Best of The Program | Guests: Larry Elder, Sen. Ted Cruz, & Carol Roth | 9/14/21
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Big Day Today, we talk about the American spirit.
We talk about the American spirit and how it is trying to be just snuffed out by the left.
And we talked to Larry Elder, who's maybe,
maybe the next governor of California.
We will know later tonight on that.
I've got my fingers and my toes and a few other things crossed today.
To please, please, California, go out and vote.
What else do we have on the podcast today, Stu?
Did you say Senator Ted Cruz?
Senator Ted Cruz, who is talking a little bit about Blinken, who might be lying under oath.
I'm just saying, he might be.
Gets quite passionate.
You don't want to miss a second of today's podcast.
Here it is.
You're listening to
the best of the Glenbeck Program.
This is the Glenbeck Program, and Senator Ted Cruz from the great state of Texas joins us now.
Senator, how are you, sir?
Glenn, it's great to be with you.
So I watched
Blinken yesterday testifying in front of Congress about how he hasn't stranded anybody, how he hasn't.
He and the State Department have only been working hard with these charities to be able to get those planes out of there.
Ted, there is nothing further from the truth.
And I believe you have been working with us.
You know the truth of that.
This is
he lied under oath to the American people multiple occasions.
But if you need any evidence on how the State Department has been thwarting our every move, you let me know.
But I think you already probably have that.
Well, I do.
And Glenn, you're exactly right.
The State Department has been actively working against valiant efforts to rescue Americans from behind enemy lines, to rescue them from Afghanistan, and no one has done more to make that happen than you have, Glenn.
Let me thank you for your incredible leadership, putting resources on the ground to
help people in crisis and help people when our own government
cut tail and ran and wasn't there to help them, which they should have been.
I appreciate you
saying that.
There are, as you know, thousands of people that we have left behind, green card holders.
We have, he said yesterday there were only a hundred people left.
Ted, I have more than on one manifest, more than a hundred people that are blue passport holders.
And this State Department will not do anything.
They laughed at us and mocked us.
They have openly mocked us
on trying to get these people out.
When we were asked,
when we asked them, what paperwork is it you need this time?
They said, well, there's a paperwork that was,
I think it was released August 28th, and everybody needs to have that paper.
And I said, where did, not me, but one of the people said, where do we get that?
And the State Department said, at the embassy.
This was last week.
When we said there is no embassy, they laughed, openly laughed at us and said, well, you'll have to figure that one out, won't you?
You know, the sad thing about how this administration has approached the entire issue of Afghanistan is that it has been political from day one.
It has been been all about the speech Joe Biden and his political handlers wanted to give on September 11th.
And they ignored every other consideration.
They ignored the military considerations.
They ignored the safety considerations.
They inexplicably gave the Bagram airfield to the Taliban,
essentially gift-wrapped it and handed it over.
Had we kept back
we would have had a safe and secure runway, actually two runways
from which to conduct evacuations and the horrific suicide bombings that happened would not have succeeded at the level they did because Bagram was built to withstand terror attacks.
But their approach during the evacuation, after the withdrawal, and today, has been all politics all the time.
And so, when it comes to assisting removing either U.S.
citizens or green card holders, of whom there are thousands that are behind enemy lines, this administration views their existence as an inconvenient truth, that every person you bring out of there, Glenn, highlights their failure.
Yes.
And so sadly, it is partisan operatives that are engaged in spend control instead of the United States State Department having the backs of Americans, and it is disgraceful.
What is happening even on our own soil here, they have brought people in that were not green card holders, were not SIVs.
We don't know who's here now on our own soil.
They did such a horrible job at vetting.
And it is amazing to me because we're held to a remarkable standard.
They don't seem to care.
And so now we have them on our Air Force bases where people over in Germany can come and go at will and leave the base and come back.
Here in America, I don't know if it's the same, but I know we have the same kind of problem on vetting these people, and we have a border that is being overrun.
This is straight out of Gibbons and the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
Glenn, you are exactly right.
Number one, on the vetting, their vetting was extremely poor, in many cases non-existent.
One of the things we're seeing, we're seeing people brought in here who had records with terrorism.
We're seeing one person brought in who had been convicted of rape.
And tragically,
we are seeing grown men arriving from Afghanistan with children that they claim are their child brides, adult men
who have little girls, they claim are their wives, and they are sexually assaulting these girls with the blessing of the State Department.
And you mentioned that they can come and go on the bases in Europe.
Well, unfortunately, they can here as well.
Two weeks ago, I was out at Fort Bliss in El Paso.
In Fort Bliss, they are standing up and building housing for up to 10,000 Afghan refugees.
I toured it by helicopter.
They were bringing them in at the time.
The planes were landing every couple hours.
I asked the commanding general, I said, what's the security on the base?
He said, oh, there is no security.
There's no perimeter.
There's no fence because this is not a detention facility.
Every one of these can leave any time they want.
Dozens of them had left already, and this was just a few days into their arriving.
He said one guy literally called an Uber and took an Uber to downtown El Paso.
They had no idea where he was, and these guys have no idea whether they're bringing in al-Qaeda or al-Nusra or other radical Islamic terrorists.
And tragically, I pray that the consequence of this dereliction of duty is not a terror attack or a suicide bombing in an American mall or restaurant or bringing the kind of violence that we see over there, bringing it at home because Joe Biden and his administration are not doing their jobs.
Let me switch subjects.
We're now having Biden say that he is going to the more sensible Republicans to talk to them about the filibuster.
What?
I'm assuming you're not getting the call from Joe Biden.
You know, I suppose I should be
complimented that I didn't make the cut of the more sensible Republicans.
Right.
Look,
this is
you know, it's really sad.
I mean, I've known Joe Biden for about a decade now.
He was vice president when I was elected to the Senate.
He swore me in.
He was always a nice, affable guy.
He was Uncle Joe.
That's been his currency since the day he got elected to the Senate 600 years ago.
The Biden we have today
is unrecognizable.
He has become Uncle Joe, just a 1950s understanding of Uncle Joe.
He has become an American Caesar and an American Caesar who's angry, angry that his subjects dare defy him.
You're seeing over and over again, listen, this vaccine mandate is utterly and completely lawless.
There is zero presidential authority to order every American to undertake a health care decision that he's decided you need to take.
There's zero basis in law for it.
Now listen, I'm someone who believes in vaccines.
I've been vaccinated.
My family's been vaccinated.
But it's your damn decision whether or not to get vaccinated.
And Joe Biden has no right trying to force you or me or our families to make those kinds of health care decisions.
And the thing that is galling, Glenn, He knows it.
He knows it's lawless.
But he issued the order anyway because he knows the litigation will take weeks or months or years, and by that time, most people will just have complied with his lawless decree.
That is the definition of abuse of power.
Why can that not go right to the Supreme Court?
Why isn't there something?
I mean, that is so unconstitutional.
And they are using OSHA.
And if OSHA can get away with this, OSHA can get away with anything, literally anything.
Why can't the Supreme Court take this up?
Well, the challenge to the Supreme Court taking it up, there's a whole series of legal standards that basically require that a case be ripe, that it be an actual case in controversy, that the injury be concrete and immediate, and that an individual who's challenging the case have standing.
And I think what the Biden administration is doing, and they have smart lawyers advising them, they're taking their sweet time promulgating the OSHA OSHA rule.
So they've announced it.
But right now, somebody who's at home who says, well, I'm facing the threat of this mandate, there's a good chance a court would say, well, it's not clear what exactly they're going to do, and it's not clear how it's going to impact you.
So we, the courts, can't resolve it until there's a clear and concrete injury on you.
And as they delay weeks and months, Most of the Fortune 500 is eager to do it anyway.
It's an excuse for them to blame, oh, it's not our fault.
The government made us do it.
And it's an excuse because they know the big employers
are looking for a way to do it anyway, and they're counting on 99% of the people being faced with a choice, get this vaccine, whether you want it or not, whether your doctor says it's the right decision for you or not, or be fired.
And
that's fundamentally wrong.
Is it time for
conservatives to understand
libertarian conservatives, which I consider myself constitutional conservative,
that, yes, private business can do what private business can do, but there is collusion here.
The private companies, what you just lined out is ESG
framework 100%.
The government wants them to do something.
It pushes them.
They collude with the government.
They get it done.
And you have an an end run around the Constitution.
Is it time that we, as conservatives, reevaluate this mantra of ours that it's a private business, it can do whatever it wants?
Absolutely.
And today, big business, big business is not a friend of liberty.
It's not a friend of free enterprise.
Big business gets in bed with big government.
Big business welcomes tyrannical government.
Big business welcomes subsidies.
And ironically, big business welcomes massive regulations because big business can survive.
The little guys get killed and the competition for the giants gets driven out of work.
And
my view is that the giant businesses have made their beds with the socialists and the revolutionaries who are trying to destroy our republic.
They're so focused on a woke
virtue signal that they're willing to be complicit in destroying our nation.
It's why, Glenn, a couple of months ago, I announced I will accept zero corporate pack checks.
No more.
I will not accept their money because if they're going to be complicit in destroying this nation, I don't want any part of it.
Good for you.
Ted, please,
please, if you need any kind of proof, and I know you don't because you've been involved trying to help us and others to get these planes off the ground.
But if anyone needs any evidence, I've got a crapload of it.
Take this man and hold his feet to fire.
He is perjuring himself, and it is about time that somebody who lies in front of Congress that has power in this country actually feels the ramifications of it.
Well, get us all of the specific evidence.
I am going to be, Tony Blinken is going to be testifying in front of me in 12 minutes.
Okay.
And so I would welcome any and all specific evidence because they are spinning desperately trying to obfuscate the truth.
And I do want to close underscoring what I said.
Look,
your listeners know your heart and what you care about, but they may not know the Herculean effort, the tens of millions of dollars, the superhuman focus you have put into rescuing Americans trapped in Afghanistan, rescuing Christians trapped in Afghanistan.
You are saving people's lives, Glenn, and it's filling an incredible need.
And I want to make sure your listeners know that this is not just you talking on the radio.
This is pulling people out of literally facing torture and murder if you were not there.
Thank you, Ted Cruz, senator from the great state of Texas.
God bless.
This is the the best of the Glenbeck program.
Carol Roth is joining us.
She's the author of a great book.
We've had her on several times before, The War on Small Business.
She's a former investment banker who sobered up and came out of the darkness, to the light side, and is trying to explain to the average American exactly what they're facing and what is going on in Washington
with
our government and big business and how they are colluding to just collapse everything that we know and hold dear.
Am I overstating that, Carol?
You're not, Glenn.
It's great to be back with you.
And before we talk about the consolidation of the economy, I just have to thank you for your leadership and your heroism that you have shown helping the people of Afghanistan.
I've been very inspired by that.
So
it is just a pleasure to be back.
Thank you.
Let me just tell you, Carol, it is truly this amazing audience that is doing it.
And there are so many people that are on the ground that I get emails from in the middle of the night, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the show that are working and doing heroic things.
But thank you for that.
All right.
Truly inspiring.
So, you know, you're not overstating things in terms of the real-time threats on our economic freedom and the ability for the average American from Main Street to create and retain wealth and this movement that we have towards the centrally planned, looking quite like socialist economy.
It's actually very frightening.
So tell me quickly, and I know we didn't plan on talking about this, but the
metric of the GDP was canceled all of a sudden.
It's still complex now that we have COVID-19.
We can't figure it out.
So the Fed stops
issuing a number of the GDP, but the Fed in Atlanta, they decide it's not too complex for them.
And the GDP, the number is reduced by 41%,
the prediction of the next quarter, a 41% reduction.
That's significant.
Why did they do this?
And why is no one really talking about it?
Well, nobody pays attention to wonky economists, probably mostly because they get it wrong so often.
And we've had this sort of shell game of changing numbers, whether it's, you know, oh, we're not going to show you the GDP, or we're going to change the way we calculate inflation, or our mandate at the Fed is to focus on inflation, but we're going to let that run hot for a while.
There's always some sort of a shell game that we're moving around.
But the reason why they're doing it, obviously, is because we have central planning that thought that it was a really good idea to turn off about a third of the economy and then try to turn it back on like you were power cycling a modem and thinking that there wouldn't be any issues.
And these complete geniuses, although many of us saw this from day one, didn't realize or perhaps did realize and are doing it on purpose the complete
ripple effect that we would see down the supply chain in terms of people out of the workforce and the inability to get enough goods and services to match the demand on the back side of the pandemic.
And that's part of what we're facing right now.
So now we're looking at this vaccine mandate,
which I was just talking to Ted Cruz, and he said they haven't really even put this in, but the big ESG companies, again, they're all putting it in because they wanted the nudge from the government to be able to do it.
And we're going to have a massive nightmare on this.
They're already starting to advertise, hey, have you had your vaccine?
And
when we have a worker shortage,
they've now created a new worker shortage.
It's incredible.
So I think a lot of people don't sort of look at the scope of what we're talking about, but we are at a historic level.
We have almost 11 million jobs that are unfilled today in this country.
Crazy.
That is because we had the government competing with these businesses and the workforce and creating uncertainty for people to come back to work.
Now they're doing it again.
They're picking winners and losers.
They're deciding, just like they decided who was essential and who was non-essential, they're deciding who should be able to work and who shouldn't work.
And the ironic thing and the evil thing here is that a large percentage of the people who have chosen not to get vaccinated for a variety of reasons, some may have natural immunity, some may have medical reasons, some may be exploring pregnancies, you know, whatever their reason is.
But many of those are people like frontline workers and essential workers that found a way to keep themselves safe during the entire pandemic and worked while the, as Carol Markowitz calls it, the pajama glass stayed home and worked from home.
And now they're saying as a thank you for working through the entire pandemic and quote unquote putting yourself at risk, now we no longer trust you to be able to make those choices and we're going to take away your ability to earn a living.
And on principle, that is such a dangerous precedent.
This goes hand in hand with
the unions and the PRO Act.
I know that
the White House didn't make this move without consulting the unions first.
This is, I mean, it is so evil what is going on.
Everything is a calculated move.
This has everything to do with the PRO Act, does it not?
It does, and a lot of people aren't putting those dots together, so I'm glad that you brought that up.
So the PRO Act, for people who may not be familiar with it, is this piece of legislation which is sponsored by big unions, which not only is going to force people to join a union whether you want to or not, but basically eliminates the gig economy, which is 59 million workers who are choosing, like you should be able to do in a free country, to work flexibly the way that they want to do it.
It has already passed the House.
It has a lot of steam in the Senate.
Like we're talking maybe one or two more votes and it passes.
And it threatens your ability to work the way that you want to work and to make that freedom of choice.
And for all the people who scream about your choice, your labor should be your choice.
You should not have these big entities, whether it's big government or big unions, deciding how you should work.
You should be able to make that contract between you and another business.
And they're sticking their nose in it.
And so we now have, again, big business, big government, big
special interests, all working to say, we're going to be the only ones standing.
And we've seen this movie before.
This is exactly what happened in a different way, but exactly what happened in the Great Depression when FDR went to the big three automakers and said, you guys come up with the rules.
And they killed great automakers and tire manufacturers and all of these people that were smaller than the big three, and they shut them out forever.
And America suffered because of it.
Right, because freedom and choice always produces better outcomes than forced, coercion, and control and a handful of people making the decisions.
And the worst part is they sell it as this is a we are being pro-worker and we're trying to help the little guy.
But as we know, every single time it does exactly the opposite.
And the only reason why these big unions and big governments need to collude in this way to try to push this through is because the unions were naturally losing membership.
The gig workers want to be left alone.
They don't want legislation.
And from an individual worker standpoint, this legislation is incredibly unpopular.
The majority doesn't want it, but it doesn't matter.
They're still going to sell it.
It's helping the little guy, just like they sold Dodd-Frank as reigning in the big banks, but gave them free rein to take out smaller banks and small businesses.
Unbelievable.
By the way, if you have not read Carol Roth's book, The War on Small Business, you need to.
You really want to understand what's going on in the country and how they are killing the entrepreneurial spirit and small businesses, and why they're doing it.
Read The War on Small Business by Carol Roth.
One last question that I have that was peculiar to me.
BlackRock, I just think, is
an evil empire being built.
They're the ones that are really behind ESGs.
They're pushing this really hard.
They are tangled up with China.
And George Soros, who
I think is like the evil emperor from Star Wars, he came out and said, what BlackRock is doing must stop.
He comes out and he says, look, BlackRock with China, it's out of control and it's really bad.
I don't know who to root for in this one.
I know.
This was the surprise of the week.
And I think it's important sometimes to separate the messaging from the messenger, especially with somebody like George Soros, who sometimes does things for his own purposes.
Once
Yeah, at least it seems that way.
But BlackRock is the largest money manager in the world.
They have $9 trillion under management.
You want to talk about people get upset about antitrust.
Nobody's even talking about the fact that they control so many assets.
And they are, as you said, getting entangled with China.
They are not only encouraging people to significantly increase their exposure to China, which makes absolutely no sense given the level of fraud that we've seen out of many of these Chinese companies, given the fact that the Chinese Communist Party has been extracting quote-unquote donations from public companies and really has the final say.
But they've also,
curious timing here, this is very suspect,
but they've also gotten from China the mandate to be able to sell mutual funds into China, which we know China does not do unless there's some benefit.
So it's something to definitely keep an eye on.
And my biggest concern, which I'm sure we'll talk about again one day, is a Trojan horse.
How do they get a way to extract more money and wealth from Americans into China via these sort of vehicles and kind of, oh, we're going to open up Chinese investment opportunities, but then we're going to shut down the company and take it away.
Or we're going to make the Chinese individuals rich and have them buy up assets in America, and they're going to come back to the Chinese Communist Party.
So keep an eye on this.
I do have to ask an addendum question to this.
I read something that there was
the bear stearns of China
is going under.
There's a problem, and it looks like China may be in real trouble with their economy.
Is that true?
So I haven't read about this specific company, and now, of course, I have some homework to do.
But China from an economic standpoint has a lot of issues
not only because their numbers have been untrustworthy and they've been putting out a lot of fraudulent information, but their demographics are a mess in terms of the percentage of their population that is going to be over 65 and needing to have care shifting and then in the coming sort of five to ten years is going to completely change and put a lot of pressure on their economy.
And their one-child policy is really going to come back to bite them in the you-know-what.
So they really are, they're not coming from a position of strength.
And when communists aren't coming from a position of strength, it's something we all need to keep an eye on.
Carol Roth, the author of The War on Small Business, a must-read if you want to understand what tomorrow is going to look like and why it's going to look like that, especially if you're in small business or you just believe in, I don't know, the free market.
The war on small business by Carol Roth.
Thank you, Carol.
I appreciate it.
Always a pleasure.
This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Stu, I want you to name the president that said this.
It could be anybody.
The eyes of the nation are on California because the decision you're going to make isn't just going to have a huge impact on California.
It's going to reverberate around the nation and quite frankly, not a joke, around the world.
Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln.
Yes, you were close.
He was the guy who ran
two terms before Abraham Lincoln.
Oh, Joe Biden?
Joe Biden.
Okay.
Yes, exactly right.
Larry Elder is with us now
from the great state of California.
Glenn, and this is a guy who lied for decades about his alleged civil rights record.
Remember, I used to go to black churches and I would strategize about desegregating restaurants and movie theaters in Wilmington, Delaware.
New York Times said, never happened.
And he still kept repeating the lie after the New York Times said it wasn't true.
He lied and said, I tried to visit Nelson Mandela.
I got arrested visiting him when he was behind bars in apartheid Africa.
Never happened.
If you ain't really black, if you don't know if you want to vote for me or Donald Trump, this guy has a lot of nerves coming to California and trashing me.
I have to tell you, it would be a lot easier to understand you if you'd take your Klan hood off.
White supremacy.
This is crazy, Larry.
I saw a picture of you, and you were walking down the street, and you had a determined face.
And quite honestly, it reminded me very much of all of the pictures that came out of the South in the 50s and the 60s, where the kids were going to school and they had to be escorted because of the white people screaming at them, calling them names.
I haven't seen that photograph
since that time until the photograph of you this week.
And no one, no one in the mainstream media did anything but mock it.
That's right.
Imagine if I had a D at the end of my name.
Imagine if I were Barack Obama, Senator Barack Obama running for president, and some white woman in a gorilla mask throws an egg at him.
Oh, my God.
They'd be talking about hate crime.
There'd be an international manhunt.
Interpol would have been called in.
They'd be talking about this in Bangladesh.
But because it's me, nobody gives a rip.
And by the way, it's a white woman wearing a gorilla mask.
People have told me.
And I've said, at the risk of sounding sexist, Glenn, how do we know who's a mask?
Oh, he went there.
Oh, he went there.
All right.
So, Larry,
tell me about your message of hope and
if it's enough to connect against the $50, $60 million worth of smears that have been played against you.
$75 million and counting.
Look, crime is up dramatically in California, dramatically.
In L.A., where I am, shootings, homicides, up 41%,
largely because during the coronavirus pandemic, the peak of it, 20,000 convicted felons were released early.
And based upon historical data, the majority of them are likely to reoffend.
We have soft on crime DAs, and Gavin Newsom's fingerprints are on both of them in San Francisco and in Los Angeles.
He sat up there at the French laundry restaurant, of course, with the very people that drafted the mandates.
They were not wearing masks.
They were not engaging in social distancing.
His own kids were enjoying in-person private education while denying in-person public education to the 80% of the black and brown students who are educated in our government schools in California.
I only mention their race, Glenn, because people like Gavin Newsom pride themselves on caring about black and brown students.
They were denied a whole year of in-person education already before the pandemic.
Half of third graders in our public education schools could not read at state levels of proficiency, and I assure you, those levels are not high.
Math scores, even worse.
I, Larry Elder from the hood, went to Quinchaw High School where only 2% of kids at my former high school are math proficient.
I support school choice.
The money should follow the child rather than the other way around.
Black and brown parents support school choice according to polls.
They want to put their kid in a private school, a charter school, a religious school, or even use the money for homeschooling.
What they're afraid of, Glenn, is that Larry Rowan is going to break this sorcerer's spell that Democrats have had over black and brown voters who routinely pulled the lever for the Democratic Party, even though they're denying the first step towards leaving poverty, which is to finish high school, one where you can read, write, and compute at grade level, and they're getting a substandard education, and black and brown parents know it.
So you have 54% of Hispanics want to recall
Governor Newsom.
And you are
being it's being said now.
There's no way, I mean the New York Times and everybody is just saying, there's no way that Gavin Newsome, there's absolutely no way.
And you also have people, grandparents, who are going to vote and saying,
it says that I've already voted and I didn't vote.
Right.
What are the chances?
What are the odds against this machine here?
Well, Lynn, I'm optimistic enough to believe that so many people are fed up.
People are leaving California for the first time in our state's 170-year history.
More businesses have left so far this year than have left all of last year.
The rate at which they're leaving is twice the rate at which they've left the previous three years.
Middle class people are leaving.
Working class people are leaving.
And the number one reason they cite is the price of a home.
It's just now hit the average price in California, $800,000, 150% above the national average.
And businesses, when they leave, they cite high cost of living, high taxes.
We have the highest state income tax in the nation, 13.3 percent, and
regulations.
We have rising crime, we have rising homelessness, we have the fire seasons because this man has poorly managed our forest fires.
We're running out of water because we haven't added to our water infrastructure in about 40 or 50 years when the state was half its size.
We're having rolling brownouts because of the way he's mismanaged the power grid.
There's no front, no level, no policy, in my opinion, Glenn, where Californians Californians are better off over the last two years because of this man's supervision.
And as a result, I believe no matter what they do, no matter what kind of shenanigans they pull, he's still going to be recalled, and I'm going to be the next governor of California.
From your mouth to God's ears, you know,
Biden was right, and possibly about the first thing
Maybe the first time he's ever been right in his life, but not for the reason he thought.
The eyes on the nation are on California because the decision they make is going to have a huge impact on California and will reverberate around the nation and, no joke,
around the world.
I think what you could bring to California would be a massive turning point.
And
I just pray that everyone who can vote and is tired of this and wants some common sense, send a message to the entire world.
It's done.
And go vote for Larry Elder and bring a friend or seven.
Absolutely.
You know, Obama has cut a commercial for him.
Bernie Sanders has cut a commercial for him.
Senator Warren has cut a commercial for him.
But in the commercial, they never say the magic words.
Gavin Newsom has done a good job for California.
No, no, no, no.