RADIODecember 15, 2023

DOJ CHARGING journalist who DEBUNKED its Jan 6 narrative?!

The Department of Justice and FBI have ordered Blaze Media investigative journalist to self-surrender himself for unknown reasons related to January 6th. Baker, who expects to be charged or even prevented from traveling to Washington D.C., joins Glenn to explain what he knows. Baker lays out why he believes the DOJ is retaliating against him for his reporting on the events of January 6th, which has exposed huge cracks in the government's narrative. Plus, he explains the story that he believes caused the DOJ to act.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: All right. We have Steve Baker on the phone.

Blaze Media, investigative journalist, who has been looking into the January 6th debacle and has made massive headway.

And it's my understanding, that Steve and the team were up in Washington. Here in the last couple of weeks. I think some of them just got back yesterday.

Spent a lot of time with the January 6th footage.

Full access now. Because of Steve.

And some news stories are coming.

But what a surprise, Steve.

You were notified by the US Department of Justice.

STEVE: Yes. Good morning. That was a great good morning I had yesterday.

GLENN: I bet.

STEVE: Yeah. We're actually here right now.

I'm actually talking to you from the secure video room. At one of the congressional office buildings in DC. We have our Blaze guys right here right now. Working on the consoles. And we've been here all week.

We're not going to stop working. I'm not going to quit doing what I'm doing. And we will just move forward, regardless of what they throw at us.

GLENN: Hang on.

I want to hear what you are finding, if you can. Give us any kind of hint on what's next coming our way.

Tell me, what are you being charged with now?

STEVE: Well, they notified my attorney yesterday morning.

That I needed to self-present. Or self-surrender myself to Raleigh North Carolina.

On Tuesday or Thursday. Arrange for that to happen on Tuesday. When we ask for what the actual charges will be. We were told by the FBI agent, that he -- quote, unquote, didn't know. And that he wouldn't know, until the magistrate signed off on the warrant.

Now, they are telling us, that I'm going to just be processed.

And then released on my own recognizance.

I will not be detained. I will not be held overnight.

Then, of course, I will be subject to whatever the magistrate decides to put on me.

I don't know if that will include surrendering of my devices.

Because, again, we haven't seen the warrant.

I don't know if that's going to include a surrendering of my weapons. I don't know if that will include any gag orders of any types.

I don't know if that will include any prescriptions that will prevent me from traveling to DC.

That's usually what happens to the January 6 event. One of the first things they do, is they prevent travel to DC.

GLENN: What a surprise. What a surprise, Steve.

What a surprise. Have you downloaded to the rest of the team, so the work can continue?

Have you downloaded what you know, and what you're looking for?

So the rest of the team, can continue?

If you can't go in?

STEVE: We have multiple dead man switches. There's your answer to that.

GLENN: And, by the way, dead man switch. We know, Steve. He's not suicidal at all. At all.

And apparently, can't hang himself with paper sheets.

So he has that going for him.

Well, please keep us informed.

You have to surrender on Tuesday. I know TheBlaze will have stories next week on this.

Is there any doubt in your mind.

Because you were contacted by the Justice Department. What?

About six months after January 6th. Because you were there.

STEVE: That's correct.

Yeah, they contacted me in July of '21. I did my first -- my only FBI interview in August of '21.

We were notified by the Department of Justice a month later. The week before Thanksgiving.
In November of '21, we were told that I would be charged within the week at that time.

And then they developed off the map. We didn't hear from them, until 20 months later. Which was August of this year. When I got a subpoena, grand jury subpoena, for all of my January 6th videos.

GLENN: And what does your attorney think, this is -- that was about?

STEVE: Well, that was interesting. Because grand juries are not convened for misdemeanor charges. They're convened only for felony investigations.

Now, that doesn't mean. Because we don't know it. They won't tell us anything. Maybe they just wanted my video for somebody else's investigation.

Or maybe it was applicable to what they were looking at for me.

And then there's no assurance that even though, there was a grand jury looking at me or the videos, that they will apply a felony account.

Look, we can assure the world right now, because actually, one of our guys right here, is harvesting every second of me in the Capitol right now.

We're going to show the world in advance, long before this thing ever goes to trial or any such nonsense. That obviously at any point, at any time, when I was on campus, there was never any violence. Never any property damage. There was never any untoward behavior. I didn't wear Trump gear. I didn't parade. I wasn't carrying a flag.

GLENN: You didn't stand on a bench, did you? God forbid.

STEVE: I did do that. I did do that. There is a federal law against that.

GLENN: I know there is.

STEVE: So I may have to plea down to bench standing.

GLENN: But wait. You did that not as a protestor, as a journalist, to get a bird's eye view, right?

STEVE: Yes! That's exactly what I did. I got up and away from the crowd, so I could record what was going on. And that was in the crypt, below the rotunda, where I did that.

And so it's going to be an interesting presentation, well in advance of whatever the government is putting together. Because we will be able to lay it out, and show side by side. A

That there were 60 other journalists.

That we were aware of, that travel through the same breached doors.

And, of course, I didn't arrive until after several hundred people were in the Capitol.

There were 60 other journalists.

Many of whom went through those doors long before I did.

Or were at that initial breach, that have never been charged.

It really comes down to who they were submitting their stories and videos to at the time.

And obviously, you know, whatever -- whatever the narrative was. The headline of the story was, like the New Yorker story. With Luke Mogul said, among the insurrectionists -- well, then he probably got a Get Out of Jail Free card for that headline.

GLENN: Well, but wait a minute. But you had your video with HBO. They're not necessarily a flag waver of the right.

STEVE: Yeah. They licensed. They licensed my videos. New York Times licensed my videos. As did many other news agencies around the world.

That was through my agency.

GLENN: Okay. So can I ask you just a couple of Frank questions. Because we really just got to know each other recently.

And, you know, are you a hardened Nazi lover that is, I don't know, you know, burning crosses?

STU: You don't lead conversations with this question. You waited this long to ask.

GLENN: I know. I know.

We have gotten to a, are you a member of the Nazi part of our friendship yet?

STEVE: Glenn, I usually get dinner and a couple of drinks before I get asked questions like that.
(laughter)
No. Absolutely not. I am -- if you -- if you analyze my politics, I am what I refer to as a pragmatic Libertarian.

And I have never had any associations with any militias.

Any 3 percenters. Any Proud Boys.

Oath Keepers or otherwise.

And I have basically kept to myself. And kept to my musical career for most of my life.

As a trumpet player and a singer.

And my journalism was my side hustle, as they say, for 20, 25 years.

And that was accelerated when COVID came to town. And I was not allowed to work in the music business for a year and a half. So I moved my journalism. And my investigative research into the captain's chair of my life. And then January 6th happened.

So that became a primary focus of what I've been working on.

GLENN: Well, we are obviously going to be following your story. And every indication is that exactly what you've said. And as you say, our team is there, looking at all the video footage of you, right now.

To make sure that we have the story and can get it out.

But also, all the other things that you are looking into.

Can you give us a sneak peak into anything else you're working on for January 6th?

STEVE: Yeah. I can tell you, that we are continuing our stories on the Capitol Police.

There's a real focus there.

In fact, I don't have it -- a second's worth of hesitation to tell you, that the story that we came out with last Thursday. Friday. That directly showed Capitol Police cover-up in corruption.

At the highest level. Probably triggered this action from the DOJ.

GLENN: Go over that story, for anybody who didn't see it.

STEVE: Yeah. The story is a particular police officer, who we have been covering. Issued an anonymous letter on Capitol Police letterhead back in May of '21. It was highly partisan, highly political. Major violation of the Hatch Act.

Major violation of the Capitol Police rules and regulations for their officers. And he was prompted to write this letter.

It was a political screed against the Republicans, that were opposed to Nancy Pelosi's January 6th select committee.

And as a result of a prompting he got from Representative Raskin, of all people.

And that was a situation where he took Raskin's prompting, and went and created this letter.
And then also solicited help from the Capitol press pool. And then he had actually some female reporters in the press pool, assist him in crafting this anonymous letter.

And when this was released on May 19th and May 20th, it was discovered the next day.

Because the cop is not very bright. He used this Capitol Police email, and he used Capitol Police printers to print off hard copies. And so he was brought in, and his investigation began the next day.

And we revealed that not only did he initially lie about the action that he had taken, using Capitol Police resources at the time, to craft a highly partisan political anonymous letter, misrepresenting the department. That this was what would be called a terminable offense. He should have been fired on the spot. There's a problem with that, though, Glenn.

We're talking about Harry Dunn, the hero of January 6th as the media has put forth.

So rather than taking disciplinary action against him. The -- the Capitol Police spiked that report.

They let him off with a 530 warning.

Meaning, that was just a warning, just a slap on the wrist. Don't do that again Harry.

And he got by with it.

Rather than being an interminable event. He was not disciplined at all.

And therefore, was allowed to testify in those oath keeper trials.

And, of course, we know where that goes from there. So you see the he connectivity there.

GLENN: Go ahead. Go ahead.

STEVE: Just to finish that up. One of the things I've been able to do. Through sources over the past couple of years, I do have and have been able to capture some internal communications between oath keeper leadership. And we know that they are livid.

In fact, they -- on Friday's report, when I released the names involved. Harry Dunn. Representative Jamie Raskin, Whitney Wild from CNN, who participated in this.

GLENN: Jeez.

STEVE: Anonymous letter. When I put all this together and published that. The chief counsel for the Capitol Police, actually called me that Twitter guy, Steve baker.

For releasing this information. And so we're seeing. We're learning. We're knowing about these kinds of things that are happening.

And we know they are upset.

And his name is Ted -- I think it's -- it's Tobias or something like that.

He's the chief counsel. He's a former federal prosecutor. Former assistant US attorney.

And he works with the Department of Justice on these cases, related to January 6th. And so we're pretty sure, we don't -- we don't have to stretch this too far to imagine, that this is probably what triggered this action against me after two and a half years.

GLENN: Steve Baker, investigative journalist, Blaze Media contributor, and now famously that Twitter guy. Thank you for everything.

Steve, we will be following this obviously very closely. And good luck. Good luck. Stay safe, please.

STEVE: Will do. Thank you, Glenn.

GLENN: Got it. We'll keep you in our prayers.

To our veterans...

Americans are bad at saying "thank you." So, this Veterans Day, Glenn wanted to take the time to make it clear: "Your country remembers you. Your country needs you. And your country is grateful in a way that language will never quite capture. Thank you."

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Hello, America. It's Veterans Day, and I want to start there in 60 seconds. First, debt is like gravity. It pulls. It pulls back on you constantly, until one day you realize, you're not moving forward anymore. And the worst part of it, most of it is just accepted. We call it normal. We make the minimum payments. We don't -- the rates come down. And we keep spinning that same old wheel, wondering why we're tired all the time. But it doesn't have to be that way.

American Financing is helping people all over the country restructure their mortgage. You know, pay off high-interest debt. And regain real financial freedom.

They're family-owned. They work for you. Not the banks. Their mortgage consultants don't earn commissions. They take the time to listen and build a plan that actually fits your life.

And it will help you keep more of what you earned.

Because every dollar you save. Is a piece of your life you're getting back. It's American Financing.

They're helping you keep more of it. And in a world where everything is getting more and more expensive, that kind of control isn't just smart, it's a little bit liberating and empowering.

The start of something much, much better. Please, call American Financing at 800-906-2440. 800-906-2440. Or you can go to AmericanFinancing.net. That's AmericanFinancing.net.
(music)

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GLENN: It's Veteran's Day, and I want to speak to one person, right now.

You!

The one who raised a hand and swore an oath that didn't end when your enlistment did. It was an oath that was older than your commanding officer. Older than the branch you served in. Older than even the nation itself. Because what you swore to defend was not a government. Unlike every other oath that every military man takes all over the world, you swore an oath to an idea.

And today, in a country that sometimes feels dizzy from spinning arguments, I think we should pause and anchor ourselves again to you.

To the men and women who tethered this republic to reality, when the storms came.

We have an amazing story.

If you really know the story of Lexington when the farmers left their plows and damp fields. Because liberty whispered their names.

They met at their church. Their preacher met them out.

They didn't have a chance of them winning.

I think of the -- the Marines who fought through the gas and the mud until the Germans called them devil dogs.

The beaches of Normandy, where boys who had never even see France saw eternity in a single morning on a single beach!

And the men who fought in Korea. And Vietnam. Kuwait. Fallujah. The Skies over Baghdad.

Every generation has a chapter that is written in blood and grit, and it was written by people who never asked for a statue. All they wanted was a chance to come home! And some didn't. And their stories end on foreign soil or carved into white markers in rows so straight, it almost breaks you.

But their gift to us, never ends.

At least, as long as we remember them and you.

Because every -- every free breath we take is borrowed from them! And you. If you're a veteran listening right now, maybe you came home to a grateful nation. Maybe you quietly slipped into civilian life, wondering if anybody saw the weight that you were carrying.

No matter your circumstance, know this: You need to know this.

Millions see you! Millions are grateful. You changed the destiny of my children. And they will never know your name.

You changed my life, in ways you will never understand.

I wouldn't be able to be here, and say these things if it weren't for you!

We take -- we take all of this so lightly. It was you that stood between tyranny and who those couldn't defend themselves.

Have you kept the promise. Most citizens like me. We never make. We never have to make.

Because always did. And you continue to do so.

It's amazing to me, when you are off into war, most times, not every time, we think about you all the time.

We want to give you the very best when you're at war. And then you come home, and then, eh, and you have the worst of our health care. I mean, at least mine was go to Canada to get the health care. I don't know if it's any better up there!

We're not really good at saying thank you. Let me just take just a second, to say it plainly and clearly to you. Thank you. Thank you for walking into the unknown when the rest of us stayed home. I don't know what your motivation was, when you joined. But thank you for believing that liberty was worth more than comfort.

Thank you for the nights you didn't sleep. Thank you for the holidays you missed. Thank you for the kids you didn't see born because you were someplace else.

Thank you for the friends you still mourn. That's why you did it.

Because you're a brotherhood.

Thank you and all your brothers.

Thank you for every scar. The ones we can see, and the ones we will never see.

Thank you -- thank all the families. Thank you for what you've done. The quiet platoon behind every soldier and sailor and airman and Marine and Coast Guardsman, because you served too.

Freedom has always been a family burden. And look at what those families are like. They're usually remarkable!

We live in a world right now that feels -- feels really loud and divided. And suspicious.

And it is!

But, I mean, wanted to take a minute on this day, and let everything just be quiet.

Gratitude has a way of silencing nonsense.

And I want you to know, how grateful I am.

So before we got back into the headlines again, before the noise rises back up, let me end this with the only words that really matter, to every veteran of the United States armed forces. Your country remembers you. Your country needs you. And your country is grateful in a way, language will never quite capture.

Thank you!

The government just CONFIRMED they’ve been ROBBING you for 15 years

Buried in a recent New York Times op-ed about the end of the government shutdown is the quietest confession you’ll ever hear from the elites: "Why can’t Republicans just accept reality? These [Obamacare] healthcare subsidies are working." But who are they working for? Healthcare prices are still incredibly high! Glenn reminds us what "subsidies" really are: money "borrowed" from the future to hide the failures of the present, and lining the insurance companies' pockets.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: So is the shutdown over? I mean, it has to go to the House, and now the House is saying that they're not going to pass it.

STU: Well, the House should be -- I don't think there's any real belief that they won't pass it. The hurdle was the Senate. And they got through the Senate. Now we get to watch the ongoing democratic Civil War, about whether or not Chuck Schumer will be removed or not.

GLENN: It's crazy. It is crazy.

So, you know, let me go through something that came in from the New York Times. What were the Democrats thinking?

It starts out, in this op-ed, back in September, when I was reporting an article, Democrats should shut down the government, I kept hearing the same warning from veterans of past shutdown fights.

President controls the bully pulpit, and parts of the government will stay open, and he decides what parts close.

It's very, very hard for the opposition party to win a shutdown. Blah, blah.

Now they have brokered a deal over the weekend, as the Senate Democrats broke ranks and negotiated a deal to end the shutdown, and return for, if we're being honest, very little according to the New York Times.

The guts of the deal are this. Food assistance, both SNAP and WIC will get a bit more funding. There will be a few more modest concessions on spending levels elsewhere in the government.

Laid off federal workers will be rehired, and furloughed federal workers will be given back pay.

Most of the government is funded, only until the end of January. Get ready, we'll be doing this again.

The deal does nothing to extend the aspiring affordable care tax credits, which Democrats essentially have shut down the government for, in the first place. First of all, it's not the affordable care tax credit.

That's -- that's not why you shut it down.
There are tax credits, yes.

But this is different. These were the government subsidies. Leave it to the New York Times. Let me lay this really clear. Democrats demanded a continuation of the enhanced subsidies for the American care act. Okay?

They were temporarily expanded during the pandemic. These were not the tax credits. These were extra subsidies stuffed into the 2021 American rescue plan, as an emergency measure. Remember, the one, we had to pass this in the middle of the night. And nobody could read it. Well, that's what it was in it. And these subsidies lowered the premiums more than usual. Expanded the eligibility far above the original ACA income caps. And was always designed to be temporary just for COVID.

So if you were in COVID, and I lost your job, and you didn't have health care or whatever, you could get on the ACA.

Even though, you're -- you're -- your salary was higher than it would be accepted.

Normally. You could get on it.

But once -- once they created this, Washington does what Washington always does, and they won't let it go.

Okay.

It's not the tax credit. To understand why this shutdown will end with such a whimper, you need to understand the strange role the ACA subsidies played in it. Democrats said the shutdown was about subsidies. But for most of them, it wasn't. This is the New York Times saying this.

It was about Trump's authoritarianism. It was about showing their base and themselves, that they could fight back. It was about treating an abnormal political moment, abnormally.

The ACA subsidies emerged as the shutdown demand because they could keep the caucus sufficiently united. They put Democrats on the right side of public opinion, even though self-identified MAGA voters wanted the subsidies extended.

And they held the quivering Senate coalition together. You shut the government down, with the Democratic caucus that you have, not with the Democratic caucus that you want.

But the shutdown was built on a cracked foundation. There were Senate Democrats who didn't want a shutdown at all. There were Senate Democrats who did want a shutdown. But thought it was strange to make their demands so narrow. Was winning on health care premiums really winning the right fight?

Shouldn't Democrats really vote to fund the government, turning towards authoritarianism, as long as health insurance subsidies are preserved? And what if winning the health care fight was actually a political gift to Trump. Now, this is the New York Times.

Absent a fix, the average health insurance premium for 20 million Americans were more than double. The premium shock will hit red states really hard.

Trump's long time pollster had released a survey of competitive house districts. Showing that letting the tax credits expire. Might be lethal to Republican effort to see hold the House. Why were the Democrats fighting so hard to neutralize their best issue in 2026. The political logic of this shutdown fight was inverted. If Democrats got tax credits extended, if they won. They would be solving a huge electoral problem for the Republicans. If Republicans successfully allowed the tax credits to expire if they won, which would be handing the Democrats a cudgel which would beat them in the next elections. This is unbelievable!

I mean, they're saying -- they're saying it out loud. You know what I mean?

They go on in this, to say, you know. Quote, why can't Republicans just accept reality. These health care subsidies are working.

No. They're not. No, they're not.

They are propping. Okay?

They're scaffolding. Holding up a structure that was never sound.

They were a COVID-era brace jammed under a tottering wall. And now, the same architects who swore the House -- the House was safe. They're telling you the splintered wood was actually part of the design. What?

This is the power the mainstream media has. The press still has over mainstream Americans. It's kind of like a hypnotic choke hold.

You say the word subsidy enough times with the right sad piano music under it, and suddenly, we forget what subsidies are. Here's what subsidies are, gang!

Money borrowed from the Chinese. But we're not on the hook for it. We're not on the hook for it.

Money borrowed from the Chinese, from the future, to hide the failures of the present on decisions that were made in the past. Okay?

And now we're told, if we don't just keep borrowing forever, America will collapse. No. What collapses is this crazy illusion. Let's be clear about something the op-ed never will admit. The Affordable Care Act didn't fail because of Republicans. It failed because math is a stubborn thing because insurance is not health care.

Because a program bent around bureaucrats and middlemen will always cost more and deliver less!
We have been subsidizing the symptoms. We never treated the disease here. And now, when a shutdown touches those subsidies, suddenly we're told the sky is cracking. TikTok is flooded with panic videos scripted by algorithms that can't really be trusted.

The influencers don't even know what they're defending. They just know fear pays better than the truth. And here the truth. The system was failing long before Trump. Long before Biden. Long before COVID. And maybe, just maybe, this moment is not a crisis, but an opening.

You know, I've said this for months now.

The greatest political opportunity of our lifetime now, is health care reform! Real, actual reform.

Not another Washington quick fix. Not more subsidiary easy or anything else. Not a Band-Aid over a bullet wound. But the Republicans won't do anything about it. I believe, and I say this without hesitation, I think. That Trump and RFK Jr. together may be the only combination force in American politics with the will to take a flamethrower to the bureaucracy, that is choking doctors and nurses. The pharmaceutical lobby, the insurance labyrinth, the 50 states wrapped in 50 different versions of red tape. All of it has to be confronted. And here's why Trump can't afford to miss this: If he solves even a quarter of this problem, if he can find the way to lower costs, if he increases access. If he frees the market to actually work across state lines, he'll not only win in 2026.

He'll be launching a momentum, that will carry Vance into the presidency in 2028.

This is the key here!

But he has to remember something Washington has long forgotten. The people he's negotiating with, they don't want a deal. They don't fear collapse.

They come it. They have been playing a slow motion Colour Revolution. One that the company has to be impoverished. Has to be frightened. And has to be divided to accept the new power structures.

Colour Revolutions only work if your people are hungry, if they're afraid, and they believe the people in the head of the government are authoritarian.

When that happens, you can have a Colour Revolution. And every day, America does not break. Every day, the economy still stands. Every day, people wake up and realize their lives are not as hopeless as the media insists.

The revolutionaries lose their leverage. So the shutdown is not the crisis.

The crisis is the addiction to government medicine. So here's the battle line that matters, I think, most right now: While the press spins, you know, panic, Trump has to gather the brightest minds. The innovators, the disrupters. The people who build things, rather than manage decline. That's what he does best. You know, if Elon Musk could do for NASA, what Washington could not. Then why can't we find. Maybe even get Elon Musk. Why can't we unleash the same kind of thinking on health care.

It's time for radical thinking!

Imagine a system where your doctor spends more time listening, than actually checking boxes.

Imagine competition across state lines. Imagine prices that behave like normal prices because the market is finally allowed to work and government doesn't have its finger on the scale.

Imagine freeing the nurses and the physicians from the paperwork prisons they're in. And letting them practice medicine again.

This isn't utopian. That's just uncaptured America. The America before the bureaucratic glacier, settled over absolutely everything in our lives.

Trump is the one that can do this. He's -- he's hitting home runs, grand slams, all -- all the time.

All the time.

Health care is the crack in the wall, where sunlight is still getting through. If you solve this, if you solve the pressure and you -- you lower the pressure on the engine behind the Colour Revolution, you win!

You win. I'm not even talking about election.

You save the republic.

You solve this.

And you solve the fear that drives half of our political dysfunction.

Washington thinks the shutdown is a battlefield. It's not!

The battlefield is health care. The future is decided there. And the man who breaks that system open. And let's Americans breathe again, will shape this country for a generation.

And the only guy to do it, is Donald Trump.

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

They're WATCHING You... The Terrifying Truth about Phone Surveillance

What if your phone knows what you’ll do before you do? Glenn Beck and former Navy SEAL Erik Prince expose the terrifying reality of modern surveillance, from the government’s secret data networks to Big Tech’s behavioral tracking systems. A global “surveillance capitalism” industry has been born, merging private corporations with intelligence agencies. Today, every app, ad, and algorithm harvests your movements, conversations, and even your thoughts. This conversation reveals how smartphones have become digital soldiers quartered in your home, and how privacy, freedom, and free will are vanishing in the age of data control.

Watch the FULL Interview HERE

America’s Economy Has CANCER - The Brutal Reality of What Trump NEEDS to Do Now

Glenn Beck warns that America’s economy is suffering from a deeper disease... one that can’t be cured by printing money, free checks, or political spin. With inflation rising, housing unaffordable, and healthcare collapsing under government control, Beck argues the nation faces a “cancer” that only painful but honest reform can heal. He and Stu Burguiere break down why short-term fixes like subsidies and stimulus will only fuel the crisis, and why the only real solution lies in deregulation, competition, and courage. Will Americans endure the hard medicine needed to save the nation, or turn to socialism out of desperation?

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Welcome to the Glenn Beck Program.

Stu does not share my -- my optimism. And I -- you know, I think that's too strong of a word. I'm not optimistic.

I am hopeful that someone in Washington, on our side understands what we're facing here. That health care is the biggest win!

It's the biggest win. And totally winnable.

STU: Yeah. And I do think -- if -- you know, if it was the top priority of Donald Trump. I think, he would be able to move Republicans toward trying to come up with something, I guess.

But I don't show much optimism on that. Because as I was going through that whole scenario, it wasn't just that we said these rates would go up, and that the Affordable Care Act wouldn't be affordable and gave all of the reasons that wound up playing out with risk pools and everything else.

And it wasn't also that we would say, hey. They're going to try to solve this by more government subsidiary easy. And more dependence on government.

We said all that stuff. And that's what we just talked about.

But other thing we said was that after this thing got passed, the Republicans would bail on opposing it. We would no longer have an opposition. We're now to the part of the story where the right-wing position is just normal Obamacare.

And the left-wing position is new expand, fancy, times ten Obamacare. The question of whether we triple down on Obamacare.

Or double down on it. That's now a conservative position.

GLENN: Okay. So let me give you some hope.

I talked to Dr. Oz. And he said, they're introducing something here in the next couple of months.

Should be, any time now.

And it will be done at the state level. And it will be to stop all the barriers from state to state.

And you get -- you get your -- your -- your funding for different programs if you get rid of those barriers for your insurance companies.

And if you don't, well, you don't get your funding. And so they will be incentivized to do it.

So I do think that there's some thinking about this, that's going on, with RFK and Dr. Oz.

In fact, let's see if we can get them on. Maybe I'll go up to Washington and do a podcast with him.

Because I think this is the big win here. Because if you look, you have to -- you have to change the life of people, in the next 15 months. Twelve months, if you want to win the election!

And if you -- if you want to win with J.D. Vance. You're going to have to do it in the next 18 months, at the very minimum, okay?

It's going to get harder and harder to do it.

So you have -- you have the things. What are the levers the president has in front of him?

Housing. What is the problem with the housing market?

The housing market, there's a couple of problems.

One, we don't have -- we have a shortage of housing. Okay. Because everybody freaked out. You know, 2008, we had a housing glut. Now, maybe we should go to other way.

So we didn't build enough houses. So now we have this giant housing shortage.

So can the president fix this one quickly?

No. Millions of houses need to be built. And how is he going to do it?

Unless there's a land grab, okay?

Unless he opens up federal land, which we saw how that one went. So he can't really fix the housing thing. He could help it, by saying, "Hey, BlackRock, you guys stop buying houses."

But how do you do that?

I mean, is that the right thing to do? I mean, it's the right thing to do for the people. Constitutionally, can you do that?

I don't know. I don't think so.

The next cost that people are feeling. Electricity. What are you going to do with that?

Well, we know that he's building power plants. Or he is -- he is letting the red tape go, on the power plants.

So if you want to build a power plant, you can build a power plant, in record time.

But that, again, is 18, 24, 36 months away. Minimum! Before you have new power plants, where you'll start to see your electricity costs go down. So you can't do that. Food costs. What is he going to do?

Import cheaper food. That's not a good idea.

So what are you -- how do you affect the average person's money? Well, you can send them free money. Which means, we have to print more.

He's going to send free money. It's the money that he's been taking in from the trade barriers.

So he's saying, he's going to send a $2,000 check to people. And that's the first time I've ever seen a check where the money was actually money.

That we had. Not printed money.

But that's all you can do. You can even do that. That's all you can do. Because you can't print money. You can't have a stimulus. Or you will Jack the prices of everything up.

And you're in the same loop over and over and over again.

The only place where the government has the tools, has enough sway, Donald Trump could do this.

To start breaking this thing up.

Is health care. And that could change things pretty much overnight.

Within 12 months, if he acted today, within 12 months, you would start to see prices come down. You would start to see competition.

You would start to see some sort of relief. But what else does he have, Stu. What else can he do, that will change people's lives. And he knows he has to do that.

STU: Well, I mean, I -- generally, I think I agree with most of that.

I think that the health care is one, you could do.

Again, that's something you sign up for on an annual basis.

Even if the prices did drop, it would take a while for that to come in.

The easiest way to do this -- and he's, by the way, done a lot of this -- is deregulation. You know, I think what's happening with some of that. And we're not seeing tons and tons of results from that, is because I think he's doing things on the other side as well.

That are affecting prices the opposite way. So we're not going to see massive drops.

Of course, a lot of this -- there's a lot of big promises that are being made. When you talk about prices coming down, really fast. It's not always achievable.

The president of the United States. We said this for 100 million years, I feel like again, we're on repeat here. The president of the United States is not the guy that sets prices. That's not his job, right? He doesn't micromanage the economy.
He can do things that can help the economy. I think what's happening now, as you're pointing out. I think this is the desperation a little bit seeping into our politics.

Is that there were -- Trump won the election with a lot of people who had faith in him. Not because he was good on even the border or on -- you know -- you know, trans kids. You know, trans men playing women's sports. It was about -- it was that affordability issue. He was really good on that.

People believed that they would see an economy like they saw in 2018 to 2019, in his first term. And we're just so far, not really seeing that.

Now, there's a lot to unwind. From where Joe Biden was. And the way these prices work. When it comes to inflation. Is not necessarily that prices drop down.

That's what is so devastating about a long-term inflation like the one we got from Joe Biden.

The prices get to a set level.

You don't necessarily bring those prices down. As much as, you slow the increase.

Which is difficult.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

STU: Again, one of the focuses of Trump's economic plan is to try to draw a lot of these products to be made in the United States.

As you point out, that is a long-term process.

You're talking about way after Donald Trump is -- is out of office, before you're seeing the -- what -- the potential theoretical benefits of new factories being built in the United States.

It's going to be to take a long time for that to work, if you believe it's going to work. When you're talking about the other side of that. Which is, you know, increasing prices, based on different taxes and such.

You're -- you're winding up with a situation where you're taking the medicine, and you're waiting for those results to kick in over multiple periods of years.

So I think the way he can do a lot of this stuff.

The best thing he can do in a quick way. Is cutting regulation.

You can cut out a lot of this stuff, to increase the speed of the improvement. Like, you want to build a new power plant. He can cut those things from 12 years, to four!

But that's not going to -- it's not an immediate, you know, economic win.

GLENN: No.

STU: What you're talking about.

GLENN: The country has cancer. That's the problem. The country has cancer.

And we can survive. But it's -- going to take chemotherapy and a long time. And so you can't just go in.

If you have cancer, you can't go in and say, well, you know, you told me yesterday, you were going to start chemotherapy, and I had my first chemotherapy, and I feel worse.

And I'm not getting any better.

"It's been six months, Doc. And I'm not feeling any better."

Yeah. You're not going to feel any better at first. Because it's a serious disease. That's the issue that we're dealing with. The damage -- and we said this under Biden. We said this under the first Trump. We said this under Bush. You know, Reagan was saying this. At some point, the -- the sickness is going to be so bad, that there's not going to be anything that feels good to do. And it's going to get harder and harder to take the medicine.
And unfortunately, you know, everybody wants a quick fix. You know, when Reagan came in. And everything was out of control, you remember what Paul Volcker did?

You remember this, Stu?

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: You weren't old enough. But you know it through history. What did he do?

STU: He had to get rid of inflation. That meant jacking up rates. And that was a painful period.

GLENN: To what? To what?

STU: Eighteen to 20 percent, in that range.

GLENN: I think at the top it was 20 percent interest rates. I remember 19 percent interest rates. Nineteen. People are freaking out over five or six. We had 19 percent interest rates. That stopped everybody from buying. You want to talk about not being able to afford a house.

That was it! But that's what sucked all of that money back in.

Well, you can't do that right now. Because the patient is so sick, you can't -- those interest rates will kill everything. It will kill all the jobs.

The whole thing will collapse. So you can't do that. But we're complaining on 5 percent. You know, and we're wanting them lower and lower and lower and lower.

Well, yes.

I want that too. Because there are signs that jobs are going away. But jobs going away is not just the interest rate. It is also AI and automation.

We are in this really ugly place, that we don't have these honest questions, and really explain to each other, exactly what's -- what all of the forces are. You're going to get socialism.

Because that will seem like the only answer.

Just make it stop. Just make it stop.

Well, okay.

But know what all of the forces are that are causing all of these things.

And there is a way out of it.

It just cannot be done in two years!

It can't be!