Best of The Program | Guest: John Cooper | 5/25/21

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 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.

Welcome to the podcast.

Today we get into Israel and all of the anti-Semitism going around the country.

Apparently, a former Bernie Sanders advisor is letting you know that you shouldn't be denouncing anti-Semitism.

That's a bad idea.

We'll get into that today.

We'll talk a little bit about cryptocurrency, the regulations coming down from the government potentially.

How far have we come in such a short time?

It's amazing to look back at just a few years ago, and we go through some examples of how far this country has moved in an incredibly uh tight time we'll get into that as well and the lead singer of skillet johnelle cooper comes on skillet if you don't know is one of the biggest selling christian rock bands of all time uh they are huge and the lead singer has always been an outspoken guy but has lately been even more outspoken he's changed uh the way he's approached the world and and his story is pretty amazing we'll get into that as well today don't forget to subscribe to this podcast and while you're there click on stew does america just do a little search for it.

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You're listening to

the best of the benefici program.

I'm just going to put you on alert.

This is not high alert.

This is DEF CON 2.

Your head may explode by the end of the program today.

I'm just saying there may be need of duct tape to wrap your head just so, I mean, it's not going to stop your head from exploding, but you'll at least have all the pieces when

you make it to the

well, I mean, hopefully you can make it into the hospital but you have to have a mask so duct tape a mask also to your face welcome to Pat Gray welcome how are you sir good and and you my friend oh oh my gosh yeah oh my gosh I have to ask you as a as a as a cancer survivor Pat

because you had some stuff removed from your face right and were they precancerous or cancer no it's cancer okay

so I just got a call from the doctor's office yesterday, and I've got to have like my skin peeled off tomorrow, and then they've got to take a chunk out of my forehead.

And they were like, it's no big deal.

But then, huh?

Wow.

I mean, that doesn't sound pleasant.

Right.

And they, I'm, I'm actually more afraid of the process than I am the cancer.

You know, like, you know,

it sounds like fun.

Sure, it does.

Yeah.

But

I'm not quite sure that this is.

So I'm going to look like Frankenstein,

you know.

Well, that's something to look forward to.

Isn't it?

I was already hot enough.

I mean, how do you improve this look with a skin pick?

Peel all the skin,

take all the skin off of him, and

then just cut a big chunk of his forehead out.

It's going to be beautiful.

That's going to be hot.

Slap a couple of bolts to the side of my head, and women will go nuts.

You're going to be irresistible.

All right.

Let's talk a little bit about,

let's do a smorgasbord here first.

May I just mention, I'd just like to hear your opinion of Betto running for governor of Texas.

Odds that he could pull that off.

He did really well, but

I think people maybe wised up to who he is by now.

Yeah, so I think the odds are somewhat low.

Yeah, the fascination seems to be done with Betto.

Yeah, I think it is.

Even against Greg Abbott, because Greg Abbott is, I mean, he's lost a lot of love.

And I think some of it unjustified, some of it justified.

The reaction to it was a little intense.

I thought, I mean, people went from loving him to hating him overnight.

Just like Christy Noam.

They all, like, everyone, she's the most popular

one decision, and she's the worst person in the world.

We're a little psychopathic, I would say, at this point.

Understandable maybe after the last year, but we are all a little psychopathic.

May I just say I had a late-night encounter with Christino a couple weeks ago.

I don't.

I don't think.

Well, it wasn't late night.

It was for the early bird special.

It was like 9 o'clock, and we flew someplace together.

But

interesting conversation with her.

I really like her.

I think she's the real deal.

I think she's the real deal.

Yeah, I'd like to see her run for president.

You know, the thing that she did in South Dakota that conservatives were so pissed off about was not that big a deal, I didn't think.

You know, she wasn't saying it, I mean, it was, she just wanted it tweaked

sports thing, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And she wanted the law tweaked.

It wasn't, it wasn't like, I'm, I'm for transgendered people running in all these races and, and being in women's sports.

That's not what she was really saying.

What about Pretty Boy Hollywood running for Texas governor?

Matthew McConaughey?

Yeah.

I thought you were going to say Chad Prather.

I was going to say, I don't know that that's what I would say about Chad, but

because he's running too.

He is running.

Is he serious about it?

He really is serious about it.

I've asked him this question 10 different times in 10 different ways.

And he tells me he is serious about it.

He's met with actual advice.

I guess they don't have an exploratory committee.

It's not part of the process here, but he's done the equivalent, I guess, of that.

And look, he's got a lot of big fans.

And, you know, I mean, certainly

got a Texas vibe to him, certainly.

Yeah.

So you could, I mean, so you got Abbott in there.

You know, there's a couple of other people.

Another guy from around here, Congressman, is Haffi's, is running for governor as well.

The car guy?

Yeah.

The car guy who has an identical twin brother.

And his brother is identical.

You're like,

which one?

Are you?

Yeah, the Black Guard guy.

But I've run into them several times.

Yeah.

One of them is a congressman, and the other one is the car guy.

And then Matthew McConaughey, maybe,

I guess, maybe running.

And I think Matthew McConaughey

could win.

Yeah, he could.

I think he could win.

Much different than Betto.

Much better chance than Betto.

Now,

look, someone like McConaughey could get into a race and completely implode in a weekend.

I mean, he says the one wrong thing about guns, and it's over, right?

But Betto is, I think, a known quantity at this point, and people don't like what they know.

I think that's safe to say.

Yeah.

Let me go here.

Cuomo might advise McConaughey.

I mean, I think

we can't get Cuomo's brother to do it, but maybe we could get Governor Cuomo to do it.

Did you see what Cuomo said about I get advice from journalists all the time?

I mean, I call journalists for their opinion on how to handle things all the time.

You do, and they take the call?

Unbelievable.

I mean, that's incredible.

And CNN fires Rick Santorum for like

a mildly poorly crafted voice.

Nothing.

Right.

In a speech that wasn't even on CNN.

Yet they have this host who has been involved in, what, a dozen controversies in the last year, none of which he's been punished for at all.

It's incredible.

It is incredible how hypocritical they are right now.

I mean, CNN's always been left-wing, but we were

there.

There was a time in which they would have taken the Cuomo thing seriously.

It's a long, yeah.

I think so.

I mean, when we were there, they hated us, openly hated us.

But at least the management was like, well, we got to try some of that.

Yeah, there's a lot of good people that were fighting for us, too, in there.

It's totally different there now, Spicy.

I mean, the way they're, it's a complete and utter disgrace how they've handled this Chris Cuomo.

Did you hear

why they fired Santorum?

Well, I mean, I just saw the comment he made at the speech.

Yeah, it's really not even about the comment because he apologized for it.

It's not even about that.

They said we fired them because no show

and no show's producer or host wanted to book him anymore.

So they're letting the shows, the leftists,

decide

who's going to be on and who's not, which, you know, I support to some degree, but in the news, not on shows, in the news, you're not even going to get the opinion from an analyst like Rick Zantorum.

I mean,

it's crazy what they're doing, really.

I mean, almost as obvious.

Is it becoming everything much more obvious?

Oh, I think so, yeah.

Yeah.

Do you think just to us?

It seems like it because nobody's doing much about it.

Of course, I don't know what you're going to do.

You know, in this current environment, if you say anything that's not glowingly positive about any minority or protected group, you're just done.

You're canceled.

And

it's also starting to backfire on the leftists.

So they should be taking note of it because they're starting to eat their own as well.

Mark Ruffalo.

Do you hear what we just said earlier on Mark Ruffalo?

No.

What happened to Mark Ruffalo?

Well, you know, he is, I mean, he's as far left as you think.

Oh, yeah, he's insane.

And

he tweeted, hey,

upon reflection and really thinking,

it's wrong of me to say that Israel was committing genocide.

They're not.

That only is hyperbole, and it's leading to danger, not only in the Middle East, but here on our own streets.

And that's got to stop.

And he was hummeled, pummeled for it online.

But he was right.

Absolutely right.

Absolutely.

And so he can't say that, but the 17,000 tweets about Hitler being right, those are all okay.

Those are okay.

That's fine.

Louis Farrakhan is okay.

Rick Santorum, we got to get him out of here.

Yes.

But Louis Farrakhan and everybody who says Hitler was right.

Hey, it's a matter of opinion.

No, it's really not.

It's really not.

I mean, I don't want, I would like to know.

I'm glad they don't cancel them because I'd like to see if my neighbor is tweeting Hitler was right.

Because at least I'll know.

Then you'll know.

You know what I mean?

They are.

Yeah.

Exactly right.

Exactly right.

One more thing I don't know.

And Pat, perhaps you can help me on this.

First of all, we should mention that the media is stunned.

Apparently, they're finding

some new theory

that the Wuhan virus might have come out of this lab.

What?

What?

Yeah.

I won't hear shock conspiracy theories like that.

Right?

Well, no, no, no, no.

no.

No, that's when Donald Trump talked about it.

It was a conspiracy theory.

But now

they're talking about it.

And so it's not a conspiracy.

All of a sudden, now it's following the science.

Right.

Exactly right.

Yeah.

Exactly right.

Boy, there's another tip for you:

are you on the right side or not?

You're really on the side that's pursuing truth or not.

The other thing is,

I'm trying to find the

CDC advice for those who have had COVID on what they should do.

I've gotten the CDC notice that you're, what is it, Stu, two or three times more likely to have a bad reaction to it if you've had COVID?

To the vaccine.

Yeah.

Yeah, to the vaccine.

And a bad effect.

And a bad reaction is, we're just talking about side effects.

Yeah, the 24-hour sort of flu-like symptoms.

Nothing lasting, it's important to note.

Well, if you don't think falling out of an airplane at 40,000 feet is

a lasting side effect,

I think that's what that's not on part of the CDC.

I don't know because

I can't figure out what you're supposed to do because they warn against it, but then they don't say

you shouldn't take it or say, hey, you know what?

You've had it, so you will have the antibodies for a while.

And when we start to see the people who were sick get sick again, you'll know.

Yeah, they have a really done.

I think I've complained about this on the air a bunch of times.

Being a COVID-19 survivor, as I am, Glenn,

back in September,

late September, early October.

I may have to go into therapy with AOC.

Please don't keep re-traumatizing me.

But we were always talking about how it was, you know, it was such a debate about whether the economy should open up and all these things.

And it's like you had millions of people who had natural immunity that could have been, I hate to say the word, but exploited, right?

Like we all could have been back shopping and doing everything indoors and everything could have been open.

And they were just like, well,

we can't come out and advocate for that because, you know, what?

They don't have a 20-year study that proves how long natural immunity lasts.

There are definitely, you know, every single piece of evidence seems to indicate that the response is more consistent from the vaccine, as you'd expect, right?

Like I had a really mild case.

I was asymptomatic.

I don't know what my immune response would be, but it does seem to be that you're protected for a second.

I mean, I had a bad case.

It hit me hard for two or three weeks.

Hit me really hard.

And really,

I don't get a special pass.

Nobody gives advice on that one.

It's just odd because everything I've ever heard about any kind of virus, they always talk about the antibodies in your body able to be resistant for at least a little while.

We have nothing on this one from the CDC.

There's still very few cases of people who got it in, let's say, March of 2020 that have become sick, especially with big symptoms again.

The immune response they've studied, and they do say

their current

current studies seem to indicate if you had COVID, getting one shot, not two, is probably the right thing to do.

Again, you know, you can make your own judgment on that, but they're just talking scientifically the best immune response.

I think the CDC is suggesting that Kexie cookies

protect a lot of people.

You are shameless.

Damn, I know.

You are shameless.

Next thing you're going to do is you're going to spell Kexie cookie.

K-E-Cookie.com.

Now, I don't know if that's going to protect you from any disease.

That is

going to taste delicious.

Wait, hold on.

If I say I just have to type in Kexi.

K-E-K-S-I

dot com.

So, wait, all I have to do is send you a bill for $20,000

and then you just pay that so you can say Kexie.

Kexi.com.

Or alternatively, you could bring over some peanut butter drizzles.

I mean, that's another

possibility, too.

Or the birthday cake with sprinkles.

Or the salted caramel, which is absolutely my

own.

Yeah, that one's unbelievable.

Okay, stop it.

You're up to 40 grand now.

The best of the Glenbeck program.

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You won't believe the difference.

There is a ton going on that you need to be aware of, and we're going to give you some action points here.

If you are awake to

the truth that we and our lifestyle in the West is under attack, and it is everywhere.

Last weekend, I held a

class, about 300 people at the American Journey Experience, and spent two days with them and taught American history

and just the facts with all the original documents, et cetera, et cetera.

And we got towards the end and we had a discussion.

And I think the number one question was, what do we do in our churches?

Because many of our churches have been infiltrated.

Well, to talk about that is John Cooper.

He came out this weekend and

he made quite a splash.

He is warning that critical race theory and woke ideology is sparking a civil war in our American churches.

He's the author of the new book, Awake and Alive to Truth.

John, how are you?

Good.

How's it going today?

Very good.

Just so people know, in case

you've not heard of Skillet, two-time Grammy Award nominated, 12 times platinum, inducted to Pandora's Billionaire Club after 2 billion streams.

Monster is one of the most streamed rock songs of all time with 285 million global audio streams.

Why are you writing a book now?

Well, see, when you read those statistics, it makes me sound really big, but I always tell people: Skillet is the biggest selling band that you have never heard of.

We've always been,

it's true, I don't know.

We've always been under the radar and we've always kind of done our own thing.

And I started speaking out about this kind of stuff a couple of years ago, frankly, because of what you just said before I came on.

It's that feeling of, okay, what do I do now?

And there's that feeling of, if I don't say something, then who is going to say something?

And I just started speaking out about some of these things.

I see it coming to the church.

And when I started noticing it about 2012 and 13, I was trying to figure out what in the world was happening.

And I just, I had to read about 200 books, and including a Glenn Beck book in there that I read.

And I just kept going

down the rabbit hole.

And then about 2016, I read about critical race theory.

And critical race theory did not open my eyes.

Critical race theory explained what I already saw.

And I started saying,

we need to be careful of this.

In the church, it's destructive.

It's Marxist.

It's a completely separate worldview in Christianity.

And how in the world these Christian leaders are combining the two.

It's

impossible, John.

It's impossible.

You can't have liberation theology or not the traditional Catholic sense of social justice, but the perversion of what is now social justice or critical race theory.

It all says there is no salvation for the individual.

It's antichrist.

It's antichrist.

You're absolutely right.

And I've been on a mission to try to tell all of my brothers and sisters out there, you know, I've been on a mission to say, look, you have to understand,

if you have a bunch of different religions, everybody instinctively knows that religions are going to use the same words as you just said.

Social justice, there's a good one.

The Catholic movement has been great

over the centuries at social justice.

But that word means something different within Catholicism, and it means something completely different within the Ibram Kendi type stuff.

And actually, Ibram Kinney is a great example.

His definition of racism is not the traditional definition.

So all these definitions have their own meaning within their own religion.

And I've just been trying to point out to people really great writers like John McCorder, Shelby Steele have been noticing that the social justice movement is a religion.

It has its own definitions, its own tenets, its own high priests and priestesses with Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo and whatnot.

It is not Christian.

And so to go to that false religion and take its definitions and its tenets and then bring it into Christianity and then ascribe the words of Christ to that kind of social justice,

that would be heretical.

If you did it with any other religion, it would be a heresy.

You know, I really believe we will, our churches are headed for a civil war, as you said.

And I think we could lose up to 50% of our churches and congregations.

I think it's going to get tougher and tougher.

And

those who understand what critical theory, not just critical race theory, anything that starts with critical theory

is Marxist in nature.

And honestly,

it's not that it's not Christian.

It is

pagan.

It's evil.

What they teach is evil.

There is no redemption,

and you must worship other gods.

And it's really dangerous.

But I think that we're going to lose about half of the people because people will say, I'm against racism.

What's wrong with being anti-racist?

Yes, yes.

I think, well, you know, there is a danger of this.

And I'm hopeful that if we get more people raising the alarm to talk about what the definitions are.

And as you just mentioned, and I'll say it in a little bit of a different way, but you and I are saying the same thing, that critical race theory, critical theory, secular social justice, it is not good news.

So the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news.

The other one is not good news.

There is no redemption for you.

But whereas in Christianity, it's great news.

And if we could explain to people in churches,

that is not actually the gospel.

And it's not good news.

It doesn't doesn't save you.

It can't redeem you.

It can't give you a brand new heart.

And I'm hopeful that if we can raise that alarm, we will get more and more people on our side.

But right now, we are seeing some really hateful things.

I don't know if you saw the, did you see that Christian prayer book that came out that has the entry where a woman is praying that God,

God, please help me to hate white people?

Have you seen that?

Oh, my gosh.

No, I have not.

Yeah, go check it out.

I believe the book is called Rhythms of Prayer.

I believe it's a Christian book put together by a white author, and it's got a whole bunch of different people contributing.

And there's a whole chapter, prayer, help me to help hate white people.

And she explains, she's defended it by saying that it is a lament

in a similar way that David would have lamented in the Psalms.

And so as she's describing it, you're realizing this is exactly what what critical race theory and liberation theology does.

The more that people see this kind of hate, the more they will say, wait a minute.

In fact, I heard of it from two of my black friends that were enraged.

They're like, John, have you seen this?

This is hateful.

This is not.

This is not what the gospel is about.

I don't think that people like it, but it is being pushed.

And so we should fight against it.

So I wrote this book.

Well, when you're, I mean, John,

when you are now coming out and saying Martin Luther King was wrong, everything Martin Luther King said in his speeches and his etiquette and everything else that he did, did, his rules for justice, those all came from the scriptures.

So if you are now saying that Martin Luther King was wrong, he based all of it many times word for word on the words of Christ.

Yeah, you know, you just touched on something interesting that I've never said on an interview because people probably get really mad at me.

But have you noticed that, as you just said, that now you have the new left are saying the same things about Martin Luther King that the Klan used to.

Yes, yes.

I'm like, you guys sound like the old white racist.

I thought that

we revered Martin Luther King, and now all of the left is, you know, it's changing so rapidly.

And honestly, that's the reason that I did write this book.

The book is called Awaken Alive to Truth.

And I got to tell people, you can only get it on my website.

So go to johnlcooper.com.

I couldn't find a publisher.

How come you can only get it on your website?

not find a publisher?

Can you just read it?

Did you talk to Stacey Abrams?

She doesn't seem to have a problem getting her book published.

No, no, I should have.

I should have.

And now we're at a place where even in the Christian publishing world, they would much rather publish Ibram Kindy than a Christian book on theology.

That's why I wrote it.

Answer the question, John, on what do people do?

If you see this in your church,

I mean, I don't recommend that you leave your church.

You've got to try to save your congregation.

But if it just, if it's, it's just too far gone, then maybe you have to consider that.

But what do you say?

How do you start?

And

let's start here.

What are the warning signs for anybody who doesn't know?

What are you hearing from the pulpit that you're like, wait a minute?

Right, right, right.

Well,

if I answer them backwards, I just want to say this.

I agree with you.

I don't think that you get up and leave your your church.

I believe in relationship and loyalty, but you need to raise holy heck.

That's what you've got to do.

The warning signs, once you start to notice, it's all in the language, and I know that you've talked about this before, but I think Ben Shapiro calls it the vocabulary, which I thought was a great way to say it.

They start using these certain words.

It's the words that should trigger you to, okay, wait a minute.

They're using this language.

I wonder if they're using it in the same same way that Ibram Kendi's using it when they talk about equity if your your pastor starts talking about equity and inclusion you you ought to get a little bit nervous and that's not because the Bible does it the Bible does talk about equity but the Bible means it in a different way than Ibram Kendi means it so when they start talking about those kind of things or if they start having I've been reading about this and a lot of pastors they're beginning to have safe spaces in churches for people of color because people of color don't feel safe around white people.

So they have like these safe spaces.

You start seeing that stuff pop up in your church under the guise of

gosh.

Wouldn't you, if you're a pastor, John, if you're a pastor and your black attendees don't feel comfortable, don't you say, sit in the front seat right next to me, and I'm going to address this.

Anybody who has a problem with

black members of this church, the door is behind you.

I mean,

you separate and segregate.

That is so bass ackwards.

It really is.

We're entering a time when we're going back to segregation under the guise of love.

And

it's really bizarre.

And again, it's the opposite of good news because the good news is the Bible has the most beautiful remedy for any sort of enmity between ethnic groups, between male and female, between rich and poor.

It's all in Jesus Christ.

That's what the Bible says.

There is no rich, there is no poor, there's no male or female, there's no Jew or Gentile.

We are all one in Christ Jesus.

That is a covenant made by God himself that is supernatural, is unbreakable.

That's the best remedy there is.

So it's very antichrist, as you said.

So if people start seeing those kind of warning signs, I would raise absolute heck up in that place, just like

parents should be raising heck at their schools when they find out they're teaching this stuff in their schools.

You don't have to be academic.

You don't have to be smart.

You don't have to be a theologian to notice this kind of nonsense and heresy.

John, I appreciate your work.

I'd love to have you on for a podcast.

You're fascinating.

Thank you so much for all of the hard work and the study that you did just as a citizen and then trying to wake people up.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you for

your risk.

Thank you.

Well, thank you so much, Glenn.

I appreciate it.

You bet.

JohnLcooper.com is where you can get the book and find out more.

John Lcooper.com.

You can follow him on Twitter at John L.

Cooper, lead vocalist of Skillet.

Yep, say it that way, I think.

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

I want to talk to you, Stu, about cryptocurrency here for just a second because I don't know what to think.

You know, if you put money in cryptocurrency, if you put it in early, everything is gravy for you.

But it's gone down like $25,000 a coin recently.

And there seems to be, you know, the miners had to pull out of China because

there was a crackdown on Bitcoin from the miners.

At the same time,

Elon Musk talked about how these miners who were mining for Bitcoin, it costs so much in electricity.

Well, where do you get the electricity for your electric cars, you boob?

And sometimes he's brilliant, but sometimes his environmentalism makes no sense whatsoever.

And about 50%,

you know, Bitcoin has about 50% better profile than the electricity fueling the cars that he's selling when it comes to renewable resources.

I mean, this is.

I don't think he ⁇ I don't think this is something that he ⁇

I think this was something else, whether he was pressured, whether ⁇

I just don't think that he's too smart to believe that.

It's been debunked like a thousand times.

This is not even a controversial issue when it comes to cryptocurrency anymore.

I think one of of the issues is,

unfortunately, again, people forget, Elon Musk is not a conservative.

He's not a guy who doesn't want to take money from the government.

He gets these credits that he needs to qualify for.

And the theory is, you know, and this is just speculation, that he needs to maintain

his,

you know, his...

his relationship with the government and the profile of Tesla as this super green place, or they don't get these credits.

Now, I don't know.

I mean, there's probably some truth to that.

I think, though, he is a real sort of crazy environmentalist person.

Like, that is

at his core.

I'm wondering if Amazon had anything to do with his decision.

You know what I mean?

Because,

what's his face?

Bezos.

Bezos.

You know, Bezos came out last week.

Did you see this?

Where he was like.

Hey, it's not fair.

The government's giving everything to Elon.

We've got stuff over here, too.

Shut up.

I got an idea for you.

Maybe the government shouldn't be giving anything to any of you people.

Anybody.

Yeah.

I mean,

you know, fairness, you're talking to me, Amazon, you're talking about fairness.

First of all, this is what Elon Musk has done.

I mean, this is the, he was the leader in this.

You were busy building clouds.

You were busy making sure the Pentagon was putting all their stuff on your servers.

You were a little busy with the grocery store thing.

And you've made a tidy little sum during COVID.

So shut up.

And I have no problem with Amazon.

I think they provide

great services.

I mean, I have problems with them, but like,

generally speaking, as an overall picture, I like what they've done.

And

I don't know how we would have gotten through COVID without ordering from Amazon, frankly.

I don't think we would have.

I think without

Amazon and without Netflix,

honestly, I mean this sincerely.

Amazon Prime, Netflix.

Can you imagine America sitting through daytime television and commercials for a year?

Not a chance.

We'd all be very engaged in what was happening in the soap operas.

And DoorDash.

I mean, there's no way.

There's no way if we didn't have those things, we would have, and that's part of the problem.

It was a drug for us.

We're fine.

Made it a lot easier, that's for sure, on a lot of people, even though it was a very hard time.

I mean, I don't know what you would have done without these companies.

It's funny because we were just talking about what happens to these giant parking lots as they

as they start to empty out and people don't come back to work.

They don't, you know, maybe 100% of the people were at work before, they sent home 80% of people, and maybe only 20 or 30% come back.

And so there's a lot more work-at-home types.

What happens?

Let's not, but let's not.

I think that's a bad idea, Stu.

Remember, I own about 100,000 square feet of office space.

Shut up.

Well, I've noticed right now.

I think it's better if everybody comes back to work.

I've noticed around this area that one of the things they're doing with these giant empty parking lots is staging Amazon trucks.

Amazon must have some deal.

They're renting this space and Amazon's just coming in and just staging giant rows of trucks, loading them up, shipping them out.

Even in our parking lot.

Yeah.

Even in your parking lot.

Yeah.

That's the use, I guess, of all this commercial real estate and all these.

I mean, look, I think the American economy, if allowed to

figure it out through the markets, will come up with solutions to this.

I mean, we've seen this at giant malls who were once filled with department store after department store, now are filled with like, you know, activity centers for kids and trampoline parks.

And all like people,

usually the market finds ways to make these things work over time.

But there is a, this happened, this was not gradual, right?

Like we just turned it off for a year.

So why?

A year and a half ago, we had never heard of Zoom.

A year and a half ago, we hadn't heard of Zoom.

Yeah.

I would have said Skype, right?

But I mean, you've heard of or FaceTime.

You've heard of video calling services, but Zoom, I don't think I ever heard of it before.

Nope.

How they became, I think they might have done it.

I think they're from Wuhan.

If there's one company that may have gone into Wuhan and changed the genetic code of that virus, it's Zoom.

Zoom.

Well, Home Depot, Zoom.

I would say Netflix also.

Amazon had a big role in it.

Sherwin-Williams might have even had

a minor role.

You're avoiding my question on cryptocurrency.

Okay, I'm sorry.

What happened in China?

China said they began a crackdown on all cryptocurrencies, not just Bitcoin.

And they say, you know, this is really going to cause some really problem in the social field.

At the same time, Elon Musk came out and said, you know, it's really a problem because of the environmental impact, which is garbage.

And then you had Janet Yellen come out and say, you know, we might think about a 50% tax on cryptocurrency.

And, you know, it is an awfully dangerous thing because no one can track anything that's going on.

We have no idea.

So we're

beefing up the IRS to make sure we go after these people.

Yeah, you got halfway through that, and I thought, is he playing a Janet Yellen audio clip?

And no, that was your appersonation.

I mean, it's identical to Janet Yellen.

Right.

So

what is going to happen to cryptocurrency?

Well, because China's already

unveiling theirs.

What's called the DUSD, the digital U.S.

dollar, is right around the corner, I think, within a couple of years.

What's going to happen?

Well, look, China has done this several times.

They seem to have these crackdowns here and there and everywhere.

And the miners generally continue to stay there.

And there's talk in the cryptocurrency community that a lot of this is bluster from the Chinese.

We'll see.

I think, like, from the American perspective, look at the hack that happened to the pipeline.

You know,

they're looking for reasons to crack down on things like Bitcoin.

Why?

It takes all of the power away from them, right?

It's a massive switch in the power center of currency.

worldwide from

right to a decentralized source.

So they really don't like it.

Now,

there's two.

With a digital currency, with a digital currency run by the government, they have all the power.

Right.

So you don't want that.

Just because it says cryptocurrency and they say it's American or Venezuelan cryptocurrency doesn't mean you want it.

You want it to be decentralized.

They can shut you down.

They can make sure you're buying certain goods and not others.

I mean, it's not good.

But if you look at, I look at like the risk of crypto when it comes to American regulation.

You have on one side a lot of really rich, really powerful, really connected people who are involved in it right now.

They're already into it.

They love it.

This is not something that is, you know, just

libertarians and conservatives

with the government anymore.

Goldman Sachs, I mean, on the week that crypto or Bitcoin dropped from, what, 50 to 38 or something,

that's when

Goldman Sachs came out and said, it is a new asset class.

That's a pretty big deal.

You're saying it's basically digital gold.

There's tons of money.

That's Goldman Sachs.

That's not some fly-by-night

bank.

Right.

And there's just tons of money flowing in from real institutional investors and really wealthy people who have made billions and billions of dollars off this stuff who are going to fight as hard as they can to make sure it doesn't go away.

Will there be regulations?

I think the Biden administration is outwardly negative on cryptocurrency.

And

they're paying attention.

Any $10,000 transfer needs to be reported to the government and all of these sorts of things can hurt crypto's growth.

Even if they ban it, it's not quote-unquote going away, but it will take a lot of people out of the market, people who just don't want to deal with the government or any problems with the government.

But I do think that there's still a really bright future for this stuff.

That does not mean in a year it's going to be up.

I don't know.

We come from an era Glenn.

We were talking on this show about cryptocurrency and telling you, hey, you should put a little money in Bitcoin back when it was like $200.

So it's hard for me to get comfortable with the idea that $35,000 is a buyer's market.

It doesn't feel like that to me.

Well, you don't have to buy

it.

You buy $200 of it still.

Yeah, I'm just saying that the levels, right?

I mean, it's all

you do not have to buy a full Bitcoin.

But there's a lot of, you know, look, there's a lot of, I mean, Ethereum's really interesting.

I think there's a lot of growth potential there.

And it just went down dramatically as well.

Yep.

It was at at 4,500, I think.

You know, I think, I mean, I don't want to, you know,

say anything that sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I think what I heard Stu say is it's the queen.

She saw the value of Bitcoin.

She wanted in.

She didn't buy it early.

So she's been calling all of her favors in from

all over the country, all over the world.

And she is affecting the

England.

Oh, Queen of England.

Yeah, and

she's manipulating the market of Bitcoin.

And I thank you for that analysis, Stuart.

You know, you just look at the queen and you just say, that looks like a crypto gal.

You know, she just has that.

Well, she wasn't an early adopter, but she's on it.

She's on it now.

No, no, no, no.