Best of the Program ｜ Guest： Stephen Moore ｜ 4⧸2⧸25
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
166.7626
Summary
Biden's allies were quietly preparing for the unthinkable, we find out yesterday. Also, Stephen Moore on all of the things that the tariffs might mean, good, bad, ugly. And the worst songs of all time, at least the ones I'm still singing.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Claudia was leaving for her pickleball tournament.
00:00:04.700
She was so focused on visualizing that she didn't see the column behind her car on her backhand side.
00:00:10.680
Good thing Claudia's with Intact, the insurer with the largest network of auto service centers in the country.
00:00:16.400
Everything was taken care of under one roof, and she was on her way in a rental car in no time.
00:00:20.840
I made it to my tournament and lost in the first round.
00:00:30.000
Some groundbreaking revelations about White House staffers preparing for the death of Joe Biden as far back as 2023.
00:00:40.740
Also, Stephen Moore on all of the things that the tariffs might mean.
00:00:55.880
There are a lot of real estate agents out there, and you can swing a dead cat around without hitting one of those.
00:01:04.520
In a lot of cases, the dead cat would probably make a better real estate agent than the person on the sign there.
00:01:08.700
But I want to introduce you to the people that I trust that are different.
00:01:20.420
We vet these people like, honestly, like they're planning to marry my daughter.
00:01:25.960
You know, we sit there cleaning a shotgun while we're interviewing.
00:01:29.800
So, let me tell you, where are you taking my couple I just sent you?
00:01:46.580
We find the agents that are the best in your area, that meet all the qualifications that we are looking for.
00:01:52.400
People who will listen to you and actually help you find the right house.
00:01:57.120
Buying or selling a house is a really big deal.
00:01:59.860
Get some people that you can trust on your side.
00:02:11.080
We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you.
00:02:17.540
We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it.
00:02:24.900
Right now, would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast?
00:02:30.580
Because every single review helps us break through Big Tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth.
00:02:37.280
If this isn't a podcast, this is a movement, and you're part of it, a big part of it.
00:02:42.240
So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up, help us push this podcast to the top.
00:02:53.240
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:03:17.540
This is a little frustrating, predictable, but frustrating.
00:03:20.560
By 2023, Joe Biden's allies were quietly preparing for the unthinkable, we find out yesterday, his death in office.
00:03:41.620
Well, it was because they kept saying that he was in perfect health and he was never healthier than anybody else.
00:03:46.340
So there's a new book out called Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by Amy Parnas and Jonathan Allen.
00:03:59.700
I mean, you did if you paid attention and you just you realized that you weren't being told the truth and you just watched.
00:04:05.680
But what we were never shown were the, you know, the the fluorescent tape marking his path at public events to keep him from wandering off.
00:04:17.300
Did you know that the death pool roster that the White House had that Kamala Harris's team drew up listing the federal judges who might swear her in if his heart stops?
00:04:33.220
I mean, his health and his his brain activity was so bad that they had a resident makeup artist on hand all the time, not just to make him up to enhance his appearance in case he goes on television, but to mask the shell that he had become.
00:04:53.780
Um, Stephen Miller said they were literally Michael Jackson in him, a reference to the late pop star owned cosmetic cover ups while dismissing skeptics as conspiracy theorists.
00:05:06.140
In some days, Biden would endear and endure the makeup ritual only then to cancel all of his briefings entirely and call it a day.
00:05:22.860
Because the aides knew it, all the leaders, leadership in the White House knew it, the people that applied the makeup knew it, the schedulers who cleared his calendar knew it.
00:05:32.360
I mean, why wouldn't they say were they protecting the president?
00:05:36.200
Because you're supposed to protect the presidency, the president and the presidency and the presidency is even more important.
00:05:44.960
And that's why if Barack Obama and we talked about this years ago, Barack Obama would have invited me to the White House.
00:05:50.940
I would have absolutely gone like Bill Maher did.
00:06:04.040
I respect the office because the office is more important than any man.
00:06:07.300
Then came the moments we're finding out in this new book of the cognitive unraveling.
00:06:15.520
But if you said anything about it, remember you were a conspiracy theory, a theorist.
00:06:19.640
So Swalwell, Eric Swalwell, the congressman, he comes to the White House and he's supposed to meet with the president.
00:06:26.720
They meet and Biden doesn't even know who he is, has no idea who Congressman Swalwell is.
00:06:34.020
Uh, Swalwell had to say, remember me, I'm a congressman.
00:06:47.280
Only God could have put us, got us through that.
00:07:02.280
This, you are committing an act of treason, I believe, to the country.
00:07:07.620
If you sworn an oath to the country, to the constitution, why are you not warning on this?
00:07:30.100
It was forced on him by Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
00:07:34.260
Uh, and then what we didn't see was the backstage backstabbing that was going on.
00:07:41.140
And Harris, remember when this happened, Biden came out and said, I'm stepping down.
00:07:47.760
And then like 30 minutes later, this endorsement for, uh, for Kamala comes out, right?
00:07:56.360
Kamala calls and says, Hey, you've got to endorse me or they're going to go for an open,
00:08:00.940
you know, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, they want an open primary.
00:08:08.900
He endorses just to screw Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.
00:08:14.080
Nobody's talking about the screwing of the system.
00:08:17.400
He's painted as a hero for doing something brave when he intentionally screwed the system
00:08:23.700
because he wanted to screw Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.
00:08:37.500
Nobody heard about the subversion of the constitution here.
00:08:54.860
Why weren't we allowed to see and how deep did this actually run?
00:09:05.160
Who is telling everybody to shut up as they Michael Jackson him?
00:09:14.440
We have to put a little fluorescent stickies on the floor so he knows where to walk.
00:09:22.660
Well, there was nobody that said, by the way, we're just, we're just trying to line up the
00:09:27.380
right justice to swear her in because we want that, that photo op.
00:09:44.140
Remember when the doctors were going there like, no, he's fine.
00:09:50.600
I had some toenail fungus and I asked him to look at my feet because he is so fine that
00:10:04.280
And the doctors came out and they were like, wait a minute.
00:10:14.740
These are the questions that you must ask because no one else will.
00:10:18.720
Who else knew cabinet members, obviously the first lady, and I'm going to stop calling
00:10:29.420
Let's pronounce that as it's, as it's spelled, pronounce it incorrectly because they are
00:10:36.580
They're just, they're as useful as dead people.
00:10:41.820
Why, why were they so eager to debunk anybody as cheap fakes?
00:11:01.520
All those that knew, here's what's going to happen.
00:11:07.680
They all just convinced themselves that it wasn't true.
00:11:10.720
They allowed their own mob to convince them that, you know, nobody really knows what the
00:11:14.680
truth is and it's better for America to hide it.
00:11:17.880
That's what they've convinced themselves of, but that's not their decision.
00:11:23.780
Their job is to tell American America the truth of what's really going on and let us
00:11:32.440
This is not just the Democrats or the Republicans and certainly not the elites in Washington.
00:11:36.960
It's we, the people, not we, the press, not we, the educated, not we, the elite, but we,
00:11:49.320
Will anyone who still watches them stand up and say, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait
00:11:54.360
I mean, I just read the New York Times and you're now covering all of the things you told
00:12:01.960
In fact, it's worse than what the conspiracy theorists were saying about what we were doing
00:12:08.600
You told us that we weren't funding color revolutions with USAID, but now it comes out,
00:12:14.880
yes, we were the great reset conspiracy theory.
00:12:23.140
Masks, vaccines, our kids being kept out of school, Russiagate on and on and on all of
00:12:33.620
They should pay embarrassment and shame for what they've done just for power.
00:12:45.660
Because the tale that we are reading or expected to read in this new book out the tell all book
00:12:51.040
about how bad it really was and nobody knew except everybody knew the real story there of
00:12:59.260
Biden's decline is a mirror and it's not reflecting one man's fall, but it reflects our, our willingness
00:13:19.720
And until it does, it goes right back to the opening monologue in today's broadcast.
00:13:25.960
Donald Trump is at least telling us we have to do these things if we want to be competitive.
00:13:34.340
That's the closest we've gotten to a doctor that actually won that will tell you the truth.
00:13:49.820
You may not like them, but you hired me to cure the patient.
00:13:56.180
And I think chemotherapy is the only way and it's going to hurt a lot.
00:14:00.220
When's the last time you heard a president tell you the truth on anything?
00:14:03.620
When's the last time you heard the press tell you the truth?
00:14:08.900
Everything we're facing right now is a little scary.
00:14:14.920
Because we haven't faced it when it wasn't scary, when it was just a choice.
00:14:24.520
You're like, why would just put a little extra work into it and your choice, all these doors
00:14:30.300
will open up, but the more you don't do, the more you avoid, the more doors that close
00:14:36.680
And at the end, you're not going to like the doors that are left because they're going
00:14:40.760
to be so few and you're going to be like, okay, I guess I'm going to be that guy for
00:14:49.700
The same thing that we bitch about with our kids.
00:14:52.240
Just do the right thing and all of these options are in front of you.
00:14:58.680
But every day you choose not to do the right thing, those doors close more and more every
00:15:11.000
And I don't know if you're going to get those people.
00:15:12.700
I'm going to talk about it if I have time today.
00:15:14.620
I don't know if you're going to get those people that have been sucked into this system.
00:15:27.780
Are you ever going to be able to convince those people that are still watching the people that
00:15:39.820
I honestly think that the left is creating a new Palestinian state.
00:15:45.620
They are creating the same thing that, honestly, they created over the last 70 years.
00:15:58.580
This is their land and the Jews had nothing to do with it.
00:16:01.780
And whipping these people up into a frenzy to where they have no other options other than
00:16:15.620
Because they've been trained almost since birth to hate the other side.
00:16:20.520
And if you think that's hyperbole, just look at who is supporting the Palestinians and all of
00:16:26.460
Look who is saying on October 8th, well, that's okay.
00:16:34.760
The same people who are the author of these lies about our country.
00:16:39.440
Let's pray for our neighbors and our friends and our family that haven't woken up yet.
00:16:52.680
Every day you have to climb out of bed knowing that pretty much anything could happen.
00:16:56.740
Given that, why wouldn't you do everything you can to make sure you're at least prepared for the
00:17:03.860
You know, there's things that are just, you know, highly, highly unlikely.
00:17:07.420
Um, but so, such a bad impact, like, you know, fire insurance.
00:17:15.860
Because it's catastrophic if it happens, but it's unlikely to happen.
00:17:19.880
Well, one thing that's not unlikely to happen is somebody in the family gets sick while you're
00:17:24.160
Now, let's, let's increase the odds of not happening.
00:17:28.020
Let's say you, it happens in the middle of the night and you're in some place, you don't
00:17:33.320
You don't, the pharmacies are closed, whatever.
00:17:40.640
They offer 28 additional medical add-ons, including things like ivermectin or EpiPens and the
00:17:50.120
five most important antibiotics in case somebody comes down with something in the middle of
00:18:00.860
Just enter the promo code Beck at checkout for a discount on your order at jace, J-A-S-E.com.
00:18:09.000
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program.
00:18:30.620
Well, you know, I think it's a Liberation Day, but I'm feeling a little maybe trepidation
00:18:38.120
I'll be out there at the Rose Garden at four, so I don't know exactly the details.
00:18:41.820
I don't think anybody does except Donald Trump at this point.
00:18:46.660
I understand that the benefits of countries trading with each other benefits both countries.
00:18:53.080
But I would say, on the other hand, because this really is a debate where I could go on
00:18:58.660
Trump does have a very important point, Glenn, which is that we do.
00:19:04.360
Now, you've got a wise listenership, but a lot of Americans don't understand that we are
00:19:08.680
the lowest tariff country in the world right now, among all the major trading partners.
00:19:13.200
And what Trump is simply saying is it's not a level playing field.
00:19:18.980
These other countries are not playing by the rules.
00:19:26.180
They better start treating us fairly or he's going to hit them with these tariffs.
00:19:32.140
Yeah, I've been listening to you for the last 10, 15 minutes.
00:19:34.900
There will be some costs to Americans in terms of buying cars.
00:19:39.000
And we might see a little rise in prices of things.
00:19:42.160
Trump describes this as, you know, short-term pain for long-term gain.
00:19:48.680
And I think it's for every American to kind of figure out where they stand on this right now.
00:19:53.660
I'm a little bit worried about it, but I will say this.
00:19:56.020
Trump is the single best negotiator I've ever met in my life.
00:20:01.260
So is he going for just a strange level playing field?
00:20:07.260
I mean, you can't say it's a free market because there are tariffs involved.
00:20:12.640
But if our tariffs are only reflecting everybody else's, then it is a free market, if you will,
00:20:19.560
just trying to bring everything level up to the place where everybody else is.
00:20:24.780
Is that the goal here, which would lead me to believe there might be some short-term effects
00:20:30.940
because we could turn the negotiating power on pretty quickly?
00:20:34.960
Or is he trying to bring manufacturing back, which is, I mean, I think he's calling it Liberation Day
00:20:44.400
And he's liberating us from almost everything that we set up right after World War II.
00:20:53.200
He's saying, effectively, in almost every category, all of that stuff is broken and we can't do that anymore.
00:21:00.280
So is he saying, we're not going to be part of this global thing anymore.
00:21:03.760
We're going to bring manufacturing back here, and that's going to be tough,
00:21:07.240
but it's the only way to really, truly grow our economy by building things here.
00:21:17.700
These are complicated questions, you know, and I can't get in Donald Trump's mind.
00:21:22.380
You know, look, let's start with why he won this election.
00:21:25.400
He won the election by winning blue-collar, you know, middle-class voters into the Republican Party,
00:21:32.220
many of whom, you know, had voted Democratic but realized that Trump was the one who really stood behind them.
00:21:38.400
I believe, Glenn, you know, the answer to your question about how do we make America number one in manufacturing
00:21:44.560
and, you know, obviously technology and other industries that are so important,
00:21:48.280
I believe many of the other things that Trump is doing, for example, our lead article in the Wall Street Journal this weekend
00:21:54.880
that didn't get a lot of attention on the front page was that, you know, that Trump is deregulating our economy.
00:22:01.480
It's going to reduce costs for American companies by as much as a trillion dollars.
00:22:07.740
I was just talking, hang on just a second, I was just talking about I'm not seeing enough about cutting the regulation
00:22:13.620
and also cutting of tax cuts because if you don't have those to go along with the tariffs, this isn't going to work.
00:22:23.880
Yeah, no, great minds think alike, and that's exactly what I was going to say,
00:22:27.420
and it was almost like we were saying the same thing.
00:22:29.680
So, you know, you look at the tax plan that we put in, you know, Larry Kudlow and I put the very first version
00:22:35.560
of that tax plan together for Trump back, what, eight or nine years ago, and it was a huge success, huge success.
00:22:42.780
Glenn, one of my frustrations right now with the Trump administration, with the president, I love this guy.
00:22:47.600
I mean, I would, you know, I would go through a burning building for him, and he wouldn't do the same for the country.
00:22:52.800
Have you heard him talk a lot about the tax cut in the last month?
00:22:57.520
Have you heard him talk about deregulation last month?
00:23:02.380
And, you know, that's the medicine, but people want to see the good stuff.
00:23:06.040
There are issues that unify the Republican Party, like lowering tax rates, dereguling the economy,
00:23:12.120
pro-American energy policy, those kinds of things.
00:23:15.620
Frankly, the tariff issue is an issue that kind of divides us.
00:23:18.940
I mean, some of my best friends are in favor of it.
00:23:23.760
So I want to see Trump talking a little bit more about all of the benefits of these other things that he's doing.
00:23:30.980
I mean, the fact, I've waited 40 years, Glenn, for a president to say we're going to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education because it's totally useless and it probably does more damage to our schools.
00:23:42.600
I mean, I was there when he signed that executive order.
00:23:47.060
He's doing incredible things for our country, but a lot of that gets overshadowed because all he's talking about right now is tariffs.
00:23:54.480
Well, he's got to bring a lot of people to the table.
00:23:57.080
So what do you think is going to happen at four?
00:24:00.360
I mean, he obviously picked four o'clock because the stock market is closed, right?
00:24:08.340
I think it's going to be, you know, I don't nobody knows exactly what he's going to say, but I think he's going to call for 10 to 20 percent across the board tariffs on just about anything that comes in the U.S.
00:24:21.360
I mean, if you put a tax on things that come in to some extent, you know, consumers will pay the cost of that.
00:24:27.380
But and then I think he's going to go after certain countries that are the worst abusers like China.
00:24:34.780
And I'm by the way, I'm all in favor of going after China.
00:24:38.560
You were one of the first people started talking about this 25 years ago.
00:24:44.960
One thing I don't get and I say this with all due respect, because I do love this president.
00:24:49.700
I don't understand why we've had so much discussion about Canada.
00:24:52.700
And Canada is one of our most important allies.
00:24:55.360
And why aren't we talking about China and some of these other countries that are, you know, dangerous to our economic and national security?
00:25:07.740
So so let me ask you, best case scenario, what happens?
00:25:14.420
That other countries dramatically bring down their terrorists.
00:25:21.660
It's also what's called what are called non-tariff barriers.
00:25:25.020
The fact that many of these countries have various rules that close the markets to American products.
00:25:32.680
And I'm not just talking about manufacturing products.
00:25:36.520
We have the greatest, most productive farmers in the world.
00:25:38.980
We produce more food and agriculture products than any other country.
00:25:42.560
And yet many countries lock out our wheat and our corn and our barley and our meat, our dairy products.
00:25:49.700
So I think if this works out and I would never bet against this president, I think you're going to see other countries having to open up their markets to American manufacturers and American farmers and American technology.
00:26:03.200
By the way, our technology companies are completely discriminated against by the Europeans in these other countries.
00:26:11.800
Brussels said, I think yesterday or early this morning, we got war plans, you know, economic war plans.
00:26:20.420
We're we're relaunching our own attack, you know, tomorrow.
00:26:33.680
OK, well, let me address that, because, first of all, I'm so sick and tired of these sanctimonious Europeans.
00:26:47.340
I mean, you know, oh, my gosh, how dare Donald Trump do this?
00:26:51.820
And I know what Donald Trump would say if he was on your show right now.
00:26:57.260
Our terrorists are one third as high as theirs are.
00:26:59.740
They've got a lot of nerve to say Trump is causing a trade war.
00:27:03.480
I mean, you know, it's like if I if I came up to you, Glenn, and punched you in the nose and then you tried to, you know, fight back.
00:27:10.000
And I said, how dare you start a fight with me?
00:27:12.360
I mean, so Trump has the moral high ground here because we do open up our markets in the other country.
00:27:18.960
By the way, there was a very famous incident that happened.
00:27:22.800
I wasn't there, but my buddy Larry Kudlow was there at one of the G20 meetings.
00:27:26.460
I think it was in Ottawa and the Europeans were sitting there, you know, complaining and grousing about Trump was talking about terrorists.
00:27:34.640
And, you know, I don't know if you're aware of this, but Trump is on the record.
00:27:43.100
The Europeans ran for the door as quickly as they could.
00:27:47.000
So now tell me what tell me what you think is is is is a likely scenario if things don't go exactly the way.
00:27:55.840
You know, I just bring this up because Paul Krugman, you know, the New York Times, he said, you know, when when by don't dismiss the careful work of our statistical agencies because you're feeling angry on the checkout line.
00:28:09.780
I don't want I mean, it's going to make things harder to buy what you need and we shouldn't downplay that.
00:28:18.700
He says it's going to it's going to be a little painful for a while.
00:28:23.340
But people are on the edge financially and, you know, no amount of political theory helps people pay for the groceries or makes it feel better when you're paying for the groceries.
00:28:33.180
What should people mentally prepare for that is a likely scenario, even if it turns out that it was the right thing?
00:28:43.980
So I think that Trump has has has has made a mistake here in the sense that we should have done this tax bill first.
00:28:59.400
I hope your listeners understand if we don't get this thing done, that we're talking about a three thousand dollar per family tax increase on January 1st.
00:29:07.980
And by the way, every single Democrat in the Congress voted for that, a three thousand dollar per family tax increase.
00:29:12.820
So we should I hope as he's talking about these tariffs, he links that to the fact that he's talking about, you know, a major growth enhancing tax reduction.
00:29:25.820
And, you know, I like his idea, for example, Glenn, where he said, look, if you're going to bring something into the country, you're going to pay a 15 percent tariff on it.
00:29:33.240
But if it's made in America where you're only going to pay a 15 percent tax.
00:29:41.000
I know what you're doing is giving a little bit of a favoritism to stuff that's made in Michigan and Ohio and Maine and Vermont.
00:29:46.960
My guess is he would have done that if he could count on the Republicans.
00:29:52.460
I know there's two groups of people that worry me, Congress and quite honestly, the Justice Department.
00:29:58.640
I don't know where Pam Bondi is, but that's a different story.
00:30:11.620
I can't keep track, but it's amazing what Trump has done already.
00:30:15.560
I mean, Trump should have that tax bill on his desk.
00:30:20.020
Why is the Senate that's sitting on this for five weeks?
00:30:30.480
Tell me about the regulations that you're seeing.
00:30:36.580
Is the regulation, because tariffs, tax cuts, regulations.
00:30:41.660
Tell me about the regulations that you're seeing.
00:30:53.300
What was the first thing that Joe Biden did when he became president?
00:30:58.840
He killed all our energy infrastructure projects.
00:31:01.980
You know, that's something one of our enemies would have done to us, but Biden did it to
00:31:07.440
He put incredible, incredibly onerous climate change taxes on our oil and gas and coal industry.
00:31:16.040
Remember Hillary Clinton saying, well, that's OK.
00:31:18.020
The coal miners can become computer programmers or something.
00:31:26.740
We have more oil, gas and minerals, by the way.
00:31:29.360
You know, this new Secretary of Interior, Governor Doug Burgum.
00:31:38.260
You know, we have $10 trillion of mineable critical minerals in this country, in the mountains
00:31:48.260
We can do, you know, he's the, the, but what I want to ask you, we're going to allow more
00:31:53.040
mergers and acquisitions so our companies can be more effective.
00:31:56.780
It's all over the board on transportation policy.
00:32:00.760
And that's going to cut costs dramatically for American consumers.
00:32:08.060
In fact, when I give talks to small businesses, you give a lot more talks than I do.
00:32:11.660
I always ask the men and women and I said, which is worse for you, the tax burden or the
00:32:23.260
To hear more of this interview and others, download the full show podcasts wherever you
00:32:29.220
So I remember when I first started warning about China's role in the fentanyl crisis.
00:32:34.500
This is years before we started talking about sanctions and sanctions today coming out.
00:32:39.740
You can't have sanctions on China high enough for my taste.
00:32:43.100
But every time I talked about China and their role in the fentanyl crisis called an alarmist
00:32:48.300
and conspiracy theorist, you know, you're just so eager to paint villains with a broad
00:32:53.680
I can't get a broad enough brush for villains, quite frankly.
00:32:57.120
And that was, I don't even know, eight, nine years ago.
00:33:11.940
The Chinese Communist Party, or at least at the very least, elements within it have enabled,
00:33:19.720
subsidized, and promise and profited off of the flow of synthetic opioids, fentanyl.
00:33:27.820
OK, and they profited off of all of it coming into the United States.
00:33:31.980
And they knew what they were doing, what they were doing.
00:33:34.940
And I wish I felt vindicated today, but I don't.
00:33:38.480
The truth that was once dismissed is too dark to be real, is really only being proven to
00:33:52.960
We've read the reports and seen the data, and still, the scale of it is overwhelming.
00:34:09.600
Back in the 1830s, the British Empire had a problem.
00:34:13.840
China had things the British wanted, tea, silk, porcelain.
00:34:17.100
But the Chinese didn't want what Britain was offering.
00:34:26.400
And the British started trafficking it into China.
00:34:31.880
Mass addiction, social collapse, and eventually war.
00:34:37.140
The Chinese emperor tried to shut it down, tried to protect his people.
00:34:48.560
They were all about power, about profit, about poisoning a population that had to gain the upper hand.
00:35:02.960
What Britain did to China, China is now doing to America.
00:35:06.540
And we are watching the replay of one of the worst songs ever in history.
00:35:20.360
And yet, like the empires of old, we pretend we don't even hear.
00:35:29.480
And the Chinese Communist Party is the new merchant cartel.
00:35:53.300
Slave camps is what we would have called them at one point.
00:35:56.800
The full spectrum of state-engineered suffering and death.
00:36:00.680
In China, over a million Uyghur Muslims have been swept into re-education centers, prison camps.
00:36:17.240
If they survive that, you can sew some clothes.
00:36:21.160
And they're making the goods that we buy every day.
00:36:32.940
The U.S. government formally declared it's genocide.
00:36:37.080
Human rights organizations all around the world have documented the abuses.
00:36:43.360
Investigators have traced the products made in those camps all the way to the shelves in our stores.
00:37:17.780
You know, not the kind that makes our stuff more affordable.
00:37:20.280
Not the kind that, you know, happens behind a closed border that we can't actually verify.
00:37:26.240
Not the kind that might raise the price of our lifestyle or cost us convenience in any way.
00:37:31.160
You know, like when Americans were against slavery before.
00:37:34.580
Unless it meant that, you know, you had to go out and work in the field and pay more for your cotton or do the things that others should do, you know, for free.
00:37:46.140
The secret is we all like to consider ourselves moral.
00:37:50.640
But we like our morality abstract, clean, neat.
00:38:00.920
I would have spoken out against slavery in the 1800s.
00:38:03.780
I would have marched against fascism in the 1930s.
00:38:10.560
You know, half the nation right now couldn't give you a correct definition of fascism.
00:38:14.280
And yet it is the most overused word in the English language, at least in America right now.
00:38:29.240
And remember, poll after poll shows growing number of us, we don't really have an opinion.
00:38:52.080
As I was reading this story about fentanyl, it was like just this giant finger pointing at me.
00:39:03.060
As I was making notes for this monologue last night, I was typing them out on an iPad.
00:39:11.280
You know, in part built by those people who may not have had the actual option to go, I don't want to build that iPad.
00:39:18.940
I've sat here in this throne calling you to action and yet kind of making peace with my own compromises.
00:39:30.580
And I don't know where it's I don't know where to stop.
00:39:36.500
I can't lie to myself about that anymore because the truth is collective sin.
00:39:41.320
Sin, I think, may be the most common sin among us, among me, my circle, my friends, my family, me.
00:39:54.980
I will come on here and I will preach about the power of the individual to make a difference.
00:40:13.080
Or I'm too entertained to get out of the water, quite honestly.
00:40:25.880
We are repeating almost everything from history at the same time right now.
00:40:30.780
How could the world ignore the signs of genocide?
00:40:36.940
How could so many good people do nothing while evil marched forward?
00:40:44.600
In fact, more than ever before, genocide, not in the past tense.
00:41:01.220
I think really because history's worst songs have a beat we find easy to dance to.
00:41:08.200
You look around today and you see all the old songs playing on repeat.
00:41:11.440
Economic slavery, propaganda dressed up as patriotism, the exploitation of the vulnerable, the weaponization of addiction, moral blindness passed off as just a nuisance, printing of money as the clowns of the printing press, you know, giving us all kinds of cakes and circuses, all the while telling us, no, it really, it's different this time.
00:41:29.980
And above it all, the lie we keep telling ourselves, well, in the past, I would have done the right thing.
00:41:44.880
Fentanyl crisis is just, it's not a natural disaster.
00:41:49.280
It is a deliberate poisoning of our population.
00:41:53.880
The U.S. government has now admitted that China's regime has directed or at least enabled the flow of these drugs for strategic gain.
00:42:10.500
Boy, these tariffs on China can't come fast enough for me.
00:42:16.340
On the border, our government in the last administration, they partnered with it.
00:42:25.600
We sign a bill here or there, but we haven't changed.
00:42:32.500
Who are the child porn marketers selling the children to?
00:42:38.380
We don't even want to think about the question because we know the answer.
00:42:43.960
And maybe one of our friends, family, neighbors, we just don't want to believe that to be true.
00:42:49.760
But for this problem to be this big, it has to be true.
00:42:58.100
And I've kept telling myself that, you know, my job is to make you aware of things.
00:43:06.400
Because we're not just ignoring, you know, the worst songs of history.
00:43:13.980
I found myself last night thinking, I believe in the power of the individual.
00:43:17.660
More than anything else, I believe that one person can make a difference.
00:43:23.780
I believe it is one of my core beliefs to the center of my being.
00:43:27.980
And then I find myself at times going, yeah, but what does it matter?
00:43:53.780
Oh, in the end, I just want to remind myself, it's just going to be me at the judgment seat.
00:44:01.620
There is no collective salvation, no collective judgment, except from historians.
00:44:11.600
And the individual is still the only one that can break the cycle.
00:44:16.400
I don't want to be another comfortable coward in a line of them stretching back through time.
00:44:22.560
I really want my grandchildren to be able to tell the story that I stood up for what was right.
00:44:31.640
Did I care enough to actually change my buying habits?
00:44:39.840
How can I come to you every day and preach a message of individual salvation of Christ?
00:44:47.300
When I'm living and, I don't know, in my own life, living and building a world of collective excuses,
00:45:03.960
What England did to China during the opium wars?
00:45:07.500
They flooded a nation with drugs for profit, crippled its society, called it trade.
00:45:15.140
Enslaving people, destroying culture, erasing faith.
00:45:18.920
And it rivals some of the darkest chapters of the 20th century.
00:45:36.220
Shame on me for knowing it and then not realizing what I was saying.
00:45:40.680
As I'm writing something to lecture you about it, and I look down and I'm looking at my iPad.
00:46:02.220
And if anything in this monologue has stirred you, maybe you feel like I do.
00:46:18.880
And I'd like to start making history in a different direction.
00:46:32.480
It needs more people that are willing to be torchbearers.
00:46:44.240
What we do in our own private lives, that matters.
00:46:48.420
Every minute that we have, that we live, matters.
00:47:12.540
Bank more encores when you switch to a Scotiabank banking package.
00:47:22.280
Learn more at scotiabank.com slash banking packages.