The Glenn Beck Program - November 04, 2025


Best of the Program ｜ Guest： Stephen Moore ｜ 11⧸4⧸25


Episode Stats

Length

38 minutes

Words per Minute

160.64937

Word Count

6,142

Sentence Count

550

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

On today's show, Glenn Beck explains why the government shutdown needs to end, and Stephen Moore joins us on the economy and Mom Donnie. All that and more on today's best of podcast. Glenn Beck is a conservative commentator and host of the conservative radio show "The Glenn Beck Show" on Fox News Radio.


Transcript

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00:00:27.820 Hello, you sick freak.
00:00:30.380 Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:31.560 This is the best of edited version, and we got some of the best here.
00:00:34.980 Dick Cheney died last night.
00:00:36.760 Here's what we should remember his legacy as.
00:00:39.980 Why the government shutdown needs to end sooner rather than later.
00:00:44.780 And Stephen Moore joins us on the economy and Mom Donnie.
00:00:48.400 All that on today's best of podcast.
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00:02:00.980 Let's get back to the table.
00:02:03.040 Hello, America.
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00:02:55.960 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:02:59.800 So we have hit a critical juncture, a turning point, if you will, on the closure of the government.
00:03:07.520 And the government needs to open back up.
00:03:09.980 And I'm going to explain it in a way that nobody else will explain it to you.
00:03:13.460 If you're watching CNBC over the last couple of days, they were saying things like, you know, the repo market is under great stress.
00:03:19.520 And they've loaned out banks, have been getting money, you know, from the Federal Reserve at incredible rates, highest it's been since 2020.
00:03:28.340 What does that mean?
00:03:29.580 What does that mean?
00:03:31.320 The banks, when they close at night, they have to have a certain amount of cash in their vaults to cover everything.
00:03:36.840 It's a requirement by law.
00:03:39.000 And if they don't have that, then they have to go to what's called the repo market and they borrow money overnight.
00:03:45.540 They pay interest on it and they borrow it overnight and they give it back in the morning when they open back up.
00:03:49.540 OK, it's only done when banks are short of cash.
00:03:53.020 It used to be a very bad thing, but now it's kind of happening all the time, but not at these levels.
00:03:57.560 So let me explain what all of this means.
00:04:00.420 OK, try to imagine, if you will, that America's financial system is like a living body.
00:04:06.860 OK, the heart, as much as I hate to say it for this example, is the Federal Reserve.
00:04:12.840 It doesn't create life, but it keeps the blood pumping.
00:04:16.340 OK, the arteries and the veins are the banks and the institutions that carry the lifeblood of the economy.
00:04:23.440 Money, money.
00:04:24.860 OK, and the capillaries are like you and me, every family, every small business, every worker trying to make a paycheck stretch from one week to the next.
00:04:35.000 OK, we're not an artery.
00:04:36.800 We're capillaries.
00:04:38.240 Now, in this body, there is something called the repo market.
00:04:41.840 OK, this is a place where banks and institutions go to borrow cash overnight.
00:04:47.240 OK, think of that cash like oxygen.
00:04:50.140 OK, the oxygen exchange that happens in the lungs.
00:04:54.440 It's fast, it's constant, it's invisible, but it is vital.
00:04:59.580 You don't have the oxygen.
00:05:00.780 It doesn't matter what the blood's doing, right?
00:05:02.980 Every night, money goes out.
00:05:04.760 Every morning, money comes back in.
00:05:06.920 And that rhythm is what keeps the entire body alive.
00:05:10.900 Well, in the last few days, that rhythm has faltered.
00:05:15.140 Something is clogging the arteries, the banks, the vessels.
00:05:19.260 They're gasping now for oxygen.
00:05:22.640 So they're going to the Fed's emergency oxygen tank, the standing repo facility, and they are drawing records amount, record amounts of cash out just to keep breathing.
00:05:32.400 OK, it's like watching a marathon runner suddenly reach for an oxygen mask at mile three.
00:05:38.880 Why?
00:05:39.620 Why is this happening?
00:05:40.520 This is the important part, because while the government is shut down and we might think, well, that's good.
00:05:47.460 They're not spending money.
00:05:49.260 The Treasury is the fiscal liver of the body, and it's storing all of the blood in the liver.
00:05:57.400 OK, it's storing cash in a vault now called the Treasury General Account.
00:06:03.140 There's nearly a trillion dollars sitting in there, cash, trillion dollars sitting there, not being paid.
00:06:09.520 Every dollar that goes into that vault is a dollar that can't circulate now through the body.
00:06:15.400 So now it's starving everything of cash because there's a trillion dollars sitting in the Treasury.
00:06:20.460 And even though you can't see it, every second the shutdown drags on, the system is being starved and the arteries are tightening and the heart is straining and the body is starting to shiver.
00:06:32.960 And that's what's happening right now in the shadows of our financial system.
00:06:37.660 It's not about Wall Street greed.
00:06:40.100 It's not some obscure number on a Bloomberg terminal.
00:06:43.440 It is about a government that is turned inward, frozen by politics, unable to pass the simplest resolution to fund itself.
00:06:51.280 And because it's doing this, it's pulling all of that precious liquidity, a trillion dollars in cash, the oxygen, the life of our economy out of the bloodstream and into a vault.
00:07:05.980 If you've ever had a power outage in winter, you might know the feeling.
00:07:09.900 Let me describe it this way.
00:07:10.980 First, it's fine.
00:07:11.740 You grab a candle, you grab a blanket.
00:07:13.540 It's kind of fun.
00:07:14.120 You start the fireplace.
00:07:15.580 Hours drag on.
00:07:16.800 The house starts to get a little cooler.
00:07:18.900 If it continues to drop on, the pipes begin to freeze.
00:07:23.000 And by morning, it's no longer a cute little thing that, oh, we're just going to sit by the fireplace.
00:07:27.760 It's cold.
00:07:28.760 OK, that's where we're at financially right now.
00:07:32.360 We are not at the point of collapse, but we are at the point of freezing the pipes.
00:07:38.800 What does that mean when I'm talking about the arteries?
00:07:41.740 The government shutdown has locked up the treasury's checkbook.
00:07:46.200 That means fewer payments to contractors, less spending, less money flowing into the banking system.
00:07:51.960 When less cash circulates, the banks can't lend freely because there's no cash.
00:07:57.320 Money gets tight.
00:07:59.540 Repo rates, that invisible overnight interest rates, that starts to spike.
00:08:04.520 And when that happens, it affects the capillaries, you and me, the smallest players, the smallest businesses, the consumers, the credit unions.
00:08:16.400 We begin to feel it first.
00:08:18.500 OK, when arteries clog at the heart, what's the first part of the body that goes cold, goes numb?
00:08:28.280 The fingers, the toes.
00:08:31.120 That's us.
00:08:31.920 Here's the tragic irony.
00:08:35.140 The politicians, you know, the Democratic Party fighting over principle.
00:08:38.660 They may think it's about posturing, about leverage, about who blinks first, but it's not.
00:08:43.420 While they're playing chicken with our nation's checkbook, it is now time to say, OK, enough is enough because the system is starting to gasp for air.
00:08:51.580 And this is how financial crises begin.
00:08:55.600 We're not in one yet.
00:08:57.880 But again, the pipes are beginning to freeze.
00:09:00.980 And this is how things happen.
00:09:02.780 They happen quietly, not with a bang, you know, not with a crash, but with tightening, with the arteries getting clogged.
00:09:11.860 All of a sudden, you have a widow maker.
00:09:14.080 And you didn't see it coming because it's a slow, silent squeeze that begins in the overnight funding markets.
00:09:22.980 The kind of plumbing that nobody ever looks at, nobody ever talks about, nobody even understands.
00:09:28.540 Do you understand how the pipes are working in your house behind your walls?
00:09:31.460 I don't even know where they go.
00:09:32.700 I mean, I know they eventually go down and out, but I don't know.
00:09:36.100 And all of a sudden, you find out when a pipe bursts.
00:09:39.940 And make no mistake, if this continues, it won't just be the banks that are hurting.
00:09:47.340 It will be your mortgage rate, your credit card interest, your grocery bill, because the system has to begin charging more for everything because they are paying more in interest to hoard what little cash is out there.
00:10:01.060 The longer it goes on, the more cash goes into the government and it sits there.
00:10:06.580 It's like watching your bloodstream start to clot.
00:10:12.100 You're not going to feel it right away, but if it reaches the heart, reaches the brain, the damage can be fatal.
00:10:19.640 So here's the one truth today on the economy that the media won't tell you or they fail to explain.
00:10:26.680 The repo market.
00:10:27.600 What the hell does that mean?
00:10:30.240 Why are you only talking to the people on Wall Street?
00:10:33.640 Why don't you tell the people who are going to be affected first?
00:10:37.900 Why can you how can an alcoholic DJ figure out a way to explain this to the average person?
00:10:43.220 But you can't.
00:10:46.100 This shutdown is not just a political stalemate.
00:10:50.600 It is a self-inflicted wound.
00:10:52.880 We are at a point now where the government is literally draining oxygen from the economy and the Fed is in triage mode, pumping emergency liquidity into the veins just to keep the patient alive.
00:11:08.440 The question is, how long can the Fed keep doing CPR before it tires out?
00:11:13.320 How long before they just we got to start printing money?
00:11:15.840 The cure is not more money, money printing.
00:11:18.760 It's governance.
00:11:20.300 It's having a damn adult in the room.
00:11:24.200 It's lawmakers that understand that starving the bloodstream to win a headline is not courage.
00:11:29.980 It's madness.
00:11:35.220 When?
00:11:37.100 When will the Democrats stop this game?
00:11:41.440 The shutdown has to end, not because Wall Street wants it, but because Main Street needs it.
00:11:49.480 The blood of the American economy, the trust, the liquidity, the stability.
00:11:54.160 It's not infinite.
00:11:55.420 And once the heart starts to falter, it takes more than an emergency repo to bring a nation back to life.
00:12:05.020 This must end.
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00:13:04.880 Now, back to the podcast.
00:13:06.380 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:13:11.440 Stephen Moore is with us now.
00:13:12.700 Stephen, how much time do you have for me today?
00:13:15.240 As much as you want, Glenn.
00:13:16.580 Great to hear your voice.
00:13:17.460 Great to be with you.
00:13:18.780 And, look, I disagree with you on something you just said.
00:13:22.740 Okay.
00:13:23.380 All right.
00:13:23.860 Let's start there.
00:13:24.640 You know, I do think, look, New York has lost two and a half million people on net over the last 10 years to other states.
00:13:33.560 Almost two and a half million people, which is, what, four congressional seats right there.
00:13:39.180 And so there is a mass.
00:13:40.720 The big story in America, Glenn, right now, and people should go to our website, Vote With Your Feet, and you can see, just click on any two states.
00:13:48.760 You can click on New York, and you can click on Texas, and it'll show you where the moving vans are going to and from, and also how much money they're taking with them, because we know the income of these people as well.
00:14:01.180 So New York has lost two and a half million people.
00:14:03.500 If New York's, and by the way, half of those people came from New York City.
00:14:06.940 So if they elect a socialist and they raise the taxes again, you know, New York City already has the highest taxes in the United States and North America.
00:14:17.480 So if they raise them again on, quote, the rich, they're not going to be there any longer.
00:14:22.760 And I'll make another prediction to you, Glenn.
00:14:25.000 Now, look, are you in Texas?
00:14:27.880 Where are you now?
00:14:29.220 I can't keep track of it.
00:14:30.560 It's like a shell game.
00:14:31.860 I never really know.
00:14:33.680 I just moved last week.
00:14:35.740 I left my business in Texas because I am never going to sever myself from Texas.
00:14:40.640 But I left my business in Texas.
00:14:42.280 But I promised my wife about 400 years ago that someday we would live by the beach.
00:14:47.260 And so we moved to Florida.
00:14:49.260 So I live in Florida, a business in Texas.
00:14:51.380 You moved from one no-income tax state to another no-income tax state.
00:14:55.380 Are you crazy?
00:14:56.440 I'm not doing anything else.
00:14:57.960 I would have dug a canal from the Atlantic all the way into Dallas if that forced me to move to a tax state.
00:15:06.920 Yeah.
00:15:07.280 So anyway, I'm in Dallas today.
00:15:09.780 That's why you guys go for the same person.
00:15:12.280 But anyway, where are you in Florida?
00:15:14.620 I'm not saying that on the air, but I will tell you that we're going to have dinner, Stephen.
00:15:20.760 When you get back into Florida, we'll have dinner.
00:15:22.760 All right.
00:15:22.800 Awesome.
00:15:23.280 Okay.
00:15:23.580 Well, great.
00:15:23.900 Well, anyway, so I know I lost my train of concentration.
00:15:26.480 But I think-
00:15:27.120 So you were talking about the people that are moving and the tax base.
00:15:31.020 Yeah.
00:15:31.280 So basically, that's why I believe-
00:15:34.500 Look, $1 million is probably a long shot.
00:15:37.020 But I think you're going to see a lot of wealth move out of New York.
00:15:41.580 Now, here's the thing.
00:15:42.780 You probably are aware of this, but about two months ago, Texas set up their own stock exchange.
00:15:49.420 So we've had the New York Stock Exchange for 150 years.
00:15:52.560 Now you've got the Texas Stock Exchange, which I believe isn't Dallas.
00:15:55.900 I believe that if they raise these tax again, you'd pay 17% income tax in New York City.
00:16:03.340 Who's going to do that?
00:16:05.100 By the way, that's on top of a 40% federal tax.
00:16:09.020 So people will move.
00:16:11.060 And I'll give you one example.
00:16:13.840 Ken Griffin, he's the billionaire who created Citadel.
00:16:18.120 And a good guy, he's a pre-market guy.
00:16:20.560 And he was the single biggest charitable giving in the city of Chicago.
00:16:24.940 He gave to the Art Institute.
00:16:27.300 He gave to the homeless shelters.
00:16:28.680 He gave to the food kitchens and the museums and so on.
00:16:33.640 I mean, he was by far the biggest donor to all of the charities.
00:16:39.200 Well, finally, they kept raising, raising, raising taxes in Chicago.
00:16:42.400 And as you probably know, he moved out of Chicago and he moved to Palm Beach, Florida.
00:16:47.600 And so then the interesting part of the story is it put a $50 million hole in the Illinois budget.
00:16:55.020 One person moving out.
00:16:56.400 Oh, my gosh.
00:16:56.740 And there's a funny story in the Chicago Cranes business that all of a sudden, his charity is like, wait, why isn't he donating this to anymore?
00:17:06.160 You know, why?
00:17:06.920 Well, he doesn't live there anymore.
00:17:08.320 And so my point is, you chase the evil rich out of your city and your state, and you pay a high price for that in terms of the – by the way, he took several thousand jobs with him.
00:17:21.180 So when you hear soak the rich, you know, the rich aren't – you know, as the old saying goes, the rich aren't rich because they're stupid.
00:17:29.520 Right.
00:17:30.620 You know, so let me ask you this, Stephen, because it used to be – it used to be that New York was – I mean, was the capital of the whole world.
00:17:38.700 Yeah, yeah, financial capital.
00:17:40.080 And because of the stock exchange, how real is the loss of the New York stock exchange as something like the Texas stock exchange?
00:17:48.900 Is that something that really could actually happen?
00:17:54.220 Yeah, it could happen.
00:17:56.020 And look, the truth is that the New York stock exchange, even today, isn't anything like what it was, you know, 60s, 70s, 80s.
00:18:03.960 Just like, you know, I mentioned I'm from Chicago.
00:18:05.780 Remember the moving trading places and they're trading commodities on the Chicago?
00:18:10.220 It doesn't really exist anymore because that's all done by computers, you know, and electronically.
00:18:14.640 So the trading floors aren't the same as they were.
00:18:17.160 So, you know, Wall Street is just a shadow of what it once was.
00:18:23.360 But what I'm saying is that, you know, today in America, in Dallas, Texas, there are more financial services jobs than there are in New York City.
00:18:32.400 Oh, my gosh.
00:18:33.820 That's amazing.
00:18:36.220 Oh, my gosh.
00:18:37.240 So, how long, how much more, Stephen, how much more can New York take before it's no longer the financial capital?
00:18:49.560 How much more, how many people have to move?
00:18:51.940 What has to happen for it to really understand, wow, we made a huge mistake here?
00:18:57.560 You'd think they'd have gotten that message already.
00:19:01.460 I mean, one of the things, you lived, you know, when you first did your Fox show back many, many years ago, you were in, you know, New York.
00:19:07.720 And so you're familiar with New York.
00:19:09.580 And then when was that, in the 90s?
00:19:11.380 And when were you in?
00:19:13.420 In the 2000s, mid-2000s, you know, 2005, 2010.
00:19:18.800 Yeah, because I remember when Rudy, this is an important point, because I know you have a lot of listeners all over the country in New York and New Jersey and the New York area.
00:19:26.460 So, when Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor, New York was a mess.
00:19:33.080 And you could see every week, because I was working at the Wall Street Journal at the time, every week you could see the improvement in the city.
00:19:39.500 He got rid of the crime.
00:19:40.640 He got rid of the graffiti.
00:19:41.760 He got rid of the drug dealers.
00:19:42.980 He got rid of, he lowered the taxes.
00:19:44.880 It wasn't complicated, Glenn.
00:19:46.320 I mean, this wasn't rocket surgery, as my kid would say.
00:19:49.260 This was, you know, obvious stuff.
00:19:51.560 And New York was New York again.
00:19:54.180 And it was booming.
00:19:55.320 And what's so sad about this election that's happening today is if Mondani wins, they will reverse every single thing that Rudy did.
00:20:04.240 And they will be back in the ditch.
00:20:05.960 How stupid would people be to vote for that?
00:20:08.680 And part of the problem, Glenn, quite frankly, something you and I have talked about in the years, is our education system.
00:20:14.080 You have these 24-year-olds who are voting.
00:20:16.600 They think socialism works.
00:20:18.300 Where?
00:20:18.900 Show me.
00:20:19.700 Where?
00:20:22.120 So what happens if he is elected?
00:20:25.340 I mean, what does it mean to people who have never gone to New York City?
00:20:30.040 Is the loss of New York City to a Mondani, is that going to affect everybody else's life?
00:20:36.680 That's a good question.
00:20:38.080 I mean, you're there in Florida.
00:20:40.620 Florida has gained – I really want people to go to this website, vote with your feet, because it's amazing.
00:20:46.540 And so Florida, under a great, great, great governor, Ron DeSantis, and you had a great governor, Rick Scott, before him, Florida – are you ready?
00:20:54.840 You're sitting down, Glenn.
00:20:55.940 Florida has imported over a 10-year period $1 trillion of income from people coming in from other states.
00:21:04.040 $1 trillion.
00:21:04.660 That's the biggest mass migration, you know, ever in the history of this country.
00:21:09.420 And by the way, people are not just leaving New York.
00:21:11.500 You know what other big state they're leaving?
00:21:13.380 Going – leaving?
00:21:14.680 California.
00:21:15.120 I think New York is moving to Florida, and California is moving to Texas.
00:21:22.160 Moving to Texas, exactly.
00:21:23.920 And so you're just bleeding these blue states.
00:21:26.920 That's why I don't get it.
00:21:28.400 And so the thing that worries me – I was thinking a lot about this the last couple days, because, you know, if these states vote wrongly,
00:21:36.100 the only way that New York even survives fiscally is with another massive federal bailout.
00:21:44.920 They're not going to have the tax base.
00:21:46.280 How are they going to pay their bills?
00:21:49.080 They're not.
00:21:50.420 They're not.
00:21:51.740 And, you know, that's – this is what I've said for a long time.
00:21:54.980 You know, the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
00:21:58.560 And California and New York and Chicago are going to eventually need giant bailouts.
00:22:04.060 And why should I pay for that?
00:22:05.520 I didn't live in those places.
00:22:07.420 I didn't live there for a reason.
00:22:08.820 And you didn't vote for those people.
00:22:09.980 Right.
00:22:10.200 Right.
00:22:10.840 That's taxation without representation.
00:22:13.580 I don't want to bail them out.
00:22:15.480 It was – it's their fault they did this.
00:22:18.020 I've always wanted to live in California.
00:22:20.680 I never have, because it was insane.
00:22:23.200 I knew that it was not going to work.
00:22:26.100 So why do I have to pay for it?
00:22:28.820 Bingo.
00:22:29.680 And, incidentally, you're right.
00:22:30.820 You can understand why people might leave New York for Florida.
00:22:34.520 You know, you're in Florida.
00:22:35.220 It's beautiful weather in Florida.
00:22:36.780 And it rains a lot and cloudy in New York.
00:22:38.920 But how do you screw up California?
00:22:40.820 I mean, California is probably one of the most idyllic places on the planet.
00:22:44.920 And people are leaving.
00:22:45.760 This is the first time in 250 years people have been – more people are leaving California
00:22:51.100 than going to California.
00:22:52.120 That's never happened before.
00:22:54.020 That's unbelievable.
00:22:55.740 Yeah.
00:22:56.180 Unbelievable.
00:22:57.380 Okay.
00:22:57.700 Can you spend some time with me?
00:22:59.340 I'm going to –
00:22:59.540 One other point about this.
00:23:01.340 And yet the governor of California is right now the lead candidate to run on the Democratic
00:23:07.700 ticket for president.
00:23:08.700 Gavin Newsom.
00:23:09.360 The guy who – what's he going to run on?
00:23:11.100 I'll do for America what I did for California?
00:23:13.440 Yes.
00:23:16.020 And so many people will buy into it.
00:23:18.620 I mean, I just – I don't know what's wrong.
00:23:21.780 It's so frustrating because you try to apply logic.
00:23:25.740 And you're like, but none of this makes sense.
00:23:28.420 None of – what are you doing?
00:23:29.900 I would love to be able to sit down and have a conversation with you, but none of this
00:23:34.260 makes sense.
00:23:35.500 You're streaming the best of Glenn Beck.
00:23:37.500 To hear more of this interview and others, download the full show podcasts wherever you
00:23:41.460 get podcasts.
00:23:43.780 So let me start here with Dick Cheney.
00:23:45.540 You know, there was a time not long ago when America was not sure of itself like we are
00:23:51.720 now.
00:23:53.660 The Berlin Wall had fallen.
00:23:55.580 We had gone through the 80s, which was a big boost to our confidence.
00:24:00.260 But we had done so much damage to ourselves in the 60s and the 70s, it took more than
00:24:05.620 one president in eight years.
00:24:08.420 Vietnam still haunted us.
00:24:11.120 The headlines were all about peace dividends.
00:24:13.580 You remember that?
00:24:14.940 The Berlin Wall comes down.
00:24:16.360 Now we should have peace dividends.
00:24:18.340 Downsizing.
00:24:19.720 Doubt.
00:24:20.420 We didn't know.
00:24:21.440 We were arrogant and yet doubtful.
00:24:24.620 The idea of a military, a powerful military, had been almost embarrassing.
00:24:29.740 To say out loud since Vietnam, Reagan had rebuilt us, but it was peace through strength.
00:24:34.340 We never went to war.
00:24:36.340 Thank God we never went to war.
00:24:38.460 But our perceived strength did all of the work for us.
00:24:41.760 But we didn't know because the last time we had tanks rolling anywhere was Vietnam and
00:24:45.580 we thought that was a very bad thing.
00:24:48.420 Well, George H.W.
00:24:49.760 Bush comes into office and he brought with him a man who had five deferments in Vietnam.
00:24:57.000 He had never served in uniform and he picks that guy, a guy from Wyoming, not loud, not
00:25:02.500 flashy, to step into the role of secretary of defense.
00:25:07.220 That was pretty controversial.
00:25:09.040 Wait a minute.
00:25:09.460 What?
00:25:09.860 Hold it.
00:25:10.960 The guy didn't look like a warrior.
00:25:13.280 He looked honestly like the accountant that balanced the books after the battle.
00:25:17.480 He was quiet, soft-spoken, but he was firm.
00:25:23.360 He was very clear on what he believed.
00:25:26.220 And he believed perhaps more deeply than almost anybody else in Washington that a nation that
00:25:32.860 can't defend itself isn't going to remain free.
00:25:36.220 And so Reagan had, you know, really built the military up and Dick Cheney kind of finished
00:25:44.020 that off with George H.W.
00:25:45.760 Bush by restoring the faith in our military.
00:25:50.600 Faith that America's strength was not the problem.
00:25:55.520 America's strength was the protector of liberty.
00:25:57.660 I'm old enough to remember the opening night of the Gulf War.
00:26:10.060 CNN was the only news network at the time.
00:26:14.220 And on my living room screen, I was living in Baltimore at the time, there was this eerie
00:26:21.220 green grain of night vision footage, which we really hadn't seen before.
00:26:25.420 And missile strikes through the darkness.
00:26:29.460 We had never seen war like this before.
00:26:32.180 Not only in night vision, but not live in our living rooms.
00:26:36.400 We had never seen anything like it.
00:26:38.220 And I remember we all kind of held our breath and we watched this new kind of war unfold.
00:26:44.540 And it was swift.
00:26:46.200 It was surgical.
00:26:47.200 It was divisive.
00:26:48.260 There was no draft or decisive.
00:26:51.180 There was no draft.
00:26:52.000 There was no chaos.
00:26:52.960 There was no quagmire.
00:26:54.100 For the first time in decades, Americans felt pride without apology when it came to our
00:27:01.700 military.
00:27:04.860 And we still wondered, is it going to be a quagmire?
00:27:06.920 But it wasn't.
00:27:07.460 The mission was very clear.
00:27:08.660 The victory was clean.
00:27:09.920 We liberated Kuwait.
00:27:11.320 That was the mission.
00:27:12.820 And then we left.
00:27:14.740 There was no oil fields, no spoils, no empire building.
00:27:19.240 Just a message to the world we could be proud of.
00:27:23.200 This is what moral strength looks like.
00:27:27.980 Free a nation and go home.
00:27:30.140 Now, when George W.
00:27:34.120 Bush ran for president.
00:27:37.680 I don't think anybody was really comfortable handing the nuclear codes over to this guy
00:27:41.220 who had been the governor of Texas and really kind of like, hey, let me tell you.
00:27:45.320 Yeah.
00:27:46.240 Right.
00:27:46.720 I mean, I wasn't comfortable.
00:27:50.420 He was a guy we barely knew.
00:27:52.880 He seemed somebody.
00:27:54.200 He seemed like somebody who was more comfortable in the stands of a baseball stadium than even,
00:28:01.040 you know, in the main offices of the baseball stadium that he owned, you know.
00:28:05.280 And everything changed in 2000 in the election when he chose Dick Cheney as his running mate.
00:28:12.880 The reaction was instant.
00:28:15.760 And I think it was the sound of America kind of exhaling a bit.
00:28:20.120 He announced Dick Cheney and Colin Powell.
00:28:22.220 They were the ones that brought us the Gulf War.
00:28:25.820 It was quick, decisive and over.
00:28:29.440 And America said, OK, OK, OK.
00:28:32.700 He's got Dick Cheney behind him.
00:28:34.100 All right.
00:28:36.280 The adults are back.
00:28:40.120 Then came that blue September morning.
00:28:45.080 And the skies were clear and the markets were open.
00:28:49.740 And in an instant, absolutely everything changed.
00:28:53.760 The world stopped.
00:28:56.720 The New York skyline was filled with smoke and fear filled the air all over the world.
00:29:05.020 Not just here in America.
00:29:06.140 No one knew what was going on.
00:29:08.080 And our president was reading stories to children in Florida.
00:29:12.740 And Dick Cheney became the acting president for a while until we could get the president to safety.
00:29:19.860 He was the one that was rushed down to the emergency bunker in the White House.
00:29:25.300 He took over for a while.
00:29:28.380 He was steady, emotionless, and firm.
00:29:35.700 He didn't tremble.
00:29:37.080 He didn't panic.
00:29:37.900 And in those hours, those first few hours, America needed that.
00:29:43.440 But fear, once it's tasted, it's hard to let go.
00:29:54.200 And so we started a war and it just stretched on and on and on.
00:29:58.880 And the mission became blurry.
00:30:01.500 Freedom became a slogan instead of a strategy.
00:30:07.020 And freedom started to take a different meaning here in America.
00:30:10.240 We passed the Patriot Act.
00:30:11.620 We built the Department of Homeland Security.
00:30:13.900 None of those things had anything to do with freedom.
00:30:16.180 We created the FISA courts and airport lines that never seemed to end.
00:30:20.260 And for a while, we told ourselves, all of this is worth it.
00:30:22.700 It's the price that we have to pay to live in a dangerous, dangerous world.
00:30:27.880 But when you give more to one god, the other gods will demand payment later.
00:30:38.460 And something in those days, a seed that was far more darker, was planted.
00:30:44.780 The anthrax attacks.
00:30:47.560 Most people don't even remember them now.
00:30:49.860 They rattled the nation.
00:30:50.960 Cheney, who was always the realist and the adult in the room, always the sentinel, told
00:30:56.880 the nation's top scientists, we can't wait for the next attack.
00:31:00.140 We have to study it.
00:31:01.000 We have to anticipate it.
00:31:02.700 And so it was Dick Cheney that urged men like Dr. Anthony Fauci to push research further,
00:31:08.520 faster into what we now call gain of function.
00:31:11.720 And I'm sure it was born out of good intent to protect us.
00:31:14.920 But as history often teaches us, good intent can be dangerous as a companion to unchecked power.
00:31:22.300 Or as my grandmother used to always say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
00:31:27.240 And still beneath all of that calculation and control, there was a different side of Dick Cheney.
00:31:36.160 He was quiet.
00:31:37.200 When his daughter Mary came out as gay, he didn't blink.
00:31:40.340 Long before Clinton evolved, before Obama changed his mind, Cheney, the hawk, Darth Vader, the architect of war, said plainly,
00:31:50.000 my daughter deserves the same rights as everybody else.
00:31:52.520 It was personal.
00:31:53.780 It was brave.
00:31:54.900 It was human.
00:31:55.900 And as a politician, he stood almost entirely alone.
00:31:59.800 Nobody gives him credit for that.
00:32:06.060 And he belonged to a different time, a Cold War man in a postmodern world.
00:32:14.880 A deep believer in the chain of command, in America's dominance, in doing what has to be done, even if the world didn't approve.
00:32:27.280 He died last night.
00:32:29.800 He had five heart attacks in his life.
00:32:32.600 I think it was 2012 he had a heart transplant.
00:32:35.080 Doctor said it would give him another decade of life.
00:32:39.400 13 years later.
00:32:45.940 Dick Cheney's life offers both a chance to give medals and lessons.
00:32:55.940 The virtue of strength and the peril of excess.
00:33:00.580 And he should have learned from the first Gulf War.
00:33:07.040 He was the iron for many years in America's spine.
00:33:11.380 After decades of doubt.
00:33:15.460 But he was also a reminder that iron rusts if it is left unexamined.
00:33:21.300 We needed his resolve when the towers fell.
00:33:25.100 And perhaps in the years that followed.
00:33:26.880 We needed more of his restraint from 1991 in the years that followed that.
00:33:33.660 But we didn't get it.
00:33:34.780 And so he leaves behind a really complicated legacy.
00:33:38.620 Which I think is appropriate today as I try to talk to you today about what does it mean to be a conservative.
00:33:46.460 On all fronts, what does it mean?
00:33:50.140 Dick Cheney was a conservative for a man of his time.
00:33:53.100 But he lost one of the main principles.
00:33:57.560 And that is conservatives believe in the rule of law and the constitution.
00:34:03.500 He's a patriot, yes.
00:34:05.280 But he's also a warning to us.
00:34:07.500 He helped America find its courage.
00:34:09.600 But he also taught us how easily courage can drift into control.
00:34:14.780 And he left us some lessons that we should learn.
00:34:20.100 The Patriot Act.
00:34:21.380 That has given our government tools to spy on its own citizens.
00:34:26.400 On Capitol Hill, nobody is talking about this.
00:34:28.780 But this is the biggest scandal probably in American intelligence and American corruption of all time.
00:34:35.900 The Patriot Act made all of it possible.
00:34:38.120 A government-wide scandal of a president spying on his opponent's party.
00:34:43.580 Including senators and congressmen and donors and average citizens.
00:34:47.420 That's still being revealed.
00:34:49.200 Nobody's talking about it.
00:34:50.300 But that came from the Patriot Act.
00:34:52.320 That gave him the power to do it.
00:34:54.620 The FISA courts, as we know in a completely other scandal.
00:34:57.800 The FISA courts were lied to.
00:35:00.000 Our FBI actually changed, physically changed documents to falsify testimony.
00:35:04.720 To secure wiretaps that they said they needed.
00:35:07.680 That we now know were unwarranted and illegal.
00:35:10.440 What else should we learn today?
00:35:15.200 We paid a heavy price for never-ending wars.
00:35:19.820 In blood, in treasure, and faith.
00:35:22.400 We failed to learn the right lessons from the Gulf War.
00:35:27.720 Define the mission narrowly.
00:35:29.540 Execute it efficiently.
00:35:31.320 And then get the hell out of there and come home.
00:35:33.960 Enhanced interrogation.
00:35:40.040 That's Dick Cheney.
00:35:41.880 We called torture enhanced interrogation.
00:35:44.700 And we still refuse, as a people, to have this debate.
00:35:47.780 We either torture or we do not.
00:35:50.600 And it's the people that should make the decision.
00:35:54.580 No one in the world looks to a nation who says one thing, but then farms out the torture to another dictator or authoritarian someplace else.
00:36:03.260 They don't look at that and go, you know what?
00:36:05.140 There's a great nation.
00:36:10.060 We should also learn the lesson.
00:36:12.080 I mean, think if we just learned this.
00:36:13.660 No, enhanced interrogation.
00:36:15.580 It's torture.
00:36:16.340 It's not.
00:36:16.900 You cannot change the name.
00:36:18.640 You can't change the meaning of words, okay?
00:36:21.580 Enhanced interrogation is still torture, no matter what.
00:36:25.020 No matter what you do to a man surgically, he's still a man.
00:36:28.980 You can't just say, oh, no, that's a woman.
00:36:32.600 Changing the words doesn't change reality.
00:36:35.920 And the heaviest lesson we have not learned a bit from is gain of function.
00:36:42.980 It may be illegal, but it is still happening.
00:36:46.820 Because there are those in the government on both sides of the aisle that think it's important.
00:36:52.860 It is not.
00:36:53.740 It has killed millions, and it has changed our world.
00:36:57.160 In that crisis, we saw blue states give new dictatorial powers that still haven't been corrected.
00:37:04.260 So, Dick Cheney, believe it or not, I actually liked Dick Cheney, but I've changed.
00:37:14.640 The times have changed.
00:37:15.820 And I would like to salute his service to a nation for what he did, and he actually believed he was doing the right thing.
00:37:24.560 And he did do the right thing in his day.
00:37:28.040 But things have changed.
00:37:29.760 And his passing marks not just the end of a man's life, but the close of that age, an age of secrecy and steel and certainty.
00:37:37.700 Honor Dick Cheney's service today.
00:37:39.740 But can we learn from the mistakes?
00:37:45.980 And can we remember one thing?
00:37:48.480 The strength of a nation is not measured just by its power to strike, but its wisdom to stop.
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