BLOG

‘Everyone Is Watching Each Other’: Author Explains North Korea’s Isolation From the World

North Korea is famously isolated from the rest of the world, with the government blocking internet access and controlling everything from food to hairstyles to social groups. It’s almost impossible for two North Koreans to conspire together because people are watching and listening all the time for anything that goes against the government.

“This did not happen overnight,” author Michael Malice said of North Korea’s isolation. “This was a 70-year methodical process.”

Malice, author of “Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il,” explained that the Kim family has been working to build up barriers between North Korea and the rest of the world for decades.

North Korean society is divided into government-designated groups, and once a week, North Koreans talk about what they did “wrong” that week in front of their peers. This level of scrutiny makes it nearly impossible for North Koreans to speak against Kim Jong Un and his regime even in casual conversation.

“Everyone is watching each other all the time and reporting on each other all the time,” Malice said.

GLENN: Michael Malice is a guy who went behind the Iron Curtain. It's a very closed country. And he left there and he wrote a book called, Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Biography of Kim Jong-il.

Michael, welcome to the program. How are you, sir?

MICHAEL: Oh, it's a great honor, Glenn.

GLENN: Thank you.

First of all, tell me, what got you to go to North Korea? I mean, you stalking Dennis Rodman, or?

MICHAEL: Well, here's the thing and something you kind of touched upon: It was bothering me a lot how so much of the press about North Korea is complete misinformation. And I said, "I'm going to do something about this once and for all." Now, I was born in the Soviet Union. I'm Jewish. These were two chances for my family to have been sent to a concentration camp. And there's concentration camps in North Korea right now. You know, people ask, how did we let the Holocaust happen? They have the camps right now. You can see the camps on Google Earth. And yet so many of these news reports want to look at North Korea and be like, "Aren't these people all silly?" It's like, yeah, these are 25 million hostages. If the government had a gun to your head and the heads of your children, you would be doing pretty silly things too.

So that's why I wrote my book Dear Readers, so that people could understand exactly what's going on there. Because it's not at all how it's portrayed in the press.

GLENN: So I would like to get into the concentration camps with you. Because people don't understand that it's not your sentence. It's they sentence you and your family for three generations. I mean, it's -- it is -- it's evil and crazy what is happening there. Most people in the west can't even begin to understand it.

But can we go back and try to explain and tell us some stories that you saw firsthand on how the North Koreans are so isolated that they have really no concept of what's really going on in the world. And they think that they can beat the United States.

MICHAEL: Well, they're not completely, completely isolated because the barriers, thankfully, have been breaking down a little. However, to your question, this did not happen overnight.

GLENN: Yeah.

MICHAEL: This was a 70-year methodical process by this gangster family. And step by step, they built up barriers to separate North Korea from the rest of the world, things like anyone who spoke other languages or who studied abroad were sent to the concentration camps. Things like books in other languages being destroyed and no longer being allowed to be taught.

Let me give you an example of the mechanisms that they use to control their population. And, again, it's things we can't even wrap our heads around here.

Everyone in North Korea is slotted into some group. Your school. Your office. Your neighborhood. And once a week, that group gets together, and you have to stand up in front of your peers and say, "This is what I did wrong this week." And then your peers have to stand up and say what they noticed you doing wrong.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

MICHAEL: So everyone is watching each other all the time and reporting on each other all the time. So a lot of times, the people are like, well, why don't they just get together and overthrow the government. If you have two people conspiring, they're done.

And as you said, the founder of North Korea, the great leader Kim Il-sung said, "Class enemies must be exterminated to three generations." So they take three generations of a family -- and even Stalin at least had trials. There's no trials. You get a knock at the door in the middle of the night. The family gets taken. And you don't even know which one of you got you sent to the camps or to the countryside. They don't tell you. It's just, "Come with me."

GLENN: Let's -- let's -- can we go back to the Korean War and how they're viewing America. They've been -- you know, we had the Korean War. And it became a TV show called M*A*S*H. And that's it. For them, they have been preparing for this time since the 1950s.

MICHAEL: Right. So according to one of their books and according to their worldview -- by the way, you can't refer to us as Americans. We are always referred to by a slur like the US Imperialists. And it's just how the language is taught there. So automatically, when they're talking about us, they're using offensive terminology. There's a book in North Korea called The US Imperialists Started the Korean War. They are taught that we started the Korean War, that we've been waiting to conquer Korea since the 1860s when General Sherman went to Pyongyang. That part is true. We did visit them back in the 1860s.

And now we've been biding our time to come back and to finish the job that we started. Now, many of your listeners are veterans. The Korean War was completely devastating to the Korean Peninsula. You had China, Russia, and North Korea at the north. South Korea, US, and the UN at the south. And between the two, the devastation was complete.

So their whole point is, you remember how bad it was in the '50s. Well, any day now, the Americans are going to come back and finish that job. And, but for the leader, you would all be dead.

GLENN: And you say "but for the leader," what's remarkable is the calendar has been reset. It's the year, what?

MICHAEL: So the calendar starts -- again, they're not going to have a Christian calendar. Because having a Bible is the death penalty, right? So you're not going to have BC and AD. So their calendar starts with the birth of the great leader Kim Il-sung in 1912. So that's year one.

GLENN: Okay. So -- and he was -- I remember one of the Kim family was brought down, you know, by angels or birds. And -- I mean, crazy kind of stuff that he remembers the day of his birth. Do they -- do they believe this?

MICHAEL: There is a lot -- it's very funny because they claim to be an atheist country. But there's all sorts of supernaturalism that revolves around the Kim family. So Kim Il-sung, the great leader, the founder of North Korea, he had missionaries in his family. And he adopted a lot of Christian mythology and applied it to his life and the life of his son and his wife. So they have a holy trinity, which is the great leader Kim Il-sung, who is the founder of North Korea, and Kim Jong-un's uncle. We have Kim Jong-il, who was the dear leader. He's their Jesus figure. And Kim Jong-il's mother, who is always referred to as anti-Japanese heroine, Kim Jong-suk. They always picture here with a gun in her hand. So this is the holy trinity that keeps Korea safe. And they have Mount Paektu at the north, which is basically like their Mount Zion, which is the spirit of Korea and basically the embodiment of the Korean energy. So they have a lot of mystical stories about this family and basically -- but for Kim Il-sung, you know, who is almost a messiah figure, Korea would still be under the boot of Japan.

GLENN: So when the UN passed these really tough sanctions -- I'm for the sanctions. I don't know what else to do. Going in with military is just -- is almost and may be an act of insanity.

MICHAEL: Right.

GLENN: But, you know, when you see the sanctions, the people have no idea that their leaders are the ones that are starving them and choking them to death. And this will only be blamed on us. And it will only make their lives worse.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

GLENN: How do you break that, in that culture? Is it even possible to get people to understand, "No, no, it's -- your leader is evil?"

MICHAEL: Well, it started happening on a micro level. You remember towards the end of the Cold War, despite decades of communist propaganda, what happened is Russia people were watching American soap operas on television. And they were thinking to themselves, it's all well and good what I'm taught in school, but why does the maid on this television show have a fur coat and I'm literally wiping my butt with newspaper? You know, I don't care about Marx, whatever. I just want food for my kids.

GLENN: Right.

MICHAEL: And North Korea, the same thing is happening. They are seeing that all these other countries are wealthier than them. It doesn't matter what you teach me in school. I want my kids to have food. It's as simple as that.

So one of the things that has happened is they have changed their propaganda from, we are wealthy, and the world envies us. And now the propaganda says, we are keeping Korea pure. So it is also the most homogeneous and most racist country on earth. This is something that's not talked about in the press, that they believe Korea is the only country that has been racially pure since Neolithic times. And they regard the South as a region under US occupation, where we basically assault southern Korean women -- Americans do -- and do with them as we please. Us -- we being barbarians. So that's another aspect of their propaganda.

GLENN: So looking at what you know about North Korea and hearing the president yesterday --

MICHAEL: Yes.

GLENN: -- how is that interpreted by Kim Jong-un and -- and the people around him?

MICHAEL: I would honestly say it's going to be interpreted with a bit of respect.

GLENN: Oh, good.

MICHAEL: And here's why: They are bullies. Right? So let me -- when they talk about we know how to treat America -- in their words, they say, when necessary, we'll slap her across the face.

And, you know, I remember last year, year and a half ago, there was this photo released of Kim Jong-un in front of his Apple Computer. And there were nukes striking Austin. And the things that they get away with saying are just completely outrageous. So Trump was basically using their language against them. So on some level, they're going to have a bit of respect for it, just like anyone who runs his mouth. At a certain point, you have to get in his face. Now, I'm not saying you have to get in his face and shove him, but on some level, they're going to say, okay. This is going to be a difference in tone at least, from previous administrations.

GLENN: So where does he go from here? You know, he has killed everybody in his family who could have challenged him. He's done it openly. He's killed everybody around him that could challenge him.

MICHAEL: He's only killed one person. And actually, let's talk about how evil this family is: Kim Jong-un's aunt. Kim Kyong-hui, Kim Jong-il's sister, that was her husband who was killed. And she's such an evil woman, that when her daughter married someone who was below their social station, she drove her daughter to suicide.

STU: Hmm.

GLENN: Wow.

PAT: Didn't he have both his uncle and his brother killed -- the guy in the airport, right? Which one was that?

GLENN: The brother.

PAT: Wasn't that his brother? And then supposedly he had his uncle torn apart by dogs.

GLENN: Yeah. I thought -- he had somebody else killed by standing them in front of a cannon and blowing a hole through.

PAT: Are these urban legends, or did that actually happen?

GLENN: Is that the way he is, Michael?

PAT: Did we lose him?

GLENN: We've lost Michael.

Okay. So get him back on the phone. Let me take a quick break. Fascinating --

PAT: I guess we'll never know.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Having somebody -- I can't wait to also talk to him about his experience in the former Soviet Union.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Anyway, he'll be back in just a second.

First, our sponsor this half-hour is Goldline. What would the opening salvos of war with North Korea bring?

Thousands dead. Some say that a million plus could be dead within the first 24 hours. The region surrendering North Korea has become the world's industrial powerhouse. It is, you know, some of the biggest economies in the world are there. And would be affected immediately. Which would wreak havoc on not only a human scale and human life there, but also I believe the rest of the western world --

PAT: Yeah, you have South Korea who is the eleventh largest, and you have China the second largest.

GLENN: And you have Japan, which is, what? The fifth largest? The fourth largest?

PAT: Yeah. In there somewhere.

GLENN: I mean, it's all affected. And I would just suggest that you do your homework now. I -- I hope this is not going to be what the experts are starting to say it's going to be this fall. But a lot of people now -- and it actually gives me some comfort. Because these clowns are usually wrong. But a lot of people are saying real trouble with the economy is on the horizon. Please find out if gold or silver is right for you. You have your money in a 401(k) or an IRA, consider moving some of that money -- some of it -- 10 percent into gold, physical gold that you can hold.

Call now for as little as $2,500. You will get three months of price protection. All the way up to a year for a 25,000-dollar investment. But make sure you read all their information. They're waiting for your call now at 866GOLDLINE. 1866GOLDLINE or goldline.com.

(OUT AT 10:23AM)

GLENN: We're talking to Michael Malice. He is the guy who went over to North Korea, wrote a book called Dear Reader, and saw behind the curtain, if you will. He's also a former citizen of the Soviet Union. So he has -- he has seen it from both sides. We were just talking to you, Michael, and we lost our connection, about, you know, we have heard that he killed his brother and his uncle.

MICHAEL: Right.

GLENN: And then a lot of the people around him who could have challenged him, he has taken out and done horrible things to. True or false?

MICHAEL: Okay. So the last part is false because theres no -- there's no one around him who could have challenged him because the point is, it's only a descendent of the great leader Kim Il-sung, who could be in the leadership position. So the people at the very top there, it's not like they were voted in. They're only at the very top specifically because of their loyalty to the regime. In fact, unless you're loyal to the regime, you're not allowed to even step foot in Pyongyang. You're geographically assigned where to live in North Korea, based on how loyal you and your family has been to the regime. That's number one.

GLENN: Wow.

MICHAEL: So he killed his elder half brother, who he only met once, I believe, because, again, only a descendent of Kim Il-sung can be the leader. So if your brother is killed, there's no plan B for you, if Kim Jong-un is taken out. There's not a Mike Pence sitting in the wings.

GLENN: Hmm.

MICHAEL: And lastly, one of the things that I was fighting about -- fighting, you know, when writing Dear Reader is the sensationalism. We tend to believe the craziest possible stories about North Korea. And South Korea reported that his uncle -- technically, his aunt's husband was eaten by dogs. That's not true. He was shot. But he was killed, and with her agreement.

GLENN: So then, you know, we keep hearing that he feels backed in a corner.

MICHAEL: That's right.

GLENN: Who is he backed in a corner by if there's no -- if there's nobody to take his place?

MICHAEL: Well, he's -- there's increasing pressure from America. There's increasing pressure from China. And what would happen is when -- you remember possibly Romania, when Ceausescu, the evil dictator of Romania for decades, when he was take -- there was a moment, and it's a very beautiful moment for everyone who loves freedom, when this horrible dictator was on TV, and for the first time the crowd starts booing. And you see the look on his face. And two or three days later, him and his wife were shot.

Kim Jong-il took that video and showed it to all the leading party cadres and said -- said, "If the masses rise up, this is what is going to happen to us." So when these regimes go down, the people at the very top like Gadhafi, like Hussein are personally killed, and with good reason.

So that's another very important incentive for Kim Jong-un to do anything he can to stay in power. It's not like if he's removed from power, he's going to, you know, retire to Saint-Tropez. This man is a monster.

GLENN: So I've only got about 30 seconds here, so perhaps I ask it and then we come back on the other side. Because I really want to know also about, you know, the former Soviet Union and your life there.

MICHAEL: Sure. Yeah.

GLENN: But I guess what I would like to know -- and I don't know if you could answer this: So is he likely to just kind of be quiet and allow himself to be put into a box, or is he the type that will fire off a missile because he's a god?

MICHAEL: He's the type who was taught and believes, you fight fire with twice as much fire and escalate whenever possible, especially when you're the small dog.

GLENN: Okay. So what that means exactly, we come back. You can find Michael at MichaelMalice.com.

(OUT AT 10:30AM)

GLENN: Michael Malice, he is an author and commentator. He's an expert to North Korea. Traveled to the very closed country. Wrote a book called Dear Reader. The unauthorized autobiography of Kim Jong-il.

You just said to me, Michael, that Kim Jong-un is a guy who believes if you're hit, you hit back twice as hard. You don't back down. And as you're describing the traits of Kim Jong-un, you're also describing our president.

MICHAEL: Well, I mean, to some extent. You remember during the campaign, Trump did apologize for the audio that got out. And I don't think President Trump would be comfortable starving 10 percent of the population.

GLENN: Oh, no, no, no. I don't mean it that way. No, no, no, I don't mean it -- I do not mean to equate the two of them. I mean, just as far as tactics.

MICHAEL: Yes.

GLENN: You know, last night, I thought the press -- the press was crazy last night.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

GLENN: They were almost saying, you know, we got to have war because, Mr. President, now you're not going to have any credibility. You can't back down. It was crazy.

MICHAEL: Glenn, it was terrifying that they're basically saying, "Oh -- first of all, the idea if North Korea is going to attack us, that they're going to go after Guam is insane on its face. They're going to have one shot, they're going to make it count, to be totally Machiavellian about it.

But let's have some perspective: For decades, we had hundreds, if not thousands of nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union pointed at us and our allies. And that was something that we managed to deal with. So this situation is not entirely without precedent.

GLENN: Okay. So that is --

MICHAEL: So everyone should take a deep breath, you know.

GLENN: So my position today has been pretty much that: Take a deep breath.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

GLENN: There is no good answer to this. The thing to do is walk away, keep your eye and ear to the ground.

MICHAEL: Yes.

GLENN: But just walk -- there's no good answer to this.

MICHAEL: And --

GLENN: Is that enough for Kim Jong-un?

MICHAEL: Well, it's scary to me how so many people are saying that because Kim Jong-un is treating our country and our president with disrespect, that we -- I saw one commentator say, "We should rain hellfire on North Korea."

GLENN: That's craziness.

MICHAEL: I mean, these are 25 million -- you want to talk about having the moral high ground, being the moral leader of the free world, and you're going to be killing 25 million slaves and hostages. What kind of person are you that -- not only that, what kind of person are you that that's your first reaction, as opposed to a last resort? It's terrifying.

GLENN: No. I was watching last night -- I'm so glad to hear you saying this, Michael. I was watching CNN. And they kept going on and on and on about, you know, how the president said all these things. And now there's a red line. And -- and -- and -- and commentator after commentator yesterday was saying, "You know, we don't have a choice. We can't be embarrassed. We can't, you know, be the laughing stock."

And I'm thinking, "We're talking about the possibility of millions dead. Who cares about your stupid honor if all it means is, you know what, I said something I shouldn't have said? I'm going to shut my mouth now, and what do you say we leave those millions alive?"

MICHAEL: Glenn, I'm going to make it even worse. The people in these concentration camps are told constantly and explicitly -- there's like 100, 200,000 people. Should the US imperialists invade, we will kill you all and burn these camps to the ground. So like you're saying, if someone has a gun to my kid's head, if someone -- if at some school, someone has a bomb that they're going to blow up a school, they can call me every name in the book. Please, call me all the names you want. Just don't kill the children. And the idea that, well, we better go in and kill the children first, as the response, is even more demented.

GLENN: How is North Korea -- if the United States would respond, I can't imagine that South Korea -- because it would be almost like our American civil war --

MICHAEL: Right.

GLENN: -- is going to sit happily by as, A, Seoul is most likely destroyed.

MICHAEL: Yes.

GLENN: And, secondly, they have family members up there. It would be viewed as the United States killing their family members, would it not?

MICHAEL: To some extent, those families have been separated now for 70 years with no communication with each other.

But let's talk something else: You know, people saying they have nukes now. This is unprecedented. They've had missiles pointed at Seoul for decades.

GLENN: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Seoul is a city with, you know, tens of millions of people, with skyscrapers. Can you imagine the imagery of missiles hitting a city full of skyscrapers? Even if they didn't have nukes, is that something people are comfortable with? Or it's just, well, at least it wasn't nukes that are hitting these skyscrapers. I mean, is that what we're talking about? And that is what we're talking about.

So it's a very dangerous situation. And, Glenn, I know you remember very well the -- the war mania that led up to the Iraq War, and how everyone was like, "We got to do something. We got to do something now. Emergency. Emergency. Emergency." Let's freak out. Let's do things as quickly as possible.

And it's like, what I was taught growing up in school is that war is a last resort. It's not the first thing you do, and it's not your best option, especially when you're dealing with a regime that is comfortable with killing its own citizens to maintain its hold on power.

STU: Talking to Michael Malice.

KimJongilbook.com is the site.

Michael, is there an increase in their resources lately? I mean, they've been able to outpace all of our intelligence estimates as to what they've been able to develop.

GLENN: Like crazy.

STU: They're dumping money into things like renovating the Hotel of Doom, which, you know, is only the Hotel of Doom because they didn't have money at one point. Are they --

MICHAEL: Well, no, the Hotel of Doom -- so let's talk about how North Korea uses their army. North Korea, everyone in the army does construction. So they're not just sitting around or whatever. They actually build things.

So that hotel, which is I think at one point, the largest building in the eastern hemisphere or something crazy, the Ryugyong Hotel was structurally unsound. So it was never completed because it can't be completed. It's a complete mess.

And it just looms like this giant hulk over Pyongyang. But let me also talk -- you talk about having empathy for the North Korean people. When I went there and we were taking the bus from the airport to the capital city, my guide pointed at that hotel, and she goes, "Look, there's our latest rocket launch."

And, you know, we don't think of them as human beings. They have a sense of humor. They have families. You know, when you're on the street, you see the grandmothers doting with their grandkids. You see teenage girls giggling when you wave at them. The fact that these people are capable of having some semblance of humanity in the most inhumane country on earth behooves us when you read news reports and trying to make them out to be clowns. Keep in mind, again, like I said earlier --

GLENN: They're not clowns.

MICHAEL: -- if someone has your family as a hostage, you're going to put on clown makeup too.

GLENN: Yeah. And it's not -- the people are -- you know, when -- I think when somebody says, you know, these people are clowns, they're meaning, you know, I think people like Kim Jong-un, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He's not a clown.

MICHAEL: No.

GLENN: He knows what he's doing. He just operates with a completely operating system than we do.

MICHAEL: Right. And the whole point of my book is spelling out how they operate and what they're doing. Because it's very logical. It's very methodical. But let me speak a bit about the clown issue: Like, I remember there was an article in a British paper that showed the marching. And it referred to Kim Jong-un's miniskirted robot army, that these young women, you know, in the army are all marching in lockstep and ha-ha-ha. It's like, you know, they're hostages. Of course, they're going to march like they're told. They're not robots. To call someone a robot is to act like they don't have a soul or a mind of their own, and they very much do.

GLENN: Okay. Well, let me ask you -- first of all, can we have you back? We're running out of time. Can we have you back tomorrow?

MICHAEL: Of course. It's an honor. We'll figure it out. We can figure it out, yes.

GLENN: Let me ask you two other questions: First of all, Otto Warmbier, the kid that went over.

MICHAEL: Right.

GLENN: Was caught stealing a propaganda poster.

MICHAEL: Right.

GLENN: Fifteen years.

MICHAEL: Trespassing.

GLENN: What did you say?

MICHAEL: Trespassing.

GLENN: Yes. Fifteen years to hard labor. Looks like they pretty much tortured him to death and dumped on our body, I thought, in a way that was very reminiscent of the Godfather.

MICHAEL: Yes.

GLENN: Sending us a message: Here's -- here's your citizen back.

MICHAEL: No, no, no, no. That's not it at all. They had him as a hostage. If you have a hostage, you want to return the hostage in one piece so you get your ransom. So when things turned south, they knew they couldn't take care of him, and that's why they dropped him off here. Think about it.

He didn't serve a day of hard labor. They treat their hostages very, very well because they're a valuable resource. Remember when they kidnapped that Ling reporter, they got President Clinton to fly to Pyongyang and kiss Kim Jong-il's ring? That's a great coup.

GLENN: Right. But this guy it looks like he was drugged and tortured. That's --

MICHAEL: My understanding is that the autopsies showed no signs of trauma, and this could have been self-harm.

STU: Hmm.

GLENN: Okay. Had not heard that one.

STU: Wow.

GLENN: One last question.

MICHAEL: Sure.

GLENN: Is there a -- is there something that we could be doing right now, other than sitting on our hands and just hoping for the best now? Is there something that we should be doing or we should be encouraging some other country to be doing?

MICHAEL: Yeah. We should be sitting down with China and saying, what is it going to take for you to turn on these people once and for all? And, frankly, Glenn, if they have --

GLENN: Oh. Did we lose him again?

MICHAEL: -- of food and they don't have concentration camps, I'm fine with it.

GLENN: You're saying: If -- if China would just roll in and they were still communists, but they were fed and no concentration camps...

MICHAEL: Right. Communism in the Chinese model, do you know what I mean? I could live with that. They don't have to have some Western liberal democracy. As long as they don't have to live in constant fear that their children are going to be murdered, that's all I need.

STU: Hmm.

GLENN: How old were you when you left the former Soviet Union?

MICHAEL: Two years old.

GLENN: And your parents came over here with you, when?

MICHAEL: '78.

GLENN: So they escaped and knew what they were escaping?

MICHAEL: Oh, yes. Oh, of course. And it wasn't anywhere near as bad towards the end as it had been, you know, when they were growing up. And it certainly wasn't anywhere near as bad as North Korea.

GLENN: Do you watch the TV show The Americans?

MICHAEL: I couldn't because they have being patriotic Russians, and that wasn't a thing. By the '80s, everyone was cynical and knew that the system was nonsense.

PAT: Huh. Wow.

STU: Hmm.

GLENN: Okay. So I'd love to have you on, maybe again tomorrow. Because I'd like to talk to you about what it's like to live in a communist country.

MICHAEL: Oh, absolutely.

GLENN: What you know. And how we've kind of blown it here on our side. And maybe perhaps you have some insight on Putin as well, on --

MICHAEL: Well, I'll just tell you one sentence: We fought the KGB, and now we have the NSA. No, I'm not joking. I'm not joking. What's the difference?

PAT: Oh, man.

STU: Hmm.

GLENN: Mike, good to have you on. Michael Malice. MichaelMalice.com. MichaelMalice.com. You can buy the book, Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Biography of Kim Jong-il, and we'll talk to you again tomorrow a little bit about, you know, what it's like to live in a communist country and what your family saw and how that relates to today. Thank you so much, Michael. We'll talk to you again.

MICHAEL: Thank you so much, Glenn.

GLENN: You bet.

TV

How Mamdani's Victory & Nigeria's GENOCIDE Are WARNINGS for America | Glenn TV | Ep 466

How did New York City elect Zohran Mamdani as its first Muslim and socialist mayor?! To get the answer, Glenn Beck dives into Mamdani's controversial backers and ties them to a global propaganda campaign run by big players in political Islam. This same propaganda campaign, Glenn exposes, can also explain the rising Islamist-Marxist alliance in America and the ignoring of genocides in Nigeria and Sudan. Plus, Johnnie Moore, president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, reveals how jihadist militias are systematically massacring entire Christian villages in Nigeria and attempting to build a new terror caliphate. And Glenn asks former Navy SEAL and Blackwater founder Erik Prince whether he believes Trump should attack Nigeria if it doesn't stop the slaughter.

RADIO

Chip Roy exposes the billionaire web fueling America’s collapse

Rep. Chip Roy joins Glenn Beck to expose the hidden network of NGOs, billionaires, and government grants allegedly funding the destruction of America from within. From Soros-backed district attorneys to U.N.-funded immigration pipelines, U.S. tax dollars are being weaponized against Western civilization itself. Rep. Roy breaks down why he has introduced the 'No Tax Exemptions for Terror Act' as he reveals the deep financial web connecting global elites, broken borders, and the slow dismantling of American freedom.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Let me go to Chip Roy. Chip is joining us. He is introducing a new bill called the -- what is it called? I love the name of this, Chip. What is the name of this bill?

CHIP: I don't remember what the name of it is. It's to stop CAIR from having tax exempt status, and any terrorist organization.

GLENN: Yeah, the No Tax Exemptions for Terror Act. I love that.

CHIP: That's it.

GLENN: That's the clearest a bill has ever been: The No Tax Exemptions For Terror Act. I love it.

CHIP: Yeah. So we came up with it on Friday when we were filing the bill. And we were going back and forth, and my chief of staff came up with that title, credit to her.

But, look, here's, the thing. Take one minute to pretend that I'm sitting in Glenn Beck's studio on television. And I'm going out and I'm going to do white boards. Okay?

GLENN: Uh-huh.

CHIP: So for your listeners out there, pretend I got that video capability. Imagine if you will, enormous numbers of bubbles of NGOs and all of these nonprofits that are out there under the cloak of things like Catholic charities or Jewish groups or evangelical groups or maybe secular groups.

They're doing all these nice and warm and fuzzy things. They're ail involved with moving people by you our country, right? They're all a part of the 250 organizations at the Center for Immigration Studies said were a part of the mass invasion during the Biden administration.

Now, over here, create a group of bubbles that are all of the groups that are pushing the district attorneys that are radical Marxists. The Soros-funded DAs that are putting criminals on our streets. And there's a whole cadre over there under the Ren Collective that the law enforcement legal defense fund ally. Now over here, on this board, show the bubbles, that...


GLENN: Wait. We lost you! Show the bubbles of, what?

CHIP: That want to see radical Sharia on our streets. Now on top of the board, put the Arabella Group, which are Democrat operatives, with Clinton and with Biden, you know, operatives.

And they're all in organization with, and coordinated with the bubbles above them, which are the funding streams from Bill Gates, from George Soros, from radical billionaires across the country, and taxpayer dollars, money through the United Nations, grand money from the United States, going to all of those NGOs. Remember those first bubbles that I put on the board.

And all of that money is then being coordinated in a war against you and me and freedom and Western civilization.

So, yes, I believe CAIR and every other one of these organizations that are radicalized against Americans ought to be, not just disbanded from their Sebring status, but probably broken up.

And we should go through it and look at the conspiracy that they're involved in and probably violating our laws in Rico violation. But at a minimum, we should take away their tax status, so I introduce legislation to do that as a shot across the bough. And we need to go further than that. I hope that's clear without a video board.

GLENN: Yeah. It is. I have -- made it, as you were doing it, I just -- I just kind of put it together, the way you suggested. All these little bubbles. And you can see. It's pretty bad.

And what's crazy is that we did not assume that our tax dollars were going to any of these places.

I mean, they have gotten so wicked and so smart, the way -- you know, I always knew that Soros and the Tides Foundation. And you suspect that gosh, you have all of this money. And it's all going out the door.

And nobody knows where the money is going. And we focus. When he with find out what the budget is. Wait. You're doing turtle studies on what know.

And nobody is asking, what about the other trillion that are studies that nobody is tracking. That are just going out to these NGOs. We are funding our own demise.

CHIP: A hundred percent. And that's exactly right. I'm glad you said that. Because Republicans, with all due respect with my colleagues, get distracted with shiny objects.

And go say -- and I've done it too. Because it's easy to say. And you go out there, and you say, oh, yeah, I lifted the turtle funding. Or I lifted to this waste. And people are like, oh my gosh. That's terrible. That's, like, $5 million.

The real engine is that flow of money. So that, okay. Dollars that are going, in -- you know, to organizations, that a lot of people view. And because they do some good work. They go to some organization. Take charities or take some evangelical groups or whatever, or some Jewish organizations. You're setting up money. Oh, they're doing good things, and they're helping people.

But then you start -- you feel -- and they're all a part of all of this, and the grants that flow through so that when your top herdsmen or my friends for the Center of Immigration Studies, and you're down at the Darien Gap. And you see that the United Nations money, the United States taxpayer money, grants were going to these organizations to funnel people from around the world, to come up through Mexico and into the United States or be flown by a plane into the United States. And then you wonder why we have so many Somalis and so many Muslim, Sharia adherents, that are dumped into our country. It's heavily because of what we have been funding. It's heavily because of our money that we give to the United Nations.

So we need to stop that. And we need to be -- look, what I have done with the bell is one step of a thousand we need to take. Right? The bill that I did two weeks ago, to say, let's start vetting people for adherents to Sharia law. Let's pass HR2.
Let's do a bill.

I'm going to introduce a bill this week. That says, we should freeze all immigration until we actually have a handle on all the ways it's being abused. Whether it's birthright citizenship, says we have to educate illegal children.

The Sharia adherents in making sure we're not importing people that are hostile to Western civilization. Making sure people aren't on the public dole. These are all things we need to do, Glenn.

And we're not doing it. And we're funding the demise of our own country. It needs to stop.

And Congress needs to back up President Trump with at least as aggressive as an agenda, as he's putting forward. We can't just pass the big, beautiful bill and then pat ourselves on the back and then hope we win the midterms. Let's go back to Congress. Let's pass the stock trading ban. Let's pass HR2 to secure the border.

Let's codify some of the President's executive orders. Let's pass health care freedom and dismantle the stranglehold that insurance companies and hospital corporations have over our health care. Let's go to war for the American people. And then they'll want to go support us at the ballot box.

GLENN: You know, there's this big reject AIPAC thing that is going on right now.

And look, I think, if you're going to do that. Then you've got to do the American Cubans. The Iranian American PAC. There's a ton of these. And I just want them to all play by the same rules.

Whatever those rules are. Everybody plays by the same rules. But, you know, one of the things that we don't look at is you look at AIPAC. And I think it's average, not election years. It's about 60, what? Sixty million. $60 million?

That can't be it. It's got to be billion.
Nothing ever sounds big anymore. But they're spending all this money in the United States.

And everybody says, oh, well, they're just. They're controlling the United States.

It is million. Thirty to 60 million on average, okay?

But if you look at Saudi Arabia, that state money, and they're spending $93 million.

And since 1986, 2.1 billion dollars, on our universities.

And they're not alone!

And nobody is saying anything about that!

And I wonder why. Why? Why?

CHIP: Glenn, I cannot thank you enough for bringing that up. Especially, I'm not going to get into the controversy that last week, and the controversy going on. With the Heritage Foundation and all that stuff.

Look, here's the bottom line. You nailed it, right?

There is a vast, vast amount of money, flowing into the United States, from the Middle East, and to our universities, and into political organizations.

And designed very heavily to advance a march of people who want to upend our way of life. Okay?

GLENN: China is involved in it too! Yeah.

CHIP: 100 percent. The Chi-Coms are 100 percent a part of that. And, by the way, this is why we should be banning, not just Chinese Communist Party ownership of our land. But, frankly, any foreign nationals shouldn't be owning our land.

Like, why are we letting people own Texas and buy Texas? This is one of the things, by the way, that I get a really strong reaction from people on the campaign trail. I talk about the Soros DA. I talk about the border. I talk about Islamification. But then I talk about something else. And it's related to what we're talking about. The corporatification of Texas and of our, you know, great red states.

We are allowing corporations to come in and buy up our homes. Literally!

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

CHIP: Buying up our homes. We allow them to buy up our hospitals, prevent doctors from being able to form their own hospitals. We're allowing them to buy up our land. Our cattle.
Our meat packing plants. Some foreign-owned. Some domestic. But it's major corporate, and a lot of it is foreign.

And I don't want to be governed by board rooms in New York City, any more than I want to be governed by the federal government.

I want Texas to own Texas. I want Texans to own Texas. And that's one of the principles things that I want to find out on this attorney general.

GLENN: I tell you, there's this big, beautiful hospital that was built just -- just where my home in Texas was.

And I was so excited. Had this really great hospital, that close.

And after it was built. I think it was like Texas doctor's hospital. And it was all these independent hospitals, who wanted to do a hospital, the way they wanted to do a hospital.

And I walk in. Because I didn't know they had opened.

But we had an emergency. I was like, take him to the emergency room. I think he's open.

Take him to the emergency room. The entire place is empty.

And the reason why is because these corporate hospitals said, if you do anything with that hospital, you're out of our -- of our system.

You won't be having any privileges at our hospital. And they put that hospital out of -- brand-new, beautiful hospital. Doctors wanted their own independence. And the big corporate hospital put them out of business.

It was insane.

CHIP: Yes. This is a major problem. And I know we're covering a lot of topics. But it's all related, Glenn. This is a war against our way of life.

And Republicans better get busy providing alternative solutions. Both calling out the war. So that people know it and see it.

They all feel it. But also then, provide alternatives. Look, I put out five years ago, a 50-page document called the case for health care freedom.

And five years ago, I put the case for health care freedom two years ago. And that document outlines an array of options, where we empower patients, empower doctors, expand the savings account, expand direct primary care.

Give people tools, allow them to be able to control their care. And drive prices down, free up doctors, so you're not having corporate-owned hospitals. And insurance companies making your own decisions.

That's an environment that most American would prefer.

And nobody would be left out. Prices would go down. House sharing ministries can fill the void. Meta share and a lot of other options. And we can have the Shining City on the Hill.

Let's talk about that to the American people. Let's talk about driving housing prices down by eliminating private equity and all of these big corporate ownerships of local dirt in our communities. Allow only individuals to own homes in our dirts and our communities and farms to be locally owned by Texans. We can then have cattle that you grow in Texas, slaughter in Texas, put in stores in Texas, and eat by Texans. That's the way we ought to do things. I'm all for free trade. So are you. So are most of us that log free enterprise. 100 percent.

But I want to make sure that we don't have corporate decision makers with crony capitalist doctors from government that are regulated, telling us how to live. And then wonder why the socialists are on the march and wonder why Mamdani is elected.

RADIO

Mamdani’s FURIOUS victory speech reveals NYC's DARK future

New York City has elected Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, as its next mayor. But even liberals like CNN's Van Jones quickly realized that Mamdani's victory speech was much angrier than the "warm" and "calm" persona he had on the campaign trail. Glenn reviews this sudden shift in character and warns that Mamdani may have just admitted he wants to tear down capitalism...

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: I want to start with the analysis from Van Jones on the Mamdani speech last night. Listen to what he said.

VOICE: I think the Mamdani that we saw on the campaign trail who was a lot more calm, who was a lot warmer, who was a lot more embracing was not present in that speech. And I think that Mamdani is the one you hear from tonight. There are a lot of people trying to figure out, can I get on this train with him or not? Is he going to include me?

Or is he going to be more of a class warrior even in office?

I think he missed a chance tonight, to open up and bring more people into the tent.

I think his tone was sharp. I think he was using the microphone in a way that he was almost yelling. And that's not the Mamdani that we see in TikTok. The great interviews. And stuff like that.

I felt like there was a little bit of a character shift here, where the warm, open embracing guy, close to working with people, was not on stage tonight. There was some other voice on stage.

STU: Huh. Huh.

GLENN: Hmm.

GLENN: It's almost like a mask has come off. What a surprise.

STU: Yeah. Just quick recommendation for anyone in New York. If Mamdani tries to get you on a train, don't go.
(laughter)

STU: It's a terrible idea. Stay away from the train.

GLENN: Very good point, Stu.

I might have even gotten on to that train without even realizing. Very good point. Very good point.

STU: I don't think it's --

GLENN: No. No trains. No trains.

Okay. So here's Mamdani. And this is how angry. Listen to how angry he is when he's talking about Donald Trump. Listen to this.

VOICE: So, Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up!
(applauding)

GLENN: Just turn it up on the TV? Because that's something he said.

VOICE: We will hold landlords to account. Because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable, taking advantage of their tenets.
(applauding)

STU: Screaming.

VOICE: We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks.

GLENN: Corruption. Change the tax laws.

VOICE: We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them, become very small indeed!
(applauding)
New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants --
(applauding)

VOICE: -- worked by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant!
(applauding)

GLENN: A very angry immigrant, whose own horror says, he doesn't identify as an American. I mean, I -- can I just spend a minute on this?

Because he's absolutely right.

New York was built by immigrants. America was built by immigrants. I mean, unless you're a Native American, you're an immigrant. Okay. And I made the case, that you might have come from Asia, even if you're an American, you know, native.

You know, go back far enough, you weren't on this continent.

So -- so I agree, all built by immigrants.

But we have a difference now, of immigrants. Listen to this from Teddy Roosevelt. There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I don't refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the best Americans I've ever known were naturalized Americans. Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.

This is just as true of a man who puts native before the hyphen. As a man who puts German or Irish or English, or French before the hyphen.
Americanism is a matter of the spirit and the soul.
Our allegiance must be purely to the United States.

We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. Think about this. Think about this, and what's happening with the Somali communities.

Think about Minnesota. Think about Dearborn. Think about New York. Think about -- think about what's being said about -- and to immigrants, today!

If he is heartily and singly loyal to this republic, then no matter where he's born, he's just as good as an American as anyone else. The one absolute certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, Italian-Americans.

Notice, by the way, he's not attacking people of color. These are all people from Western Europe! So this isn't something new. And it's not about racism. Scandinavian. Yeah. Boy, you must hate white people. Those are the whitest white people on the planet, for the love of Pete.

The American who do not become Americans, and nothing else, are hyphenated Americans. And there ought to be no room for them in this country.

The man who calls himself an American citizen. And shows by his action, he's primarily the citizen in the life of our body politic. He has no place here. And the sooner he returns to the land in which he feels his real heart allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. This is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American, and nothing else.

I mean, you know, when he said that, in the early 1900s, he was talking about a whole different class of immigrants, race-wise. But it doesn't matter. Hyphenated American race.

If you are an American, you don't see race. People have in the past. And it's been wrong to do it. And you know who really saw that clearer than anyone else?

The progressives! Margaret Sanger, being one of them. The progressive movement!

They're the ones, who wanted to separate races.

For the love of Pete. So he's now angry, and he's -- he's jamming a wedge between Americans and immigrant Americans.

Listen to -- listen to the next cut here.

VOICE: As so often has occurred, the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour, that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour.

They want the people to fight --

GLENN: Okay. Stop for a second.

Stu, can you explain that?

Play that again. Explain this sentence to me.

Play it from the top.

VOICE: As has so often occurred, the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour. That their enemies are those earning $20 an hour.

GLENN: Stop.

What does that mean? What does that mean?

STU: I mean, the case is that -- I mean, Republicans -- you know, the Republican Party, the evil, rich people.

GLENN: The billionaires.

STU: The billionaires. Are saying -- are trying to convince everybody. That the problem in our country are the poor people.


GLENN: So -- so exactly the opposite of what he's doing.

He's trying to convince the people who are 20-dollar an hour, that the 30 to billionaire class is their problem.

Is their enemy.

STU: Yeah. Very true. You might find --

GLENN: A little bit. A little bit. Go ahead. Play the rest, please.

VOICE: They want the people to fight amongst ourselves, so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking a long broken system!

We refuse to let them dictate the rules of the game anymore!

They can play by the same rules as the rest of us.
(applauding)

GLENN: Yeah. Amen. I'm all for that.

VOICE: Together, we will usher in a generation of change.

And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears. Not the appeasement it craves.
(applauding)

GLENN: Now, he goes on, the very next sentence, which we didn't grab: After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it's the city that gave rise to him. If there's any way to terrify a despot, it's by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. How did Donald Trump accumulate power? How did he do that?

Capitalism. Capitalism. He accumulated power by making money. By creating businesses. By building, you know, New York. A lot of New York was built by Donald Trump. So that's how he accumulated power.

So what he's saying here, you want to talk about the mask coming off -- what he's saying here is when we to now dismantle that system of capitalism, because that's what gave him power.

One last cut, 47, please.

VOICE: After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump, how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him!
(applauding)

GLENN: Listen to this.

VOICE: If there's any way to terrify a despot, it's by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.

STU: They're so obsessed with this guy.

VOICE: This is not only how we stop Trump. It's how we stop the next one.

GLENN: It's amazing. It's going to be interesting to watch New York City over the next four years. Very, very interesting. Because he is -- he's going to be pushed by the left. They are going to demand that he does these things. And he wants to do them. So let's see what he gets done, and how many great changes are coming to that city.

RADIO

What the DESTRUCTION of New York means for the rest of us

New York City is likely to elect either Zohran Mamdani, a communist, or Andrew Cuomo, a failed governor, as mayor. Either way, it could destroy the city. So, how will this affect the rest of America? Former Trump economic advisor Stephen Moore joins Glenn to explain why he believes another mass migration out of New York is coming…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Stephen Moore is with us now. Stephen, how much time do you have with me today?

STEPHEN: As much as you want, Glenn. Great to hear your voice. Great to be with you.

I disagree with you on something you just said.

GLENN: Okay. All right. Let's start there.

STEPHEN: You know, I do think -- look, New York has lost two and a half million people on net over the last ten years, to other states. Almost two and a half million people.

Which is, what? Four congressional seats right there.

So there's a mass. The big story in America, Glenn. Right now. And people should go on our website. Vote With Your Feet. And you can see, just click on any two states. You can click on New York. And you can click on Texas. And it will show you the -- where the moving vans are going to and from. And also, how much money they're taking with them because we know the income of these people as well.

So New York has lost two and a half million people. And, by the way, half of those people came from New York City. So if -- did they elect a socialist and they raised the taxes, again, New York City already has the highest taxes in the United States in North America. So if they raise them again, on, quote, the rich, they won't be there any longer. And I'll make another prediction to you, Glenn.

Are you in Texas? Where are you now?
(laughter)

GLENN: It's like a shell game.
I never really know. I just moved last week. I left my business in Texas.

Because I am never going to sever myself from Texas. I left my business in Texas. I promised my wife about 400 years ago, that some take we would live by the beach. So we moved to Florida. Business in Texas.

STEPHEN: You moved from no income tax state. To another no income tax state.

GLENN: Yeah. Are you crazy? I'm not doing anything else?

I would have dug a canal from the Atlantic, all the way to Dallas, if they forced me to move to a tax state. Anyway...

STEPHEN: So anyway, I'm in Dallas today.

GLENN: I know.

STEPHEN: Where are you in Florida?

GLENN: I'm not saying that on the air. But I will tell you that we're going to have dinner, Stephen. When you get back into dinner, Stephen, we'll have dinner.

STEPHEN: So, anyway, now I lost my train of concentration.

GLENN: So we were talking about the people that are moving and the tax base.

STEPHEN: Yeah. So basically, that's why I believe -- look, 1 million is probably a long shot.

But I think you're going to see a lot of wealth move out of New York. Now, here's the thing. You probably are aware of this. But about two months ago, the -- Texas has their own stock exchange. So we had the New York Stock Exchange for 150 years. Now you've got the Texas Stock Exchange, which I believe is in Dallas.

GLENN: I know.

STEPHEN: I believe, if they raise these taxes again, you pay 17 percent income tax in New York City.

GLENN: Jeez.

STEPHEN: Who is going to do that?

GLENN: My gosh.

STEPHEN: After 40 percent federal tax. So people will move. And I'll give you one -- one example.

Do you know Ken Griffin? He's the billionaire who created Citadel.

GLENN: Yeah.

STEPHEN: He's a big guy. Free market guy. And he was the single, biggest charitable giving in the city of Chicago. He gave to the Art Institute. He gave to the homeless shelters. He gave to the food kitchens and the museums and so on.

I mean, he was -- he was by far the biggest donor to all of the charities.

Well, finally, they kept raising, raising taxes in Chicago. And as you probably know, he moved out of Chicago. And he moved to Palm Beach.

Florida. And so then the interesting part of this story is, it put a 50 million-dollar hold in the Illinois budget.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

STEPHEN: And all the -- there's a funny story in the Chicago business. That all of a sudden, charities like, why isn't he donating to us anymore?

Why isn't he living there anymore?

So my point is, you chase the evil rich out of your city and your state. You pay a high price for that. By the way, he took several thousand, you know, jobs with him. So when you -- when you hear stoke the rich -- you know, the rich are -- as the old saying goes, "The rich aren't rich because they're stupid."

GLENN: Right.

So let me ask you this, Stephen. Because it used to be that New York was -- I mean, was the capital of the whole world.

STEPHEN: Yeah. Yeah. Financial capital.

GLENN: And because of the stock exchange. How real is the loss of the New York Stock Exchange. As something like the Texas stock exchange?

Is that something that really could actually happen?

STEPHEN: Yeah. It could happen. And look, the truth is that the New York Stock Exchange, even today, isn't anything like it was '60s, '70s, '80s, just like I mentioned I'm from Chicago. Remember the movie Trading Places, they're trading. It doesn't really exist anymore. Because that's all done by computers and electronically. So the trading floors aren't the same as they were. So Wall Street is just a shadow of what it once was. But what I'm saying is, today in America, in Dallas, Texas, there are more financial services jobs than there are in New York City.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

STEPHEN: That's amazing!

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

So --

STEPHEN: It's happening.

GLENN: So how long -- how much more, Stephen, how much more can New York take before it's -- it's no longer the financial capital?

How much more -- how many people have to move?

What has to happen, for it to really understand, wow. We made a huge mistake here?

STEPHEN: You would think they would have gotten that message already.

GLENN: No.

STEPHEN: And one of the things that you first did your show, many, many years ago. You were in New York.

So you're familiar with New York. And when was that? In the '90s when were you --

GLENN: In the 2000 -- 2000s. Mid-2000, you know, 2005. 2010.

STEPHEN: Yeah. Because I remember when Rudy -- this is an important point because I know you have a lot of listeners all over the country in New York and New Jersey. In the New York area.

So when Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor, New York was a mess. And you could see every week, because I was working at the Wall Street Journal at the time. Every week, you could see the improvement in the city. He got rid of the crime. He got rid of the graffiti. He got rid of the drug dealers. He got rid of -- he lowered the taxes. It wasn't complicated, Glenn. I mean, this wasn't rocket surgery.

GLENN: I know.

STEPHEN: This was obvious stuff.

And New York was New York again. And it was booming. And what's sad about this election that's happening today, is if Mamdani wins, they will reverse every single thing that Rudy did. And they will be back in the ditch. How stupid would people be to fall for that!

And part of the problem, Glenn, quite frankly, something you and I have talked about for years. Is our education system. You have 24-year-olds are voting, they think socialism works. Where? Show me. Where?

GLENN: Yeah. So what happens if he is elected? I mean, how -- what does it mean to people who have never gone to New York City?

Is -- is the loss of New York City to a Mamdani, is that going to affect everybody else's life?

STEPHEN: That's a good question. you're there in Florida.

Florida has gained. I really want people to go to this website.

Because it's amazing.

So Florida, under a great, great, great governor, Ron DeSantis. And you had a great governor, Rick Scott, before him. Florida, are you ready? Are you sitting down, Glenn? Florida has imported over the ten-year period, one trillion dollars of income from people coming in from other states. $1 trillion. It's the biggest mass migration ever in the history of this country.

GLENN: Unbelievable.

STEPHEN: And, by the way, people are not just living in New York. What you know other states they're leaving?

California.

GLENN: I think New York is moving to Florida, and California is moving to Texas.

STEPHEN: Moving to Texas, exactly.

And so you're just bleeding these blue states. That's why I don't get it.

So the thing that worries me. I was thinking about this, a lot over the past couple of days. If these states vote the wrong way, the only way that New York even survives, fiscally is with another massive federal bailout.

GLENN: Bailout. I know.

STEPHEN: How are you they going to pay their bills?

GLENN: They're not. They're not. And, you know, that's -- this is what I've said for a long time.

You know, the Constitution is not a suicide PAC. And California and New York and Chicago are going to eventually need giant bailouts.

And why should I pay for that know. I didn't live in those places. I didn't live there for a reason.

STEPHEN: Right.

GLENN: Right. That's taxation without representation.

I don't want to bail them out.

It was -- it's their fault, they did this. I've always wanted to live in California.

I never have, because it was insane. I knew that it was not going to work. So why do I have to pay for it?

STEPHEN: Exactly. Bingo. And incidentally, you're right. You can understand why people might leave New York for Florida. You know, in Florida, it's beautiful weather. In Florida, and rains a lot. And probably in New York. But how do you screw up California?

I mean, California is one of the probably most idyllic places in the planet. And people are living. This is the first time in 250 years people have been -- more people are leaving California than going to California. That's never happened before!

STU: That's unbelievable. Unbelievable.

STEPHEN: Yeah.

GLENN: Okay. So can you spend some time with me --

STEPHEN: Can I make one more point about this?

GLENN: Yeah.

STEPHEN: The governor of California is now the lead candidate to run on the Democratic ticket for president: Gavin Newsom. The guy who is -- what's he going to run on? "I'll do for America what I did for California?"

GLENN: Yes.

And so many people will buy into it!

I mean, I don't know what's wrong. It's so frustrating, because you try to apply logic. And you're like, but none of this makes sense! None of it. What are you doing?

I would love to be able to sit down and have a conversation, but none of this makes sense.