Best of the Program | Guests: Rep. Chris Stewart & Carol Roth | 3/28/22

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Hey!

Oh my goodness, what a great episode.

On this episode, Stu discovers that he has a nephew and he adopts his six-year-old nephew and the laughs ensue.

And then we go on a trip to Disneyland.

It's gonna be a man.

It's a very special podcast.

Today, actually, we start with President Biden.

And do we agree?

Do we see it the same way?

Or you're kind of, you're a little, oh, so I don't know if I'm going as far as you are as far as what they're attempting to do.

I know,

but I think I'm with you.

The most innocuous

description of these moments in this speech, I can't buy.

Yeah, I can't buy that.

Yeah, so there's an interesting paradigm that is being set up that we are at war and brace yourself for a very long war.

And I explain it right off the top.

Then Then we also have Carol Roth with us to talk to us a little bit about what is happening with our economy and that new special tax, that 20% tax of unrealized money.

Oh.

That's great.

I can't wait.

Yeah, when you really understand what that is, it's not just a tax.

It is anti-American and would just destroy.

what's left of any economy or free market.

Also unconstitutional, if you wanted to add that.

I don't know if anyone cares about that anymore, but what?

Yeah.

All on today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Blenbeck program.

Okay, so let's start with this wonderful,

wonderful speech that the president gave yesterday, first of all, or a day before.

He was in Poland, and it was remarkable.

You could compare it to, and it has been, Pope John Paul and his speeches to Poland and

JFK and Ronald Reagan.

And I think it's true.

I mean,

he really went right where everybody who is involved in this,

right where they live.

Cut five, please.

As a matter of economic security and national security for the survivability of the planet, we all need to move as quickly as possible to clean renewable energy.

And we'll work together to help get that done.

That's great.

That's great.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

He also was talking about Ukraine and NATO and what was happening with Ukraine.

And I think what's great is what he ended it with.

Now, listen how awkward this is.

Usually you leave on a happy note.

President Biden decided not to.

Here it is: Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refused to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness.

We will have a different future, a brighter future, rooted in democracy and principle, hope and light, of decency and dignity, of freedom and possibilities.

For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.

Okay, all right.

So that was weird.

Apparently not in the speech.

I don't know if you can trust that or not, but let me refresh your memory on the

Gorbachev-Reagan speech while he was in Berlin.

Mr.

Gorbachev tear down this wall that went back and forth with the State Department.

He said, I'm saying it.

No, you're not.

Yes, I am.

No, I'm not.

Wait a minute.

It's like that Bugs Bunny routine.

It was taken out of the speech three times.

It was not in the teleprompter, and he knew right

where he wanted to say it.

And he wrote it.

It was him.

Mr.

Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

Now, that was not a, Mr.

Gorbachev, somebody needs to overthrow you.

Quite different.

But the State Department was against that because it would cause all kinds of problems, they thought.

And it did.

It did.

Unfortunately, for the Soviet Union, not for the rest of the free world.

It freed the world.

Now,

Put, I mean,

this was,

it seems like an ad-lib because you wouldn't have put that at the end of the speech.

But

Mr.

Mental Agility couldn't find a place to put that into the speech.

So just at the end, he's like, the whole time, now think about this, if it was an ad-lib,

The whole time he's thinking, this guy can't be in power.

This guy can't be in power.

And he can't find a place to put it in the speech, so he just adds it to the end.

Now,

is it possible that that's what he really thinks?

Well, let's remember, Joe Biden is known for leading his staff.

He's known for whatever the policy is they're working on.

Do you remember the homosexual marriage thing?

We know that the White House was working on a draft to announce, you know, they were for gay marriage, yada, yada.

And Joe Biden just came out on some weekend and went, I'm always for gay marriage.

That's where we need to be.

And the White House was a little pissed.

Remember that?

Oh, yeah.

Okay, so he's done that kind of thing several times where he leads the staff.

He leads, he just blurts it out.

I mean, this conflict was

began

around that whole situation where he said a minor incursion might not be that big of a deal.

Right.

This is the same type of moment.

Right.

So if he's thinking this,

and this is an ad-lib,

what does that mean?

Now,

let me give you some additional stuff.

There's a possibility he's just completely senile.

And that's a discussion we should have.

Because if he's that out of control, he should not be the president of the United States.

I honestly don't don't think that's it.

I think he has a different point of view.

And

let me make the case here.

First of all, this strengthens Putin.

Horrible, horrible idea.

Horrible idea.

But also,

in his framing, he is also framing this as democracy versus autocracy.

This is a theme.

of

his

first year, his nightmare year.

This is one of the first things that stood out to me in his first speech from the well of the Senate, when he told all of the people sitting there in

the Capitol that you were the people that made the world a better place, that they were the people that got us through this pandemic, not the American people, the people in power.

And then he twice, maybe three times, questioned democracy versus autocracy.

So he's going for a bigger thing.

He's not going for the

Putin getting out of Ukraine.

He's going for something much, much bigger.

Case in point, did you see the weird tweet that came out from his office?

He's not on Twitter.

I don't even think he knows how to work the phone.

He's like, the phone doesn't have that little grinder there on the side.

Well, Macethel, give me, give me 81,000.

What?

So I don't think he knows how to work any kind of

any kind of phone sitting on the pot, you know, tweeting.

Listen to this.

We are engaged in a new great battle for freedom.

A battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression.

This battle will not be won in days or months either.

We need to steal ourselves for the long fight ahead.

Wow.

Wow.

What

hmm.

What does he see coming?

Now,

Blinken came out this weekend and said, that's not what he means.

I suggest it is.

Because what was the other problem?

What was the other thing that he said this weekend?

while he was over there he made several things uh that they had to walk back but they were all in exactly the same direction let's play uh cut 13

now but the Ukrainian people Ukrainian people have a lot of backbone they have a lot of guts and I'm sure you're observing it and I don't mean just the military which is we've been trained in since back when Russia moved into

southeast

Ukraine.

But also the average citizen.

Look at how they're stepping up.

Look at how they're stepping up.

And you're going to see when you're there, and some of you have been there, you're going to see, you're going to see women, young people

standing in the middle in front of a damn tank.

just saying, I'm not leaving.

I'm holding my ground.

They're incredible.

All right, okay.

They take a lot of inspiration from us.

And you know, woman who just died, the Secretary of State used to have an expression.

She said, We are the essential nation.

It sounds like a bit of a hyperbole, but the truth of the matter is, you are the organizing principle around which the rest of the world is, the free world, is moving.

Okay, stop.

There's a couple of three things here.

First of all, let me take down the obvious kind of essential one going to his mind state.

That woman that just died.

That would be Madeline Albright, but he couldn't recall her name.

That woman who just died.

Okay.

So that makes a case.

He doesn't know what the hell he's even talking about, which is a conversation we should have.

But let's

look at this as maybe he does know what he's talking about.

He just has no filter on it.

When he suggested that the troops that were stationed in Poland, that they would witness the bravery of the American people when you're there,

he immediately followed it with, and a lot of you have already been there.

But that doesn't make sense.

Now, I dismiss this as an old man gaffe when I first heard this, but this was one of the first big gaffes they had to walk back.

So I dismiss this as just, ah, well, it's just an old man gaffe.

Well, doesn't that fit with he has to be be removed?

And doesn't the

world

looks to you, the soldier, you are the organizing principle that the world is being built around?

Those fit.

So I'd like to give the president the benefit of the doubt, but if I'm on the opposing side, if I'm advising Putin, because this is what they have to do, what is this president even saying?

Is he incompetent?

Or is he revealing

what their real intention is?

I would say, if I were advising Russia,

I don't know, Mr.

President, but I think that there is a pattern here.

Just look at what his Twitter feed said.

Again, it doesn't mean that he's not senile, but my case to you is

he's revealing the things that are coming.

And how do we know?

Well, those were all crazy, off-the-cuff clips, but they're all consistent for a bigger, longer war.

All right, maybe he's just thinking that himself, but nobody else is.

Then why would the White House tweet, we are engaged in a new great battle for freedom, a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression.

This battle will not be won in days or months

either.

We need to steal ourselves for the long fight ahead.

That's coming approved from the White House yesterday.

America, we better decide a couple of things.

First of all, is our president competent?

If he's making these kinds of mistakes,

and they truly are mistakes because he just is not a gaffe machine, this is a very dangerous situation.

If he's not competent, He should not be the President of the United States.

And I know what that means.

That means a world run by Kamala Harris.

God help us all.

But at least she would not make any sense and wouldn't be doing this stuff.

Or are we being prepped for a war?

It seems to me

when Putin is talking about

his first phase is done

and everybody's looking for negotiations and Putin seems to be looking for a way out of this, this is exactly the wrong kind of language to use.

Where is the White House saying it looks like Putin may be done with the first phase, as they said, and it looks good.

Maybe we have a bright future with a very quick war that has come to an end.

Where's that encouragement?

Instead, Instead, we need to steal ourselves for the long fight ahead.

I think this administration wants war.

I think they want a fight.

They just don't want to release it yet.

But that's what they're talking about in the White House, and he's just blowing the cover.

That's my theory.

But it's either that or the guy is totally incompetent and saying things that are very dangerous, that are not connected to any reality in the White House, and that should stop.

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

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Carol Roth, I got a lot to talk to you today, but I want to start

with this 20% minimum

income tax on people that make over $100 million a year.

Hi, Carol.

Hi, Glenn.

You know, it's not even an income tax.

It's a quote-unquote wealth tax, which is an idea that is so bad that nine countries in Europe abandoned it.

I mean, imagine an economic policy being so bad that Europe's like, yeah, you know what?

We're out.

So didn't France try this recently?

And it, like, all of their wealthy people moved away.

Yeah, the statistics were that between 2000 and 2012, 42,000 millionaires and

had a mass exodus from France.

So it basically drove all the people out because, you know, if you have those means, capital is mobile and you're not going to stick around when you have other options.

And that was the catalyst for them being another one of the countries that goes, you know what, maybe this isn't such a great idea.

And even though there is a long tail on it, they're still still collecting a little bit of revenue because it was grandfathered in i think around 2014 they said we're we're gone

um now talk to me about so nobody has tried to move that number down i'm concerned always when they say it's only gonna hit these people taxes never do that in america No, I mean, anything that is targeted at the billionaires is really a ruse for them to get you to agree to it because, oh, why would I care for it to affect the billionaires but really it's going to impact you and that is the ruse if you think about you know this being tied to individual income usually if you are an upper tier individual you have very sophisticated tax work you probably have trusts you may have shell corporations so i would imagine there's probably going to be some loopholes and go well it's not really an individual income it's a family trust or you know some some way around it but now you've agreed to it and they're going to go well you know

we put it in on this, but we're going to move it down.

We're going to move it down.

You have to remember the Biden administration wants to hire 87,000 new IRS agents.

I mean, that's not for going after the billionaires.

That's for coming after you.

So they not only want to do that, they got the funding to do that in this last bill.

So the really dangerous thing

that is in this wealth tax is a tax on unrealized gains.

This is insanity, absolute insanity.

Can you explain it?

Yeah, so unrealized gains, I always say it's not really a thing.

We shouldn't normalize it.

It's really a ruse to have unlawful seizure of personal property.

So let's say you buy a house and you bought it for $100,000.

And then in your neighborhood, another house sells for $200,000.

They're going to say, well, you know,

all the houses in this neighborhood are, you know, they're worth about the same.

So you have an unrealized gain of $100,000.

We're going to tax you on that.

So what do you do?

You have to sell your house to pay the taxes.

So take that analogy then and move it to the stock market.

Most of these individuals who are wealthy are so on paper is because they own big pieces of companies, which the market has valued at higher and higher levels.

And so on paper, their ownership looks big.

But if all of a sudden they have to now sell stakes in their companies, that upends the entire market system.

It basically nationalizes or socializes companies.

It affects all of us through pensions and 401k because of supply and demand in the market.

If you have these big people who are selling massive shares of their company, it's going to drive the prices down for everybody.

It's an utter total disaster.

It's unconstitutional.

And it's one of those things we have to push back on.

Because, like you said, if you just say, well, it's just for the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos' of the world, you're accepting a breach in principle, and then the game is over.

And it won't be.

I mean, this is the way, you know,

the Great Reset says by 2030.

Now, think of this.

You have to get people out of ownership.

In

eight years, eight years, two elections.

You have to get people to own nothing.

This is a way to do it.

If you have unrealized

taxes on unrealized income, meaning your house, think about how much your house is worth today if you wanted to sell it, knowing that tomorrow it could go down and you lose money if you didn't sell it.

You just don't know where the top and the bottom is of a market.

But if you have to sell your house to be able to pay the taxes for income that you didn't have, it was all on paper.

You don't own houses.

You put a lot of people out of their house.

Yeah, and it's all based on theory.

Unfortunately, we already have something that's kind of close to that in property taxes.

This would just double and triple up on it.

But, you know, it's anything you own.

I mean, maybe your grandparent gave you an heirloom, a painting that's now worth a bunch of money.

Like, what are you supposed to do?

Oh, it's worth a million dollars.

Now I have to sell this family heirloom so I can pay taxes for what?

I mean, this is the most un-American concept that you could possibly think.

This is what caused Robin Hood.

I mean, this is the kind of thing that was going on in the adventures of Robin Hood.

That's what the sheriff was doing.

They were doing unreasonable taxes and then giving it to the state, giving it to the king and all of the people that were in with the king.

I mean, we are starting to live in Nottingham.

Yeah.

And the crazy thing that when anyone talks about it, an unrealized gain or this theoretical gain in value, they never talk about the unrealized losses.

Well, what about, you know, if something's gone down, are you going to give it back to me?

Of course not.

It never works like that.

Nobody ever wants to socialize the losses.

They only want to participate in the gains.

It's a one-way street.

And again, they use, this is what happened, by the way, in Venezuela.

They use this, you you know, kind of populist language and say, oh, you know, these elites, they own everything.

Let us take it over.

Let us take over business and you're all going to share in it.

And obviously, they went from the fifth biggest economy in the world decades ago to the state that we all know that they're in today.

This is the way in.

And it is so dangerous.

I cannot even

make it emphatic enough.

It is, it's truly amazing that the president is suggesting this and putting this in.

And

is something that the Democrats would have been against, you know, 10 years ago.

It shows how far left this president and this administration really has gone and the Democrats have gone.

Absolutely.

And even

somebody like Janet Yellen, who's been an absolute disaster at the Fed and now at the Treasury, you know, when this idea first circled around, she was going out and saying how great it was and trying to populate it.

And they got a lot of pushback and it kind of died for a little while.

And now, you know, polls are down.

So here it is again.

Maybe we can distract everybody from, you know, all the other economic disasters and inflation and high gas prices by saying that we're going to go after the greedy billionaires.

And, you know, hopefully, again, we will get that same kind of pushback and say this is unreasonable, it's unconstitutional, and it just cannot happen.

All right.

So let me switch topics.

You wrote a great article.

I think this came out last week.

ESG advocates are killing the American dream.

Can you just go in the middle of it, you talk about a 60-minute piece where they're talking about or talking to the CEO of Tricon Residential.

And this is happening everywhere.

And nobody's really paying attention to it.

And it is so dangerous.

This is so infuriating because these global elites who are pushing ESG are saying, well, we're doing this for the good of society and that S, that social piece, you know, we want to make things, you know, good for everybody.

So these same banks and financial institutions who have bought into this idea that they're going to make decisions that are good for society are now funding companies that are competing with you to buy houses.

We are underfunded, or excuse me, we are underbuilt in this country

by about four to five million houses, depending on who you ask.

And so there's there's already a supply-demand imbalance but now you've got these these big financial institutions that are backing these folks you know like the ones that are quoted in the 60-minute piece and interviewed there as well as others that are publicly traded that are going in and buying 30,000 40,000 80,000 I saw one of them residential homes and they're going in with all cash offers they're often waiving inspections sometimes they're not even looking at the houses and so from a buyer's perspective you know here's here's, we know it's going to close.

It's all cash.

We don't have to go through any brain damage.

And they're just selling their houses to these corporations who are then renting it back to people who now can no longer afford a house, have been priced out of the house.

And this goes back to that whole great reset playbook of you will own nothing and who will be happy, except we know you won't be happy because owning a home is part of that wealth creation and part of that American dream.

So Carol, when do people, do you think, what is the tripwire that wakes people up the average person because the average person still i think is saying this kind of stuff won't happen it you know it's it's germany in the 1930s okay yes but it's not going to get any worse than this and if you keep moving the line uh to it can't get worse than this look look how far we have come in 10 years when where where is the pain point for the american people

that's an excellent question.

I know you spend a lot of time on social media, Glenn.

Have you ever seen the distracted boyfriend meme where you have the guy who's looking at a girl and his girlfriend's kind of like looking at what's going on?

And it's, you know, very much everybody's looking at stuff.

that isn't important.

And the stuff that's really important is that looking at you going, why aren't you paying attention to me?

And there's just so much nonsense out there that people are highly focused on that I think you do such an incredible service to the average American by by bringing up these issues that nobody's talking about.

You know, usually when the tripwire happens is after it's too late, you know, after it's affected so many people that you hit that tipping point that you're at the point of no return and they go, oh, gosh, I guess we should have

paid attention to this earlier.

And, you know, that is the unfortunate thing.

It is why it's so important to have these conversations and for individuals to help spread the word.

I mean, this has to be a movement.

You have to be out talking to to your friends and to your family and to your neighbors about these things because it's really getting out of control.

Did you see, is this true that the Fed came out and said

the next four

increases on interest rates will be 50 basis points each, a rise of 2%?

I certainly saw that they were entertaining it as a possibility.

I don't think that it was 100% set in stone, but they are more open to that, which basically says, uh-oh, we are really behind the curve and we need to play catch up.

And as we've talked about, has implications.

Yeah, because that is how much, how much is the increase for each point just for our federal budget?

So basically, it is tied into pushes up the 10-year yield.

The 10-year yield already trading up.

It was at like 2.5%

for at least a day last week.

And that affects when the government issues bonds, how much it has to give in terms of interest.

So when they do that, when they do that financing, and so this isn't on

the current financing, which is already done, but on future financing, every 1%

is $300 billion in additional taxes.

So it's not something that's going to happen immediately.

But again, if you go back to that CBO projection that this was going to happen, you know, by 2032, it was going to be another 300 billion.

They were expecting the 10-year yield to be at 2.1% by 2025, and we're already at 2.5%.

Unbelievable.

It would mean another $600 billion that our government would have to pay just in interest.

Crippling, crippling.

The best of the Glen Bank program.

Chris Stewart is with us now.

He is the representative from the state of Utah.

Welcome to the program, Mr.

Chris Stewart.

How are you?

Glenn, great to be with you as always.

I sense a little sarcasm, so I want you to know I'm going to keep my sarcasm in check as best we can during our time

this morning.

I don't know what you're talking about.

uh chris is the author of the final fight for freedom if you haven't read that book yet you should it is the perfect book for people that you're trying to explain what is happening and what is coming um because it takes you from a fictional scenario that everybody can understand and then he breaks it down and says yeah this is what's really happening uh it's a fantastic book the final fight for freedom so chris uh a couple of things first let's start with the president this weekend.

Everybody's talking about what he said that, you know, basically somebody should go over and shoot Putin.

Maybe we'll do it.

I mean,

that's one way to interpret it.

And people are trying to make it look like he's just incompetent.

I have another theory.

This is what he really feels.

He also you could blow it off, and I did at first blow off his statement to the troops, and you'll see that soon

when you get to Ukraine.

And they blew that off as just a, you know,

a gaff.

But then the White House yesterday also came out with a tweet that I found really quite frightening, and that is, we're engaged anew in a great battle for freedom, a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression.

This battle will not be won in days or months.

We need to steal ourselves for the long fight ahead.

What the hell's going on, Chris?

Yeah, boy, there's a lot to unpack there, Glenn.

You know, to his statement, there's no question that that's the way he feels.

I'm talking about Biden saying that, you know, we've got to get rid of Vladimir Putin.

There's no question in my mind, and I think he's made that clear through the last several months that that's exactly what he would like to see happen.

And I think we need to ask ourselves a couple questions then.

First, do you think that Vladimir Putin is stronger now at home than he was three days ago?

A lot stronger.

I promise you that he is.

There's no doubt about it.

And by the way, the irony of us claiming and

this five years we went through where Russia was interfering with our own elections, with our own democratic process.

How do you think the people in Russia feel now?

I mean, and so they're going to rally around him.

It makes him stronger.

And the second thing is, do you think this makes it more or less likely that we'll be able to exit Ukraine without this getting worse?

Because it certainly makes it less likely that that's the outcome when Vladimir Putin feels like he's fighting literally for his life.

Chris, I heard this morning that Vladimir Putin is saying phase one is over.

And it looked like a chance for him to

save face and kind of retreat and just take the Dunbar region if that would be acceptable to the Ukrainians, which I doubt.

But it looked like he was, for the first time, not talking about advancing.

So are we closer to peace or closer to war after this weekend?

Well, I mean, who knows, Glenn?

I mean, honestly, I could give you my opinion on that, and I will, but we have to caveat it with the sense that the fog of war is thick.

And it's like the great saying, everyone's got to plan until you get punched in the face.

And that's what we're dealing with here.

But whether it's less likely or more likely is unknown.

I think it's certainly less likely that we have an exit, provide Bledberg with some kind of off-ramp now than it was three days ago.

But that has to be our goal.

We have to try to set up some framework where he can claim some kind of victory.

And whether it's they give up the Damascus region in the east and probably Crimea, and as you said, Zelensky has indicated he'd be open to that.

But the alternative is just a catastrophe.

And that is we kill who knows how many Ukrainian people in a proxy war for year after year after year now.

It will look like Syria seven, eight, ten years from now.

If you engage in a proxy war between Vladimir Putin and the United States, and Ukrainians are in the middle of that.

And by the way, if you think that Vladimir Putin has to go, well, what about President Xi?

What about the MOAs in Iran?

What about

North Korea?

Where do we draw the line?

Well, that's where we have to go and compel.

That's why it was scary to me that

we are saying outright, this is not a gaffe.

This is from

the White House and POTUS's Twitter feed, a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression.

This battle will not be won in days or months either.

We need to steal ourselves for the long fight ahead.

When you're making it the battle, not for Ukraine, but...

half the world, and the world is already dividing itself now because of Ukraine.

What are we really doing?

What are we fighting?

Are we preparing to separate ourselves from half the world?

Yeah, Glenn, and I think at the top your program, I was listening to you, and I think you laid that out really well and very thoughtfully.

And once again, if you make this a battle between freedom and autocracy or freedom and tyranny, then why only the Ukraine?

Why only Russia?

Once again, why not President Xi?

If you want to see autocracy, if you want to see repression, go to the the western regions in China, as I've been able to do, and look at millions of Muslim Uyghurs who are in essentially concentration camps.

And by the way, building goods that our businesses here are more than happy to purchase.

And where do you draw the line?

Including, by the way, Glenn, with some of our allies.

Because some of our allies are not pillars of virtue.

We align ourselves because we must in order to

enable some type of global security.

There are occasions when we have to align ourselves with people that are not democratic governments.

And where do you draw the line?

And if he's stealing us for this thing in Ukraine, then I wonder, well, what else is there?

And how do you justify only the Ukraine and only Vladimir Putin?

It's nonsense.

And we surely have learned this over the last 20 years.

We cannot compel democracy on nations that it is not

within their history.

It's not within the people's actual genuine sincere interest in the sense that they are more than, in many cases, they're okay with the government and the leadership they have.

Let me switch topics here because I don't know how he defines freedom and repression either, because we have had a growing surveillance state in this country for quite some time, and it is terrifying.

There is no such thing as just metadata anymore.

Everything can be tracked down to the individual person.

And

you have just introduced legislation that is

set up to prevent any intelligence agency from spying on American citizens.

Don't we already have that law somewhere in the Bill of Rights?

Yeah, yeah, we do.

And in fact, we have it very explicitly in executive orders and in legislation that's already exists.

But here's the deal, Glenn.

And I'm going to try to not be sarcastic about this, but I have to make this one point, is the U.S.

people do not trust government agencies anymore.

Pick one.

Who knew that the CDC was political?

Well, we learned four or five years ago, the FBI and the DOJ certainly are.

And the NSA and the CIA, you can't.

The post office is spying on us.

Yeah.

So this is, and this is, thank you for bringing this up, Glenn, because this is so important.

This administration came to power and they said the greatest threat facing our security is not, once again, China or Russia or the mullahs in Iran or North Korea.

They said the greatest threat facing our own security is internal.

They said it's white supremacy, domestic violent extremists, DVEs, they call them.

Okay, so, well, then they use that justification, which is nonsense, as I think the vast majority of Americans would agree.

But then they say, okay, well, the intelligence community, for example, the NSA, the CIA, they cannot collect intelligence.

But now, suddenly, under this administration, they can receive intelligence.

Well, tell me the difference.

What is the difference between collecting intelligence and receiving intelligence?

And they then have used that new justification, that new juris,

you know, description of a word, which I think we would all understand, say, okay, well, now we are going to involve the National Counterterrorism Training Center and the director of national intelligence to write reports on domestic extremists, which are, by definition, American citizens.

It cannot happen.

Well, we are,

I mean, we've found a very convenient way.

We spy on England and they spy on us.

And I don't even think we need that anymore.

I mean,

the problem is, is the intelligence agencies include almost every agency now.

It's not that hard to do, apparently.

And we are working together all around the world.

And somebody told me, Chris, I said,

when will a president shut this down?

And they said they never never

because the excuse will be everybody else has it and we can't be the only one that doesn't know what our citizens are doing

yeah so well

go ahead I I think it's fair to point this out you know this type of attitude towards American people the the incredible abuse of Department of Justice and FBI that we saw in the Russian hoax where they're there where they're literally lying to Congress again and again and they're lying to the FISA courts, etc.

That only happened under a Democratic administration.

And this new redefinition of words to where they cannot collect, that they can receive.

Once again, only a Democrat administration is allowing that.

So

I don't think we've got equal concerns here.

It's certainly true the Republican Party, ironically, because this is a bit of a shift.

Most of us were viewed as being defense hawks, but now we are the protectors of privacy.

It's the ACLU and our Democratic colleagues and others such as them who are saying, you know, they're the ones who are fighting our initiatives, our efforts to try to retain privacy and protect civil liberties for Americans.

So what would be the punishment for, let's say, Google just happens to say, you know what, we have all this data on people and we just got to get it off our servers.

Do you want to take a look at it?

What would be the penalty for

any government agency?

Yeah.

So, I mean, look, if they are, if the problem has been, is like I said when we first started the interview, there's already rules, there's already executive orders, there's already legislation, but they don't attribute any penalty to it.

It's like, hey, this is a bad idea, but if you do it, we're just going to remind you it's a bad idea, and then we're going to move on.

Right.

And so, you know, but there's no penalties attached, so there's no disincentive for it.

And so this legislation would attach a penalty for it.

It would attach a penalty to the person, to the individual.

So let's just say

you were involved in any of these,

you know, the Russiagate scandals.

What kind of penalty would you receive?

Well, and honestly, Glenn, they're kind of apples and oranges because the Russiagate scandal was just so clear.

I mean, there was clear deception.

There was clear lying to agencies.

There was clear deception to the FISA courts.

So it already is against the law, as you can imagine, and there are penalties attached to those kinds of behavior.

This is a little bit different in the sense of they are actually working under what they believe is a new executive authority.

And so it clarifies that you don't have that authority.

And if you continue to claim that authority, we're going to punish you.

We're going to prosecute you for doing that.

You can't do it and just say, well, we believe we have the authority to do it.

No, we're going to say very definitively, you do not.

So we're back with Congressman Chris Stewart, and his book is The Final Fight for Freedom, which is a must-read.

It just

encapsulates almost all of the stuff that we are fighting against right now, and that is a wide array.

And it's all explained in a very simple, simple way.

And

it's a little breathtaking, but it is also written in a way to where it takes you on a story and then shows you the facts of that story and tells you exactly what's happening in our government.

It's called the Final Fight for Freedom, and you can pick it up at bookstores now.

It really is a must-read.

Chris, I want to talk to you a little bit about the maximum motherload of personal information,

the programmable digital currency that we're now, quote, studying in Washington.

Who is the one that actually authorizes the currency?

Is it Congress

or is it the Fed?

Or who is it that says you can switch to a digital currency?

Yeah, that's actually a great question, Glenn, and I'm not an expert on this.

I'll tell you my view,

but it's subject to

this one caveat, and that is regardless of who's authorized, it may not be the actual individual or agencies who end up authorizing a digital currency.

But I think that Congress ultimately has oversight on this.

Clearly, we do, and clearly we authorize this.

Now the Fed, as you know,

certainly

more than I do, but as you indicate over and over again, the Fed has taken powers into itself, just like the presidency has over Congress.

The Fed has taken powers into itself that are just frightening over the last 80 years and accelerating rapidly, I mean, in a breathtaking pace over the last five to eight years, going back probably to 2008.

And, you know, it's an irony that the one thing people wanted from cryptocurrency was privacy.

They wanted to, you know, to have an ability to not be manipulated by Fed policy or by monetary policy.

And the creation of a government currency does exactly the opposite.

I mean, it beholdens us in ways to where virtually everything we do, including everywhere we go,

every

purchase we make would be monitored, potentially monitored, and if so, you know, if deemed necessary, corrected by federal policy, by federal bureaucrats.

It should frighten the life out of people.

Okay.

Well, Chris, would you look into that for me and see if there's anybody on the Hill that is at least even questioning the Fed?

Because I think this is going to come fast and furious.

Well, Glenn, there are.

I promise you.

I sat down for probably a little more than an hour with Patrick McHenry, who will be the next chairman of financial services just last week on this issue.

And I promise you, he's intensely aware of it.

He's intensely concerned as we are.

He sitting on that committee and being the chairman, we pray in 2022 when we take over the House, he will play a key role in

trying to restrict what I think is just a horrible, horrible idea from this administration once again.

Wow.

I am glad to hear that, Chris.

Thank you very much.

All right.

The name of the book is The Final Fight for Freedom.

If you want to get into the fight, he's just introduced a new bill to prevent intelligence agencies from spying on American citizens.

You can find all of his information at stewart.house.gov.

Get involved.

There are no bystanders.