Best of the Program | Guests: Steve Deace & Justin Wheeler | 12/6/18

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Welcome to the podcast.

It's Thursday, and we had

an awful lot to talk about.

We had an update on Microsoft and the new things that they want to do.

They've got the military's back.

They're going to provide AI for the Pentagon, which I'm torn.

I'm glad somebody in the tech industry is willing to be pro-America and help us out, but I don't like the idea of robots killing people or teaching robots how to kill people.

Also, a touching tribute to

George H.W.

Bush from his son yesterday.

We kind of went into that and what makes a man.

Steve Dace also joins us and the one and only Andrew Heaton.

Also, some really important things to learn about the economy and the stock market and how it all works.

Justin Wheeler joins us for that, all on today's broadcast and podcast.

You're listening to the best of the blend back program.

It's Thursday, December 6th.

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Glenn back.

Yesterday,

the first funeral for George H.W.

Bush happened in the

National Cathedral, and it was

everything you think a Bush funeral should be like,

or would be like.

There were no snarky comments except from the press.

There was no lecturing anyone on politics.

It was just truly humble

retelling of a man's life.

It was.

It was kind.

It was decent.

It was

The press immediately jumped into, oh, did you see how Hillary Clinton and Trump

behaved like.

Can you shut up?

Sincerely, shut up.

Here's a guy, George W.

Bush,

who I think is liked by every single president.

All of them like George W.

Bush.

Here's a guy who had reason

to hate Donald Trump.

Didn't say anything.

Was polite.

Was kind.

Who has has reason

to hate the Obamas because look at what they did to him.

They just trashed him for four years.

It's the Bush economy.

Well, if Bush hadn't have screwed it up so much, he never responded.

In fact,

yesterday, he brought Michelle Obama candy

because the last time they were at a funeral, he did it.

And they become friends.

As he was describing

his father yesterday,

he talked about

who he was.

He said, My dad knew how to die young.

Probably because twice in his life, he almost did.

And he said, I think those brushes with death made him cherish the gift of life, and he vowed to live every day to the fullest.

Dad was always busy in constant motion, but never too busy to share his love of life with those around him.

He taught us to love the outdoors.

He loved watching dogs.

He loved landing the elusive striper.

Once confined to a wheelchair, he seemed happiness sitting on his favorite perch in the back porch at Walker's Point, contemplating the majesty of the Atlantic.

The horizons he saw were bright and hopeful.

He was genuinely an optimistic man, and that optimism guided his children and made each of us believe that anything was possible.

How many of us are doing that with our children now?

He talked about his service to the nation.

He talked about

how he didn't judge people.

Dad could relate to people from all walks of life.

He was an empathetic man.

He valued character over pedigree, and he wasn't a cynic.

He looked for the good in each person and usually found it.

Dad taught us that public service was noble and necessary, that one could serve with integrity and hold true to the important values like faith and family.

He strongly believed it was important to give back to the community and the country in which one lived.

He recognized that serving others enriched a giver's soul.

To us, he was the brightest of a thousand points of life.

When he lost, he shouldered the blame.

He accepted that failure is a part of living a full life.

But he taught us never to be defined by failure.

He showed us how setbacks can strengthen.

He went on to describe, and I urge you to read this eulogy or to go back and listen to it again.

If you didn't hear it the first time, go back and listen.

He's describing what a man should be.

And you don't hear that anymore.

Andrew Heaton is in today.

Andrew Heaton has a new podcast called Something's Off with Andrew Heaton.

There's a story from Vancouver

that traditional masculine values

are being ditched by millennial men.

Can you tell me, as a millennial, what are traditional male values?

I'm not sure.

I mean, first of all, keep in mind this is Canada.

I'm looking at this and it's from Vancouver.

So it says young Canadian men, and I highlighted that.

Men seem to be holding masculine values that are distinctly different from those of previous generations.

Some of the, you know, I haven't read the report, but I'm reading through the synopsis of it.

Some of it makes sense to me.

Some of it I'm not sure of.

There seems to be this kind of shift in emphasis from physical strength to health, which is good on my end because

I would much rather try and pick up a woman at a bar based on

my metabolism than stuff I could lift.

So that's good on that end.

I don't know that it's so much that we're actually altering what it is to be a male so far as it's just sort of bad to think about it.

I do think there's some of that going on right now.

Where it's, you know, I've mentioned before on your on your show that I moved here from New York.

Um, and uh, one of the things that was interesting to me about that experience was I didn't go into New York thinking of myself as a white male.

I am.

I mean, I am demographically a white male, but it just wasn't important to me.

I didn't notice.

Yeah,

I am, for those of you listening that can't see me, I am a storm of mayonnaise.

I mean, I'm literally wearing tartan truce right now.

It's uncomfortable.

Yeah, Yeah, I've got a pocket square on.

But that wasn't part of my identity.

You know, if you'd asked me when I came into New York, I'd say I'm a comedian.

I'd, you know, I talk about politics.

And by the time I left, that had kind of been hammered into me.

And it's not necessarily good.

That you're a white male.

Yeah.

How'd they hammer that into you?

It's brought up a lot.

Like, or if, well, say, for example, if I have a contrary opinion, that's something that's like, well, you know, you are coming from a position of privilege,

which is a way of saying.

Did you say, I'm from Oklahoma?

There's no privilege at all in that.

Yeah,

which there too.

Like, I think the phrase multivariate analysis comes to mind.

I dated a young lady in New York who she's from Oklahoma as well.

And she's from Cowita.

Shout out to Cowita.

But while we were dating, she could not call her dad.

Her dad doesn't own a phone.

He's that poor.

And this is two years ago, three years ago, but he doesn't own a phone.

And if she needs to get a hold of him, she has to call her neighbor or write him a letter.

And I think like that, I don't feel like it's fair to lump that guy into the same category as I am.

It's not fair to lump us into the same category of like a hedge fund manager.

When my sister moved to Wyoming, she used to have to go to a phone pole about five miles away from her house.

She didn't have a phone.

She was too poor to put a phone in.

And she had to drive to a phone pole, and she would stand sometimes, you know, hip deep.

to call and say, hey, Merry Christmas.

We thought, you know, we were like, move back to civilization.

But, I mean, is that privilege?

Is that privilege?

I think in general, whenever your instinct is to engage with people by negating their ability to make an argument, it's a bad thing.

It's one thing to go, I think that you're wrong.

It's another thing to say, you are just forbidden to venture outside of what I believe is the proper narrative.

So did you hear George W.

Bush's eulogy?

Most of it, yeah.

Most of it.

So I urge you to go back and listen to it.

Tell me that that isn't something that

we would all say, I want to be like that.

Yeah.

That guy was a paragon.

He really was.

The photo, I'm sure it's been making the rounds, but the photo that I thought was very touching was, and he's so quiet about it.

George H.W.

Bush was a guy who really didn't like political theater.

He was raised by his mother to not use the pronoun I very often.

But I think in his 80s, there's this great photo of him completely bald because one of the Secret Servicemen,

his son, I think, had got leukemia.

And so all the Secret Servicemen shaved their heads in support.

And George H.W.

Bush just did it.

And like, you know, it wasn't like a huge national story.

It did make the rounds a little bit, but it wasn't like he did a press conference.

It's just he wanted to be supportive of this kid.

And I think that kind of,

you know, that deep character that was very much concerned with people around him rather than adulation.

Bringing candy to Michelle Obama.

Oh, I thought that was cute.

That was George W.

Bush there, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But if that isn't his dad, I mean, he was thinking about her.

You imagine how hard it is to have a funeral that goes on and on and on and on and on.

George H.W.

Bush died.

They put him in a coffin.

They fly Air Force One down.

They put him in the back.

The whole family gets on board.

They have a big ceremony in the laying in state in the rotunda of the Capitol.

Then they have a giant parade to go to the

National Cathedral.

He has to give a eulogy.

Then they take the body after like the third 21 cannon salute.

They put him back on Air Force One.

They fly to Houston where they're going to have a parade and

then another funeral.

i i so hope that in the middle of all of this george w bush went hey i need to stop at quick trip and like ran in and was like you guys got snickers and like like bought it for michelle obama that would that would be the most surreal uh bizarre thing for the guy writing i mean how great is that can you imagine seriously thinking about

burying your father who you were close to and

and having to go just through that and yesterday do you have the clip sarah just of the last part of his eulogy

Play this.

In his inaugural address, the 41st President of the United States said this.

We cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car, a bigger bank account.

We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood, and town better than he found it.

What do we want the men and women who work with us to say when we are no longer there?

That we were more driven to succeed than anyone around us?

Or that we stopped to ask if a sick child had gotten better and stayed a moment there to trade a word of friendship?

Well, Dad, we're going to remember you for exactly that and much more.

And we're going to miss you.

Your decency, sincerity, and kind soul will stay with us forever.

So through our tears, let us know the blessings of knowing and loving you, A great and noble man.

The best father a son or daughter could have.

Oh, my gosh.

And in our grief, let us smile, knowing that dad is hugging Robin and holding mom's hand again.

Here's a guy who has

put on a strong face

all week.

And been lifting other people up.

I don't know if you saw yesterday when he was accompanying the casket and everything else,

but it dawned on me yesterday, the last time I saw the last time I saw him look like that.

He had this, he had almost like a frown, but he was biting his lip.

And you could tell that he wasn't, I mean, he was engaged and he was trying to hold it together.

And I realized yesterday, as the, as they were doing another 21, you know, cannon salute,

and I watched him, and I realized I haven't seen that face on George.

I've only seen it once one other time.

And it's when they whispered in his ear, we're under attack.

Remember he sat there and he kind of frowned and he bit his lip.

That guy was working hard to hold it together all day.

And one crack there.

I think it's a lot of the time when we look at this kind of stuff, we

almost dehumanize the people in it.

You know, it's ultimately that's his dad that died, which is is really sad for him, regardless of the political connections.

George W.

Bush is in that capacity not there as a former president.

He is, but that's really incidental and secondary.

I'm glad that they did.

I mean, they did a secondary funeral in Houston,

or I guess at College Station at the George H.W.

Bush Library, and I'm really glad they did because

that's got to be very tough to have to put on that

level of public-facing decorum when you're burning up inside.

And here he is

doing a job as a son and a former president

of honoring his father the way his father and mother would have been proud

of

instead of wallowing in his own grief.

I just, I find this family remarkable.

So out of curiosity,

what do you think George H.W.

Bush is going to be remembered for?

Like, I think probably the Cold War and character.

I think those are the two things that are going to really stand out.

Yeah, I think so.

And his son will be remembered.

You know, George W.

Bush said to me, I'm prepared to be the most hated man

on the planet for the next 50 years.

Well, good news there.

That has been eclipsed.

You're safe, sir.

He said, I'm prepared.

He said, because I know that in 50 years from now, they're going to look back and realize this is they did what they had to do.

They did the only thing they could do.

And

he said, I'm confident that history will remember.

And, you know, George H.W.

Bush, I think history will remember.

The guy, you know, when Clinton came in, they started changing a lot of policies in the Middle East.

I'm sorry, not in the Middle East, in the Soviet bloc.

George Bush, that was not something.

We didn't even really think about that.

No, and that's to his great testament.

Like I mentioned this, I did kind of

a post-mortem of the Bush administration on my podcast earlier this week.

And I mentioned that, that when you think about the collapse of the Cold War, you don't tend to think about it.

We think about the fall of the Berlin Wall, but we don't really think about anything else.

And that's to the great testament of George Bush, that it wasn't a big - it could have been terrible.

That could have gone off the rails.

That's a nuclear empire, a nuclear empire disintegrating.

And that could have gone real bad, real quick.

And what's amazing is not only do you not think about it, you also don't think about him.

Yeah.

Until you stop and go, wait a minute, wait a minute.

What was that like?

Then you realize, oh my gosh, he managed that thing.

That's truly his kindness first,

the managing of the collapse of the Soviet Union, a distant second.

And I think that's exactly how he would want it to be.

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

A podcast for the Blaze TV.

It's Steve Dace joining us now.

Hello, Steve.

How are you?

Good morning, Glenn.

How are you doing?

Well, you don't sound happy.

Morning, Glenn, how you doing?

Yeah,

my bad.

Let's start over again.

Steve, how are you?

I am better than I deserve, Mr.

Glenck.

How are you, brother?

That's fantastic.

You're also lying.

I'm just watching the Dow just spiral out of control.

Only down 406 points.

Nolan, 412.

No big deal.

Just about 2%

on the opening bell.

So, you know, nothing to worry about.

Steve, I don't know if you know this,

but

Veggie Tales is racist.

Yeah, it's funny.

I don't remember that

watching all of those with my kids all of those years when they were little.

But I think I'm blinded to it because of my heteronormative Caucasian patriarchal tendencies.

There you go.

So

a group of students in California have an annual whiteness forum.

Now, we were I'm pretty sure, don't you think, Andrew, that we're pretty sure this is they're not for whiteness.

No, No, I was confused by that because the title of like the annual whiteness conference or something, I thought, oh, that's you need you need to steer clear of that.

But no, I think it's about whiteness and probably not in a favorable capacity.

Correct.

So now they have come out against Veggie Tales and said that it is dangerous for children.

Actual words, dangerous for children.

They said that it's Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber.

Cucumbers have been through a lot, Glenn.

You should leave them alone.

I know.

But they are

villains because

all of the colored vegetables

are noted in the show as the bad guys.

I've not seen this.

They're in comas.

Is that what you mean when you say vegetables?

No.

It's an actual cucumber and an actual tomato.

Oh, this seems much better now.

So you never picked up on that, Steve.

I didn't.

But, you know, there's a couple of things at play in stories like this.

Every year on my show, Glenn, we we always go in we start a new year with like a theme.

I try to model myself after my all-time favorite bands, U2 and The Beatles, and just kind of reinvent yourself so you're not just doing the same stale thing.

And so our theme for next year is no BS.

All right.

And one of the things, and we started it yesterday on this clip with Katie Turret, MSNBC, talking about how meaningless life is because we won't, you know, focus so wholeheartedly on global warming.

And I I think what I mean by BS in these cases is force them to live by what they claim they believe.

For example, if you really believe that

whiteness is racist and you're at a university, remove yourself from the university then.

Drop out of school so that someone of color may have your spot.

When Kirsten Powers said on CNN

a couple of weeks ago that she has been a beneficiary of the white patriarchy.

If you really believe that, Kirsten, quit your paid gig at CNN so someone of color may have that spot.

If you really believe that

what happened to Native Americans was so absolutely dreadful and terrible that you just can't even, then give up all the trappings of Western civilization, trade in Wi-Fi for wampum, and join the local reservation.

And if Katie Tur really believes that all is meaningless because we won't make global warming our single-minded focus, you know, don't take that gas-guzzling, you know, SUV unmarked out front of 30 Rock home to your posh flat there on the Upper East Side.

Quit your gig and, you know, grab a placard and go out there in Times Square, bang your drum and say, bring out your dead.

These people don't believe any of this stuff.

They may feel it, but they don't believe it.

No, wait a minute.

They're post-modern econoclasts, Glenn.

They're just attempting to deconstruct and destroy the previous existing norms in order to make way for the new normal.

That's what this is.

Now, hang on just a second.

Bernie Sanders,

Bernie Sanders spent $297,685 with Apollo Jets, a private jet charter service,

in one month.

And you're telling me he doesn't believe the things he's saying about global warming?

He's got to get there quickly.

Well, in fairness, when you have three homes while you're suffering for

the working class, That requires a lot of jet travel to get back and forth to those $50,000 honorarium speaking engagements that you're going to be able to do.

Steve, I'm going to have.

I'm going to push back a little bit.

I will posit.

I do think that generally Democrats and progressives do believe the stuff they're espousing.

I don't know that they always live up to it.

And so I would say the gap is one of hypocrisy, but not of actual

sort of cynical lying about the ideology they're professing.

It's not cynical.

It's immaturity.

When I was a child, I thought spoken reason as a child.

When I became a man, I set aside childish things.

When we were kids, did we really love that song?

Did we really love our favorite team?

Did we really love that band?

Well, yeah.

And we were 11, okay?

We didn't understand what love was.

All right.

We were immature.

We were children.

The credo of progressivism is very simple, because I wanna.

Whatever I want, I will justify.

Whatever I need to reverse engineer, whatever philosophy I need to deconstruct, whatever cafeteria Christianity I need to choose from the menu, where Leviticus both is terrible to gaze, but also the basis of my immigration system at the exact same time.

I can just do whatever I want because I want to.

And then

when I finish Antonio Gramsci's Long March Through the Institutions, so I control the college campuses and I control the media, four legs good, two legs bad becomes four legs are good, but two legs are even better because I wanna.

It's really about coercion, control, and power.

And that's really what progressivism is.

And now you're watching it, to borrow one of its own terms, transition.

It is transitioning now from postmodernism to evangelism to cultural terraforming.

And you saw that with one of the most powerful progressives in the world this week, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple.

He was literally talking about deplatforming people that he finds objectionable.

And look at the terms he used.

We put this video on my Facebook wall.

He used the terms, and I quote, sin.

He used the terms, and I quote, judgment.

Now, I'm old enough, and I think all of us listening are old enough to remember we couldn't use those words anymore.

They were intolerant.

Well, they're using those words now.

They're co-opting this now.

They're now spreading the new time religion.

So I happen to agree with you, Steve, that

with the exception of this, I think there's a difference between progressives.

I think we're out of the progressive era.

I think we're in the postmodern era.

And it is the truly radical

postmodernists that have control or the hands around the throat of the culture,

and

they are culturally terraforming.

I don't think it's the average progressive.

I think the progressives like Bernie Sanders, who was not really a progressive, he's really more of a Marxist.

I mean, he would say as much.

He's a socialist.

He's a socialist.

So,

you know, the average person who claims to be a progressive, I don't think is in that category.

I think there's 10% of this population that would like to just take us to hell.

And

they believe it, that it would be a great thing.

I think that's true.

I think it's a bad idea to view any large group of political people as monolithic.

If we're looking at the, even if we're looking at like the Libertarian Party, there's different camps within the Libertarian Party.

There's certainly different camps within the Republican Party, and there's different camps within the Democratic Party.

And I would agree with you.

I think most Democrats want America to be good.

They like America.

They're rooting for good things.

However, they have a different way of doing it.

So putting all of them into that kind of anarchic, destroying the civilization thing, I think would be overshooting the mark.

And I don't think that ⁇

I like your opinion on this, Steve, that what's happening in Paris

goes to show that

80% of the people in France believe in global warming.

They believe in it.

However,

when it actually comes down to it and it's going to affect their life, they're like, well, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I want to do something, but I want them to do something.

I want them to pay for it, not me.

And that's where a real problem comes in.

And I think what you're talking about, you know, it's do as I say, not as I do.

Well, that is the childlike thinking of I want things without consequences, or I want to pass those consequences on somebody else.

And this has been a several staged cultural devolution.

It's been a cloud pivoting on a devolution scale.

The welfare state was the first salvo.

And you begin this notion that we're going to devolve from a safety net to a full-fledged welfare state.

And at the heart of it is this notion that I have to subsidize other people's poor choices.

And therefore, you're not accountable for your actions.

And we're going to create things like marriage penalties.

And we're going to incentivize things like out-of-wedlock births.

That's the first and opening salvo that I'm entitled to something that doesn't belong to me rather than face accountability for a poor life choice that I made.

You reach the next stage now where this mindset becomes institutionalized and that's what you're talking about right now.

And this goes to what the theme of our show was for this year, which was worldview.

And we started off our year talking about the seven deadly worldviews and the last stage, and they go in stages.

And the last stage is secular humanism or postmodernism.

And it's always, whatever it's been called in past eras, it's a temporary staging ground because we want to believe in something transcendent.

We all have the Blaise Pascal described God-shaped hole in our heart.

And so this is the final stage of deconstruction in order to prepare the culture for the next transcendent truth to come.

If you look at Europe, the two transcendent truths, and they're about a quarter century ahead of us on the devolution scale, the two new transcendent truths are cultural Marxism

and Islam, which is, you know, we have a lot of former Catholic churches now or mosques in Europe.

The same thing is going to happen here as well.

If you don't see spiritual revival in America, in a quarter century, we're going to be exactly where you see France, exactly where you see the UK.

We're heading there now.

Look at what the so-called conservative parties are in Europe.

Look what's happening to the so-called conservative party in America.

They're really, we're just not that far-left parties.

And that's exactly what's happening here.

And it's unavoidable unless you have a great awakening, the likes of which that gave birth to liberty in America in the first place.

I will tell you,

I think you're wrong

on your analysis of 25 years.

I don't think we're that far behind.

I really don't.

I mean, look how fast.

I don't know optimism this morning, and then you guys peed all over me.

Steve, thanks so much.

Steve Dace follows this program on the Blaze TV Network.

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I want to bring in Justin Wheeler, who is a researcher for me and really watches what's happening in Wall Street and the economy.

And maybe, are you, would you say you're a little more optimistic than I am?

Sure, I think so.

Yeah.

You know, you're an optimistic catastrophe, and I think I'm an optimist and occasionally catastrophist.

So what is happening with Wall Street?

Down now 433 points.

Yesterday

rallied right towards the end, but it was ugly all day long.

What's happening?

So two schools of thought.

One is this is more of a normal correction.

We are seeing, you know, we've had a long bull run.

It has not, you know, had a significant retrenchment for quite some time.

It's had a couple of times this year where it looked like it was going to get into correction territory and then didn't.

It slipped right to that 10% line and then it recovered quickly.

So

one school of thought is this is normal.

We should expect this to occur.

It is normal for a market to have to retrench, for irrational investments to need to get taken out of the marketplace and more rational investments to come take their place.

So the one school of thought is this is a normal or healthy retrenchment.

The other school of thought looks back about seven or eight years and goes, it's not possible for this to be a normal or rational retrenchment because the market for the last seven to eight years has not been normal or rational.

We came out of the financial crisis and did abnormal, irrational things.

We built up the market with $4 trillion of printed money.

We brought $2 trillion of corporate money back into the United States.

Trump did that, brought that money back in from overseas.

And the companies took some of that money and gave it back to the workers.

We saw those press releases when they occurred.

But the vast majority of that money, they took it and to avoid paying taxes on it, they invested it in their own stock.

Now, it was no longer a tax that year.

It would be a capital gain for the following year.

So $2 trillion additional dollars went into the market that otherwise would not have been there in stock buybacks.

So, there really are those two competing schools of thought.

One that you'll hear from Merrill Lynch that says this is a normal, rational retrenchment.

Even if we see a 10, 15 percent

decline in the market, that's a healthy retrenchment.

And early in next year, those gains will remanifest themselves.

And then the other one looks back a few more years and just says, I'm not really sure that's the case because we didn't enter a healthy period.

And so, what does that mean for a percentage of loss?

To get back to where we should have been, if this was a normal healthy retrenchment, the Dow would have to lose more than 15% to 20% of its total value from where it got to in terms of an all-time high.

And some analysts say as low as $18,000 before we'd be back to where we should have been if a healthy retrenchment had occurred in 2008.

Okay.

But we're not, you don't think that this is a

2008-style event that is on the horizon.

Not yet.

I think there's actually still time left.

I do think we're going to see some declines.

We should see a floor today, for example, around 24,460, somewhere in that range.

It should level out right there, and we should see some

support.

And then we should actually gain back, you know, from the all-time high through what we've lost today or into tomorrow, we should gain back 50% or 60% of that over the next few weeks.

And I think we'll have a relatively light end-of-the-year season going into next year.

But then we have President Donald Trump.

And Trump doesn't like markets to not respond to what he's doing.

You know, he made a major arrest yesterday or asked his Canadian friends to make a major arrest on behalf of the U.S.

Justice Department.

A very important Chinese person.

A very important Chinese person, not just from who she is as a CFO of one of the largest corporations in China and the daughter of the founder of that corporation, who is also a major party member in the Communist Party.

The founder was.

So the Chinese obviously can't not respond to that.

And then Trump, being who he is, will have to respond to them.

And the way Trump responds is publicly.

It is not privately through diplomatic channels.

It's through Twitter.

Our Secretary of State is his Twitter account.

Yes, effectively.

So can you tell me what

she was arrested for?

No.

They have not disclosed specifically other than potential violations of the sanctions that we have against Iran.

But nothing specific, only that there are potential violations.

And

the treaty that we have with Canada gives them up to 60 days to apply for her extradition to the United States.

So they may hold her for up to 60 days, unless, of course, the Chinese protest and they cave into those protests.

What would be our reason for doing this?

Of course, this depends on who you ask, Glenn.

There's a conspiracy corner that you can find on Zero Hedge that is delightful to read some mornings, and it's a great way to wake up, actually.

Eat the skin off your face.

Conspiracy theories are a great way to get your imagination stimulated in the morning.

They're fantastic.

But a couple of those that are out there right now is this is a more protracted chess game that Trump is playing against China.

This is tantamount to what Reagan did to the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.

Trump is playing that long game with China.

He is not looking for a good, healthy trade agreement.

He wants to bring down the party in power.

And that is effectively the steps he is taking that won't take one step or two steps.

It's 15 chess pieces deep.

And then that party is in real trouble.

I will tell you that you could make a case for that.

I'm not convinced.

that he's a chess player.

You know, he seems like more of a checkers kind of guy.

So I'm not convinced he's a chess player, but the moves that he has made, you could make a case.

You can make a case that

he is going for something much bigger, and it's the collapse of China.

Yeah, Justin, can you walk me through how that would work exactly?

So

he's arresting this high-profile Chinese citizen, and

we're having a trade war.

How does that result in the Communist Party's downfall?

We are with Justin Wheeler, who is one of the guys who does research for me and watches the economy for me and just stock market and tries to explain different things.

And we were talking about

Donald Trump and his tariffs with China.

He may be, maybe

playing

a game of chess with

China.

And it's not just about a new trade deal.

It's actually about taking at least President Xi out.

He is significantly damaging

President Xi in China.

Yeah, I mean, China is an interesting economy because it is still a classical mix of

a strong communist regime.

But over the last 20 years, they have adopted capitalist principles in order to grow.

That is how they have been able to grow is by saying, well, we got Hong Kong and Hong Kong's working.

What does Hong Kong do?

Well, they practice capitalism, so let's do some of that.

And we've experienced this quote-unquote Chinese miracle.

You know, Trump as a strategist, we talk about is he playing chess or is he playing checkers?

And Trump as a strategist, his, you know, if you read his two books from the 60s, but especially The Art of the Deal, which was used in Wall Street.

And one of the things you learn from the movie Wall Street is that

these wealthy businessmen want to acquire or partner with companies.

And they don't look at a company that's having a Chinese miracle and say, I want to partner with them.

I want to acquire them.

They say, I want that company, but I want it on its downslide.

And so what do they do?

They cause its downslide.

They do things to impact that company so they can buy it at a good deal for them.

They want to buy it at a discount.

So they'll buy out suppliers that are supplying that company and say, well, you're no longer getting aluminum at this discounted rate.

They'll make a deal with the union for the union to go on strike.

They'll do things to that company.

Donald Trump expresses this in the book.

This is strategy that you do to acquire a company at a better deal.

He's done it throughout his entire career.

And I think we're seeing very much that same game at play for him.

And it is working when he deals with economic issues and diplomatic issues.

He looks at the European Union.

He looks at England.

He looks at Canada and Mexico.

And now he looks at China and says, I do want a better trade deal.

I can't get that better trade deal.

The deal I want for the American people that I think is best for us, I cannot get it from this communist regime.

So what do I do?

I take the knees out from underneath that communist regime.

I hurt them where they can't hurt me back, at least not in a grand scale.

Yes, cars are going to be a little bit more expensive over here, but over there, they will have 5 million people out of work.

And those people protest, and those people support the Communist Party.

And so it does a significant service to him in elevating his

negotiating power and his position of power with them to do things that weaken that regime.

He doesn't want to destroy China.

This is not some racist, globalist thing.

He's not trying to be an imperialist.

He just wants a better deal for the American people.

And the best way to do that is to weaken Chinese companies and to weaken the Chinese regime.

So

a dangerous game.

Sure.

And

when Reagan played it with the Soviet Union, he had Thatcher playing the same game.

He had the Pope playing the same game.

I don't think Donald Trump, I'm not sure that even in his own administration, he's, if he is playing this game, expressed that to everybody.

I'm sure.

I'm sure he has not.

Is 5 million angry unemployed people in China going to make a difference?

I mean, it's a large population and they're so suppressive of any type of dissent.

I don't know.

It's not like Xi Ping is looking at polls going, oh, no, they don't like me.

Sure.

And it depends on where it happens in China.

So China's an interesting market now because you do have people in China who have independently grown wealth.

You have Chinese people over the last 15 years that used to live on a rural farm and work for the Communist Party growing rice and now drive a car in Shanghai.

And just like us, if it comes to giving up that car, they now know, I can have a car.

I don't want to give up that car.

So if you end up with five or 10 or 20 million unemployed people in rural China that is not covered by the news media and where people still are poor, no, it won't matter.

If you end up with five or 10 million unemployed people in Shanghai and in the larger metropolitan areas, it will matter significantly.

That's really what happened to the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union collapsed on the protest of 10 million people with 200 million citizens.

But 10 million people protested.

The entire communist regime collapsed.

It depends where it happens.

Yeah, and they're very, the one thing that the communists have known, and this is why I think that

they have their total surveillance state by 2020,

is

they can't handle, they're so fragile that they can't handle any real unrest.

I mean, this is why they built those ghost cities.

They built those damn ghost cities because they can't have this stop because they know if it stops, there's been enough people who have built those that are looking in going, I don't live like this.

Wait a minute, people can live like this?

And once they see that, they want that.

I think the Chinese regime has been far more competent in terms of retaining its totalitarianism than the Soviets were.

Because Gorbachev, and this is not a slander to Reagan, by the way, but when we say that Reagan won the Cold War, I think that you're giving communism far too much credit.

I'm sorry, you're giving Reagan too much credit and communism too much credit.

Communism collapsed because communism is stupid.

Correct.

But what Gorbachev did was Gorbachev looked at this kind of fraying Soviet empire and he went, here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to give people more freedom and they will love me and the government as a result of this.

And what happened was they went, you know what, now that I've got more freedom, I think of myself more as a Ukrainian than I do as a Soviet citizen, and the whole thing imploded.

China's learned from that model.

And China's gone, we're going to give enough economic freedom that we can get some money going, but we're not going to give any type of, no, you do not get any rights to protest or anything like that.

And they've managed to keep that grip on power.

Agreed.

And there's a couple of differences.

The Soviet Union built itself as an empire.

They went and conquered numerous countries around them.

China is insular.

They have not conquered outside of their own borders since World War II.

I mean, they really are a cohesive set of independent states with different cultures internally, but they are a cohesive nation.

They think of themselves as Chinese.

So that's a great point.

The other significant difference, though, of course, is what Glenn was talking about with that total surveillance state.

They want to snuff out dissidents at one person.

They don't want to wait till it's 20,000 people or Tiananmen Square anymore.

They've learned that lesson.

So that's why they want to be able to find one person in a big city and find them right now and shut them up.

And they're getting in.

We've talked talked previously, and I'm sure you've covered a lot on the whole credit rating system, the social credit rating system they have.

Where if you're looking at the wrong Google search images, you're seeing unpatriotic pornography, whatever the thing is, they can begin to algorithmically determine that you could be a problem person, and we're just going to grind you to a dust to make sure that that doesn't happen.

So, I find it interesting.

Let me switch back to,

well, before we move off of China,

we're playing a dangerous game because they hold our treasuries.

We're having a lot of debt come back up for sale.

There's no real buyers, which means we have to raise the interest rates.

And

they do have the leverage to hurt us.

Now, we have the leverage to, I mean, if we go down, we both go down, right?

That's correct.

So, but it is a very delicate game that we're playing here.

It's a very delicate dance of, it's chemotherapy.

What we're engaging in right now is chemotherapy.

You

kill the cancer, but the chemo may kill you as well.

It's a very fair point.

They do hold a significant amount of U.S.

debt, and they have a, you know, no pun intended, Trump card to play that Trump doesn't have to play, and that's labor.

China can bring a massive amount of effectively

slave labor to bear to shore up any shortcomings they have in technological advances.

They can put 100 million people to projects if they need to at basically slave wages to overcome us saying, hey, we're no longer going to do manufacturing of this type or we're no longer going to trade with China.

So they have that card that they can play, but that card is very dangerous for them to play.

Now that they have introduced some levels of capitalist freedom and wealth into that country,

playing that card is very difficult for them to do.

It's certainly more difficult than it was before they inherited Hong Kong and started to adopt some capitalist policies.

And how long do we have with the American people?

How much of a leash does

Trump have with the American people on, for instance, farmers are hurting.

They're still saying, you know what, I still trust him, it's going to work out, but they're really hurting.

When he says, you know, hey, we can affect, you know, we can take another 10 or 20 percent on our iPhones.

Once that really starts hitting and impacting people, no, they're not going to put up with it for very long.

I agree with that.

It's very much like we just saw with France and a 10% increase in gas prices.

You know, there was an assumption that these people support a green economy.

10% more.

They'll pay it because they support this.

But when the reality gets there and you're paying 20% more for your iPhone, or if you're a parent, your four kids' iPhones, all of a sudden that starts to have a significant impact to your disposable income.

One other thing I wanted to touch on that you brought up, and I just want to bring it up because

we talked five or six years ago about the fact that the Fed had run out of bullets.

The Fed jumped in and saved the economy.

They pumped $4 trillion plus into the economy.

They loaned a bunch of money out at 0% interest, and they lowered interest rates to zero.

And they were out of bullets.

But they've reloaded.

That's what I thought.

Interest rates are back up now.

The Fed has interest rates up in the US.

And they've offloaded some of their debt.

Yes.

More than a trillion dollars has expired of the debt that the Fed bought, the treasury incidents.

The Fed didn't sell them back into the market.

The Fed just let them expire and got paid back by the treasury

and ostensibly all the profits from that sale went back to the treasury if you believe the paperwork that they filed

so the Fed the Fed has reloaded yes China currently owns in the neighborhood of 1.7 to 2 trillion dollars of US debt but the Fed could step in and buy that now they couldn't have five years ago or six years ago they were out of bullets but now they could step in and buy that they could reload their balance sheet back to four trillion and buy all of the Chinese debt if the Chinese decided to dump it on the market to punish us.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: When you say that they were out of bullets, was there some sort of statute limitation on the amount of money that they could print?

I'm unaware of such.

No, you just, you can't, when you're at zero, you have no more, you have no other place to go.

You have to go to negative interest rates.

You have to just start saying, please take this.

I'll pay you money to take this.

Which some countries did.

Obviously, in Europe, that happened quite a bit in South America.

And most of those have stabilized back to zero or zero plus interest rates.

We certainly could, you know, again, spend that type of ammunition and go zero.

The United States never has, but we could.

The other, again, challenging thing is the other bullets that the Fed can always spend is just printing more money.

And I don't mean the type of money printing they did was to pump that money into Wall Street.

They printed a bunch of money, but really they just bought securities and gave loans to big corporations.

Very few of us, I mean,

so those poor guys at Wall Street really needed it.

I mean, you know, I was was doing okay.

I've got a canoe.

Yeah.

I don't need any more money.

Right.

So,

but they could do that other type of printing.

They could do the helicopter drop that we've, you know, it's been talked about for a long time as the last-ditch effort of trying to save an economy.

I mean, it's also a great way to rob anybody that's actually stored up wealth at any point because you're like inflation is just taxation without legislation.

It's a way of like, I'm going to print away.

I'm going to make, I owe money, and so I'm going to make my money less valuable so that I effectively owe less money.

But if you've spent 40 years trying to amass a savings account, well, there's 40% of your savings account gone.

Yeah, Germany taught us that in two years in the 20s, and our country has taught us that over 70 years since then.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

You know, Christmas is the gift that just keeps on giving for the radical leftist.

The charade goes on year after year where decent folks across the country just try to enjoy and celebrate Christmas.

You know, the most wonderful time of the year.

Why is it the most wonderful time of the year?

Why is it?

Because

you kind of generally act like a human being for maybe a couple of days.

You're like, oh, you know what?

I'm going to pretend to care about people.

I'm going to be nice to people.

I'm going to smile and say, Merry Christmas back to you.

It's the most wonderful time of the year that militant progressives don't like at all.

And it's a little exhausting.

It's got to be.

Come on, you're not really outraged by Rudolph.

Are you really?

Really, that's what you got going on in your life?

I mean, that thing's been on the aince 1964.

And first of all, if this is the first year that you've noticed that Santa was a jerk in that, where were you?

You don't like Christmas, and it's totally fine.

It is.

I'm totally fine with that.

But could you just be cool with people who do like Christmas?

You know, there's tons of people out there that celebrate Christmas, and they're tired of their happiness being held hostage by an extreme minority.

Sometimes just one person going, I don't like that.

No, sir, I don't like that at all.

This year, a self-described, unintentional Grinch who stole Christmas is in the lead to win Scrooge of the Year, the principal at Manchester Elementary in Omaha, Nebraska.

Omaha, Nebraska.

She sent her teachers a memo this week outlining all of the Christmas-related items and activities that will not be allowed in the classroom, and you will not have an extra scuttle of coal.

The banned list includes Santa, Christmas trees, elf on a shelf.

Oh, man, I

I'm for execution for the person who came up with Elf on the Shelf myself.

But singing Christmas carols, playing Christmas music, making an ornament as a gift, any red or green items.

Oh, hates the planet and communism, I see.

Reindeer, and candy canes.

Now, not because the sugar will make the children hyper, because I guess Halloween was okay.

But as the principal explains, the candy cane is shaped like the letter J

for Jesus.

She also writes, red is for the blood of Christ and white is the symbol of his resurrection.

Oh my gosh, I am so offended by her memo.

What kind of stuff is she trying to preach?

In case you try to cheat, different colored candy canes are also not allowed because they still have the first letter of Jesus.

So So why is this principal going out of her way to delete any trace of Christmas in her school?

She says, quote, I come from a place

that

from a place that Christmas and the like are not allowed in schools.

Where is that, Russia?

Where is that?

Her list, quote, aligns with my interpretation of our expectations as a public school who seeks to be inclusive and culturally sensitive to all of our students.

No, you miss under the word.

Understand the word inclusive.

What about being inclusive

and sensitive to those students probably the vast majority who do celebrate Christmas?

I mean, does your kid have to celebrate Ramadan and, I don't know, eat the food or whatever the hell that is?

I mean, nothing against Ramadan.

That's fine.

You want to do Ramadan?

That's fine.

I don't care.

I don't care that you teach my kids about Ramadan.

Can you stop with a hate on Christmas and Christianity?

Can you ask yourself,

are you the only one that doesn't feel like Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year?

Now, I think it's gotten less so since I was a kid, but that just might be because I'm getting old and grumpy.

But I know when I was a kid, it was the most wonderful time of the year.

It was a time of new expectations, new hopes.

It was a time, I remember when the snow would fall and everything would be quiet outside, and it just brought peace.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, as well,

snowing the day after Christmas doesn't help anybody's mood.

Snow between Thanksgiving and Christmas is delightful.

Why?

Christmas,

I mean, how do we miss that Christmas has the word Christ

in it?

Christmas has been diminished over the years, no offense, Rudolph, by Rudolph and Santa and everything else.

Those are still wonderful traditions.

But we celebrate Christmas to remember

what a crazy, cool dude Jesus grew up to be.

What a crazy.

I don't care if you even believe it.

What a great gift given to humanity that you can be forgiven for even the worst things you've ever done.

I don't want to live in a world where there is no forgiveness.

I don't want to live in a world where

I do something stupid

and it's going to hang over my head for the rest of my life.

I mean, we're already seeing that.

It's called the Me Too movement.

You say something in 1971 to somebody,

God forbid that's hanging over your head.

Christmas.

It's the most wonderful time of the year for a reason.

And I don't care if you think it was Christ that brought this piece

or, you know, I don't care.

You know, Mohammed the Ramadan dog, whatever.

I don't know what, God forbid you'd have any kind of legends spring out of anything Islamic.

They would have killed the makers of that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer if that had been done for Mohammed.

So

I don't care how you think we got here.

It worked.

It worked.

It creates magic and hope and kindness for just a few days out of the year.

Leave it alone.

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