On this episode of The Glenn Beck Program, host Glenn Beck is joined by Dom Theodore, the Program Director of the program that saved his career 20 years ago. They talk about what it means to stand up to the political establishment, and the lessons that can be learned from it.
00:46:08.880They do a lot more online than you know of, as you're doing a lot more than just shopping.
00:46:16.000Your data can be susceptible through all of the stuff that you do while you're online, especially when you're shopping.
00:46:23.780Everything you have could be gone in a moment.
00:46:26.120Now, nobody can protect all identity theft or monitor all transactions and all businesses.
00:46:30.820But you can help protect what's yours with LifeLock by Norton.
00:46:34.340Join now. Save up to 25% off your first year with the promo code BECK.
00:46:39.020Call 1-800-LIFELOCK, 1-800-LIFELOCK, or head to lifelock.com and use the promo code BECK.
00:46:45.160It's lifelock.com, promo code BECK, or 1-800-LIFELOCK.
00:46:49.320All right, let me give you a couple of stories here real quick, and then I'm going to have somebody explain some of these things.
00:46:59.380First of all, President Biden signed an executive order last Monday, and it was, you know, we're just trying to strike a balance between innovation and regulation of artificial intelligence.
00:47:11.860What it does is it gives the left a free pass into capturing the most important technological advancement, possibly of all mankind.
00:47:24.760They're using the Defense Production Act, and it gives the government oversight and regulatory scrutiny of the industry by creating new reporting requirements, interagency coordination in handling AI.
00:47:42.120It calls for the development of new technological standards and tools for the evaluation of AI systems.
00:47:48.500It also calls for AI companies to report on training, security, testing, dual AI models, blah, blah, blah.
00:47:57.120It also requires AI developers to provide safety test results and to make sure that we're baking in DEI.
00:48:07.760By the way, it also is in the regulations, it allows the federal government to look through every line of code in software.
00:48:21.040I don't know, that sounds like a problem.
00:48:23.780So, controlling AI is the first story.
00:48:27.500The second story is coming from the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, looking for digital equity.
00:48:37.760This is a power grab that is unlike any power grab ever in the FCC history.
00:48:46.480This will grab all of the Internet and give the United States government and this administration with the FCC complete control of every aspect of the Internet.
00:49:02.100We have Federal Communications Commission Commissioner, Brendan Carr, with us now.
00:49:12.760Thank you. Can you explain what this means?
00:49:16.180Yeah, well, look, first of all, I think you're right to put this in a broader perspective.
00:49:21.200There's a lot of individual actions that are taking place right now in the government that could just look like sort of unconnected, disconnected, isolated pinpricks.
00:49:30.800But right. But to your point, in a switch analogies, there's a far, far broader mosaic that is taking shape.
00:49:36.900And we have to wake up and take a look at it.
00:49:39.600So as you noted, the Biden administration has this A.I. executive order.
00:49:44.260And look, I'm all for sort of putting some, you know, common sense guardrails in place.
00:49:47.660But this thing goes way beyond towards government control.
00:49:51.700And there's lots of other pieces going on.
00:49:53.500As you mentioned, President Biden has called on the FCC here, where I work, to put in place a digital equity plan for the Internet.
00:50:03.100And that plan would have the FCC for the very first time ever assert intrusive new controls and regulation of the Internet.
00:50:15.820Literally every feature of the service, the speed, the latency, the pricing, how long installation times go and where Internet can be built or not built for the very first time.
00:50:28.180I mean, we have never put a regulatory regime like that in place in probably 50 years at the FCC.
00:50:33.740You have to go all the way back to sort of the New Deal era when we were regulating the mobile telephone monopoly, a point in time in which there was virtually no distinction between the private sector and the government.
00:50:45.140And one other piece of this real quick, just two days ago, Jim Jordan put out a new report that showed that the government had been colluding to censor the free speech rights of private citizens.
00:50:56.580And so this is all part of one plan, whether it's jawboning social media, whether it's AI or whether it's this digital equity plan that we're going to vote on at the FCC next week.
00:51:09.200I certainly think it can be used for nefarious purposes, but also it's just it's fundamentally a rejection of what we are as a country.
00:51:14.800It's a rejection of free market capitalism.
00:51:17.040I have my concerns with with big corporations.
00:51:19.300Don't get me wrong, but this is absolutely sort of a progressive approach that really feels like, you know, Bernie Sanders has captured the FCC.
00:51:27.720Well, I mean, I will tell you, if you're building the same kind of system, the last time it was seen was Ma Bell.
00:51:35.760Look what that did to that technology.
00:51:39.360It wasn't until we got out of the phone regulation business that we had answering machines and call waiting and all kinds of wireless communication.
00:52:08.540Look, in a couple of years ago, six years ago, we ended this Obama era experiment with heavy handed regulation of the Internet called Title Two.
00:52:17.560It was branded in the public as net neutrality, because that sounds like a very positive thing who could be against net neutrality.
00:52:23.540But what we saw the last time they tried to do this with heavy handed controls was a decrease in investment in this space.
00:52:29.480And when we repealed Title Two in 2017, if you remember, it was a total sort of apocalyptic prediction.
00:53:52.180Can do I have to jump through extra hoops?
00:53:55.480Do I have to, you know, be, you know, D.E.I. loving or anything else?
00:54:01.580Well, look, you know, this is the this is putting the FCC in charge of entire industries that we never regulated before.
00:54:09.580Before, as you know, from your background, it was sort of broadcasters and it was to some extent ISPs themselves.
00:54:14.900But now we say if you are at all in the chain of this, you know, communications space, you're going to be sort of newly subject to the FCC.
00:54:22.980Whether it reaches as far as you, I don't think so.
00:54:25.740But it also doesn't need to because the broader plan, whether it's, you know, the censorship industrial complex that we're seeing right now or the Title II approach where the FCC is asked in that proceeding whether they should be blocking IP addresses.
00:54:39.160You know, the broader plan is one that certainly, you know, brings you within the realm of the federal government wanting to control.
00:54:46.020And it's, you know, it's good that you got up and running in a very different regime.
00:54:52.760And I think, you know, litigation is one aspect.
00:54:54.520Thankfully, there's a lot of favorable Supreme Court law right now that is reigning in the administrative state.
00:55:00.400And I hope that that, you know, is is something that happens here.
00:55:03.280Because, again, if you step back, people look at, you know, the presidency and the House and the Senate and how often those change hands.
00:55:11.380But the administrative state, the alphabet soup of agencies in Washington, D.C., has been under the control of Democrats for approaching 12 out of the last 16 years.
00:55:20.540A very important period of time for economic growth in this country.
00:55:24.400And so it's a good thing that the Supreme Court is starting to look at some of these power grabs that the agencies are attempting to do.
00:55:31.220So with the FCC involved, let me switch gears over to the use of A.I.
00:55:37.380What is what is the FCC's role with A.I.?
00:55:42.220It shouldn't be much, but this executive order does direct the FCC to play a role.
00:55:49.040Look, I spent a lot of time in Europe, in Brussels, in this job, talking with my colleagues over there.
00:55:54.680And Europe has a very, very different approach when it comes to new technology.
00:55:58.980They hold roundtables, they hold listening sessions, they hold salons, they look at it, they spin it around.
00:56:05.680And on the front end, before they let anybody use it, it's got to be acceptable to the government.
00:56:10.420The U.S. historically has taken a very different approach.
00:56:12.880That's why Silicon Valley developed here.
00:56:15.580That's why the Internet giants, for good or for bad, are based here because of permissionless innovation.
00:56:20.520And what the Biden administration is doing with this A.I. executive order is the exact playbook that I have seen take place in salons all across Brussels for the last 10 or 15 years.
00:56:29.840And it's resulted in innovation really getting squeezed in Europe.
00:56:51.220I mean, look, at the end of the day, you know, all of these constraints are not taking place in China.
00:56:56.420And there's a very unlevel playing field.
00:56:58.800I mean, our Internet providers, our online companies here, social media, are not even allowed to do business in China.
00:57:06.980And so it's a very asymmetrical regime already.
00:57:10.540And so, yeah, we have to be very careful that we don't hold back, you know, positive entrepreneurship from America.
00:57:16.260Are you concerned, and I know this is, you know, a little far afield from what you do, but the AI order, the executive order, calls for regulations that will allow the federal government to look through every line of code in software.
00:57:37.720I know that the government, I don't know who to root for on getting AI first, but I know our government has been looking, trying to develop AI.
00:57:46.560This gives them, this gives them the keys to all AI, doesn't it?
00:57:54.240Yeah, it's really a disturbing overreach.
00:57:57.560Again, this isn't sort of a conversation about regulatory philosophy around the edges, you know, where we're talking about, you know, between the 40s, I can agree, I can disagree.
00:58:07.720What we're seeing is really a pretty hard lurch to the left.
00:58:12.020And it's a view of the administrative state and a view of government that we haven't seen in, you know, decades.
00:58:18.860Have we ever seen, because this, you described this as the old Soviet, I think you were the one that described this as the old Soviet Union.
00:58:27.040You know, the regulatory state really just taking everything on.
00:58:35.320I mean, look, this digital equity plan that Biden has asked us to put in place is predicated on a less than one page provision that was tucked into the 2021 infrastructure law.
00:58:56.240But the FCC, at President Biden's urging, has just read effectively thousands and thousands of pages into that one page law that Congress never passed.
00:59:08.140And, yes, again, it is part of this broader play to empower the administrative state.
01:00:19.640Here's a number that should shock you right now.
01:00:22.440There are over 38,000 U.S. veterans experiencing homelessness right now,
01:00:27.220our heroes who signed up to protect and serve us.
01:00:30.240These people are now living on the streets, sleeping under bridges, lacking basics that you and I enjoy.
01:00:35.660Anyway, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, I was about to say something about all the people that are living in hotels that came across the border.
01:00:43.260They're even kicking some of those veterans out to make room for illegals.
01:00:51.940Well, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation is committed to helping these people who have sacrificed.
01:00:56.840They provide housing assistance and service to vets who meet the program's requirements.
01:02:15.260And I grew up, you know, starting at 13 years old, you know, in radio, having to take the FCC tests and all their regulations and everything else.
01:02:27.060And I'm telling you, if they decide to, they'll cut your legs off so fast and you'll have no recourse.
01:04:09.880They're monitoring Americans in the hundreds of thousands.
01:04:14.380You know, there's a there's a very good chance, very good chance that I'm being monitored and people like me probably do his monitored Ben Shapiro.
01:04:27.580And they have the right to do that because of Section 702.
01:04:33.380They are doing now, according to Mike Lee, he said, FISA court and the director of national intelligence have confirmed that our government conducted warrantless surveillance of millions of Americans, private communications.
01:04:43.820It's imperative Congress enact real reforms to protect our civil liberties, including warrant requirements and statutory penalties for privacy violations in exchange for reauthorizing Section 0 to 702.
01:04:58.560Our bipartisan government surveillance reform act stops illegal government spying and restores the constitutional rights of all Americans.
01:05:06.420I think we should we should look into this, but it ends the back door search loopholes.
01:05:13.820The reverse targeting and the purchases of private data from third party brokers.
01:05:21.580You can read all about it on Glenn Beck dot com or the blaze.
01:05:39.640Life doesn't come at you slowly, does it?
01:05:42.880It's incredibly busy and you don't have the time to be held back from living your life and doing the things that you have to because of pain.
01:05:52.480The pain we suffer, especially on a regular basis, is caused by inflammation in our joints, in our body.
01:06:00.220What's amazing about inflammation is it's the source of almost all of our problems.
01:06:04.640If you've ever had this kind of die hard pain, get rid of it.
01:06:13.280I know you've probably tried everything, but there's a daily supplement out there that helps your body fight that pain.
01:08:05.120And I know we disagree on this, but I voted not to send 14.3 billion dollars to Israel.
01:08:13.060And I voted not to try to sanction Iran.
01:08:18.720As a result of everything that's gone on.
01:08:21.900And most recently, I guess the mortal sin here is I voted not to censure Rashida Tlaib, citing my concerns about the First Amendment and a member's ability, a member of Congress's ability to say what they want, regardless of how hateful and detestable I might think it would be.
01:09:05.720I support their right to defend themselves.
01:09:07.620And I condemn the atrocities and the attacks that Hamas conducted.
01:09:12.080But the first thing that we did in supporting Israel was this resolution, which if it just said we support Israel, it would have been great.
01:09:21.700But I think it tends to expand the conflict when we should be trying to keep the conflict geographically managed.
01:09:29.500And I was worried that it would give President Biden the authority, the imprimatur of Congress, to attack Iran.
01:09:36.220And so I voted against it for that reason.
01:09:50.600So there is buried in this 1,039-page law that passed when the Democrats were in the majority a provision that – and I'm going to read this directly because the Democrats say it's not in there.
01:10:05.560So I had to read them the law to them.
01:10:07.660They obviously didn't read it before they passed it a couple years ago.
01:10:11.300But there's a provision for a kill switch in all new vehicles by 2026.
01:10:17.100And I'm going to read that very quickly.
01:10:19.260It says it will passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired and prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected.
01:10:32.120In other words, they have mandated that there be technology in every new vehicle sold after 2026 that evaluates your driving performance, gives you a scorecard while you're driving, and if you fail, it will disable the vehicle and put you on the side of the road.
01:10:49.500There are so many problems with this, even if you could imagine it would technically work, but it's not going to technically work.
01:10:58.060There will be 1,000 more false positives than there are actual catching of drunk drivers with this technology.
01:11:04.880But let's say you're a mom and you've got kids in the car and you've pulled over twice onto the shoulder to let emergency vehicles go by, and then you've swerved once for a deer, and now you make your final correction, and boom, the car says,
01:11:22.960Okay, we're the judge and the jury, we've adjudicated you're driving, we believe you're impaired, you have 100 yards to get to the side of the road.
01:11:31.120How do you appeal your conviction on the side of the road when it's your car who's convicted you?
01:11:37.080Well, this doesn't seem like you're four drunk drivers.
01:11:40.040I was very excited to hear that take from you.
01:11:43.220But I will tell you that I was at OnStar years ago, and this is before Barack Obama.
01:11:56.060I was doing commercials for General Motors, and I took a tour of their OnStar facility, and it was in the morning.
01:12:02.840And you could see on their just gigantic electronic board all of the cars that had OnStar and were activating it or were having trouble or where they were.
01:12:16.660And I talked to the head of OnStar, and he said, Yeah, we can pretty much disable your car.
01:13:16.700And what this purports to do, this law would be to allow an artificial intelligence to decide whether you have the right to travel or not.
01:13:27.540And that's why I offered an amendment yesterday to defund this.
01:13:31.260In one of the 12 bills that we're voting on, I offered an amendment to defund this rule, this law.
01:13:39.000And, you know, I've been here 11 years.
01:13:41.420I lower my expectations for my colleagues every year, and it's still not low enough because my amendment did not pass.
01:13:48.420There were 19 Republicans who voted to keep the kill switch mandate in law.
01:13:54.760What part of everyday life and the out-of-control, growing, authoritarian state do they not see?
01:14:10.320What part of this do they not understand that, oh, this looks like it could be abused,
01:14:18.060and the reason why I care about this one is because everything else this government has given control over or been given control over, they have abused.
01:14:30.580These 19 Republicans are to the authoritarian left of AOC because even AOC voted for my amendment because she was concerned about civil liberties on this.
01:14:41.240So I don't know how you can be a Republican and be for limited government, be against government mandates, be for allowing people to control their own lives,
01:14:52.200be for private property that you own, not some corporation, not some government,
01:14:57.160and be for the Bill of Rights, the Ninth Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, and still want to have this kill switch mandate in these cars.
01:15:07.460Now, their argument is, oh, we want to catch the drunk drivers.
01:15:11.240The problem is, this technology, the way they've prescribed it, will have far more false positives,
01:15:19.180and it will crush your liberties if this goes into place.
01:15:24.300My only hope here, Glenn, is that this technology they want is so ridiculous that they will put off the mandate once they realize they can't do it.
01:17:43.960Another camera that will be in your car, who has access to that camera and under what authority and do they need a warrant?
01:17:51.980These are questions that haven't been answered, but another congressman who serves on the Transportation Committee,
01:17:59.120his name is Scott Perry, who happens to also be chairman of the Freedom Caucus.
01:18:03.240He and I sent a letter to Secretary Buttigieg.
01:18:07.980They're trying to school me here on how to pronounce that.
01:18:10.400That ask them these questions, because we don't know how they plan to implement this technology, but we can't imagine a good way to implement this technology.
01:18:23.380You don't give this to a government that is asking for a renewal of Section 702 and they violated everything in that.
01:18:32.040That is your sacred honor to uphold those things.
01:18:37.960If that government can't not spy on its own people, we catch them silencing people and working with private organizations and private companies to silence people,
01:18:50.240you're going to give them more power with your car?
01:22:53.900But he's been working on education and books and reading.
01:23:00.800And I think he has some exciting stuff to talk about coming up next.
01:23:04.760You think the leadership of young children, young minds, an important part of our country's future, which at this point, we seem to just be assigning to iPads and AI.
01:23:18.480That seems to be our approach for the next, I don't know, couple decades.
01:23:22.580You know, the phone thing was a great example of this.
01:23:25.180We were like, hey, what happens if we turn over 10, 12 hours a day to a device we carry in our pocket and never look at each other in the eyes again?
01:23:39.300You know, we are, we, it is so amazing because if somebody came down and was looking at society and saying, what do you mean you guys are depressed?
01:23:49.620You're not communicating with each other, blah, blah, blah.
01:23:53.160I mean, have you thought about your iPads and your phones?
01:23:56.300And we'd make all kinds of excuses for them.
01:24:04.900The Amish, I mean, except for the horse and buggy thing and the no electricity and, well, all the things that make our life, phones, you know, they were right.
01:24:13.620Besides that, besides all those things.
01:24:15.560And maybe iPads and television and cable and satellite.
01:24:18.360Let me talk to you a little bit about Hillsdale College right now.
01:24:24.940It is so important that you understand our history and our constitution.
01:24:30.800Hillsdale College, been around for a while.
01:24:33.120Well, 1844, they've been providing top flight education and really trying to give, trying to create the great virtuous and well-educated citizen.
01:24:45.520They produce now more than 40 free, not-for-credit courses that are self-paced so you can start whenever you want.
01:24:53.200This is everything you need to change the way you understand our country, the world, your place in it.
01:24:57.620And it's all in one place, all without any kind of long-term commitment.
01:25:02.800Feel free to learn when and where you want.
01:25:06.140Check out Constitution 101, the meaning and history of the U.S. Constitution.
01:25:10.360You can get it now at hillsdale.edu slash glenn.
01:27:25.480Someday you're not going to be around anymore.
01:27:27.960When that happens, it'll be the job of your kids and your grandkids to carry on the tradition of bearing witness to the history for future generations.
01:27:36.480The question you have to ask, do they know our history?
01:27:41.040The writers of the Tuttle Twins books know that your kids are being exposed to garbage when they step into a history classroom.
01:27:47.780They've set out to change this with their Tuttle Twins history books.
01:27:51.540If you want to teach your kids the true principles of our founding,
01:27:55.300to look up the heroes that built our nation and excited about personal empowerment instead of victimhood,
01:28:01.300you need to get them the Tuttle Twins history books.
01:28:03.640Big sale on the books going on right now, this week only.
01:29:55.360There's a wolf in grandma's clothing, to use the Little Red Riding Hood metaphor,
01:30:00.740and that wolf, we have discovered, is the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books, which is Scholastic.
01:30:07.720They're a billion-dollar company, around for over 100 years.
01:30:10.040They have over 100,000 book fairs across the country, hundreds every single day in public and private schools.
01:30:16.240And the books are increasingly laced with gender-confusing, race-infused, pornographic, sexually explicit material that you can't even advertise on Facebook.
01:30:30.860Look, the conservative Christian conglomerate meta is even saying you can't show that stuff.
01:31:00.640And I don't understand it when these school boards will sit there and say, as parents will angrily read a book that their kids brought home,
01:31:10.480and they'll say, that's not appropriate.
01:31:12.500What do you mean it's not appropriate?
01:32:50.260If you're a parent, you know all of this stuff.
01:32:52.020And the fact that there are federal laws prohibiting the distribution of pornographic and obscene materials for minors because it's harmful to them doesn't go away when you put it into books like this and say that they're educational.
01:33:06.300It doesn't make them less obscene and any less harmful.
01:33:08.560And so we've got to wake up and not just, frankly, yell at the school board because they're heavily invested.
01:33:16.700They haven't read every book in their library and the books are laced.
01:33:19.260It's like, you know, you get Halloween candy that's laced with fentanyl.
01:33:23.920You don't necessarily know that it's there, but Scholastic is lacing their books with obscene material in the middle of the pages with benign looking covers.
01:33:55.580You drive a wedge between you and them and they will go down roads because of their natural curiosity and their impressionable minds with teachers who are pushing this stuff.
01:34:05.200And Scholastic, former CEO, is saying we're we are committed to putting more and more of this material in more and more channels as we possibly can.
01:34:12.680In fact, they apologized to the leftist organizations when they pulled back a little bit in some of these book fairs and put these LGBTQ obscene other type.
01:35:31.300And then don't just stick it to them to figure it out.
01:35:34.440So, we have actually created a nonprofit.
01:35:38.260It was started by a concerned mother called Skytree Book Fairs.
01:35:42.660You can replace these harmful scholastic book fairs with helpful, wholesome book fairs with 500 books that have all been vetted and screened to take out all of the nasty pornography and the critical race theory and the race stuff.
01:36:00.160And they're about wholesome, good values.
01:36:03.020And we already have over 700 public and private schools that have already begun the process of replacing scholastic with Skytree Book Fairs.
01:36:13.180And the first one is coming up next month in Spotsylvania, Virginia.
01:37:50.080Isn't it mind-blowing to think, Stu, that before the stars began to shine in the universe, God knew that you and Glenn and I would be sitting here talking about just such an absurd reality that we live in.
01:38:03.460And then having ideas to do something about it.
01:38:07.700And we can do it together and make a difference.
01:38:09.380What's really amazing to me is he has that for everybody.
01:38:14.700And how many people have been convinced by evil that they don't have a purpose, there isn't anything they can do, that they shouldn't pay attention or they will get in trouble if they stand up for things.
01:39:03.860And as you're going through, as you're going around America and you're doing these things, what are you feeling?
01:39:10.360I'm feeling that we are living in really exciting times.
01:39:17.560Revival, great awakenings, people snapping out of their stupors have always happened in this country and around the world during times of moral collapse, spiritual apathy, economic decline, and political corruption.
01:40:16.240You know, when you have a beer and you kind of have that buzz that sort of dulls your senses a little bit and everything just kind of seems like it's floating along.
01:40:24.960I feel like because of our prosperity, because of our comfort and the ease with which we can go through days and just pick up a latte and Uber to the cafe.
01:40:36.320We've sort of been in this dull-minded buzz, not recognizing the essential truths that if you are not pursuing truth and beauty and goodness sacrificially and leaning into that stuff with everything, including math, history, science, English, and economics and agriculture, you're screwed long term and your children will pay for it.
01:41:15.680And then go to your school and see if you can get the SkyTreeBookFairs to come and do a book fair at your kid's school.
01:41:26.140It is important that we see these trusted brands that have long ago gone off the beaten path and gone their own way and are actually poisonous to our society and our kids.
01:41:42.100We have to see these brands for what they are.
01:48:01.680When you purchase one of Goldline's legal tender bar cards and one of their silver maple flex bars, you get a hundred of the Mind Your Business silver bars, no additional charge.
01:48:46.280It's now available for purchase on Blaze TV.
01:48:49.580It is the opposite of the antihero, the flawed person who makes no effort to change and then becomes worse and worse and suddenly is a hero.
01:48:57.780So, this is one of the worst people you will ever see, Phil Robertson.
01:49:04.620Like, his life story is just brutal, brutal.
01:49:09.320And if you've made a mess of your life like he did, and you and somebody you love is in a dark place, maybe all of the above, you need to see this movie.
01:49:20.220It is something you watch with your family.
01:50:11.060First of all, Janet Yellen yesterday came out and said, we can't cut the IRS $80 million increase because, quote, it will hurt the IRS plans for improved service.
01:50:24.200Oh, they had some really great customer service things that they were going to do.
01:51:48.080It crowds out, as we take debt, productive capital in the market that grows the economy.
01:51:54.240It's just the worst possible personal finance.
01:51:57.340You know, if you're in your home, and you overspend, and you put everything on the credit card, and now all of a sudden you're paying all of this money in interest, you would say to a family, that's ridiculous.
01:52:15.100And I'm going to pay that interest, and that interest, because I'm not really paying those things down.
01:52:20.580That interest is going higher and higher because I'm becoming a greater and greater risk.
01:52:24.580But you know what people do, you know, if you have your own credit card, sometimes they'll go, oh, well, there's this great offer over here.
01:52:30.100There's a 0%, you know, introductory rate, so I'll just transfer it over here.
01:53:34.300So I had, Carol, I had Brian Riedel on, I don't know, it was a couple of years ago now.
01:53:37.980And we were talking about this problem.
01:53:40.520He was talking about how large it was going to get.
01:53:42.320And what he said at the time, and he said over and over again at the time, was, why don't we take these short-term loans that we've made in this very low interest rate environment and just lock them in long-term, right?
01:53:56.780Because we would avoid so much of this.
01:53:59.000And, like, normally I come back to, well, the government doesn't care.
01:54:18.440I don't know if you're familiar with Stan Druckenmiller.
01:54:21.160He is this iconic billionaire investor, incredibly smart and savvy.
01:54:26.160And he basically said, he put Yellen, you know, right on the hot seat, said, this is the biggest mistake anybody has ever made, the fact that we had all of this debt and you didn't lock it in over the long term, which in theory I agree with and is something I think you and I have even talked about.
01:54:43.960The issue that has sort of come out as a bunch of us have done the research is that the reason they didn't do that is that they couldn't.
01:55:01.680And that what would happen when there is no demand and you try to put more supply in that the interest rates go up.
01:55:08.700And so basically what is believed in economic circles is that that would have killed the economy and thrown the treasury into a tizzy, the treasury bond market into a tizzy.
01:55:19.820And so if you read, there's a new report, this treasury borrowing advisory committee just put out this report and they said, we recommend right now that they issue at the shorter end of the yield curve.
01:55:34.100Things like, you know, two year and five year and maybe 10 year above the normal recommended allocation.
01:55:40.780It sounds a lot like inflation, right?
01:55:41.960We'll let it run higher for a little bit of time.
01:55:45.020Eventually we want to get back to there.
01:55:46.580But the reason is because there is no demand for locking up money with the U.S. government for 30 years.
01:55:54.160And the rate that you would have to pay would just absolutely undo everything.
01:56:04.860You know, it's not like we're like, oh, well, we're in this this tight period, but they're going to be cutting spending.
01:56:09.740And we have all these great initiatives.
01:56:12.100There's absolutely no appetite to cut spending.
01:56:15.600We're obviously in a very tenuous geopolitical environment, which, you know, Yellen's come out and said, oh, yeah, we've got plenty of money to be able to help finance that, let alone that escalates.
01:56:28.060I mean, we are in a really perilous financial position and the treasury market and that information that's coming out there is really telling an important story.