©2024 MERCURY RADIO ARTS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) joined The Glenn Beck Program on Monday to talk about why the GOP won't resurrect the Obamacare repeal bill passed in 2015, his wild curiosity about evidence the administration might have about wiretapping, and why Republicans are suddenly in love with infrastructure spending.
Enjoy the complimentary clip above or read the transcript below for details.
GLENN: Senator Mike Lee who is at an airport getting ready to board a plane. We're glad you would take the time to hop on the phone with us. How are you, sir?
MIKE: Doing great. Thanks so much, Glenn.
GLENN: Good. Let's get to Obamacare repeal and replace. This thing is nothing like what the Republicans were promising us they would do. Nowhere even close.
Do we have a chance of getting something good out of this?
MIKE: Sure. Something good can come out of it. What happens, whether something good comes out of it, the extent to which it might be good depends entirely on how members of Congress handle this in the next few days, on how they choose to cast their votes.
Now, look, you're right. What we promised was to repeal Obamacare, as much of Obamacare as we possibly could, and then to start trying to find new ways to put the American people back in charge of their own health care.
Well, what this bill does is it doesn't repeal nearly as much of Obamacare as we could. It leaves all kinds of things intact. It leaves most of the Obamacare regulations in place. Most of -- many of the Obamacare taxes remain in place, at least for a time. It leaves expanded Medicaid intact for a period of time. And then doesn't make as many adjustments to it long-term.
Meanwhile, it comes up with a new refundable tax credit, which we don't know the cost of yet. We don't know how many people are going to take it.
There are a lot of unanswered questions, which begs the question: Why are we not just repealing? Why are we not just passing the same repeal bill that Republicans in the House and in the Senate voted for in December of 2015? That's what I'd like to see.
STU: Mike, is it true that you can't just repeal it unless you have 60 votes? You can't do it through reconciliation with just a full repeal?
MIKE: There is some ambiguity as to how many of the insurance regulations of Obamacare could be repealed through reconciliation. So there's an open question on that. But we do that know we could repeal all the taxes and all of the subsidies and possibly some of the regs through reconciliation. We know that because the reconciliation bill we passed in 2015 repealed all of the taxes and all the subsidies.
GLENN: So why aren't we doing it?
MIKE: That's a very good question. That's what I believed we were going to do. That's what many of us were told -- otherwise led to believe.
GLENN: Why aren't we doing it?
STU: He said it was a good question.
MIKE: There are those in Congress who chose to take a different path. Now, I can't speak for them. I can't speak to what their intentions are. I think the easiest, simplest way of explaining it is, they had other priorities that they wanted to attach to this. Priorities that were perhaps higher than simply achieving repeal, at least to the degree that --
GLENN: Can you give me an example of what might be more important than what you promised the American people?
MIKE: Okay. So here's how I think they would explain it, and I want to be clear, I'm always careful not to try to speak for somebody else. But I think if they were here with us, they would probably say, look, we don't want people to be in a state of too much uncertainty and doubt. We don't want them to be afraid. We want them to have a degree of confidence about what comes next after Obamacare repeal. And so we want to provide a soft landing spot for them. And that is so important. It's important enough to them, apparently, that they're willing to go a little softer on some of the repeal and provide more programs through this bill right now.
The problem with that is, it's -- it's not going to pass. And it probably shouldn't pass until they can answer more of these questions, more of these questions about why we can't repeal more of Obamacare than this bill does.
PAT: And the other problem with that, Mike, is that that's not what they promised us. That's not what they said they were going to do. They didn't say, well, we're going to think about this and provide a safe landing spot for people. It's going to take a really long time. We're going to not repeal -- it was repeal and replace. That's what they ran on. That's what they were elected to do. And now, again, as so often happens with the Republican Party, they're not doing it. Frustrating.
MIKE: Yeah, that's right. By the way, I love the Kermit the Frog imitation that both you and Glenn do.
GLENN: Thank you so much. Thank you. That's what happens when your best friend since 1980 --
PAT: Yeah.
MIKE: Well, he has, in fact, been the spokesman for the AHCA, so it's appropriate that we use his voice when doing this. But, no, you're exactly right, this is what we ran on, this is what we promised. Now, to my great dismay, to my great surprise, on many instances over the last week or so, we've had legislators from the House and the Senate somehow saying that this bill, the AHCA is somehow what we campaigned on, what we ran on. Well, that's news to me. That's news to me because we've had this bill for only a few days.
PAT: Me too.
MIKE: That's news to me if we somehow ran on this specific bill, a bill the score of which we still don't know. We still don't know how much this thing is going to cost. We still don't have any idea how many people will take this refundable tax credit. And, therefore, how much it's going to cost. So that's news to me, that that's somehow what we ran on.
What I remember that we ran on was that we would repeal every scrap of Obamacare that we possibly could, the whole thing, if we could get away with it under our procedural rules in the Senate. And that's what we should be doing.
STU: We're talking to Senator Mike Lee. And every time you're on, Mike, I like to ask you the nerdiest, most boring, uninteresting question to see --
GLENN: So please keep this answer short. Please, for the love of Pete.
STU: So I apologize in advance for this.
But when the Bush tax cuts were passed, they were passed under reconciliation. And because of that, they expired after ten years. Would the same thing happen here? If we repeal all these Obamacare taxes, in ten years, are we going to be talking about the expiration of the Obamacare repeal, and then it's going to be back into effect again?
MIKE: No, not necessarily. In fact, almost certainly not.
GLENN: Good end to that.
MIKE: Because of the fact that we were dealing with taxes in that circumstance, rather than something else. So that wouldn't be it.
STU: I thought it was a tax, which is the only reason it was constitutional. Wasn't that -- tax versus fee. Wasn't that a big conversation with Roberts?
MIKE: I'm sorry. I didn't hear that question. Can you say that again?
GLENN: Good. No, no, let's move on.
STU: Let's move on.
GLENN: So, Senator, let me ask you about the intelligence committee has given the president until this afternoon, they say they can't find any evidence that Barack Obama was spying on Donald Trump. And to present some evidence -- and we'll go pursue that. Any indication that he's going to present that evidence? And is there any reason to believe that he couldn't present the evidence if he had it?
MIKE: Okay. That's a good question. I'll answer the first question, I have no idea. I would love to see what the evidence is. I'm wildly curious about it. As to whether he could present it, that depends on what the "it" is.
I will tell you, my first reaction to this, when I very first learned about the tweet, my first reaction was, he's probably not talking about a traditional wiretap, where somebody actually goes to a judge and the judge orders a phone line to be tapped. Perhaps he's talking about a foreign intelligence surveillance court order issued pursuant to Section 702 of the FISA amendments, which would say, you know, here is an identified agent of a foreign government. Let's monitor this person's communications. And that there might have been some incidental communications with some US citizens, perhaps including people who were involved in one way or another with the campaign. That incidentally got pulled into that. That was my first reaction is that seemed the most plausible possibility. If, in fact, it's that, there might be some reasons why we might be reluctant to share that. Or --
GLENN: No, but he could share it with the intelligence committee, could he not -- or committee?
MIKE: Yes, yes, they've got the clearance to do that. So there's no reason why he couldn't share something like that with them. They've got clearance to see pretty much all of that. But as far as his ability to share that publicly, that would seem less likely if my theory is correct.
GLENN: And there's nothing that the president can't get, right? If he said, I want to show it, but, you know, this agency won't let me, you know, have access to this. There's -- everybody in in the Senate, would be like, okay. We need to see this. Behind closed doors. But you will open these books or whatever it is that he's saying the evidence is -- there's nothing the president couldn't get to, is there?
MIKE: I assume so. Because -- and, look, he's the commander-in-chief. There's nothing that he doesn't have access to. And so if he can -- if he can back this up, if he knows what it is that he's referring to, there's no reason that I'm aware of why he couldn't come up with something that he could produce to these Intel Committees. Now, whether he will choose to do so or not is a different question. Perhaps there are those close to him advising him, hey, you don't have to do this if you don't want to. But that --
GLENN: Why wouldn't you?
MIKE: -- that requires rank speculation.
GLENN: Why wouldn't you?
MIKE: I don't know. If perhaps he didn't want to set a precedent that he could just be required to answer questions every time the Intel Committee wanted to hear something. But I would think in this instance, he would want to, particularly because these questions are going to be raised from time to time.
GLENN: Right. And we're talking about national security. I mean, we're talking about something that he's accused another president of doing. And if that president was doing that, that needs to be stopped.
MIKE: Yes. Yes. Exactly. And that's -- that's -- all the more reason why I suspect he'll provide them with what they want to know because you're right. Look, this is one of the things I've been worried about for years. And I've expressed this concern on your show previously. But if you remember the Church Committee, the Frank Church Committee back in the '70s --
GLENN: Yep.
MIKE: -- conducted a series of hearings to look into abuses by our intelligence-gathering agencies, and what they concluded was startling, which was that in every administration from Ford -- from FDR through Ford and Nixon, who was in power at about the time they concluded their research, that the US government's intelligence gathering apparatus had been used to engage in political espionage. Now, look at what's happened since then. Our technology has improved dramatically. Our technological means of gathering intelligence have grown by leaps and bounds. And our laws haven't always kept up with that.
And so to me, it would be almost surprising if some of this were not occurring. That's why we need to be watchful of this. That's why I was concerned, immediately, when I saw the president's tweet was because I considered it plausible, if not likely that this kind of thing would be going on.
GLENN: One last question, let's go to infrastructure. The G.O.P. went out of their gourd -- and I believe rightly so -- for a stimulus package for roads and bridges and tunnels and everything else for $787 billion. I remember that number. It's burned -- seared into my memory of $787 billion. Now the president is proposing a trillion dollar stimulus package, and the Republicans are very excited about it. Can you tell me what made the 787 billion-dollar stimulus package an affront on the Constitution and this one a dream come true?
MIKE: Well, I can't point to any distinguishing characteristic between the two, as to why this one would be good and that one bad.
In fact, look, when I look at the Constitution, I see the powers of Congress being limited. They're enumerated powers, most of them in Article I, Section 8. And they talk about things like the power to provide for our national defense, to declare war, to regulate trade between the states with foreign nations and with Indian tribes. I don't see anything in there that says that it's the prerogative of Congress to create all infrastructure.
Now, look, it's one thing if we're talking about an interstate corridor here or there. But it's another thing entirely if we're talking about wholesale, top to bottom, soup to nuts transportation infrastructure, even intrastate projects.
I think whether we're talking about under the Obama administration or any subsequent administration, headed by a Republican or a Democrat, I think we've got to look carefully at what we're doing there. Not every transportation infrastructure is necessarily outside of Congress' authority. Because some of them do involve a distinctly interstate function. But where they don't, we have constitutional problems.
GLENN: Mike Lee, always good to talk to you. Thank you so much, sir. Appreciate it.
MIKE: Thank you very much, sir. It's good to be with you.
STU: So positive.
GLENN: Yeah. He is. Boring as snot.
STU: Thank you very much.
Oh, I love him. He is saving my hope in the entire country right about now.
GLENN: He is so good and so smart. And, you know, he's just tickled pink by, you know -- I love -- I love because you know he's accurate. But when you're talking to him -- because he's like this all the time, well, I mean, in section 508, subsection B, paragraph four --
STU: Yeah.
GLENN: -- you'll see -- and he did that like four times during this. You just have to get used to, that's the way he is.
STU: He's that guy.
GLENN: And that's why he is so good and so needed in the Senate. Want to give you this from the New York Post today. Bank fees rise to an all-time high. The average customer now pays $666 a year in banking fees.
STU: Satan.
GLENN: Right. Right.
STU: This is how it happens.
GLENN: The overdraft revenue from the top three banks has surged from 5.1 billion to $5.4 billion. That's what they make if you overdraft.
$5.4 billion. Does anybody remember that we're providing them? It's a service that we're providing them as well. We're giving them our money.
JEFFY: No. No.
GLENN: So they can loan it out to other people. No, they don't care anymore.
JEFFY: No, they do not.
The U.S. government shutdown is hoarding nearly $1 trillion in the Treasury, all while government employees are going without pay. Like a body slowly losing oxygen, this squeeze spikes rates, and threatens Main Street first—freezing small businesses, families, and consumers. This is all PLANNED to destroy Trump's economy and give power back to the Democrats. This MUST END.
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: So we have hit a critical juncture. A turning point, if you will. On the closure of the government.
And the government needs to open back up. And I'm going to explain it in a way that nobody else will explain it to you. If you're watching CNBC over the last couple of days, they were saying things like, you know, the repo market is under great stress. The banks are getting money from the Federal Reserve. At incredible rates. Highest it's been since 2020.
What does that mean?
What does that mean?
The banks, when they close, they have to have a certain amount of cash in their vaults to cover everything.
It's a requirement by law. And if they don't have that, then they have to go to what's called the repo market, and they borrow money overnight.
And there's interest on it, they borrow it over night. And they give it back in the morning when they open back up. Okay?
It's only done when banks are short of cash. It used to be a very bad thing. Now it's happening all the time. But not at these levels. So let me explain what all of these things mean.
Try to imagine, if you will, that America's financial system is like a living body. The heart, as much as I hate to say it. For this example, is the Federal Reserve.
It doesn't create life. But it keeps the blood pumping. Okay? The arteries and the veins are the banks and the institutions that carry the lifeblood of the economy, money. Okay?
And the capillaries, are like you and me. Every family, every small business, every worker trying to make a paycheck stretch from one week to the next. Okay?
We're not an artery. We're capillaries. Now, in this body, there's something called the repo market. Okay?
This is the place where banks and institutions go to borrow cash overnight. Okay?
Think of that cash like oxygen, okay?
The oxygen exchange that happens in the lungs. It's fast, it's constant, it's invisible. But it is vital. You don't have the oxygen, it doesn't matter what the blood is doing, right?
Every night, money goes out. Every morning, money comes back in. That rhythm is what keeps the entire body alive. Well, in the last few days, that rhythm has faltered, something is clogging the arteries.
The banks, the vessels, they're gasping now for oxygen. So they're going to the fed's emergency oxygen tank. The standing repo facility.
And they're drawing record amounts of cash out, just to keep breathing. Okay?
It's like watching a marathon runner suddenly reach for an oxygen mask at mile three. Why?
Why is this happening?
This is the important part. Because while the government is shutdown, and we might think. Well, that's good. They're not spending money.
Hmm. The treasury is the fiscal liver of the body. And it's storing all of the blood in the liver. Okay?
It's storing cash in a valuate now called the treasury general account. There's nearly a trillion dollars sitting there.
A trillion dollars sitting there.
Not being paid. Every dollar that goes into that vault is a dollar that can't circulate now through the body. So now it's starving everything of cash. Because there's a trillion dollars sitting in the Treasury.
And even though, you can't see it, every second the shutdown drags on. The system is being starved. And the arteries are tightening.
And the heart is straining. And the body is starting to shiver. And that's what's happening right now in the shadows of our financial system.
It's not about Wall Street freed. It's not some obscure number on a Bloomberg terminal. It is about a government that has turned inward, frozen by politics, unable to pass the simplest resolution to fund itself. And because it's doing this, it's pulling all of that pretty sure liquidity. A trillion dollars in cash. The oxygen. The life of our economy, out of the bloodstream, and into a vault.
If you've ever had a power outage in winter, you might know the feeling. Let me describe it this way. First, it's fine. You grab a candle. You grab a blanket. You start the fireplace.
Hours drag on. The house starts to get a little cooler. If it continues to drop on. The pipes begin to trees. And by morning, it's no longer a cute little thing, that, oh, no. We'll just sit by the fireplace. It's cold. Okay?
That's where we're at, financially right now. We are not at the point of collapse. But we are at the point of freezing the pipes.
What does that mean, when I'm talking about the arteries?
The government you shutdown has locked up the treasury's checkbook. That means fewer payments to contractors. Less spending. Less money flowing into the banking system. When less cash circulates, the banks can't lend freely because there's no cash.
Money gets tight. Repo rates, that invisible overnight interest rates. That starts to spike. And when that happens, it affects the capillaries.
You and me. The smallest players. The smallest businesses. The consumers. The credit unions. We begin to feel it first.
Okay?
When arteries clog, at the heart, what's the first part of the body that goes cold? Goes numb. The fingers. The toes. That's us! Here's the tragic irony.
The politicians, you know, the Democratic Party, fighting over principle. They may think it's about posturing, about leverage, about who blinks first. But it's not. While they're playing chicken with our nation's checkbook, it is now time to say, enough is enough! Because the system is gasping for air.
And this is how financial crises begin. We're not in one yet. But, again, the pipes are beginning to freeze. This is how things happen. They happen quietly, not with a bang.
Not with a crash. But with tightening. With the arteries getting clogged. All of a sudden, you have a widow maker. And you didn't see it coming.
Because it's a slow, silent squeeze that begins in the overnight funding markets. The kind of plumbing that nobody ever looks at, nobody ever talks about.
Nobody even understands. Do you understand how the pipes are working in your house, behind your walls? I don't even know where they go. I know they eventually go down and out, but I don't know. And all of a sudden, you find out, when a pipe bursts.
Make no mistake, if this continues, it won't just be the banks that are hurting. It will be your mortgage rate. Your credit card interests, your grocery bill.
Because the system has to begin charging more for everything. Because they are paying more in interest, to hoard what little cash is out there.
The longer it goes on, the more cash goes into the government, and it sits there.
It's -- it's like watching your bloodstream start to clot!
You're not going to feel it right away. But if it reaches the heart. Reaches the brain. The damage can be fatal.
So here's the one truth today, on the economy, that the media won't tell you, or -- they fail to explain it. The repo market.
What the hell does that mean!
Why are you only talking to the people on Wall Street. Why don't you tell the people who are going to be affected first.
How can an alcoholic DJ figure out a way to explain this to the average person?
But you can't!
This shutdown is not just a political stalemate.
It is a self-inflicted wound.
We are at a point now, where the government is literally draining oxygen from the economy! And the Fed is in triage mode. Pumping emergency liquidity into the veins, just to keep the patient alive. The question is, how long can the patient keep doing CPR, before they tire out?
How long before, we need to start printing money.
The cure is not money printing.
It's governance. It's having a damn adult in the room. It's lawmakers that understand that starving the bloodstream to win a headline is not courage. It's madness!
When -- when will the Democrats stop this game, the shutdown has to end!
Not because Wall Street wants it. But because Main Street needs it!
The blood of the American economy. The trust, the liquidity, the stability.
It's not infinite.
And once the heart starts to falter, it takes more than an emergency repo to bring a nation back to life.
This must end!
Across Nigeria, Christians are being hunted, churches burned, and entire communities wiped out — yet the world remains silent. In this powerful discussion, Glenn Beck and Rep. Riley Moore uncover the horrific truth behind Nigeria’s Christian genocide and the shocking indifference from global leaders. This silent war on faith is one of the greatest humanitarian and moral crises of our time. Will America stand up for its brothers and sisters in Christ before it’s too late?
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: All right. Riley, let me talk to you about Nigeria, and what's happening in Nigeria. It's the scariest, most deadly country in the world, if you happen to be a Christian. And nobody seems to -- to be talking about it. And, you know, you have been involved in, you know, urging Secretary Rubio to say Nigeria is a country of particular concern, which I don't what an that means exactly. What doors does that unlock?
RILEY: Yeah. So that is -- that designation actually fits in the U.S. Code. So it does unlock 15 different Levers for the President when a country is designated a country of particular concern. That could be holding development money, that could be going to international institutions to free assistance through there. That could also halt security assistance, which would be arms sales and training and things like that, that have been going on in Nigeria. We could sanction individuals. It gives the President the authority to do a number of different things that can really, I think, leverage the Nigerians to actually start caring about our brothers and sisters in Christ, who are getting murdered for the professions they're facing in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
So I think this is a good first step, and we're going to see how the Nigerians react to this now. I've been having meetings with Departments of State.
We are going to meet with the Nigerians here at some point as well, here in DC.
So we're going to see what they're going to bring to the table. But also the President, who always puts all options on the table, has said, if they don't start fixing this, they're there couldn't potentially be kinetic military actions on -- in Nigeria.
GLENN: What does that mean?
Boots on the ground?
RILEY: No. To me, it does not mean that. To me, you have -- you have complex issues that are going on, over there. Where you have in the middle band of the country. This is where the Fulanis are. And these are herdsmen. And this is where you get this radical strain, obviously. Islamic terrorists, these Fulanis. These are herdsmen, tribes, and they have been attacking Christians in that middle band. In the northern part of the country is mostly Muslim. Southern part of the country is mostly Christian.
So that middle part, where they graze their cattle and all that, is where you see a lot of these flash points and murdering going on. But then in the northern part of the country is where you have ISIS, Boko Haram. They are operating there. And where they're taking over towns and communities, as we saw in Syria, right? Previously. Same type of thing.
GLENN: Yeah.
RILEY: CAIR is enfranchising, going on over there, all through the Lake Chad region, actually. So that's where I think, if it made sense to have some type of military action in forms of an airstrike or something like that, to -- to be able to tamp down some of the leadership and break up some of that structure in there.
That's something that would make sense. But to me, just speaking for myself, I want to try to work with the Nigerians, for them to do the right thing here.
President Trump obviously I mentioned, on Truth Social. Needs to specifically look into this. Which we are doing here in Congress. I want them to do the right thing.
I think the Nigerians actually have the chance right now to actually strengthen their relationship with the United States, if they're going to do the right thing.
But we can't allow to continue the slaughter of Christians where we have over 7,000 just this year, have been killed, for being Christian.
We can't allow that to continue, as a Christian country ourselves, which we are.
I know we're -- you know, some may debate that. I promise you, and nobody knows more about the founding of the country than Glenn Beck. Is that this is a Christian nation, founded on Christian values.
And we have to stand up for these people. Because nobody else is paying attention to this. Other than you, and some folks at Fox news. And that's really about it.
GLENN: Oh, I tell you, you know, I was planning on bringing my cameras with me. And I was going to go to Nigeria in the first quarter. And I have had briefings and warnings from the highest levels. Do not go.
You are not going. And I said, yes, I am. I want to bring this story.
You can't go. I've been to war zones. And this one, they're like, this is the most dangerous place on earth right now!
That's pretty remarkable, that nobody is really talking about it.
RILEY: It really is, and it's this silent genocide, that has just continued on since 2009, where we've had in between 50 to 100,000 Christians murdered for their faith. Our brothers and sisters over there, suffering, and no one has done anything about it. You might remember the bring back our girls movement around 2012ish, '14.
GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.
RILEY: Seventeen of those girls have still never been brought back. People forgot about it. It's fine. Boko Haram just has them. It's not fine.
It's not okay. And there are a lot of Levers that the administration is able to pull here, I think to get the Nigerians on the right course.
It's not that they don't have resources. This is an oil rich country. With a lot of critical minerals.
They have the means to be able to do this, at the end of the day, it's a question of prioritization. And what their goals actually are. And we need them to focus on this. Or the President will start to focus on it.
GLENN: Well, I will tell you, 19,000 churches have been burned.
And yet, from what I'm hearing, there are some in the Nigerian government that are like, no. This is not what's happening. This is not about genocide. It's not about Christians. It's just squabbles.
Really? Fifty to 100,000 people. And 19 thousands of individuals people have been burned in little squabbles, that don't have anything to do with radicalized Islam?
RILEY: Exactly. And this is the excuse I've gotten from people on the ground, look, do terrorists kill other people other than Christians? Yes, of course they do. But we're talking about five to one is the ratio, Christians versus non-Christians are being killed over there right now.
Secondly, I want to point out for everybody, President Trump has a designation in Nigeria. It means his first term.
It was taken off by the Biden administration. Because they claimed the killings had more to do with arable land and herders, and actually the root cause was climate change.
GLENN: Climate change.
RILEY: Yeah. That's why these killings were happening. Because of climate change. Where that's why we saw the murder rate just skyrocket during the Biden administration.
And President Trump, who cares very deeply about these issues, he's not going to allow that to persist anymore.
GLENN: He said, if there is an attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet. Just like the terrorist thugs that attack our cherished Christians.
I will tell you, I've -- you know, been reading up on it. And doing our homework.
And, you know, it reminded me of how the Germans went into Poland. Where they would just take whole communities. They would put them in the church. And lock the doors. And burn it to the ground.
That's what's happening in Nigeria. They're doing the same thing. They're burning churches. Not just burning churches. They're gathering Christians up. Putting them in, locking the doors, and then burning it down so that all of these women and children and men die in a fire in their church. And it's horrific. It's horrific.
What does the average person need to do?
RILEY: Yes. The average person needs to call their number of Congress and elevate this. And make this an issue that is on their radar, that they care about.
I'm introducing resolution which would be a sense of Congress, that we support the President. And we support the people and the Christians of Nigeria, and their plight.
And we condemn what the Nigerian government is doing, in action around this. That resolution should be getting introduced here soon.
So that would be something that would be hugely helpful.
GLENN: Wow.
It will be interesting to see who votes for that, and who doesn't.
That would have been -- that would have been a no-brainer 15 years ago. Just a no-brainer.
And now, I wonder if you can even get that passed. That's sad. Sad.
RILEY: It's sad. And I think we need to put it to the test. Put it to the test.
Certainly, if I'm whipping the votes, I don't have Ilhan Omar in my "yes" column.
But, you know, let's -- let's put it to the test here.
Is New York City’s new mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a socialist or a communist? Glenn Beck takes a look at history to explain why it doesn’t really matter: BOTH lead down the same road …
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: You know, we've been talking about socialism, and Donald Trump is getting pilloried in the press for calling Mamdani a communist. And I find this ritual here, that we're going through is just, you say the word socialist, and, you know, 25 years ago when I said that these people were socialist, everybody said, "Oh, my gosh. You can't call them socialists. That's an outrage." I said, "The mask is going to come off, that they can't wait to tell you they're socialists."
Now Donald Trump said, you know, Mamdani is a Communist. And everybody is like, oh, my gosh. Look at this hysteric from the Cold War. He's just -- he's out of the Cold War radio drama.
So let me just clear this here. Because the difference between the two terms, you know, is really not some great firewall of virtue here. As if one leads to like Scandinavian candles and the other leads to gulags. That's not what's happening.
What we've forgotten here is what always is forgotten. And that is how Karl Marx actually talked and saw the two. He didn't draw, you know, polite little distinctions. He described socialism as the transition. The necessary scaffolding that leads to communism. That's Karl Marx. So socialism for Karl Marx was the road, not the destination.
Communism is the end of that road. He wrote -- he wrote an essay, the Critique of Gotha Program. And Marx said, under socialism, from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution. Under communism, to each according to his needs. The only difference here is timing. It's not philosophy.
It's not goals. It's just how far along the revolution you are, okay?
Socialism is the bridge to communism. According to Karl Marx, don't take it from me. Communism is the completion of socialism. It's -- it's the antithesis of a free market system. Even Lenin called socialism the first and necessary phase of communism. So it's not partisan rhetoric. Okay?
This is the literal architecture of Marxist thought. But can we get out of the theories of all of this?
I mean, history gives us warning. Much more vivid than any theory. You know, we would like to imagine that the worst horrors of the 21st century came from one beast alone.
And we think that's Hitler. But actually, a bigger beast was Stalin. But if you want to look at Germany from 1930 to 1945. You see something really uncomfortable.
A socialist movement that curdled into something monstrous, while it never called itself communist. In fact, the Nazi government. The national socialists. The Nazis were not communists. They were against the communists.
They killed communists!
But they shared the same foundational belief. That the rid is disposable, and that the state defines the truth.
They both believe that rights are not given by God, but administered by political power. And that dissent on any of this, has to be crushed for the good of the collective.
That is the -- that's the definition we should care about!
Socialism doesn't to give full marks communism to become catastrophic. It just has to replace the individual conscience with the will of the state. And don't you see, that's what's happening here? They'll crush you! They'll destroy you. You disagree with them, they'll destroy you. Even if you've been on their side. I am going to share eye story with you, from 1979 that happened. That I don't think most people understand. And in New York, you better understand it.
When a society accepts the premise, that premise, history shows the -- the slide can accelerate from a utopian promise to industrialized cruelty. Horror show.
Like that!
Germany saw it. Russia saw it. China saw it. Cambodia. North Korea.
Cuba. I mean, it's all right there, just different flags. Different slogans. But it's the same structural error.
So can we stop with this mocking of the language?
You know, people laughing. Oh, you said Mamdani is a communist, but he's just merely a socialist. You're missing the point entirely.
The issue is not whether the label is technically perfect. The issue is the philosophical DNA is exactly the same. Collectivism over the individual.
State control over personal agency. Central planning over free will.
And that the belief that human nature can be engineered by a political force. That's where it always goes wrong. It doesn't understand human nature. So you can argue all you want, about where socialism ends and where communism begins, but honestly, that's like, hey, kids, memorize the date of this war.
Why? Why? I'm never going to use that fact again. What difference does it make? The thing we should care about is, why was that war fought? What happened at the end of that war? When communism and socialism, we should be saying, where does that road lead?
I can tell you that the road always begins with the state controlling your choices. Okay?
It will control your choice of energy, money, your children's education. Your speech.
Your job. What you drive. And it always ends with never greater liberty. It always ends the same place. In a society that has forgotten that freedom is fragile.
That power concentrates. That people are the same over and over and over and over again!
Human beings. They go bad! Especially when you give them power, and they're told they're part of a grand collective. Humans are willing to commit horrors they would never do as an individual.
That's the biggest thing. You get these horror shows of 100 million dead, because it's a collective!
We're all doing it. I'm not doing it. Everybody is doing it. That's the warning.
That's historical. And we ignore it at our own peril. Now, the problem here is, is that socialism is on the rise. And communism will be next.
Remember, when I first started talking about Obama, they -- I was -- I was raked across the rolls -- the coals, every day for even suggesting he might kind of like socialism. Now, socialism is fine!
So that road is still going to -- we're going to continue rolling down that road. And any country that goes into socialism -- we're not talking about a capitalist. We're not talking about Sweden anymore.
In fact, we are actually talking about Sweden. Look at the road they're going down now.
I mean, they're going into their own kind of authoritarian rule with Sharia law.
That is coming to Sweden. We are not talking about this friendly socialism. We're talking about the complete abandonment of the free market entirely. We've been this stupid little hybrid, that doesn't work. It only causes misery. We've been this hybrid.
And it doesn't work in a country this large and a country this diverse.
But look if you're -- you know, if you grew up after 9/11, where have you seen capitalism work for you?
Okay? You've seen, I know I've seen it. I've seen the rich get richer. And I don't mean the rich.
I mean the really, really, really rich. The ones that the Democrats never really talk about. They say they hate the rich. The rich have to pay their fair share.
But they're hanging out with George Soros. They're hanging out with the Ford Foundation. They're hanging out with Bezos and all of these other people. Because that's -- that's -- that's real control! Okay?
They don't hate those guys. They never do anything to affect their taxes. They don't pay taxes. Because they have the money to put it into trusts and everything else.
You don't have that!
So when I say, I've seen it happen. I've seen the rich get richer.
You know who the rich are?
Citibank. These banks that have been taking our money through bailouts, when do we get that money back?
When do you get that money back?
You don't!
You don't. That's why this is working. That's why you can say, socialism is neat. Because nobody knows the killing machine that socialism actually is. Nobody has any idea. Look at the killing machine. Look at the killing machine that's being built in socialist Canada right now.
What is it? MAID is the third or fourth biggest killer. It kills one in every 20 Canadians. Why is that happening? That's not out of compassion. That's because they're running out of money for health care. That's what that's about. Get them off the dole! Stop it. Now, if they're earning a lot of money, get them in, because we can still get their money, but let's make sure they're making money. If they're getting old, if they are cripple, if they fought in a war and just can't has come it themselves, if they're super, super young, if they have an expensive cancer, let them die. Help them die!
That's because they're looking at the collective, not the individual. And that's -- that's the beginning of the dark killing machine in a socialist country. And Canada is -- is -- I mean, it has socialized medicine. The problem is, it's all failing. Socialism always fails.
Capitalism has -- has taken people out of poverty. Solved problems. Healed people. Given people heat and houses and cars and airplanes. All of that is because of the free market. All of that is the free market.
You get rid of the free market. You put it in the hands of governments. And you have monsters. Monsters. And we know it, because we've seen it over and over and over again.
But our -- if you're -- if you -- if -- if you don't remember, or barely remember 911, you've never been taught any of this.
You've never been taught what it actually means. So you're seeing this play out, over and over again. Look at that guy, look at, he's not going to have to pay a price. He's just going to get away with it. And he's taking all of our tax dollars. Okay. I hate all of that.
This capitalist system, it's corrupt!
You're seeing that play out in real time. You're not seeing anybody actually go to jail for these things.
Of course, you think that it doesn't. I don't think it works the way it is right now!
But then you're -- you're given this false utopian promise. Without any information.
Read the warning label on socialism!
Where has it ever worked?
Show me where it has worked!
And don't say Sweden. Sweden.
Sweden is falling apart right now. Do you know why?
Because Sweden, everybody was blond hair, blue eyed, they were all related to each other. It was a small, little country.
You can do it when everybody is the same, and it's small. It will work in -- to some degree!
But the minute you start going diverse, the whole thing falls apart. So you want to be Sweden?
Go ahead. Look at Sweden today.
I don't want to be Sweden.
Read the warning label. That's our job, to show that warning label.
It's our job to teach what's not being taught. This is a death cult.
Stay away from it. Warning. Warning.
Is this the 'smoking gun' evidence that could put former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey behind bars? Just the News CEO John Solomon joined Glenn Beck to reveal some shocking new revelations, including Comey’s own emails allegedly authorizing anonymous leaks to the NYT on the Clinton case, potential handwritten notes proving he KNEW Hillary’s team approved the Russia collusion hoax, and a possible email from Comey referring to Hillary Clinton as “President-elect Clinton." Will a Northern Virginia jury hold the Deep State accountable? Or will politics bury the truth again?
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: John Solomon is with us. He is the CEO and editor-in-chief. In chief of Just the News. If you don't check that every day, you're really missing out on a really great news site. Justthenews.com. John, I have made a promise with my audience a long time ago, I do my best not to waste their time.
And as I'm looking through the things I want to talk to you about, I have to start with this question: Is any of this going to mean anything in the end, or is this -- are we just spinning our wheels and wasting our time, talking about how the deep this scandal with James Comey is becoming?
JOHN: That's a great question. And I don't think history has an answer yet. It will really depend on the tenacity and the focus of the Justice Department, the prosecutors, and the jurors that are going to catch these cases. Right? Are they willing to rise above politics and say, "We don't want an FBI that goes after people based on their political color, not the quality of the evidence against them."
And that is what began on 2015 on James Comey's watch, a different type of FBI that seemed to go after Donald Trump and his associates, regardless of evidence, and protect Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden, even though the evidence against them was pretty strong, as we ultimately found out from the IRS whistleblowers. So we don't know yet. Listen, these are going to go to trial if the judge lets them go to trial.
The judge in the Comey case seems to be giving the prosecutors a hard time there already. But that's going to be litigated. I'm going to go up to the Supreme Court. It will be a long battle.
But the question is, is the fight worth it?
I think if you don't punish the people that created this mentality, you have deficits in America for a long time.
Banana republic, prosecution arc. And I think that's not what Americans want. They want to say, the FBI is above politics. It hasn't been in the last texted, until the last few months, under Kash Patel.
GLENN: Okay. So let's talk about what the new evidence is the -- the burn bags.
The hidden rooms. And the evidence that now has been found that -- that shows Comey looks like he was lying. To Congress. When he said, no.
I didn't know anything about it.
JOHN: Yeah. Yeah. So let's remind people what the alleged lie is, what he's been accused of and indicted of. He told Congress in '17, and then reaffirmed, unequivocally in 2020, that he never asked any of his staff to provide information to the news media. The government, Kash Patel found significant documents that go to the contrary. They chose not to go after James Comey. So in the Bill Maher administration, they knew the same evidence, but they didn't go after him. What is the lie?
He told Congress, I didn't -- one, I never authorized anyone to leak to the media anonymously about the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump cases. And, two, I don't think I knew anything about an intelligence intercept that Hillary Clinton was setting up a fake Russian collusion hoax, that we ended up investigating.
Well, we now know, first, his own emails, with his own top lieutenant, Daniel Richmond. A former lawyer who he brought into the special government. The FBI. There's an FBI employee, showed that James Comey, told him, good job, and make them wiser as he was briefing them on how he was anonymously trying to spin the New York Times and provide information to the New York Times about the Hillary Clinton case.
So directly on point to the testimony he gave. I didn't authorize him to leak about Hillary Clinton in their emails. So this guy was leaking it. He was affirming it, and saying, go ahead. And he was encouraging him to make that reporter wiser. In other words, give them more information anonymously.
So that's the first lie. The second lie -- and, by the way, the grand jury bought that evidence, that we believed he lied.
GLENN: Okay.
JOHN: And that is what we call the Clinton planned intelligence. Was Comey, as John Brennan claimed. And as other evidence -- did Comey know, did he pay attention, did he have some awareness that as the FBI was starting to investigate the Russia collusion ruse, the hoax, that Hillary Clinton had been interpreted, or her people had been intercepted, showing that she approved the plan. He said, it doesn't ring true. I don't think I knew about it.
Well, in a locker, in a burn bag, they found some handwritten notes of James Comey, that appeared to include the briefing from John Brennan where he clearly knew, that Hillary Clinton had been intercepted -- or, her team had been intercepted, saying she approved this plan to hang a fake Russian shingle on Donald Trump's campaign house. Now, those are handwritten notes.
GLENN: Yeah. That is in his handwriting, that he clearly understood. And so now you've got him on -- on two really significant lies. That show that this whole thing was -- was -- they were in collusion with one another. And all of this was bogus.
And they knew it from the beginning.
JOHN: Yeah. That's exactly right. That's why, when you look at this. And then take the third bag of this. Those notes were never produced in earlier subpoenas to Congress or other investigations. They were found in a room, where it appears, according to the government, there is an effort to get rid of or hide this evidence.
So it hadn't been hidden from prior subpoenas, according to the government, according to Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor. And then, two, it looked like they were in burn bags. Meaning, they would never be there.
Now, some other people said, oh, well, there's electronic records of it.
It turns out according to the government, there was no electronic record of the note. Meaning, if they had been burned or destroyed, it would have never happened.
Now, why would James Comey want to lie about this? Because as we see in these same emails, it appears he had a motive.
His motive, as he wrote, his colleague is, I fully expect to be working for president-elect Hillary Clinton. She's talking this way, before the election in 2016.
He thought Hillary was going to be his boss. And as he wrote Dan Richmond, he said, I think Hillary Clinton will be, quote, unquote, pleased by the way I handled her email chase. In other words, he reopened it and cleared her a second time.
And when the smoke cleared, Hillary would like to keep him out as FBI director. That's the insinuation of those notes. So --
GLENN: Yeah. I want to get the exact. I want to give the exact phrase he wrote. A president-elect Clinton will be very greatly.
JOHN: Yeah. Grateful, I'm sorry.
GLENN: Wow.
JOHN: Yeah. Grateful. So he expected it -- that's his mindset in the fall of 2016.
And he opens up an investigation on Hillary Clinton, what we now know to be a ruse. Bad evidence. An agency had to lie to the FISA courts to get the FISA warrants. If his motive was that, or his thinking was that. He probably does not want to admit that I was warned, that maybe this was all a joke before I allowed this investigation to go forward. Before I affixed my name to a FISA warrant that the courts have now said was misleading, false, and violated the law. So that is the context at which the prosecutors are going to try to bring this -- bring this case. Now, it's going to be in northern Virginia, where there are a lot of federal workers and a lot of anti-Trump sentiment.
Can they get a conviction? We don't know. But is it worth trying to do it? Most people I talk to said yes, because the alternative is you have by inaction a sanction, which is what Bill Maher and John Durham did by not bringing this in 2020.
GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Can I switch topics. There's something that came out today. James Comey's daughter, and the Epstein case. Apparently, James Comey's daughter sent a message to Epstein, that if you don't have to prove it. But if you can show us anything that ties Donald Trump to this, it's going to go a lot easier for you.
Can you give me this story?
JOHN: Yeah. I've seen it. I've not been able to corroborate it. In this world of media today. I've been super careful. It's hard to know if things are true. I haven't found anyone yet who seems to know the proof on it.
It's possible. Who knows? I mean, prosecutors make these sort of deals all the time. And as we know, it seems in the last decade or two, I think when you have to go back to the era of the Ted Stevens prosecution. The IRS pursuit of conservative groups. And maybe the prosecution which turned out to be malicious and wrong of Virginia governor McDonald.
There is a culture that began at the beginning or around the time of the Obama era. Where winning for prosecutors is more important than winning fairly or on the face of the evidence.
And that's why these cases ultimately got overturned. That mentality exists in the Justice Department.
And then when you add the nature of politics, the Trump Derangement Syndrome that seems to come in, in 2015. You have a very dangerous prosecutorial and law enforcement system that's easily weaponized and can easily cheat.
And unless you got multi-million lawyers, you probably will get hosed, because very few people will find the grounds to overturn this.
And that it is crushing power of the state, that Jim Jordan talks about. Chuck Grassley talks about. That Donald Trump wants to reform.
And I don't know, in this case, whether Mr. Comey did this or not.
Because I can't confirm it yet. But if I knew, I'll come back to you.
GLENN: Right.
JOHN: The scenario does go on. And we've seen it. And it's very, very troubling.
There's a case coming up in New York, where the FCC has to admit that there were journalists writing fake stories that were then used to justify investigations of companies.
A system of cheating to get a consequence regardless of whether it's warranted, is something we all have to take a deep breath. We have to fix it. Or we won't be any the different than rectangles and Iran.
GLENN: I will tell you, that I am so glad to say, that you said, I can't confirm this.
I haven't found a source to confirm it.
Because when I read that story, it looks as though one of the people that is telling this story is the guy who was in jail, with Epstein, who would also have motive for making something like this up. So, you know, I don't want to exonerate her.
And I don't want to condemn her. I just want the truth.
And he doesn't seem like a reliable source.
JOHN: Yeah. I think we have to get the evidence, and try to -- listen if the lead is something -- let's check it out and true -- find out if it's true.
We learned that Russia collusion wasn't true. I think we'll learn that most of Ukraine impeachment wasn't true.
And I think today, we just have to dig in first. Get the facts.
But we will -- we will do that. I promise, I'll get back to you, as soon as I know what I can find out for the government.
GLENN: Yeah. Thank you, John. I appreciate all your hard work.
John Solomon from Just the News. Go to JusttheNews.com. Follow him. John Solomon. JSolomonReports on X. But he is an old school journalist. Investigative reporter. Has worked for everybody, until everybody was like, you can't say those things. That's our side!
And then he just left and did his own thing. And I'm very grateful for it.
Editor-in-chief of Just the News. John Solomon
