Best of The Program | Guests: Sen. Mike Lee, Andrew Roth, & Bethany Mandel | 5/10/21

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So Stu and I thought we would just start telling the truth.

And we thought,

you know, it just doesn't get better, was one of them.

But that was kind of a bummer.

You know, it might be a reflection of our mood today.

And then I thought, well, it does, but the real problem is if it's not one thing, it's another.

Right?

Right.

Yeah.

You know, sometimes clichés have a way of being completely right.

And that's where we are today.

Right.

And we decided not to say this in the actual podcast because we didn't want to bum people out.

Well, we want to bum you out.

We figured you're here for the long haul.

I mean, you subscribed.

So

you know.

You know what it's like.

You know what it's like.

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You're listening to

the best of the Glenbeck program.

This is the Glenbeck program.

I'm going to read two things to you.

First, the New York Times.

The New York Times wrote, Two days before a mob of Trump supporters invaded the United States Capitol, upending the nation's peaceful transition of power and leaving at least five people dead, the right-wing radio star Glenn Beck delivered a message to his flock of 10.5 million listeners.

It's time to fight.

It's time to rip and claw and rake, Mr.

Beck said on his January 4th broadcast.

It's time for you to go to war as the left went to war four years ago.

Now, they updated that even though we gave them all of this information a week before the story aired, two days after publication, they updated it with this.

Mr.

Beck did not lobby for his listeners to invade the Capitol, and a day later, he urged marchers in Washington to channel your inner Martin Luther King, adding, violence is not who we've ever been.

But the language he used on his January 4th show was typical of the aggressive rhetoric that permeated conservative talk radio.

Okay.

I mean, again,

you specifically said not to go.

I know.

So couldn't that, why would they use you as an example?

It makes no sense.

Here is the latest story today.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot set social media ablaze Monday evening with a call to arms.

That's a quote.

Quote, to my friends in the LGBTQ community, the Supreme Court is coming for us next.

This moment has to be a call to arms.

We will not surrender our rights without a fight.

We will fight, a fight to victory.

Hmm.

I wonder if the New York Times is going to say the same about her.

She's calling to arms.

I don't know what that means, except call to guns.

Isn't that what arms imply?

But there's a double standard here.

The president won't, will not disavow those who are now marching in front of the Supreme Court justices' homes, which is my understanding, it is clearly illegal to do if you are trying to

intimidate or change the verdict of a Supreme Court justice.

Mike Lee is joining us now

from

Washington, D.C.

Hello, Mike.

How are you?

Hello, Greg.

Well, it's good to be with you.

Good.

And, you know, what they did to you at the times, that sounds like reckless disregard for the truth to me.

That's actionable defamation.

Ooh, really?

Huh.

Absolutely.

All right.

Look,

you told them what you had actually said.

They ran the story anyway, not reflecting that.

That is.

Does it matter that they corrected it two days later?

No, because they still defamed you in the meantime.

Nobody reads the corrections like they read the original story.

This is part of what's disgraceful, is that they get away with this.

So

let's talk a little bit about, first of all, what is happening to the Supreme Court justices in front of their homes.

Mike, that's clearly illegal, is it not?

Yes, it is.

It violates a Virginia statute.

It also, quite arguably, violates a federal statute, 18 USC Section 1503, I think it is,

that

would seem to suggest that this is unlawful.

But more than anything, Glenn, this is just really creepy.

It carries with it an implicit threat of violence because it says to the occupants of the home where they're protesting, we know where you sleep.

Correct.

It's the only purpose it serves.

And that has no place in society.

You know, I actually dealt with it.

First time I ever dealt with this, I was 11 years old.

My father, who was serving as President Reagan's solicitor general at the time, filed a brief in a case, and it dealt with an issue related to abortion, related to Grove versus Wade.

The abortion rights movement didn't like it, so they protested in front of our home.

I was the only one home at the time.

Actually, my older sister Wendy was there, but she was asleep the entire time.

She slept long.

So I went out and talked to them.

You know, the movie Home Alone hadn't come out yet.

It wouldn't come out for another 20 years.

But when I saw that movie many years later, I thought, I know how that kid feels.

I started thinking, what do I do?

Do I break out the illegal fireworks stash that I had from where my cousins bought on the Indian Reservation the summer before?

Do I turn on the sprinklers?

It occurred to me if I did any of those things, news crews would show up.

That would be bad.

So I just went out and talked to them instead.

And the very first thing the lady said to me, there's a lady who appeared to be in charge of all of them.

We'll call her Karen.

And Karen said to me, Well, hello, little boy.

We're not here to hurt you.

That's creepy.

And it's creepy anytime you protest in front of the home of a public official.

Right.

That's what's wrong with it.

And I'm wondering if that would even be said today.

A lot of these protesters, I mean,

it's vile what's going on, just as it was vile on January 6th.

That was a mob.

And not everybody, but the ones that really kind of broke down the door, etc., etc., those people were in a mob mentality and just vile.

So, Mike, yesterday, without anybody condemning these people and saying it has to stop, the Senate voted to pass a bill to provide security services to the Supreme Court justices and their families, and it was a unanimous vote.

Yes.

How can somebody on the left say that this isn't violent and yet vote unanimously to provide security?

Well, if one of them were on the show with us,

and I'm sure all the lefties come on your show constantly.

All the time.

So

you can probably provide the answer.

I'm sure they would say, look,

the potential is there.

We want to make sure they have safety when they need it.

But look, there's no reason for them to not condemn this.

There's no reason for them to not call it off.

It is inappropriate.

I have yet to have this conversation with any of my colleagues, Republican, Democrat, otherwise,

in which they will disagree with the suggestion it's inappropriate to show up to someone's home to protest.

It's not appropriate.

I don't know why it is they can't find the moral courage to express publicly what I think all of them believe privately, which is that that is unacceptable.

That was the problem with January 6th for many of us.

We were like, where is Donald Trump?

Why isn't he stepping up to the plate right now and saying, this is horrible?

Stop it right now.

Let me ask you, there's a bill now going through

at the Senate, and it's to codify Roe.

Can you explain what's going on here?

Yeah.

There's a bill moving through the Senate, and they want to codify Roe, but it's Roe on steroids.

It's worse than Roe, far worse.

It basically says that no state can have any law restricting abortion in any way and guarantees abortion right up until the moment of birth without any restriction by any other law.

And so this is a very radical proposal.

This is substantially farther to the left.

than what you'll see from any ordinary American.

Americans understand that regardless of how they feel about abortion more broadly, they understand that the closer you get to birth,

the closer you get to the point where a baby could clearly survive outside the womb,

nearly all Americans support some restrictions on abortion, but they want to get rid of even those.

This act is intended to protect all people with the capacity for pregnancy, cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with a different gender, and others who are unjustly harmed by restrictions on abortion services.

Mike, I got to believe if I were running for the Senate and I was kind of in a purple state,

I would be really upset at the Democratic leadership if I'm running as a Democrat.

Yeah, and why wouldn't you be?

But look, they're trying to impress a certain radical French element of their own base, base, and this is where they're going to do it.

The next step they're going to do is they're going to try to pack the Supreme Court or hashtag expand the court, as many of my liberal colleagues are now using that hashtag.

They want to add justices to the Supreme Court of the United States, which is itself a huge mistake.

All these things are designed to delegitimize and denigrate and isolate those Supreme Court justices inclined to vote for Justice Alito's masterfully written mandatory opinion.

Mike, you were part of the crew that you were a leader in the crew to find these Supreme Court justices.

They're saying now that it looks like this is going to be the filing

ruling.

Do you believe that?

Yes, I do believe that.

And I also believe that the reason these people are freaking out so much is that

they're afraid of the same thing.

And so that's why I think if this does, in fact, happen, the pivot will happen very, very quickly, and they'll move on to saying this is an illegitimate court, so we're going to have to change it.

We haven't seen this since 1937.

It's why I started seeing this coming about a year and a half ago.

That's why I started writing the book that comes out June 7th, available for pre-order now called Saving Nine.

Saving Nine explains what happened last time they did this, how we stop it, and why it's such a horrible idea.

It is a book that is right on time

called Saving Nine, and very good.

Mike,

the bill that they are trying to pass, let's just live in fantasy land,

we say that it passes, okay?

Isn't that still what the Supreme Court was saying shouldn't be done, that it should go to the states?

It's not a federal issue?

Yes.

So the Supreme Court draft majority opinion written by Justice Alito.

said that these are the sorts of decisions that ought to be made by the people's elected lawmakers

and not by nine lawyers wearing robes on the Supreme Court of the United States for the simple reason that there's nothing in the Constitution that makes this something that the courts decide, nothing in the Constitution that even makes this federal rather than state.

Now,

there are some places for federal law to weigh in on most areas, but most laws, most of the time, that affect most of your day-to-day life are state laws, not federal laws.

So it follows logically that given that there's nothing in the Constitution making abortion distinctly a federal issue, most laws dealing with abortion should be handled at the state level.

Does that include if New York or California includes

partial birth abortion or after-birth abortion, which is now strangely being talked about in those states, does the federal government have a role in stopping any of that?

Depending on how far Congress wanted to push the envelope, Congress could try to assert more authority in that area.

My personal view is that this is one of those areas that

really is perfect for the Constitution, for the Constitutional Principle of Federalism.

Because, look, there isn't a lot of national unity, national consensus on this issue.

People in Utah would decide this very differently than the people of New York.

and people in Mississippi very differently than those in the state of Oregon.

And, you know, sometimes that is part of the constitutional compromise.

That's part of who we are.

That is the compromise.

Right.

We allow people to govern themselves differently according to local preferences.

Well, Mike, I want to thank you for all the work that you did with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to get these

guys on the Supreme Court and

women as well.

It's because of, I think, your work that we have these people.

And I am hoping that that when we get a Republican in office, that you are appointed to the Supreme Court because I think you would make a tremendous Supreme Court justice.

Thank you so much, Mike.

Thank you very much, Glenn.

You bet.

By the way, if you want to support Mike in his race for Senate, you can do that by, I don't know, checking out, I don't know, Mike Leafer Senate or whatever the hell.

I don't know

the best way to point people to his site, but yes, you should go look at his site.

And this is an important week, I think, by the way, to consider that.

If you are a person who looks at the ruling from

Alito

and looks at that in a positive light

and maybe have dreamt of the day that Roe versus Wade would be overturned your entire life, for example, it's important to highlight, as you did right there at the end, the really vital role that Mike Lee has in this ruling.

He was the guy, basically.

That's why they're coming after him so hard.

Right.

He was the guy who put together the list along with the Federalist Society and a couple of other people that you mentioned.

But he was really the driving force to get that list in front of Donald Trump that he wound up selecting from, these three justices.

And in the office with him,

campaigning for these people, really trying to educate Donald Trump on who they were and getting them to be the candidate.

Without Mike Lee, you don't have the situation that we're looking at this week.

That's how crucial he's been to this process.

And if you care about this issue at all, you should remember that as you look at who you're voting for here in Utah over the next year.

Well, you have Edwin McMuffin, who's running against him, who is pro-choice.

And so that's, you know, that's one thing that you would have going for you.

Is he pro-choice?

I didn't even know that.

Yeah, I guess he's pro-choice.

Regardless, I mean, it's one of these things that even if you had somebody else you were considering, like, this is such a vital issue, and he was so vital to to it.

And I tell you that the left knows it.

Too bad the right doesn't know it, but the left knows exactly what he's done.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

So there is an opinion in the Washington Post.

I was listening to a podcast the other day featuring two hard-left Americans in their late 30s.

I won't name names, but you know the type, socialist intellectuals who use terms like dissident to describe themselves.

The conversation mainly centered around a few themes.

The kids today are too self-righteous and judgmental.

The

Democratic Party is corrupt and uninspiring.

Donald Trump wasn't nearly as bad as everyone said.

And I miss the good old days.

This op-ed is so worth the read today.

In the Washington Post,

again, are millennial leftists aging into right-wingers?

Yeah, and I think there is a real pushback.

And hopefully there is a pushback not to the uninspiring Republican Party, which everybody says is the only thing we have.

Well, that's the only thing we have because

nobody's doing anything about it except for the Freedom Caucus.

Freedom Caucus is inside the Democratic Party, just like the progressive caucus was inside the Democratic Party.

And this is the antidote to the progressive disease.

And

I just hope that it is spreading all over the country because we need people that will stand together.

in the shade of the Constitution.

Andrew Roth is the president of the State Freedom Caucus Network.

He is trying to create more freedom caucuses all around the country, and he is with us now.

Hi, Andrew.

How are you?

Hey, thanks for having me, Glenn.

You bet.

You just started one in Nevada and South Carolina, right?

And just last week in Illinois, we've got five total:

Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Nevada, and Illinois.

Our plan is to launch another five to seven this year so we can have maybe 10 to 12 total going into the new year.

Okay, so

what does the Freedom Caucus, so for people who don't know, what does it stand for?

And what are you looking for?

Well, hopefully your listeners know about the House Freedom Caucus, and we are operating under their blessing and under their auspices.

And they believe in limited government,

more freedom, both economic freedom and cultural freedom from the woke left.

And they have made great strides in the halls of Congress.

But if we're going to take back this country, they recognized, as do a lot of people, that the fight is at the state level now.

There are all of these big issues that need to be won at the state level, whether it's election integrity, school choice, CRT, the list goes on.

Right.

So we need to organize at the state level.

And

I'll confess, like, a lot of people don't know who their state senator is or their state rep.

And there is a lot of mischief and a lot of corruption happening at the state level.

But the good news is that there are a few conservatives in each legislature who we can help organize by bringing them resources and expertise that we have to create these state freedom caucuses.

So that's what we're doing.

And I'll tell you what, it's an exciting project.

And we're going to change things around as quickly as we can.

I will tell you,

what I've seen traveling around and talking to the different state legislatures,

without the Freedom Caucus, there seems to be a group of people that

are

angry and can't work within the system.

And you understand it because in some of those states, the system is so corrupt on both sides.

But there's got to be an organizing factor that can get things done.

And I think that's what you guys are doing in Washington.

And you're, to me,

this is the answer.

The answer is coming right now from the Freedom Caucus, which is don't play the game on either side.

Just let's return the power to the people.

That's exactly right.

And these state lawmakers, I mean, just think about it.

Everything is working against them.

First of all, they're citizen lawmakers.

You know, they've all got full-time jobs, or at least most of them do.

So they're either busy, you know, harvesting the crops or,

you know, doing their nine-to-five job and they're taking time out of their busy life to go to the Capitol and be a representative, which means they don't have a lot of time to read the bills, to understand how things work.

So the establishment already has them under their thumb.

Plus, they don't have staff.

And if they do have staff, it's usually provided to them by leadership, which means they have an actual spy in their office.

So anytime a conservative in any state legislator wants to do something proactive to limit the size of government, there are a lot of forces working against them.

But we can change that.

And that's what we're trying to do.

We're going to bring them resources, staffing, all sorts of things so that they can strategize, they can meet,

and they can figure out which bills to kill and which bills to push up.

And here's the best part, is that we can build build a coalition of supporters behind them.

You know, as I mentioned before, a lot of people don't know who their state rep or their state senator is, but we plan on changing that.

We want to turn these people into heroes because if they see that fighting for limited government and liberty is something that people will respond to, they're going to do more of it.

And so their colleagues are going to follow them as well.

So

you've made a lot of money.

Are you going into

the state houses, Are you talking to the reps that you look at and say,

these are the kind of people that we want?

And you're talking to them one-on-one?

This is both the

grassroots, but does the politician come first to make sure you have somebody that you can support right away and then gather the support for that person?

Oh, definitely.

We have a pretty rigorous vetting process.

We reach out to the grassroots and we basically ask them who's the most conservative member in the legislature.

And they usually land on one or two people and then we start talking to them.

And then we give them bylaws, like a template, which they can take to their colleagues.

And it's basically an accountability document.

Basically,

it tells them who they can invite into the Freedom Caucus, how they can kick people out.

When a Freedom Caucus takes a position, it's expected that all members follow that position.

And if they don't, they need to submit a letter basically explaining why they can't.

And if you rack up too many of those letters, then it's time for you to go.

So the bylaws are an important part.

And then after that,

we try to identify somebody in state who knows how things work, who can help that Freedom Caucus operate, kind of the person behind the curtain who can help read the bills, make vote recommendations, build coalitions.

None of this is happening right now.

And this is what we're going to change.

And I got to tell you, it's working.

I mean, we're just in five states right now, but it's working.

We've had some major successes.

A couple of chairmen of these state freedom caucuses have been on your show and have explained the success that they're having.

So I think

the best is yet to come.

Well, I hope that you're right because a lot of these people who I happen to believe in all over the country,

they're beating their heads against the wall.

They're so outnumbered,

and they see what the problem is, but

it's so dirty.

I mean,

because I'm fighting against ESG, the money

that is

being pushed around by the big banks and the lobbyists is just insanity.

And people don't have the time to do their own homework on it.

It's a problem.

Yeah, and that's why we just need to bring more resources on our side to level the playing field.

In South Carolina, in fact, today,

there's going to be a big, big bill decided on certificate of need.

And I know a lot of people don't know what that is, but basically, if you want to build a hospital in some area,

you literally have to get the permission of the incumbent hospitals.

Right.

It's a racket that the government has set up.

And in South Carolina right now, the Senate wants to repeal certificate of need in the entire state.

And the majority leader in the House, a Republican, promised to repeal it.

But then when he realized that there were enough votes to actually do that, he killed the bill.

Well, the South Carolina Freedom Caucus is not taking no for an answer.

So they're going to attach an amendment to a new bill.

that will repeal it.

And we're going to find out today if that's successful or not.

Wow.

I hope it it is.

I know here in Texas, my local area wanted to build a hotel, a hospital, and had to get, you know, the certificate of need.

And the entire thing was just a scam.

I mean, people don't understand how many things and how many big businesses have

colluded with your state government to get special things that you don't even know about.

You just don't know.

Yeah,

I would call it a soft form of corruption, but maybe it's a hard form because it's happening every day without people knowing about it.

But that's what we're trying to change.

So if we're able to repeal it today, I think it's going to be a huge victory.

And you know, everybody's favorite state, Florida, doesn't have certificate of need and everything's doing just fine down there.

So any excuse that we need it for the health of

for public health reasons is just nonsense.

So we're really excited about it.

Okay, so how do people get involved if they are if they want to get involved at all and help?

What do they do?

So our website is statefreedomcaucus.org.

And there you can go and see which state freedom caucuses we have up.

We also urge people to recommend state reps in their state.

We're having conversations with state lawmakers all across the country.

We're not quite to Vermont and Hawaii yet, but

we're getting there.

And I'll tell you what, there are actual patriots in states like that.

Oh, I'm sure.

Sometimes I think the liberal states are our best opportunity.

Of course.

Because the Democrats have been in charge for so long that they've gotten lazy.

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, you're,

you know, it's one thing to be a Catholic in Rome and another thing to be a Catholic in China.

You know,

when you're not surrounded by it, you have to work for it.

And

I think I was much sharper when I had to be in New York every single day, you know, battling it out every day, even in the streets and at dinner and everything else.

You can get a little loose

if you're in a very conservative area.

Yeah, you're in the lion's den.

Yes.

So I really do have a lot of hope for states like that.

In fact, like I mentioned, we just launched the Illinois Freedom Caucus, and those guys are going to fight for right to work, lower taxes.

They're going going to take on the corrupt pension system there.

They've got a lot of work to do.

Yeah, they've got a lot.

There's a lot of conservatives in Illinois who need a voice to get behind.

Andrew, thank you very much.

This is Andrew Roth.

He is

running the State Freedom Caucus.

You can find it at statefreedomcaucus.org.

StateFreedom Caucus.org.

You want to sweep up and clean up your state and get it back to where it should be.

This is a very good start.

Statefreedom Caucus.org.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Bethany Mandel.

She's a contributing writer for the Deseret News, editor of Heroes of Liberty book series, and the latest target last night of a man once known as Keith Oberman.

I mean, he's sure that's still his name, but most people don't know his name anymore.

We'll get into that here in a second.

Bethany, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

You bet, you bet.

So we were talking about this yesterday in a meeting, and I don't understand it.

The baby formula shortage.

I don't know why nobody is doing anything about it.

And I don't, I really, this bothers me that we're living in a country that is now just expected to

get over it.

And that's not America.

Oh, no, it's not.

So what's happening with this?

Take us from the problem to possible solutions.

Sure.

So, I mean, everyone is having supply chain issues across the board from everything from lumber to

the car

chips.

So, I mean,

it turns out that there are consequences to shutting down your economy for a year and a half.

Shocking.

Shocking probably to all your listeners, but there are unintended consequences to such an action.

And this is one of those unintended consequences.

Almost 50% of the baby formula that our babies in America use is made in China.

And, you know, Shanghai is currently locked down.

You can't get things on and off boats to and from China.

So there's a lot of that going on.

There's a lot of sort of staffing issues across the board that are leading to drugstores and all these department stores having a hard time getting things on the shelves.

But the sort of major precipitating factor was a massive recall at one of the biggest formula companies called Abbott.

And they found

that there was a bacteria that had made its way into the formula can that was extremely dangerous to babies and two babies died.

So it wasn't a super duper overreaction on their part, but they decided to,

in my personal opinion,

do a recall that was maybe a little bit too broad.

And they pulled a lot of formula off the shelves.

And there was no real plan for

how do we replace it in the marketplace.

And so there's also not really been a plan to test the formula that they pulled off the shelves to see if it was in fact safe.

And it wasn't, hang on just a second, but

it wasn't that they just pulled this all off.

They also shut the factory down and the factory is still not operating.

Yeah, because they had to clean it.

There was a bacterial infection so severe that it killed two babies and hospitalized, I think, six.

So, I mean, it was a really serious thing, and parents have to know that what they're feeding their baby is safe.

But this is sort of the lack of urgency that we see on the part of the government in

so many ways that we've really gotten a window into in the last two years.

A total lack of urgency to treat this

as an emergency.

One of my sort of favorite stories about this is during COVID,

we learned that the vaccine was somewhat dangerous to teenage boys, that it was causing heart issues.

And the FDA scheduled a meeting three weeks away on Juneteenth.

And then when Juneteenth became a national holiday, they were like, you know, we're going to honor that holiday.

We're just going to push it back another few weeks.

And so

we were administering a vaccine to teenage boys that was potentially life-threatening to their hearts.

And FDA pushed it off for five weeks.

And that sort of lack of urgency and government bureaucracy that we saw with the hearts of teenage boys, we're seeing the same thing with Formula right now.

So, you know, it's crazy.

This is why

centralized planning never works.

It just never works because the people in charge of all of it that have to give the go-aheads and everything else, they're government workers and not necessarily, you know, the fastest or understand the concerns down the down the line.

We're most competent, let's be honest.

What'd you say?

We're the most competent, let's be honest.

All of us have sat in the DMV before, and those are the people right now who are sitting on the manufacturers.

So like ability to get food out.

What is the company waiting for from the government?

I mean, they have to get the okay that everything is safe and that everything is sanitary and that they can, you know, release everything that they've pulled off the shelves so have they so they have completed the company has completed everything it was supposed to we're just waiting for inspectors

basically yeah oh my gosh oh my gosh

so I mean they are ramping up they say I mean the issue is also you know they they are ramping up production but

they're afraid to sort of pour more money into it because then it's going to increase the cost of formula, which has already gone up significantly with inflation.

And And so, you know, this is something the Biden administration can do.

They can say, we will pay the difference.

We will get more people in so that you're running 24-7, and we will foot the bill.

We just, we need a formula, affordable formula.

produced right now today, and we will do whatever it takes to make that happen because this is the priority and babies are our most precious natural resource.

And you're not hearing that from the Biden administration.

And you would be, I'm quite surprised because that sounds like a public-private partnership and they love those.

Yep.

Okay.

So what is it that parents can do?

Because I'm seeing all these warnings.

No, don't do anything.

I'm not going to let my baby starve.

And I'm pretty sure that, I mean, I was probably getting a little whiskey in my nipple when I was growing up with a bottle.

You know, they had to have done.

Explain a lot.

Pardon me?

Yeah, it does explain a lot.

But there had to be things that, you know, we were feeding our kids back in the day before formula that we can do again, not for every child, the special needs children, but for the regular baby.

So I'm going to push back a little bit on you with that.

So most regular babies who don't have special needs, there's enough switching that you can do that you can find an alternative.

If like, you know, the CVS brand is in stock, you could get like the Target brand.

Like there's some wiggle room okay so it's not a shortage

oh it's not a shortage for average babies as well

so it is but not nearly to the extent that it is for babies who are on special formula the special formula shortage is particularly acute um and those are the majority of the parents that i'm hearing really panicked like the the parents with the average baby no health needs just can take formula um they can they can sort of run around to different stores and usually find something in stock i'm not saying that that's that's right and that, you know, whatever.

Yeah, but it's not a panic situation.

Right, right.

And I think that that's, if I were that parent, that is what I would do.

The formulation of formula is really specific.

And there are a lot of different minerals and nutrients that are in there that you can't just do at home or you might not get precise.

I spoke to a pediatrician actually in Texas.

Her name is Whitney Morgan.

And she told me, you know, I've seen babies come into my office and I've seen babies die when I was working in a hospital.

Their parents tried to stretch a formula can and put more water in and it messes up their electrolytes very quickly and it can lead to hospitalization and deaths

more easily than I think any people, anyone wants to consider.

But also one of the sort of scary things is, you know, all of these recipes and I sent her one of those recipes and I said, what do you think about this to sort of

break down the recipe?

And she said, it is lacking in a couple nutrients that, you know, in the short term will absolutely keep a baby alive.

But in five months, we're going to notice some cognitive issues that are now

permanently in place because this baby was not getting the brain food that they needed, basically.

So

a lot of people grew up on this homemade formula, but a lot of people didn't grow up.

There's a lot of room for error, and we saw that room for error with what happened in the Abbott formula company that, you know, they were, they had the best safety protocols in the world, and two babies died of a bacterial infection.

So I would really, really caution parents against DIYing formula because it can go really wrong really fast.

And I think it's more dangerous than the shortage.

That's not an answer I wanted.

Sorry.

But I'm glad you told me the truth.

I just,

I mean, we don't understand how blessed we have been as we are losing things.

Nobody thinks of baby formula as, I mean, this, this is,

you know, if this would become acute for a long period of time,

it would change

our society.

A lot of babies would die or, I mean, it's, you don't even think of that because we're so used to having it.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And one of the first things that I,

have five kids, and I mostly breastfeed, but I also understand that life happens.

And one of the first things I did when COVID started was buy a couple of cans of formula just in case, because we saw things flying off the shelves.

And I was like, you know what?

I'm just going to have a couple cans.

I'm breastfeeding my baby right now, but life happens, things can change.

And this is one thing that I'm scared of.

I'm scared of flying off the shelves.

Okay.

Let me switch topics.

You were, Can you give me the tweet here, Stu?

From Keith Oberman.

I don't know.

I mean, I guess he's just sad in his nursing home tweeting things out, but he came after you yesterday because you were homeschooling.

Mother's Day, actually.

Mother's Day.

On Mother's Day.

Perfect.

That's good.

After Bethany had responded to

Steve Schmidt tweet, Keith Olberman said, imagine putting homeschool mom in your bio and not understanding you've just ruined the lives of five innocent children.

Jesus, the worst.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

I mean, he's like a really sad human being, honestly.

Like,

we have this sort of saying in Yiddish, like, Nebach, like, oh, this like poor soul.

And that's honestly how I feel about him.

Like, he, I don't know if you remember, he went after Mitt Romney at Christmas time last year.

No.

Romney posted a picture of his like beautiful, enormous family that's like perfect in every way.

Right.

And he tweeted something like this as like my worst nightmare or something and it's like that really says a lot about you sad that's really sad and anybody who can't see that homeschooling i mean

just what we've learned about the teachers unions and and crt and and sel all of these things

how do you not see that putting your your kids in the wrong school is much much worse much worse yeah yeah i mean I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, and the test scores that have been released about what happened over the last two years are mind-blowing.

Like, oh, I know.

The abilities of children in middle school to do math went from like, they were testing at like 60, 70%

to about 5%

on level.

I will tell you.

Oh, I know.

I will tell you, I'm having a hard time with my kids in high school because they're just, they're, they just, it, it's like they just lost.

I don't know.

Well, they did.

They lost two years, and it, they're just,

just struggling so hard to get anything back.

We've just destroyed a generation.

No, we absolutely have.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it, Bethany.

Yeah, thank you so much, Claire.

You bet.

You can find her at our website, heroesofliberty.com, heroesofliberty.com, or follow her

at Bethany Shondark.