The Glenn Beck Program - January 14, 2022


Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Sen. Mike Lee & Matt Ridley ｜ 1⧸14⧸22


Episode Stats


Length

40 minutes

Words per minute

155.3783

Word count

6,272

Sentence count

480

Harmful content

Misogyny

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly discuss the worst week for Joe Biden in his entire first year as president, and why he's the worst president in the history of our republic. They also debate whether or not he's better than any other president in his first year.

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 .
00:00:00.000 If you want to know why the world is dramatically changing all around you,
00:00:04.200 you want to know why things don't make sense, why corporations are going woke,
00:00:07.460 why vaccine mandates that are not based on science are being imposed on people,
00:00:12.020 why the government is now spending Republicans and Democrats alike
00:00:14.940 trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars more than they take in,
00:00:18.100 then you need to buy this book, The Great Reset.
00:00:20.480 You need to learn what's going on with The Great Reset.
00:00:23.540 We've spent more than a year investigating this, a year and a half.
00:00:26.940 We have done an incredible amount of research on this topic,
00:00:30.260 and we are just now figuring out how all of these pieces fit together,
00:00:35.040 and we're going to talk about it today on the show.
00:00:37.360 Couldn't have said it better myself.
00:00:38.660 It's at glensnewbook.com if you want to pick it up.
00:00:40.920 Also, subscribe to the podcast, rate and review.
00:00:42.980 Don't forget Studos America as well.
00:00:44.200 I'm going to be talking with Justin as well and going deeper into The Great Reset on tonight's program.
00:00:49.880 Don't miss that.
00:00:50.860 It's on BlazeTV as well, blazetv.com slash Glenn.
00:00:54.080 Promo code is Glenn.
00:00:54.920 Here's the podcast.
00:00:56.940 You're listening to The Best of the Glenn Beck Program.
00:01:10.880 Mr. Bill O'Reilly, welcome to the program.
00:01:14.500 The biggest story of the week, sir.
00:01:17.700 Worst week for Joe Biden in his entire first-year presidency.
00:01:24.220 Is this, I mean, because you remember the days of, really, Jefferson,
00:01:30.320 is this the worst a president has done in his first year that you can recall?
00:01:36.720 Well, before I answer that back, I know you're a little bit delirious about the COVID thing.
00:01:42.880 Yes.
00:01:43.320 Are you feeling all right?
00:01:44.500 Are you okay?
00:01:45.020 Well, I'm in an iron lung right now, and it's been very bad.
00:01:52.240 I know the left is rooting that I pass on, but it's not happening yet.
00:01:58.560 I bought an old iron lung.
00:02:01.560 You sound okay.
00:02:02.420 And because this is the eighth time you've had COVID, I'm going to give you a pass on the Jefferson.
00:02:06.740 But I have to tell you, you know, that Stu is actively undermining you.
00:02:15.500 Oh, I know that.
00:02:17.100 Okay, good.
00:02:17.820 I'm trying.
00:02:18.080 I know that.
00:02:18.820 I'm very well aware of that.
00:02:20.320 So tell me about these poll numbers and what it means, because it doesn't seem like they are any less likely to stop doubling down on things.
00:02:27.920 Okay, so the Quinnipiac poll has Joe Biden's job approval rating at 33%.
00:02:34.600 That is not a reliable poll.
00:02:37.980 It has never been.
00:02:40.040 So, you know, we want to be fair here in our analysis of the president.
00:02:44.160 I don't believe that he's down to 33%.
00:02:47.260 Here's how I see it.
00:02:49.620 There's no question that Joe Biden is failing.
00:02:54.060 Okay?
00:02:54.420 Okay, on Monday on the No Spin News on BillOReilly.com, I'm going to have my lead segment exactly what you said.
00:03:01.600 Is he the worst president in his first year in the history of our republic?
00:03:09.140 So I'm bringing on a liberal historian, presidential historian, because I want to see that point of view.
00:03:16.440 For me, he is.
00:03:18.780 And I'm pretty good at this history business.
00:03:21.000 I think you may know that.
00:03:22.440 Yeah.
00:03:22.520 I went over every president.
00:03:26.820 Now, you could make an argument that Herbert Hoover, because he walks in and then the whole economy collapses.
00:03:33.300 But that was set into motion before he got into office.
00:03:37.700 And it also, his policies, while he didn't do anything, that probably would have been a little bit better than some of the things.
00:03:46.440 But, you know, the Hoover projects started under him.
00:03:50.020 There were some things that lasted.
00:03:53.500 He had no leadership skills.
00:03:55.200 He had no vision.
00:03:57.000 He was befuddled like Biden is.
00:03:59.100 And James Buchanan, of course, was a president before Lincoln.
00:04:02.440 And under him, the South was emboldened to separate.
00:04:07.200 I have a letter in my historical collection by Harry Truman saying that if Buchanan had been the same temperament as Andrew Jackson,
00:04:17.420 that there wouldn't have been a civil war, interesting letter.
00:04:21.720 But anyway, Biden, there isn't anything you can point to, not one thing.
00:04:27.040 And if there is, I want your listeners to contact me, Bill at BillOReilly.com, okay, that he's done to improve the nation.
00:04:36.580 That's the test.
00:04:38.300 You just step back, take emotion out of it, politics out of it, and say, give me one thing that Joe Biden has done to improve the country.
00:04:47.260 Just one.
00:04:49.440 And you can't do it.
00:04:50.820 And so this week, getting back to your what's the biggest story of the week, he got pummeled on every time he turns around, record inflation, record COVID cases,
00:05:04.960 his insane legislation about Voting Rights Act, which is unconstitutional, by the way, is not going to happen.
00:05:13.420 Build Back Better, not going to happen.
00:05:15.320 Can't get anything done.
00:05:16.780 So we're looking at a guy who basically is sitting there, and he's got three more years, and it's over.
00:05:25.360 It's over.
00:05:27.360 It's like the Kansas City Royals.
00:05:29.500 They're not going to win the pennant this year, okay?
00:05:33.500 But he is legislating.
00:05:36.060 I was just talking to Mike Lee, and Congress is almost irrelevant, but he's just going through with executive orders.
00:05:43.360 And they are being overturned, but they do.
00:05:46.440 Go ahead.
00:05:47.580 Even those orders are foolish.
00:05:50.860 They don't get the country anywhere.
00:05:52.960 They don't move the country.
00:05:55.300 I mean, I'll remind everybody that it was his executive order a year ago that opened the borders.
00:06:00.660 Right.
00:06:02.560 He did it.
00:06:03.760 He can't blame Congress.
00:06:05.040 He can't blame Trump.
00:06:06.060 He can't blame Obama.
00:06:07.240 He can't blame anybody.
00:06:07.940 He did it.
00:06:09.140 And to this day, we have tens of thousands of people a week crossing that border illegally.
00:06:17.060 None of them tested for COVID.
00:06:20.120 Tell me about killing of the...
00:06:21.360 How on earth does that help the country?
00:06:23.140 Tell me what your thoughts are on the filibuster being killed.
00:06:27.600 Did that...
00:06:28.080 I mean, I don't think that ever had a chance.
00:06:30.300 That never was going to happen, because if you do that, then when the Republicans win the Senate next November, which they will, they just turn it on you.
00:06:44.060 They turn it on you.
00:06:45.360 They revoke everything that you've done.
00:06:47.040 Yeah, you can veto and all this, but you just tie it into an incredible knot.
00:06:52.320 You've got to have the ability on controversial legislation to have an overwhelming majority in the Senate, or you don't have a country anymore.
00:07:01.360 You have a partisan mess.
00:07:03.440 You have to backstay.
00:07:05.120 I talked a couple of weeks ago about Hillary Clinton running as the candidate, and it was kind of roundly mocked.
00:07:14.000 Now some people are picking this up.
00:07:16.440 I'd love to hear your analysis on Hillary Clinton.
00:07:19.940 Do you think she will run?
00:07:24.740 Do you think the party would back her?
00:07:28.440 Okay, I broke this story about five weeks ago when she came out and cried about something.
00:07:38.680 Yeah.
00:07:38.980 She was crying.
00:07:40.120 Okay, and I said, oh, there's Hillary crying. 1.00
00:07:43.960 Why would she do that? 1.00
00:07:45.360 Look, the Clintons, whether you despise them, and I'm sure most of your listeners do, are very, very savvy people.
00:07:53.640 And even though they don't really, they're not a close couple anymore, they do confer.
00:07:59.800 And they know that Biden's a disaster.
00:08:03.740 And they know he's not going to run again.
00:08:05.960 Again, there's absolutely no way on this planet that Joe Biden runs for re-election as it stands now.
00:08:14.880 Okay?
00:08:15.580 Now maybe through the gift of God, he'll go out and part the Potomac.
00:08:20.640 I don't know.
00:08:22.100 I guess it could happen.
00:08:24.100 But he's befuddled.
00:08:25.960 He's incompetent.
00:08:27.740 He's way too old.
00:08:29.520 And I'm not saying that age-wise.
00:08:32.420 It's his mental capacity.
00:08:34.600 And I'm not saying he's senile.
00:08:36.100 And I'm not going to do that.
00:08:37.300 That's not fair.
00:08:38.040 I'm not a doctor.
00:08:39.480 But he cannot govern this country.
00:08:42.440 So he's not going to run again.
00:08:44.240 So Hillary says, hmm, Kamala's out of the box. 0.97
00:08:47.400 She can't do anything.
00:08:49.340 She's not going to get the nomination. 0.98
00:08:51.340 All right?
00:08:51.780 So who else is there but me?
00:08:55.540 The Democrats still like Hillary. 1.00
00:08:57.620 I think that's a fair statement.
00:08:59.520 So why not me?
00:09:02.240 But then Hillary gets a boomerang thrown at her by one Michelle Obama last Sunday, 0.99
00:09:09.260 who takes out a completely unnecessary ad in the New York Times,
00:09:13.700 costing the Obama Foundation, Michelle's Foundation, about $75,000 to say,
00:09:21.620 hey, I'm getting back in the political game because I want to register everybody to vote.
00:09:26.800 And, of course, she doesn't.
00:09:28.120 She just wants to register Democrats to vote. 1.00
00:09:30.620 Okay?
00:09:31.080 So here I am, Michelle Obama.
00:09:33.340 Hmm.
00:09:34.040 Isn't that interesting?
00:09:36.180 Okay?
00:09:36.980 So Hillary wants to run. 1.00
00:09:39.120 She wants to be president. 1.00
00:09:40.880 So why wouldn't she?
00:09:42.580 That's how you have to approach all these questions.
00:09:45.340 Why wouldn't Hillary Clinton try again? 1.00
00:09:48.800 She thinks she won the first time around.
00:09:51.200 Where have we heard that before?
00:09:52.600 So anyway, you were astute because I'm sure you didn't see my initial report on Hillary Clinton
00:09:59.040 because you don't watch the no-spin news every night.
00:10:02.240 No, I don't listen to you even now.
00:10:03.640 I'm barely listening to you now.
00:10:06.320 Bill, so do you think that, I mean, you want to talk about a queen.
00:10:10.920 Do you think that Michelle Obama would actually run?
00:10:14.380 I don't know, but if she does, she walks in.
00:10:19.960 Nobody will even primary her.
00:10:22.840 So if she can have that nomination, if she wants it, no one will primary Michelle Obama. 0.86
00:10:31.080 No one.
00:10:31.420 Oh, my gosh.
00:10:32.020 That's a doomsday device there.
00:10:36.220 I mean, I think that is something that should be concerning to everyone because that's concerning.
00:10:42.600 I mean, look, it depends on what political spectrum you're on, obviously.
00:10:46.920 Liberals, progressives, and Democrats would love to have her run. 0.88
00:10:50.440 However, once she does run, she's going to open herself up to, you know, the hate fest that America is now. 1.00
00:10:59.360 It's a hate fest.
00:11:00.300 All right?
00:11:01.360 This is not like, okay, the best man or woman wins.
00:11:05.700 No.
00:11:06.700 It will destroy you and your family.
00:11:09.120 It's like organized crime.
00:11:10.480 It's like killing the mob.
00:11:12.060 That's what politics is now.
00:11:14.140 All right?
00:11:14.580 But we've already played that game with the Obamas, and they are experts at deflection, especially with the media.
00:11:23.880 They would not let the Obamas be destroyed like that.
00:11:26.960 But like the Clintons, all right, the Obamas are very, very shrewd.
00:11:32.080 Now, the corporate media is going to deify, word of the day for Stu, look it up real fast, Stu, deify Michelle Obama.
00:11:41.460 So she'll have the media with her.
00:11:44.100 But with the media declining drastically in influence and readership and viewership, the Internet then rises.
00:11:55.160 And she is going to be the subject of an unbelievable personal attack if she runs.
00:12:03.800 And she knows that.
00:12:05.340 They know it.
00:12:06.760 So when Barack Obama first ran, he didn't get attacked very much.
00:12:11.700 You'll remember that.
00:12:12.820 All right?
00:12:13.480 Oh, I know.
00:12:14.180 It was like, here's this newbie.
00:12:16.200 He didn't do much in the Senate, but he's an African-American.
00:12:18.880 And as Joe Biden said, he's a clean guy or something.
00:12:23.520 Remember that?
00:12:24.280 What a great guy.
00:12:24.960 No, we're now debating whether he's calling somebody articulate is racist when Joe Biden said he was clean, articulate, and a fairy tale.
00:12:36.540 Unbelievable.
00:12:37.320 Right.
00:12:37.960 Right.
00:12:38.500 I mean, but it doesn't matter because Joe Biden's a Democrat.
00:12:42.800 Now, if Joe Biden had been a Republican, he would have been canceled immediately.
00:12:46.300 Okay, so with the Michelle Obama scenario, it's fascinating because it could be Trump versus Michelle.
00:12:56.700 And I mean, I don't even know how people would get through that.
00:13:03.360 Oh, no.
00:13:03.620 My gosh.
00:13:04.180 Our heads would pop.
00:13:05.780 Our heads would pop.
00:13:06.720 It would be great for you and me because, you know, everybody will be glued because every day there'll be another.
00:13:15.880 They're mud fest.
00:13:17.540 You know, the Obamas aren't like Donald Trump.
00:13:19.620 They're not direct hitters.
00:13:21.140 They hire their hitters.
00:13:23.440 Yes.
00:13:23.800 Okay.
00:13:24.080 And they'll have them all over the place.
00:13:26.700 Oh, yeah.
00:13:27.900 And so we're going to be sitting here going, is this America?
00:13:35.820 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:13:45.880 Mike Lee is here to talk to us a little bit about SCOTUS and some of the other things that are going on in Washington this week.
00:13:53.860 Hi, Mike.
00:13:54.260 How are you?
00:13:55.880 Good to be with you as always, Glenn.
00:13:58.080 Thank you.
00:13:58.780 Great for your recovery.
00:13:59.980 Well, I'm in an iron lung now, Mike.
00:14:02.080 I don't know if you know that, but I've been trying to hide it.
00:14:06.540 But now I think, you know, now that I've taken the soundproofing out, you can hear the echo of the iron lung that I'm in today.
00:14:14.560 It's ridiculous how, I mean, I did the show the entire time I have COVID.
00:14:19.640 I have a cough.
00:14:20.940 It is into my lungs, but it's not a bad problem.
00:14:24.320 And I've been trending for two days with people wishing me, you know, death.
00:14:29.520 It's crazy.
00:14:31.180 But, Mike, let's go to SCOTUS.
00:14:34.340 I feel like, and this is why I wanted you on, I feel like we have another John Roberts half measure.
00:14:41.420 I feel like we won with the battle in our businesses, but we lost with the Department of Health.
00:14:52.260 Yeah, yeah, that's true.
00:14:53.700 What the Supreme Court did was to say that the OSHA mandate that dealing with every employer, the part of the mandate that said 84 million Americans, including, by the way, 500,000 Utahns, are at risk of losing their jobs if they don't bow to presidential medical orthodoxy.
00:15:10.700 Fortunately for all of us, the Supreme Court had the courage to stand up and say, no, no, they can't do that.
00:15:17.100 This is not a dictatorship.
00:15:18.200 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, they didn't really.
00:15:22.200 They only said OSHA can't do that because it's out of bounds.
00:15:26.660 They didn't say the federal government, did they?
00:15:29.560 Right, right.
00:15:30.380 So this is the part dealing with the 84 million Americans covered by the OSHA mandate.
00:15:34.480 That dealing with the part that says we will find an employer with more than 99 workers if they don't fire every worker who refuses to get vaccinated.
00:15:43.540 With respect to the so-called CMS, maybe, that dealing with Medicare and Medicaid programs and health care systems that interact with them, that receive money from them, the Supreme Court punted.
00:15:56.920 The Supreme Court said, we're going to let this litigation play out.
00:15:59.440 We're not going to weigh in right now.
00:16:00.600 We're not going to stop this abruptly.
00:16:02.360 And so this was, look, as between the two, if we were going to have to win one and have the court punt on the other, I'd a whole lot rather win the one that we did win yesterday.
00:16:12.660 I wish we had won both.
00:16:13.980 Now, Mike, what's concerning to me is the White House just doesn't care.
00:16:22.800 It's not even going through Congress anymore.
00:16:24.940 It's almost as the Supreme Court is a legislative body at this point.
00:16:29.460 Because immediately they started revamping.
00:16:33.160 They're working now on, because of Sinema and others, not going to work on this filibuster thing.
00:16:40.160 They're now doing executive orders.
00:16:41.920 I mean, there's just no stopping these guys.
00:16:44.840 And the Supreme Court is not the place for legislation.
00:16:50.260 No, no, it's not.
00:16:51.900 And look, this is part of a syndrome of self-importance that pervades Washington, D.C., especially within the executive branch.
00:16:57.840 One in which people are willing to say, you know, we can't really trust the peasantry.
00:17:02.860 We can't really trust those who are elected by the people at the most regular intervals to pass legislation.
00:17:08.580 We're going to have to have the experts do it.
00:17:09.860 This is the Woodrow Wilson dream for America, is that you'd have only Tony Fauci's in charge of everything.
00:17:17.020 Little Tony Fauci's in charge of every area of the American economy.
00:17:21.120 Seasoned, wise experts, infallible in their approach.
00:17:25.000 And only rarely, of course, willing to call elected lawmakers morons.
00:17:29.840 So, Mike, I had a sit-down with Donald Trump, and I don't know if you saw it.
00:17:35.000 It was a couple of weeks ago.
00:17:36.200 It was all about the future, not about the past.
00:17:39.100 And I said to him, you know, things are so out of control that a serious pruning, and I would be for the shutdown of all these federal agencies, you know, to a skeletal staff.
00:17:51.580 And I said, it's just completely out of control right now.
00:17:57.140 It's almost like we need a system reboot and set it back to factory settings.
00:18:02.680 That's going to be impossible to get this thing back under control unless we have a strong GOP that understands what we're fighting and what we're up against.
00:18:14.460 And it's not Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
00:18:16.860 It's much bigger than that.
00:18:18.720 Are you seeing troops starting to rally in the GOP, or are we playing the same game with the McConnells and stuff?
00:18:26.000 Well, without question, I'm seeing this troop starting to rally, and I'm seeing fantastic, exciting new candidates like Josh Mandel in Ohio coming up through the ranks, people who are willing, as you say, to come back and reimpose the factory settings.
00:18:39.880 What are the factory settings in our system?
00:18:41.880 Well, in our system, that's the Constitution.
00:18:44.240 And it's a document that still works today.
00:18:46.580 It's as relevant as it was back when it was written in 1787.
00:18:50.840 But we have to start following it.
00:18:52.380 And one of the things that it says, the very first operative provision of it, is that Congress makes the laws.
00:18:57.800 All legislative powers, here and granted, shall be vested in the Congress of the United States.
00:19:02.020 We've drifted far from even that very first and critically important definition.
00:19:07.200 There's a reason for that, because we entrust the lawmaking power, which is inherently the most dangerous power in government, only to people who are elected by the people at the most regular intervals.
00:19:18.120 And if we ever cease to do that, as we have been lately, because we've been delegating it all to Tony Fauci's, we deviate from the factory settings.
00:19:25.520 Let's restore the factory settings.
00:19:27.540 So Christian Sinema gave a great speech yesterday on the filibuster.
00:19:32.080 I don't think they even have 49 or 48 votes for this thing.
00:19:36.740 But she came out quite eloquently.
00:19:40.040 I'm impressed by some of her stances on reason.
00:19:50.200 Yes.
00:19:50.840 Look, Kirsten Sinema is fantastic.
00:19:52.820 She's a dear friend.
00:19:54.440 She and I are both graduates of Brigham Young University.
00:19:57.480 And while we don't agree on everything and we have different party affiliations, I have tremendous respect for Kirsten.
00:20:04.480 In fact, I was just talking to her last night.
00:20:06.220 You know, she's a hero.
00:20:08.120 She's willing to stand up for things, even when it's difficult.
00:20:10.940 In fact, she seems to have her very best days, especially when it's difficult.
00:20:17.240 And I admire that tremendously.
00:20:19.280 Are you sensing a change in the Democratic Party?
00:20:22.360 I mean, the poll numbers are, I've never seen anything like this.
00:20:26.740 And are they still able to bully their people into line as much as they were?
00:20:33.020 That appears to be their M.O.
00:20:36.500 And as far as I can tell, Glenn, they're doubling down on that.
00:20:39.780 Like, they're saying, OK, this hasn't been working.
00:20:42.220 So we've got to give it even more cowbell.
00:20:44.700 And I think that's going to end badly for them.
00:20:47.380 So I was, I'm thinking about COVID a lot.
00:20:52.560 I have it.
00:20:53.100 My family has it.
00:20:54.320 Everybody I know has it.
00:20:55.700 I mean, the scientists that are down in the Antarctic, they have it as well.
00:21:00.940 I mean, everyone's going to get this variety.
00:21:03.760 And it's good.
00:21:04.940 I mean, it's causing us a lot of pain.
00:21:08.420 And it is causing death.
00:21:09.720 But the death rate is down 91%.
00:21:11.780 This becomes an endemic, which is really good. 0.96
00:21:14.820 But speaking of doubling down, I'm seeing the president saying he wants to push businesses to choose to do this anyway.
00:21:23.820 They are getting more and more draconian.
00:21:27.280 There's calls today for getting Joe Rogan off the air and Spotify to fire him and censor him because of the COVID laws or the COVID lies, as they say, that he is spreading.
00:21:42.120 They're talking now about much more draconian kind of rules and laws.
00:21:49.040 Do you see this ending well here, Mike?
00:21:54.000 I mean, we're at the tail end of COVID, and they seem to be going even crazier.
00:22:02.020 You know, there's a reason why we have a First Amendment.
00:22:05.080 There's a reason why we've decided that government ought not be able to punish people for contradicting government orthodoxy.
00:22:13.280 And the reason is there's really disproportionate bargaining power.
00:22:17.060 The one thing that makes government government is its ability to use force with official sanction, with the seal, with the badge.
00:22:26.380 And so it really is dangerous.
00:22:28.120 We should take these things very seriously.
00:22:31.020 Whenever they come out and true government offices try to threaten, intimidate, belittle people, true government office, to the point that they can't express a differing opinion on a matter of public policy, that's really dangerous.
00:22:46.020 Well, you have Joe Biden coming out.
00:22:49.360 I think yesterday, Joe Biden came out, it was yesterday, the day before, and said to social media, you have got to shut these shows down.
00:22:57.920 I mean, he is pressuring big businesses to become even more draconian on the First Amendment.
00:23:05.420 This is, I mean, this is really dangerous.
00:23:08.020 It really is.
00:23:10.120 And when you get to the point where a government is as big and is as powerful as the federal government is, as the executive branch in particular is, you have to stop and wonder whether we've just allowed it to get too big.
00:23:22.320 Because if there's that much subtlety and sophistry within that system, we've got to tear it down and get it back to the basics of what the federal government is supposed to be doing.
00:23:31.200 National defense, trademarks, copyrights and patents, immigration, naturalization, regulating trade or commerce between the states and foreign nations and with the Indian tribes.
00:23:38.880 There are a few other powers, but that's it in a nutshell.
00:23:41.920 We're into everything right now.
00:23:43.600 And because we're into everything, they can do anything they want.
00:23:46.560 Mike, the the Ray Epps situation and January 6th, I mean, I don't even understand it.
00:23:58.180 Can you give me an update on on what's happening with the January 6th investigation?
00:24:04.820 Yeah.
00:24:05.340 So Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and I, along with the rest of our colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned at length these officials from the FBI and the Department of Justice the other day.
00:24:16.700 We asked the most basic questions about who was arrested, why, when, what was being investigated, what the situation was with Ray Epps.
00:24:24.860 Time after time after time, they told us, I'm sorry, I don't have that information.
00:24:29.520 After a while.
00:24:30.280 Can you hang on just a second?
00:24:31.480 Can you put that into perspective, Mike?
00:24:33.400 How often does something like that happen?
00:24:36.160 How out of the norm was this line of questioning and their answers?
00:24:42.520 Well, it's not at all uncommon to have an executive branch employee or high-ranking official in front of a committee and to have us ask them a question and have them say, I don't know the answer.
00:24:55.180 But what's different here is we were asking them questions about the very topic that they had agreed to come and testify about in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:25:06.600 That's what's so spooky about this.
00:25:08.940 They came before us to talk about those very issues, and they appear not to know a thing about them.
00:25:14.880 So they're either lying or they're being willfully ignorant of what happened.
00:25:19.040 And I'm not sure which one is worse, but they're both awfully bad.
00:25:25.820 So, Ray Epps, do we have any real indication that he may be an FBI, or is this just speculation because we don't know what's going on?
00:25:35.440 Well, when these officials were asked that question at this hearing earlier this week, they just refused to answer.
00:25:43.140 They just said, can't talk about that.
00:25:45.880 And so we're going to keep hounding them until we get answers.
00:25:49.760 It appears to me, based on the way they answered.
00:25:51.960 Now, look, if, in fact, he was unknown to the FBI prior to January 6th, if, in fact, he had no association with them,
00:26:01.980 I can't imagine that these officials from FBI and DOJ wouldn't have said as much at the time,
00:26:08.540 that they wouldn't have at least said, we're not sure who he is, or he's not connected with us.
00:26:13.900 They did not say that.
00:26:15.620 They instead just punted and said they couldn't answer it.
00:26:19.020 And so that's a real problem, and we've got to get to the bottom of it, because if that is true,
00:26:26.640 if we had this person, if Ray Epps were, in fact, someone acting for and on behalf of the federal government
00:26:33.160 and agitating, as he obviously was in these video clips, and encouraging people to engage in unlawful activity,
00:26:44.380 one has to wonder how many other people like him were there.
00:26:47.240 Correct.
00:26:47.720 And at whose direction were they operating?
00:26:50.740 Mike, last question.
00:26:52.500 I know you have to run, but this week I released the book on The Great Reset.
00:26:57.380 I have to send you a copy.
00:26:59.100 We cannot keep it in stock.
00:27:01.140 Literally, we cannot keep it in stock.
00:27:03.000 It's the best, fastest-selling book I've ever written,
00:27:07.460 and we're just trying to get the printers to keep up with the demand.
00:27:12.600 So I'll send you a copy, or you can get it on Kindle.
00:27:15.780 But one of my researchers asked today, where do we stand on the $100,000 or the $10,000 snoop on bank accounts?
00:27:23.260 Did that finally pass through?
00:27:24.600 Is that still being debated?
00:27:25.540 No, that has not passed through, and that's going to pass through over my dead body.
00:27:32.040 That cannot happen.
00:27:33.820 We're not going to let that happen.
00:27:35.760 And if your listeners want to learn more about it, they can always go to leifersenate.com,
00:27:40.160 or they can learn about these and other topics we've just got.
00:27:42.300 Mike Lee, the only man in America that I would gladly endorse
00:27:50.040 if it wasn't a death knell to everybody's political career every time I've done it in the past.
00:27:58.220 But you are fantastic, and I wish you the best.
00:28:01.940 Thank you very much, Mike.
00:28:03.780 Thanks so much, Glenn.
00:28:05.160 You bet.
00:28:05.580 Mike Lee for Senate.
00:28:06.600 We have Matt Ridley on the phone with us.
00:28:26.700 He's the co-author of Viral, The Search for the Origin of COVID-19.
00:28:32.580 There is a big story that came out this week,
00:28:35.280 exposed emails from Fauci and the gang,
00:28:39.080 seem to be just a blip in the news cycle this week.
00:28:42.060 But it is important that we don't move on.
00:28:45.540 We have to search for the origin of COVID-19.
00:28:49.820 And I wanted to get Matt Ridley on to talk about what was discovered in these emails.
00:28:56.240 What does it tell us, and why are they important?
00:28:58.200 Hi, Matt.
00:28:59.900 Ben, good afternoon.
00:29:00.960 Nice to talk to you.
00:29:01.660 Good morning, I should say.
00:29:02.740 Thank you.
00:29:03.180 Yeah, well, you're in the UK.
00:29:04.120 So, good evening, good afternoon.
00:29:07.620 So, Matt, tell me what new came out this week.
00:29:12.800 I don't know if you saw the Fauci hearings,
00:29:15.620 but, I mean, we had this information a few months ago,
00:29:20.460 but now it is being confirmed and doesn't look good for Fauci.
00:29:25.740 Am I reading that right?
00:29:26.760 Well, we've known for a long time that there was a meeting in early February which Fauci attended,
00:29:34.640 so did Francis Collins, so did Sir Jeremy Farrer of the Wellcome Trust,
00:29:38.760 who was actually the person who asked for the meeting,
00:29:41.380 and a bunch of other senior virologists on the phone on Saturday the 1st of February in which they discussed the widespread concerns among virologists at the time that it looked like this new virus was the product of manipulation in a laboratory,
00:30:00.980 or at least it had mutated in a laboratory, that they couldn't explain how it came about in nature.
00:30:06.980 We've known just the outlines of that, but when we sought the emails about that meeting that followed that meeting, we got totally redacted documents, you know, with everything blacked out.
00:30:19.360 And that was a little intriguing, to say the least.
00:30:25.720 Now, some of the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have been allowed a sight of the unredacted emails and have transcribed some of the key paragraphs,
00:30:36.980 and they are even more startling than we expected,
00:30:41.260 because what they show is that Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, and other senior advisors to the government in both the UK and the US were briefed very clearly by virologists
00:30:56.800 that at the time they thought there was a very good chance this had come out of a laboratory,
00:31:00.640 they couldn't explain one feature in particular of its genome by any other way,
00:31:06.840 and that they thought that theory should be taken very seriously.
00:31:10.720 And yet the outcome of that meeting was to commission an article for Nature Medicine magazine,
00:31:18.060 and another couple of articles came out shortly after that too, one of which had Farah on as a co-author,
00:31:24.220 which basically rubbished that idea and said, no, it couldn't have come from a lab,
00:31:30.000 and there was no evidence for that, and it was a conspiracy theory, and everybody should shut up about it.
00:31:34.500 So what changed in the couple of days after that meeting to take these people from thinking it was a very strong possibility
00:31:43.340 to thinking it was a nutty conspiracy theory that could be ruled out?
00:31:49.380 And not only is it.
00:31:50.320 What you want to show is that what changed is politics.
00:31:53.360 It wasn't scientific evidence that changed their minds.
00:31:56.140 It was the impact this might have on the reputation of science in general and science in China in particular.
00:32:05.320 What do you have on that that shows that directly?
00:32:10.800 Well, there's an email from Ron Fauci, who is a Dutch scientist who is involved in this experience,
00:32:20.380 who says we can't agree to this because it would have an impact on...
00:32:28.340 We must rule out this possibility because it would have a significant impact on science in general
00:32:33.900 and Chinese science in particular.
00:32:35.920 We have a remark from Francis Collins in one of the emails saying,
00:32:41.220 this might damage international harmony if we indulge in this speculation.
00:32:46.160 It's a strange choice of words.
00:32:48.520 It's the sort of words that the Chinese regime uses actually a lot.
00:32:53.580 So it's pretty clear.
00:32:57.020 And then finally, there's an email in April in which Francis Collins basically says to Dr. Fauci,
00:33:05.220 yes, this article did come out, but it didn't shut down the debate as much as I'd hoped.
00:33:11.900 There are still people speculating about a lab leak.
00:33:15.120 That's a pity because it's not helpful to the reputation of science.
00:33:20.960 The background of this, of course, you remember,
00:33:23.580 is that Donald Trump has said this virus comes from China around the same time.
00:33:27.980 And a lot of these scientists are very strongly opposed to him
00:33:32.800 and are horrified by the thought that some of this information might give him some vindication.
00:33:39.480 So I think, you know, the problem here is scientists saying one thing in public,
00:33:43.960 thinking a completely different thing in private,
00:33:46.900 and their reason for doing so being political, not scientific.
00:33:50.500 Matt, have you ever read The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling?
00:33:57.820 I have, but a very long time ago.
00:34:00.360 Yeah.
00:34:00.960 Well, I think of that poem almost every day
00:34:05.560 because it talks about when society goes this far off the rails.
00:34:10.680 And, you know, the last line is, you know,
00:34:13.180 The Gods of the Copybook Headings, you know, with terror and slaughter return.
00:34:17.320 You will eventually, depending on how far you go,
00:34:20.980 you will have to come back to truth.
00:34:24.100 And the more you fight it, the worse it becomes,
00:34:26.720 and the worse the fight back to the truth is.
00:34:30.700 Science and medicine has got to start their fight back right now,
00:34:36.180 or they're being, they are completely discrediting themselves right now
00:34:43.500 by not being 100% transparent.
00:34:46.440 We can't survive with a medical industry and hierarchy
00:34:52.060 that is involved in lies, blackmail, you know, payoffs, and politics.
00:35:00.440 It's bad for all of humanity.
00:35:05.220 Well, yeah, I probably wouldn't go as far as to use some of those words,
00:35:09.160 but I agree with the point you're making,
00:35:11.260 and I do so as somebody who's very pro-science.
00:35:15.280 I've defended and championed science all my career.
00:35:18.760 I've written about the wonderful achievements of scientists.
00:35:21.480 It's my, I think it's humankind's greatest achievement, bar none.
00:35:25.120 I agree.
00:35:25.580 The discovery of how the world works.
00:35:28.500 But it is getting very difficult to defend the way science is behaving as an institution
00:35:37.120 on some of these matters.
00:35:39.200 And if science is to retain its reputation,
00:35:43.120 it's got to own up and say, look, in the name of science,
00:35:46.460 some people have been doing dangerous experiments.
00:35:48.620 That's a mistake, whether it led to this pandemic or not.
00:35:51.780 Certainly didn't help predict it as it was supposed to.
00:35:54.400 And if science were to look at itself and say,
00:35:59.560 sorry, guys, we got a few things wrong here.
00:36:01.880 We got a lot right.
00:36:03.080 We've developed vaccines and so on.
00:36:04.760 But actually, we may have started this pandemic.
00:36:07.240 We're really, really sorry.
00:36:08.800 Let's make sure it never happens again.
00:36:10.680 They would get a lot of credit.
00:36:12.260 Instead of doing that, they're saying, no, no, no.
00:36:15.840 We don't want you to talk about this.
00:36:17.300 We don't want you to think this.
00:36:18.620 We can rule it out.
00:36:19.560 It's a conspiracy theory.
00:36:20.560 It's nutty.
00:36:22.620 And I'm afraid that means that when this does come out to be the case,
00:36:28.260 which it may well do, can't be sure about that,
00:36:31.740 but we may well find out that this did start in a lab,
00:36:34.720 that it may drag a lot more of science down with it than it should.
00:36:39.200 Yeah.
00:36:40.000 So, Matt, I don't know if you're qualified to tell me this,
00:36:43.380 but I take the latest news of this pandemic becoming an endemic as good news.
00:36:52.840 This is what really kind of happened in the 1918 flu.
00:36:57.540 Bad the first year, worse the second year.
00:37:00.280 Then it starts to peter out, and we just end up with a flu.
00:37:04.740 Omicron seems to have a death rate lowered by 91%.
00:37:09.560 And we're still in the throes of everyone getting it, so it's still bad.
00:37:15.100 But I take this as the possible beginning of the end of this nightmare.
00:37:22.920 Do you agree or not?
00:37:24.240 I completely agree with you.
00:37:26.200 I've been saying this for a number of weeks.
00:37:28.040 And when I started saying, hang on, I think this is the milder version of the virus,
00:37:32.640 I had, you know, some of the sort of medical establishment saying there's no such thing as a mild version of a virus.
00:37:39.420 It only depends on how much our immune system reacts to it.
00:37:44.140 And respiratory viruses don't evolve towards mildness.
00:37:48.440 I'm sorry.
00:37:49.140 Then how do you explain the fact there are 200 kinds of common cold and none of them kill us?
00:37:53.120 You know, et cetera.
00:37:53.980 So I think this is exactly what we've been waiting for, a mild version displacing, a nastier version,
00:38:01.040 the virus becoming endemic, becoming a seasonal, not completely harmless,
00:38:06.580 and still capable of killing people infection.
00:38:10.080 And I think that's what happened, for example, with the other four coronaviruses that we catch all the time.
00:38:15.880 They cause the common cold or versions of it.
00:38:19.160 Right.
00:38:19.340 They're not the commonest cause of the common cold, but they're one of the causes, and they do not kill us.
00:38:24.940 And they started as nasty pandemics that probably did kill us.
00:38:29.080 Are they, is there any case to be made for, you know, Fauci has even come out and said,
00:38:36.680 everybody's going to get this.
00:38:38.640 So why the big push now again on quarantine and everything else?
00:38:45.280 Isn't this kind of what we were hoping to happen?
00:38:49.220 I mean, I don't want anyone to die.
00:38:51.120 So do everything you can so that they don't die.
00:38:53.900 But this is the end of that isolation thing.
00:38:57.480 The people in Antarctica, in the labs there, have Omicron.
00:39:02.600 So everyone's going to get it.
00:39:05.180 Exactly.
00:39:05.680 Well, the UK, which hasn't always got it right in this area,
00:39:09.360 and has been far too draconian and authoritarian in the way it's handled this health crisis, in my view,
00:39:16.640 nonetheless, did take a decision back in July that it would open up society again.
00:39:22.260 And we were predicted to have hundreds of thousands of deaths as a result by the modelers.
00:39:27.120 That didn't happen.
00:39:28.080 That has meant that we've had an earlier and bigger Omicron wave than other countries.
00:39:33.900 That has largely displaced our Delta wave.
00:39:36.740 That has meant that we've now got, yes, we're still getting 100,000 new cases a day,
00:39:40.920 but our death rate is knocking along in the low hundreds and has not got anything like as bad as it did last winter.
00:39:50.220 It looks like we in the UK are going to be out of this pandemic quicker and earlier than other European countries.
00:39:59.520 That's fantastic.
00:40:00.500 Compared to the US.
00:40:02.300 And so that tells us that the right decision was to open up society and stop these lockdowns back in the summer.
00:40:09.740 Scotland wouldn't follow suit, and it's having a slightly worse time now.
00:40:13.460 Matt Ridley, God bless you.
00:40:15.220 Thank you, sir, for all of your hard work.
00:40:16.580 Thank you for defending science and just speaking the truth.
00:40:20.220 As you understand it.
00:40:21.480 God bless you.