“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.