RADIOSeptember 06, 2022

Jared Kushner: How Team Trump ‘CRACKED THE CODE’ in Middle East

One of the Trump administration’s biggest successes — and a win the far-left loves to ignore — was finding peace in the Middle East. And Jared Kushner, Former Senior Advisor to President Trump, played an integral role in it all. He joins Glenn to detail how he helped Trump ‘crack the code’ regarding the Middle East, the tactics used that were ‘contrary to conventional wisdom,’ and the one question he asked world leaders that helped the progress begin...

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Do you remember this from Saturday Night Live?

VOICE: I was sitting in my little Kushball. Jared Kushner.
Yeah, unbelievable.(applauding)(laughter)Jared, I've sent you all around the world to represent me. But no one has ever heard you speak. You're like a little Jewish homily.
GLENN: You know what's amazing, in the time, that guy went on to shoot somebody on the set and to kill him. Alec Baldwin, which I didn't see coming. And also, I don't think people saw coming, the Abrahamic Accords. Jared Kushner joins us now. And his -- and his new book, that is out breaking history. A White House memoir. Hello, Jared. How are you?
JARED: Doing great. Thank you for having me, and thank you for reminding me of that. That SNL skit, that was quite funny.
GLENN: I mean, they really hammered you. At one point, they put you in little short pants.
And I don't know about you. I think you've -- based on that response, feel the same way. When they first started mocking me on Saturday Night Live.
I thought, wow. I've made it somehow or another. Even if they're making fun of you.
That's great. Even better. But how everybody said, Jared Kushner, how could you possibly send him to the Middle East?
We've been trying to crack this code for 80 years now.
And yet, you did. Can you talk a little bit about what you write about in the book. About how you crack that?
JARED: Sure. Well, first of all, it was definitely a challenge, that when we got involved. I don't know. Maybe they thought I couldn't make it any worse, than all the professionals who had worked on it for decades before.
But what I did was I went there. And I write about this extensively in my book. About how my first year was spent listening. I was meeting with all the listeners. I was asking them questions. Which actually had a hard time processing at first. Because they were so used to not having these questions asked, which is America has so much power, to influence things. And we've done some things that actually have made this reach knew-in so much worse.
If you were in my shoes, what would you be doing?
And finally, it got to really interesting conversations. And I listened to everyone's point of view.
And I really realized that pieces about the future, and that you have to get people to focus on their joint interests. Let's put everyone on the same side of the table.
And then there were certain patterns that became very clear to me, that were contrary to what all the conventional wisdom was.
And there was one example I give in the book, where I was meeting with one of the great foreign policy academics, who is well respected.
And I played out for him my approach.
And I said to him, well, do you think I have a chance of succeeding? And he said, absolutely not. I said, why so negative?
He said, Jared, nobody has made any money betting on success in the Middle East in the last 25 years. So I like that you're bringing new ideas, but you just have no chance of being successful.
But ultimately, I think by building strong relationships, by thinking outside the box.
Again, I write a lot in this book about President Trump and my interactions with him, and my interactions with all the world leaders.
We took a fresh approach. We tried to be empirical. We tried to be pragmatic. We saw things for what they were. And again, we were ruthlessly criticized for the approach we took in the Middle East, up until it worked
GLENN: So in the book, you talked about David Friedman, and he's a bankruptcy lawyer in Manhattan.
And he suggested, and you guys decided to use -- to look at the Israeli Palestinian conflict, like a bankruptcy.
So can you explain that? And is it that you guys were not council of foreign relations. Years and years of the State Department, that you came from a business background, and had a totally fresh set of eyes?
JARED: So you have to always look at a situation, and put yourself in the other people's shoes, and try to figure out what are the fulcrum components that are driving a situation. So when we look at the situation. You know, you couldn't equate the Israelis and the Palestinians. One was a democracy, and one was a kleptocracy.
One had a super powerful military, one was basically just kind of a -- it was -- it was kind of a con job, at some point. And so we saw it for what it was. And we weren't trying to be balanced. We were trying to be honest. And I think that really -- really was distorting for a lot of people. So we saw that the whole Palestinian situation was, I think, billions of dollars of aid. It was never conditions based. And we basically said, like US foreign aid is not entitlement.
If we're going to give you this money, we want to see certain things happen. So we worked very hard over a couple of years, to do certain things. And, again, I give President Trump tremendous credit for what he did. Because when he moved the embassy, I take people into the situation room, and how he had opposition from Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense. The Intel community said World War III would occur.
And what he basically did was he calibrated all the different advice. He made a very measured decision, decided to go forward with it, despite the advice of everyone, that it would cause war.
He tasked me with reaching out to all the different leaders and saying, look, don't -- you can't cherry-pick your relationship with America. We're helping you with Iran. We're helping you with military. We're helping you with economy.
You know, don't mess around with this. So he made the decision. Everyone said the world was going to end. And what happened the next morning, the sun rose. The next evening, the sun set.
And the light moved on, and it was done.
And the same thing happened with the Iran Deal. So President Trump was starting to realize, that certain variables that people thought were fixed were fluid. And I give many examples in the book of these interactions, and how we moved around all these different elements, in order to create the opportunity for people to see the Israeli-Palestinian issue for what it really was.
And to see that it was really about leadership, trying to stay in power, so they could maintain the flow of funds, they had. And they had no interest of making the lives of their people better. I believe the job of a leader is to number one keep their people safe. And to number two, give them an environment where they can have opportunity to better their lives and their children's lives, and have hope and excitement for the future. And the Palestinian leadership was not doing that.
GLENN: So in your book, we're talking to Jared Kushner, in his book, Breaking History: A White House Memoir. You talk about one of the things that you were doing. And totally makes sense. You united the Middle East, because you recognized the common foe was Iran. And that kind of brought people together. And -- and when your dad, or when your father-in-law, the president, got out of Iran -- you know, the stupid, dangerous Iran peace deal. That made a difference.
How much of a role did that play? And what does it mean, that we are sitting down at the table with Iran now?
JARED: So the first deal in 2014 was probably the worst transactions, ever done. Maybe in the history of diplomacy.
And it just made absolutely no sense. Iran was on a glide path to a nuclear weapon.
They had gotten $150 billion in funds, that were basically now, they were using to -- to fund Hezbollah, Hamas, all these different people.
They were chanting death to America, death to Israel. It made absolutely no sense. But what it did, it kind of scared the Cochran of all of the Arab countries, to say, okay. This could be that bad. Actually, when we got there, they were starting to rebuild their relationship with China. And saying, look, when America went and did the deal with Persia, we were thinking, we had to teach our kids Chinese, because America was not dependable anymore. And we said, wait, guys.
Wait -- wait a minute. Calm down here. These -- these relationships that we've had with you guys have been long-standing many, many decades. We agree what happened here was terrible. But let's figure out a rational policy. What we did was we reimposed sanctions on Iran, we took their oil exports down from 2.6 million barrels a day to 100,000.
GLENN: Wow.
JARED: We really dissected their economy. And we -- we -- there were data foreign currency reserves, and we stopped. And what Trump said about Iran, is that they never won a war, but they never lost a negotiation.
So he figured out how to really create a better condition than what we inherited. And we really tried to give the incoming administration a much stronger hand, which was only buttressed that we had Iraq much more stable than what we got there. ISIS caliphate was eliminated.
And now we had the Abraham Accords. So all the way from Haifa, our goal was to try to create a place of security from Haifa to Muscat in Oman, and then get economic activity between it all, to basically show the Iranian people that there would be the opportunity for you to live a better life, if you joined into this. So instead of falling -- again, we had six peace deals in the last six months. I wrote about how we made those occur, instead, the administration runs and goes back to Iran on their knees, begging to make the old stupid deal.
And so it makes no sense to me. But, again, I think what you'll see in this book, is that we came with an outsider's perspective. We tried to bring common sense. And, again, we really broke the mold on a lot of issues, and did things contrary to what people, who were the conventional thinkers in Washington did. And why they did those things, decades before it got there. I didn't understand why they were going back to some of those things. Now that we've seen that those policies that were different now, are working. It makes absolutely no sense.
GLENN: We are going to be short on time. So I -- there's so many questions, I would like to ask you. For instance, you know if you would have thrown in bad stuff about President Trump, you would have made a fortune. And the left would have loved you, and left you alone.
And you didn't do it. Congratulations.
JARED: Yeah. I learned that the love of the left is something that is -- it's not worth what people think it is. I see people contorting themselves and saying certain things that they don't believe. Or not saying things that they don't believe. But the left has no loyalty. They turn on you in a second. And I think it's knew better to say the truth. And look, I do think that being in the White House, I saw so much information asymmetry, in terms of how we recovered and what we did. But, again, there was two currents in this book, that I tried to capture happening at the same time. One that we were under relentless attacks being accused of collusion with Russia, and treason. And then, you know, impeached for trying to investigate corruption in Ukraine. And attacked by the media.
And I tried to show what it was like, living through all that. But also getting all these things done. What President Trump, in office, we had inflation was low. Gas prices were low. Wages were rising. The wealth gap was shrinking. We had peace in Europe. We had peace in China. We were making great deals. We had them on their back foot. And it didn't all happen by accident. So I tried to take people inside the room. And the treaty deals. And negotiations with President Putin.
The negotiations with King Salman, the negotiations with President Xi. And how Trump used his unusual style, in order to achieve these outcomes. And at the end of the day, I find a lot of my friends, on the left, they hyper ventilate over different things that Trump will say. Or how they perceive it. But I think that results matter. And I want people to understand how those results were achieved. And it's been very disheartening for me to watch how, again, you put the government bureaucrats back in charge. And inflation is rising. We have a war in Europe. China is, you know, being provocative with Taiwan.
North Korea is firing off weapons. I write about how Trump was able to create the relationship with Kim Jong-un. And going to the DMZ. How he walked into North Korea. Nobody knows how that came about. And how it almost didn't happen, many, many times. So I wanted people to really understand, how he did the things. And why him being the way he is, empowered by -- and working with the right people around him, enabled him to accomplish so much.
GLENN: Your book is fascinating. And it -- and it -- I mean, it really is a thriller. All of the things you just laid out, it is -- it's a thriller.
Let me ask you one thing: Because there was parts of the book, that get very, very personal.
And one of my favorite parts is when you talk about your grandma. We've only got about two minutes. Your grandmother was 16 when the Nazis invaded Poland. Your family went from ghettos to mansions in three generations. Which is remarkable.
Can you talk a little bit about what your grandmother went through? And how that affected you with the Abrahamic Accords.
GLENN: Sure. So my grandparents were both in Belarus. And then the Nazis came in. My grandmother I write about how, in her town, they took a 50th of the educated Jews. They shot them in the head, the Nazis, and then they made the young women. Like my grandmother, clean the blood off of the stones. While they had other Jews playing instruments, to -- to celebrate it. It was a brutal experience. They joined the resistance fighters. The Woods. Out of a town of 10,000, 250 that escaped. And then ultimately, they got married in Hungary. They came over to America on a boat. I read about how my grandfather went to New Jersey. He was a carpenter.
He said he was afraid of heights, so he couldn't work in the buildings in Brooklyn. So they said, go to New Jersey. They have shorter buildings there. And it's just an amazing American story. And so I try to take people through that very quickly.
But I'll say that for me, you know, again, what I saw working in the White House, going from, you know, the son of a refugee. The grandson of refugees. Is that America is an absolute amazing country. It's plagued with incredible opportunity. We have amazing people. And what president tried to do with the administration, was to allow for the American dream to be prevalent, allow it for it to be deep, to give everyone an equal opportunity.
And I think that's what our policies do. For me to be able to work on the Abraham Accords, as a grandchild of Holocaust survivors. And I talk about my interactions with the Germans. Where I was actually disappointed that the lack of enthusiasm, and the lack of -- of engagement that they had with us, given that, you know, the whole plight that we still have in the Middle East. I explain how it really is a remnant of the post World War II anti-Semitism that existed. Because of the Holocaust. And because of the Nazis.
And so I just think that it was an amazing honor to do it. And it is an extraordinary story. And I really -- you know, I believe has his hand in everything we do. I am very, very -- big believer in that. And just very, very grateful for all these experiences.
GLENN: I agree.
JARED: And again, a lot of it was very difficult. I write in the first year about how I had to adjust, I was surrounded by a lot of complicated people. But I go through the lessons I learned. And I was trying to give people who never served in Washington, who -- who obviously have followed the Trump administration. Who followed politics. A real insight to what it was like to serve in Washington. What it was like to work in the White House. And what it's like to navigate. And all the lessons I learned. So that hopefully, businessmen will -- will continue to go and serve in government so we don't have the career political class that often is trying to keep power as opposed to making people's lives better.
GLENN: Jared Kushner, the name of the book is breaking history. If you don't know, where have you been? He was a former senior adviser to President Trump. And this book is really a thriller to see from the inside. What was going on. And how they did the things that they did.
By the way, you were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Please tell me you don't lose it to Greta Thunberg or --
JARED: No. I lost it to a journalist who nobody has ever heard of. But I guess I -- I guess they created more peace than we did.
GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.
JARED: You know, it's -- the peace is the prize. And I see every day -- you know, people send me pictures of Israeli fruit being sold in Emirati supermarkets, or new flights or new business deals being done.
GLENN: That's great.
JARED: And really reuniting Israelis and Muslims. It's just -- Jews and Muslims in the Middle East. It's such a beautiful thing. So the dividends from this, is staying forever, in terms of the positivity that it unleashed.
GLENN: Well, I think it was truly a miracle. I agree with you. God was in the center of that, and I can't thank you enough. Jared Kushner. Author of the book, Breaking History.
JARED: Oh, thank you so much.
GLENN: All right.

WARNING: Financial Armageddon Coming Unless Trump Does THIS | Glenn TV | Ep 432

We’re at a crossroads, and the Trump administration might just be the last hope for a REAL Great Reset, one that doesn’t enslave you — like the one pushed by the U.N., Davos, and progressives — but one that puts you back in charge. From Bretton Woods to the World Economic Forum 2030 Agenda, every step has been a deliberate move to control your money, your freedom, and your future. Glenn heads to the chalkboard to outline multiple “Great Resets” throughout history, and the stories of those empires all end in disaster. Everything Glenn has been warning about is getting closer, and three separate economic models he ran through AI all say the same thing: Financial Armageddon is coming by 2030. America’s massive debt and trade deficits are pushing the dollar toward ruin. If the U.S. dollar loses reserve status, expect skyrocketing inflation, plunging incomes, and a cost-of-living crisis. But he also ran economic models that reveal what America can do to stop the death of the dollar. Trump’s tariffs, tax cuts, and deregulation are forcing some positive change, but is it too late? Justin Haskins, co-author of “The Great Reset” and “Dark Future,” says Trump is giving us a way out — and it doesn’t involve the authoritarian BRICS alliance or the fascism of Europe’s WEF. He’s looking for allies and economic partners to build a new world that puts YOU and America first once again.

JD Vance: America is DONE Telling Other Countries How to Live

“The era of American preachiness and America telling other countries how to live their lives is OVER,” Vice President JD Vance tells Glenn Beck. Vance joins “The Glenn Beck Program” to comment on the Trump administration’s latest massive moves and what’s still to come, including President Trump’s history-making trip to Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. VP Vance also puts Western Europe on notice over its social media censorship plans, promises major spending cuts in the FINAL version of the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” lays out Trump’s plan t slash regulations on AI and energy companies, explains why staying ahead of China on AI is a matter of life and death, and tells a little-known fact about the Vatican’s role in global politics ahead of his trip to Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: We welcome to the program, the vice president of the United States, and somebody who I think has the presidency in his future. J.D. Vance. Welcome to the program, Mr. Vice president.

J.D.: Glenn, how are we doing?

GLENN: I'm great. I'm great. What an amazing few days the president has had, first with all of the foreign wins before he left, with the wars, you know, and everything in the State Department and Marco Rubio is doing. And now, this speech. I think this Riyadh speech is historic. On so many levels. How would you describe what's going on in the Middle East this week?

J.D.: Yeah. So I agree with you, Glenn. About that particular speech. I mean, when I listen to it. And I obviously knew a little bit about what the president was going to say. It changed a little bit. I was there the last couple of days. But the core message is very simple. That America wants not to remake the world in America's image. We don't want to force our allies to adopt our form of government. We actually want to be in the business of shared interests and shared economic cooperation. So long as you're not trying to kill anybody, and so long as you're interested in building wealth for your citizens and working with America, then America is open for business. And I think that's a very important signal to send to the world.

You know, the Obama administration economist Larry Summers had a very smart point, a few years ago. He said, you know, when the Chinese show up in the developing world, they show up with a bag of money. When Americans show up in the developing world, they show up a with a lecture.

And, you know, if you're given a choice between a lecture and a bag of money, you're going to choose the bag of money every step of the way. I think what the president is saying, is that era of American preachiness and America telling other countries, how to live their lives, that era is over.

And I think it's a very important point for the Middle East. It's a very important point for the whole globe. And in some ways, only President Trump could have made that argument at this point in time.

GLENN: Are we stopping with the bags of money too?

J.D.: I think we're stopping with both. But we are really looking at economic cooperation. And, you know, in Africa, for example, Glenn, you have America diplomats sent by the Biden administration, who are telling very conservative Christian African countries, that they need to fly the LGBTQ flag.

But they're not engaging in any economic arrangement where, you know, the Africans have critical minerals that we need. They have other industries that we can be participating in, we can be partnering on, and I think that's the bags of money point.

It's not that we'll give them money, but that we can have some shared economic relations with a conservative African country, where we won't tell them how to live their lives. We actually just want to enter into a partnership with them.

And that's, again, a big, big change.

It's a big shift, but it's an important shift from a very dumb American policy, to a very smart one that I think will benefit the next generation.

GLENN: There was this old TV show. It was a game show when I was a kid, called the 20,000-dollar Pyramid. And they would allow you to say, pass, and you could just skip the subject of the question. I give you that. We're playing the 20,000-dollar pyramid here. You know, I look at the reaction of your speech in Europe. Then I see the moves that they're making. I see the new Prime Minister of Canada. Who is the architect of the Glasgow financial accords.

And I'm not sure we're on the same page anymore.

Is -- is -- we can be friends with everybody.

But I'm not sure we're walking down the same path anymore. With those countries.

J.D.: Well, it worries me, Glenn. Because look, there are certainly some economic benefits and friendships that we can have with a lot of our, you know, sort of western European and obviously our Canadian friends. But in western Europe, in particular, you know, my view on this point is, our relationship with western Europe is what's going to be unique. You know, America, of course, started as an English economy. We're always going to have a special relationship with the United Kingdom. But what that means you fundamentally is that if we see certain European countries in Germany, for example, where we have 38,000 troops.

If we see Germans do something incredibly offensive to American values, I think Americans are going to recoil a little bit at that. You know, I went to Germany very recently, very briefly, Glenn.
Just to visit the troops and say, hello.

And I was hearing from Germans during that very brief visit on the ground, saying that they were worried about free speech policies in their own country.

Well, if we have 38,000 troops there and we're living amongst the Germans, we're literally defending their country.

I think you can expect Americans to at least express some negative opinions about some of the free speech policies they're seeing in Europe.

And, Glenn, you know this as well as anybody. Things that start in Europe. Sometimes come over to America. The same way that things that start in America, make their ways to Europe.

The kind of social media censorship that we've seen in western Europe.

It will -- it's already made its way to the United States. That's the story of the Biden administration, silencing people on social media.

So we will be very protective of American interests when it comes to things like social media regulation.

We want to promote free speech. We don't want our European friends telling social media companies that they have to silence Christians, or silence conservatives.

GLENN: Right.

J.D.: And I think there will be that friction over the next ten years. It's not that we're not friends. But there is a disagreement you didn't see ten years ago.

GLENN: Right. So they've decided they will not pursue being a leader in AI. But they will make all the rules. How confident are you, that we are in a -- a winning position here on AI?

It is advancing so rapidly. And the things that I hear that come out of China, it's either another way hipped. It's all a paper tiger. Or they're way ahead. Where are we, do you think, on AI and, you know, AGI.

J.D.: Well, I think that we're ahead, Glenn. But nobody -- nobody says that we're way ahead, should be believed. You know, in artificial intelligence, six months is a lifetime. Twelve months is a generation. We're probably 12 months, maybe two years ahead of where the Chinese are, when it comes to critical hardware, when it comes to necessary infrastructure. When it comes to the engineering talent. But that is not very far ahead at all. And we're really going to have to invest a lot in developing America's next generation of scientists. Glenn, we're going to have to make sure that our hardware companies, that we stop regulating them to death. That our energy infrastructure. That we stop regulating them to death. Because if we allow the Chinese to catch up. We may never ever have an edge on China in this space again.

And I think for a lot of people, artificial intelligence is a chat bot. It's something that maybe helps a college student write a paper.

No, no, no. The artificial intelligence that I'm worried about, Glenn, is the kind of intelligence that helps them develop next generation weapons. It helps their rockets and missiles hit their target, and 99 percent more accurate than the weapons that use artificial intelligence. They're just massive defense technology implications of this.

That it's kind of like, what would have happened, if the English Army had faulted the Americans in the Revolutionary War, and we had M-16s and they had muskets.

We don't want to be on our battlefield of the future and have -- you know, we have the muskets, and the Chinese have the M-16s. I think AI is the critical part of staying ahead of the Communist Chinese.

And it's something, look, we're very focused on. We have a great guy. It's David Sacks in the administration who is leading this effort. But it's full pedal to the metal, Glenn. We have to constantly be innovating and staying ahead of the game. We can't follow the European lead of regulating. We want America to innovate, and that's what we're doing.

GLENN: I spoke to the president a couple weeks ago. And, you know, I was going to ask him about nuclear energy. And he just volunteered. I said, what about energy with AI?

And he went to say, you know, we're talking about making them their own -- you know, their own utilities. And they can build it. We can clear, even if they want nuclear power plants. That didn't print.

I mean, I thought that was one of the bigger headlines of my lifetime. And nobody seemed to pick that up, or care about that.

And we do lose, if we don't have these power plants. Are we -- what are we doing to accelerate?

I mean, they need 99 percent of our power by 2028.

99 percent of the power that's currently being made.

We need power plants.

J.D.: Yeah. You're a smart guy, Glenn. Because I don't know what else the President said during that interview, but I doubt it's as important as that point.

GLENN: Nothing.

J.D.: This is a critical issue. And, yes, what we've done. We've had Lee Zeldin's EPA, and all of our environmental folks look at how we cut through the red tape. And make it possible. Because the market would do this. Right?

These companies would like to do this.

But it's the environmental bureaucrats that have told them, you can't really attach any power plant off-grid to a pure, you know, artificial intelligence hardware facility. We're tearing down those regulations and making it possible again.

And then, of course, Glenn, part of this is not just building these facilities, but it's powering them with the fuel that we need. And the president -- you hear this term, all of the above.

The President has really said, we're all of the above.

GLENN: Have to be.

J.D.: We're lowering the regulations on coal. We're powering the natural gas folks.

Petroleum, obviously, nuclear.

Like, this is a president who said, all power that we have, we need to put it into this prospect. And, Glenn, one important point on this. You look at a chart of electric degeneration, the People's Republic of China versus the United States.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

J.D.: Four years ago, we blew them out of the water. Right now, the PRC is producing about three times as much electricity as we are. And we flatlined in the last 20 years. That innovation. That development.

That's got to change. We've got to be producing more power for the next wave of innovation.

It's maybe the most important part of the puzzle.

GLENN: So I did a show last night on just that a reset is coming. It's inevitable that a reset is coming. We have to hurry, cut the budget. Onshore. Fix the tariff -- or, the trade deficit, or we don't really have a chance of doing anything.

And as I was looking at -- we ran three different models through AI, and they all came back with the same stuff. And we're doing those -- the president is doing those things, except for the cutting of the budget.

I mean, Congress won't even pass the DOGE cuts. When will the White House become strong on, you must cut the spending?

J.D.: Yeah. Great question, Glenn. And I will say, the big, beautiful bill text just came out last week. That's going to change a lot from now until then. We've already had conversations with, you know, House leadership that we want to see some more significant efforts to rein in spending here. You know, the President also believes, Glenn, and I think he's right about that, that if you cut the trade deficit or you raise revenue through tariffs, then you actually go a long way to making the country on the worst single fiscal pathway as well.

But you're right. You can't do it without cutting domestic spending. We're going to have to do a series about it. Think about as clear Congressional leaders as possible.

But, look, you know, knock on wood here.

But I think that once we get the final package out of the House and the Senate, we're going to have something that is serious on -- on budget cutting.

One final point on this, Glenn. No one is talking about it. When I talk to Elon. When I talk to the DOGE folks. Whereas where they think they will get the most cuts. Is in taking people. Illegal aliens. And other people who are defrauding the Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security system.

But you think about two people, right? A guy who paid his Social Security for four years. Obviously, we want that guy to get his Social Security benefits.

You compare that person to an illegal alien, who engaged in Medicaid fraud. Obviously, we don't want that person to get their benefit. I think Democrats are going to fight us on this. But this is such an important point, we cannot allow people to defraud the Medicare and Medicaid system. Or it's going to bankrupt this system. It's also just fundamentally unfair. I don't want people who shouldn't even be here be on the public dole.

GLENN: Right. I know you're headed to the Vatican. You're going to be celebrating the inaugural mass of Pope Leo this weekend, along with Senator Rubio, who is also Catholic. You had one of the last conversations with the last Pope.

Why -- why does the pope matter so much to the world?

And I want to talk beyond faith and religion.

Why is he so important?

J.D.: Well, obviously, right?

He's the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics. And so there is just a lot of soft influence. Right?

He doesn't have a military. He doesn't have an army. But he does have a lot of influence to the Catholics. And I think a lot of Catholics -- I think we won a majority of Catholics in the last election. But a lot of the Catholics continue to vote Democratic. And so, you know, there is just a natural influence in -- in having the ear of 1.4 billion faithful people, including, you know, 100 million or so, in the United States.

I also think, Glenn, something I picked up on.

And you don't see a lot of headlines about this.

But the Vatican has already played a very constructive role in some of the peace conversations that we've been having all over the world.

They've been trying to facilitate negotiations between the Russians and the Ukrainians. They've been trying to facilitate other peaceful negotiations between various countries, and so they have that soft power. Right? They have the ear of the Catholics.

But then they also have the ability to use that soft power, to play a mediating role in some of these disputes. So while the pope doesn't have an F-35 standing behind him, he does have the prayers of a lot of faithful Catholics.

And that matters when you try to insert yourself in these conversations. So we welcome that engagement. As you know, the president really believes that we can have less conflict in the world, if we just have cooler heads prevail.

So we welcome that engagement, and we will continue to do so in the next few years.

GLENN: Thank you so much, Mr. Vice President, for all you do.

If you don't know why he picked Leo as his name, you in particular will be fascinated by it.

You will have to ask him. Because it's -- it's -- you'll love the reason why he did it. Have a safe trip. Thank you for everything that you've done, and Godspeed.

J.D.: Thanks, Glenn. Buh-bye.

GLENN: J.D. Vance, our vice president.

DeepSeek’s New AI: Glenn’s Warning of a Tech Abyss

Has China’s DeepSeek developed a “completely different species” of artificial intelligence that’s smarter than anything we’ve ever seen? Or are the rumors all lies generated by an AI bot? Glenn reviews some of the latest terrifying and SOCIETY-CHANGING advancements in AI, including how scientists have developed a new AI tool that can tell your biological age and potential health issues using just a picture.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: I want to talk to you a little bit about AI.

Apparently, there is a new AI that the scientists at Mass General in Boston have developed a new AI tool called Face Age.

And it can tell your biological age by a picture of you. And apparently, not just -- not just your biological age. But how healthy you are.

In fact, they are -- they believe now, with the eyeball test.

Research in the Lancet digital health. Indicates -- you ready for this?

That artificial intelligence will be able to not only spot that you have cancer.

But also, if you are being treated for cancer.

That's not working.

They have this much time to live.

How terrifying is that?

I mean, how great is that?

How terrifying is that know. Would you have -- if you could have it, and it would tell you, wow. You're looking pretty old and beat up! You don't have much longer to live.

Would you go into the face tool? And say, how long do I live?

How much longer -- I do not think I would do that. I don't want that.

STU: I would want to know if I could do something about it, I suppose.

I mean, I guess, being able to -- if you knew -- and, again, this is somewhat speculative here.

But if you knew, you were going to die in two months, I guess, I -- the idea of wanting to know, would be intimidating.

But I also think, I would like to probably have moments with my family and my kids, and say the things I want to say.

And like, get my affairs aligned, and such.

Start some new affairs.

GLENN: New affairs. Wait. What?

STU: Just kidding, honey.

No, but I would like to get -- if you want to get your affairs arranged, you want to make sure that you're not leaving your family with a burden. You want to make sure you say to your kids, the things you want to say. Maybe you want to write something.

GLENN: Okay. What if you put your face in? Okay. And you take the picture. What do I have left? And it just comes back. What time is it now?
(laughter)

STU: I don't know. If this stupid device can't tell time. It's like a VCR.

GLENN: I don't know. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes, maybe. Maybe. I don't know. You're not doing well. You're looking a little peaked.

Some of the things that are coming with AI are remarkable. Go ahead.

STU: Life-changing too.

I would say, society changing, probably.

GLENN: So can I just read something to you, that is part of it is beyond my understanding.

And will be beyond something -- and I just want you to hear this.

This is I rule the world MO. This is @IruletheworldMO.

Nobody knows who this really is. They think that this may be an insider, and one of the big AI research firms.

STU: Okay.

GLENN: But they also think it might be a bot by one of these AI research terms to throw the other research terms off. Okay?

They have no idea who this is. Okay.

So, but just listen to what -- I'm hoping it's a bot that is trying to throw people off.

Listen to this. Just got off a four-hour phone call with sources inside Chinese DeepSeek labs.

And holy cow, they're using other language. We are so F-ing behind, it's not even funny anymore.

STU: Hmm.

GLENN: DeepSeek R2, it's not an incremental improvement.

It is a completely different species of intelligence, operating on principles nobody in the West has even theorized yet.

They have abandoned transformer architectures entirely for something they're calling recursive cognition lattices.

The scale in dimension of our math doesn't even have a good notation for this.

The compute efficiency gangs that violate what we thought were fundamental limits like 400 times improvement in reasoning per teraflop.

Not four. Not 40. Four hundred times. Our benchmarks now are literally meaningless.

The scariest part isn't the raw capability.
But how it's developing novel mathematical frameworks on the fly to solve problems. Research gives it questions, and it invents entirely new branches of mathematics to answer them. One physicist showed it a problem they've been stuck on for 15 years. They solved it in seconds with notations nobody recognized. It took three days for them to translate its solution back into standard mathematics.

We saw demo videos that can't possibly be real, except multiple independent sources confirmed.

R2 designed and simulated room temperature, super conductor, from first principles in under an hour, complete with fabrication methods, using existing technology.

They've already produced the samples in the Beijing labs. Blah, blah, blah.

Their -- their in -- I can't say it.

STU: Interrogation?

GLENN: No. No. No. No. Merging with man and machine.

STU: Okay.

GLENN: With biological systems.

STU: Integration?

GLENN: Integration. Thank you. With biological systems is the real nightmare fuel. Two-way neural interfaces that make Neuralink look like a child's toy. Direct cognitive enhancement already in human trials.

This isn't even the most advanced system. They're the ones showing it publicly. America is still treating this like normal technology race, while China understands. It's the an extinction-level transformation of civilization.

It's like watching a nuclear power race, where one side is debating the ethics of gunpowder.

STU: Wow. Because my -- my recollection of the DeepSeek story, when that came out a few months ago.

GLENN: It was nothing --

STU: Experts landed on the idea that there is absolutely -- like they basically were using our technology.

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

STU: It wasn't as impressive as we initially thought. So this person or bot is saying, that it is.

Now, I will say, if you are a person trying to hide your identity. Just saying, you just had a four-hour conversation with a specific company, I mean, how many four-hour conversations happened that day? It would be a weird way to hide your identity unless you're -- so who knows, maybe it's just all blown out.

GLENN: Hopefully it's all blown out.

I mean, you read the -- Sam Altman follows -- others follow. It's not just. It's seen inside the circles. And they don't know who it is, or what it is.

STU: That's true.

GLENN: A post like that makes me think it's a Chinese bot.

STU: Because it seems like it's promoting DeepSeek. Right? That's just amazing.

GLENN: Yes, but he's not always promoting DeepSeek. Or it isn't promoting it. And this is the craziest part. You don't know! Now it doesn't have to be a person!

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: It could be an algorithm.

STU: Now, of course, there is this thing -- you know, there's no -- what is it? There's no -- there's no limit to the levels humans can achieve when you don't care about pain and suffering.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: I think paraphrasing Louis C.K. for that one. Chinese can just throw bows at this. They're doing a lot of human trials on this stuff. As we've seen, maybe with Wuhan in the past. They're kind of willing to do anything. Right? And if they're doing this. And actually seeing these advances, we wouldn't do.

GLENN: No.

STU: You wouldn't be in human trials yet for any of this stuff. Although, a very long ramp up for Elon Musk's company, as we've seen some of that I guess. But they're just -- they'll just throw people at it.

GLENN: You know what's crazy is, we are dealing with technology that we have absolutely no idea, what it's going to be like, what it can do. Nothing, nothing, and I've read several articles, and they're talking about how just everything that you -- everything, the way you work, the way you think, is just about to be completely disrupted.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: And we're just -- the world is just kind of going along with it. And we're like, I don't know. I don't know.

Maybe we should pass something about it. We're just going along with it.

And, you know, science. There's a -- there's a watch, I think it was Omega. I can't remember. There was a watch that was made in the 1950s and '60s, and its sweep hand, its second hand, it had like a lollipop on it. So it was the stick of the hand. And then it had like this little circle on it.

And it was sweeping around. And the reason why they put the lollipop around it, it was the citizenship signal to the buyer and the wearer. That that watch didn't have radiation in it. And it's not like, oh, you were working in a lab. It was that they were -- you know, we had put, to make things glow at night, that was radiation okay. To get the luminosity on watches. At first, we were like, why don't we just use some of this?

Okay. And that went on for like a couple of decades, you know.

And we were like, hey.

How come his arm keeps losing all of his hair in the first week of wearing that watch.

So they put this little lollipop on it. Yep. No radiation in this one, dude. That's crazy. That we could make.

We could do that kind of stuff. For that long.

And we kind of forget about it. And now, what are we working with? This will make nuclear stuff look like nothing. Like nothing.

STU: We're so close to it, as well, it seems.

GLENN: I read another post, where they were saying that -- that it is getting so fast in -- in for defense, that -- and I said this. I know I said this five years ago.

That you won't even know that you've lost the war. Because for you, the war hasn't even started yet.

But you will start and lose the war, in a flash.

And the time it takes you to go. Wait a minute.

There's a war going on. What?

You've already lost. It happened. And you've lost.

Because AI is going to get so good.

It will predict absolutely every move. That everybody is going to make.

And it will just go, oh, here's the countermove. And put it in.

And go, okay. Well, that's over.

STU: It's like when you -- you're not a big video game guy.

But when you start praying a game. And you just decide to go on the toughest level of the opposing AI.

And like, you just can't do anything.

You just automatically. Your base is destroyed in seconds.

That's a very -- very low level version of this.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: Let me -- can I give you one other thing on AI.

I think this is fascinating. This is in the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago. I haven't heard anybody talk about it.

We've talked about it for a long time.

The surveillance state. I remember with you, taking calls from people. Going, I will not get an EZ Pass because that means they can track me when I go through the tolls. Right?

GLENN: Remember when we were in Tampa. This is the year 2000. They put cameras up in the streets of Ybor City. And everybody was like, I will -- not in America. Not doing that right now.

Nobody was willing to give their fingerprints. Nobody wanted to give their face. None of that.

STU: Yep. We all carried our phone. Of course, GPS everywhere we go. We click yes, agree. Agree. Agree to everything.

GLENN: We open the phone with our face.

STU: Yeah. Listen to this. This is amazing. This is from an author Joanna Stern.

GLENN: Wall Street Journal.

STU: Wall Street Journal. I've been wearing a wire everywhere since February.

That's how the article starts. I've got all the transcripts, important meetings, arguments with my kids, chats with disgruntled employees, late-night bathroom routines. There's plenty more I can't share, if I want to. And my bosses and my family as well, to keep liking me.

No, not an FBI informant. I willingly wear a 50-dollar bracelet that records everything I say. And uses AI to summarize my life. And send me helpful reminders.

GLENN: Why would you do that?

That's called a panopticon.

STU: Uh-huh. I think we're basically there. How do you have a private conversation in this world?

She tested two other devices as well, that are on the market now for 159, $199. They recall every single thing.

They transcribe every single thing. They have recordings of every single thing that was said by her or around her.

GLENN: Let's try it --

STU: That's crazy. Crazy.

GLENN: Crazy? No, it's crazy not to try it, to show everybody how bad it is, but it would be crazy to do it and be like, I think that's going to be a great addition to my life.

STU: Hmm. She says, within hours of wearing this bracelet, I was blown away at how quickly it turned ramblings and random chatter into useful, actionable information, yet allowed me to quote myself from February 24th at 5:15 p.m. This bracelet is really F-ing creepy.

Apparently said that out loud.

But, I mean, you can see. Again, I can see a world where that probably would be beneficial. You have a conversation with someone about something. What did they say? You would have it. When you were saying, hey. We should get together next Thursday.

It puts something in your calendar. That says, hey, call this person about that Thursday meeting you discussed. Of course, that would be beneficial in some way. It's like having an assistant. If you are an executive, you have an assistant.

GLENN: Those bots are already -- by the end of the year, those will be strong everywhere. You will have that assistant doing that in your phone and everything else. It will already do that.

STU: This is the death of private conversations though. They're over.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: Every single time you have a conversation, you should act like you're on television, having it.

GLENN: Yes.

Well, we've lived that way for a long time.

STU: That's what made me so interested.

Video of the day

Rand Paul: Trump Just Had His “Tear Down This Wall” Moment

President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia and the Middle East was historic for many reasons. But Glenn and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) agree that perhaps the biggest moment was when he denounced “western intervention” and “so-called nation builders.” Gone are the days of a system that led to endless wars and destroyed nations. Instead, Trump is aiming to let nations develop themselves through good trade relations. Sen. Paul also comments on Boeing’s Air Force One delays, Qatar’s plane offer, why he can’t support Congress’ current version of Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” and what might be in store for Dr. Fauci regarding COVID investigations.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: We welcome to the program Rand Paul, senator from the great state of Kentucky.

Rand, I want to play something for you. And in yesterday's speech, which I think should have been like a Libertarian's dream. It was mine.

Listen to this.

DONALD: And it's crucial for the wider world to know, this great transformation is not coming from Western interventionalists, or flying people in beautiful planes. Giving you lectures on how to live. And how to govern your own affairs. No. The gleaming marbles of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, was not created by the so-called nation builders, neocons, or liberal nonprofits like those who spend trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop cabal, Baghdad, so many other cities.

Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves. The people that are right here. The people who have lived here all their lives, developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions, and charting your own destinies and your own way.

It's really incredible what you've done. In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built. And the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies.

That they did not even understand themselves. They told you, you had to do it. But they had no idea how to do it themselves.

Peace, prosperity, and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of your heritage, but rather, from embracing your national traditions and embracing that same heritage, that you love.

So dearly.

GLENN: Rand Paul, what did you think of that?

RAND: Pretty amazing. You know, there have been so many times, when I've heard President Trump speak, or seen his actions on foreign policy, that have been -- oh, my goodness. This is the best president we've had in my lifetime.

GLENN: I know. I thought he sounded almost like Washington at that point.

Just like, do it yourself. We're not here to tell you what to do. I haven't heard that ever, from any president.

RAND: And this is why the Bush wing hates Donald Trump so much as an establishment. Because these are the people who wanted to spend freedom at the point of a gun everywhere, they thought they were going to shape the world for democracy, which is a sort of leftover Woodrow Wilson idea. But, no. This is the part of Donald Trump I completely embrace, encourage, and will defend, and defend on a daily basis.

GLENN: So I said earlier today. That part of that speech was as significant as the Gorbachev tear down this wall speech. Agree or disagree?

RAND: I agree. It's incredibly significant to say, you know, we've helped these relationships, not by bossing around the world. Not by intervening. But by basically, you know, trading, and he didn't use the word trade. He could have.

But basically, having trade and good relations with these countries that had to develop themselves.

GLENN: So while we're there, why don't we talk about -- why don't we talk about, I don't know, trading nothing for 400 million-dollar airplane.

Where do you stand on this gift from Qatar?

RAND: You know, you can't take gifts, unless they're approved by Congress. I think Jefferson was offered something. And Congress actually voted against Thomas Jefferson being allowed to keep it. But you can't do it. I mean, it just -- and it's going to set up the appearance of impropriety whether Congress will protect him or not.

Possibly. But the other thing is, we're the world's largest arms merchant. We sell arms by the billions, everywhere throughout the Middle East. We populate the heads of every war on the planet.

And so Qatar is a big recipient of arms from us, and so we make these decisions. And the president pretty much makes them on his own.

Congress has the chance to object, and I've objected in the past with arms, when I felt like -- particularly when the Journalist Khashoggi was killed by the Saudis. I thought we should have laid off arms for a while, and somebody should have had to pay some penance over that.

GLENN: Great.

RAND: And so I've tried to block different arms sales before, but there's a potential that the administration's protectiveness will be codified over a million dollar plane. There are also practical concerns as well.

One of them is, is where are we on the one that they have ordered? And it's already made. And they're just upgrading it, you know, putting the electronics, defensive weapons on Air Force One, and they're within six months of being completed.

Qatar's plane would have to be completely outfitted. It will probably have to be stripped down on the inside, completely reconfigured. And has to have the special stuff, the way it's classified.

GLENN: Yeah, it's two to five years just to finish it.

RAND: It may be that the other plane is actually closer to being finished.

Boeing is disappointing on so many fronts. But they haven't had this plane, since I think it was commissioned by the first President Trump. And four years later, still not there. It's really a disappointment. But we have to know more about it. The thing is, if he really wants this plane, and it's a great plane.

The Qataris can sell it, or give it back to Boeing. And Boeing can work with us, and we could pay a price. And then we would mediate all of this.

If he takes every family transaction that they have had in the Middle East for the last ten years or the next ten years, it will be heavily scrutinized. And I think it doesn't come to any good.

GLENN: Yes. So what do you think about the possibility -- and this may be giving him too much benefit of the tout.

But the guy is playing 15-dimensional chess it seems, in so many ways.

He -- I spoke to him about the Boeing plane a few weeks ago, and he was smoked.

And, you know, we -- we began our participation in and ended World War II in a quicker time than we have ordered that plane in 2018, to today.

So it's -- I mean, it -- what is Boeing doing?

And he's saying, and others are saying, that it may be five years from now. May be even ten!

What about the idea that he is just trying to push the pressure on Boeing, and like, get it done!

VOICE: Boeing has become an extension of the government. They're a government bureaucracy. And they behave like it.

Now, look, I think the Empire State Building was build in a year. China right now is, what's that?

GLENN: Ten months.

RAND: Yeah. Ten months. China can erect a 30-story building in a matter of 2 or 3 months. I mean, it's amazing how fast things can be done. And Boeing can't make a plane in four years, and some other planes don't fly. And so that is a problem. If you're a plane manufacturer and they don't fly. It's because Boeing is such a slow ponderous corporation. It's been, you know, had a monopoly on sort of government planes for so long. That near being outcompeted internationally.

And just slow. And so I see them more as an extension of government bureaucracy, than I do as a real capitalism. But no company could get away with being this poor, this slow moving, if there was a real marketplace.

GLENN: So what do you do to solve it? Because I think that is the real solution.

I feel like the former Soviet Union, when Gorbachev or anybody else would get into a ZiL. You're like, oh, that's nice.

That will break down halfway to the airport.

You know, what do we do?

Boeing, you can't sue Boeing. The president can't sue Boeing. The country can. How do you fix this?

RAND: Here's the interesting thing. This intersects with the discussion over trade. Some would say, that's what we do.

We protect Boeing. Protect them from international trade.

What if we did this? What if we got rid of the trade barriers, and we let all the international companies compete with Boeing? Boeing would have to get better or go bankrupt.

So they're inefficient because they are protected. Some would say that that's what happened to US steel over many generations. What if we do protect US steel. We've had steel import quotas for generations. We've tried to do whatever we can to block international steel from coming here. And yet, all it did was it led to a large behemoth of US steel that was about like Boeing was. And it would react to the marketplace.

GLENN: Let me talk to you about government aircraft. Military aircraft.

We have to have an aircraft company.

RAND: I agree.

GLENN: What can we do?

Because honestly, the right thing for the president to do is sue Boeing. Look, you violated our entire contract.

It means nothing. I'm going elsewhere.

He can't sue Boeing. Because that would be very bad. The second thing, he has no choice, but to buy American.

So how do we solve this know.

RAND: The other thing, I guess you could do, you could reduce what they're paid.

For example, if the government said, we're giving them a billion. 500 million. Whatever it is.

That should be in every contract too.

And, you know, I think Elon Musk was a big promoter of this. When he started building rockets to take satellites into space.

He said, you know, the problem you guys have is its cost, plus. So everybody just keeps inflating their costs, and they always get the same profit or bigger profit, if they have cost overrun. Make competitive bidding, and put penalties in your contracts. So Boeing should have penalties in the contract.

If you want another airline or another company to make planes in the US, I'm perfectly happy to vote for no corporate taxes on some of the planes in competition with Boeing.

Just no corporate taxes, period. Ten years, 20 years. It would take a lot. It takes a lot of money to get started in that field.

Look, Elon Musk started from scratch. Maybe ten years ago. Building rockets. So you think somebody couldn't. Like Elon Musk, start building planes. I guarantee you, if Elon weren't so tied up with other things, if you said, Elon, why don't you start a plane company to compete with Boeing, I bet he would have it started within a year.

GLENN: Yeah, he would. Quickly, do you have time? Because I want to talk to you about the big, beautiful bill, and also Fauci. Do you have a second to hold on for one minute?

RAND: Absolutely.
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All right. Ten-second station ID. Back to Rand Paul.

I know you're giving us extra time. And I really appreciate that, Rand. But let's talk about the one big, beautiful bill. How do you feel about it?

RAND: Well, you know, the tax cuts from 2017, I supported. I support making them permanent. And really, I'm very supportive of the president's program on the tax plan.

That's a big part of the bill. The second part of the bill is there's supposed to be spending cuts. So far, I think they're pretty wimpy and not going to amount to much.

That's bothersome. But I would still vote for it.

Even if I got some spending cuts and that's confirmed. The reason I can't vote for it is because they will raise the debt ceiling $5 trillion.

And the reason I can't vote for that, is that it belies. It really contradicts everything about what would be in the hearing. We hear about Elon Musk and DOGE and all these cuts.

And we're all jumping up and down from our seats for Donald Trump. And then the deficit is going to be 2.2 trillion at the end of September. And then it's another 2.8 billion -- 2.8 trillion the next year. They're planning on adding $5 trillion in eight years. Which means there's going to be no reform. And conservatives are going to wake up at some point in this administration, going wow. Where did all these cuts go? What happened? We haven't seen them in a while.

And how come the deficit is going up at just an alarming rate? In the past, conservatives have never voted to raise the debt ceiling. It's always been all Democrats and the big government Republicans, and we know who they are. And we've always derided them. And it was a day of shame. The day of shame, you walked down to the well of the Senate or the House, and you vote for all the spending that you put forward. But most of the conservatives. Particularly myself and others. We haven't voted for the spending. And we don't want to vote for the debt.

Now, I have said I will vote for some increase in the debt.

I will give you three months' worth.

So I introduced an amendment about two weeks ago, increase the debt ceiling, three months' worth.

You know how much that is? $500 billion.

GLENN: Jeez.

RAND: That's an enormous increase. And it hurt me to even put it forward, but I did say this: We will give you three months. You're all promising me, we will cut some spending. We have a balanced budget.

We will do all these great things. I tell you what, proof is in the pudding. I'll give you three months for the borrowing power, then you come back and ask me again for four months.

So I would do the opposite. I would have a debt ceiling vote every three months, and it would be a lever. And we would only give you an increase in the debt ceiling if you were actually cutting spending. And people say, what about default? Default should never be on the table.

GLENN: That's -- that's fake. We're never going to default.

RAND: Yeah, well, we bring in 400 billion a month in revenue. And the interest payment is 80 billion. Why would you ever default? We should announce to the markets that we have plenty of money. And if we have to cut spending elsewhere, we will. But we won't default on our interest payment. There's no reason ever to. And this is a game they play, just to get everybody to vote for them. To scare the market to death. And scare everybody to death. And they will say, we will default and there will be chaos. There's no reason to default. We will just cut spending elsewhere. And we will take the first dollars we get, and towards the interest payment.

GLENN: This is the thing. I'm so mad at Congress right now.

I mean, they won't even go through with the DOGE cuts. They are -- they're arguing about those. And honestly, the DOGE cuts in the end, seem a little disappointing.

You know, they're not taking the steps that I thought we all voted for.

RAND: Well, the DOGE cuts are some of the lowest hanging fruit. I'm all for them.

They went to the foreign aid budget. And they found crazy stuff.

You know, 2 million for sex change operations in Guatemala.

GLENN: Right.

RAND: Hundreds of thousands for a trans comic book, a trans opera in Colombia.

And, you know what, they have it in the rescission package.

The White House has had this rescission package about four weeks now. It's only 9 billion.

So it's not enough to amount to anything, but it's still worth cutting. They're afraid to send it to the Capitol.

Because the feedback they're getting from Senate and House leadership is we don't have the votes to cut 9 billion.

And if that's true, these people need to -- the reason we sent the vote, so everybody knows who these people are.

Who are the people that can't cut out 2 million for sex changes in Guatemala?

You can't do that. They need to be ridden out of town on a rail.

GLENN: Can you give us some indication of how long we have?

I mean, people have been saying, it's going to get bad. It's going to get bad.

We are really, truly at the end. If we don't cut our spending.

How much time do we have to cut our spending before we're just overwhelmed by interest payments?

RAND: I think it depends on what the interest rate is. For many, many years, we have gotten away with this. The George W. Bush, we went 5 -- 5 trillion in debt to 10 trillion. Our interest payment went from four to two, and then everybody was gleeful, even the Dick Cheney conservatives. Like, oh, that doesn't matter.

Well, if you keep cutting your interest rate now, and doubling your debt, you can get away with it.

But now we're stuck at the opposite end. We're 36 trillion in debt. And the interest rate is going up.

Now, it stabilized a little bit. But interest rates went where they were in 1990. When I bought my first house, it was 11 percent.

Probably pay a little less than that. Maybe nine. Maybe eight. We couldn't pay it. We couldn't pay it today. So it depends on the interest rate. The interest rates now, we're struggling. Interest payments is the largest item in the budget, and it's crowding out other spending. So we are struggling. We bring in 5 trillion in revenue, and we spend 7 trillion.

The entire budget that Congress votes on, which is almost 2 trillion, is all borrowed. So the discretionary spending, what government votes on, military and non-military discretionary, it's all borrowed.

The entitlements soak up every dollar of revenue. We are in a bad way. I can't tell you when it ends, but I can tell you, if interest rates spike, we will be in a serious problem.

GLENN: Yeah. I now only have about 40 seconds.

I would love to have you back. Can you just tell me, is anyone going to pay for the COVID thing? Is that ever going to happen?

RAND: We're not done, and I will bring Anthony Fauci back in. We finally discovered the records, as to who determined that the money went to Wuhan. They have resisted me for three years. Robert Kennedy has helped me get the records. So was Jay Bhattacharya. This week or next week, we will begin interviewing the people who are on that committee. We are going to find out what was the debate?

What was the discussion. What were the arguments for sending it to Wuhan? What were the arguments against it?

Who made the arguments?

And then who ultimately had to sign off on this.

It was our belief that Anthony Fauci had to sign the document. We haven't found the document yet.

GLENN: Yeah. Thank you. Rand. Rand Paul.