The Glenn Beck Program - April 21, 2021


Best of The Program | Guests: Jason Whitlock & Josh Rogin | 4⧸21⧸21


Episode Stats

Length

39 minutes

Words per Minute

143.75633

Word Count

5,626

Sentence Count

405


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the podcast. Today, we get into the Derek Chauvin trial, and we spent most of our
00:00:04.040 time on that, going into some real perspective and what to take from it, where we can go in the
00:00:10.040 future. And was this the right thing? Was this our justice system working? Or was this justice
00:00:15.300 system under pressure? We get into that today. We also have a really great interview with Josh
00:00:19.780 Rogan. He comes on to talk about his new book about China. And what was the origin of COVID-19?
00:00:28.800 Was it really just this innocent thing, as we've known? Was it a mistake? What happened there?
00:00:34.880 And was there a cover up? He says there was, and we'll get into that as well today. Make sure to
00:00:39.840 subscribe to blazetv.com slash Glenn. Promo code is Glenn. Save 10 bucks on your subscription to
00:00:44.420 Blaze TV. Glenn has a new special tonight, How Biden's Spending Spree Could End Our Currency As
00:00:49.800 We Know It. It's a big one. You don't want to miss that. It's right after a brand new Stew Does
00:00:54.260 America. And you can get all the podcasts, by the way, right on this podcast app. Just
00:00:57.840 click on subscribe. And of course, on Stew Does America as well. Subscribe there. It's all
00:01:02.960 free. Check it out. Here's the podcast.
00:01:04.800 One of the greatest memories on a day of tragedy for me has to be October 2nd, 2006. I don't know if
00:01:33.540 you remember what happened on that day. But a guy named Charlie Roberts walked into a one-room
00:01:47.500 Amish schoolhouse. It was a beautiful Monday morning, unseasonably warm. He was 32 years old. He was a
00:01:57.540 dad, father of three young children. He walked into the schoolhouse and ordered the boys and the
00:02:07.020 adults to leave, then tied up 11 little girls between the ages of 6 and 13 and then shot them. He killed
00:02:17.160 five of them, injured the others, and then he killed himself. It was when evil came to town. I mean,
00:02:32.780 there's nothing more peaceful than the Amish. And if you've never had a chance to be in an Amish
00:02:39.900 community, you know, or go to an Amish community, next time you're in Pennsylvania, which might be,
00:02:46.100 you know, never, you should go to Amish country. It is beautiful. And the people are amazing. They're
00:02:54.240 amazing. And here comes this monster into this school, and he shoots these innocent little girls.
00:03:03.080 And it is, it was one of the most shocking scenes I had ever seen. And it was a horrible, horrible day.
00:03:11.900 Everybody was talking about the little girls. The news was focused on the little girls.
00:03:27.840 What was really, what made that day so memorable to me, was when the Amish were still gathered in a
00:03:38.520 barn, waiting to find out whose child was alive and whose child was dead, still waiting to find out if
00:03:49.320 their daughters survived. There was a knock on, on Terry Roberts' doors. Terry Roberts is the mom
00:04:03.500 of the killer. And it was an Amish man named Henry. And he knocked on the door.
00:04:16.220 They had already talked inside the house. We are going to have to move far, far, far away.
00:04:22.220 We're now parents of a mass murderer. And how can this community, I mean, we can never face this
00:04:30.600 community. Then came the knock on the door from Henry. And Henry said, we don't see you as our
00:04:41.200 enemy. We lost our daughters today. But you lost a son. Now, can you imagine what that felt
00:04:56.840 like as a parent? On the day of Charlie, the killer's funeral, 30 Amish men and women, some parents
00:05:11.180 of the victims, came to the cemetery and formed a wall to block out the media cameras.
00:05:17.940 These were parents whose daughters had died at the hand of the guy they were burying.
00:05:27.240 And they did the work of blocking the media.
00:05:31.880 And then one by one, they went over and expressed their deep sorrow for the mother's loss.
00:05:39.240 That's probably all you know about this story.
00:05:48.540 But I have to tell you, when you actually put into practice what you believe, miracles happen.
00:06:00.160 Four weeks after the shooting, the Roberts were invited to meet with all of the families
00:06:09.780 in a local fire hall. Now, can you imagine your son killed these parents' children?
00:06:18.200 One mother looked across the fire hall and held the gaze.
00:06:30.300 Both women looked at each other.
00:06:32.780 The mom of the killer who was grieving the loss of her son and grieving all of the ones that
00:06:41.620 he had killed and the mother of one of the daughters that had been killed.
00:06:48.200 This mother looked over with tears in her eyes and said,
00:06:55.360 We're all grieving.
00:06:57.840 We're all trying to make sense of the senseless.
00:07:08.260 There's a word in black cursive.
00:07:13.300 And it's on a, it hangs above a big double pane window in Terry Roberts' sunroom.
00:07:23.620 The sunroom itself was built by the Amish.
00:07:28.960 And as they gave that to her,
00:07:31.920 they gave her a sign that just says,
00:07:36.200 Forgiven.
00:07:36.640 Now, imagine how hard it's been.
00:07:43.800 But as time went on,
00:07:46.380 the Amish went on.
00:07:49.300 They,
00:07:49.780 it wasn't empty words.
00:07:51.500 They embraced her as a member of the community.
00:07:54.920 She was in the hospital with stage four breast cancer.
00:07:57.840 One of the girls that her son tried to kill,
00:08:03.660 cleaned her home before she returned from the hospital.
00:08:10.900 Around Christmas time,
00:08:13.240 the Amish came to her house to sing Christmas carols.
00:08:16.520 These people know how to live.
00:08:23.760 These people,
00:08:24.900 I mean,
00:08:25.440 me personally,
00:08:27.960 I think they,
00:08:28.400 do they have electricity?
00:08:29.600 I think that that's the,
00:08:31.140 that's the other group that doesn't have electricity,
00:08:33.600 right?
00:08:34.400 The Amish just have horse and buggies,
00:08:36.200 but I think they can.
00:08:36.960 I don't,
00:08:37.320 I don't know.
00:08:38.440 I don't want to live like them,
00:08:40.300 but you know what?
00:08:41.880 I don't want to live like this either.
00:08:43.220 I think I'd rather be Amish.
00:08:47.960 I was looking for that yesterday.
00:08:51.800 I can't find it.
00:09:01.460 These families have found a way to come together.
00:09:05.300 Yesterday,
00:09:06.140 you had people saying,
00:09:08.180 this isn't justice.
00:09:09.700 Well,
00:09:10.320 it may or may not be,
00:09:11.960 and not the way you mean it.
00:09:13.760 I don't know.
00:09:14.700 I wasn't in the jury room.
00:09:17.260 I mean,
00:09:17.500 there's a lot of evidence that they had to go through and the jury,
00:09:21.800 I mean,
00:09:22.300 in,
00:09:22.720 in Minnesota,
00:09:23.820 you have to be.
00:09:27.000 100% all jurors need to agree.
00:09:32.000 In just a few hours,
00:09:33.320 they all agreed on all three.
00:09:37.500 Really?
00:09:37.980 Because I would think there would be,
00:09:40.440 it might be a struggle a little bit.
00:09:41.860 Now,
00:09:42.120 again,
00:09:42.600 I wasn't in the courtroom.
00:09:43.860 I don't know the jury instructions.
00:09:45.600 I don't know Minnesota law,
00:09:47.800 but really,
00:09:49.660 I pray.
00:09:54.880 That these people were not trying to send a message to the rest of the world,
00:09:59.940 not trying to send a message to the community,
00:10:04.920 not trying to send a message to anybody who might harm them if they did otherwise,
00:10:10.240 but actually we're looking at the facts of the individual case.
00:10:18.740 And I wasn't there.
00:10:19.980 I don't know.
00:10:20.520 All I know is I didn't hear anybody talk about the family of Chauvin yesterday.
00:10:31.980 Did you hear anybody talk about his family?
00:10:35.860 There's,
00:10:36.320 there's two people involved here.
00:10:38.900 There,
00:10:39.580 there is the victim and the perpetrator.
00:10:45.120 Both of them have families.
00:10:50.680 Both of them now have lost their son,
00:10:54.180 their daughter,
00:10:54.720 their husband,
00:10:55.920 their father.
00:11:00.200 Both families have had tremendous loss.
00:11:03.880 And I can guarantee you in Minneapolis,
00:11:06.740 if you are the family of Chauvin,
00:11:10.400 you are thinking today,
00:11:12.380 I should move far,
00:11:13.920 far away from here.
00:11:15.120 You were thinking,
00:11:18.840 how am I going to stay close,
00:11:22.280 close enough to be able to visit him in prison?
00:11:27.060 Because close enough to visit him in prison is not far enough away from the
00:11:30.880 people who would do me harm.
00:11:32.440 Call me racist.
00:11:34.340 You know,
00:11:36.080 justice was done yesterday.
00:11:38.300 We all saw the video and we all saw something that horrified all of us.
00:11:44.180 Now,
00:11:45.120 I personally don't think that right,
00:11:48.240 you know,
00:11:48.800 rises to the level of murder,
00:11:50.400 but they define it differently in Minneapolis and in Minnesota.
00:11:55.920 It's a different standard than the one you and I are used to.
00:11:59.400 So again,
00:11:59.900 I don't know.
00:12:02.140 I'm glad he play is paying a price,
00:12:05.020 but is this price right?
00:12:07.940 But was justice done?
00:12:22.040 See,
00:12:25.720 people are looking for social justice and social justice is not real.
00:12:33.800 Collective justice is not real.
00:12:37.340 Because you're asking for something to happen that is impossible to happen.
00:12:47.340 When men are involved,
00:12:51.600 miracles,
00:12:52.720 mistakes,
00:12:53.980 and murder will happen.
00:12:56.620 because men are flawed.
00:13:09.900 People must pay for their sins and they will.
00:13:13.600 And that's up to God.
00:13:14.600 We need to make sure people pay for their crimes.
00:13:19.280 And all we're doing right now is playing musical chairs.
00:13:26.640 I personally think America was on the mend.
00:13:29.360 I thought America was struggling to be a more perfect nation.
00:13:34.540 And that takes time.
00:13:35.800 And I think that the progress that we had made from 1950 or 1960 to the year 2000 was astounding.
00:13:50.720 Astounding.
00:13:51.680 Was it right?
00:13:52.320 No.
00:13:54.220 Did we made real progress?
00:13:56.280 Yeah.
00:13:57.120 Racism still exists?
00:13:58.600 Yeah.
00:13:59.120 Bad cops?
00:14:00.200 Yeah.
00:14:00.660 Bad priests?
00:14:01.900 Yeah.
00:14:02.080 Bad artists?
00:14:06.540 Bad TV people?
00:14:07.940 Bad whatever?
00:14:08.860 Yes.
00:14:09.380 Because it's a collection of people.
00:14:12.420 Miracles.
00:14:14.860 Madness.
00:14:15.500 Mistakes.
00:14:16.400 And murder.
00:14:17.260 All happen
00:14:18.140 when you have a group of people.
00:14:28.960 I want to hear from you today.
00:14:30.740 888-727-BECK.
00:14:34.660 But I urge you to ask yourself this.
00:14:38.460 Because I haven't heard this from anyone.
00:14:41.100 I haven't heard this from any.
00:14:42.920 I watched TV last night.
00:14:44.200 I haven't heard it from anyone.
00:14:46.020 Everyone has an agenda.
00:14:47.380 We have an amazing opportunity to reset, to take this, even if you agree or don't agree with the verdict.
00:15:02.200 It's the system.
00:15:03.720 And I'm going to talk a little later about how the system has failed.
00:15:06.940 And the system has failed because it failed to protect people who were to be the jurors.
00:15:16.260 It failed to protect the possible innocent because information was held back.
00:15:25.540 Can we just, can we look at this story today as just a story, because this is all it's supposed to be, a story about two men.
00:15:43.340 George Floyd, not a perfect man, but didn't deserve to die.
00:15:50.360 Chauvin, not a perfect man, but not convicted of racism.
00:15:56.900 Nowhere in the trial did they say, and he was racist here, here, and here.
00:16:04.700 Oh, he has a long pattern of racism here.
00:16:08.500 That's what this story has become, but that's not what this story is about.
00:16:18.380 I would ask that you would ask yourself, how am I going to serve my nation best?
00:16:25.040 What is the thing that I can do today that will serve my nation best?
00:16:32.120 And the best thing you can do is serve your God.
00:16:35.100 And the best way to serve God is to serve your fellow man.
00:16:38.000 Is anyone thinking of all families?
00:16:44.420 I pray for all of them.
00:16:48.500 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:16:55.040 Jason Whitlock, let me go to you.
00:17:07.760 I'm sorry to make you hold.
00:17:08.880 I, uh, but I wanted you to hear at least one voice of, of people.
00:17:12.940 They, uh, cause I am seeing in the phone calls that are stacked up and I'm hearing,
00:17:16.940 uh, from, uh, from phone calls.
00:17:19.480 People are sad today.
00:17:22.980 They're afraid of, of where we're headed.
00:17:27.460 Give me your perspective on the verdict yesterday.
00:17:32.600 Well, I'm going to first piggyback off your comment.
00:17:35.760 I think people are justifiably confused.
00:17:39.760 Like what, what are we doing here?
00:17:41.940 Where, what direction are we headed in America?
00:17:45.280 We've always been headed in the direction of expanding freedom, expanding fairness, uh, moving against a race-based worldview.
00:17:59.340 And now we're pivoting really quickly and really passionately the opposite direction.
00:18:09.200 And it's a byproduct of technology.
00:18:12.240 In terms of big tech and, uh, the way we communicate now is, is, is cheap and not substantive.
00:18:25.020 Cause again, Glenn, when you think about those of us in our fifties, you know, we grew up in homes with one phone in the home, no call waiting, one record player, one, maybe two TVs in the home.
00:18:39.880 So, but now there's just, and so I think like communication has been cheapened and it's been dumbed down to a point where it's just much easier to lead people the wrong direction.
00:18:55.580 And, and social media promotes an anecdote driven worldview.
00:19:02.560 And I haven't.
00:19:04.160 May I just interject here on, on, you know, you're talking about how it's been cheapened.
00:19:08.240 I didn't know anybody that ever wrote a letter to the editor.
00:19:11.660 Cause you have to sit down, think about it, write it, put it in an envelope, get a stamp, get the address, send it in.
00:19:17.520 I mean, it took forever by the time that thing was out.
00:19:20.880 Now everybody's writing a letter to the editor and it's all of equal value.
00:19:26.360 And only the ones that are the hotheads are the ones that make it to the top.
00:19:30.680 I mean, what are we expecting to happen?
00:19:32.920 And again, so someone that would write, write a letter would really be passionate and probably really informed on the topic and they would take the time to do that.
00:19:43.140 And now all it takes is 10, 30 seconds to write out a tweet that says, I hate you.
00:19:48.840 And so my, my reaction to the verdict was, I thought that to me, clearly I thought Derek Chauvin was guilty of manslaughter.
00:20:00.740 I don't think he had an intent to kill.
00:20:03.000 I do think he was a bit drunk on his power and a bit distracted by the crowd harassing him.
00:20:09.880 And, and that combination turned lethal, uh, for George Floyd.
00:20:15.920 However, having said that, I'm just amazed at how big tech and corporate media working together have us so focused on George Floyd and other resisting criminal suspects and what happens to them.
00:20:35.960 And I know people get tired of hearing it, but, but I'm just amazed the seven year old girl got shot and killed sitting in a, uh, McDonald's drive-thru window.
00:20:48.380 No one cares.
00:20:49.980 There's no emotion around a seven year old girl.
00:20:55.880 And I'm just amazed that, and again, I,
00:21:00.400 Because this isn't about anything real, Jason, this isn't about actual justice.
00:21:05.360 This isn't about anything.
00:21:07.560 This is about political power, capital, uh, and, and in some cases, actual dollars.
00:21:17.080 Oh, no, the actual dollars.
00:21:19.500 Now, I wouldn't even say in some cases, in a lot of these cases, there is money to be made in, uh, championing, resisting criminal suspects, black suspects who are killed by white cops.
00:21:34.120 There's lots of money.
00:21:36.020 Patrice colors.
00:21:37.040 Patrice Conn makes up a hashtag and now she has four homes scattered across America and has a deal with Warner brothers and all this other stuff from making a hashtag and pretending like she cares about George Floyd.
00:21:53.520 There's a lot of money being made.
00:21:56.220 It's a look, Al Sharpton, uh, takes a picture of himself getting on a private jet to go be with, uh, George Floyd's family.
00:22:06.860 Again, all the messaging is, look at, I've made it.
00:22:10.380 I'm flying on private jets all off the backs of criminal suspects resisting arrest and pretending like their life has 10 times the value of these kids that are being, and, and some adults being slaughtered in the streets every day.
00:22:30.640 And we ignore that a seven year old girl, she had no shot at life.
00:22:36.500 She's experienced nothing.
00:22:38.400 She's done no harm to anyone and she's slaughtered and no one cares.
00:22:44.480 It's, it's mind blowing to me.
00:22:46.180 And I get why people are like, American values are being changed rapidly, rapidly.
00:22:55.380 I mean, this is just overnight and it's all driven by social media.
00:23:01.220 I'm going to say this and it'll irritate some people, but again, if you go look at how America on a dime changed on same sex marriage, that's the influence of social media.
00:23:14.860 That's the influence of Twitter and amplifying voices, uh, and Jack Dorsey says it, that that's the goal of social media and the Twitter to amplify voices that, that he deems need to be amplified.
00:23:31.180 And, and, and, and again, I, I said it last time I was on your show, I, I have great sympathy for the LGBT community and how we have demonized their sin and, uh, not demonized our own.
00:23:47.960 Yeah.
00:23:48.540 Excuse them.
00:23:49.120 I get it.
00:23:50.200 And so there needed to be a correction of, of among us believers and Christians.
00:23:55.740 We needed to correct our behavior as it relates to that.
00:23:58.240 But I'm not, again, it's just like I said, there's reasons why I haven't gotten married and, and so everything's not for everybody.
00:24:08.780 Uh, Jason, I, I appreciate it.
00:24:11.620 I've got a network break I have to hit, but thank you for, um, the, the, uh, reason, uh, and the logic that you're using today.
00:24:21.340 I, I really appreciate it.
00:24:23.100 Jason.
00:24:23.500 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:24:30.200 Josh Rogan is a, um, is an author and he has had access to the top us officials from the white house and in our foreign policy machine.
00:24:49.840 Uh, and he has written a new book called chaos under heaven.
00:24:53.860 Uh, and, um, it talks about our relationship with China and what happened under Trump and with the Wuhan virus.
00:25:05.520 Welcome to the program, Josh.
00:25:06.800 How are you?
00:25:08.220 Great to be with you, Glenn.
00:25:10.220 Thank you.
00:25:10.900 So, um, thank you for at least asking honest questions and letting the chips fall where they may.
00:25:17.600 I don't know why we can't talk about, uh, where the virus came from.
00:25:22.500 I don't think that it was a man-made virus that was intentionally released.
00:25:27.760 I think there's a good chance that it did come from, uh, the, uh, Wuhan, uh, Institute and it was accidentally was released, but I don't know if we have any proof of that.
00:25:39.920 Tell me about what you have found.
00:25:45.100 Well, that's exactly right.
00:25:46.460 Glenn, as it turns out, the origin of the Corona virus is not a political question.
00:25:51.860 It doesn't matter if you're on the left or the right.
00:25:54.420 It doesn't matter if you like Trump or if you don't like Trump.
00:25:57.160 It doesn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican.
00:25:59.300 It is simply a scientific and forensic question.
00:26:01.980 And probably the most important question that we have to answer in order to solve the crisis that we're in and prevent the next pandemic.
00:26:10.260 Yet, for over a year, we've been told that just to even utter, just to even mention the possible, still yet unproven, but certainly possible theory that the outbreak began due to human error in one of these Wuhan labs.
00:26:26.140 Just to mention that was considered quite impolite and quite out of bounds in Washington society and in the media for a number of reasons.
00:26:34.720 So before we get into the reasons, let me ask you, we but the we knew something was wrong.
00:26:43.900 I mean, talk about the Wuhan cables.
00:26:46.280 Yes. So what I reported at the time and then again in this book was that for years there have been concerns amongst U.S. diplomats and others about these Wuhan labs, the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
00:27:00.600 the largest repository of bat coronaviruses in the world where U.S. and Chinese scientists were working together to create viruses,
00:27:09.500 not create, but to use science to develop viruses into versions that were more virulent that could affect humans more easily and therefore were more dangerous and more transmissible.
00:27:21.540 And then when the outbreak happened right next to these labs, it was there were a lot of people inside the U.S. government who wanted to look at these labs and who saw these reports from years ago about concerns about these labs.
00:27:32.820 But they were unable to do so because of the political environment and because of the things that were going on inside the U.S. government and in the U.S.-China relationship,
00:27:41.340 including that the Chinese government was blackmailing the U.S. government into not asking any questions and also blackmailing a lot of other countries
00:27:48.140 and also lying about the origin of the virus and covering up the sciences and jailing the scientists and jailing the journalists.
00:27:54.060 So there was a very extensive and well-funded campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party and also the friends of this lab,
00:28:02.460 the American friends of this lab, whose stories were tied in with the lab, who had a clear conflict of interest,
00:28:07.520 who were telling all the journalists, you better not talk about the lab.
00:28:10.300 And by the way, we don't think the lab did it because we're the best friends of the lab.
00:28:13.780 We're the best people to tell you that they didn't do it.
00:28:16.040 So there was a perfect storm of horrendousness that combined to push us towards this idea that we couldn't look at these labs.
00:28:23.320 And then, you know, here we are a year later.
00:28:25.780 And of course, now we have Robert Redfield, who was the CDC director, Dr. Tedros, the head of WHO,
00:28:30.940 and many other people, including many scientists, saying, hey, listen, we got to look at these labs.
00:28:35.440 It doesn't matter what political side of the spectrum you're on.
00:28:38.560 So now we have to look at these labs.
00:28:40.420 And that's the bottom line.
00:28:41.660 And we've wasted a year.
00:28:43.440 We've wasted a crucial time and energy and resources.
00:28:46.680 And the question is only more important than ever because it relates to how do we stop this pandemic from happening again?
00:28:52.440 And we can't do that if we don't figure out how it happened in the first place.
00:28:55.620 Okay.
00:28:56.080 So now let's go to why have they why is it been I mean, you're you're called a conspiracy theorist.
00:29:04.880 You're you're called all kinds of names.
00:29:06.660 You're shut down.
00:29:07.660 People have been shut down on social media.
00:29:11.000 Some have lost their jobs just for questioning.
00:29:14.600 Why?
00:29:16.420 Why?
00:29:17.040 Who's so powerful that this is all is shut down like that?
00:29:20.900 You know, there's a couple of reasons.
00:29:23.720 One is because of, again, this propaganda campaign that was run by the Chinese Communist Party, but aided and abetted by American scientists who are the best friends of the lab.
00:29:32.160 I'm talking about Peter Daszak, the EcoHealth Alliance and all the rest who, you know, told us that it was a conspiracy theory because they didn't want anyone to look at the lab.
00:29:40.960 And then when the WHO did its report, they hired the same exact scientists, including Peter Daszak, to go look at the lab.
00:29:47.620 They went there for three hours, talked to the scientists, didn't see anything, didn't get got some data, but not really all the data.
00:29:54.140 And they came back and said, we don't need to look at the lab anymore.
00:29:56.720 And this is a cover up.
00:29:58.540 OK, this is there's no other word for it.
00:30:00.560 It's a cover up to distract us from the urgent need to look at this lab and also look at the other theories with the whole point is that we need to look at all the theories and and figure out what's what.
00:30:11.480 And, you know, wherever the facts lead, that's where we have to follow.
00:30:15.160 And it's really as simple as that.
00:30:16.960 And then in the media, the reason that they picked up on this was because Donald Trump endorsed the lab theory and most of the mainstream media didn't want that to be right.
00:30:25.540 They couldn't bear with the fact that Donald Trump might have been right about something, despite the fact that he also did all these other things they considered horrible.
00:30:32.960 But even the broken clock is right twice every day.
00:30:35.860 And here we are a year later and Donald Trump is no longer president.
00:30:38.780 So it doesn't matter if he was right.
00:30:40.360 But the media still doesn't want to correct their error if it is an error, because they don't want to get dunked on.
00:30:46.220 And but getting dunked on is really not what's important.
00:30:48.020 What's important is protecting our country from this pandemic.
00:30:51.820 I was talking to Condi Rice last week, and she said something that I had not heard anybody say before.
00:30:57.600 She corrected me when I said rising China.
00:31:00.340 And she said it's a risen China.
00:31:03.060 It's a risen China.
00:31:04.580 It's not rising anymore.
00:31:06.240 It's going to get more powerful, but it's already at the table and it's a powerhouse.
00:31:12.040 What does what does the shift in our our president mean to China?
00:31:20.500 And I mean, because I am not for trade barriers.
00:31:24.240 I was strongly against trade barriers.
00:31:27.100 However, I was torn on trade barriers with China because China is just they're out of control and they are not the friends of freedom.
00:31:37.240 And and not friends to us.
00:31:39.920 And so I was I was glad to see that we were taking a hard line on on China.
00:31:45.880 And now I feel like we'll just excuse anything again that China is doing.
00:31:51.560 Is that at all accurate or is.
00:31:54.700 Yeah, Glenn, I agree with almost everything that you said.
00:31:57.320 You know, when the Trump administration came in, what they did was they flipped over the chessboard.
00:32:01.440 They ended 40 years of what was largely a policy of engagement first, cooperation first, which meant betting on the idea that as China got more powerful, that it would liberalize economically.
00:32:13.720 And then that would lead it to liberalize politically.
00:32:16.160 And that would then solve the rest of our problems.
00:32:18.480 But it became pretty clear after Xi Jinping took power in 2013 and more and more over the years that that just wasn't happening.
00:32:25.740 China was going another way.
00:32:27.260 And actually, they were abusing our engagement to advance their interests against ours.
00:32:31.140 And actually, they were interested in changing the world order to make it safe for autocracy and repression and aggression of all kinds.
00:32:38.260 And that we were we were late to acknowledge that, much less respond to that.
00:32:42.380 Now, the problem with the Trump administration's response, of course, is embedded in the title of my book, Chaos Under Heaven.
00:32:48.380 It was very chaotic.
00:32:49.540 You were there.
00:32:50.080 It was a mess.
00:32:51.300 It was very functional.
00:32:53.220 And so it was hard for anybody to really understand what was going on.
00:32:57.200 And the factions fought internally.
00:32:59.620 And Trump changed his mind on the tactics and all the rest.
00:33:02.400 And, you know, we didn't stand up for human rights and against the Uyghurs and in Hong Kong.
00:33:06.860 And the trade war, you know, I could make an argument that the terrorists were useful.
00:33:10.880 But because the trade war was executed in such a haphazard manner, it undermined its effectiveness.
00:33:16.320 But here we are four years later and Trump flipped over the chessboard.
00:33:20.700 And now the Biden administration has a chance to set it back up again.
00:33:23.940 And they could, if they choose, set it up in a way to give us back the advantage.
00:33:28.700 We still have the high ground.
00:33:30.200 We still have the best economy.
00:33:31.820 We still have the right.
00:33:33.020 You know, we still have the position of moral justification that we stand for the things that we believe in, including democracy, freedom, human rights, the rule of law.
00:33:44.000 And then we still have allies and partners who profess to believe in those things.
00:33:47.660 So we don't know yet if they're going to pull this off, if they're going to take this new approach that the Trump administration admittedly messed up at times,
00:33:56.440 but handed them and make it more international and more effective.
00:34:00.000 They could do that if they chose.
00:34:01.320 We just don't know yet.
00:34:02.140 What are the signs that show us one way or the other?
00:34:07.180 Have you seen anything yet?
00:34:08.260 Well, absolutely.
00:34:10.000 So for right now, we have a lot of continuity.
00:34:11.940 And we saw, you know, we still have the tariffs that, you know, I'm not a tariffs guy either.
00:34:16.800 But, hey, listen, that's leverage.
00:34:18.560 You don't want to just give them away.
00:34:19.880 You want to use them to get the things that you want.
00:34:22.060 The Biden administration confirmed that there's a genocide going on in Xinjiang against the Uyghurs.
00:34:26.900 Guess what?
00:34:27.520 There is a genocide going on against Xinjiang against the Uyghurs.
00:34:30.860 And now they have to actually do something about it.
00:34:33.080 So the indications are that they're, oh, by the way, they also haven't said that we can't talk about the lab accident theory.
00:34:39.160 The Biden administration confirmed that there was some shady stuff going on in the lab that they didn't admit to.
00:34:44.940 In other words, they want to get to the bottom of it.
00:34:47.400 They're not invested in the idea that we can't talk about the lab accident theory because they weren't there at the time.
00:34:52.440 So the indications are that they are open to a more assertive, more aggressive policy towards China because that's what the American people want.
00:35:07.560 That's what the polls show that Democrats and Republicans want because the Chinese Communist Party's aggression now affects us in our own lives, in our schools, in our markets, in our sports, in Hollywood, in Silicon Valley, everywhere.
00:35:19.900 So now that all Americans are woken up to this, especially if you're sitting in your basement scared of getting the coronavirus, you know that what happens in Beijing no longer stays in Beijing, and you want your leaders to do something about it.
00:35:32.240 And that's what the American people are calling for, and that's what the Biden team is starting to respond to, but it's not enough yet.
00:35:37.540 So what was it that the Americans were doing in this lab that many Americans didn't want other Americans to know about?
00:35:48.900 Were they doing something nasty, or was it just it looked bad?
00:35:53.660 This is a crucial question, and this is a great question, because according to Robert Redfield, again, not a completely unproblematic person, but not someone who's bailing out the Trump team for the sake of it.
00:36:05.280 According to him, the virus likely came from what's called gain-of-function research.
00:36:09.720 That's what they were doing there.
00:36:10.960 It's where you collect all these viruses from the wild, and then you run them through mice that have lungs that are adapted to act like human lungs.
00:36:18.000 And you do that a few thousand times, and you see what happens, and that's the idea there is to predict the next pandemic.
00:36:24.260 And wouldn't it be ironic if the program to predict the next pandemic actually caused the pandemic, sparked it quite accidentally, of course?
00:36:32.560 And the problem with that is that these Americans were doing this in Wuhan because this research had been largely banned by the Obama administration in the United States.
00:36:42.640 So they moved it to China, where there was less oversight.
00:36:45.660 And now here we are, and we're trying to get back into these labs.
00:36:48.640 It's basically impossible because the Chinese government won't allow it.
00:36:51.800 But what we can do is we can examine these American labs.
00:36:54.920 And that means the NIH, and that means the NIAID, which is run by Anthony Fauci and the EcoHealth Alliance.
00:37:01.340 And this is what you see.
00:37:02.580 This is what you see in Congress.
00:37:04.140 More and more lawmakers standing up to say, OK, well, listen, if we can't get into these Wuhan labs, we want to know what all the American labs were doing in conjunction with them.
00:37:12.820 And we want to know where the procedures followed, and if not, why not?
00:37:16.640 And who's going to be held accountable for that?
00:37:19.700 Then we've got to take a look at all this gain-of-function research because, and this is going to blow your mind,
00:37:24.200 the current plan to respond to the pandemic is to increase this research sixfold by spending another $1.2 billion to collect 500,000 new viruses from the wilds
00:37:36.020 and bring them to labs all over the world.
00:37:37.920 It's called the Global Environmental Project.
00:37:39.720 And do you want to do this every year?
00:37:41.400 Do you want to have this problem every single year?
00:37:43.860 So my simple proposal, again, I'm not a pro-Trump guy.
00:37:47.760 I'm not an anti-Trump guy.
00:37:49.120 I'm not a Republican.
00:37:49.900 I'm not a Democrat.
00:37:50.460 I'm just a reporter who would like to not have a pandemic every year.
00:37:54.100 And my idea is let's figure it out before we sixfold increase this risky research.
00:38:00.440 Let's figure out if that's what caused the pandemic.
00:38:02.660 Yeah, it would be helpful.
00:38:03.620 I don't think so.
00:38:06.500 No, and I think if we're going to do this research anyway, we should do it in the United States.
00:38:12.060 Shipping it off to China and having them do it in China, where their standards are a lot lower than ours, is insanity.
00:38:21.020 Insanity.
00:38:21.760 Not just lower.
00:38:22.980 Go ahead.
00:38:24.300 The allegation by the Trump administration, which was confirmed by the Biden administration, by the way, again,
00:38:30.020 not pro-Trump conspiracy theories, Jake Sullivan, all the rest,
00:38:32.880 was that they took this research and then they had their own game going on with their military in a way that we didn't know about.
00:38:39.260 Okay?
00:38:39.540 And that's the real danger here, is that we think we're just doing open science with a bunch of nice Chinese scientists.
00:38:45.900 But these nice Chinese scientists may be very nice people,
00:38:48.800 but they don't get to make the decisions about what research happens and what they tell us and what goes on in these labs.
00:38:53.700 That's run by the party, and the party acts as it acts, which is not in our area.
00:38:59.760 Josh Rogan, author of Chaos Under Heaven.
00:39:02.660 Chaos Under Heaven is the name of the book.
00:39:04.440 Josh Rogan, thank you for being on.
00:39:05.800 Appreciate it.
00:39:06.320 Nananana.
00:39:07.620 Bye.