The Glenn Beck Program - January 09, 2020


Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Senator Mike Lee, Ian Bremmer & Mark David Hall ｜ 1⧸9⧸20


Episode Stats


Length

46 minutes

Words per minute

165.60199

Word count

7,708

Sentence count

572

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

16

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) calls in to talk about the Iran situation and his thoughts on it. Also, Ian Bremmer is with us to discuss the risks of 2020 and if America is still a Christian country.

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 Hey, welcome to the Glenn Beck program. It is the podcast today. We've got a lot. We have very controversial Mike Lee on. He's normally not controversial, but he is today. He was very upset about the briefing that he got in Congress. We talked to him about that. And also, where does he stand on President Trump?
00:00:21.020 Well, it's not what you're going to hear from the rest of the media. This is an interview worth listening to all the way through. Also, Ian Bremmer is with us. The risks of 2020. What are the things that he sees over the horizon this year? And was America a Christian founding? Are we a Christian based country?
00:00:46.940 A professor from Oregon actually chimes in. Don't miss it.
00:01:01.180 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:01:05.340 We have Senator Mike Lee on the phone with us now, who is is either loved or hated by so many, and I think misunderstood in this particular case. Senator, welcome to the program.
00:01:26.040 Thanks so much, Glenn. Good to be with you as always.
00:01:27.680 So, Mike, you are not saying that the president shouldn't have gotten Soleimani or that he hasn't handled this right.
00:01:38.780 That's correct.
00:01:39.340 Right? You're for that.
00:01:41.240 I have not spoken out against the attack on Soleimani. What I am concerned about is where we go from here.
00:01:48.780 Correct.
00:01:49.040 I want to make sure that any subsequent military action against Iran is carried out only through the constitutional formula, which is through a declaration of war or an authorization for the use of military force.
00:02:01.780 And this is something...
00:02:02.600 I actually think the president wants the same. I think the president wants to follow the Constitution. I commend the president. I support the president.
00:02:07.640 This president has been actually the most respectful and the most restrained in his use of military power as commander-in-chief, more so than any other president in my lifetime.
00:02:19.760 I agree with that.
00:02:20.340 And I respect him for that.
00:02:21.420 Unfortunately, some of those around him seem to be coming from a slightly different place, and that worries me.
00:02:28.500 I was shocked because I felt exactly the same way about President Trump.
00:02:33.040 I was really proud of the way he has restrained himself. He, you know, he didn't go and lob missiles after they took down our drone.
00:02:42.260 You know, they've captured our sailors, et cetera, et cetera. And he really didn't do any of the things that I think other presidents would have done.
00:02:52.420 And yet he didn't look weak. And he just drew the line of, you kill our people, and that's a different story.
00:03:01.620 He drops the bomb. This all goes fairly well as of today, goes fairly well.
00:03:08.940 But I was shocked, Mike, to hear on television all of the people from the right that were saying, we've got to bomb their oil fields.
00:03:18.140 We've got to go after them. No, no, no, no. We don't want that.
00:03:22.480 We don't want that. And President Trump doesn't want that.
00:03:25.800 And look, this is one of the many reasons I have endorsed his reelection.
00:03:31.800 One of the reasons why I'm the co-chair of his reelection campaign in my home state of Utah is because I think he has shown tremendous restraint as commander in chief.
00:03:40.200 And it's one of the things I love about him.
00:03:42.340 He wants desperately to not get us involved in unnecessary, unconstitutional, undeclared wars throughout the world.
00:03:48.400 And so it worries me when I see some people around him making arguments that are consistent with those that have been made over the course of many decades that have driven a wedge between the American people and the war power.
00:04:01.620 The war power is supposed to belong in the people's branch, which is Congress, because it's the branch of government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals.
00:04:08.720 Okay. Now, wait a minute. I want to make sure that we're talking about the same thing, because it's my understanding that the way the world works, it is so fast.
00:04:17.360 And it's like this in the Constitution. The president has the right to strike, but then he's got to go to Congress within 30 days and get a war powers act passed.
00:04:33.600 So we have a declaration of war. Otherwise, all the military have to come home and everything else because you hold the purse.
00:04:42.240 Yeah, that's right. The president has the president has the power inherently under Article 2 to order a strike that is discreet and that is necessary in order to repel an actual or imminent attack.
00:04:55.360 But, you know, further actions, a sustained military effort, something that would qualify as an act of war does, in fact, require congressional authorization.
00:05:06.000 And that's what they need to obtain. So I think the president agrees with me on that.
00:05:11.160 I just think some of those surrounding him, advising him and advising Congress on behalf of the executive branch yesterday are not adequately taking that into account.
00:05:19.560 Yeah, I think the American people need to be very careful because we we hear everything in black and white now, and there are extremists on both sides.
00:05:28.120 There are people in Washington that I hear, and I think they are actually their hatred and their politics against Trump are so strong.
00:05:38.320 It's almost like they want us to lose. They want us to. I mean, they're standing behind terrorists. It's crazy.
00:05:47.120 And on the other side, there are extremists that want us to go to war with Iran.
00:05:53.880 I think the average American person is like, look, if you kill our people, you hit them, you hit them hard, you move on, and we don't have to go to war with Iran.
00:06:04.460 It's not the right idea. I think that's where the average person is.
00:06:08.560 But the politics in Washington, which brings me to this question, how can you said yesterday, which I completely agree with you, you said, you know, it's our we have to debate.
00:06:24.360 It's un-American. And the people that were advising Trump and advising you and informing you on what was going on, you said, came in and said, don't don't debate this because it will empower Iran. 0.94
00:06:38.960 And I agree with them. However, I also agree with you that that's your job. You have to do that. We're not a dictatorship. We have to have that debate.
00:06:50.320 However, in this particular time period, do you really think, Mike, we could get honest debate on the floor?
00:06:58.720 I mean, I'm not saying we stop debate, but I just don't think that there's there's honest debate now.
00:07:05.320 Anything that Donald Trump does. Look, we could and we should.
00:07:09.960 And under the War Powers Act, we can and we must have that debate.
00:07:14.200 The Constitution requires us to have it. And if we get ever get to the point where we can get mired into a global conflict or a war of any kind and Congress says, oh, we can't possibly handle that.
00:07:25.540 And we've got a major problem with Congress. I agree.
00:07:28.060 But look, we do have procedural mechanisms through the War Powers Act to advance debate on this issue.
00:07:33.260 There are some people who are fond of saying, well, the War Powers Act is unconstitutional.
00:07:36.940 Look, the War Powers Act doesn't fundamentally change the balance of power between the executive branch and the legislative branch.
00:07:42.780 All it does is provide a schedule, a timeline by which members of Congress can advance certain arguments for an up or down vote on signaling our approval or lack thereof of a particular military action.
00:07:55.540 That's exactly what the Constitution expects of us. And we should do it.
00:07:58.320 The problem is people are hearing you today and we're living in such a black and white world.
00:08:05.740 You were saying this under Obama and you were saying this privately about the War Powers Act under Bush.
00:08:15.940 This is something that is not about Donald Trump.
00:08:19.860 You were leading the fight on Yemen. We're in Yemen. What are we doing in Yemen? Fighting a war.
00:08:28.820 Barack Obama got us involved in Yemen through executive action without bothering to go to Congress.
00:08:33.640 That has continued for several years, notwithstanding the fact that it was never declared by Congress, notwithstanding the fact that it's unconstitutional to do it that way,
00:08:41.160 notwithstanding the fact that the American people have no national security interest.
00:08:46.120 They are not made safer by our involvement as a co-belligerent in the Saudi-led coalition effort against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
00:08:56.480 And so that's what I'm saying here is that I was consistent in previous administrations on this.
00:09:02.020 I'm being consistent under President Trump.
00:09:04.360 And President Trump himself, I believe, agrees with us.
00:09:08.060 That is, that the president himself shouldn't be free to get us involved in a war.
00:09:13.000 The power belongs to the people's branch in Congress.
00:09:15.600 He is so anti-war.
00:09:18.660 He's barely a conservative or a Republican on that front.
00:09:25.000 When you look at—
00:09:25.600 Important distinction there, by the way, Glenn, because one is anti-war because one is a conservative.
00:09:30.820 Being anti-war means one is a conservative.
00:09:35.080 It doesn't undermine it.
00:09:36.360 Unfortunately, the Republican Party has at times deviated from that standard and has drifted more toward the direction of Woodrow Wilson.
00:09:44.140 Show me a war so that I can get involved in it so that I can build government.
00:09:47.660 That's wrong.
00:09:49.180 So, Mike, where is this headed?
00:09:54.280 The House votes today on restraining the president from doing things, and I believe that that is mainly political in the House.
00:10:07.360 So, you said that you wanted to know which way to vote, and you were looking at yesterday, and the people who came over to brief you were the worst that you've ever seen.
00:10:19.300 And were they saying that you had to vote with them, or just not discuss it, or what was it that they said?
00:10:28.000 And what are you planning on doing?
00:10:31.620 Glenn, the most important and the most troubling thing that they said was that they refused to commit to any set of circumstances in which they would be required to come back and seek authorization from Congress before undertaking additional acts against Iran.
00:10:47.720 They wanted to hold open the possibility that almost anything, even right down to taking down the Supreme Leader, might be authorized either under their inherent authority under Article II or under the 2002 authorization for the use of military force or otherwise, and that they might not necessarily have to come back to Congress.
00:11:07.320 I think that's inexcusable.
00:11:08.580 And there was a suggestion in there also that we shouldn't be debating it, that we shouldn't have this discussion, because that might embolden Iran, and it might make us look weak.
00:11:19.500 Look, this is the whole reason the Founding Fathers put this thing in Article I, Section 8, the whole reason they put it in Congress.
00:11:26.020 They didn't want to have the executive capable of getting us into a war.
00:11:30.560 President Trump doesn't disagree with that.
00:11:32.480 In fact, I believe he agrees with the Founding Fathers' decision to do that, and that's why I think he was ill-served yesterday by those briefing the Senate.
00:11:40.560 So, Mike, I really do agree with you.
00:11:43.860 I just want to play devil's advocate here one more time.
00:11:47.340 The Founders, when they did this, could not be heard in the capitals of our enemies live, and also did not have a world that was controlled by a State Department and manipulated in the media as it is today.
00:12:12.380 You do see the point that, and I'm not saying we don't debate, but you do understand the point that the debate, especially if it becomes political, does send the message that we are not all on the same page.
00:12:30.900 It does, and that is precisely the point of the war power being put in Article I, Section 8, and being a power of Congress.
00:12:38.340 It's a feature, not a bug, to require debate and careful deliberation in the public eye before going to war.
00:12:45.860 The Founding Fathers never wanted or intended it to be easy to get involved in a war.
00:12:50.140 It's part of how we stay out of war.
00:12:52.380 There are, moreover, more than adequate means of dealing with the modern realities that you described without supporting the Constitution.
00:12:59.260 The president has inherent power to repel an actual or imminent attack on the United States.
00:13:04.680 The president also has certain power to order special operations teams to go in outside the War Powers Act process and strike in a more clandestine fashion.
00:13:16.500 Neither of those is impaired by this kind of debate and discussion about whether we should go into war.
00:13:22.760 We haven't had a war declaration since 1942.
00:13:28.200 That's right.
00:13:29.200 It's a problem.
00:13:29.760 It is a problem, and it shows this gradual decline over the last 80 years away from the constitutional framework and in a direction that allows for the consolidation of power.
00:13:41.900 I've been against that in previous administrations.
00:13:44.680 I'm against that in this administration, which is headed by a president who agrees with me.
00:13:48.320 Senator Mike Lee, thank you so much.
00:13:51.580 I appreciate it.
00:13:52.980 And I commend you for your bravery of standing up and being consistent no matter where the arrows come from.
00:14:01.040 Keep up the good work, Mike.
00:14:04.780 The best of the Glenn Beck Program.
00:14:06.600 Hey, it's Glenn, and you're listening to the Glenn Beck Program.
00:14:16.160 If you like what you're hearing on this show, make sure you check out Pat Gray Unleashed.
00:14:20.740 It's available wherever you download your favorite podcasts.
00:14:24.640 Hello, Stu.
00:14:25.960 Mr. Beck, how are you?
00:14:26.760 Well, I'm a little upset about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.
00:14:32.120 I don't know what to do.
00:14:33.580 You're oddly interested in that story.
00:14:35.260 I am, because of tradition, because of history.
00:14:37.740 I think history is about to change.
00:14:39.660 I think when the queen dies, I think the royal family is probably over.
00:14:45.800 And that might be a good thing, but I just, you know, I'm a conservative.
00:14:51.660 I like to conserve the best parts of things and get rid of the—
00:14:56.500 There's not any argument for me, at least, to conserve the monarchy.
00:15:01.660 Like, let it go away forever.
00:15:03.740 Yeah, I mean, because it's not my country, I don't care about what they spend.
00:15:08.580 You know what I mean?
00:15:09.220 No.
00:15:09.380 I'm like, oh, well, you're spending, wow, $3 million for that wedding.
00:15:13.460 Oh, and $3 million to remodel their house.
00:15:17.900 Oh, wow.
00:15:18.760 Okay.
00:15:19.140 I mean, if I was over there, I'd be absolutely against this monarchy.
00:15:24.540 Yeah, I would want the whole thing gone, though.
00:15:26.440 But their actions, I don't know how—like, to me, it's just a—well, we have a giant sinkhole of money
00:15:32.380 that we're going to throw—we're going to throw a bunch of money into a pit every year
00:15:35.780 so we can say we have a queen, right?
00:15:37.620 Like, that's essentially the entire part of this.
00:15:40.100 Like, none of—it doesn't mean anything anymore.
00:15:42.920 And I come at this as a person who watched every single episode of Suits.
00:15:48.160 I love Suits.
00:15:49.260 It's like my favorite show.
00:15:50.620 And Meghan Markle was on Suits. 1.00
00:15:52.220 And I still don't really care about what she's doing right now.
00:15:55.980 Well, okay.
00:15:57.240 I mean, that's—I agree with that.
00:15:58.960 That's a high bar.
00:15:59.900 That's a high bar.
00:16:01.120 It's hard to pass.
00:16:02.900 I've watched every episode of The Crown.
00:16:05.600 Ah, see.
00:16:06.760 This is what happened.
00:16:07.600 Yeah, this is what happened.
00:16:08.420 I actually like Elizabeth a lot.
00:16:10.520 I hate the rest of the family.
00:16:11.760 But I like Queen Elizabeth a lot.
00:16:13.920 I think she's an amazing woman who's done an amazing thing.
00:16:18.560 I mean, think of this.
00:16:19.640 She is, A, the longest-running monarch in all of English history.
00:16:24.980 And she has weathered this—I mean, when she grew up, people in England,
00:16:30.140 and the upper class were still dressing for dinner, you know?
00:16:34.580 Now everybody's going to McDonald's in the upper class, you know?
00:16:38.020 And she's weathered this storm and hasn't been chased out on a rail
00:16:42.500 or people screaming for their heads or a bloody revolution.
00:16:46.240 She's remarkable on what she's done.
00:16:48.980 And maybe the time for monarchies are over, and I think so.
00:16:52.380 I like it as a tourist.
00:16:54.400 Right.
00:16:55.060 You know what I mean?
00:16:55.560 I mean, I like it just to—
00:16:57.120 We like it like we—hey, I want to make the guard laugh at Buckingham Palace.
00:17:01.720 That's the level of interest that we have.
00:17:03.660 Exactly right.
00:17:04.660 I mean, I just—
00:17:05.620 What happens if those Buckingham Palace go away,
00:17:08.740 and then we can't make faces at the guard?
00:17:12.200 What happens when she dies?
00:17:13.460 I'm pretty sure it turns into a mall, and they throw a Cinnabon inside,
00:17:16.180 which improves almost any building.
00:17:17.880 Yeah, right.
00:17:18.140 But the problem is, is I just don't—when you see—I'm really torn on this,
00:17:26.300 because you've got Prince Charles, who looks like he's going to be actually getting the crown,
00:17:31.160 which is crazy.
00:17:33.820 Camilla.
00:17:34.740 Nobody likes the two of them.
00:17:36.460 Then you have Andrew with Epstein.
00:17:39.240 I mean, there's nobody likable.
00:17:41.320 I feel like Andrew, he couldn't even get a birthday party put through.
00:17:44.400 Right.
00:17:44.880 I don't think he's getting it.
00:17:45.820 So then you have, I don't know, the older one who's not Harry.
00:17:51.580 What's his name?
00:17:52.160 You mean physically, or you mean name-wise?
00:17:53.760 Name-wise.
00:17:54.580 And maybe physically, too.
00:17:55.720 I don't know.
00:17:56.160 But he's not Harry.
00:17:57.260 The hairless one.
00:17:57.860 Yeah, the hairless one is—he's after Charles.
00:18:02.680 Well, Markle has broken up their relationship.
00:18:05.900 I mean, the two brothers of Princess Diana, you know, are the two sons.
00:18:11.000 They're broken up.
00:18:11.980 Megan Markle's just finishing the job we started back in 1776. 0.85
00:18:14.980 1776, all right?
00:18:16.200 We're going to break that whole crown up.
00:18:17.900 She really is.
00:18:17.960 She's almost like an American colonial coming in and breaking the whole thing up. 0.98
00:18:23.240 Get ready.
00:18:23.840 You let it happen, Great Britain.
00:18:25.900 Yeah.
00:18:26.200 And I feel sorry for Harry because nobody's noticing that what he's seeing is that his wife is becoming his mother.
00:18:32.840 This is the best of the Glenn Beck Program.
00:18:38.240 Hey, it's Glenn.
00:18:50.340 And if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.
00:18:54.520 His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.
00:18:58.580 Hi, it's Glenn.
00:18:59.380 If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do us a favor and rate us on iTunes?
00:19:03.680 If you're not a subscriber, become one today and listen on your own time.
00:19:08.100 You can subscribe on iTunes.
00:19:09.660 Thanks.
00:19:10.400 I love this.
00:19:11.140 Democratic insiders are now telling the frontrunners, hey, can you guys stop looking like you're Iran's lawyers?
00:19:17.300 They said they want to avoid any sense that they are looking like they are in favor of Iran.
00:19:27.480 Horses out of that barn.
00:19:29.420 And they also need to explain what they would do differently.
00:19:32.520 It can't simply be just rejoin the Iran deal.
00:19:36.000 It can't be come home, America.
00:19:38.620 Come home, America wasn't a great theme for George McGovern in 72, and it's not likely to work any better in 2020.
00:19:44.860 I think they're facing another George McGovern kind of loss.
00:19:49.240 I really do.
00:19:51.240 I just don't.
00:19:52.760 At this point, everything could change.
00:19:55.480 But at this point, I can't imagine Americans saying, yeah, yeah, we got to go with these people and the socialist and radical ideas that they have.
00:20:07.100 Because I don't think America lives there.
00:20:09.060 Yeah, maybe.
00:20:11.220 I mean, it seems like the McGovern style victories have only occurred with presidents with incredibly high popularity ratings.
00:20:20.880 I mean, you know, Nixon's approval ratings were incredibly high before Watergate.
00:20:25.720 Reagan was coming into the real meat of the success of his administration the morning for America against Dukakis.
00:20:33.460 You have that sort of background, and that seems to be sort of the pattern for that.
00:20:38.680 Trump has had a lot of success with the economy.
00:20:42.020 This most recent incident with Iran has, I think, worked out well. 0.99
00:20:46.720 The ISIS thing, there's been a lot of success stories. 0.99
00:20:49.380 But still, his approval rating is 41%, 42%.
00:20:52.320 And polling kind of shows a very close race.
00:20:56.380 Sometimes he's behind.
00:20:57.340 Every once in a while, he's ahead.
00:20:58.420 But it's a pretty tight race, very polarized public, almost nothing that's happened.
00:21:04.040 All these big stories has moved his approval rating more than two or three points his entire administration.
00:21:09.360 He's had the most consistent approval ratings of any president in a really long time.
00:21:14.680 And you think of the way that the coverage has been against him.
00:21:17.260 It's amazing they haven't been able to knock that down.
00:21:20.080 But that doesn't necessarily, at least the science right now, I don't think points towards a massive victory like that.
00:21:27.000 I don't even know if that's possible today.
00:21:28.800 I think we almost are too polarized for it even to occur.
00:21:32.260 Maybe.
00:21:33.020 Or with anybody.
00:21:33.620 Maybe.
00:21:34.460 But I just sense Democrats are tired of this, too.
00:21:41.320 This is the best of the Glenn Beck Program.
00:21:43.420 Ian Bremmer is with us now.
00:22:04.480 He's the president and founder of the Eurasia Group, leading global political risk research and consulting firm.
00:22:10.020 The Economist says he's a rising guru in the field of political risk, and we're glad to have him here.
00:22:17.800 And, Ian, I have to tell you, I'm a fan of Mike Lee.
00:22:21.540 And Mike Lee was against the president when he was running, and then he was for him after he did a few things.
00:22:29.540 Yesterday, he came out and said it was a horrible briefing, and no president should have just war powers unlimited.
00:22:38.320 And he's being branded today as anti-Trump.
00:22:42.140 No, it's a thinking human being.
00:22:44.600 I can be for some things and against other things.
00:22:47.440 And I appreciate that about you coming out yesterday and saying, I don't – I'm not a Trump supporter, but good job on this Iran thing.
00:22:58.300 Thank you.
00:22:59.720 You'd think that that would be a fairly sensible position to be able to take.
00:23:03.860 But as you know and as you just said, it's becoming more challenging.
00:23:08.860 I was heartened that actually the interview that I did on CNN that was sort of as all this was coming down the pike on Monday morning was then picked up and promoted and talked about on Fox News. 0.99
00:23:22.320 And it's just so rare that that actually happens in a sensible way because there's just so much of two completely separate countries in two completely separate bubbles in digesting different information and news and deciding that they have a team.
00:23:37.340 And if you're not on the team, it doesn't really matter whether you do something that's smart or good.
00:23:41.960 You know, I mean, like, would I have supported Obama if he had had the same – if he had killed Soleimani and the Iranians had responded with nothing and let's please talk? 0.68
00:23:53.520 Of course I would have.
00:23:54.540 It had nothing to do with who the president is.
00:23:56.400 Right, right.
00:23:57.540 Good for you.
00:23:58.240 It is shocking that I have to thank you for that.
00:24:00.440 But let me point out that you're a thinking human being still, and those are rare.
00:24:05.440 So looking at the report that was released on Monday from your group, you're looking at the top risks for 2020.
00:24:15.000 Do you put Iran in the top risk at all?
00:24:19.460 We put it – we had a broad risk about what we call Shia crescendo of challenges to stability in both Syria, Iraq, and Iran as risk number eight towards the bottom of the list. 1.00
00:24:36.320 But Iran itself was considered a red herring, that actually it was going to be talked up a lot.
00:24:43.080 People were going to say we're going to war, and we didn't buy any of it.
00:24:46.260 And we got a lot of pushback.
00:24:47.640 I changed my New Year's resolution as a consequence to just trying to convince people that World War III is not imminent. 0.83
00:24:56.400 And, you know, here we are.
00:24:58.480 It was crazy.
00:25:00.120 I mean, look, there's no question Iran is still a very serious adversary of the United States in the region.
00:25:07.540 That's not – that didn't change overnight.
00:25:10.620 But we have now established a real deterrent.
00:25:13.840 They have now backed down, and there is a window of opportunity for negotiations.
00:25:18.280 I mean, so much so that the likelihood of negotiations being pursued between the U.S. and Iran directly this year, in my view, are greater than a resumption of military conflict directly between the two sides.
00:25:30.980 And I think that's quite something to say.
00:25:32.360 So, you say the number one risk for 2020 in the U.S. is who governs the U.S.
00:25:38.940 Quoting.
00:25:40.060 In 2020, U.S. institutions will be tested as never before, and November election will produce a result many will see as illegitimate.
00:25:47.380 If Trump wins amid credible charges of irregularities, the result will be contested.
00:25:52.800 If he loses, particularly if the vote is close, it will be the same.
00:25:56.220 Either scenario would create months of lawsuits in a political vacuum, but unlike the contested Bush-Gore 2000 election, the loser is unlikely to accept a court-decided outcome as legitimate.
00:26:10.820 That's frightening.
00:26:13.380 It's not the end of democracy.
00:26:15.780 It's not like the United States is about to become Hungary or Turkey.
00:26:19.840 It's not like our institutions are going to break.
00:26:21.820 But I do think that we're going to – the equivalent is Brexit, right, and not the Brexit reality that's coming at the end of January, but rather what happened after they voted, which is that the people that lost said, no, we want another vote.
00:26:38.380 This wasn't acceptable.
00:26:39.560 You didn't tell us what this was all about.
00:26:40.980 This was illegitimate.
00:26:41.720 And so for three years, you had the Brits tearing each other up at the exception, at the expense of getting any legislation done, of actually governing, of actually leading.
00:26:52.540 And I fear that we're entering a period like that in the United States.
00:26:57.360 Again, the U.K. institutions are still there.
00:26:59.960 The royals took a beating over the last few days.
00:27:02.280 But leaving that aside, the institutions are still there.
00:27:05.140 They're still a democracy.
00:27:06.280 They still function.
00:27:07.020 But, my God, they showed themselves being completely incapable of governing for a period of time.
00:27:12.040 And I think that coming out of the 2020 elections, we're likely to have that kind of a broken election process.
00:27:18.020 But that wasn't – Brexit wasn't broken because there was a big scandal of possible rigging of an election one way or another.
00:27:28.260 What they were saying was, well, we're not going to – we're just not going to do that because that's just not the right thing to do.
00:27:36.040 They weren't listening to the people.
00:27:39.140 And that was the real problem in Brexit.
00:27:41.960 If there is a scandal that goes along with this in one way or another, that's different than the Brexit thing, isn't it?
00:27:51.640 Yes, yes.
00:27:52.400 Certainly how we get there is completely different.
00:27:54.260 I was just talking about what it would feel like in the United States.
00:27:56.820 So we weren't talking about revolution.
00:27:58.280 No, how we get there in the United States is we have an impeachment.
00:28:03.480 The president has been impeached.
00:28:05.600 He will be acquitted.
00:28:07.560 And he will be acquitted despite having, in my view, having committed crimes, abusing power, to swing the election in his favor.
00:28:16.960 So impeachment will be broken as a restraint on the president as he seeks re-election this year.
00:28:26.240 So, Ian, let me ask you this.
00:28:28.360 We disagree on the crime thing.
00:28:32.440 I think this is a – I think this – there are crimes that were committed, but not necessarily by the president.
00:28:39.360 But if he did commit them, I want to know them, I want to hear all of the evidence, I want it fair, and I want it out in the open.
00:28:47.200 And if he did, he's out.
00:28:49.140 Or if anybody else did, do you think that we live in a world that Washington will give us a fair trial and call everyone to the witness stand?
00:29:03.220 Oh, no.
00:29:05.200 No, no, no, of course not.
00:29:06.120 Because, I mean, again, you know, the Democrats, this is a party line.
00:29:09.560 Right.
00:29:09.960 The vote was a party line vote.
00:29:11.820 And in the Senate, the same thing is going to happen with the Republicans.
00:29:15.160 I mean, so there's no possibility that impeachment could proceed in the way that our founding fathers had intended it to.
00:29:22.140 But doesn't that –
00:29:22.940 Impeachment is clearly broken as a process.
00:29:24.340 Right.
00:29:24.560 And doesn't this – this breakdown, I think, is happening in Washington, I'm not sure that it is happening as much as it – in the middle of America and the non-political America.
00:29:39.340 I'm not sure that it's happening as strong as it is on TV and in Washington.
00:29:44.360 I think both Democrats and Republicans see this entire thing as this – but neither side is being right here.
00:29:52.480 Again, I think that the sclerotic partisanship, the capture of our political process by big money and special interests on both sides has led to an awful lot of angry people, a lot of Americans that feel that the system is broken, that it's disenfranchised, that it's rigged.
00:30:12.360 And, you know, that is about Washington.
00:30:14.640 It is about the political system.
00:30:16.320 But, you know, there was a story last year that one piece of data that, I mean, I think articulated this for me that had nothing to do with Washington.
00:30:24.300 But, my God, it feels the same way for everyone, which is, you know, around this varsity blues scandal with all the parents, the wealthy parents buying their way into universities.
00:30:33.000 So, it turned out that last year in Greenwich, Connecticut, 50% of the high schoolers taking the SAT, 50% of them, had notes from psychologists allowing them to take the test unmonitored over two days as opposed to four hours.
00:30:52.780 Oh, my gosh.
00:30:54.280 And, I mean, so you talk about the average American, right?
00:30:57.280 The average American looks at that and they say, yep, exactly.
00:31:00.940 That's the problem.
00:31:02.500 I knew it.
00:31:03.220 I can't do a damn thing.
00:31:04.600 I mean, I'm powerless.
00:31:05.800 These people are screwing me.
00:31:07.980 And so, is that Washington?
00:31:09.560 Well, Washington is complicit, but it's more than just Washington.
00:31:12.480 We can't say it's just Washington immediately.
00:31:14.040 I agree.
00:31:14.400 That's not right.
00:31:15.020 I agree.
00:31:15.360 That's not fair.
00:31:16.060 Let's talk a little bit about China.
00:31:20.380 What's coming our way with China? 0.99
00:31:22.880 Because China is not Iraq.
00:31:26.560 I mean, we're not going to be able to.
00:31:29.060 We're not going to be able to do anything with China and have them react the same way. 0.97
00:31:34.340 But they seem to really be hurting by these sanctions.
00:31:39.000 What's coming our way?
00:31:40.780 Well, I like the way you put that because, you know, I mean, Trump, his two of his biggest foreign policy wins have been the same basic strategy.
00:31:49.400 They've been what he just did with Iran and then what he did with Mexico when he said, I'm going to destroy your economy.
00:31:55.380 Literally, your head's going to spin if you don't actually tighten up the borders.
00:31:58.680 In both cases, Trump's like this guy at the poker table with a massive stack of chips in front of him.
00:32:04.040 It doesn't really matter if he's holding a 2-9 or a pocket aces.
00:32:07.160 He just put all of his chips in and you're going to fold.
00:32:10.440 Right?
00:32:10.860 Right.
00:32:11.060 But China is not going to fold.
00:32:13.280 Right.
00:32:13.620 China's ability to say no to the United States is actually quite robust.
00:32:17.760 And so we are going to get this deal signed on January 15th, this phase one trade deal.
00:32:22.740 The Chinese are sending Lu He to Washington, D.C., the lead trade negotiator.
00:32:27.460 And it'll get signed and the markets will be pleased and tariffs, some tariffs will be reduced as a consequence.
00:32:33.320 But that's as far as it goes, in my view, Glenn.
00:32:35.660 This year, we're going to have U.S.-China relations deteriorate on a host of fronts.
00:32:41.640 We've got this woman from Huawei that we haven't been talking about for months, but she's about to go through her extradition hearing in Canada in just a couple weeks' time, the week after the phase one deal is signed.
00:32:51.600 That's much more meaningful for the Chinese than the phase one deal if you talk to their leaders.
00:32:55.600 You've got Taiwanese elections this weekend, going to move in a more nationalist direction on the back of their solidarity with the demonstrators in Hong Kong.
00:33:03.740 Hong Kong, the Chinese just appointed a new liaison to manage the region, much more hardline and senior than the one they had previously appointed.
00:33:14.380 That's clearly not moving in any good direction.
00:33:16.600 You've got the Uyghurs, the ethnic minority, Muslim minority, 1.5 million of them in re-education camps and forced labor.
00:33:25.960 Inside China and Congress, bipartisan, believe it or not, one of the few things that they agree on in Congress right now is we need a harder-line policy on China.
00:33:34.540 And Trump signed it, even though he didn't really want to because he thought it might screw up his trade deal.
00:33:39.200 So, I mean, I think on all of these different issues, the U.S.-China relationship, the world's two largest economies in the world, are actually heading towards more confrontation this year.
00:33:47.380 And do you see that becoming a Cold War kind of scenario?
00:33:55.140 Or, I mean, you know, if Hong Kong falls, Taiwan is next.
00:34:00.100 And do we just let that happen?
00:34:02.600 Or is it a Cold War or a Hot War possibility that is on the horizon in the years to come?
00:34:08.920 We're not going to intervene in Hong Kong at all.
00:34:14.060 And I think we're still very far from military confrontation over Taiwan or over the South China Sea, for example, where we all have a lot of military assets and territories contested.
00:34:25.340 But there is a Cold War that's already here when we talk about technology and even the language that Xi Jinping uses, this idea of a long march that they are now on in building AI supremacy by 2030.
00:34:41.980 The Chinese have decided to decouple their technology systems, their algorithms, their big data, their cloud from that of the United States. 0.96
00:34:51.600 And, you know, if you listen to Bill Gates or Steve Pinker or any of the people that are more optimistic about the future of the world, the reason they give you for that optimism fundamentally is globalization.
00:35:00.880 It's because ideas and people and goods and services have moved faster and faster across borders over the last generations, really post-World War II, right?
00:35:11.700 And suddenly we're taking a very significant step in the other direction.
00:35:16.920 For the first time, really, in your and my lifetimes, we're seeing that happen.
00:35:21.660 Where the future of the global economy is being divided into two, a U.S. sphere and a Chinese sphere.
00:35:30.120 And that clearly – that does have elements of real Cold War because in trade, we can fight with the Chinese. 0.68
00:35:36.460 But ultimately, we do want to trade more with them.
00:35:38.380 They want to trade more with us.
00:35:39.560 They want to buy more treasuries.
00:35:41.000 We want their economy to succeed because it's good for us.
00:35:43.020 And when we decouple our tech systems from each other, we want their tech system to fail.
00:35:48.320 It becomes a security-type competition between the two.
00:35:52.240 And so for me, when I think about Cold War, it's when two major powers literally are pushing for the collapse of the other.
00:35:59.780 It's the collapse of the other.
00:36:02.000 And I think that's the definition.
00:36:03.580 I think that's where we now are in technology.
00:36:06.120 We weren't there a year ago.
00:36:07.340 We were heading in that direction, but we're there now.
00:36:09.780 Ian Bremmer, political scientist, author of Us vs. Them, the Failure of Globalism and his Top Risks for 2020.
00:36:17.920 It's a fascinating read.
00:36:19.920 You can find it at ianbremmer.com.
00:36:23.200 You can also follow him at Ian Bremmer.
00:36:25.780 Thank you so much, Ian.
00:36:26.820 Appreciate it.
00:36:28.080 Always good to be with you, Glenn.
00:36:29.000 Happy New Year.
00:36:29.280 You bet.
00:36:29.520 Bye-bye.
00:36:34.720 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program.
00:36:39.780 Even if you are one of those people that, you know, work on roofs in Phoenix in the summer,
00:36:53.540 or you are a construction worker digging ditches for a living,
00:36:58.360 I think you will agree with me that being an American political scientist
00:37:05.880 and a professor that believes in God and the founding of our nation,
00:37:11.820 and you're centered in a university in Oregon,
00:37:16.340 I might at times think he has a worse job than the guy on the roof in the middle of summer in Phoenix.
00:37:25.080 His name is Mark David Hall.
00:37:27.060 He's a political science professor at George Fox University.
00:37:30.040 His research and writing focuses on American political theory and the relationship between religion and politics.
00:37:36.820 He is not afraid to say.
00:37:39.520 In fact, he's published a new book called Did America Have a Christian Founding?
00:37:45.560 The answer to that is?
00:37:48.120 Absolutely.
00:37:48.700 Yes, it did.
00:37:49.400 Yeah.
00:37:51.320 How did this get so distorted over the years?
00:37:54.640 When did this really start to—people now believe that our founders were deists,
00:38:01.040 but a deist believes that there is a God, but he's like a watchmaker,
00:38:05.260 and he built the watch, set the watch, and now he doesn't care.
00:38:09.040 He has nothing to do with it anymore.
00:38:10.780 But our founders, all of their—Washington, he writes about miracles.
00:38:16.420 He writes about divine providence.
00:38:19.540 How is that misunderstood?
00:38:21.820 You know, that's a great question.
00:38:23.780 I think these debates began in the 19th century, but really in the 20th century,
00:38:27.260 when we started getting a bunch of secular, progressive academics,
00:38:30.600 they just wrote book after book saying most of the founders were deists.
00:38:34.320 They created a godless constitution.
00:38:36.700 They wanted a wall of separation between church and state,
00:38:39.560 and they just kept repeating these same lines so many times that people have come to believe it's true.
00:38:44.200 So where was our founding?
00:38:45.580 Was our founding in Jamestown, or was our founding in Plymouth?
00:38:50.580 That's a great question.
00:38:52.500 So I begin by looking at three different possibilities.
00:38:55.420 One is the early colonial settlements, and if that's what we mean by founding,
00:38:58.960 then I think indisputably we had a Christian founding.
00:39:01.580 The Puritans came here, of course, to create Christian commonwealths.
00:39:04.640 But even if you look to the south, the Virginia laws of 1610 say everyone must go to church,
00:39:10.840 blasphemy will be punished by death, and so forth.
00:39:12.720 So I think all the early colonial settlements were very concerned with the things of God.
00:39:17.420 And when you move up to what we usually think about, the late 18th century,
00:39:20.980 the war for American independence, the creation of our constitutional order,
00:39:24.920 there the case becomes a little more difficult.
00:39:26.720 So most of my book focuses, in fact, on the late 18th century.
00:39:30.180 So where did that come from, and what were we based on?
00:39:33.540 What were they really trying to do?
00:39:35.880 Well, that's a great way of phrasing the question.
00:39:37.720 Sometimes people look at this and they say,
00:39:39.260 okay, what I want to do is argue that all of America's founders were good, godly, pious Christians.
00:39:45.180 I don't take that approach.
00:39:46.600 First of all, we know some of them were heretics.
00:39:48.620 Jefferson and Adams and Franklin departed from the basic tenets of Orthodox Christianity.
00:39:55.060 But then in many cases, we simply do not have the records.
00:39:57.940 We might know that someone was a member of this church,
00:40:00.360 maybe even that he attended church,
00:40:02.160 but that really doesn't tell us much about his heart or about even his orthodoxy.
00:40:06.240 So what I look at instead is the ideas that influenced the American founders.
00:40:10.300 And I argue that they were influenced by Christian ideas
00:40:12.520 or ideas developed in the Christian tradition of political reflection.
00:40:17.480 And they drew from these ideas when they broke from Great Britain,
00:40:20.020 when they created our constitutional order.
00:40:22.340 And so therefore, America had a Christian founding.
00:40:24.860 Do you believe in the covenant?
00:40:25.980 Do you believe that there was a covenant made in Plymouth
00:40:29.040 and one with Washington and Lincoln?
00:40:32.100 Oh, I don't imagine how you could look at America's founding
00:40:34.800 from the early colonial settlements to the late 18th century
00:40:38.020 without understanding the importance of covenants.
00:40:40.320 These folks all believed in the importance of covenant.
00:40:43.260 A covenant, of course, is an agreement between two parties with God as a witness.
00:40:47.940 And these folks almost solely thought in terms of covenants
00:40:50.860 from the Mayflower Compact on really to the late 18th century
00:40:55.080 and then into the present day.
00:40:57.160 And what does that mean?
00:40:58.200 What makes that different than a contract?
00:40:59.800 I think a contract, of course, still should be binding.
00:41:03.960 But the way we treat contracts, if you're a football player with a good season,
00:41:07.840 you might throw your contract out the window and renegotiate.
00:41:10.520 The idea of a covenant, a marriage is a great example, right?
00:41:13.420 Right.
00:41:13.740 When you join, when a man joins with a woman, 0.98
00:41:16.200 you make a promise before the eyes of God.
00:41:18.560 And really this thing should not be ripped asunder,
00:41:21.620 or at least it's a very, very serious thing
00:41:23.660 before one would even contemplate breaking that covenant.
00:41:26.500 And so when our pilgrims came, I'm fascinated.
00:41:31.700 I've just found an old map that was made by the Librarian of Congress
00:41:39.520 in, I think, 1870 or 1865.
00:41:44.400 And it was the roots of Jamestown that brought slavery 0.88
00:41:51.880 and brought corruption and division.
00:41:59.380 And the pilgrims' founding and that tree gave us, you know,
00:42:04.960 humility and honor, et cetera, et cetera.
00:42:08.120 And it's my understanding that they were arguing back and forth
00:42:12.860 before the Civil War, which one are we?
00:42:16.440 And I think we're having that same argument now, aren't we?
00:42:19.220 I think there's a lot of truth in that.
00:42:20.940 Although I do argue and push back a little bit
00:42:23.400 that I think the Southern colonies were more concerned
00:42:26.060 with the things of God than oftentimes 19th and 20th century historians
00:42:29.680 give them credit for being.
00:42:31.480 But indisputably, New England was the center of American intellectual life.
00:42:35.580 Our best colleges were there.
00:42:37.440 Many of our best leaders came from there.
00:42:39.760 And I think you cannot understand America,
00:42:42.220 as Alexis de Tocqueville found when he came to America in the 1930s,
00:42:45.700 without understanding the Puritan influence,
00:42:48.160 or more broadly the Reformed or the Calvinist influence.
00:42:51.340 And the arguments that even we have today were happening back then
00:42:55.520 just on different topics.
00:42:56.720 Theirs was slavery.
00:42:58.280 But our founders get such a bad rap.
00:43:02.020 Many of our founders were religiously bound to end slavery.
00:43:10.080 That's exactly right.
00:43:11.420 In the initial draft of this book, I addressed that briefly in the conclusion.
00:43:16.360 And my publisher and I agreed to pull that section out,
00:43:19.080 and I'll have a sequel to this book coming out,
00:43:20.780 that will have a whole chapter on the founders and slavery.
00:43:23.600 And I think it's, you know, we need to be critical of our own tradition.
00:43:26.360 Sure.
00:43:26.560 And we can be critical of slavery.
00:43:28.440 It was a horrible, unjust institution.
00:43:31.280 Well, you're exactly right.
00:43:32.120 Many founders were coming to recognize that it's incompatible
00:43:34.860 with the basic Christian idea that all humans are created in the imago dei,
00:43:39.020 the image of God.
00:43:40.040 Many were already working for its abolition.
00:43:42.140 Many states voluntarily abolished slavery between 1776 and 1804.
00:43:46.840 The direction was definitely heading towards abolitionism.
00:43:50.660 Unfortunately, Eli Whitney invented the cottingen
00:43:53.140 and gave slavery a lease on life.
00:43:55.240 So, if the founders could come back,
00:43:59.620 I've always believed that the founders would come back
00:44:02.140 and they would say,
00:44:03.220 huh, so how long did the Constitution last?
00:44:07.240 Because I don't think they'd recognize us now at all.
00:44:11.880 Do you think that they would be,
00:44:14.520 how would they react today?
00:44:17.220 They would be absolutely flabbergasted.
00:44:19.080 I think since the 1930s, of course,
00:44:21.780 the Congress and the Supreme Court have a lot of federalism.
00:44:24.660 They're going to be tossed out the window.
00:44:26.580 The national government can pretty much do anything it wants.
00:44:29.620 I think literally all the founders,
00:44:31.500 with the possible exception of Alexander Hamilton and James Wilson,
00:44:34.760 would say, this is insane.
00:44:36.260 You are giving far too much power to the national government.
00:44:38.860 We must rein things in.
00:44:40.620 Things like education and the punishing of crimes
00:44:43.160 and the promotion of virtue.
00:44:44.720 These things belong at the state level or the local level.
00:44:47.140 The national government should have nothing to do with these things.
00:44:50.580 Do you see us turning around?
00:44:51.840 As a historian, what's it going to take to turn us around?
00:44:55.680 You know, I tend to be an optimist,
00:44:57.360 and I'm not very happy with the direction we've been heading since the 1930s,
00:45:00.680 but I'm hopeful.
00:45:01.700 And one of the things I do in this book is I say that we need to look at the basic principles
00:45:06.460 that motivated America's founders,
00:45:08.600 and this should encourage us to return, maybe slowly.
00:45:11.240 I'm a Burkian conservative, so I would say we don't want to overturn things tomorrow,
00:45:15.040 but slowly and surely we should start turning things back to the states.
00:45:19.040 And then, of course, even more importantly,
00:45:21.000 Americans should turn back to God. 1.00
00:45:23.120 And I think that's where our real hope lies.
00:45:25.020 Do we make it without that?
00:45:26.560 Could we become Europe and still be America? 0.88
00:45:30.020 You know, that is an excellent question.
00:45:32.240 I think America's constitutional order does assume, for instance,
00:45:35.420 that humans are sinful, and so we have important checks on power,
00:45:38.760 including power and checks that remain today.
00:45:41.240 And so it's an open question in my mind, but for sure,
00:45:45.520 America's founders embraced the syllogism that if you're to have a Republican form of government,
00:45:50.560 you must have a moral people, and if you're to have a moral people,
00:45:53.880 you must have a religious people, and by religion, they all meant Christianity.
00:45:57.220 There's no question about that historically.
00:45:59.480 Mark David Hall, good luck surviving Oregon.
00:46:04.580 Mark David Hall, the author of a new book that everyone should have in their library,
00:46:09.480 Did America Have a Christian Founding?
00:46:12.300 It is answered.
00:46:13.940 It's a legitimate question and answered by Mark David Hall.
00:46:17.900 You can find him at his website at markdavidhall.org.
00:46:21.360 Again, the name of the book, Did America Have a Christian Founding?
00:46:24.840 Thank you so much, sir.
00:46:25.760 Thank you.
00:46:26.200 Appreciate it.
00:46:26.760 The Blaze Radio Network.
00:46:31.440 On Demand.