Best of The Program | Guests: Bill O’Reilly & Brad Thor | 7/23/21

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 going to 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, great podcast today.

We have, of course, Bill O'Reilly on, and then Brad Thor.

Brad Thor talks about his new book called Black Ice.

It's a thriller.

Brad is on his 20th number one bestseller now with this series.

And he focuses on the Arctic Circle and China and Russia and what's going on.

And he had some real insights on what's really happening.

We talk about geopolitics in this era and whether we're in a war already with China and Russia.

Brad Thor and so much more on today's podcast.

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

Hello, America.

It's Friday, the Glenbeck program.

Glad you're here.

Bill O'Reilly comes up in about half an hour.

I'm really excited to talk to him about the news of the week, what he felt was the most important, usually wrong on that.

He's usually wrong on that, but

he's got a great viewpoint.

And we'll check with him in about half an hour from now.

Looking at you right now, you have a great viewpoint as well, a viewpoint from space.

Well, you know, Branson went into space and then

what's his name from Amazon.

He went up.

I went in, you know,

was a little controversial.

Bezos, when he went into space, his capsule kind of looked a little, you know.

But I went in a

rocket shaped as Ladybits.

And so I'm in space now.

It's very strange.

It's funny watching you because if you missed it, Glenn is laying flat on the ground today, and they've put a green screen behind him and are just changing the backgrounds to torture him.

And it's fun.

Actually, it's one of these things.

We should send some pictures out, tweet some pictures out of Glenn with the various backgrounds.

And perhaps I'm just

a suggestion to the audience because it's Friday.

It's a summer Friday.

Maybe they're a little bored.

Yeah.

At Studos America at Glenn Beck.

Tweet us the background you think should be behind Glenn for the rest of the show.

It's just if you have a funny picture that you think would look funny, having Glenn in the middle of it as he's trying to do serious material on the air.

I'd like to be in the garage with Jack Ruby right now.

Can you put me back in bed with Amy Schumer, please?

Does that one, that one looked kind of real, didn't it?

Maybe I have to take it full screen.

There it is.

Kind of looks like,

and she's looking over at me like, oh my gosh, this is great.

And so to make this complete, it has to be like.

I think.

One of those things.

I will say, it's not just,

we are, we've talked a lot about social media today because of the Amy Klobuchar bill and sure people can tweet backgrounds for you to do the radio show with today at Studios America at Glenn Back

but it's we're not just here to be silly no we're not we are here to help the audience and navigate these very difficult cubes now I don't know if you know this but they've decided to come out with new emojis um because hey things are changing and so the emojis need to change too uh and so the good people at the emoji-producing factory

have decided to take on a new task, Stu.

Yeah, well, I know they had the pregnant man, which was a nice one.

Because, you know, people don't realize this, but men can be pregnant.

No, men cannot become pregnant.

Yes, they can.

Yes, they can.

No, they cannot.

No, they can't.

Basically, the way that a man becomes pregnant is they are a woman, and then we call them a man.

Oh, yeah.

And so then they can become pregnant.

But a biological man, no matter how he

changes

his parts,

can't have a baby.

And anybody like Stu who's trying to propagate that, dangerous medical disinformation.

Just want to point that out.

Dangerous medical misinformation.

This is the road we're on.

This is the road we're on.

They will know.

They will, and we're far down this road, by the way.

I mean, the fact that they're releasing a pregnant male, which we all, we all, look, we can all talk about this stuff however you want, but the bottom line is that men cannot have children.

That is a very basic fact in human anatomy.

I have children.

You did not give birth to any children.

It feels like I did.

People always say, like, we're pregnant.

Now she's pregnant.

All right.

You're not anything.

You spent probably 18 seconds doing something.

It's over.

Your part of this is pretty much over.

You'll spend the rest of your life probably screwing the kid up as they grow up.

But you're

somebody has some daddy issues.

Holy cow.

But it's like

that term is hilarious.

We're pregnant.

I got that you had a small rule.

She's the one doing everything.

What are you doing?

I know.

We have children.

That's accurate.

Yes, of course.

We're pregnant.

No.

No, we're not.

We're not.

No, we're not.

And we're glad.

Half 50% of us are glad we're not pregnant.

Now, if you look at our physiques, we look pregnant.

Yes.

And the male pregnant thing actually would work for us as an emoji because we look like we're pregnant.

Exactly right.

Stu, that's our new logo.

You and I, as emojis, pregnant.

It works.

It works.

And that will keep us.

They can't ban us then.

Right.

So we're the pregnant men.

We decided.

We can't be banned on that.

We decided that we were going to help the emoji people and come up with some new emojis as well.

For instance, I don't want to.

I don't want to get somebody's pronouns wrong, and they don't always announce their pronouns.

So

to make sure I don't misgender somebody, I'm suggesting a new 99-shaped emoji.

That way, you know, I just put that instead of Mr., Miss, you know, you, they, whatever it is, you just put the 99 emoji up there.

So this is what covers the 99 genders?

Is that the idea?

Yeah, now we might have to change that as the genders keep going up.

Yeah, maybe 999 would be a safer thing.

Probably.

Because we probably have a good month or two before it hits 999 genders.

Yeah, now I've come up with another, and we're going to be tweeting all of these out so you'll be able to see them.

I came up with another one because we know that CRT, we told you yesterday the definition of a word that you probably have never heard, praxis.

It's an old word, but

it's really used by

communists and people who believe in Karl Marx.

I mean, I believe in Karl Marx.

I just don't believe in his writings.

but um

the uh uh praxis means putting it into action and that's what's happening to our schools they are making activists out of our schools uh and so you know when we're talking about our kids i think it's easy just to use a

just a little emoji there which is uh it looks to be how would you describe that stupid an angry child an angry baby holding a b lm sign yeah so there's your new emoji for child activist.

Now,

we all have complained from time to time that we've lost our heroes.

You know, all of their, who are the heroes?

And so we thought we would make the politically correct emoji of our new heroes.

And here they are.

They're holding hands.

There's

three of them there.

One is Castro, one is President Z, and the other is Maduro.

And they're holding hands with halos over their head.

Totally appropriate.

And the good thing about using these emojis, you will never get banned using them.

These will be completely approved as long as you don't use them in some sarcastic way.

Who would do that?

I hope nobody.

I mean, I know this isn't sarcastic.

We're not doing this in a sarcastic way.

We mean it.

We mean it.

I would love to have these emojis.

Can we?

Is there a way to make this emoji package so we can actually have people use them as emojis?

I don't know.

I will say I've never in my life used an emoji for any reason.

I do.

I use the guy.

I use the guy with his tongue out and his eyes kind of popped out and cross-eyed.

I use that one a lot.

I use the one where he's just got big white eyes and he's like, what?

I use that one a lot.

I had this thing where I learned growing up words.

So I use those to describe the things I'm talking about.

It's a crazy idea.

The one I find

the most active, at least for me, is the salsa dancer.

Yeah.

Have you seen that?

They have a lady salsa dancer and a man salsa dancer.

And I use that all the time.

Really?

All the time.

I can't tell you how many.

Is it like, hey, honey, bring me the, and then salsa?

Exactly.

It's like, hey, honey, you want to salsa dance tonight?

You know?

I thought you were looking for condiments, but I was apparently a miserable.

No, no, no.

That's the main use for it.

Okay.

That's the main use for it.

What the hell is that?

Why do they have a salsa dancer?

Why?

Who's using that?

I don't know.

I don't know the point.

People think these things are cute, and

I don't understand.

It's just a dumbing down of our society in such a massive way that I don't.

Let me just tell you this.

You know

who can really help, who can really help and not dumb down our society is the government.

And that's why we have a new government emoji here to help.

It's just a yellow-faced guy in dark sunglasses and a needle.

So he's got the vaccine all ready to go.

He's here to help.

Coming door to door?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then, of course, if you want anybody to take you seriously, you're going to need this emoji.

This is your vaccine passport emoji.

So you can just label that and you're like, look, I can come into this theater.

Here's my passport.

You know what I mean?

Exciting.

Yeah, yeah.

Now, this one was inspired by

Joe Biden

because, you know, I, of course, use Latinx all the time when I'm talking about, excuse me for saying this, Latinos.

Now, is it confirmed?

Latinx?

I thought it was Latin X.

Is it both?

How does that work?

Well, it is Latinx,

but apparently Joe Biden is so hip that he came up with his own way of pronouncing it.

And here he is.

Listen.

It's awful hard as well

to get

Latinx vaccinated as well.

Latinx.

Latinx.

Good point.

So we have a new Latinx

emoji.

It's a tissue box with a sombrero on it.

A new

Latinx.

You know, that one may get you banned.

That one potentially might actually get you banned, but it's still really funny.

Let me go for the peaceful protester.

If we have the peaceful protester, he's a black block rioter with a raised fist, antifa

banded, a branded riot shield, and his face is masked.

So

that's the peaceful protester emoji.

And not spreading COVID.

Exactly right.

Because they're wearing the mask.

Exactly right.

And let me just show you now the journalist.

There's the emoji for the journalist.

That seems to be very similar to the peaceful protester Antifa member.

Oh, yeah, they're exactly the same.

Okay.

But just depends on which context you use.

And then here is the college student.

You have the college student emoji

right there.

Again, that looks exactly like the journalist and the Antifa member.

I know it's hard to tell them apart, isn't it?

It is.

It is hard to tell them apart.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

So I love the Twitter feed,

especially during the town hall on CNN from Bill O'Reilly.

Bill O'Reilly, I'm just going to read his Twitter feed here.

First 10 minutes of the Biden Town Hall, incredibly boring.

Not just boring.

Tweet one,

tweet number two, 16 minutes in and we're still on COVID.

The president says he listens to science.

Good to know.

Next, 30 minutes in, absolutely no news has been made other than the president wants school kids under 12 to wear masks.

Next tweet, a commercial break, thank God.

Next, I'm not being facetious.

No joke.

I'm being serious.

This town hall is tedious beyond belief.

And the last one is, it's almost over.

No joke.

I'm serious.

Bill O'Reilly, welcome to the program, sir.

Here's the deal.

It was painful.

It was a painful thing to watch.

I waited for the clips.

I knew this in advance, Bill.

I knew this in advance.

But we have to do our jobs as guardians of the country.

Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, guardians of the nation.

So I'm in a house.

Someone was nice enough to invite my son and I over for dinner.

There were a few people

in attendance.

And after dinner, we sat down to watch Don Lemon, always a treat.

Always a treat.

You know that.

Oh, okay.

Well, he's one of the most well-informed reporters in the nation.

I don't know if you know that.

I like Don Lemon personally,

but, you know, I mean, I know what I'm going to get from Don.

But anyway, about halfway through, it was an hour and 20 minutes.

There was almost a brawl in the house, people trying to grab the remote to turn anything else on.

Okay?

Anything.

Anything.

It's Ben Gooley on with Revenge of the Mummy.

Get that.

Oh, so bad.

So bad.

It was.

It was.

And then when the ratings come in, a million five.

Now, if people don't understand the ratings,

if I got a million five viewers, you would have been in trouble.

I would have committed suicide.

Yeah, no.

Your average night,

if I'm not mistaken, was about 3 million.

About 5.

Oh, it's a five.

Because

we had the two runs

and five to six million

would turn in.

And that I knew he was going to get, I knew that the rate is going to be low.

I didn't think they were going to be that low.

And also, I wanted to, this is another topic, but the Olympics this summer are going to get wiped out in a rate.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Nobody cares.

In fact, I think people are rooting.

We may have a situation to where, remember, Bill, what we used to have the Soviet Union to root against?

Yeah.

We may have that situation again, except we'll be rooting against America.

Well, I don't know about that, but I know that I'm

the women's soccer team.

I mean, they're so

but

we got, we look, Sweden beat the U.S.

women's soccer team three to nothing.

Now, just step back a moment.

There is no grass in Sweden.

They have to

practice on glaciers.

It's just frozen.

And they beat our team three to nothing.

Okay?

And I mean, I'm sitting there going, Sweden, 9 million people.

America, 320 million people, many of them female.

I got to tell you, I got to tell you.

We got our butts kicked three nuts.

Look, I said to the U.S.

women's soccer team coach, maybe you might want to do a little less kneeling and a little more running.

Run and shoot.

I have to tell you, the European Handball Federation has fined the Norway Women's Beach Handball Team.

I don't know if you heard this.

You haven't?

Oh, this is great.

Okay, so the Norwegian women's beach handball team, they were fined.

They came out

onto the scene wearing shorts, and that's...

That's against the league policy.

They're supposed to wear bikini bottoms.

So I just,

I mean, when we are more

woke and

I mean, we've turned into the worst

country in Europe.

We have just turned into the one with France.

Okay, I'm going to just say it.

France.

We have turned into France.

When Europe looks like, oh, that's crazy, huh?

They got their women's team wearing bikinis.

Something's wrong.

Something's wrong.

I don't know how you play handball on the beach.

Don't you need a wall and some kind of floor?

I don't know, Bill.

You're asking the wrong guy.

I have no idea.

All right.

So, Bill, there's a couple of things that I want to talk to you about.

First is Amy Klobuchar.

Do you think this is the big story of the week, or what do you think the big story is?

Well, Amy Klobuchar Klobuchar wants to limit speech, right?

Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah, the COVID misinformation, and she wants HHS to be able to label people, you know, who are engaged in dangerous misinformation.

Yes.

It sounds a lot like the Soviet Union.

Sure does.

Because, and I'm not being facetious here.

No joke.

Joe Biden might say.

This is no joke.

Right.

Okay.

Being serious.

All kidding aside.

Yes.

Next week is the anniversary in 1943 of Joseph Stalin passing a law in the Soviet Union during World War II that imprisoned anyone who was a coward.

That was the law.

Now, of course, Stalin was the one who decided if you were a coward or not.

So now in Erica, we have Amy Klobuchar saying, hey, if you say something that we, the federal government, don't like about COVID,

we're going to go after you.

Now, what's the difference between old Joe Stalin and young Amy Klobuchar?

Well, they will say that

you are misinforming people right now, Bill, because this is a health issue.

And Klobuchar says that there has to be an exception here for health misinformation because health information is deadly.

Well, we already know that climate change is a health issue.

We know that Antifa and their riots over the summer because of race, that was worse, this is the CDC, that was worse than the pandemic, the pandemic of racism in America.

We know that guns are a health issue.

I mean, pretty much,

this is the threshold.

You cross this this threshold and freedom of speech is done.

Well, there's no doubt the progressive left wants to limit freedom of expression and thought in America.

And no one could deny that.

I mean, I guess Don Lemon might, but

no one really could say, no, no, these are real

ACLU people that want freedom of expression.

And by the way, the ACLU is not the ACLU.

Right.

They're not.

They're right on board with, hey, you know, if we don't like what you're saying,

you got to go to jail.

Sorry.

You know, and you know what?

We're going to have bail.

We're not going to have bail for the people who commit manslaughter.

I'll let them right out.

But you,

not out.

You got to go away.

Yep.

So this trend, and you're right to point out that what Senator Klobuchar is doing is trying to normalize this stuff.

Right.

Hey, yes, we're doing this to protect you because if Lenny down the street doesn't want to get vaxxed, he's a danger to you.

I'm not sure about that.

Why would he be a danger to me?

If Lenny's an anti-vaxer, I don't care.

Does that influence me?

No, I do what my doctor recommends, which I think everyone should do.

All right.

And then I go along.

I don't really care about Lenny.

If Lenny wants to live in the basement unvaxed, that's okay with me.

He's not a bad guy.

But Lenny is going to get out and he's going to infect other people.

I know.

It's kind of like that zombie thing, you know?

Yeah.

And that's really the genesis of the whole anti-vax movement.

The anti-vax movement kind of believes that the government somehow is involved with this vaccine, which is true to the extent that Trump got it up and running.

And that's the lead, as I told you, on the Trump O'Reilly history tour.

How did you do it?

But the anti-vax movement believes that somehow the government has put little chips in there and they're going to track you.

Correct.

Okay, fine.

Believe that fine.

But here's a very interesting thing.

While Amy Klobuchar and the progressive left are pounding the anti-vaxxers, they don't say a word about African Americans who won't get vaccinated.

And that, of all the ethnic groups in America, African Americans have the lowest vaxxed rate.

And number two, Bill?

Number two?

Hispanics.

So I think Hispanics and whites are just about tied.

But the problem as far as vaccine on the ethnic front is with African Americans.

And then you get Biden out there going, well, we understand that problem because of Tuskegee and in the past.

And you're looking at the guy going, wait a minute, do we live in a country where everyone is treated the same?

Obviously, we don't.

And it goes right back to the equity thing.

Like, well, we're going to give certain groups a pass, and they can really do what they want, even even if they're public health dangers.

So you never hear Klobuchar say that, all right, about African Americans.

And I'm saying to myself, look, you know,

the real threat to America is not from China and it's not from COVID.

It's from

we are turning on each other because the media is pushing the progressive left dictum that some groups and some people in America are more entitled to better treatment than others.

And that's going to tear the nation apart.

Of course it is.

Bill,

let me ask you,

when you say that the biggest threat against the nation is the progressive movement,

I think the progressive movement has turned into the Marxist movement now.

Would you separate the traditional Democrat liberal from that group?

Yes.

I mean, I know a lot of traditional Democrats who are not progressive nuts and who don't really know how to handle the situation now.

They're very confused on how to handle it because the progressives have the megaphone.

So

right up the top of your head, everybody listening to Becca O'Reilly right now, name one progress,

one so-called moderate Democrat in the country that has any influence right now.

Name one.

You can't.

There's not one Hubert Humphrey.

There's not one Jimmy Carter.

There's nobody.

And you can't say Biden because Biden is captured.

He's being held

by the progressive left.

I mean,

I don't know whether I'm sure this registered with you, but violent crime is like the second issue among Americans right now.

Oh my gosh,

it's gone through the roof.

Right, right.

And so Biden is up there for at least eight minutes explaining how cracking down on gun stores is going to stop violent crime.

Nobody believes that.

There is literally nobody on earth with an IQ

over a hundred that believes that or could possibly believe it.

Yet there he is yammering about he's going to get a task force, he's going to bring in bazookas, I'll have more guns there, I'll blow them off because that we got to stop violent crime.

And then he goes, and by the way, community policing.

I mean, we don't need to arrest drug gang thugs who are gunning down children.

No,

we're going to bring in a social worker with the cops.

Okay?

It's like a remake of Dragnet with Jack Webb.

You remember that show?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

But in the back seat,

there's a shrink.

I mean, I'm just a fact.

But here's Dr.

Ruth who's going to talk to you about why your son decapitated five years ago.

You know, really, really, the president of the United States is killing.

Well, hang on, I want to go.

I want to go.

I want to finish this, particularly about the police and Joe Biden in 60 seconds.

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey,

Mr.

Brad Thor.

Hello, Glenn.

How are you, sir?

I'm doing well, thank you.

It's nice to be on with you.

You know, I remember the days when,

you know,

you'd send me

a galley of the book, and you were very excited, and you'd be like, Glenn, I'm so excited.

You got to read this book.

And then it would come and it was autographed.

The only reason I know this is because

I've been putting the books back in my shelf at the house, and I have all of your books and most of the galleys, and they're all autographed, say nice thing.

This time I just got something from a PR person.

What?

Here's your book, Glenn.

Oh, man.

So only Stu got to sign one this year.

Don't lie for him, Stu.

Don't lie for him.

I will say the gold-plated

display case was a little over the top, Brad, but I did appreciate it.

And I will tell you, I also said I was not talking to you again until,

you know,

until your

hero, Scott,

walks into a room and somebody's listening to the Glenn Beck program

or just renewing their subscription on the blaze.

It's not happening.

It's not happening.

Brad, it's good to have you on.

You know, it's funny.

I didn't know you were coming on last week.

I didn't know you were coming on.

And

I watched, what is it, American Assassin,

the first movie of yours that was made.

And I forgot how good that was.

Really, really good.

Jesus, that was Vince Flynn.

That was Vince Flynn's book.

Thanks a lot, Glenn.

No, no, no, okay.

So it's not American Disaster.

Which one is it?

I don't have any movies yet, Glenn, but thank you.

Why don't you just pour some lemon juice in that paper?

I thought that was really good.

It wasn't you.

It was a snacks I'm talking to here.

It wasn't you that wrote it.

I think Glenn's getting a little revenge for his lack of signed copy.

I just thought it was really good.

Did you write The Hunt for Red October?

Because I watched that and it was really good.

Nope, didn't write that one either.

Wow.

So what have you written or done?

I got a couple.

Got a couple out there.

How many, what is this?

The 20th or 19th?

20th in the Scott Harvath series.

Yeah.

Black Ice.

And

this one, he's, you know, it starts and he's on vacation or, well,

he's having a good summer

and he's on the fjord.

And he's got a girlfriend.

He's got a little flow with

his very attractive girlfriend who works for the Norwegian Intelligence Service.

And I'm not even going to try to pronounce it because it has an O with a slash through it.

So Solvi.

Solvi Kolstad.

Okay.

All right.

So tell me why this book is

as good as a Vince Flynn book.

Well, he's out of vacation days, out of sick days, and DC calls, wants him back, or they want his resignation.

So he decides he's going to come back.

It's this calling.

He loves his job.

And he's getting ready to leave.

And he's walking out of a cafe in Oslo and sees a ghost climb out of a taxicab.

Somebody he killed years ago, halfway around the world.

And that starts off a huge chase all the way up into the Arctic.

So here's the thing:

you and I have known each other.

We've been friends for a very, very long time.

And

I think I coined the term faction, is what you write,

because

it's always based in facts, and I can always tell what you're concerned about just by reading your books.

And in reading this one,

you are concerned about something happening in the Arctic and

how far behind Russia and China are

in the area.

Can you tell me what you were thinking on this?

So I've been friends with the former National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien since college.

And this was an issue that I had brought up with him,

is China inserting itself into the Arctic.

So the Arctic is getting warmer and warmer, and the ice is melting up there, which provides a lot of opportunities.

And China, suddenly, the Russians were bad enough up there.

They've opened up 50, more than 50 old Cold War-era bases up in the Arctic.

So they're moving very quickly up there.

And China has declared itself a quote-unquote near-Arctic state, which is the Seinfeld of diplomatic terms because it means absolutely nothing.

The closest China is to the Arctic Circle, any settlement's over 800 miles away.

So China is trying to get a foothold up there.

They've got two icebreakers.

They're putting icebreakers up there.

We only have one, and it doesn't work very well.

Why?

The Russians have 30.

We fell behind the curve.

Even Mike Pompeo said we are playing catch-up in the Arctic, and there are...

Why is it important that we're up in the Arctic?

So there are huge deposits of rare earth minerals, gas, oil.

There's a whole bunch of stuff up there that we're going to want access to on the commercial side.

On the national security side, we don't want Russia and China militarizing the Arctic and taking over that area.

China's been sneaking soldiers in, posing as scientists.

They're moving very quickly.

It is the next Cold War.

No pun intended, is what's going on up in the Arctic.

Okay, so

that's what you're concerned about.

But you also in it, and maybe it's maybe it's just me, but I felt there was a little Eric Swalwell

influence in this book.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes.

So that's, yes, very, very good, yes.

So the Chinese have all these different forms of statecraft, and I joke in the book that they have as many forms of statecraft as the Eskimo have words for snow.

So there is a kind of a honeypot operation where someone, the Chinese are trying to get influence in D.C.

and they put a very attractive young woman, Chinese woman, Chinese woman living in L.A., up to

sweetening a deal with somebody to try to get China's ends pushed through in Congress, correct?

Very good.

Yeah, no, I'm not a dummy.

I mean, I don't get, you know, any kind of phone calls from my friend to say, hey, I'm coming on or anything like that.

But I do.

I mean, I'm not a dummy.

I do read.

Did Swalwell play any role?

Did Swalwell, the Fang Fang thing, play any role in this?

Yeah, I think that was something that was, you know, I was clipping a lot of articles out of the paper when this was happening.

And, you know, there have been people that have been busted for not registering as a foreign agent.

That's another thing that really makes me mad.

In fact, they just busted another guy for lobbying on behalf of UAE Monday.

So that kind of stuff, people trying to exert influence on behalf of foreign nations and not registering as an agent is something that I don't like, particularly when it's Americans doing it.

I just think it's absolutely terrible.

And I don't care what party you come from, you cannot do that.

You can't go in and try to lobby for China or somebody else

and not, you know, basically wear it on your sleeve like an ASCAR uniform.

I want to know who's paying you.

Yeah.

The spy says something in the book that stuck out.

I underlined it.

Said,

don't think of it as China.

Think of it as a consortium of investors along with an experienced Chinese oil and gas corporation.

What do you mean by that?

So

there is a lot of trying to put people at ease

when they're making these deals, the Chinese.

They're very happy to

let people wet their beak and make money off these deals.

And they phrase it and put it in certain terms so that people really can tell themselves, lie to themselves, that they're not doing this on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.

But that's exactly what's going on, regardless of who China puts up as a face on this thing.

The Chinese tried to buy a Canadian mining company in the Arctic so they could actually get some real estate in the Arctic that they could claim as theirs.

I mean, and the stuff they were doing in Norway, using a Chinese real estate investor and trying to use him to buy all this property up there.

So it is a creeping, endless thing as China pursues this Belt and Road initiative where they're putting money all over the world and then trying to influence the politics and the governments where they're making heavy investments.

And it's not a good thing.

How bad are we, Brad?

Well, you know, we've got a lot of problems, and it goes back decades and over multiple administrations.

I mean, you know, under Clinton, there was the missile technology from L'Oreal that got given to the Chinese, and

they bully the crap out of American companies who do business in China to turn over their sensitive trade secrets and things like that.

So it's a bad thing.

But the thing that steams me the most is that they were putting the brakes on the WHO in the beginning of COVID so that they could go around the world and try to buy up the PPE.

They knew it was coming.

They knew how bad COVID was going to be.

And they still made the WHO drag their feet while they went around

gobbling up masks and all sorts of stuff.

It's just, we need to be much better as a country.

They are a national security threat.

Yet if you're on cholesterol medication, guess where it comes from?

Yeah, Yeah, I know.

China.

We have sold our souls to the Chinese.

I mean, we're looking, we're the ones who invented the damn chip, and now we get all of the chips.

GM has stopped making trucks, and they say this chip shortage may go on until 2023.

Yeah, it's crazy.

And with two teens who needed cars,

it's nuts what's going on.

And if we don't get control of our supply chains and stop manufacturing critical items like PPE and like medications in China, we're never going to be able to stand up to them when we need to.

When you look at, I don't know if you saw what happened yesterday, but it felt like something that China would do.

There came out and said that this was just a software update that caused a shutdown of like Bank of America's website,

ATT, I mean, a whole list of giant corporations were offline yesterday for a while.

And I thought, if this is a cyber attack, this shows how people just do not take us seriously and how far behind we are in our infrastructure.

And don't talk to me about the infrastructure Joe Biden is doing.

I mean, actual protection of our infrastructure.

We have, I think we're already in a war with China and

Russia.

It's just a cyber war, unlike we've ever seen before.

Are we prepared at all?

No, not on this front.

Not in what's called gray zone conflict, which is where the cyber attacks, that's the term for the arena in which those are happening.

And Glenn, you and I years ago, years ago, talked about a white paper that was written by two Chinese PLA colonels called Unrestricted Warfare, where these Chinese strategists, military strategists, said there is no way they could ever beat the United States on the conventional battlefield.

So they needed to find other ways, things that we took for granted and thought were harmless, and could weaponize those and turn them against us and use them against us.

And that's where we're at, and we are woefully ill-prepared to handle this kind of conflict.

And it's not going to let up.

Look at

the gas pipeline that got shut down with ransomware from those Russian hackers.

It's bad.

And the Chinese, we hear all about the Russian hackers all the time, but the Chinese are even more sophisticated.

They have office buildings just full of these people that all they do is hack and look for vulnerabilities all day long.

Brad Thor, the author of a new thriller that is out perfect for the summer.

It's called Black Ice.

More in just a second.

He's also the movie Born Identity.

Really?

That was his.

Very

unbelievable.

I mean,

I'd lose respect for him if that wasn't

movie, but...

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