Glenn Beck sits down with Daniel Cameron, Kentucky's First African-American and Republican Attorney General, to talk about the Durham trial, the state's new crisis and crisis response team, and much, much more.
00:03:16.900Thank you so much for having me on this morning.
00:03:19.180Thank you for everything that you're doing.
00:03:21.180You're one of these Attorney Generals that are taking ESG very seriously.
00:03:24.760And you say that stakeholder capitalism, environmental, social, and governance investment practices actually violate the laws of Kentucky, right?
00:03:44.060Well, and honestly, I think if you look at our law or if you even look at some of the language in ERISA itself,
00:03:52.980the requirement of investors regarding pension systems here in the Commonwealth indicate that the way that the investments are supposed to work is that they are solely to bring and bring money for the beneficiary.
00:04:12.380And so that is the sole mission and purpose of an investment.
00:04:17.100And so when you see things like ESG that are ancillary interest and could have a consequential negative impact on the investments of teachers, firefighters, law enforcement, other state public employees,
00:04:36.060that's something that, as AG of Kentucky, I'm going to stand up against and make sure that folks here in the Commonwealth know that we're going to be watching this very closely to ensure that the investment practices are done in a way that is solely for the benefit of the beneficiary as opposed to some of these ancillary interests related to ESG.
00:04:58.620If I'm not mistaken, a study just came out last week or the week before that showed that the ESG funds, many of them are performing under the market.
00:05:10.160And one of the big may have been BlackRock, I'm not sure which one, but one of the big funds came out and said, yeah, well, I mean, for a while you are going to make less money, fewer returns on your investment.
00:05:26.960But in the long run, it's the right thing to do. And it'll pay off. That's not you can't do that.
00:05:35.080Glenn, you I mean, you're exactly right. You think about the folks sitting at their dinner table who have worked in here in Kentucky, at least in state government or have served as teachers or firefighters or law enforcement.
00:05:50.760You know, they don't want to hear that they're in their investments, their pensions might take a hit because somebody in New York at some asset management firm wants to figure out a way to include ESG in their financial strategy.
00:06:12.260That just is not something that's going to sit well with folks here in Kentucky. And I dare say not going to sit well with a lot of your listeners.
00:06:18.860They want sound financial investments that are based on the sole responsibility of looking out for the beneficiary rather than environmental, social and governance type strategies that, again, are not specific to making money for the beneficiary.
00:06:38.620And it's, you know, another problem with this is people don't understand. It's because of ESG.
00:06:45.320We are having these gasoline prices. We're having the fuel shortages because the ESG investors are taking our state funds, you know, every union that has the funds, the pension funds, that all is going into investment.
00:07:03.440Most of it is going to places like BlackRock, and they won't invest in coal or petrochemicals.
00:07:13.440Well, you know, when you run out of money, you run out of gas and fuel.
00:07:20.080Yeah, that's right. I mean, I've talked to a lot of, you know, fossil fuels, natural gas and coal companies that say that on the open market, it's hard for them to find financing.
00:07:30.560Right. And it's because the these index funds or these asset managers are using other people's money.
00:07:38.880I mean, let's let's call it what it is. They are. They're not using their own money.
00:07:41.920They're using other people's money. They're using retirees money.
00:07:45.860They're using folks that have been working in state government and state systems.
00:07:49.700Again, teachers, law enforcement. They're using their money to make these decisions.
00:07:54.480And, you know, your listeners and folks here at home don't necessarily know this.
00:07:59.660And so one of the reasons we wanted to issue this opinion and we were asked to issue this opinion is to put a spotlight on it so that this is whether it's in this context or other context.
00:08:12.280The more information people have, the better decisions and informed decisions they can make in terms of where their money is going, how it's being spent.
00:08:21.960You're seeing this in so many different contexts and so many different industries.
00:08:25.660And that's why I'm obviously honored to be on with you this morning to talk about this, because I think as patriots, as men and women who get up and work every day and and want to see a better future for themselves and their children,
00:08:39.720they don't want their money going to some of these ideas or strategies that are not aligned with their own values.
00:08:47.220And so that's also another reason that we decided to issue this opinion.
00:08:50.960You stated in this opinion, investment management firms are publicly committed to coordinating joint action for ESG purposes, such as reducing climate change.
00:08:59.920For example, the steering committee at the Glasgow Alliance for Net Zero states these, quote,
00:09:05.500the systematic change needed to alter the planet's climate trajectory can only happen if the entire financial system makes ambitious commitments and operationalizes those commitments with near term action.
00:09:36.780And so the challenge that we are seeing is that this is hurting the pocketbooks of the working men and women of this country.
00:09:43.380And again, we, as you all often talk about, have got to stand up and be willing to push back against these notions that are out of line with the majority of the values of the men, women, children across America.
00:09:58.380OK, so what are you doing as attorney general?
00:10:00.320You say you were asked to release this.
00:10:19.360Are we to be single minded in in making sure that the beneficiaries, that their money or the money that they put into the system, that the investments themselves mirror or make sure that those dollars can be maximized as opposed to taking some sort of hit because of these ESG goals?
00:11:06.160We want to put a flag in the sand to say this cannot be a process that is jeopardized in Kentucky when it comes to making money for our beneficiaries.
00:11:16.900That process cannot be jeopardized by these ESG approaches.
00:11:21.420So the three biggest firms that are involved have, I mean, trillions of dollars.
00:11:28.800They most likely have some Kentucky money in it.
00:11:36.720Is she looking at individual firms that are ESG based?
00:11:40.400So we wanted to empower our pension boards, if you will, our trustees to have this information so that they can make wise decisions moving forward on what our investments look like and to scrutinize those closely and report back to us if there's anything that we need to be undertaking in terms of investigating any of the actions of the asset managers.
00:12:07.660Real quick, could you just talk to other attorney generals in other states that may not be pursuing something like this and to the American people on how important this is, how dangerous this is?
00:12:19.300Well, I'll say to my colleagues and other attorney general across the country, this is a big issue.
00:12:27.680This is important to the pocketbooks of the working men and women.
00:12:31.640And, look, I'm a part of a party, the Republican Party, that believes in standing up for the values of the working men and women and the working class folks all across this country.
00:12:42.820And I know a lot of my colleagues believe in that.
00:12:45.140This is a way to do it, to stand up to these ESG practices that have invaded a lot of the investment strategies across our financial markets.
00:12:57.280What I'll say to hear to your listeners and folks back home is pay attention to this stuff, whether it's in the financial context or in Hollywood or entertainment more broadly.
00:13:13.780We've got to be careful about where our dollars are going and what they are funding.
00:13:18.480So, this is, again, these ESG practices are things that are an investment strategy that is using your money.
00:15:18.380There's actually a lot of positive news and uncanny news as well, in which the East and the West have been mixed up in our lifetime.
00:15:26.100So, essentially, to go over this, the Biden administration submitted 13 amendments to international health regulations that, taken together, would serve to cancel out all of the requirements to consult with the host country before declaring a public health emergency in that region.
00:15:46.600That wouldn't be, that's when you say the authority, that's, they don't, the WHO would not have to talk to our president or Canada's prime minister or anybody else if they wanted to declare a health emergency in the United States or Canada.
00:18:52.000They take this hyper literalist approach when you raise a political concern.
00:18:56.440Hey, why is the Biden administration truncating all the timelines for approval as well as vitiating any requirement to consult with the host nation in order to declare a public health emergency?
00:19:08.620And they're like, well, the WHO can't do anything to you anyway.
00:19:11.580Well, yeah, I mean, that's why we're saying we need to stand up to that.
00:19:15.020But but the broader point is that it demonstrates that the Biden administration is not done with this.
00:19:57.260In fact, one of the articles I was reading earlier this morning as I prepared for this interview was the fact that the defenders of this are saying this is not, you know, this is not some crazy idea.
00:20:15.480Global pandemic response had relatively little coordination, little unity.
00:20:20.420In fact, it was more like 1983 and 2009 TV miniseries V, where politicians, personalities, social media accounts and others seem like they were actually trying to help the enemy.
00:20:31.100In this case, the covid-19 that allowed the virus to kill over six point two seven million people and counting.
00:20:38.380That's why the World Health Organization is discussing the global pandemic treaty at the upcoming 75th World Health Assembly.
00:20:47.020Yet some celebrities, a bunch of social media accounts have been trying to guess what?
00:21:00.680So it goes into how how screwed up the response was.
00:21:05.020And if the who would have just had authority to make sure everybody was doing the same thing and the right thing, how many lives could have been saved?
00:21:14.140But we know the who was incompetent itself.
00:21:17.460Well, what's remarkable about all of this is that they never take ownership for the results of their incumbency.
00:21:29.700We helped about it for two years, but no one listened to us.
00:21:33.020You had some isolated areas that over time moved away from these policies.
00:21:36.740But for the most part, whether it was formally coordinated or not, which it's hard to tell, nearly every corner of the world coalesced around closing schools, around masking, around mass vaccination, around denying treatment.
00:21:54.620Like you look at the denial of the hydroxy and ivermectin in America.
00:21:57.960I mean, that occurred in almost every corner of the world.
00:22:01.720So they got what they wanted, and yet we have six times more cases now, even though it's kind of off-season in the summer, than we did this time in late May, early June of 2021, even though all the vulnerable people have at least three, if not four shots, and it keeps going and going and going, they never take ownership for their policies.
00:22:26.540They act as if no one's vaccinated, as if we didn't try all these things, and as if somehow we were in power, we had zero control over that.
00:25:49.460Tonight, I'm going to show you on my Wednesday night TV show the disasters that are coming.
00:25:56.540And they are Biden-made disasters and how they will cripple us and what the administration in the bureaucracy is already laying the foundation for.
00:26:08.840Because they're not only just creating it, they have a solution for those problems.
00:26:15.740And I don't think you're going to like them.