The Glenn Beck Program - January 21, 2025


Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Chad Wolf & Jenn Pellegrino ｜ 1⧸21⧸25


Episode Stats


Length

42 minutes

Words per minute

181.28952

Word count

7,752

Sentence count

566

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On Day 2 of the Trump administration, we have three of President Donald Trump's most senior officials on the show to talk about their reactions to his first day in office and what they are looking forward to in the weeks and months to come.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:30.000 Hey, welcome to the podcast. A great one for you. On day number two of Trump, we have Chad Wolf, Jen Pellegrino on with us.
00:00:39.480 Also, Mike Lee and Alan Dershowitz. You don't want to miss everything that is going on in Washington.
00:00:44.800 We're talking about it here in today's podcast.
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00:02:09.980 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program.
00:02:22.800 Welcome to the Glenn Beck Program.
00:02:24.540 Glad you're here.
00:02:25.360 We're at the America First Policy Institute, which is kind of ground zero for everything
00:02:30.420 that happened yesterday and is coming.
00:02:34.620 Chad Wolf is with us.
00:02:35.940 He was the DHS acting secretary for a while, and he's also the American First Policy Institute
00:02:44.800 executive director and chief strategy officer.
00:02:48.160 Great job on yesterday.
00:02:50.280 Whatever role you guys played yesterday, that was impressive.
00:02:54.960 Well, I appreciate it.
00:02:55.760 I think we played a role as well as many other groups and individuals.
00:02:59.800 A lot of what we've been doing over these three and a half years was to lay the groundwork
00:03:03.500 for what occurred yesterday.
00:03:04.800 Both from talking about what does it mean to be America First, what does it mean to bring
00:03:09.660 America First policies into public policy, and then a lot of work we did to help the transition
00:03:15.680 to get to where they were in order to sign over 200 executive actions yesterday and to
00:03:21.840 really hit the ground running as hopefully they're doing in every department, in every agency
00:03:25.840 today to move forward.
00:03:28.000 What is today like?
00:03:30.900 What is happening today?
00:03:33.540 If you're a Trump political appointee and you're inside, so I'll talk about it in two
00:03:37.600 different ways.
00:03:38.040 If you're inside an agency like DHS or the Department of Ed or State Department, it's
00:03:43.000 drinking from a fire hose, right?
00:03:44.420 Because there's a limited number of you coming in on day one, and then they slowly start to
00:03:48.480 populate those agencies over a period of time.
00:03:51.300 You're coming in and you're trying to get your hands around major decisions that have to
00:03:55.900 be made.
00:03:56.320 Get your hands around the budget.
00:03:58.360 Budget drives priorities in a lot of these agencies and departments.
00:04:01.840 Getting your hands around that.
00:04:03.080 Getting your hands around hiring decisions.
00:04:05.100 All of these things matter because all of these turn into policy.
00:04:09.080 Couldn't you look at the budget before you got in?
00:04:12.080 Is there anybody?
00:04:12.860 Yeah.
00:04:13.240 Yeah, absolutely.
00:04:14.000 I mean, you can get a sense of the overall budget, but what have they spent in the last
00:04:17.760 two weeks?
00:04:18.920 And where have they spent that?
00:04:20.040 And what are their priorities for spending that?
00:04:21.820 Or who have they appointed to lead certain agencies' career?
00:04:25.700 Sorry, not agencies, but departments within an agency.
00:04:28.740 And did they appoint them in the last two weeks, right?
00:04:30.980 To slow down the agenda.
00:04:33.480 When I came into DHS in 2017, I started asking for, let me see the list of SES, which is the
00:04:39.980 Senior Executive Service.
00:04:41.740 Well, finally, I got it after a lot of delay.
00:04:44.860 And almost a third of them were appointed in the last two weeks before President Trump
00:04:48.420 took office.
00:04:49.640 Wow.
00:04:49.900 Right?
00:04:50.380 And so it gave you a sense of, well, they didn't let us pick them because they could
00:04:54.320 have easily just delayed some of those selections and made some recommendations.
00:04:57.440 They didn't do that.
00:04:58.780 They made the appointments.
00:05:00.380 And they did that for a reason.
00:05:01.700 So, you know, the president talks about the deep state.
00:05:04.500 You can call them the administrative state or whatever it might be.
00:05:06.600 I think that's a challenge.
00:05:08.260 I think that appointees coming in today, they're trying to get their hands around.
00:05:11.900 So what has the administration found or what is the tact that they're going to use on just
00:05:17.420 firing people?
00:05:18.380 I mean, mass firings have got to happen.
00:05:21.200 Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:22.640 Unfortunately, I would say that there's a lot in law that makes that difficult.
00:05:28.520 Just protections that Congress has passed for the civil service team overall.
00:05:34.620 But what you can do is you can identify who the problems are, right?
00:05:38.040 You can look at their past performance.
00:05:40.160 My sense is from serving for the last, you know, the previous four years, the team has
00:05:44.760 a good sense of who those are.
00:05:46.280 You can move them out of the way, right?
00:05:49.240 So move them from one agency or, sorry, one office to another, right?
00:05:54.200 So if they're in an office that's critical to the operations of that department and they're
00:06:00.060 not on the team and they're a problem, they're underperformers, well, you can start
00:06:03.700 the process of removing them by moving them to another office that maybe is not as important.
00:06:09.560 And you just kind of move them out of the way until you can start the whole process.
00:06:13.360 Because what they do is they'll throw a EEO complaint in.
00:06:17.000 They'll throw a whistleblower complaint in.
00:06:18.680 Right, right.
00:06:18.940 All designed to slow down the process of their removal.
00:06:21.800 Right.
00:06:22.100 I got to tell you, I mean, if you could get them and move them, you know, you'd have the
00:06:26.960 biggest department in, in America, you know, the department of deadbeats, you just, I mean,
00:06:31.920 it's like, uh, uh, the teacher's union in New York, you can molest a kid and they don't
00:06:37.760 fire you. 1.00
00:06:38.380 They just move you into a place where you just show up every day and sit in a classroom.
00:06:42.920 Now you can remove federal employees.
00:06:45.100 It's just difficult.
00:06:45.920 It's hard.
00:06:46.800 Uh, but who do they work for?
00:06:48.060 I mean, you know, if the administrator is not in charge of the hiring and firing, then
00:06:55.900 he's not in charge of anything, uh, is that going to be challenged?
00:07:01.580 Are we going to, I'm sure it will, but I think it's pretty good.
00:07:03.820 Uh, you know, there's pretty good case law that allows them to remove individuals.
00:07:07.380 The question is whether you can speed it up.
00:07:09.200 Not my guess is the team is looking at ways to do that.
00:07:11.560 So he came in yesterday, uh, and I love this like a wrecking ball.
00:07:16.180 Um, when is the average person going to start to see any of the effects of what's happening
00:07:24.360 here in the first week?
00:07:25.780 Yeah, I I'm hopeful soon.
00:07:27.180 It's hard to give you an exact timeline, right?
00:07:28.960 Just depends on where you are, right?
00:07:30.420 If you start to see changes in your school system, uh, or in the schools that you're in
00:07:35.100 or your DEI programs, if you work in a large corporation, perhaps they're getting rid of
00:07:39.840 those on, on day one or very soon.
00:07:42.020 If you're along the border, hopefully you're seeing some real changes very, very quickly.
00:07:46.180 Almost every community is impacted by fentanyl.
00:07:49.160 Hopefully at some point that starts to turn as well.
00:07:51.640 And I'm, I'm very hopeful that it will.
00:07:53.460 So it just depends on, you know, how do you view as an American changes to your life?
00:08:00.080 You know, depending on what you care about the taxes, the inflation that might take a
00:08:04.560 little bit longer.
00:08:05.320 Uh, but that's going to, that's going to come with relief as well.
00:08:08.140 How do you look at, or how will the drug cartels look at what he did yesterday?
00:08:13.080 What are you expecting?
00:08:14.000 I mean, I would love to actually have a war on drugs and just annihilate those people.
00:08:21.040 Yeah.
00:08:21.080 I think they were put on notice.
00:08:22.200 They were put on notice.
00:08:23.080 Obviously there's a lot of changes, but saying that we're going to start the process of designating
00:08:27.760 them as a foreign terrorist organization, that is, that's a shot across the bow, right?
00:08:33.060 I mean, that's to say you're a target now.
00:08:34.940 Yeah.
00:08:35.220 And I give them a lot of credit.
00:08:36.840 I mean, we've talked about this for a long time and we've talked about the issue of cartels.
00:08:41.680 We've admired the problem for years and decades and we've treated as a law enforcement issue
00:08:46.620 primarily with ATF and DEA and others.
00:08:49.020 And we've had some wins from time to time, but it's not getting any better.
00:08:52.240 I have to tell you, it's, it's almost as if our government has been working with them
00:08:58.020 at least in the last four years.
00:08:59.380 We're enabling them.
00:09:00.320 We're empowering them.
00:09:02.180 They, they, they being the cartels may have made more money.
00:09:05.600 They had more power, more territory, more weapons than they have ever had before because of
00:09:10.080 the human trafficking that occurred over the last four years and the amount of money that
00:09:14.520 they made off of that.
00:09:15.620 Right.
00:09:16.100 It's important to remember all the millions of folks that came across the border, every
00:09:19.320 single one of them paid anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000, depending on where they came from
00:09:24.320 in the world.
00:09:25.000 That all goes into the pockets of the cartels.
00:09:27.440 And so you can imagine what that does.
00:09:30.100 Oh yeah.
00:09:30.520 Yeah.
00:09:30.680 Um, the, um, the outcry from deporting, you know, um, president Trump said yesterday,
00:09:39.260 this is more than even, uh, Eisenhower did, who was the number one.
00:09:43.820 No, he wasn't.
00:09:44.460 It was Bill Clinton.
00:09:45.740 11 million people were deported under Bill Clinton one way or another.
00:09:50.600 Uh, and I never heard word one of any whining about it under Bill Clinton.
00:09:56.760 Um, what are you, how are we going to combat the media just losing their mind about these
00:10:05.500 poor people?
00:10:07.740 Well, no whining under Bill Clinton, no whining when, when, um, Hillary Clinton signed the
00:10:12.000 secure fence act.
00:10:12.880 Yeah.
00:10:13.440 Uh, and whenever that was that said, Hey, you've got to build physical infrastructure along
00:10:17.700 that wall.
00:10:18.120 And now people are like the wall's racist, right?
00:10:20.140 It just depends on, on the politics.
00:10:22.240 I think that the left is going to work overtime.
00:10:24.620 I mean, we already saw this in the Washington post yesterday because they canceled the CBP
00:10:28.120 one app at, at 12 noon, right?
00:10:30.540 Washington post had a story up probably about four hours later about how this family had
00:10:34.780 been waiting for months to get their CBP one app.
00:10:37.220 And it was, it was canceled at the last minute.
00:10:39.600 And, and you're sort of like, yeah, that elections have consequences and this is what, this is
00:10:44.440 what occurs.
00:10:45.080 Yeah.
00:10:45.680 So they're already friend.
00:10:46.880 Yeah.
00:10:47.280 They're already working overtime.
00:10:48.580 They're going to find the most sympathetic story and, and their goal is not to fight on
00:10:53.320 the policy.
00:10:53.900 They know that the American people and like, like the policy that the president Trump is
00:10:58.260 implementing, they're going to try to pull on the heartstrings and they're just going
00:11:02.020 to try to do that and do that over time to where it just wears them down.
00:11:05.800 Um, and so I, every time I hear a sympathetic story, I think about, uh, uh, you know, Lincoln
00:11:13.460 Riley, I think about Rachel Morin, I think about those families that will never have their
00:11:18.580 children back because of what the Biden administration did over the last four years.
00:11:22.920 So let me talk to you about, uh, security, um, in a different way.
00:11:27.500 We know a lot of people have come across the border that wish us ill.
00:11:31.000 Um, you know, you don't have to comment on this.
00:11:33.640 I would love to hear it, but, uh, you know, I, I wonder how much of, gee, it's cold outside
00:11:38.960 was also, you know, protection for the president.
00:11:43.480 Let's not put him out in, in harm's way needlessly.
00:11:47.960 Um, uh, now that, you know, we have CNN saying we're going to take over Greenland and we're
00:11:55.520 going to march our troops into Greenland.
00:11:58.140 And, uh, you know, the, the world is on fire enough.
00:12:02.800 What are you, what are you seeing for security here in America?
00:12:05.520 Well, I don't have access to any classified information, but what I could, I could probably
00:12:09.860 imagine is definitely the chatter was up, right?
00:12:12.580 And so you saw a number of security measures that we haven't seen before during inauguration,
00:12:17.340 but you saw that, I mean, during the campaign, I mean, he was targeted twice.
00:12:21.160 Um, and his threat profile during that campaign was much higher than president Biden's was
00:12:26.380 right.
00:12:27.320 And so, well, you have to be significant point taken.
00:12:31.300 Um, but coming into office, that's only going to increase.
00:12:34.940 And so this is a president that tells you exactly what he thinks.
00:12:39.660 Um, and is going to benefit is going to advocate as he did yesterday and will continue to what
00:12:45.800 is to the benefit of American, the American people.
00:12:48.620 And that's going to piss off a lot of people.
00:12:50.340 It's going to piss off a lot of special interest and others that like the status quo, the way
00:12:55.080 it is, whether it's the cartels, we were just talking about it.
00:12:57.380 They like the status quo, the way it is.
00:12:59.260 They want to coexist in this like harmony to where they can do what they do.
00:13:04.280 Uh, and you know, the U S does what it does.
00:13:06.680 And the president Trump saying, no, that's, that's not the way I'm going to do it.
00:13:09.920 And so I'm going to, I'm going to challenge that status quo and in doing so he's going to
00:13:13.800 make enemies.
00:13:14.820 Does the administration still remember, do they have a long enough memory?
00:13:20.340 I know Trump does, but do they have a long enough memory on who these people are that
00:13:24.860 are all coming in?
00:13:25.940 You know, you saw Bezos and everybody else and you know, the media hated those people.
00:13:31.080 I mean, love those people.
00:13:32.200 Now they hate them, but they were their best friends.
00:13:34.900 They were calling each other at night.
00:13:36.500 Hey, can you suppress this?
00:13:37.840 Can you suppress that?
00:13:38.720 Now they're all in bed with Donald Trump.
00:13:41.580 Um, and I know exactly who they are.
00:13:44.020 I mean, uh, you know, is a rattle, does a rattlesnake make a good pet?
00:13:48.120 Yeah.
00:13:48.340 Yes.
00:13:48.920 As long as you always remember it's a rattlesnake and not a cute little puppy dog.
00:13:53.720 Right.
00:13:54.160 These are rattlesnakes that have just folded their fangs back for a little while.
00:13:58.440 Um, I'm concerned about the people that are now coming in going, Hey buddy, here we are.
00:14:05.680 Yeah.
00:14:06.200 Do are we, do we have a long enough memory on the right?
00:14:09.100 Yeah.
00:14:09.300 I think we do.
00:14:10.020 I agree with you.
00:14:11.160 President Trump certainly does.
00:14:12.360 Yeah.
00:14:12.660 I think he knows that.
00:14:13.760 I think at the same time, they're always trying to figure out, you know, we hear this term a
00:14:17.600 lot growing the tent, whether you grow the tent with those folks or not, I think they're
00:14:21.840 probably interested in their self-interest and in what's best for their companies.
00:14:25.540 And I think, and I understand that there's a place for that as long as you always remember
00:14:30.060 there are rattlesnake.
00:14:30.820 And so if that coincides with what the president and his team want to do, great.
00:14:34.140 But I agree with you.
00:14:35.320 I mean, you've got to understand, um, that for the longest time, definitely four years
00:14:40.300 during his term and almost four years during Biden, uh, they were on the other side of
00:14:44.480 a lot of these issues.
00:14:45.280 Yeah.
00:14:45.880 DEI, right?
00:14:46.780 Oh yeah.
00:14:47.100 I mean, they were happy to put these things in place and only now are they canceling it.
00:14:51.380 And, um, does that change?
00:14:53.140 Yeah.
00:14:53.580 Thank you so much.
00:14:54.580 Yeah.
00:14:54.720 Appreciate it.
00:14:55.220 Uh, that's, uh, Chad Wolf.
00:14:56.920 He's from the America first policy Institute.
00:14:59.280 He's the executive director.
00:15:00.600 These are the people that are putting a lot of the power players into place.
00:15:05.980 Uh, and they've done it quietly and done it the right way, just keeping their head down
00:15:09.820 and working hard.
00:15:13.940 So you and I have to be the change we want to see in society.
00:15:17.180 We celebrated when Roe versus Wade was overturned, but the national stain of abortion continues and
00:15:22.840 we have to keep working to end it by changing the hearts and minds of our brothers and sisters.
00:15:27.440 One great way to do that is by donating to pre-born today.
00:15:31.520 The abortion pill accounts for over 60% of all abortions, and it's available pretty much
00:15:36.180 24 seven.
00:15:37.220 This is why pre-born is so important.
00:15:40.040 Pre-born has rescued over 300,000 babies from abortion and every day on average, they rescue
00:15:46.500 200 more.
00:15:47.680 And they care about the mom just as much about the baby.
00:15:52.680 They're, they're not just saving lives.
00:15:54.540 They're saving people from misery.
00:15:56.820 They're, they're saving souls.
00:15:58.780 It's, it's amazing thing when you aim to heal everyone involved in this.
00:16:05.640 If you have the means, would you consider a leadership gift to save babies in a big way?
00:16:10.180 Uh, I'm going to, uh, uh, host their, their annual fundraiser.
00:16:14.880 I think it's in Naples tomorrow.
00:16:17.260 I'm on my way to Florida today.
00:16:19.320 Deductible donation, tax deductible donation of $5,000 would sponsor the entire country's
00:16:24.300 network for 24 hours.
00:16:25.800 Just go to pound two 50 keyword, baby pound two 50 keyword, baby, or pre-born.com slash
00:16:32.200 back.
00:16:32.620 Now back to the podcast.
00:16:35.760 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:16:40.880 All right, let me go to Mike Lee.
00:16:43.220 Senator.
00:16:43.840 How are you, sir?
00:16:45.300 Doing great.
00:16:45.900 It's good to be with you as always.
00:16:48.660 So I wanted to ask you, uh, you tweeted something last night.
00:16:52.840 Uh, is DC ignoring Trump's pardons?
00:16:56.940 If it is, then this is definitely a time to repeal DC home rule.
00:17:01.340 You had me at the word repeal.
00:17:04.300 Uh, DC's government has no right to exist constitutionally.
00:17:08.620 Congress shouldn't have delegated its lawmaking authority over DC.
00:17:12.420 It's time to take it back.
00:17:14.480 I love you.
00:17:16.020 Okay.
00:17:16.580 Tell me what this means.
00:17:18.900 What this means is that Congress needs to do its job.
00:17:23.240 We've had a problem for a long time with Congress delegating its lawmaking power to unelected,
00:17:28.140 unaccountable bureaucrats.
00:17:29.540 We've got a corresponding problem in that we're supposed to be the lawmaker for the District
00:17:36.080 of Columbia.
00:17:37.460 Article one, section eight, clause 17, sometimes known as the enclave clause, gives us that power.
00:17:43.080 We've been delegating that to the DC government for about a half century.
00:17:48.140 Uh, the results have been disastrous results have been a government that doesn't serve the
00:17:53.600 interests of the people.
00:17:54.420 Well, it's a, a radical leftist regime that runs it.
00:17:59.060 Their schools are failing.
00:18:00.920 Crime rates are soaring.
00:18:01.960 And last night, from what we can tell, after Trump issued a pardon for a number of prisoners
00:18:08.920 involved with January 6th, uh, there were only two released last night.
00:18:14.960 And I spoke to someone last night who had gone down personally to the DC jail, saw that only
00:18:19.980 two of them had been released and jail officials at the DC jail announced that they wouldn't be
00:18:25.300 releasing any more last night.
00:18:27.440 Now, this is not hard, Glenn.
00:18:30.500 They have names and they have pardons.
00:18:34.760 They can identify those prisoners who have been pardoned.
00:18:37.900 Trump's directive was that they were to be released immediately, as one should when one,
00:18:43.240 uh, sees that somebody's been pardoned and they still weren't out.
00:18:48.300 So we're still trying to get names, numbers, and, and verify that this, uh, uh, is how this
00:18:55.900 is happening.
00:18:56.340 But from what we can tell, they haven't complied with it yet.
00:18:59.060 It's yet another reason to revisit DC's home rule, which I think should be repealed.
00:19:03.860 Um, that's extraordinary, um, that they would be that bold and say, because everybody was
00:19:16.820 watching them last night.
00:19:18.480 I haven't heard this reported.
00:19:20.780 I mean, CNN is the only thing I can get in this stupid hotel.
00:19:24.080 By the way, if anybody on my staff books me at a hipster hotel, one more time, heads will
00:19:31.440 roll.
00:19:31.960 I, I want actual furniture, not beanbags.
00:19:36.340 Thank you.
00:19:37.620 Um, the hipster hotel feels exactly the same way, by the way.
00:19:40.660 Oh my.
00:19:41.400 They were really popular in the seventies.
00:19:43.340 So, you know.
00:19:44.680 Oh, they were very popular and I, who doesn't love them?
00:19:47.940 I'm not 18 years old anymore.
00:19:50.720 Or please book me in an adult's room.
00:19:54.340 Um, anyway, uh, uh, uh, he was watching CNN last night and they had, you know, people
00:20:01.920 stationed out there and they were just complaining that, you know, criminals that had killed police
00:20:07.000 officers on January 6th were just being released.
00:20:09.860 You're saying that there's only two that were released last night and nothing yet this morning
00:20:16.200 that you know of.
00:20:17.460 That's right.
00:20:18.240 That's right.
00:20:18.720 My former staffer, Sean Peterson was down at the DC jail and he said that they released
00:20:24.640 two of them through a back door.
00:20:26.620 And then a jail official said, we're not releasing any more tonight, even though there were apparently
00:20:31.520 many more, uh, to be released.
00:20:33.880 Now, again, as you said, Glenn, these, these are people who have been pardoned.
00:20:39.580 And this is a government that has done like things like this for a long time.
00:20:44.520 I've got story after story of horrible things that, you know, DC allows non-citizen voting 1.00
00:20:49.840 in their local elections.
00:20:52.940 You know how difficult that can be to disentangle the people who were casting votes in, uh, local
00:21:00.280 elections from those, uh, who are voting in true federal elections.
00:21:04.760 That is a problem in and of itself.
00:21:07.320 You've also got the fact that they've just, uh, uh, time after time, they've taken positions
00:21:12.220 that harm the people of DC, make everything more expensive.
00:21:15.860 These guys have high tax rates.
00:21:18.100 They spend like crazy in education yet.
00:21:21.300 They've got one of the most failing school systems in the entire country.
00:21:25.120 You want to know something interesting?
00:21:26.680 Four years ago, uh, an elite unit from the Utah national guard was out here in DC, uh,
00:21:33.400 protecting DC, protecting the white house from the violence that was erupting in the summer
00:21:38.860 of 2020 in this city.
00:21:41.180 In the middle of the night, after they'd gone through like a 36 hour shift, none of these guys
00:21:45.380 had slept in 36 hours.
00:21:47.440 They had worked all night and all day and all day the next day.
00:21:52.700 And, um, they were evicted by the office of the mayor of the DC government.
00:21:58.620 These are the kind of people these are, and they've been begging for a reveal of DC home
00:22:02.980 rule for a long time.
00:22:04.480 We need it now.
00:22:05.480 They've been begging for it by the terrible things they do.
00:22:10.000 Uh, I want to cut the mayor of DC some slack because they might have been begging for it.
00:22:15.360 It might've been high on crack.
00:22:17.800 Uh, and, and I think that, I mean, cause that is a tradition, isn't it, Stu, for the DC mayors
00:22:23.980 to be high on crack?
00:22:25.020 Yeah.
00:22:25.220 I think it's part of the, uh, the job description, part of the deal.
00:22:27.760 You have to, uh, you have to at least be high on crack occasionally, I believe.
00:22:32.840 Um, so, so Mike, is this going to gain any traction?
00:22:36.840 What are you going to do?
00:22:39.080 Well, the first thing we've got to do is make sure that these prisoners who have been pardoned
00:22:44.000 are in fact released.
00:22:46.140 But I think the word needs to spread.
00:22:48.680 Now, I, obviously this is a niche issue.
00:22:51.040 Here it is a local issue and it's an issue that's very emotional for many of the people
00:22:55.440 who live in and around the area.
00:22:57.300 But I think more and more residents of DC are getting wise to the fact that something's
00:23:02.020 not working right.
00:23:02.760 And increasingly on the Hill, hang on, just what does this mean?
00:23:06.240 What would this mean for the judicial system?
00:23:08.800 Because you can't get a fair trial here in Washington, DC and you know, anything goes
00:23:14.220 wrong in Washington, DC, anybody commits any crimes in, in the Capitol or in the white
00:23:19.020 house, it's all tried here in Washington, DC.
00:23:21.880 And it's so corrupt.
00:23:23.420 It's got to stop.
00:23:24.200 What would this mean for that system?
00:23:27.400 Well, look, at least for the system of deciding who's going to be prosecuted, who would be running
00:23:32.700 the city would change.
00:23:34.600 And you'd start to see people prosecuted for more things like property crimes.
00:23:40.700 There's sort of the Soros funded prosecutor mentality has infected this city.
00:23:46.860 And it shows I've lost count of how many members of Congress and how many staff members of members
00:23:53.940 of Congress and people I interact with most when I'm in Washington, of course, have been
00:23:58.400 assaulted, have been carjacked, have been stabbed, have been robbed, often in broad
00:24:04.540 daylight, often within a block or two of the U.S.
00:24:08.760 Capitol, which is one of the more heavily policed, heavily secured locations anywhere in
00:24:14.560 America.
00:24:15.360 And yet this happens here because there is an environment of lawlessness.
00:24:19.180 The more this happens, the more members of Congress are saying that this isn't working.
00:24:25.660 This is our capital city.
00:24:26.740 It should be a shining city on a hill.
00:24:29.560 We can't let it slip into this state of disrepair and utter lawlessness.
00:24:34.280 It would be helpful if people started tweeting and started calling their senator or House member and
00:24:44.740 started some grassroots effort to repeal D.C.
00:24:48.500 home rule.
00:24:50.340 It might gather some attention if people started doing that today.
00:24:55.100 Mike, let me ask you about...
00:24:56.280 I've been tweeting from my at-base Mike Lee account over and over again, repeat, repeal D.C.
00:25:04.260 home rule.
00:25:05.040 So if people want to join in this, you can retweet me, you can tweet on your own, send
00:25:10.660 out posts on X on any other social media platform, contact your members of Congress and tell them.
00:25:17.140 The message is very simple.
00:25:19.300 Repeal D.C.
00:25:20.880 home rule.
00:25:21.440 Mike, the idea that we can no longer go after Fauci or any of the people on January 6th, what does that mean to you?
00:25:36.840 Well, what it means to me, first of all, is that these guys are going to have a hard time, perhaps an impossible time,
00:25:44.420 invoking the Fifth Amendment, not if, but when they're subpoenaed to testify in congressional hearings.
00:25:50.140 Because if they've been pardoned, then one can rationally, logically conclude that there's no risk of prosecution.
00:25:59.920 And if that's the case, I don't think they can invoke their Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent.
00:26:06.020 And we can finally get to the bottom of exactly what happened.
00:26:09.540 It also means that there was an understanding that some things happened.
00:26:14.220 Some things happened that would otherwise likely be likely to lead to an investigation, if not promote charges to be brought against some of these people.
00:26:26.340 But what do you, because I watched enough CNN yesterday.
00:26:30.720 I watched CNN enough yesterday to know that they're spinning this as they're just doing this as preemptive against Trump because he's going to go after these poor people.
00:26:39.540 Yep. So if you believe that, then you're likely somebody who believed Fauci in the first place.
00:26:47.100 And you're quite possibly somebody who, even after Anthony Fauci, was caught repeatedly lying, in some cases under oath, to Rand Paul and others who asked him questions.
00:27:00.560 But remember, Rand Paul was raising the question very early on about gain-of-function research.
00:27:07.160 Tony Fauci repeatedly denied that there was gain-of-research funding happening.
00:27:12.980 And, of course, it was all the time. They were covering it up.
00:27:16.040 They tried to use a different name to characterize it, but it was still gain-of-function research.
00:27:21.000 Tony Fauci also spread the false rumor that this was, you know, the result of, I don't know, a pangolin and a monkey holding hands in a park somewhere in Wuhan, and that produced the virus.
00:27:38.220 And, you know, a lot of people were harmed as a result of this.
00:27:41.120 The COVID deaths and illnesses in and of themselves were bad enough, and the predictable, foreseeable outcome of the U.S. government's funding gain-of-research activities in places like Wuhan, a place that was known to have a horrible hygiene record.
00:28:00.440 And that's how things like this happen.
00:28:02.260 People get hurt.
00:28:03.240 And then the country overreacts, and more bad things happen all over the place.
00:28:07.860 Yeah, this has got to be investigated.
00:28:09.520 And, yeah, President Biden knew Tony Fauci faced real problems here.
00:28:15.080 That's why Trump needed to act, and I'm glad that Trump is going to see to it if the truth comes out.
00:28:22.120 Biden may well be able to pardon him, and he, in fact, did.
00:28:26.500 But in some ways, that helps us get to the bottom of the truth.
00:28:29.320 We've got to subpoena the heck out of these guys and get the truth out of them.
00:28:32.880 Because if they tell a lie on the witness stand, if they deny what we now know because of documents to be the truth, they can be prosecuted for that lie.
00:28:48.100 Can they not?
00:28:49.360 Yes.
00:28:49.820 Yes, of course.
00:28:50.980 Of course.
00:28:51.520 And, of course, the whole point here is not we can't undo the damage these guys did.
00:28:58.600 And the point isn't to torment them for the sake of tormenting them.
00:29:02.020 The point here, Glenn, is that we've got to get to the bottom of the truth because otherwise this kind of pattern of abusive government continues to happen.
00:29:09.260 And I will flag here the fact that if we understood the nature of the federal government, if we read the Constitution and understood the twin structural protections at the heart of it, the vertical protection that we call federalism, the horizontal protection that we call separation of powers, this crap would end.
00:29:27.860 And so we've got to we've got to restore the movement in America, getting people to read and understand the Constitution, particularly the structural Constitution, which has been badly, badly neglected and bastardized over the last 80 years.
00:29:42.540 You're streaming the best of Glenn Beck.
00:29:44.360 To hear more of this interview and others, download the full show podcasts wherever you get podcasts.
00:29:49.840 Welcome to the Glenn Beck program and Jen Pellegrino, who is America's first Policy Institute senior director.
00:29:56.460 She is also American First Policy Institute chief spokesperson.
00:30:01.140 If you don't know anything about America First Policy Institute, I kind of say good, really, because they kind of kept everything under wraps and they were just putting their head down, not looking to score points or become famous or anything.
00:30:16.800 They wanted to make sure that they could actually get in and do the hard work once this administration started.
00:30:23.600 And a lot of the people that have been working with America First are now in cabinet level and just under the cabinet level.
00:30:32.960 So there's a lot of a lot of planning that happened here that was started to execute yesterday.
00:30:41.280 Right.
00:30:41.520 Exactly.
00:30:41.960 A lot of planning.
00:30:42.840 And, you know, we're so proud of the work that's been done here, Glenn.
00:30:45.540 I've been only on the team for a little over a month now, but I look back to my career as a journalist and interviewing a number of experts and leaders from AFPI over the years.
00:30:54.460 And it's really been incredible to watch the work that they've done that have led us to this place where we have this mandate, this massive victory, this new day in America that is largely thanks to the work, the research, the policy that AFPI has developed.
00:31:09.940 And you think back to 2021 when Brooke Rollins, who had worked in the Trump administration the first time around, had this vision.
00:31:18.780 I mean, it was the start of a dark time in this country, the dark winter, as Joe Biden called it back then.
00:31:24.020 Right.
00:31:24.360 And, you know, when so many conservatives were out there feeling defeated, feeling like it was over for us and it only got worse as the years went on, Brooke had a vision and thought we could have a great comeback.
00:31:37.780 And it's amazing to see how that transformed where we are.
00:31:41.200 This is the first time, and I know, you know, it's happened with every president, but this is the first time that I felt we stepped up our game so much we were at least competitive with the left on once you win.
00:31:59.420 You know, the left comes in and they've done so much homework that they're building a machine and they've been building this machine forever.
00:32:06.960 And we never seem to come in with a schematic and go, no, no, no, that part has to be removed and that part has to.
00:32:13.640 And we're building a machine and here are the new parts.
00:32:18.080 I feel like we've done that this time for the for the first time in a dramatically significant way.
00:32:24.940 Would you agree with that?
00:32:25.660 I would agree with that, Glenn.
00:32:26.820 And, you know, it's it's been a process, right?
00:32:29.120 I think that the left, in my opinion, it goes back to 2020 when our cities were burning.
00:32:33.960 And I think Americans were sick and tired of seeing it.
00:32:37.800 I remember being in the middle of it in D.C. and on the weekends having to get out of town because I couldn't think about what was happening.
00:32:44.420 It was stressing me out personally.
00:32:46.300 And I think so many Americans watching that, they said, we're done, you know, sitting back and being quiet.
00:32:52.540 We have to speak louder.
00:32:54.080 We have to have a backbone.
00:32:55.120 We have to push back a little bit more because they were doing it on the left.
00:32:58.380 And so it's it's been really remarkable to see how, you know, year by year, slowly but surely, we're starting to kind of pull back a little bit to regain that control.
00:33:09.480 And obviously, AFPI has been a great leader in that space and getting the messaging out there.
00:33:14.800 But I think Americans have just gotten fed up.
00:33:17.400 They're sick of being lied to by administrations, by the media.
00:33:21.160 And they said, we're not going to have it anymore.
00:33:23.560 So why do we have the White House correspondent?
00:33:25.540 I mean, I know the history, but the White House correspondents, they control the press room.
00:33:31.180 Why?
00:33:32.020 Great question.
00:33:32.940 Why don't we just get rid of that?
00:33:34.540 We should.
00:33:35.420 We should.
00:33:35.920 I'll tell you, as when I was a White House correspondent during the last Trump administration, it was brutal.
00:33:42.040 You know, they did not want conservative outlets in there.
00:33:45.200 Aside from kind of the big names that we all know, the smaller outlets that a lot of people watch, that they look to, that they feel are more truthful in delivering the news, more transparent.
00:33:55.440 The White House Correspondents Association was threatened by.
00:33:58.840 It was in the way they treated me every day when I was in that room.
00:34:01.640 And, you know, the Trump administration said, we want you in there to report.
00:34:05.500 I had to stand off to the side.
00:34:06.800 I'd get blocked with a ladder.
00:34:09.060 They tried to.
00:34:09.640 What do you mean blocked by a ladder?
00:34:11.020 Blocked by a ladder.
00:34:12.000 So, photographers that would be in there put a ladder in front of where I'd be standing off to the side so that I couldn't see the podium, so that the president, who would call on me, wouldn't see me.
00:34:22.300 So, they would do all kinds of things to try to make your life difficult, from putting notes on your station down in the basement at the White House there, the press basement, really kind of some passive-aggressive action and trying to, you know, prevent you from doing your job, because they were certainly threatened by it.
00:34:39.360 And so, I really hope, you know, given the way President Trump and his team have handled the media so well, especially this last election cycle, I really hope, given all that they've learned and experienced, that they transform that briefing room.
00:34:53.720 Yeah.
00:34:53.920 Have the right people in there, because, you know what, Americans are sick and tired of being lied to, Glenn.
00:34:59.320 Yeah, I don't have a problem with, you know, the left being in there.
00:35:03.800 Right.
00:35:04.160 Just an equal share of right should be in there as well.
00:35:07.820 You shouldn't have a hostile press room every time the press secretary walks out.
00:35:13.960 On either side, you know, you should be able to call on the people that people are actually listening to.
00:35:20.280 And I have to tell you, people are not listening to CNN.
00:35:24.180 And, I mean, those days are over.
00:35:26.800 It's over.
00:35:28.300 And the White House press corps should be dismissed.
00:35:33.060 Your time, you know, you had, you know, from Woodrow Wilson till now, congratulations on that cute little idea.
00:35:38.760 But things have changed, and you no longer can pull all the strings.
00:35:42.520 Exactly.
00:35:43.060 And you look at how the media landscape is changing, right?
00:35:45.460 I mean, look at your success, Glenn, so many others that are outside of that legacy media space.
00:35:51.140 That's what people are turning to now.
00:35:52.660 Yes.
00:35:53.060 Because they're so tired of being lied to.
00:35:55.240 It was so out there and open that they lied to us again and again.
00:35:58.860 I mean, look at going into the 2024 election.
00:36:01.580 You know, how many Americans thought Kamala Harris had it?
00:36:04.580 She had it in the bag.
00:36:05.820 She was winning.
00:36:06.760 Look at all these celebrity endorsements.
00:36:08.560 Oh, yeah.
00:36:09.240 And yet, they weren't doing real reporting as to what was actually going on.
00:36:13.000 So, a lot of people were surprised that we won in such a landslide.
00:36:16.260 How much are you going to miss Corrine Jean-Pierre?
00:36:19.560 Oh, man.
00:36:20.660 You know, I'll miss making fun of those exchanges.
00:36:23.380 That was always entertaining.
00:36:25.300 But it was such an embarrassment.
00:36:26.960 I mean, you think about how we look on the world stage as these briefings are taking place.
00:36:31.640 You know, they love to say how the adults were back in charge when they came to Washington.
00:36:35.680 And it was the exact opposite.
00:36:37.700 I have never seen anybody less prepared for a job, even at the end of her job, than KJP.
00:36:46.800 Everybody.
00:36:47.360 You could say that just about anybody in the Biden administration.
00:36:50.940 I mean, such an embarrassment.
00:36:52.400 Again, I mean, you look at Jen Psaki. 1.00
00:36:54.320 Some say she did all right when peddling the lies.
00:36:56.640 Sure.
00:36:57.240 But KJP just, you know, was buying into it and thought we did, too.
00:37:01.380 She had no clue.
00:37:02.060 Half the time, she had to bring in somebody else to do her work because she couldn't explain the questions that were being asked by the president.
00:37:08.200 And she never got her nose out of that book. 1.00
00:37:10.760 Never.
00:37:11.620 Never.
00:37:12.000 I mean, it was like you're not talking to a real person.
00:37:14.160 I mean, why not just have AI in there answering the questions?
00:37:17.900 Why not have the cheat sheet like Joe Biden always carried around, right?
00:37:20.880 I mean, everything was so choreographed.
00:37:23.380 And down to, I'm calling on this outlet first.
00:37:25.700 This is the question.
00:37:26.620 And then there's the back of his head.
00:37:27.900 So what are your feelings about actually being able to change the game?
00:37:34.800 What have you guys done here that we can actually reduce the size of this government?
00:37:42.040 How confident are you that we're going to be able to do that?
00:37:45.280 Listen, I think it's going to take some work.
00:37:46.840 It's obviously a massive undertaking, but we've got a lot of momentum right now.
00:37:51.540 We've looked at how many people from the America First Policy Institute have gone into the new administration.
00:37:56.840 At some point, a lot of them will come back here as we see transitions.
00:38:01.740 But I think there's a lot of effective leaders that the president has brought around him.
00:38:05.800 When you look at this new cabinet and you look at other staffers in the West Wing.
00:38:10.780 So I think that they're going to be ready to get to work.
00:38:12.740 You saw that in the actions he took yesterday.
00:38:15.300 You know, he said in one of his rally speeches, yeah, somebody told me to kind of release these orders, you know, a few at a time.
00:38:21.120 And he said, heck, I will.
00:38:22.980 You know, we're getting to work today because that's what the American people have asked for.
00:38:26.820 We've suffered long enough.
00:38:28.080 And he really changed the paradigm, I think.
00:38:30.960 I mean, just the idea of the transparency of signing, explaining and signing all of those in front of people.
00:38:40.500 And then last night he goes back to the White House and he's signing more executive orders with the press in the room.
00:38:45.420 And he's holding this impromptu press conference, which was you would have never seen that.
00:38:51.480 Nobody does that.
00:38:52.860 Nobody does that.
00:38:53.700 And you wouldn't you wouldn't see a fraction of that work out of this last administration in a week.
00:38:58.840 Right.
00:38:59.120 I mean, it was early on.
00:39:00.880 Obviously, they reversed all of Trump's work.
00:39:03.500 But, you know, it was aside from that, how often was Joe Biden in Rehoboth laying on the beach?
00:39:08.160 Yeah.
00:39:08.960 And now President Trump is getting to work and getting us back to where we were in an even better place than where we were four years ago.
00:39:15.640 And at least we know who the president is now.
00:39:18.540 Yes.
00:39:18.940 You know, it was.
00:39:19.900 We know who the president is now.
00:39:21.800 We know that there are two genders now. 1.00
00:39:24.200 I mean, it's President Trump said it yesterday.
00:39:26.140 We're back to common sense.
00:39:27.520 So what do you think of the the press and just their survival rate?
00:39:36.300 I was watching CNN last night because they weren't sorry Fox.
00:39:41.780 I know they weren't hearing Fox and I had nothing else.
00:39:45.200 But I'm watching them and it's almost as if they're insane.
00:39:49.260 I mean, they are so riddled with derangement and their hypnosis of themselves.
00:39:57.420 They just didn't make any sense at all.
00:40:00.260 It was so crazy to watch.
00:40:02.900 But the rest of the world is watching.
00:40:05.060 Yes.
00:40:05.320 You know, and they're seeing glimpses what they're allowed to see.
00:40:11.380 How does the mainstream media survive this period?
00:40:15.580 Because they're not going to learn.
00:40:16.980 They're not going to learn, Glenn.
00:40:18.220 I mean, you look at how Americans are tuning them out.
00:40:21.000 You look at some of the top talent at these networks that are having to, you know,
00:40:25.600 either take a massive cut in their salary or end up exiting and going out on their own.
00:40:30.400 It's going to be really tough.
00:40:31.780 And you'd think, you know, common sense would say, oh, for the last four years, they had no access.
00:40:37.180 You know, they didn't get any transparency.
00:40:39.260 They had nothing from this administration.
00:40:41.280 Now you've got a president that's ready to speak directly to you.
00:40:44.700 You know, ask all the questions you want.
00:40:46.220 He's ready to go in the lion's den with any network.
00:40:49.020 So you'd think they'd be grateful because not only do they have that access, but it's great for the ratings when Trump is on.
00:40:55.440 But I don't see them changing.
00:40:57.520 I don't see them, you know, obviously reporting the truth, aligning with, you know, the vision that President Trump has had and reporting on it accurately.
00:41:05.760 So I think we are going to see the shift more toward the podcast space, more toward the work like you do, because Americans are fed up with it.
00:41:13.700 There was a poll out in December from AP that two thirds of Americans had to tune out the media.
00:41:18.700 They were tired of politics and news because, again, it was all lies.
00:41:22.520 And for that election, they said, wow, wow, we were misled for how long?
00:41:27.400 And the only time they actually changed their minds is when somebody actually who they used to love signs up and says, you know what, I'm going to stand with Donald Trump.
00:41:38.180 Then they that's that changes them overnight.
00:41:40.480 They hate those people.
00:41:42.380 What do you think about all of these people that are playing, you know, kissy butt with with Donald Trump that are all these executives, Bezos, Zuckerberg, everybody else?
00:41:55.100 I mean, I'd just like to hear your opinion first.
00:41:58.240 I don't trust them, Glenn.
00:41:59.240 I don't trust them.
00:42:00.480 I hate to say that.
00:42:01.900 You know, I know the president obviously has good judgment.
00:42:05.300 He's got a great team around him.
00:42:06.740 But I really have a lot of concerns seeing some of these individuals, knowing the things that they've said, the actions they've taken in the past.
00:42:14.180 And suddenly, because they're backed in a corner, they're supporters, they're fans of President Trump.
00:42:18.760 The American people don't buy that.
00:42:20.200 Yeah, good.
00:42:20.680 I hope he doesn't buy that, nor does anybody else.
00:42:22.800 Always remember their rattlesnakes.
00:42:25.180 They've just tucked their fangs back for a while.
00:42:27.940 But they will strike again given a chance.
00:42:30.420 Exactly.
00:42:30.820 I hope we remember that.
00:42:31.880 Thank you so much, Jen.
00:42:32.860 Thank you, Glenn.
00:42:33.360 Appreciate it.
00:42:33.680 Pleasure.
00:42:34.040 Great to see you.
00:42:34.400 Good work here.
00:42:35.040 Really good work.
00:42:35.960 Thank you so much.
00:42:36.740 If you'd like to find out more, just go to the website, AmericaFirstPolicy.com.
00:42:44.620 AmericaFirstPolicy.com.