RADIOJune 14, 2023

Glenn: New TikTok filter could be DISASTROUS for society

Earlier this year, TikTok unveiled a new filter (the ‘Glamour’ filter) which could bring with it DISASTROUS consequences for our society. Glenn and Stu explain how this new filter doesn’t just smudge some edges or add makeup — it completely TRANSFORMS your face into one that looks like a model’s. What will this mean for teenage girls? How will this affect beauty standards? Why aren’t the same women who were once outraged at magazines for photoshopping images speaking out in the same way now? And is this kind of terrifying filter available for TikTok users in China, or just in the Western World? Glenn and Stu discuss all these questions, plus more…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Hey, the Chinese government has just introduced a new filter on TikTok that's going to be really good for all of us, especially our girls.

You're going to love this.

STU: Remarkable.

GLENN: This is a new filter that you can put on all of your TikToks. And it is making, you know, beautiful women and average-looking women and a few not so good-looking women, look like models.

STU: They all look incredible, in realtime.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: Even on mobile. And these filters, which are -- have a basis in a computational model of facial beauty, will alter your face in realtime, not look a little bit better. We've all seen filters, right?

It blurs a little bit. And it makes your skin look a little bit more smooth, or whatever. And this changes you completely into an incredibly good-looking person -- version of yourself.

GLENN: And it's not just like a makeup effect.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: I mean, it's -- it actually alters your face, into -- takes what you have, but then alters it in such a way, to where it beautifies you.

STU: Yeah. I retweeted this at Stu Does America. If you want to see some of the back and forth. And the commentary in some ways, is as valuable as the picture. Because the picture will make your jaw drop, when you see what these people really look like.

But then also, every one of them has this reaction like, oh, my gosh, I look so beautiful. And then they show their real face. And they say, oh, gosh, I've never felt more ugly.

What is this going to do to people?

GLENN: Oh, it's terrifying. It is terrifying. And, you know, I have to tell you, the first though was, how do I get one of these for our cameras? But that was really more about you, than me. You know, I know what I'm inflicting on you, if you happen to be watching.

STU: Right.

GLENN: There's a reason I'm on radio, you know.

STU: No kidding.

GLENN: Shut up.

Because you're there too.

STU: No kidding.

GLENN: If you're watching on the Blaze. I don't know if you can take it from behind me, and show what's on the screen. But this -- this woman, she is pretty. She just looks like she got up in the morning. Right? She doesn't have any makeup on. But she looks pretty. And look at that.

Now she's a -- an absolute model.

And she is -- she's one of them that's like, this is -- they're all saying the same thing. This is bad for society.

STU: Yeah. My initial two reactions were the same as yours. Which is, oh, my gosh, this is terrible for society.

How do I get this on every camera I use? The market is going to push this through. It's too good. It's too good.

Everyone will want to look like this. Especially when you have an entire society based on turning people into broadcasters.

GLENN: When you -- when you -- for instance, let's say I would use this.

And then I would be out in public. And they would be like, oh, my -- he's a dog face boy. What happened? You know what I mean?

STU: You know what, Glenn. What does being out in public even matter anymore, to these people? There is it don't out in public. There's just this camera. There's just the social media.

GLENN: But then think about how hollow this is.

Let's say you become famous, because you're so beautiful. But you're only beautiful in the virtual world.

And you get all kinds of attention, and all kinds of love and blah, blah, blah. And you're so hot. And then you go out in the real world, and you're the dog face boy.

STU: Uh-huh.

GLENN: You're not going to want to be out in public anymore.

STU: Right.

There is no, and then you go out in public. Right?

That just ends --

GLENN: It's terrifying.

STU: It ends.

And it's just going to screw with people.

Think of -- think of the teenage girls. We've been talking about it for a while. Who already have all sorts of problems, and what it's doing to their brains.

GLENN: Can I say, where are the women's groups? Do you remember when we used to complain?

STU: Glamour Magazine is Photoshopping. Oh, are they? That's a real problem compared to this.

GLENN: Yeah. Where are those people? I will tell you, I will not -- I started my dad years, just thinking, I would have loved to be a child in this era, because it has everything. You know what I mean?

Anything you want, you have access to. And now, as I have teenagers and I see the pain they're in all the time -- you go to school, and the girl -- my gosh. Girls are so vicious to each other.

You think, you know, I am so sick of hearing about boys and, you know, how bad boys are. And men are.

Girls are vicious. They are absolutely vicious with one another.

But my daughter comes home. My son comes home.

I can't imagine all of the pressures. My sisters had, you know, Vogue magazine, or what was the one you just said? Glamour.

STU: Glamour, Cosmo.

GLENN: Cosmo. They had those. That, you know, I can't live up to that.

STU: Right.

GLENN: This. How is can't daughter or your son -- does it do it to men?

STU: It does. And I haven't -- the transitions don't seem as dramatic with guys, I guess.

GLENN: Of course not.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: It just maybe puts us in pants, instead of cargo shorts.
(laughter)

STU: You just have my shirt no longer has wrinkles.

GLENN: We can't do any more than that.

STU: That's it. We're not scientists here.

GLENN: And isn't that weird that it's mainly for women? That they don't really have it for guys?

Women are already so freaked out about their looks. Guys are like, oh, I've got -- oh, yeah. It's just a piece of baloney been stuck in my beard for a week.

I'm sorry. Thank you.

STU: Yeah. Remove spinach from your teeth.

GLENN: Right. That's all it does. That's all it does.

STU: The guy who is talking about it on Twitter said, the effect seems to do different things to different people. On men in general, it's very subtle. Not so subtle on women, much harsher and unrealistic expectations. But even on men, it's not just makeup. It makes structural changes to the face.

You know, and you just look at this. And you're saying, you know, as we deal with this, think of --

GLENN: It's incredible.

STU: Now even the real people have turned into the AI models. Right?

You're not even seeing people anymore.

Think of every advertisement. Think of every account you follow.

These people will all start using this stuff.

GLENN: Think of this, when they say they airbrush her hips to be a little bit -- no.

No. No. This is so far beyond that.

And it's being done in realtime, to your daughters.

STU: And the market --

GLENN: Get off TikTok.

STU: Yeah. But wait. Just because it comes directly from the Chinese Communist Party. You think I should remove it from my phone?

Why wouldn't I carry it around with me, everywhere, with every piece of monitoring technology, that the Chinese government could ever beg for. Isn't that a better option?

GLENN: I would -- I would love to see if TikTok is doing this to their own people. I highly doubt it.

STU: Lots of times they aren't. Their algorithms often will promote, hey, here's some -- some incredible -- an accomplishment. A female, Chinese scientist. Like, for example, releasing a plague on the -- on the world.

They'll promote these incredible achievements.

GLENN: We like to call her "bat lady."

STU: Bat lady. Here's bat lady. She's -- remember coronavirus? That was her!

GLENN: She changed the world!

STU: She sure did. Look how many millions of capitalists she destroyed.

But they will -- like, these incredible achievements by Chinese citizens, they will promote those in the TikTok algorithm there. And then for us, internal to America, we get people who have had tragedies, who have been -- you know, who are developing Tourette's Syndrome out of nowhere.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: You know, all of the Tide pods.

GLENN: Yeah. You just get all of the -- yeah, you get the dumbest of the dumb, which just --

STU: Dumb. Victimhood. Tragedy.

That's what gets promoted there, to our algorithm.

GLENN: And people think that we're not really in a war with China. They think that -- I mean, even my own family. I -- my wife has TikTok. My wife -- I bet your wife has TikTok.

STU: Good God, of course she does.

Half the time I'm saying this to her, hoping she's listening.

GLENN: Right. And it's like, okay. Guys, we got to stop with TikTok. Got to stop with TikTok. It's really bad. Yeah. I know. I know. It's gathering information on everybody.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's gathering information on everybody. If I would have said, hey. By the way, the Nazis -- the Nazis are back in Germany, Hitler is actually alive. And they have this device where they're gathering all the information on you.

You might say, that's a bad idea. I'm not going to help them.

STU: And I will also mention, their genocide killed far fewer people than the one in China.

GLENN: Thank you.

STU: So, yeah.

I think it's kind of a bad idea. And, you know, look, I think -- this is a debate that will go on until the end of time.

I mean, these -- these -- this is such an egregious one.

Look, Mark Zuckerberg is really annoying. You know, Mark -- I don't think -- I don't want to give my information to Mark Zuckerberg either.

I don't want to give it to Google either. I don't want to give it to Apple either. But like, when it's actually owned by the Chinese Communist Party, is there no line?

I mean, seriously, this party is literally responsible for more deaths than the Nazis. They currently have millions of people in prison camps, and are basically at war with us. They just floated a freaking balloon over our country, to spy on us.

And we're like, I think they can get access to everything I've ever done. And my location at all times. And all my photos. And all the words I've typed and then deleted.

And everything -- they should have access then. They seem like nice people.

I don't know.

Sounds like there's a flaw in the logic somewhere.

Somewhere.

GLENN: When you have -- when you have -- when you have TikTok. Correct me if I'm wrong.

They monitoring everything. So if you do your banking online.

That's all being sent to the Chinese communist government.

They know your banking.

Your banking code. They've got it all.

STU: Certainly, they deny they have that.

GLENN: Of course, they do.

STU: But there have been many security experts and agencies that have come out and said, no. They are doing -- I mean, they have access to basically everything.

GLENN: Everything. Even what you deleted.

So I'm typing, you know what, you SOB, you better -- I better not do that. Delete, delete, delete.

Hey, Mike, you know, I was really disappointed in our conversation. You know what I mean? They have the first draft. They have everything.

STU: Again, a lot of people are like, well, I don't care. I never do anything that I would have a problem with --

GLENN: The Chinese.

STU: -- being public. Or having the Chinese -- I don't do anything. And I get that. A lot of people haven't. For example, I doubt that's true. You know, one of the things we talked about before, is this theory of cloudburst. The cloudburst apocalypse, which is, we put everything up in the cloud. It all sits up there. What if, at some point, AI, for example, hacks all of it at once. And releases all of it. Everything you've typed on a private message, on your computer.

Every photo you've ever put anywhere. What if all of that, for everyone comes out on the same day in a searchable fashion?

Theoretically possible in the future. And, yes. You might think, well, I never did anything. First of all, I doubt it. If everything you ever typed got out there, you're telling me, you wouldn't have friendships that blew up, at the very least? Not to mention, your financial future.

But forget that for a second. You are helping to fund this effort, which is targeting people all around the world. That did do something that might run afoul of the Chinese government.

You're helping fund it. You're giving them money. You're funding the operation, when they go and take down some dissident in a helpless person in some other country.

GLENN: All right. By the way.

STU: You're doing all of that.

GLENN: That's on TikTok, and you'll be able to find the rest of this monologue on TikTok later on this afternoon.

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!

Is this the REAL reason Democrats ended the shutdown?

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!