00:00:00.000We're going to be mighty popular today because on today's podcast, we have Kristi Noem and she didn't do well on Tucker last night.
00:00:09.200At least that's the perception. Tucker went after her and said, you know, you're selling out your values for this NCAA debacle where South Dakota is saying, wait, we're not going to fight this in the colleges because we might lose.
00:00:23.340There's a lot of half information and wrong information out there. And going into the podcast, I didn't know if I was going to agree with her or disagree.
00:00:32.760And when we disagree, we tell people to their face. And so they they hate us. They hate us. So did she hate us or not? What really happened?
00:00:42.800Yeah, we'll get into that. I think that's it's an interesting conversation about just the conservative direction in general that we get into as well there.
00:00:50.280Let's talk about the border quite a bit today. Yeah, we had an expert who was down on the border just about to cross into Mexico because he is a, you know, homeland security guy.
00:00:59.620Been with the DPS here in Texas. He's he's a guy who knows this inside and out.
00:01:04.880He said, I can't get any information from anyone on the American side.
00:01:10.920But boy, people talk on the other side of the border. And he told us what's really going on there.
00:01:16.600So don't miss it. All that and so much more on today's podcast.
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00:01:45.260I think you'll like them. Here's the podcast.
00:01:49.640You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:02:00.640Todd Benzman. He currently serves as the Texas based senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, Washington, D.C.
00:02:08.820Policy Institute. He led the counterterrorism intelligence for the Texas Department of Public Safety's intelligence and counterterrorism division in its multi agency fusion center.
00:02:19.820Before his Homeland Security service. He was a journalist for 23 years covering national security after 9-11 as a staff writer for major newspapers and reporting in 25 different countries.
00:02:31.160He is also the author of the book, America's covert border war, the untold story of the nation's battle to prevent jihadist infiltration.
00:02:40.160He joins us now. I believe you're in Mexico now, Todd, is that right?
00:02:50.360And as soon as we're done with this call, I'm going to head over into Piedras Negras, which is on a smaller city on the Mexican side across from Eagle Pass, Texas.
00:03:02.940And yesterday I spent all day in Ciudad Acuna across from Del Rio.
00:03:10.860So tell me what is really happening on the border.
00:03:13.380Well, migrants are coming from all over Mexico, southern Mexico, and also from other parts of Mexico where ports of entry are walled or they're better walling in those areas and harder to get across.
00:03:30.480So what they're doing is they're sector shopping for the easy routes in.
00:03:35.560And this happens to be one of the easy sectors they perceived easy to get through and into the United States and be released.
00:03:43.420And so just in the past week in this sector, about 5,700 migrants crossed over and were apprehended or got away, about 1,700 got away estimated, which compares to like kind of in the low hundreds on a normal week.
00:04:02.560So we're really seeing a major, major spike happening in this sector because it's perceived to be forgiving and easy to get through.
00:04:14.580So is this happening with the Texas Border Patrol as well?
00:04:20.200I mean, because we've had this problem before with Obama, not this bad.
00:04:25.320But Texas DPS has been down on the border, and they are different than the Border Patrol from CBP.
00:04:51.820And the purpose of that is to fill the gap because Border Patrol is spread very thinly in an area like this.
00:05:01.000This is why it's easy to get through here where there's no walling.
00:05:05.500They just come through and either bum rush the agents who are here and get past them or they can, you know, family units know that they can turn themselves in.
00:05:17.940So some are running and some are turning themselves in.
00:05:20.180And the family units are being paroled right into the country with notices to appear.
00:05:26.020And now they're not even bothering with notices to appear in some parts of the border.
00:05:30.100They're just waving them through the turnstile into the Greyhound bus stations.
00:05:38.480And are we, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:05:39.560Are we, the United States government is paying for these trips all over America, right?
00:05:44.660I wouldn't say that they're paying for the bus fare, but they, there are NGOs that are facilitating communications and wire, you know, the migrants are getting money wired in from relatives and they're paying for their bus fare.
00:06:00.960But there are NGOs that are assisting and cooperating with all of, all of that.
00:06:07.060But you've got DPS is here and National Guard.
00:06:10.700And what happens is they can catch migrants.
00:06:13.680They can't hold them for long and they call border patrol comes and picks them up.
00:06:18.000So it's really good to have them here.
00:06:24.500We have, we have good relationships with the border patrol and we are, we're getting a total blackout.
00:06:33.460People won't talk to us and it is leading us to believe that there, that is, there's something happening here on the border and nobody wants to talk about it.
00:06:43.580Is that just me being me or are you experiencing a kind of a blackout as well?
00:06:58.380It's the Biden administration caused all of this with their campaign rhetoric during the campaign.
00:07:05.300And then their very first moves were to just open the border wide, reinstitute, catch and release.
00:07:11.220The migrants that I talked to over there on Mexico side, all tell me with a, to a man and woman, that the reason that they came now was to take advantage of Biden's policies.
00:07:23.340And it's embarrassing to, you know, to the Biden administration.
00:07:30.200They'll tell you privately that that's what it's all about.
00:07:33.940And they don't want to advertise what they've done and what they're going to be doing.
00:07:41.720And I think that, you know, you could get the story without their cooperation.
00:07:46.280I didn't even bother after the first couple of phone calls.
00:07:49.720I saw that this thing was going nowhere.
00:07:52.100There was going to be no embedding and no interviews with Border Patrol.
00:07:55.820And I'll tell you this, Glenn, I've got a lot of Border Patrol agents all from California to the Gulf of Mexico who do talk to me on a regular basis.
00:08:06.100And I know what's going on, at least through their eyes.
00:08:09.100But the most important thing is that you can see it through the eyes of the migrants if American reporters would just bother to interview them.
00:08:18.540What are they saying besides we came because of Biden?
00:08:22.280Well, they're saying, A, we came because of Biden.
00:08:28.620And they're saying that they know that they can get in now.
00:08:33.800They're going to get in now, sooner or very soon.
00:08:38.280Nobody who's coming to the border doesn't believe that they're not going to get in during this administration.
00:19:40.700In addition to the 12 original flavors, Built Bar just added cookies and cream, carrot cake, caramel brownie, lemon almond cheesecake, apple almond crisp.
00:21:09.600I think the first thing, there's been massive instability in the supply chains, whether it's been COVID, whether it's been other issues.
00:21:15.900So we have at least gotten very good at managing that instability.
00:21:19.560And frankly, that's what we've been doing week to week, car by car, looking at our profit margins, looking at where we have shortfalls, and managing that.
00:21:27.300I think things will get stable by the fall, but certainly it's going to be complicated and it's going to be challenging.
00:21:32.960But I think we'll navigate it, particularly here in the U.S. market, between our two main plants, Puebla in Mexico and Chattanooga in Tennessee.
00:23:54.400China is the world's largest importer and consumer of computer chips.
00:23:59.400Now they want to be the largest producer.
00:24:01.120They've spent the last decade working on strategies for a tech self-reliance, and they've been stockpiling computer chips.
00:24:09.040This is what the Biden administration really means by infrastructure, by we need to invest in our infrastructure.
00:24:16.480We are becoming more like China, public-private partnerships.
00:24:20.320And you will see more and more that we are going to get into the investment world.
00:24:27.200Last month, Bloomberg reported Chinese businesses bought $32 billion of equipment used to produce computer chips from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and elsewhere.