The Glenn Beck Program - January 25, 2021


Best of The Program | Guest: Ajit Pai | 1⧸25⧸21


Episode Stats

Length

42 minutes

Words per Minute

176.61664

Word Count

7,540

Sentence Count

6

Misogynist Sentences

8

Hate Speech Sentences

9


Summary

On today's show, we have a special interview with the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Payan. We talk about his views on the FCC, the immigration crisis, and much more! Don't miss the second episode of the Glenn Beck Program!


Transcript

00:00:00.000 hey it's monday stew and i look for look for fun conspiracy theories uh uh and invent a couple of
00:00:07.220 our own uh gee why would they say that this show pushes conspiracy theories that's crazy sounds
00:00:12.200 crazy sounds crazy uh also we have uh ajit payan you may not know who he is yeah but he's the uh
00:00:19.520 head chairman of the fcc big part of the trump administration uh one of our favorite trump
00:00:24.720 administration officials and that he's done a great job and one of the things he's done is
00:00:28.040 protect the internet uh when the left was trying to take it over he stood up against that
00:00:31.740 and clearly won the battle and he's got some concerns and uh some exciting things to talk
00:00:37.180 about on today's uh broadcast also on the podcast we talk about the real meaning behind the impeachment
00:00:44.680 and the 14th amendment what they're really trying to do don't want to miss the second of today's
00:00:48.860 podcast here we go you're listening to the best of the glenn beck program
00:01:00.420 welcome to the program mr pat gray from pat gray unleashed the podcast you can hear on blaze tv as
00:01:11.060 he records it live before this broadcast uh or you can uh check it out wherever you get your podcast
00:01:17.140 hello pat yeah hello glenn how are you oh perfect just i mean so perfect you know i'm so glad the
00:01:24.200 media said uh over the weekend uh cnn was talking about how joe biden what he's doing is just boring
00:01:30.740 there's i mean he's just not doing anything he's just not doing anything that's exciting or you know
00:01:38.700 controversial right like they're just 19 boring executive orders exactly and they're all like
00:01:45.660 hey maybe you should order more paper clips yeah you know exactly and who cares about paper clips
00:01:52.620 except for the fact that none of them are about paper clips they're about things like the border
00:01:57.400 right right well just release all all people that ice has in custody yeah all of them no big deal
00:02:07.900 yeah just all of them yeah it's not everybody it's not like he's releasing
00:02:11.660 well he is releasing all of them yes he is uh but he's not releasing more than all of them
00:02:18.520 no that would be controversial yes but this isn't uh this isn't nope he's also inspired uh caravans
00:02:26.120 again so we got uh yes we have that going on we had one of 8 000 last week that was broken up a
00:02:31.340 little bit uh we have another one of 3 000 that launched uh again like yesterday that's great
00:02:36.580 that's only that's great you know 11 000 people that are headed i think it's wonderful states of
00:02:41.960 america hey by the way uh did you did you hear that jeff bezos and amazon little upset yeah i did hear
00:02:49.440 yeah little upset there's a they're trying to unionize amazon and he doesn't like that i mean
00:02:56.160 when you got a corporation like amazon that's working well why not throw a little bit of the
00:03:05.260 postal service in there with it you know what i mean let's get a couple of really good unions in there
00:03:10.700 so um amazon has just filed with the national labor relations board because the unions said what
00:03:21.140 we're going to do because it's so huge instead of having a meeting where everybody votes uh what
00:03:26.140 we'll do is we'll have mail-in ballots and uh and uh bezos doesn't like that because he
00:03:35.260 he says mail-in voting there's too much of a risk of fraud by the labor unions yeah the only way it
00:03:43.220 can be valid and fair uh-huh is to have an in-person voting system right well not only that not only that
00:03:51.520 he said um the concerns about election security run uh particularly high because we don't have
00:03:59.880 a reliable electronic signature platform hmm hmm so amazon doesn't have that yeah hmm that's interesting
00:04:12.680 that's uh so i throw that in i mean again some of the stuff gets out of where the election was you know
00:04:19.200 crazy but the one they keep saying like will we check the signatures it's like i buy things every
00:04:24.500 day and they supposedly check the signatures like they they don't even look at my signature when i
00:04:29.460 sign a credit card receipt for thousands of dollars they don't even care like they check the signatures
00:04:35.420 i mean i'm not saying they don't go through a check but like how reliable is that check i have
00:04:39.260 literally signed at mickey mouse at times i really have yeah i signed one jesus at one point
00:04:45.180 just to see just to see nope i just i actually signed it jesus mccool nothing nothing i i sent my
00:04:55.140 kid up there the other day to buy lunch with my credit card and they gave it to him like i he's not
00:05:00.240 he didn't get the credit card he's nine they don't care he's on his cell phone american express i know
00:05:08.520 i know i've i wrote i wrote the check i don't know why it's not there for last month's payment
00:05:13.680 i just need lunch today um tim matheson for for for some reason now tim matheson is the guy remember
00:05:24.640 do you know who he is yeah he's the guy from national lampoon's animal house animal house yeah
00:05:29.860 right he was otter in that right and and what he's been doing since is oh it's terrific stuff
00:05:39.020 right whatever it is so so anyway i've seen all of his film yeah oh so um so he he tweeted out
00:05:48.100 so wonderful to have a first lady with class and heart and can speak english oh yeah
00:05:59.080 melania trump what a dummy she only speaks five languages only five she's only fluent in five
00:06:07.760 and no class did you see her you see her out sitting on the washer and dryer that she put
00:06:14.500 on the back porch of the white house sitting there with a crop top and she's sitting there just
00:06:22.140 drinking a budweiser and i thought could we get some class wouldn't it be nice wouldn't it but no
00:06:28.160 no no you got a supermodel in the white house and they hated her guts for four years for no
00:06:34.420 apparent reason whatsoever is there any first lady that had more class than melania trump
00:06:41.220 not that i can think of she was always classy i think jackie o would be the only one that i could
00:06:46.400 think of that was was in her category yeah jackie o had real class but you know i was at the white
00:06:55.040 house and i'm in the rose garden remember when she redid the rose garden yeah yeah and what did
00:06:59.380 they say they said she ruined it that it was ridiculous it was terrible do you know what she
00:07:04.300 did because i was standing in the rose garden it is beautiful you know what she did no not exactly
00:07:10.320 yeah she uh uh restored it to the exact plan of jackie o they had changed it since so all she did was
00:07:19.840 like i think jackie o had the right plan and they restored it to the jackie o plan and that was
00:07:27.640 classless unbelievable i mean it's just unbelievable i i just but the class of dr jill biden wow now
00:07:37.620 that yeah i yeah that's amazing um san francisco hotels are being used to house homeless people
00:07:45.780 and there's a new executive order that has just been signed by joe biden it's so boring i i shouldn't
00:07:54.320 even read it to you um under the order certain kinds of emergency housing for the homeless are eligible
00:08:02.000 to be fully reimbursed through september now uh not sure if this executive order uh if if this
00:08:13.920 emergency will will fit this executive order but i'm guessing it does uh so now we are going to be
00:08:24.320 paying for the hotel rooms of the homeless in san francisco
00:08:31.980 i have to ask you do you have a line anywhere do you have a line on on taxes where it's just like okay
00:08:41.080 okay no because i almost feel like that's taxation without representation because i'm paying for
00:08:47.200 programs in california i don't get any representation in california why am i paying for policies that i
00:08:55.620 vehemently disagree with in california california should have to pay their own bill i don't live in
00:09:02.700 california for a reason i live in texas for a reason you know texas brought home all of its own gold
00:09:10.520 we have our own gold reserve now we finally got it out of the federal reserve it took us five years
00:09:17.400 but we got it and now we have all of our own gold reserves i did that for a reason because texas knew
00:09:25.560 this ain't gonna last is texas why does texas have to pay for the nonsense in california
00:09:33.220 is it just me because i feel this way about why am i if those if they're using federal funds
00:09:40.660 then no that's i mean that's completely wrong these ideas this is why you know madison did not want this
00:09:47.400 to be the outcome right where we just send a bunch of money to the federal government and it distributes
00:09:52.680 it all over the correct all over the country correct the opposite of the model right and it's it and
00:09:58.320 they're doing it in california they're going to do it with and if it's executive order do i really
00:10:04.700 have representation there because they're spending money through executive order it's supposed to go
00:10:10.880 through congress but even if it does go through congress um i don't have any representation in
00:10:18.360 california who's who's the one going to hold the budget for us who's going to be the one that holds
00:10:24.820 the feet to the fire who's going to make sure that california has some austerity instead of just
00:10:31.020 continuing to spend money i mean i just think we are setting ourselves up for massive problems because
00:10:39.980 when new york fails which it will when illinois fails which it will i have no problem helping a neighbor
00:10:49.360 but not the neighbors who have been living it up not the neighbors who are like you guys there's
00:10:54.800 so stupid party why would i help them i i think new york will probably be fine because
00:11:03.780 i just imagine the sales of the poster that andrew cuomo made celebrating how good what a good job he
00:11:10.700 did on coronavirus those are probably selling so much that he can just pay off all the budget
00:11:14.480 problems with that right and or his book yeah just just either one the book about what a great job he
00:11:19.320 did with the coronavirus that was released just as they went to the highest peak they've had
00:11:23.740 since the beginning of the by the way speaking of more problems 7 000 national guardsmen are going
00:11:29.200 to remain in washington through mid-march now 7 000 so dc's essentially an occupied city then
00:11:38.720 i guess i guess that's what i guess it's great that's what they said trump wanted to do to portland
00:11:46.020 make it an occupied city now we have 7 000 national guardsmen and desantis is calling them back he's
00:11:53.080 like you're not you're not keeping any of my national guarded march i mean i i understand that
00:11:57.340 like maybe the next day they don't leave because that would be kind of an obvious cue to everyone if
00:12:02.020 there was going to be a problem but mid-march i mean what what's the limiting what's the limiting
00:12:07.200 argument here like at some how why would you send them home in mid-march then the people are going to
00:12:11.960 come in april right like there's no limiting principle here to stop this so desantis is pulling
00:12:18.400 the troops back uh so is uh so is texas yeah they're gonna lose yeah all the red states are
00:12:24.760 gonna be like no we're not gonna we're not gonna we're not an uh an everlasting occupying force in
00:12:29.640 this in washington dc yeah and they're making them sleep in parking garages now they moved them out of
00:12:35.480 the marbled floors of the of the capitol building and put them in a parking garage they said that they
00:12:40.940 national guard asked for that not bull crap i'd say that's bull no they said that they they wanted
00:12:46.920 to be we want to sleep in a parking garage it's more comfortable for them we'd we'd hate to be in
00:12:52.860 a hotel put us in a parking garage i mean please those are comfortable please we don't want to go to
00:12:57.360 a hotel though that's for the homeless right we'd rather sleep in the garage
00:13:02.100 the best of the glenn beck program
00:13:08.080 it's an honor to have ajit pai on with us again former fcc chairman uh ajit how are you
00:13:24.320 my gosh they've silenced him already hey glenn how are you there you are having me on you bet how
00:13:31.740 are you sir pretty good pretty good hope you're doing well also on this monday morning um so you
00:13:37.680 were the uh chairman of the fcc before that you were the commissioner at the fcc you were appointed
00:13:44.280 then by barack obama um and approved unanimously by the uh senate so everybody agreed that you were a
00:13:53.100 a good guy that could get the job done um you've done some amazing things i believe that you and
00:14:00.780 and when you were at the fcc those involved with you save the internet uh from net neutrality tell
00:14:08.600 me about the health of the internet and where we are today because of those challenges before we look
00:14:14.340 to the future well the internet in terms of its infrastructure is stronger than ever and this is
00:14:20.860 remarkable when you consider that when we made our decision to repeal these heavy-handed net neutrality
00:14:25.440 regulations back in 2017 the left was caterwauling about how this was the death of the internet as we
00:14:32.300 know it that was according to bernie sanders others said the internet would slow down to one word per
00:14:36.960 time the others said that you'd have to pay 15 per month just to be able to tweet all these things
00:14:44.100 have fallen by the wayside speeds are now twice as fast as they were back in 2017 internet infrastructure
00:14:50.300 has been built out so that millions more americans have access uh obviously it's a much different
00:14:55.900 environment than those uh hyperbolic predictions would have suggested and to me at least the proof
00:15:00.640 in the pudding has been during the pandemic we've had our internet infrastructure has held up despite
00:15:05.440 the increase in traffic whereas in europe which still has these net neutrality regulations they had
00:15:10.500 to go hat in hand to companies like netflix and youtube and beg them to throttle content because they
00:15:15.540 don't have the infrastructure that's necessary to sustain these loads so we made the right decision
00:15:20.500 and i'm glad we did so are you still hearing the voices where those forces still out there for
00:15:26.340 net neutrality and to bring some of these regulations back and if so why you know i'd say we still hear them
00:15:35.180 all the time whenever i'm on social media i see it uh and it's incredible i think it's more of a
00:15:41.460 religious issue with some folks on the left and what does that mean what do you mean by that
00:15:47.780 because what i mean by religious issue is there is literally no set of evidence you can ever provide
00:15:53.800 to these people to persuade them that there's not a problem you look at the last three years without
00:15:58.960 these net neutrality regulations we haven't seen any kind of market failure we haven't seen broadband
00:16:03.380 providers broadling or blocking content nonetheless they say that these rules are absolutely vital and
00:16:09.380 the internet's about to die meanwhile these very same advocates are going to the tech giants and
00:16:14.360 telling them we want you to censor content that we don't like and so the hypocrisy of these advocates
00:16:19.860 is just stunning it's just as i said there's literally no evidence we could provide in terms of
00:16:24.640 faster speeds more infrastructure you have open internet all that kind of stuff that would persuade
00:16:30.200 them and so it's not a reason policy debate anymore and at least on some quarters at least it's much
00:16:36.240 more of a issue of religion do you believe or do you not and uh that's unfortunate because we're
00:16:42.900 after all we're making policy here we're not putting our finger in the wind the hypocrisy is overwhelming
00:16:48.580 but as you mentioned there's no evidence you can present but the evidence is there right like the
00:16:53.340 speeds have gone up dramatically since they promised they would slow down to a trickle yeah and that's
00:17:01.280 the incredible thing and the speed is the most objective one there's a group called ukla o-o-k-l-a
00:17:06.540 the independent company they do their own assessments of speeds they were the ones who
00:17:10.800 were saying hey the speeds are tracking upward and upward and i kept pointing this out to you to some of
00:17:15.680 our critics and they would say well the speeds were going up anyway and so you didn't have the
00:17:19.700 responsibility for that i said no no you if you look at the february 28th i think it is 2018
00:17:25.060 the entire senate democratic caucus put this out on twitter if we lose net neutrality you'll get the
00:17:30.540 internet one word at a time and so i said look that is objectively false like there's no debate about
00:17:36.620 this this this internet did not slow down and nonetheless there's still some folks who say no
00:17:41.900 it's still at risk your broadband providers are going to start censoring content any day now and
00:17:46.860 it's always the sort of boogeyman that's right around the corner that we have to regulate against
00:17:51.940 as opposed to the concrete problems that we can see on the internet which is not any type of stuff
00:17:58.240 like this it's more that people in rural areas don't have access or people in urban areas can't
00:18:03.020 afford access and those are the types of problems we need to be addressing not this phantom of net
00:18:07.520 neutrality which to me at least is a solution that won't work and to address a problem that simply
00:18:12.220 doesn't exist um it is 5g has been described to me as 4g being the size of a garden hose
00:18:19.820 and 5g being the size of a channel for all of the all of the information i know uh my wife just uh
00:18:30.580 i don't remember where she was but she used real 5g and she she was i mean she never comments on speed
00:18:38.380 unless it's really really slow and she said to me oh my gosh glenn you can't imagine how fast it was it
00:18:44.760 was just like load load load load it was just there every time um it's yeah go ahead can you
00:18:52.580 describe 5g and what it will mean and how far we are away from that really being everywhere
00:18:59.100 i'm really excited about 5g this next generation of wireless connectivity and unlike some of the
00:19:05.900 predecessor transitions we've had yet 1g to 2g 2 to 3 3 to 4 the 5g is going to be a leap partly
00:19:12.820 because of the speeds you mentioned that uh you know 100 times faster speeds than 4g a much more
00:19:17.920 responsive network so when you click on the link it'll come up almost immediately but it's more
00:19:22.520 the fact that this technology will underlie all kinds of different industries uh health care for
00:19:27.340 example if you want to do a telehealth visit with your doctor much higher uh resolution video
00:19:33.700 much lower latency as they call it so you can immediately see uh what the doctor is looking at
00:19:38.960 and all that kind of thing it's going to be tremendous if 5g with doctors means because the
00:19:43.840 latency goes from uh what 100 milliseconds to down under 10 which means in some cases you might be able
00:19:54.120 to actually do surgery on the other side of the world with 5g exactly right i mean that is the future
00:20:01.740 that's within grasp and if you think about all these low latency applications from telehealth to gaming
00:20:07.080 to you name it that's a really big deal so i'm really excited about the work that the fcc did over
00:20:12.060 the last four years to help that potential become a reality here in the united states so i just bought a
00:20:18.480 refrigerator the other day and it said bluetooth enabled and i'm like i don't want my refrigerator
00:20:26.340 to be bluetooth enabled the amount of information that is going to be going out of our homes now
00:20:33.300 with 5g because it allows it allows 5g allows everything to be smart a smart item um are you
00:20:42.120 concerned at all about privacy and uh and and just the use of all of this information on the american
00:20:50.480 people absolutely and this is why many years ago i called on congress to come up with legislation on the
00:20:58.240 federal level to establish rules of the road for privacy in the digital world we don't have that
00:21:03.360 right now and so what you see is some states like california taking the lead and essentially regulating
00:21:08.940 on their own within that state or you see europe implementing very strong privacy regulations and
00:21:15.260 essentially multinational companies like google and facebook uh abide by those same restrictions in the
00:21:20.520 u.s just as they would in europe because you can't have different uh privacy protections across uh
00:21:24.980 you know across the world so i think right now it'd be great for congress to sit down and put on the
00:21:30.220 page some of those basic privacy protections but the other issue related to privacy is security glenn
00:21:35.760 i mean as you know as everything gets connected the network is only going to be strong as its most
00:21:41.860 vulnerable point and we're talking about 5g and security there are companies like huawei and zte
00:21:46.700 other companies in this space that could look to compromise some of our networks for their own gain now
00:21:52.560 whether it's economic espionage or inserting malware or even more insidiously the chinese
00:21:57.240 communist party looking to compromise security of networks to gain insights on where our national
00:22:02.480 security is vulnerable well people would say that blockchain is going to be really important for
00:22:07.440 our security but when we're at you know uh what is it 56 qubit uh quantum computing even blockchain
00:22:18.940 is vulnerable isn't it i mean now that we're getting into quantum computer computing so fast
00:22:25.100 how are we going to be able to keep things secure that's a really good question and that's part of
00:22:32.360 the reason why a few months ago before i left i asked the fcc to organize a forum around quantum
00:22:38.040 computing to understand what this future looks like and i don't pretend to have the answer to your
00:22:43.520 particular question but i do think it's important for the u.s government to start thinking about
00:22:47.940 quantum and ai and machine learning and some of these blockchain these next generation technologies
00:22:53.400 it might seem futuristic but oh it's here the future can become the present a lot quicker than people
00:22:58.120 think one more question on privacy um before we move on the um um
00:23:05.060 um has anyone suggested that all of my information belongs to me it is it's mine and if i decide to sell it
00:23:17.920 then i will make that decision and i'd make my decision on what parts of it i'd be willing to sell
00:23:24.580 this would not only throttle these uh giant companies that are truly getting rich off of the backs of of all
00:23:32.040 of us uh through metadata and now really amazingly uh detailed data on each of us but it would also
00:23:41.400 return our privacy it would punish the the googles of the world uh financially by taking that incentive
00:23:52.280 away from them but they could buy it from us which would also be something that the american people
00:23:57.660 could make money on is anybody suggesting that i i have seen that suggestion in some quarters in fact
00:24:04.340 i think there might be some legislative proposals floating around congress along those lines uh so i think
00:24:10.240 that's one of the things that people instinctively get is that uh the property right they might have
00:24:14.920 so to speak in their own data is something that should be vindicated now on the other hand there's
00:24:19.780 some who've raised some questions about that for example if you're walking along a road um and you
00:24:24.840 have a smart network transportation network that is monitoring you know how traffic is going so that
00:24:30.960 they can avoid hitting pedestrians and the like is that your data does it also involve some public
00:24:36.080 safety issues and there's some sort of gray areas there but i do think there's a lot to sort out in
00:24:40.520 this you know what is your data who owns it how should it be used these are the kinds of things that
00:24:45.780 congress needs to speak to we don't have a framework right now for understanding that and
00:24:49.540 we need one desperately i look at the bottom of my alexa and i see that it has an fcc license
00:24:55.240 uh on it and uh i wonder if in some ways this isn't and i know this sounds ridiculous but hear me out
00:25:03.960 a violation of the third amendment which is the government can't you know quarter soldiers in
00:25:09.080 your home um i feel as though the government isn't but if they start to collude more and more with
00:25:16.460 these companies they kind of are um aren't they quartering people not the government but these
00:25:22.020 companies aren't they kind of quartering people in our home if they are constantly going and listening
00:25:28.140 to us and gathering information i haven't thought about that angle um but what i will say though
00:25:34.160 the just you know the fcc logo you see on the bottom we're not licensing them all we do is
00:25:39.460 essentially authorize their equipment to say any device in the united states that emits or receives
00:25:44.920 radio frequency or rf we have a responsibility to okay it so we actually don't license those particular
00:25:50.860 devices directly but i do think it's interesting that a lot of us rely on these devices that
00:25:56.380 you pick up a lot of our conversations uh and they deliver a lot of value but i think some people
00:26:01.900 also have the concern you know what are they looking into everything and so i hear that that's
00:26:07.400 one of the things too that it's just a new world this didn't exist when i was a kid needless to say
00:26:11.500 when you when you were inside the confines of your home that was sort of this impregnable fortress
00:26:16.140 so right right your own thoughts and data so it's a much more complicated world now because of
00:26:21.820 technology we're talking to ajit pai he's the former fcc chairman he was appointed
00:26:26.360 by barack obama and um and uh served under trump as well i think he's the best chairman uh that the
00:26:34.240 fcc has ever had and he also is uh somebody who i think really because of his passion has saved the
00:26:41.880 internet uh from net neutrality and we've seen how good the internet has become uh you spoke earlier
00:26:49.560 about when you're talking about hypocrisy about the kind of controversy about big tech companies
00:26:54.540 censoring uh conservative voices generally um and obviously we have a right for free speech we don't
00:27:00.580 necessarily have a right to an audience on someone's private website as someone who's a conservative and
00:27:05.460 is very scared of of a federal intrusion on the internet um i am worried about this sort of new
00:27:13.440 idea from the right where there's a big debate going on whether the government should step in and do
00:27:18.360 something to these big tech companies where do you stand on that well where i stand is what i've said
00:27:23.900 for many years which is that these tech giants increasingly are running social platforms that
00:27:29.140 have become the new public square and to the extent that some are either obstructed or prevented from
00:27:35.860 speaking that square i think it's important for people to understand how are these decisions being
00:27:40.460 made who are who is making these decisions and why and i think the past couple of months have only
00:27:46.320 illustrated the fact we don't have any insight here and for me at least as a consumer i don't care
00:27:52.480 whether it's a network operator like you're in a service provider or a content company like a tech
00:27:57.280 platform i just want to know am i able to speak or not am i able to read what i want or not and if i
00:28:04.600 want to understand the rules of the road and i think that kind of lack of transparency is what's
00:28:08.620 frustrating a lot of people nobody knows what's inside the black box so here's the here's the deal i've done
00:28:13.660 broadcast for 45 years i know what the rules are i know what the fcc says i know it's acceptable and
00:28:19.740 not because the rules are very very clear always have been when we get blocked or we get dinged by
00:28:28.380 some of these high tech companies we usually don't know why and so i can't i can't make sure that we're
00:28:36.160 in compliance if i don't know what it means to be in compliance exactly right and that's why some of
00:28:44.080 the decisions seem to be made as they go along as a i pointed this out last summer when i asked on
00:28:49.900 twitter why is the supreme leader of iran allowed to tweet out threats especially author urging the
00:28:56.460 destruction of the as he called it the zionist state and all of this nonsense uh whereas other people
00:29:02.020 are not allowed to say things which are clearly not as far as that don't go as far as that and
00:29:07.080 i think it just goes back to you know like i said in november 2017 i gave a speech where i said if you
00:29:11.460 are really concerned about a free and open internet what you need to be worried about is not net neutrality
00:29:15.820 it's the question of how these tech platforms operate free from any transparency requirements
00:29:21.520 whatsoever and i think people on the left and the right now i would think agree with that
00:29:25.820 this is the best of the glenn beck program and we really want to thank you for listening
00:29:33.220 we have uh jeep pi the former fcc uh chairman and commissioner former commissioner as well
00:29:46.960 of the fcc he was appointed by barack obama he served under uh uh under donald trump and um and i think
00:29:55.060 he is phenomenal on freedom of speech and regulation uh being minimal let the free market work things
00:30:02.180 out um thank you first of all for everything that you've you've done a jeep to keep the internet free
00:30:09.200 and to keep our voices uh intact i want to i want to talk to you about something that is really disturbing
00:30:16.340 now this is from uh congresswoman tulsi gabbard so she's on the left she said this weekend it is so
00:30:24.600 dangerous uh this is an issue that democrats republicans and independents libertarians should
00:30:30.240 be extremely concerned about especially because we don't have to guess about where this goes
00:30:35.080 or how it ends when you have people like former cia director john brennan openly talking about how he
00:30:42.060 has spoken with or heard from employees or nominees in the biden administration who are already starting
00:30:47.720 to look across our country for types of movements similar to the insurgencies they've seen overseas
00:30:54.260 that in his words uh make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists racist bigots he lists a few
00:31:03.700 others and at the end even libertarians um it's dangerous because of our civil civil liberties it will
00:31:13.480 mean that who could be scooped up uh tomorrow we don't know i am very concerned about the freedom
00:31:22.500 of speech on broadcast radio and the freedom of speech for those of us not just the average man but also
00:31:31.200 those of us who they're talking about deprogramming or uh licensing to be able to have a podcast
00:31:40.060 it's an unfortunate time for those of us who cherish free speech in the first amendment and
00:31:47.660 that's part of the reason why i've been so steadfast in my defense of it because i do think a defining
00:31:52.960 feature of our democracy is that any faction that happens to be in power should not have the ability
00:31:59.500 to define who is allowed into the public square and who is not and i think that's a basic
00:32:06.140 of american democracy over the decades i may disagree with what you say but i will fight to
00:32:11.980 the death for your right to say it i think that understanding has become frayed and i think the
00:32:16.640 first amendment is even more important when we have a tribalistic political culture like we have now
00:32:21.040 because we don't want your ability to speak to depend on whether or not you are in favor with those
00:32:27.780 in power so i don't know what particular information mr brendan was uh relying on when he made those
00:32:32.700 assessments but i'll just simply say as a general matter the first amendment is important for all of
00:32:37.120 us even when we disagree with the message that we might be hearing over the airwaves are you concerned
00:32:43.780 um that the next fcc uh commissioner and chair chairman uh will erode some of these freedoms for radio
00:32:55.460 are we in radio in a safe zone or not i certainly hope so i mean i did everything i could over the
00:33:05.280 last four years last eight since i served at the fcc to make sure that radio had the ability to thrive
00:33:11.120 into the next century it's the oldest communications medium of addressing the mass market that we've got
00:33:16.020 it's older than the fcc itself and to me at least i think it is one of the important forums for
00:33:21.960 discussion of these types of issues so i hope that the next fcc will embrace that i'm a little more
00:33:27.220 worried about what people will think on the digital side of things uh you know over the internet and
00:33:31.840 the like where as i said you have net neutrality advocates demanding certain types of regulations
00:33:36.460 but then on the other hand demanding censorship on the internet which seems inconsistent with that but
00:33:40.820 hopefully radio can continue to be one of the places where we do still embrace that first
00:33:45.960 amendment value that all of us cherish do you know anything about the people that are coming in behind you
00:33:51.340 yes i served with all the four of the current commissioners who are there including the acting
00:33:56.380 chair so you know i do think they have a shared commitment to a public service to the public
00:34:01.380 interest uh you know they i think they believe in the first amendment just as much as i do so
00:34:06.060 hopefully they will stick by that yeah that's been a bipartisan tradition at the fcc and i think the
00:34:11.960 most dangerous thing would be for us to get back into the game of approving licenses or doling out
00:34:17.220 favors based on whether we agree with the political views of the would-be license holder and that's
00:34:21.940 just not what the fcc should be doing it should be a market-based objective decision not trying to
00:34:27.540 look through into a crowd and pick out your friends um i want to read a story to you and and just ask you
00:34:34.360 your opinion on this and and i warn you that i i find what this man did and said to be disgusting and
00:34:41.360 despicable but there's there's a sentence that had just been handed down that i cannot believe
00:34:49.220 is um is constitutional a federal judge has ordered a kentucky man who allegedly stormed the u.s capitol
00:34:57.060 earlier this month not to make any comments about the breach uh or the u.s government online damon michael
00:35:05.380 beckley who was arrested by the fbi in cub run last week was released on conditional bond which
00:35:12.620 barred him from using the internet to post about the rally that the capital riot rally or matters
00:35:19.380 related to the u.s government uh he was also prohibited from attending any rallies protests or demonstrations
00:35:26.520 and he must be now monitored by gps he said things online like vice president pence my name is damon
00:35:34.040 michael beckley i don't appreciate this one bit the situation you caused here sir we're not putting
00:35:39.720 up with this tyrannical rule if we've got to come back here and start a revolution and take all these
00:35:44.620 traitors out which is should be done then we will i don't agree with that i think that's abhorrent speech
00:35:51.380 but isn't this as a federal judge telling him he can't speak about the government or
00:35:59.060 voice his opinion about the government online isn't that a violation of the constitution and
00:36:06.180 isn't there any protection for him well i certainly share your assessment of the comments themselves
00:36:12.140 this is an area of the law that's pretty well developed and one that i'm unfortunately
00:36:16.300 not as knowledgeable about about whether or not judges can restrain uh the speech in this way so i
00:36:22.920 probably had to defer until i had a chance to you know read the brief study up on that area of the
00:36:27.320 law a little better i know that this is something that has occurred in a number of cases and uh
00:36:31.440 yeah i'd want to express uh more informed opinion after reading all that stuff um tell me before we
00:36:37.220 let you go tell me the the thing that keeps you up at night and tell me the thing that you see over
00:36:44.740 the horizon that really excites you well in terms of what keeps me up at night it is the security of
00:36:51.040 our networks i spent a lot of time over the last four years here domestically making sure the
00:36:55.660 sec did everything we could to secure our networks against uh national security threats from the
00:37:01.520 outside in particular i've been very outspoken about the chinese communist party's determination
00:37:05.440 to dominate the world through technology and in particular to lead in 5g and that's something i
00:37:11.400 think the we should all be worried about hang on just a second people don't believe me when i say
00:37:16.900 there is a a building i think it's in beijing dedicated all it is is the communist party
00:37:23.380 it's their platform of hackers and they are hacking in and trying to hack into our pentagon
00:37:30.680 i can't remember it's some ungodly number of like 70 000 attempts a day or something like that i mean
00:37:36.680 they they have groups of people that this is their job to hack into our infrastructure true or not
00:37:46.060 that we've heard similar reports and i think that's part of the concern and not only that i mean they've
00:37:52.280 demonstrated that they are willing to export their anti-democratic values when it comes to things like
00:37:56.760 the nba or taiwanese flag emojis or the like imagine what they would be willing to do if they
00:38:03.660 had access to our telecom networks that is a serious threat indeed so explain that for people who don't
00:38:10.880 understand that well so imagine if we had all these 5g networks built in the united states everyone
00:38:16.320 was using them on everything from smartphones to connected refrigerators to your cars
00:38:20.360 to military installations and let's say some of that equipment was built by the companies like
00:38:26.600 huawei and zte which are themselves subject to chinese communist party rule so what if the chinese
00:38:32.600 communist party said you know what we just want to see exactly how american consumers are using
00:38:36.540 broadband let's see how broadband around military installations uh is being deployed and whether we
00:38:41.860 can get insights into things like troop movements or missile placements i mean all these kinds of
00:38:46.260 things would be simply one request away from the chinese government to huawei and zte and we would
00:38:52.240 have no way of ever knowing that those requests have been made and that our networks have been
00:38:56.140 compromised and i think that is the risk and that's why i've been so outspoken about the fact that i'm
00:39:00.620 very bullish on 5g's potential but we also need to think about security as a forethought as opposed to
00:39:06.540 an afterthought you once we've installed these networks it's too late you just can't put that genie back
00:39:11.520 in the bottle so we need to be very careful about this threat and not not have a rosy-eyed view of
00:39:18.420 the reality of the situation final question for you uh wait wait didn't you give the well you ask
00:39:23.360 a final question then i want to hear his optimistic thing okay well i was just going to ask my passwords
00:39:27.860 are all set to one two three four five should i change any of them yeah i would definitely urge you
00:39:34.540 to change that and you don't don't change it to password either that's the one that i think is
00:39:37.900 probably not as well advice mine's password zero one two three four five oh that's really uh
00:39:44.180 anyway um tell me what you're excited about tell me tell me what's on the horizon that you say people
00:39:51.300 don't understand how game changing in a positive way this could be i think what i'm really excited
00:39:59.140 about is just the new influx of broadband-based technologies you know when i got into this business
00:40:03.780 broadband essentially meant telephone lines being souped up with tsl to deliver relatively slow
00:40:09.220 service now at the end of my tenure at the fcc we've authorized low earth orbit satellites companies
00:40:14.440 like spacex to deploy broadband from space at a really high speed we've also encouraged electric
00:40:19.940 utilities to get into this business since they have a deep footprint across rural america we've
00:40:24.560 encouraged we've had a huge influx of spectrum thanks to our decisions that allow fixed wireless
00:40:29.020 companies to enter the space i guess all which is what i'm trying to say is all of these different
00:40:32.960 technologies are finally being unleashed through the power of the market to deliver connectivity to
00:40:38.340 american citizens and to me at least broadband is more important than ever and i'm really excited to
00:40:43.060 see how all these companies using all these technologies are able to innovate for the benefit
00:40:47.880 of consumers it's going to be a really exciting decade to come in that regard are you at all concerned
00:40:53.420 i mean i was going to ask you what's next for you but you were appointed by obama but you
00:40:58.480 actually uh served also under donald trump and they're going after anybody that served with
00:41:04.140 donald trump you concerned about your future and what's next for you i don't know i we had the
00:41:10.380 privilege of being an independent agency and i led in that spirit i kept all the political nonsense
00:41:16.140 in washington at arm's length to the extent i could and uh did the best i could and i think
00:41:21.160 you know a lot of the issues uh they didn't have a partisan sheen at all for example establishing
00:41:25.680 988 is a three-digit number for suicide prevention and mental health and making sure people's
00:41:30.460 disabilities had access to technology i mean the all the bulk of our work was pretty non-partisan
00:41:34.700 so as for what the next adventure is i'll have to wait and see but one of the things i found in my
00:41:39.000 career is that it's just such an amazing country that you just work hard and you try to be in the
00:41:44.640 right place at the right time and something will present itself to you so i'm so grateful for the
00:41:49.240 privilege of having the chance to serve and look forward to the next adventure being just as
00:41:53.240 intellectually stimulating and rewarding jeet i would love to do a long-form uh um interview with
00:42:00.120 you on our podcast i've i've got a lot of uh questions on security and uh and uh technology
00:42:07.380 that is coming i would love to pick your brain so if you have time some point i'd love to have you as a
00:42:11.860 podcast guest well sounds good let's let's let's love to talk about it let's figure out what work
00:42:17.160 work and uh and again thank you for your service you've been great at the fcc thank you thank you
00:42:24.360 thank you well i can't say enough how much i appreciate the kind words glenn uh i really
00:42:28.660 appreciate the support from everybody out there in the country thank you god bless ajit pai he was
00:42:34.280 now leaving uh the fcc as the fcc chairperson
00:42:38.520 you