Glenn Beck is back from his vacation and ready to talk about a variety of topics, including the latest in the ongoing saga of Mike Lee's proposed bill to sell off all of our national parks, the Dallas Cowboys trade to the Philadelphia Eagles, and much more.
00:01:12.600You know, is it solid, well-built, sitting on a great foundation?
00:01:16.780Or does it look a little more like a fixer-upper with credit cards that's stacked up everywhere?
00:01:21.240You know, in the basement, high-interest loans leaking through the roof at a mortgage payment, eating through, you know, the walls month after month.
00:01:28.560Look, you don't need to tear the whole thing down.
00:01:30.800You just need to have a team that knows how to renovate the right way.
00:01:34.800And I'm here to tell you that American Financing is that group.
00:02:13.880You know we've been fighting every single day.
00:02:15.720We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you.
00:02:21.980We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it.
00:02:26.860But to keep this fight going, we need you.
00:02:29.380Right now, would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck Podcast?
00:02:32.740Give us five stars and lead a comment because every single review helps us break through Big Tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth.
00:04:07.560I mean, you couldn't be in Russia or China and Iran and do anything more helpful than get all of us to start tearing each other apart on the same side.
00:04:19.140Yeah, it's like, you know, as a Philadelphia Eagles fan, if the Eagles make a trade and you're not sure how to feel about it, one way to decipher that is to see how Cowboys fans react to it.
00:04:29.560If they love the trade, you know it sucks for your side.
00:05:21.680And I might say that when my producers brought up today, Glenn, you really have to talk about our federal government selling off 3 million acres of land for affordable housing.
00:05:35.240I might have been a little shameful there as well.
00:05:40.380And I'm going to try to not be shameful in my response on the federal land today.
00:05:48.300But I will tell you that might be beyond my abilities today.
00:05:52.820I am so unbelievably tired of hearing about how we're not going to be able to hunt or fish because Mike Lee wants to sell 3 million acres of federal land.
00:09:33.120And then, I mean, can you imagine if that bit were played in any place in the Middle East where women are like under their burka thinking, I don't want to live like this.
00:10:18.200She's a black woman making millions of dollars on television opposing the current president of the United States.
00:10:26.060Do you think there's a lot of examples in Iran of this sort of behavior?
00:10:30.280Are there a lot of Jews that have giant television shows in downtown Tehran with their studios making millions of dollars as they carry on the networks the programming that opposes the Ayatollah?
00:11:19.800I'm just trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.
00:11:21.900Can we focus on one other thing, too, that I think is interesting about this development?
00:11:26.460The opposition in that clip comes from Melissa Farah, whatever her name is.
00:11:31.640She was – and I think there's such a fascinating journey of this type of person who was a complete unknown.
00:11:40.400She was a communications official in the Trump White House back in the day and kind of turned into this like, oh, well, I'm notable now because I'm turning against Trump after leaving.
00:11:51.440And there's like a whole genre of people who have gone through this process and whatever.
00:11:57.120It seems to be very rewarding for them when it comes to their media careers.
00:12:21.960But she became famous because of this one thing.
00:12:24.660And there's this interesting thing that happens because you assume the fact that she at one point did serve in the Trump administration, that she had some familiarity with, I don't know, the right side of an argument or the conservative side of the argument.
00:12:38.840Or, like, just the fact that Iran is a danger or whatever.
00:12:41.640She was, you know, involved in defense.
00:12:43.800And then she's forced to go on here and do this show where every day her job is to say, basically, look, I served in the Trump administration.
00:12:52.720I, I, I'm obviously not a liberal, but I can't believe what they're doing.
00:12:58.740And then something like this happens that is so overtly wrong, that something that she obviously knows is a lie, and she has to make that decision on, like, do I go with the truth here or do I do this thing that I've been doing?
00:13:17.220Right, like, and it's got to be perplexing to make these decisions because at some point there is a level where you just inherently can't say the words to go along with the party line that you're supposed to take these days.
00:13:32.140And this is one of those instances where, like, no, it's obviously not as bad for black people in America today as it is for gay people in, in Iran.
00:13:43.540Like, it's just so overtly false that you can't even stop yourself.
00:13:49.080And I find it interesting where they kind of find that line.
00:17:08.200It is insane, especially since, you know, the radical left says that a 17 and a half year old can't consent to have voluntary sex with their boyfriend.
00:17:20.560That would be sexist and that would be horrible.
00:17:23.120But they can consent to have an abortion and they can consent to have radical surgery that can't be reversed.
00:17:31.760By the way, the decision is like six to two and a half.
00:17:35.820Elena Kagan, my former colleague at Harvard, didn't reach the merits of whether or not a state could actually ban these operations on a minor.
00:17:46.300She got involved in whether or not you need super duper scrutiny or just super scrutiny, a kind of, you know, a very technical thing.
00:17:55.620But she didn't rule on whether under any kind of scrutiny the state could do that.
00:18:02.080So definitely two of them said that the state could do it, but not necessarily a third one.
00:18:08.440OK, can you can you break this argument down and why it should have been unanimous?
00:18:14.220Oh, it should have been unanimous. There's no question.
00:18:17.560States under the Constitution have the authority to decide medical issues.
00:18:22.640States decide a whole range of medical issues.
00:18:25.940I remember when I was a young professor, there was an issue of whether or not one twin could be operated on to remove a kidney to be given to another twin.
00:18:37.200And, you know, that case went all the way through the course.
00:18:39.160The federal government never got involved in that.
00:18:41.280That was up to the state of Massachusetts.
00:18:42.820And, you know, they made an interesting decision.
00:20:09.120And, you know, for me, if I were, you know, voting, I would not vote to allow a 17-year-old to make that irreversible decision.
00:20:19.100But if a state wants to do it and if a country in Europe wants to do it, all right.
00:20:23.520But the idea that there's a constitutional right for a minor who can't, you know, isn't old enough to consent to a contract or to have sex, is old enough to consent to do something that will change their life forever and they will come to regret is absurd.
00:20:41.400So, I don't know how you feel about Justice Thomas, but he took on the so-called experts and really kind of took them to the woodshed.
00:21:04.060Most of the major cases that I've won have been cases where the experts went one way and we were persuading them that persuaded a jury or a judge that the expert is not really an expert.
00:21:16.500Experts have become partisans, just like everybody else.
00:21:20.240And so I'm glad that expertise is being challenged by judges.
00:21:26.660And, you know, experts sort of challenge judges.
00:21:31.620Everybody challenges everybody else as long as we're all of us allowed to speak, allowed to have our point of view expressed, allowed to vote.
00:22:13.600And honestly, if it would work in a state, we would all adopt it.
00:22:17.920But the problem is some of these things, like Romneycare, doesn't work.
00:22:22.200And so they want to they want to rope the federal government into it because the federal government can just print money, you know, and, you know, any state wants to do anything.
00:22:31.340But, for instance, I have a real hard time with California right now because I have a feeling, you know, when they fail, we're going to be roped into paying for the things that we all knew were bad ideas.
00:22:40.740Why, you know, why should I pay for it in Texas when I know that wouldn't work?
00:22:47.500And I've always wanted to live in California, but I don't because I know that's not going to work.
00:22:52.740Yeah, but, you know, conservatives sometimes take the opposite point of view.
00:22:57.240For example, the same Justice Thomas says that a state cannot have the authority to decide that guns should not be available in Times Square or in schools, that there has to be a national openness to guns because of the Second Amendment.
00:23:16.080And, you know, you can argue reasonably what the Second Amendment means, but, you know, conservatives, many conservatives take the view that there has to be a single standard for guns, and states can't vary in their decisions how to control guns.
00:23:33.100I'm in favor of letting the states make those decisions.
00:23:35.600Doesn't that just take what the Bill of Rights is about and turns it up outside the head?
00:23:46.720I mean, it says, you know, anything not mentioned here, the states have the rights, but they cannot, the federal government cannot get involved in any of these things, and these are rights that are enshrined.
00:24:01.840So, I mean, because you could say that, but, I mean, when it comes to health care, that's not in the Constitution, not in the Bill of Rights.
00:24:12.260The Second Amendment does provide for the right to bear arms.
00:24:15.680The question is whether it's interpreted in light of the beginning of the Second Amendment, which says essentially a well-regulated, well-regulated militia.
00:24:27.160Whether that applies to private ownership as well, whether it can be well-regulated by states.
00:24:33.800Look, these are interesting debates, and the Supreme Court, you know, decides these, but all I'm saying is that many of these decisions are in some way influenced by ideology.
00:24:46.020The words of the Constitution don't speak like, you know, the Ten Commandments and God giving orders from on high.
00:24:53.860They're often written in ambiguous terms, even the Ten Commandments.
00:24:58.020You know, it says, thou shalt not murder, and it's been interpreted by some to say thou shalt not kill.
00:30:11.100Mike Lee is here, a man who hates land, who hates fishing, who hates water, who hates air, who just wants to sell all of our national parks, or at least good portions of them, to private fat cats so he can build, quote, affordable housing.
00:30:30.360And we all know what that's code for, right?
00:30:33.320I mean, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and I have had this conversation with my family, and I've tried to explain that to them calmly and peacefully, and it doesn't seem to make an impact.
00:30:45.900But maybe Mike Lee, who is a much better orator than I am, can actually bring the facts to the table so we can stop having this stupid argument on selling the federal lands.
00:31:27.940Every one of those statements that you made in your opening reflects falsehood.
00:31:33.300What we're dealing with is an entire generation of Americans that will fail to launch if we can't bring the dream of homeownership back within reach.
00:31:42.520Years of failed policies have helped drive up inflation and helped make living entirely unaffordable for young Americans.
00:31:52.700Meanwhile, the federal government owns 640 million acres of land, nearly a third of all land in the United States.
00:32:01.200The vast majority of that land has zero recreational value, disposing of a fraction of 1% of that so that the next generation can afford a home.
00:32:12.540Is a common-sense solution to a national problem.
00:32:18.860Mike, I will tell you that that sounds great, but you're talking about building affordable housing deep in the Olympic Peninsula, which is a rainforest.
00:32:36.760And look, the map being circulated by the left-wing Wilderness Society, run by President Biden's own BLM director and eco-terrorist, Tracy Stone Manning, is flat-out misleading.
00:32:48.520First of all, when this bill puts land up – puts it in the category of eligibility for sale, it doesn't mean for sale.
00:32:57.700It just means there's a process by which it could be transferred.
00:33:02.660Secondly, with regard to any of these protected lands, the crown jewel lands of the United States, in this bill, it can't operate.
00:33:14.740Like, legally, it excludes anything that's within any of the 15 designations of federally protected land.
00:33:22.860So if it's in a national park, a wilderness area, a recreation area, wild and scenic rivers, trails, preserves, seashores, lakeshores, historic parks, memorials, any of the 15 categories, it's not even eligible for this.
00:33:37.620And they're working on changes to further limit eligible lands to those Forest Service-owned lands within two miles of a population center and lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management within five miles of a population center.
00:33:55.920So this deals with land that is only in or near a place where people live, and it doesn't authorize the sale.
00:34:05.820It authorizes a process whereby it could be considered for that purpose.
00:34:10.920You know, I have heard from my environmentalist friends and family that that doesn't give anyone any—they have no say in their own lands.
00:34:51.960It doesn't fit within any of the categories of protected land.
00:34:55.720It's within either two miles or five miles of an existing population center, depending on whether it's Forest Service or BLM land.
00:35:03.300And at the end of the day, if the land is deemed suitable for single-family housing—and by the way, that's all it's allowed for is single-family housing, not high-density housing of any kind—then and only then can it be purchased at a discounted rate so that more people can have access to land.
00:35:26.160Now, look, we're talking here about nothing that would affect grazing rights.
00:35:32.740It incorporates valid existing rights, including grazing rights, and would take that land out of eligibility for sale on something like this.
00:35:44.080There is no land that will necessarily be sold, transferred, or handed over just because it appears on one of these maps.
00:35:53.300What we're dealing with is a fraction of 1% of the land owned by the U.S. government, an entity that was never supposed to own between a fourth and a third of the land in the United States.
00:36:08.880This is garden-variety land that's just sitting there vacant where people can, do, and should live.
00:36:14.080Mike, why is this so controversial among conservatives?
00:36:22.840Well, frankly, I think some of it is being driven by the left, by misinformation driven by the left and by people like Tracy Stone Manning.
00:36:32.400I think there are other people who would consider themselves conservatives who, for one reason or another, are not working off of accurate information.
00:36:47.120And because they mistakenly believe that this bill would do more than it actually does, that it would sell every parcel of land that we've got or every parcel of land that's listed as potentially eligible here, that that's going to bring on Armageddon.
00:37:04.120But, again, we're talking about a tiny fraction of all the land that the U.S. government owns, a fraction of 1% of all that.
00:37:12.500And in a state like mine, in Utah, where the federal government owns close to 70% of the land in our state, and meanwhile, we've got people moving in from places like California.
00:37:23.760We've got families that are growing, and people are experiencing a genuine housing shortage.
00:37:35.060President Trump knows that this is unacceptable, that America should be dealing with such a housing crisis, especially in western states like mine where there's a lot of federal land.
00:37:45.180That's why President Trump has talked about this sort of thing is that they can't find housing, we have so much land, and we're going to put it to use, and I applaud them for doing so.
00:37:56.000What are the chances that this goes through as is?
00:38:00.440Look, I think we've got a very good chance of it going through as part of the big, beautiful bill, which the Senate will be considering as early as next week.
00:38:12.820And look, the American people will be better off as a result of this.
00:38:20.140We have to realize that it's more important, particularly in lands that are in or near existing population centers.
00:38:31.240We opt to make some of that available, especially in states with a lot of public land like mine.
00:38:38.000I have family members, Mike, that, you know, I've been joking about it here, but I have family members been going back and forth with me.
00:38:45.900We've had great conversations, but it is, they are really, truly terrified that the land that they have hunted on, they've camped on, they've hiked on, is all going to be gone, and they won't have anything to say about it.
00:39:01.400Yes, well, and that's simply not true.
00:39:05.900Look, we've got state and local government consultation requirements, and the agencies are still going to have to comply with all kinds of existing federal laws,
00:39:19.720including the APA necessitating a public process by which these lands would be considered.
00:39:26.500And so those who are suggesting this bill does more than it actually does, in some instances, people might be operating on good faith based on things others have repeated.
00:39:39.040But I think a lot of this is being driven by the far left and by people like eco-terrorist Tracy Stone Manning,
00:39:44.740who accept as almost an article of faith that you can't ever allow any land that is today under the ownership of the U.S. government,
00:39:56.600you can't ever let that be owned by anyone else.
00:39:59.600It's simply illogical, and it's very unfair to those who live in public land states.
00:40:04.960And 30 by 30 wants 30 percent, so they want to gain another 3 percent, and 50 by 50 wants 50 percent of the American land.
00:40:45.460And the other thing that really bothers me that the federal government is doing, our Treasury is doing, is they're trying to put all of our land onto our balance sheet.
00:41:18.420So we've got to get a hold of our debt and deficit.
00:41:22.500We've also got to make it possible for people to continue to live the American dream.
00:41:29.280And the way to happiness is not more government ownership.
00:41:34.780The way to happiness is to allow the American people a fighting chance in the race of life and the ability to raise their families.
00:41:43.760It's just on no planet is unreasonable to say we're going to take a fraction of a percent of federal land that's not protected and make it potentially eligible for consideration for a place where people could live.
00:42:00.340Quickly, Mike, how did they get all this land?
00:42:05.640All right. As states were added to the union, starting really with the Louisiana Purchase, land that was not owned by somebody as of the moment of statehood was very often deemed federal in the statehood enabling act of the state in question.
00:42:23.040In states like mine, many of those states added since the Louisiana Purchase got language in there contemplating that federal land would ultimately be sold.
00:42:32.940And that as it was sold, a percentage of it would go to the state, often as is the case in Utah's Enabling Act, for the benefit of the state's public education system.
00:42:43.720The U.S. government honored that plan with respect to states throughout the Midwest.
00:42:50.900When we got to the Rocky Mountains, the land was regarded as rugged, not as valuable.
00:42:58.400And policy changed in the mid-70s, not leading to that.
00:43:02.020But this all comes back to something that was actually discussed at the Constitutional Convention.
00:43:07.420I believe it was Airbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who in September of 1787 raised a concern, talking about the fact that, you know, it could be a problem.
00:43:18.720If the U.S. government controlled too much land in some of the states and utilized its vast authority over that land, it could compel those states to an undue sort of subservience to the U.S. government.
00:43:36.180And it's a concern that I think is reflected in this bill.
00:43:38.900But this bill, more than anything, is there to help the American people afford housing, particularly in states like mine, where there's a lot of federal land that doesn't have any recreational value or aesthetic value or scientific value, but is in a place where people live and need homes.
00:43:54.040Vets should at least be eligible for consideration.
00:44:01.680I got to tell you, there's not a single person that signed the Constitution that would have signed it if they knew the federal government could control 70% of their land.