Best of the Program | Guests: Vivek Ramaswamy & Eric July | 7/20/22

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Speaker 2 Hey,

Speaker 2 I guess. We talked to him about that.
Also, Vivek Rameshwami was on talking about ESG, Black Rock, and what is happening to our energy

Speaker 2 sector. Really important.

Speaker 2 We had the first badge of merit, and we also spent just a little time on the possible climate emergency order that the president and the White House have been talking about.

Speaker 2 Not supposed to come out today, but he's supposed to make a step towards that today, and maybe more next week. It's important that you are up on this information, all part of this podcast.

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Speaker 3 You're listening to the best of the Blend Glenbeck program.

Speaker 2 This is the Glenbeck program. This national emergency thing really bothers me.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's shocking to me

Speaker 2 how many things that we have talked about in the past are here now.

Speaker 2 And the national emergency thing is something that, like in the last four weeks, I had a whole show on it and saying, this is what's coming next.

Speaker 2 And while

Speaker 2 for yesterday, they thought for a while he was going to declare a national emergency today,

Speaker 2 but the White House has said, don't look for it today, but it could be coming next week. That's terrifying.
That should chill you to the bone. It's one of those things that I said four weeks ago.

Speaker 2 If they declare a national health or climate emergency, run for the hills. Run for the hills.

Speaker 2 It was interesting to see the squad, too, just blatantly wearing those green bandanas like you were talking about, which shows their affiliation with the communist, the revolutionary Communist Party in America.

Speaker 2 But the thing is, they don't care anything. They don't care.
They think they're too far down the road that we can do anything about it. And

Speaker 2 as you started saying, I think in about 2009, they're just going to show themselves because they're proud of who they are and what they are.

Speaker 2 They love it, and they can't wait to tell you what they're doing and who they are and what they are.

Speaker 2 And so if we don't do anything about it now.

Speaker 2 This is all going to be on us because they're just outright saying it, showing it. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Let me go through.

Speaker 2 This is so incredible because we are dealing with people who want to destroy our Constitution, want to reset absolutely everything. And they are so close to doing it.

Speaker 2 A national emergency, the president doesn't have to explain in great detail. He can just declare the national emergency because of

Speaker 2 climate. And then he has to outline to Congress some of the things that he wants to do.

Speaker 2 But nobody can stop him

Speaker 2 unless it's the Supreme Court. So we have these, and we talked about this maybe six months ago.
They're called PADS or PEADS, presidential executive,

Speaker 2 no, presidential emergency emergency directives. And

Speaker 2 these are secret even from Congress. Congress doesn't even know what they are.
They are presidential directives.

Speaker 2 When a president comes in, he says, What are the possible emergencies that could happen that I won't have time to respond on?

Speaker 2 And they'll say, you know, nuclear war with Russia. Okay.

Speaker 2 So there's a Pad,

Speaker 2 and these

Speaker 2 Ads are executive emergency orders that remain unsigned. So Congress doesn't know what they are because they're not in effect.

Speaker 2 So this was the big worry of the left that President Trump had all of these P Ads already done, and all he'd have to do is sign them, and you can move quickly.

Speaker 2 So the President right now, they are working on one of those P Ads, an emergency directive, that would give the president 140 special

Speaker 2 powers.

Speaker 2 And let me just give you a scenario here.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 this is from, let me see who printed this.

Speaker 2 This is from the Atlantic back in 2019.

Speaker 2 They were worried about the president doing

Speaker 2 a national emergency. Claims of emergency or necessity cannot legitimize legitimize martial law until they can.

Speaker 2 Presented with this ambiguity, presidents have explored the outer limits of their constitutional emergency authority in a series of

Speaker 2 directives known as the Presidential Emergency Action Documents, or PADs, which originated as part of the Eisenhower administration to ensure continuity of government in the wake of a Soviet nuclear attack.

Speaker 2 They are draft executive orders, proclamations, and messages to Congress that are prepared in advance of anticipated emergency. PADs are closely guarded within the government.

Speaker 2 No one has ever, not one, has ever been publicly released or leaked.

Speaker 2 Their contents have occasionally been described in public sources, including FBI memorandums where they were attained through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as agency manuals and court documents.

Speaker 2 According to these sources, PADs drafted from the 1950s through the 1970s would authorize not only martial law, but the suspension of habeas corpus by the executive branch, the revocation of America's passports, the roundup and detention of subversives identified in an FBI security index that contained more than 10,000 names.

Speaker 2 Now, this is what was in there in the 1970s that we know.

Speaker 2 Can you imagine the list of enemies? Can you imagine the list of enemies to the climate?

Speaker 2 How many people do you know on radio that have been

Speaker 3 called

Speaker 2 enemies of the climate? That they're climate deniers and these people should be put in jail.

Speaker 2 If the president issues an executive order on emergency action, it gives him the power to be able to arrest those people and hold them

Speaker 2 without habeas corpus. So you don't have a judge involved.
You don't have a trial. No hearing involved in that.

Speaker 2 So they talk about this and they they say, let me give you this scenario from the Atlantic. Trump's inflammatory tweets provoke predictable saber-rattling from Iranian leaders.

Speaker 2 He responds by threatening preemptive military strikes. Some Defense Department officials have misgivings, but others have been waiting for such an opportunity.
As Iran's statement grows

Speaker 2 more warlike, Iranophobia takes hold among the American public. Now, just take Iran out and replace it with Russia.
Take Trump out and replace it with Biden. It's exactly what's going on right now.

Speaker 2 Proclaiming the threat of war, Trump invoked Section 706 of the Communications Act to assume government control over internet traffic inside the United States in order to prevent the spread of Iranian disinformation and propaganda.

Speaker 3 Now,

Speaker 2 We already know the Department of Homeland Security is saying that there are many sources of propaganda, mis,

Speaker 2 dis,

Speaker 2 and malinformation. We know they're tracking it right now.
And we also know that their point of view is not necessarily your point of view.

Speaker 2 You don't think they would do this? It's a climate emergency.

Speaker 2 He also declares a national emergency under

Speaker 2 EPA, authorizing the Treasury Department to freeze the assets of any person or organization suspected of supporting Iran's activities against the United States.

Speaker 2 We've seen this happen in Canada.

Speaker 2 Wielding the authority conferred by these laws, the government shuts down several

Speaker 2 left-wing-leaning websites and domestic civil society organizations based on government determinations, classified, of course, that they are subject to Iranian influence.

Speaker 2 Now, they already have this scenario. The difference between, I think, conservatives and Marxists is Marxists

Speaker 2 will warn you about fascism, but will not warn you about communism.

Speaker 2 Where I will tell you, yeah, there are fascists out there. There are people on the far, far, far, far right that I think they're so far right that they're actually left like a circle.

Speaker 2 But, you know, if you want to claim that fascists are on the right, fine. Fascists are on the right, great.
Yes, they exist.

Speaker 2 And I do believe there are people on the right that wouldn't mind seizing power, but it's few and far between and would not have regular American support.

Speaker 2 The left, however,

Speaker 2 that is the Democratic Party. It is no longer the Democratic Party.
They are beholden to the Marxist-communist left, as evidenced by the green bandanas around their necks.

Speaker 2 Okay, so they don't see it from their own side, but they do see the same problem that we see. If you think Donald Trump can do it,

Speaker 2 why do you

Speaker 2 suppose that

Speaker 2 Joe Biden wouldn't do it when the climate emergency is, I can't get Congress to do what I want them to do.

Speaker 2 When the health emergency is, I can't get Congress and I can't get the Supreme Court to do what I want to do.

Speaker 2 That's not the definition of emergency. That's the definition of you suck at politics or you're out of step with the American people or the Constitution.

Speaker 3 Protests erupt.

Speaker 2 Go ahead. Go ahead.
It's pretty amazing, too,

Speaker 2 what we're okay with when it's our party in power. Like under George W.
Bush, if you remember, at the beginning, we were all for the Patriot Act.

Speaker 2 Now, it turned out years later, we realized that that was stupid and we shouldn't have been for it, but we were because it was our guy.

Speaker 2 You know, I'm sure

Speaker 2 it was the same thing with the Alien and Sedition Act under John Adams back in

Speaker 2 1800.

Speaker 3 You're okay because he's your guy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and that's the problem. We can't have a guy.
It's why I've never asked you to trust me. I've never asked you to trust me on anything.

Speaker 2 I've always said, do your own homework and root them in principles. It's why the 9-12 project was different than the Tea Party.
The 9-12 project was rooted in principles and values.

Speaker 2 That's where your loyalty needs to be, not to me, not to anybody else.

Speaker 2 You can't just follow someone blinding and say, he's my guy. Loyalty is important.

Speaker 2 You know, you don't just sell people out, but if they are breaking the values and the principles that you hold dear,

Speaker 2 you need to call them on it. You need to call them on it.

Speaker 2 One more thing on this.

Speaker 2 The Atlantic goes on to say this is the scenario under Trump.

Speaker 2 Protests erupt. On Twitter, Trump calls the protesters traitors and suggests in capital letters that they could use a good beating.

Speaker 2 When the counter-protesters oblige, which would not happen, would not happen because that's not what the right does.

Speaker 2 Trump blames the original protesters for sparking the violent confrontation and deploys the Insurrection Act to federalize the National Guard in several states.

Speaker 2 Do you not see with what they're setting up with January 6th? Do you not see that

Speaker 2 this is their scenario? They say it was coming with Donald Trump, but this is their playbook.

Speaker 2 Using the presidential alert system first tested on October 2018, the president sends a text message to every American cell phone warning that there is a risk of violence at polling stations and that troops will be deployed as necessary to keep order.

Speaker 2 Some members of opposition opposition groups are frightened and they stay at home on Election Day. Other people simply can't find accurate information online about voting.

Speaker 2 Would turn out at historic Lowe's, a president who is facing impeachment just

Speaker 2 months earlier, handily wins re-election and marks his victory by renewing the state of emergency.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 gosh,

Speaker 2 why shouldn't we fear that this could be happening with this president when he's saying he's going to declare a climate emergency and a health emergency?

Speaker 2 Warning, warning to all Democrats and all Republicans. Any president who is talking the way this president is, and that includes Donald Trump, warning.

Speaker 2 That's very, very dangerous.

Speaker 2 This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

Speaker 2 Vivek, my friend, how are you, sir?

Speaker 4 Good to talk to you, Glenn. How are you?

Speaker 2 Very, very good.

Speaker 2 You are a guy who I think one of the few that actually really gets ESG and the Great Reset, believes and understands how dangerous it is, and is working to educate people and also

Speaker 2 help us beat it.

Speaker 2 Let me start with what's happening with ESG and BlackRock.

Speaker 2 Is BlackRock's downturn in their profits? Is this something that is caused

Speaker 2 by ESG?

Speaker 2 Or is this just the downturn of the market that everybody is feeling?

Speaker 4 Well, the answer to that question, Glenn, is it is both of those things, in part because BlackRock is contributing to the downturn in the market that everyone is feeling because of ESG.

Speaker 4 So I'll explain to you how that works, where this is the largest asset manager in the world, managing over $10 trillion, around $10 trillion, about half the U.S. GDP in the hands of one firm.

Speaker 4 And if you add Vanguard and State Street to the list, the top three, they manage more than the U.S. GDP.

Speaker 4 And what they do is they're aggregating the money of of everyday citizens, probably most people listening to this program, actually, probably you and me included, with we don't know it, through our 401k accounts, through pension fund accounts, et cetera.

Speaker 4 And what they do is they use that money to advocate for these ESG policies in corporate America, climate change plans, emissions caps, diversity, equity, inclusion quota systems for race and gender on boards, et cetera.

Speaker 4 They use our money to advocate for those principles in corporate America that makes companies less successful.

Speaker 4 And as we've seen this year, has actually contributed to stock market declines as well, in my opinion.

Speaker 4 And the ESG-specific funds this year, Glenn, have actually underperformed the broader market as a whole, even though the broader market as a whole has already done badly enough.

Speaker 4 And I think a big part of why the broader market has done badly is in part because of the demands of these ESG-linked asset managers. But the ESG-specific funds have done even worse.

Speaker 4 So the answer to your question is: is there a downturn because of the broader market or is it because of the failures of ESG?

Speaker 4 The answer is both, because part of the reason the broader market is turning down is exactly because of some of these toxic policies that cause companies to focus on these orthogonal social agendas.

Speaker 2 So, let me ask you if

Speaker 2 because this

Speaker 2 I'm not an investor guy, I really, I mean, I should never be around money. I'm horrible at investing.

Speaker 2 However,

Speaker 2 it would be my feeling that if you are in a place to where oil is as scarce as it is, if we didn't have ESG,

Speaker 3 wouldn't the

Speaker 2 energy market be the place to put your money? Or is that just a Glenn Becky market?

Speaker 4 Well, it's not just Glenn Beck, it's Warren Buffett quietly starting to behave this way too, Glenn. So you might give yourself a little bit more credit than you just did.

Speaker 4 But it's actually, if you think about it, you know, this is

Speaker 4 the potential moment for U.S.

Speaker 4 energy to really shine and rise to the occasion, not just as an investment proposition, but as a proposition to meet the needs of Americans at a time when there's a massive supply-demand imbalance, right?

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 you remember that as recently as 2018, the U.S. was the world's largest producer of energy.
How quickly things have changed now with the U.S.

Speaker 4 president groveling in front of foreign dictators around the world, begging them to produce more oil that the U.S. could be producing instead.

Speaker 4 And now, I know the Biden administration is trying to walk this back.

Speaker 4 I think a lot of ESG managers like BlackRock are trying to walk this back and say, well, we don't really want to end fossil fuel production. Actually, you know what? This is done is he's just making

Speaker 4 good on a campaign promise. In September of 2019, on the campaign trail, I'm quoting him exactly.

Speaker 4 Here's what President Biden, then candidate Biden said, I guarantee you we're going to end fossil fuels, end quote.

Speaker 4 That was a campaign promise that he's now delivering on, but he has multiple tools to deliver on it because normally the way constitutionally you would deliver on that campaign promise is that you would get a law passed through Congress.

Speaker 4 Well, he doesn't have the political support to do that. The American people haven't given Congress the political support to do that.

Speaker 4 Joe Manchin won't even stand in the way of doing, won't even allow that to happen. And so what are they doing now?

Speaker 4 They're resorting to other means like executive action through the climate change emergency. We'll hear more about what that means.

Speaker 4 They're doing it through the private sector, deputizing their cronies like BlackRock, many of whose alumni, by the way, work in the Biden administration, but large private sector actors, they do the favors for them in return for those private actors.

Speaker 4 doing through the back door what government could not get done through the front door through Congress, the constitutionally ordained way for actually passing laws.

Speaker 4 So he's delivering on that campaign promise, but doing it through the back door in ways that I think would make our founding fathers shudder if they actually knew the way the government

Speaker 4 was treating the private sector and using the invisible fist of government instead of the invisible hand of the market to actually reach these outcomes.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 one more question on

Speaker 2 food now.

Speaker 2 Would food be the same thing? Because

Speaker 2 we have the ability, we have the property, the land, we have the farmers, we have the history of being the world's breadbasket. If it wasn't for ESG,

Speaker 2 wouldn't this be the time that farming would be the best kind of investment where

Speaker 2 we would be selling our wheat and our food all over the world. We would literally be feeding the world if it wasn't for ESG.

Speaker 3 Am I wrong on that?

Speaker 4 And at a time when there's real demand and need for it as well. So the way I look at it going is these are all part of the same categories because energy is upstream of food production as well, right?

Speaker 4 It takes energy to transport food, to be able to export food, to be able to produce food, to be able to put the ingredients together for, you know, so I agree with you.

Speaker 4 I kind of look at energy as even more fundamental because it's upstream of nearly every other sector and nearly every other production means.

Speaker 4 But the thing, the thing for people to understand here is that

Speaker 4 this is damage that's been done in the last few years by the merger of public power and private power. So that's what makes it so hard to find a source.

Speaker 4 Because on one hand, Biden can say, this isn't my fault.

Speaker 4 This is just the decisions of the private sector that stopped drilling for oil, that stopped drilling for natural, that stopped fracking for natural gas. We didn't do that.

Speaker 4 There was no policy you could point to.

Speaker 4 But actually, the reason why they're doing it is because of the ESG movement in the private sector that this administration and the modern left supports through the back door.

Speaker 4 And so that's kind of how they're able to really trick the public through this jiu-jitsu move, saying that, oh,

Speaker 4 this isn't us passing laws to do this. We're just seeing the private sector underinvest in oil and gas.

Speaker 4 That's what they say when gas prices are high, when in fact they were responsible for causing it. And that's what people need to wake up to.

Speaker 2 All right. So

Speaker 2 they are not talking to the American people about this. They're blaming the private sector.

Speaker 2 And that that usually means the investors and the companies. But the investors are not necessarily a part of this.
A lot of us are invested in these companies through our 401k, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 And we're not telling the companies to do this. Do the companies want to do this? Or is it based just on the pressure from places like BlackRock, who have a lot of those shares? Because

Speaker 2 we run our money through BlackRock for our 401ks.

Speaker 4 It's really the latter. Glenn, I'm telling you.
So the U.S. energy sector,

Speaker 4 the potential of U.S. energy to be able to supply not only America's needs, but the global needs,

Speaker 4 is staggering. And this isn't just a policy failure.
It's an American travesty when those same companies have been hamstrung from being able to do their jobs.

Speaker 4 Now, most people choose to work in the energy industry, for example, work in the energy industry because they want to be part of that solution.

Speaker 4 But what's happened in the last four or five years is that these large shareholders like BlackRock have imposed constraints on these companies. I'll give you a very specific example.

Speaker 4 Exxon, by the way, was the largest company in the world as recently as 2013. It's the largest U.S.
energy company.

Speaker 4 BlackRock voted in favor of putting three dissident directors, three new directors that they put on the board of directors of Exxon to adjust its climate change strategy.

Speaker 4 And before BlackRock put those voted for those directors to join Exxon's board, Exxon had a business plan to increase oil production 25% between 2020 and 2025.

Speaker 4 After they put those new directors on Exxon's board, they revised their business plan to reduce oil production 20% over those same five years. Wow.

Speaker 4 That's a clear before and after. Now, imagine today how much more successful the American energy industry would be, Exxon would be as a company.

Speaker 4 how much lower gas prices would be if American oil companies were actually producing more oil, which was their prior business plan, before BlackRock and Vanguard and State Street 2 vote in favor of these new directors on the board, say, no, no, that need doesn't match your climate change plan that we want to see you implement.

Speaker 4 Now you need to reduce oil production. This is the travesty, Glenn.

Speaker 4 It's the fraud of our time where Americans are paying for $5 gas at the pump with one hand, not knowing that their own 401k accounts and their own pension fund accounts and brokerage accounts are actually subsidizing the very ESG agenda that gives them $5 gas in the first place.

Speaker 4 And I think that once people start to see that with clear eyes, the good news is we find our way to a better way forward to say that we're not going to let someone else abuse my money, abuse my savings, to be able to send messages to the U.S.

Speaker 4 energy industry that I absolutely don't want to be delivering to the U.S. energy industry.

Speaker 4 Instead, I want them to make great products. That's actually what I think the next step in this battle looks like.

Speaker 2 We have a ton of states now that are looking to move their money and all of the pension funds and everything else. We have a lot of states that want to do that.

Speaker 2 We have a lot of people that want to do that. But I'm assuming this is what you're working on.

Speaker 2 I think you told us last time you were on that you were going to start something and go right after BlackRock. And

Speaker 3 is that happening? This is why

Speaker 4 I started Strive earlier this year, creating a firm to compete head-on versus BlackRock because these are problems Glenn created in the market that need to be solved solved through the market.

Speaker 4 And so that's where I started Strive. And

Speaker 4 we're going to take these guys high on. And I've learned a lot over the last

Speaker 4 few months even about how broken that pension fund system at the state level really is.

Speaker 4 And this isn't even a Republican or a Democrat issue. We talk about, a lot of times people talk about the deep state and the federal government.
I think it exists at the state level.

Speaker 4 I think it exists in corporate America, what I call deep corporate.

Speaker 4 But these are institutionalized, bureaucratized actors that, that BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard, they've mastered this system over the last ten to twenty years.

Speaker 4 And it's an ossified system that in absence of everyday citizens speaking up and demanding change, you're going to have a mid-level bureaucrat who's going to happily sit and collect his paycheck without wanting to be bothered that's going to say, well, this is what I've done and I don't get paid anymore if I serve my citizens or not, so leave me alone.

Speaker 4 I'm overstating the case, but only by a little bit,

Speaker 4 which is exactly how many of these mid-level bureaucrats at the state level think and even communicate.

Speaker 4 And I think that at the end of the day, the right answer is going to come from everyday citizens demanding change.

Speaker 4 Kind of like what you saw in a small scale of the school boards last year, parents taking educational control back into their own hands, not leaving it to some sort of bureaucratized school board and saying that it's your job to educate my children.

Speaker 4 No, they're my children, and I have a say in how they're educated. It's the equivalent,

Speaker 4 I think, bottom-up, you know, it's a sort of a positive revolution of sorts that we need to see.

Speaker 3 That actually take everybody's presence and say, This is my hard-earned savings.

Speaker 4 I'm going to take control. Just like it's my kids, it's my money.
It's not your money, a pension from your cut, and it's definitely not your money, BlackRock. That's what we're going to have to see.

Speaker 2 Vivek, earlier this week,

Speaker 2 I came back from vacation and I said the most important story since I've been gone was the Sri Lanka

Speaker 2 overthrow of the government and kicking out of the president because

Speaker 2 the World Economic Forum said this is the model. And there was a story up at WEF.org that said the headline was, How we're going to make Sri Lanka rich by 2025.
So they implemented all of this stuff.

Speaker 2 They did everything the World Economic Forum said to do.

Speaker 2 And I talked about it and read that story on the air. By the time I got off the air, the World Economic Forum had taken that story off of their website.

Speaker 2 But do you agree that Sri Lanka is the example that we should all be looking at, saying they're the ones who did it, and look how it turned out?

Speaker 4 I think it's a great example. Unfortunately, Galen, I would love to say it is the example.
Unfortunately, we're seeing more and more examples by the day.

Speaker 4 I mean, look at what's happening in Ghana. Look at what's happening in the Netherlands.
Look at what's happening in the United States and Canada at a smaller scale.

Speaker 4 We have an energy supply shortage that we just talked about in this country.

Speaker 4 But you're right, Sri Lanka is a great example to see what happens when these toxic philosophies are taken to their logical extent. And, you know, I think that this is a transnational issue, Glenn.

Speaker 4 It is a transpartisan issue. It goes beyond partisan boundaries, national boundaries.
It is a global monarchy,

Speaker 4 and it's going to take a revolution to find it. I agree.

Speaker 2 You're exactly right. Vivek, thank you so much.
Be a part of that revolution

Speaker 2 because we're in one, whether you like it or not. And we don't need to pick up our guns.
We need to inform ourselves and inform our neighbors. Knowledge, knowledge is power.

Speaker 3 The best of the Glen Bank program.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the Glen Bank Program. You know, the thing I love about

Speaker 2 the hosts on Blaze TV is

Speaker 2 they all own their own shows. I own my show, and Pat owns his, Eric July owns his.

Speaker 2 And so you attract entrepreneurs, and Eric July is an entrepreneur, man. I can't tell you, Eric, how happy I am for you.

Speaker 2 When I first saw the news, that you were putting out a comic book and you were crowdraising, crowdfunding, and you were looking for a million dollars, and you hit that in the first 24 hours, and now you're almost up to $3 million.

Speaker 2 I have to tell you, God bless America.

Speaker 3 You are sending.

Speaker 2 I'm guessing. I'm guessing.
I don't know because I don't know the comic world.

Speaker 2 But if I'm sitting there at Marvel, as I'm looking at things like how badly Thor did, and Disney, how bad their numbers are starting to look, and DC which just always sucks I'm thinking we we should probably not go so deep into the woke front have you seen what Rippiverse is doing

Speaker 3 this has been just an incredible experience and I've been talking about the state of the comic book industry for a very long time and for

Speaker 3 us to put this out and to get the reception that we got, it just reassures kind of everything it was that I was saying.

Speaker 3 And that is that people still want this stuff.

Speaker 3 They might be going out to try to, let's say, import, let's say, someone else's material like the Japanese with manga because the American stuff sucks right now so much.

Speaker 3 But this proved that, hey, people still want this stuff. They're still enthusiastic about it.

Speaker 3 They just don't want any of the nonsense that's tied certainly to the American comic book industry right now.

Speaker 3 So this has just been insane in the sense that it just reassures everything that I've been talking about for a while. And Eric,

Speaker 2 the best example of this, I think, is the latest Thor, which is just laden with wokeness.

Speaker 2 Every relationship in the movie, just about, is a gay relationship.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 they throw in the thing where the two gay men have a biological baby together.

Speaker 2 And so they're even doing things that don't make any sense just to bend over backward and pander to the LGBTQ committee, which is fine if you want to do that.

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't care about the sexuality of the characters. It's just, I don't want that jammed down my throat.

Speaker 2 I just want an enjoyable movie and an enjoyable comic book, which is what you're doing, essentially.

Speaker 3 Exactly. I mean, that's really all people want.
It's not about not seeing black characters or even, you know, whatever sexuality or whatever.

Speaker 3 But when you're beating your audience over the head with it, and it's clearly become just a vanity project for all of these people to write their own goofy stories.

Speaker 3 And oftentimes they don't make sense for those characters that they wrote.

Speaker 3 You know, I talked about this in our kind of opening kind of trailer where I discussed like, hey, you've seen your characters that you love be bastardized. And that's the fundamental issue.

Speaker 3 They're not creating new characters or something.

Speaker 3 They're taking the character that everybody knows and recognizes, like the Tim Drakes of the world, and they just make them bisexual out of nowhere and weird stuff like that. So

Speaker 3 this resonates with so many people because they have been assured that, okay, this is something new and fresh, but we don't have to go through that.

Speaker 3 We're not going to be gaslit by the companies themselves, the actors or the actresses.

Speaker 3 That's not going to happen. And this is what people want.
So, we just made it easy and just put the stuff out there.

Speaker 2 I will tell you that,

Speaker 2 you know, you probably know this better than I do, but the reason why we have superheroes is because of times like this.

Speaker 2 You know, back in World War II,

Speaker 2 it was such a powerful force that we didn't, we felt small, insignificant, and didn't know how to stop all of the problems. So we came up with superheroes.

Speaker 2 Well, our problems are just as big, but our superheroes now, the ones that they're ones that, now that they're woke,

Speaker 2 they're just part of the problem. It's no longer an escape, and it's no longer

Speaker 2 a powerful being that can

Speaker 2 supersede everything else and just be above all of it.

Speaker 2 That's the secret to a good comic character, isn't it?

Speaker 3 Absolutely. And I talk about this about acknowledging those sort of universal truths.
And that's where we got away from with the comic book industry right now: what is just, what is right, what is

Speaker 3 good, what is bad.

Speaker 3 Like that stuff has gone completely out the window because a lot of folks are more obsessed with their individual social preferences and social agenda that they may have and it of course bleeds off into their work.

Speaker 3 So these people don't look like or these characters or say definitely the superheroes, the ones that are supposed to be good. They're more interested in using them as a vehicle to lecture them about.

Speaker 3 lecture their audience about stuff that they don't even care about. And it's not about that character going around kicking butt, fighting off the evil.

Speaker 3 That kind of goes out out of the realm of reality right now. It's more about: hey, I want to use this character so you can accept my individual agenda.

Speaker 3 And I'm going to use that character that you know and love to as a vehicle to really get this message out of there. And it just makes for very, very bad art.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 tell me, because

Speaker 2 if, again, if I were in this industry, I would see you selling 30,000 copies on day one as a disturbing trend for my company.

Speaker 2 two questions. Have you heard anything,

Speaker 2 even through the grapevine, from these companies? Is there any reaction from these companies like Marvel?

Speaker 3 100%.

Speaker 3 We know that's exactly what's happening. There's insiders that have already talked about this, about, hey, it's putting them on notice.

Speaker 3 Disney's looking at it like, well, hey, this is something that is happening. It's not to say that we're going to completely upend what it is that they're doing, but

Speaker 3 you're seeing that maybe

Speaker 3 a lot of what they're doing isn't as lucrative as what they anticipate so they see this guy who's been doing comic book commentary come in and make this amount of money sell this amount of copies i mean people need to understand the magnitude of this for those that don't like you they would classify our book as a graphic novel per se that's what they would call because of how big it is this first first book if you look at those sales in comparison to like the what's going to the north american comic book sales we've already destroyed any book that they've put out that's in this genre.

Speaker 3 Marvel, be it DC Image.

Speaker 3 We've destroyed anything that they put out all of 2021,

Speaker 3 of course, last year. So it shows that, of course, this is a thirsty market here, but we're doing something that they said could not happen.
You can't do original characters. You have to race swap.

Speaker 3 You have to sexuality swap because people already have these characters that they're tied to and they recognize.

Speaker 3 And we showed, no, you give them something interested that they can be interested in, then they will certainly, you know, you'll reap the benefits, let's say that.

Speaker 3 And that's what's happening right now.

Speaker 2 So the next question is,

Speaker 2 people sometimes build businesses

Speaker 2 and they become very, very successful. And

Speaker 2 a Facebook will come in and buy them

Speaker 2 and just absorb them, sometimes to sit on them, sometimes to use them, but make it theirs. Would you sell if they came to you and said, hey, we'll offer you whatever?

Speaker 3 Not interested. Would you sell? They couldn't sell it.
They couldn't buy it for 100 million.

Speaker 3 They couldn't buy it for 100 billion because if they're willing to pay for it that much, I can make that much myself.

Speaker 3 So I look at it from a creative standpoint, as well as as a businessman. The point of this whole thing that we're doing is that I looked at the industry.

Speaker 3 I saw a problem with it, a fundamental issue with it, and I wanted to do things my sort of own way. I took the, let's say, what people are doing like in the crowdfunding space.

Speaker 3 I took it, made it my own kind of spin on it, giving people the visual numbers so they can see it and all of that, while also already having the work done.

Speaker 3 I already paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make sure that I can make this happen, which is why we can get it to the audience relatively quick.

Speaker 3 So if they came to me with a dollar amount, I could refuse it because like this is the whole point. I don't want to have to go through you guys.

Speaker 3 I want to be able to show folks that we can do this in a far more decentralized way than what it was before. And yeah, as a libertarian, philosophically, that's what I want.

Speaker 3 I don't like the idea that there's these mega corporate entities, billion-dollar corporate entities that have control of all of these properties.

Speaker 3 We have a direct, just with the internet and the technology alone, we have a direct line of sight with our audience. We don't have to go through the old guard anymore.

Speaker 3 And that's probably what frustrates these guys more than anything if they write these hit pieces. It's that we're seeing success, but we're also not going through them.

Speaker 3 So they can't give me enough money to take my property. Not at all.

Speaker 2 all right so Eric can you give us just a one-minute

Speaker 3 rundown of what the characters are what what's happening in book one yeah so I some issue number one it deals with a character by the name of Avery Sillman he had before been a hero of sorts he got his abilities he started to be a hero and there was an event that happened that well he decided to kind of walk away from it so this story I some issue number one kind of takes place with him after he had already been a hero.

Speaker 3 He's a regular blue-collar civilian kind of in Texas. He has his own ranch.
He's doing his own thing.

Speaker 3 And his sister Altona gives him a call and wants him to visit an old friend because there was another different friend or family friend that was interning with his sister.

Speaker 3 And she's like, hey, can you go? check it check this out she was interning with us she's kind of gone missing and last i heard your old friend darren fontano which is his name has uh

Speaker 3 had some sort of relation with her. Go look into it.

Speaker 3 So, even though he doesn't like being in the city, he's going to, for the sake of his sister, for the sake of this old friend, he's going to go check this out.

Speaker 3 And of course, he has kind of the longest day in his life meeting all these interesting characters that all of you guys are going to, of course, enjoy. I know people are going to love it.

Speaker 3 So, I wanted to tell this story in the way that it is because I don't think there's a lot of Texas heroes that are out there. And I was like, let's give it a shot.

Speaker 2 So, is it a superpower?

Speaker 2 Yeah, he does have. Does he have a a superpower?

Speaker 3 He does have superpowers. People will find out exactly what those are in the book.
He does have certain abilities. It's not as, I know people are guessing.
That's the cool thing about comics.

Speaker 3 Everybody has their theories and everything. We're already seeing that.

Speaker 3 We did this in a very unique way.

Speaker 2 Did he fall into toxic waste or was he bitten by a bat?

Speaker 3 No. Was it bitten by an animal that gave him his

Speaker 3 powers or anything like that? All right.

Speaker 2 I can't wait to. I can't wait to get it.
And I would like a first edition for our museum as well. You guys.

Speaker 2 I think this is going to be big.

Speaker 2 And you already know that.

Speaker 2 Where can you go to

Speaker 2 buy one?

Speaker 3 Of course, Rippiverse.com. You can go get the book.
You can go get a bunch of other items that we have, a couple of different covers, a few different covers, actually, as well as different,

Speaker 3 we got trading cards, got all kinds of merchandise items, shirts, everything, hats. You can get all kinds of stuff that's associated with it over at Rippiverse.com.

Speaker 2 I love it. Rippiverse, R-I-P-P-A verse.com.
Eric, congratulations. We'll talk to you again, my friend.

Speaker 3 All right. See you soon.
Bye-bye.