Glenn Beck explains why the FBI may have lost millions of text messages during the Russia investigation. He also talks about Bigfoot and the New York City sewer alligators. Glenn Beck is a conservative commentator and host of the conservative radio show "The Glenn Beck Show" on the Blaze Network.
00:12:17.720Maybe if they just beat each other, maybe we won't have any problems.
00:12:24.320Maybe the Republicans and the Democrats will just take each other out and leave the rest of us alone.
00:12:29.740It feels like every three or four months, there's a clip from a foreign country in which, you know, they're on the floor of whatever their Senate is called.
00:12:36.440And they start beating the crap out of each other.
00:12:41.320I'm kind of, in some ways, I'm looking forward to the time that somebody goes on Fox News or CNN and they just lift that fake desk up and just pitch it over somebody's head like they do in Russia.
00:13:35.640But the costume, the costume is purely American.
00:13:46.640And if she'd like, we can make them nicely beaded, too.
00:13:50.960Researchers found two serious security flaws in chips that are used in almost every PC server, smartphone, tablet produced in the last decade.
00:13:59.160If it says Intel, yeah, Intel can get in.
00:14:04.760Somebody who's looking for Intel can get right into that chip.
00:14:42.640No, this is about stealing your identity and living a life and all that entails with your identity.
00:14:49.460And it is going to cross your path at some point.
00:14:52.760If you have LifeLock, they are the ones, I think they're the best in the business.
00:14:57.520Not only because, I mean, nobody can, you know, I hate saying this every day because it's so clear and obvious.
00:15:05.100Nobody can monitor all transactions at all businesses.
00:15:09.340However, they have a setup that they are looking at a wide range of things.
00:15:14.800They're not just looking at your credit and they also have in-house people that if there is a problem, they're here in the United States and they are a restoration specialist and they'll work to fix it.
00:15:25.280It's one thing to say, hey, your identity's been stolen.
00:15:28.220I don't know what to do with that information.
00:16:09.100I feel bad about the talking stick that it was destroyed in what we tried to do as a civil conversation, really, about whether Susan Collins is a Republican or not.
00:16:24.420But then again, isn't the talking stick from Africa that she pointed out that we should use, isn't that really, truly cultural appropriation?
00:16:43.400And I'm offended that you would, you'd pull that out and try to appropriate someone else's culture and an important thing in their culture.
00:16:54.240Literally, Africa, Africa is what it is today because of things like this.
00:21:30.720When asked, they say that they want to strive to be deserving of the great trust placed in it by its national leaders and American citizens.
00:21:40.160As Stu just pointed out, the leaders are the citizens.
00:32:55.100We're not, but people who are working on AI are talking about cyber judges.
00:32:59.660And they've done studies, for instance, in Israel, that you have a better chance of going to jail the closer you get to your trial, being heard, and your judgment coming closest to lunchtime.
00:33:12.360If you get them in the morning, the judges are most likely not to give you a tough sentence.
00:33:18.220The closer you get to lunch, the study showed, that judge is hungry, and he is more ill-tempered, and you have a harsher sentence coming your way.
00:33:48.820I've told you that they're already diagnosing cancer in the New York Board of Medicine.
00:33:53.720There is an IBM robot that is on the board.
00:33:58.940Also, with the paroles here in America, they've decided, put all of the parole information to decide who has the best chance of making it, and who's going to go out and commit another crime.
00:34:13.660They started using it, and they're like, okay, so, you know what?
00:34:16.340We're going to listen to you, and here's what the computer says.
00:34:18.580And so, no, but what they found was, is that because of all the data, the AI system was saying that African Americans have a better chance of recidivism than other races.
00:34:37.120So, an African American would be more likely to go back to prison after committing a crime.
00:35:06.460Was the goal to figure out who should stay in jail and who should not, based on hard facts, or is the goal social justice?
00:35:19.660And remember, this is teaching the child what we prioritize, what the truth is.
00:35:28.620We should be very concerned about what Facebook is doing now with freedom of speech and fake news.
00:35:37.280We should be extraordinarily concerned about what Twitter is doing, and we should all be a part of the effort that Prager University is now mounting against Google and YouTube that has now, in their algorithms, classified Prager University as hate speech.
00:35:55.520Because it won't stop once you've programmed the goal.
00:36:12.740If you are looking to hire some new people, Fortune 100 companies, companies my size, use ZipRecruiter.
00:36:23.360And they do it for a couple of reasons.
00:36:25.380It not only posts everything with a single click to 100 different job sites, but ZipRecruiter actively, its goal is to go out and find the most qualified candidate.
00:36:35.560And it goes out and it searches the internet for those people who are looking for a job that are qualified for your job.
00:36:43.260And then it invites them to come and apply for a job with you.
00:36:47.180Right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free.
00:36:50.54080% of people who use this get qualified candidates in 24 hours.
00:37:11.100It's something that we do a lot more as human beings than I think most people realize.
00:37:15.360I mean, you drive down the road and there's a little yellow line between a car coming at you at 50 miles an hour and you're on your side of the road and they're on their side of the road.
00:37:24.060And we just trust that they'll stay on their side of the road.
00:37:26.480Their self-interest will do it, whatever it is.
00:37:29.240We don't die most of the time when we're driving and this is a positive thing.
00:37:32.680It's hard, though, to find people you can trust when it comes to really complicated transactions like real estate.
00:37:41.160You know, you're talking about your biggest investment in your entire life and you're trusting this to someone because you don't understand what any of those forms mean.
00:37:50.780You don't need half the people don't even read them.
00:37:52.260You need someone who can walk you through a big transaction like buying or selling a home and make sure there are people that you can trust that have been screened that aren't just some random person you're looking up on the phone book.
00:38:05.020Realestateagentsitrust.com is a company that Glenn actually started because he was trying to sell his house and had some issues.
00:38:11.100And basically what they do at realestateagentsitrust.com, it's a network of 1,200 agents.
00:38:15.980And Glenn and his team have gone through and kind of gone through and found the best ones in each area.
00:38:22.480And you go and you put in your address and you put in your area where you are and you find an agent you can trust.
00:40:27.540Lobbying operations to try to influence policy.
00:40:30.300Net neutrality, DACA, corporate tax reform, regulation of online advertising, mobile medical apps, self-driving cars, and, of course, climate change.
00:40:43.040Government and the tech giants are barreling towards a showdown because current antitrust laws are not equipped to handle these tech companies.
00:40:51.800Because these tech companies are not just one thing.
00:40:55.720Amazon, it's like an old mail order catalog company.
00:41:00.520It's also a grocery store chain now after buying Whole Foods.
00:41:03.620It's a TV broadcaster that produces its own original shows.
00:41:49.460And if the government wants to protect consumers from exploitation, they'll have to pry our data from the cold, dead fingers of the tech giants.
00:42:23.800You must keep an eye on government and business so they don't grow out of control mainly through the government and government regulations of business.
00:44:39.920I have been reading a lot lately on high tech.
00:44:45.260And the book I'm currently working on is Life 3.0, Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.
00:44:51.180And it is really good because of the questions that are in it.
00:44:54.580But it talks a little bit about educating your kids.
00:44:57.000And there are three things for the future that if you want your child to be successful, there are three things that you really need to focus on.
00:45:08.560One, does their future job, the thing they want to do, does it require interacting with people and using social intelligence?
00:45:16.400Because robots are not going to be able to do that.
00:45:44.380Does it involve creativity and coming up with clever solutions?
00:45:48.100And does it require working with an unpredictable environment?
00:45:53.320Those three things are what your kids, you should be preaching to your kids and talking to your kids about on their future career or your future career.
00:46:02.980I contend that the current education system is, it does require, it is teaching people how to socially interact and use social intelligence.
00:46:13.940But it is putting you in a box on that because it's killing the other two things.
00:46:21.660Does it require creativity and coming up with clever solutions?
00:47:11.500How do you respond to those three questions and the idea that the educational system is teaching our kids to live in a box that no longer exists or will no longer exist?
00:47:25.760Well, I mean, I can say the truth is that the economy is changing much more slowly than people realize.
00:47:30.380The high-tech sectors that you're talking about are only a small part of the economy.
00:47:34.080The world is changing a lot more between 1945 and the 70s than it has in the last 30 years.
00:47:40.240So I'm specifically talking about the thinking creatively and thinking out of the box to be able to adapt to whatever comes.
00:48:29.100So, you know, a lot of what I say in my book is that even though the world is changing dramatically, colleges have been locked in the same system for about 1,000 years.
00:48:39.920Modern employers keep heavily rewarding people with fancy college degrees, even though it doesn't seem like they're adapting to the modern world very well.
00:48:48.480And my main story is that the point of college isn't really to train people for the future anyway.
00:48:52.540It's more to jump through a bunch of hoops and show off and say, hey, look at me.
00:49:08.460So, human capital story is basically the one that parents and teachers and propaganda say about education, which is you go into school and they pour skills in you.
00:49:16.520You learn reading, writing, math, all this great stuff.
00:49:19.360And at the end, you are a transformed child, and you know how to do all these things, and then you're suddenly employable.
00:49:26.660And obviously, there's something to that.
00:49:28.480But if you really think about all the classes you've taken throughout your life, how many can you safely forget after the final exam?
00:49:34.200I mean, I don't know about you, but I think, you know, 75, 80, 90% of classes, once you're done with the final exam, you never need to know this stuff again.
00:49:45.360It says, you know, whenever you do anything impressive, when you go and get an A in your Aristotle class or complete four years of Latin or anything, any accomplishment that's irrelevant to virtually any job you'll ever do, still, when you put that on your transcript, employers look and say, wow, look at what this kid did.
00:50:01.260I think he's worthy of being trained to be a secretary.
00:50:04.840So, essentially, the education system, when it's signaling, is designed to do is not to actually teach people things, but to be able to signal to employers that, in theory, you're smart enough to do something else.
00:50:35.260Yes, I'll put a grade A sticker on it.
00:50:37.780And signaling a lot of what the education system does is the second thing.
00:50:40.620They're not really cutting you and making you great.
00:50:43.700What they're doing is looking at you and putting a sticker on you and saying, see, this is worthy of being hired for certain kinds of jobs.
00:50:50.600If you don't get the sticker, it's like, no, not good enough.
00:50:54.200So there's another theory out there that has been popular called Common Core, which this is, in my opinion, what Bill Gates was trying to solve.
00:51:07.200He was trying to put that sticker on you really early by, you know, really watching you closely and then sorting you out for the right job.
00:51:16.620I don't think that education is, for me, education, good education, is not teaching me what to think.
00:51:43.760So, I mean, Glenn, I see you're being an optimist there.
00:51:47.220I mean, even the idea that kids are learning a lot of stuff, I think, is really optimistic.
00:51:52.460I mean, if you especially just go and look at tests of what adults know about any of the stuff they learn in school, they've forgotten almost all of it.
00:51:59.780So, I mean, if we could have an education system that actually durably taught them even a bunch of facts, it would be better than what we have.
00:52:05.620It would be great if we could teach them how to think.
00:52:37.880The book is The Case Against Education, Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money.
00:52:44.020Volatility in the stock market, wild swings in Bitcoin, the constant turmoil in Washington.
00:52:49.900Last night, in the first, what, eight or ten minutes, I opened up the television show with something you have to see on the chalkboard because it's really complex.
00:53:01.300It is what causes inflation, and that is the amount of money plus velocity.
00:53:07.200And I explained the tax cuts, and not even the tax cuts, the repatriation of billions of dollars from these giant corporations and what that's going to mean.
00:53:18.260Now, if you understood last night's chalkboard, the first ten minutes of the show, you will understand why I say today gold is going to go up.
00:53:26.540Gold is up almost $100 since mid-December with lots of run room.
00:53:32.060You're going to see the stock market go through the roof.
00:53:34.380It's called a melt-up, and that usually is the precursor to something really, really bad.
00:53:39.860But we're already beginning to see a melt-up, and it's not just me saying it.
00:53:43.860It's other people now saying this as well.
00:53:46.180And you're going to see inflation go up, which will drive interest rates up.
00:53:51.920The gold is the place that the world always returns when it has gone insane.
00:53:59.980But it is also the hedge against inflation, and that is why gold is going up right now.
00:55:18.080Well, I mean, if you just go and measure the literacy and numeracy of American adults, say about a third to a half, their skills are just so bad, you'd almost call them illiterate and numerate.
00:55:29.840On the other hand, if you go over to college graduates, I'd say that basically their literacy and numeracy is kind of what you would prefer for a high school graduate.
00:55:43.240I mean, like, the amazing is I look out my window here in Philadelphia and see this amazing society, and they're like, how is it that we're able to get it done when people's skills are so poor?
00:55:52.600And through this, like, most of the time people learn on the job by practice, and most of what you fail to learn in school never comes up again anyway.
00:56:09.240If you did that, you make the case that really wouldn't be very useful in the current system because there's no little stamp of approval that says MIT loves you, right?
00:59:49.780George Mason University is the author of The Case Against Education.
00:59:54.100And he's also going to be speaking today at the Public Library of Philadelphia.
00:59:59.240It's free if you'd like to get a free education today at 730.
01:00:05.200So, Brian, let me just speak for, I think, the average person in America, whether it is a parent, a person going to college or thinking about going to college.
01:00:17.780We know the, we don't know it like you do.
01:00:22.920I mean, the stats that you lay out are pretty frightening of what, how bad education is right now.
01:00:32.540However, I think most people kind of know, especially conservatives, I think they send their kids thinking they're going to have all this debt.
01:00:45.880They're building water parks at universities now.
01:00:48.660They're not really getting a real education.
01:00:52.960In fact, I'm sending them almost against my will because I'm afraid of what those professors and what these universities are going to teach my kids on social justice and all this nonsense.
01:01:06.480But every parent, most of them, will say the same thing.
01:02:43.120You know, like, if you just go, you know, like, if you go through government statistics, what are, like, the high-paying jobs that don't require college?
01:02:50.620You know, there are still a lot of them.
01:02:52.620They're ones where, especially upper-middle-class families, they don't really know anyone who does these jobs anymore.
01:02:57.560So it's kind of hard for them to really visualize it.
01:03:00.900Right, if your kid is super bored sitting, listening to some windbag go and talk about abstract stuff, then, you know, like, you really should look into getting your kid vocational education.
01:03:11.100And instead of pressuring him to do something that he probably just has no interest in, find something that actually engages them in a course that doesn't require you to have four years of college debt, which is pretty crazy, if the kid's going to drop out anyway.
01:03:24.060You break this into kind of the selfish return and the social return, which is an interesting way of looking at it because you go through, really, the numbers of the selfish return on education, which a lot of times can turn out better, even financially, for a lot of kids to not go to college because they don't have all that debt.
01:03:43.320But can you talk a little bit about the social return?
01:03:46.280What's the actual path forward for us when you're talking about policy and you're talking about how to design an education system that actually works for the country?
01:03:55.020Sure. So if you remember, I was talking about human capital versus signaling. So there's the optimistic view that college is actually transforming you into a skilled adult.
01:04:05.260And then there's the not so optimistic view that I'm pushing that most of it is just about putting a stamp on your forehead and saying good enough to be trained.
01:04:13.660All right. Now, from the point, selfishly speaking, it doesn't really matter why employers will reward you for getting your degree.
01:04:20.920But from the point of view of society, from the point of view of taxpayers, it makes a huge difference because if you really school is really actually remolding our youth into the skilled workers, the future, then it's making our whole society richer.
01:04:33.880But if the main thing you're doing is putting stickers on people's foreheads, you can't get rich by putting lots of stickers on people's heads.
01:04:39.660So if it really is just saying you're in the top 25 percent of the distribution, then when you go and encourage more education, the main thing you do isn't get skilled workers.
01:04:50.520It means you have to spend more and more years in school just to get onto first base, just to go and start learning the job.
01:04:57.220I will tell you, there's there's a lot of people that that I have met and I'm in media, so it's slightly different.
01:05:04.740But nobody takes the college person seriously like, oh, you've got some latest information, you have some new.
01:06:36.620And then, you know, like, you know, so you're not going to keep someone employed just because you hired them and they're on the team if they're on the radio.
01:06:46.300Whereas for a lot of jobs, once you get hired, people will keep you there at least until the next recession comes along.
01:06:51.860And they just, well, we've got to get rid of somebody.
01:06:53.440So how about the person that's a huge disappointment?
01:06:55.220We're talking to Brian Kaplan, author of The Case Against Education, Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money.
01:07:01.140Brian, does some of this, the way we've moved towards signaling when it comes to universities, does that explain grade inflation at some level?
01:07:11.160Where we've seen, you know, back in the day, it used to be 10 or 15 percent of kids got A's in classes.
01:07:16.400And now it's sometimes 60 and 70 percent.
01:07:20.940And so it's actually pretty weird when you think about it, because if the main thing the college is doing is signaling, you might think that there would be a lot of pressure on us to really separate the great students from the good ones from the not-so-good ones.
01:08:13.420And so I think that's more of what's gone.
01:08:16.360Well, because it seems like there's a series of incentives, because if I'm now sending my kid to college because I want them to get that piece of paper, if at the end of this, where I've spent all of this money, I don't get that piece of paper, I'm not going to want to continue that process with the next kid.
01:08:34.100And it feels like there's an incentive for colleges to be able to push these people through and give them the piece of paper whether they want it or not, because that's all I'm really asking them for in the first place.
01:08:41.780Yeah, I mean, that sounds right until you take a look at the low graduation rates.
01:08:47.420If colleges really wanted to just pass people along, they would just cut standards even more than they already have, which is a little scary to think about.
01:08:55.300But, I mean, there is a point where you say, how low can we cut the standards before the students, before everyone will get over them?
01:09:00.900You know, I mean, a lot of it is honestly just to get the students even to bother to show up in class.
01:09:05.440So, I mean, like, you know, a typical college class has maybe 60% attendance on an average day.
01:09:10.840And, you know, those 40%, you know, a lot of those kids are the ones that are not going to get it through, although, you know, like a reasonably good student can still squeak by even attending all that often.
01:09:20.600Standards, you know, again, standards are strangely low, and yet there's many standard students that fall below even those low standards.
01:09:26.840If I could reflect what I think people feel for a second here, Brian, we are concerned about the standards, obviously.
01:09:40.320We're concerned about the price because how do we or our kids afford this?
01:09:46.860But we are also growing concerned, and I hear this from the left as well.
01:09:51.220They are very concerned about the things like, you know, the freedom of speech and thought on campus.
01:09:58.800And it is becoming, it feels as though it is becoming dangerous to the republic to get this indoctrination sometimes.
01:10:09.500And when you're talking about all these problems, you're saying, you know, we need to fix this from the inside of these powerful institutions.
01:10:22.700Or do others, is there a movement inside to say we have real problems and we've got to change this?
01:10:29.660Well, so, I mean, here's the thing is, you know, professors vary very, very widely amongst themselves.
01:10:36.560Different departments are very different.
01:10:39.180So, I mean, here's the main thing I'd say just to help people calm down a bit.
01:10:43.860Most professors are so boring that the brainwashing doesn't work.
01:10:46.800And most, and attendance is so low that a lot of the students are not hearing the stuff that you don't want them to hear.
01:10:55.780I mean, it's important to keep in mind that, you know, like when students, like students, even when they're getting a grade for the class and everything else,
01:11:01.920a lot of them just stay in the room and play video games.
01:11:05.440And, like, even when they're in the classroom, their minds are wandering.
01:11:08.160They're not paying that much attention.
01:11:09.080So, I mean, I agree that if you just look at the syllabi or if you just listen to a recording of many professors' lectures,
01:12:53.860Again, maybe it was an effort to politicize science, although maybe it was just the professor was curious about what kinds of kids he's teaching.
01:13:55.320Anyway, let me tell you about SimpliSafe.
01:13:57.800The home security company I've worked with since there were only 10 employees and the founder, actually, I can't remember if it was MIT or Harvard, but he was up there and he was an engineer.
01:14:09.080He comes from an engineering or tinkering family, if you will.
01:14:11.740So, his grandfather really helped us win World War II by coming up with some things for tanks in World War II.
01:14:19.560And so, he wanted to be kind of like his grandfather.
01:14:21.920Well, he just was helping his friends who all rented row houses, you know, in their final year of college.
01:14:29.000And there was break-ins on the street and they couldn't put a security system in because they didn't own the house, yada, yada, yada.
01:14:36.740So, they couldn't have it wired and they couldn't sign a long contract.
01:14:40.100So, he came up with SimpliSafe and it was very simple back then.
01:14:45.140Now, over 2 million people are protected with SimpliSafe and they've just released their brand new home security system.
01:15:39.240When you just go to the website and you look at the chart and how much money you're going to save, you know, in the first three months, the first six months, the 12 months, it will blow you away.
01:15:46.700How much money you're just flushing down the toilet.
01:16:49.560WaxRx, they are recommending you use WaxRx to clean your ears because that's what it's for.
01:16:56.080The WaxRx system is the method physicians trust the most and it's just like the system they use in their offices.
01:17:01.840Basically, the WaxRx system has these wax softening drops that break down your wax inside the ear.
01:17:08.880It's not something that people want to talk about.
01:17:10.960But, again, you're doing this at your house and you want to make sure that it's actually done the right way.
01:17:16.080Go to usewaxrx.com and order your reusable ear wash system today and use the offer code RADIO and they're going to ship it free right to your door.
01:17:25.460The promo code gets you the free standard shipping.
01:17:44.420He's doing his show from the Mercury Studios today and he'll be on TV tonight for a few minutes.
01:17:50.680And I'm going to give a special 30 minutes with just Ben and I talking about, you know, youth, the future of the conservative movement just for subscribers only at right after 530.
01:18:27.860Last hour, we were talking to a professor from George Mason and he was talking about, you know, how bad the education is.
01:18:35.260And I was talking a little bit about the brainwashing that is going on and the activization of at least 10 percent of our college students that just want to be liberal activists.
01:18:45.580And who is doing that on the other side?
01:18:48.000Who is who is is activating today's youth to be able to get them to defend the Constitution and conservative principles?
01:18:56.120The answer is sitting in my studio right now.
01:19:29.260Do you meet anybody on the left that is because I have people who are hard on the left who say I'm really concerned about what's happening on college campus?
01:19:37.100I think that's a growing concern for a lot of people on the left.
01:19:39.360And I think anybody who's an honest person on the left has to look at the way that they're cracking down on free speech and think to themselves, this is a problem.
01:19:45.380And it could reverse itself and bite us.
01:19:47.620Yeah, this is not this is not a single edged blade.
01:19:50.700So, yeah, I mean, it's a serious problem that they're allowing the hecklers veto to prevail here, that somebody from the community will threaten something.
01:19:57.880And suddenly 100 officers are necessary.
01:19:59.480And we ban everyone from the general public.
01:20:01.220They've now done this at Northwestern.
01:20:03.420They just ban people from coming in entirely from the outside community, whereas like last week, Anita Hill spoke at UConn and it was completely open to the public.
01:20:14.540So you're going to join us today for a few minutes on the television show.
01:20:19.680We're going to do some stuff that for subscribers only to the blaze.
01:20:22.280And we're going to talk about the the future of the conservative movement and and what our principles are and how we how we navigate from here.
01:20:29.720But I want to talk to you about kind of the news of the day and get your point of view on.
01:20:37.040Do we have the audio of the Secret Society or do you have the latest memo or piece?
01:20:42.840Because two days ago, was it two days ago or yesterday, Ron Johnson comes out and he said, you know, there's and we have we have a source that says there was a secret society meetings that were going on.
01:20:54.940And we know we have this text message and something didn't feel right.
01:20:58.800I want everything released because if that is happening.
01:21:02.500But I also said, I think it was yesterday, that kind of sounds a little like McCarthy saying, I've got the names of 250 people right in my pocket.
01:21:10.140But if you don't have it, you're going to destroy everything.
01:21:16.220And here's what we found out yesterday about what that that memo or that text message actually said.
01:21:28.080OK, in the single message again, the single text message sent the day after Trump was elected was from senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page to Peter Strzok, the top counterintelligence officer at the FBI.
01:21:39.640And a key figure in the Bureau's past investigations into Trump and Clinton.
01:21:43.100Here's the quote. Are you even going to give out your calendars?
01:21:46.220Page asked Strzok. Seemed kind of depressing.
01:21:49.100Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.
01:21:56.340The way all Republicans were talking it up yesterday was was like this was going to be the view from Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom where he looks down and there's just a bunch of people chanting.
01:22:04.500And what it actually ends up being is just a bunch of nerds who sit around and have beer and talk about work.
01:22:12.840But I really this is my big problem is no one is waiting for all the evidence to come out before jumping to their narrative conclusion.
01:22:19.260So you have people on the left and their narrative conclusion is Donald Trump definitely colluded with Russia.
01:22:22.900And the FBI is in the midst of one of the great investigations of our time that is going to uncover the real source of Donald Trump's victory.
01:22:29.400And any questions that are asked about that are completely out of line.
01:22:32.100And then on the right, you have this counter narrative that the FBI is thoroughly corrupt.
01:22:35.740It has been completely run through with people on the left who don't care about the truth and are simply out to get President Trump.
01:22:42.120And my tendency is to think that there's a lot of in between there and it's probably somewhere in the in between, meaning that there are probably people like Strzok and Page who don't like Trump.
01:22:50.280We don't really know the impact that they've had on this particular investigation.
01:22:53.040One of the texts that everyone seems to be ignoring on the right is the text from Strzok to Page saying, I don't want to join the Mueller investigation.
01:23:17.320And all of these propositions can be true.
01:23:18.940It can be true that the FBI was politicized by the Obama administration most clearly in the Hillary Clinton investigation.
01:23:23.340There's no question that the FBI was political in that investigation.
01:23:26.600It's also true there are bad apples inside the FBI.
01:23:28.400It can also be true that the investigation right now is doing what it's supposed to do.
01:23:31.740It can also be true that that investigation has gone beyond its original bounds and is now moving into obstruction, which seems to me a lot more of a stretch.
01:23:38.480All these things can be true at once, but people are not waiting for all the evidence to come out before they jump to whatever facts support the conclusion that they want.
01:23:45.320Either the FBI is thoroughly corrupt or the FBI is thoroughly pristine.
01:23:49.640And to find the real conclusion here, doesn't the theater hurt this idea that everyone comes out and screams about how we know we have a secret society?
01:23:56.580We know Russia is included with Trump.
01:23:59.740Doesn't that really hurt the search for the actual truth?
01:24:12.700That means that he actually gets to declassify, for example, the FISA application on Carter Page.
01:24:17.080One of the big complaints from people on the right, I think quite, quite, quite possible this is true, is that the FISA application on Carter Page was based on the steel dossier, the fusion GPS dossier that was funded by the Democrats and was essentially based on Russian disinformation.
01:24:33.560OK, if that's the case, then why not just release the application?
01:24:40.500And I've been told by people, well, he doesn't want to look like he's politicizing the investigation.
01:24:43.580How does he not look like he's politicizing the investigation?
01:24:47.320I mean, the guy tweets about Jeff Sessions and Andrew McCabe and James Comey every five minutes.
01:24:52.420So all I want, you know, just as an American, all I want is more information and less conjecture because all I'm getting is conjecture and posturing.
01:24:58.960And now you've got the Democrats are putting out their own memos.
01:25:19.620And maybe if that's not true, then wouldn't you expect Devin Nunez to say, no, I have seen the classified material.
01:25:23.980And my my memo is based on that classified material.
01:25:26.340But the DOJ emailed Devin Nunez, sent him a letter yesterday, and they said, listen, don't release that classified memo because, number one, it compromises national security.
01:25:33.660But number two, you actually haven't seen the underlying classified materials you're talking about.
01:25:37.880So why are we reading a memo not based on the classified materials that are actually at issue, especially when a lot of those classified materials could become declassified by the president?
01:25:46.440All this says to me, here's where I actually think this is going based on the evidence that's on the table where I think this is going is I think Robert Mueller is going to try and establish a pattern of obstruction against President Trump.
01:25:55.920He's going to suggest that President Trump was trying to fire James Comey and go after his own DOJ and go after Andrew McCabe in order to stop an investigation into him, because whether or not Trump is innocent, he thinks he's innocent.
01:26:08.420And therefore, he was trying to, quote unquote, obstruct the investigation.
01:26:11.920This is the problem with obstruction as a charge.
01:26:13.640There doesn't actually have to be an underlying crime in order for you to obstruct.
01:26:16.280Right. If you're obstructing an investigation, then it doesn't it doesn't matter whether there's actually underlying anything that went bad.
01:26:22.240The problem is, I think we're going to get the worst case scenario because I've become such a pessimist that we always get the worst case scenario.
01:26:27.460The worst case scenario here is that there is no actual legal obstruction, right, because the actual statutes on obstruction do not cover President Trump firing James Comey or even saying to Andrew McCabe, who'd you vote for?
01:26:39.040That doesn't obstruction is a legal charge.
01:26:40.920As a lawyer, these charges in the U.S.
01:26:42.820Code do not apply to what President Trump has done.
01:26:50.040And then they launch an impeachment push against President Trump.
01:26:52.900And then Republicans are forced into the position of having to defend some of the stupid and I think dismal things that Trump has done from firing Comey, which I think was dumb, to, you know, demanding a loyalty oath, all these sorts of things that are not illegal but are not smart.
01:27:07.220And so we're sitting around defending those.
01:27:08.920And then the Democrats are browbeating us and saying they need impeachment.
01:27:11.200It's just it's a it ends up being a battle over bad behavior as opposed to a battle over criminality.
01:27:15.800And the left will charge that the right is fine with criminality and the right will say that the left is trying to to use the law in the wrong ways.
01:27:22.080And, you know, and nobody will be half right and both will be half wrong.
01:27:35.280And I don't honestly, I don't think people care that much about this other than the diehard political fanatics on the right who think that Trump is absolutely innocent of everything and has never done anything wrong.
01:27:44.420And people on the left who think that that Trump is absolutely guilty of everything and is going to be impeached.
01:27:49.180They're waiting for the deus ex machina to come in and just remove Trump from office, which is not happening.
01:28:45.320The FBI has known things about Russia and they have not they have not followed through.
01:28:52.840Why is there someone that is saying, you know, kind of like what's his name that went in and took the under it took his the documents out of the Library of Congress or the Sandy Berger.
01:29:03.800Yeah, the National Archives, you know, both sides were kind of like, oh, no, that's you know, that's that's pretty OK.
01:29:09.000I'm pretty OK with that because both sides are dirty with Russia.
01:29:12.840We need to know, can we trust our Justice Department?
01:29:37.500I agree with a lot of this, and I also don't think that it's going to happen.
01:29:39.820I think that everyone if you're on the side of what the FBI is doing right now, then you are going to stand up for the FBI no matter what.
01:29:45.680If you don't like what the FBI is doing right now, then you're going to suggest that they're a nefarious institution in the pay of the opposite side.
01:29:51.020It's how do either of these not accomplish the goals of Vladimir Putin of destroying our republic?
01:29:56.900Well, I mean, I think that Putin was very smart.
01:29:58.540He realized that all he had to do was drop, you know, a hint of conspiratorialism into American politics and everybody would jump on it with both feet.
01:30:13.000I mean, if you look in another area where Russia was supposedly nefarious, I really don't think that Russian bots were manipulating people's information hole during the last election cycle.
01:30:21.880I think that people are jumping on that because they find it politically useful.
01:30:25.100So it's Russia interfered in the election.
01:30:27.440But I think that what they've done even more to more success even is they've allowed that impression that they interfered in the last election cycle to now create the basis on which everything else moves.
01:30:39.040So, for example, the release of the memo hashtag that was trending last week.
01:30:42.160Suddenly, Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff are suggesting the reason that it's trending is because of Russian bots.
01:30:46.340And they're calling on Facebook and Twitter to actually crack down on these non-existent Russian bots that were supposedly sending this trending.
01:30:51.880Daily Beast did a report yesterday and they said it wasn't Russian bots.
01:30:54.700That was just a bunch of Republicans who are hashtagging release the memo.
01:30:57.920The point that Dianne Feinstein and Schiff are doing is what they are doing is they want Facebook and Twitter to crack down on right wing media outlets claiming that it's a way of cracking down on fake news.
01:31:07.320So they're using the Russian bot stuff and they're using the Russia stuff as a proxy for getting to a political goal they want to get to.
01:31:15.040I swear, every day I wake up and I think I'm cynical enough about politics today.
01:31:20.320And then by that night, I'm thinking, my God, I need to be twice as cynical as I was this morning because it just doesn't work.
01:31:25.300Back with more Ben Shapiro here in just a second.
01:31:31.160Markets are beginning to price for a potential interest rate hike in March.
01:31:36.400If you missed the show last night, I did a chalkboard and it was really interesting because I know I did this chalkboard a couple of times when I was at Fox, one that was similar.
01:31:47.420And I said, look, this is what I'm looking for.
01:31:50.100This is where we're going to start to have trouble if these things happen.
01:32:11.300Anyway, one of the things that you will draw the conclusion on is if you don't have a locked in interest rate right now on your house, you need to get one.
01:32:22.900Because interest rates are going to go up and up and up.
01:32:26.760They have to as we start to see more and more inflation as all of this money starts flowing through the system.
01:32:33.600The people that I would like you to call is American financing.
01:32:37.780They're mortgage consultants and they're salary based.
01:32:40.220And that makes a difference because they work for you and not a bonus.
01:32:43.920Most places, in fact, almost all places, and especially banks, they are giving bonuses to their loan officers if you'll sell the people into this.
01:32:53.080That's not what American financing does.
01:32:55.300You'll get a straightforward and effortless mortgage experience.
01:32:58.120I want you to call them now at American Financing 800-906-2440.
01:33:27.580Talking to Ben Shapiro, who I think is the leader of the future movement of conservative thought in America.
01:33:40.240He is everywhere on college campuses and everywhere online where it counts with the youth.
01:33:48.080We're in a weird situation right now to where we have a president who is, in many ways, giving us, as conservatives, things that we haven't seen since maybe Reagan.
01:34:07.440We have a great Supreme Court justice.
01:35:09.640Because if we're not willing to call out bad when we see it, even from people that we like what we're getting from them, then we can't have an honest conversation.
01:35:16.040It turns into simply fanboying or fangirling for a particular political figure.
01:35:21.580They couldn't call out Obama when Obama was engaged in obvious corruption with the IRS, for example, while saying, oh, we like Obamacare, but we don't like what he's doing with the IRS.
01:35:30.240But you see this on the right now with regard to Trump's character.
01:36:03.380Interesting phrasing of that question.
01:36:04.260I think, again, that we have to learn to live with cognitive dissonance.
01:36:10.220You can like a lot of the things he's doing.
01:36:11.460And as an evangelical Christian or as an Orthodox Jew as I am, I think you can stand and say, listen, this guy is standing up for religious liberty with the judges that he's appointing.
01:36:36.720Then you should talk to her about not being a porn star.
01:36:39.160But the fact that we feel compelled to make excuses for bad behavior is something that I think leads people who are in the middle, not even on the left, people in the middle to say, well, you're not being intellectually honest about your own side.
01:36:49.920And you lose your own moral credibility in that line.
01:36:52.320I'm not worried about Trump losing his credibility.
01:37:30.020I think that that holds true, particularly for Trump, even to the extent that new information doesn't change what you feel about Trump.
01:37:35.300If you think Trump is despicable, you're still going to think Trump is despicable.
01:37:38.100If you think he's wonderful, you're still going to think he's wonderful, which suggests to me that when he does something bad, we don't have to stand around and defend him like this is going to destroy his political career.
01:37:46.060The man won an election after being caught on tape talking about bragging, bragging about grabbing women by the genitals.
01:37:51.240I don't think he requires your defense at this point.
01:37:59.320It's about what you are willing to say is good and bad and what your friends think about you and what people think about you as a person based on what you are willing to condemn and what you are willing to accept.
01:38:08.340But you can accept the policies and despise the actions in personal life.
01:38:42.760I don't know if you saw the news today, Pat, but federal spending for the fourth Monday in January set a record of $16,596,000,000, even though the federal government was shut down.
01:38:57.580We're closed for the day and still spend a record amount of money.
01:44:06.200And so they don't want to go in on anything to reach into that and pull it out because once, once they do, then they expose themselves as liars and they expose the NSA for what it really is doing and what it is capable of doing.
01:44:22.900And they run the risk of waking up the American people to the threat because the way it is now, somebody, too many of us think, well, I'm not doing anything wrong.
01:45:05.920So I think it was about two months ago we did a story about this new thing that was happening on, I think it was Reddit was where it started.
01:45:13.380And, and they were talking about how they were, they were using artificial intelligence, uh, to put the faces of celebrities on existing porn videos.
01:45:26.820So it would look like, you know, Taylor Swift had a porn video.
01:45:55.320This is from December, last December on the TV show.
01:46:00.240Researchers in artificial intelligence lab in California, they developed an algorithm capable of manipulating images into pretty much anything that they want.
01:46:09.920I'm going to show you the algorithm first.
01:47:20.120And so, as you read the story, there's a one throwaway line about halfway through it that says, most of the videos they're doing this with are porn.
01:47:30.160However, there was a video of the Argentinian president doing something.
01:47:37.940A pro-Hitler speech of some sort where they had put the Argentinian president's face onto someone who was saying something positive about Hitler.
01:48:14.220So, what I said about that at the time was, okay, so you walk into a brothel, but it wasn't you.
01:48:21.840If the government or somebody else that is powerful...
01:48:24.480Now, remember, do you remember the story from Russia where the Russian government offered a million dollars to anyone who could prove that the picture of the Soviets landing on the moon and the Soviets planting the Soviet flag wasn't real.
01:48:45.280They've developed an algorithm that now you cannot tell.
01:48:49.720There's no traces that they have augmented a picture.
01:48:53.540And so, what they did is they took a picture of, you know, our moon landing with Apollo 11, and they just put them in a cosmonaut outfit with a Soviet flag and put the Soviet flag on the lunar lander.
01:49:05.140You could tell because you've seen that picture a million times.
01:49:07.740You knew that was our lunar lander, but they were saying a million dollars for anybody that can prove that this is a fake because you can't.
01:49:19.840If I said to you today, Pat, to solve crime, if we just track everybody, okay, if we just always track everybody, we're going to be able to get rid of 90...
01:49:35.940If we're going to be able to prove people were guilty 90% of the time, but everybody has to be tracked, what would you say?
01:49:43.060I would say if you're willing to compromise your liberty for your security, you're going to lose both and you deserve neither.
01:49:53.540Pat, right now, nefarious people, because you're a CEO, because you're outspoken in the PTA, because you have an ex-spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend that hates your guts,
01:50:10.620they can produce evidence that no one can tell is true, and they're going to put it out online, and it could destroy you.
01:50:24.600Now, the way to take care of this is just if we just know where you are all the time, you can prove that wasn't you walking into the brothel.
01:50:35.480Now, I pitch it that way, and this stuff becomes real, and people start to know it, and people are starting to be destroyed by it, and you don't know.
01:51:29.800The new Taco Bell fries are out today.
01:51:32.100The recent false alarm in Hawaii really demonstrates on how unprepared people are.
01:51:39.120If you didn't watch my warning on the economy yesterday from the TV show, please watch the first 10 minutes on demand at theblaze.com slash TV.
01:51:48.540It is compelling, and it is based in math and history, and you need to see that 10-minute chalkboard right at the beginning of yesterday's show.
01:51:57.560Because you need to do a few things to prepare.
01:52:01.240One of the things that you can do if you have not yet done it is please, please have some sort of emergency food supply.
01:52:12.200Right now, my Patriot Supply will provide 102 servings of survival food that lasts up to 25 years, and it's only $99.
01:53:07.260And we have done a disservice to these fries, as we kind of pointed out in the break.
01:53:10.600You know, they've now gone through the drive-thru, and we had to hear Glenn talk for however many minutes about whatever he was talking about.