The Glenn Beck Program - Best of The Program | Guest: Christopher Rufo | 7/27/20

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

Glenn’s family caught the coronavirus. How has hydroxychloroquine become political when doctors say it actually works? John Roberts abandoned the Constitution again, refusing to take up a clear First Amendment case. City Journal contributing editor Christopher Rufo joins with the latest on how the city of Seattle is responding to chaos: by looking to abolish prisons. Will the coin shortage usher in a cashless society? Sand and aluminum shortages are also on the horizon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's something else here now. Something new. From. Exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls scary as hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules.

Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Welcome to the podcast. It is Stu back from vacation. Glenn is here as well today. We talk a little bit about a COVID-19. And I don't know if you've heard of this. It's a virus that's going around. Also, we look at that. And Glenn has kind of an announcement to make about him and his family and COVID-19. You're going to be interested in that, I think. Also, Glenn is up for the Radio Hall of Fame. You can vote for him at RadioVote.com. It goes through August 9th. The listeners are important to this process. So if you get a chance, please go to RadioVote.com, one vote per email address. And you can cast your vote for Glenn Beck and or against him, honestly. It's up to you.

Also, Christopher Rufo joins us. He's a guy who's done documentaries about the Pacific Northwest and all the craziness going on in these cities. He's got more on what's going on in Seattle right now, which is mind-blowing. And there's a coin shortage right now. Why? Why is there a coin shortage? There's also an aluminum shortage going on and Major League Baseball already facing the potential cancellation of their season after only a few games. We'll get into all that today on the podcast.

Make sure you subscribe to this podcast and subscribe to Stu Does America, all episodes of both available right here, wherever you get your podcast. Give it a five-star rating and a great review or a mediocre review, but the five-star thing is really important. Also, make sure you do that as well with Stu Does America. A new episode tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on Blaze TV. You can subscribe to Blaze TV at blazedTV.com slash Glenn. The promo code is Glenn. Here's the podcast. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck.

Don't get too close to your headphones, Pat, or to the camera lens. Apparently, my family all has COVID. The most isolated family on the planet, except for one weekend over a month ago. Over a month ago, we had 400 people up at our house. and if we were going to get it, two weeks after that is when we should have gotten it. But we didn't. No, we didn't. Instead, we just isolated and stayed indoors.

I think it can take up to 30 days. Somehow another got COVID. It can to incubate or whatever they call that, to percolate in your system. I think it can take up to 30 days. Now, initially they said it takes 15 minutes and then it went to like two weeks. then it was like, maybe it's 30 days. And then it was like, no, it could, you know, a year and a half later if you're exposed, it could just pop right out.

So you, were doctors present at your birth? Because if they were, that was a crowded room you shouldn't have been in. You could get it at any moment. But so I don't know how, but everybody last week, I mean, I think I joked about it last week on the air that, and it's the only reason why we're on the air today. is because I joked about it with the head of Mercury, and I said, yeah, everybody's dropping from fly. We got the COVID here.

And he was like, everybody's dropping like flies. Glenn may be joking, but I'm smarter than he is, so I'm going to tell engineering to have everything ready to go. So last night, I get a call, and they were in my house last night at midnight, after my wife and I came in with masks and wiped everything down in here so they could come in.

and put the program back on the air because everything had been ripped out of my house because I was going back to work today. Can't they just leave it there? I don't know. You know, if you ever have a hanker in to stay home, you can just do it. Well, that's why they don't put it there because he'll stay home every day. That's why they don't do it. Right.

I think that's exactly right. They don't want to put it in my house because they know I will never come back into the studio. And I paid a lot of money for those studios. So, in retrospect, not a good idea. Although we might get Joe Rogan. I mean, I think we should, I think all the listeners should email Joe Rogan today and tell him work at the Mercury Studios. I think Joe Rogan has enough money for his own building, maybe several buildings. No, he does, but he's smarter than that.

He's smarter than that. You know, why would he, when you can just, when you can have somebody else's studio and just rent, why would you buy a huge why would you buy the Paramount lot right you know what I'm saying that makes a lot of sense that makes no sense you know Pat this is the sort of reasoning that's going to get Glenn into the Radio Hall of Fame

it's this sort of thinking out of the box that's going to win it for him I think so here's the problem radiovote.com yeah radiovote.com I've already voted I mean not for Glenn right but I did vote NPR NPR guys no yeah I went with NPR I thought that would be a good better than Glenn

if I lose to the NPR guys guys. And listen, audience, because I know you, you will vote for the NPR guys because you'll think it's funny. Don't. Don't do it. It won't be funny to me. It won't be funny. It was funny last year. Last year when you lost to the fabulous sports babe or whoever, that was funny. This will not be funny. I'll be funny. I'm the Susan Lucci of the Radio Hall of Fame. I'm the Susan Lucci. And I know. I'm never going to get in it because I've been told by the guy who runs the Radio Hall of Fame, you will never be inducted to the Hall of Fame. Now, this is a very long time ago, right?

This is, this is many, many, many years ago. He's still there. He's still there. And believe me, he still remembers. And you know what? The place is somebody we know pretty well. Yeah, yeah. I would think would be friendly.

No, but the guy who started it all is there. Okay. Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing. You know, last year, apparently when you could vote, it counted for like, it could override all the other votes. But apparently somebody did what I would have done this year and cheated. And we're offering like prizes for people who could vote and, you know, set up extra emails and everything else. And so now it's only one-twent of the vote, which I think, you know, is not the way.

way it should be, but, uh, wow, you know, because listeners listen more than, you know, probably board members do. Oh, yeah. And board members sometimes can have vendettas against people and then they never get in. They're doing a good job to win this vote. Let me tell you, you are working it hard. Again, the reason I'm on baby aspirin right now. I'm on baby aspirin. You can't be held responsible for what I'm saying someplace, but it's so small because it's printed for baby eyes, all the warnings. I don't know if I should be operating high, you know, heavy machinery with this or not. I don't know. Probably not because I never see babies operating heavy machinery.

That's true. So they might all be on baby aspirin and probably, probably. Now, let me ask you this. What does the baby aspirin do in the COVID situation? Oh, it's a strong pain reliever. Is it? Okay. I'm still working up to ibuprofen 800.

You know, when the doctor says, have you ever? Now listen, I want to talk to you about something. I want to be serious here for a moment. Have you ever had Ibeprofen 800? I want to just slap the doctor when they say that. Yeah, it's like, no, no, doc, slow down. Not ibuprofen. 800?

I take them by the handful, Doc. Anyway. Never had anything that strong. Owee. So I think we've cracked. I really think we've cracked this. Did you see the Yale epidemiologist who said, stop with the hydroxychloric

scare tactics. Yes. It works. It works. And we all had to hate it, I guess, because we all hate Donald Trump. But it works. It's such a bizarre. And I don't know.

It's so bizarre. It's just like a religious fervor around this one medication. It is. It is. It is. It obviously doesn't cure every single case. Right. It does, but it does seem to help in some cases.

There's been multiple studies that have showed that. And it should, you know, it's been tried in several areas. and like there's this fervor against it and for it as if it's like been this like long-term political dividing point. Like pro-life and pro-life and pro-hydroxy and anti-hydroxy and we all have this in our DNA for the last 50 years. It's like, well, we all just want something that works, right? Like Trump also said remdesivir in the press conference where he mentioned hydroxychloroquine. The same press conference. And that's fine.

Nobody cares about Remedsofer. Why? I don't know. I just don't understand it. I talked to a listener last week who said his whole family got it. And it was like the sniffles for his kids. It was like a mild cold for him. Then his wife was really sick because she's got underlying issues.

And they wouldn't give her hydroxychloroquine at the hospital. So he brought her home and their primary care physician ordered hydroxychloroquine for it. 12 hours later, she was almost completely better. Wow. 12 hours later. Yeah. It's amazing. I got it for my vet.

Really? I'm kidding. Yeah. No, you know, they were talking about it. In some states, they are making illegal for doctors to prescribe it. I know. That's insanity. Insanity.

As Stu said, it's not the cure-all, but it does help a lot of people. But I will tell you that my doctor has done a lot of research, and he is always calling me going, hey, hey, you should know. But hydroxychloroquine is what I'm supposed to take. he said with zinc, not with a Z-pack, but with zinc, then the bear children's baby aspirin, that's because people are getting, that's because they're getting blood clots. People are getting blood clots in their lungs.

And so take one baby aspirin, and it helps so you don't get blood clots in your lungs. And then this is the newest part is, I don't know what it is, Bissud. How do you say? that, Pat, look at the label here. How would you say that? It's a not real-

re-sudinide. Yeah, not really reasonable. W-D-B-U-D-B-O-Sed, yeah, B-O-Sed, yeah, like you said. That's why I'm nominated for the Radio Hall of Fame and you're not, man. That's why. Wait, but your doctor didn't give you the Pepsid? They keep saying that there's a chance that Pepsid actually helps the fight. Really?

I'm serious. I mean, that is true, right? It is legitimately like, again, that does not mean you should go out and take Pepsin for, I don't, you know, I've not looked into, but there are studies that say that they think it could be a potential treatment for COVID-19. There's so many things out there. They just say everything, right? Yes. It's like, uh, yeah. You know what?

Glenn, I think, I mean, can we come up with like nachos? Is it possible nachos can cure COVID-19? You should try it. Let's see what happens. He said, he said, it doesn't make sense that you didn't get it. Um, because, you know, you have a compromised immune system. And I said, Doc, I have been eating a steady diet of ice cream and Hershey's chocolate. I think we should look into that.

I think we should look into that. It may have helped my immune system. It's an obvious vaccine. It's a vaccine. Right. Oh, wait a minute. I never thought about just intervenously taking Hershey's chocolate. Wow, that would be really, you'd miss the taste, but.

Let me just check with one thing here. I just want to get Pat's take on John Roberts. Oh, my God. John Roberts. how this one this one really drives me crazy yeah because this one is clearly constitutional yeah this one is not like well it's in the commerce clause this is the first amendment the first amendment and the court wouldn't even take it up and john roberts was the deciding vote they wouldn't take up the Nevada limits on in-person worship services, wouldn't even listen to it.

I'm telling you, just like the, just like the Jim Crow laws and the, shoot, what was the really bad, the Dred Scott decision. The American people did not listen to the Supreme Court on the Dred Scott decision. They didn't listen, and they were right for not listening. these 10 people do not decide what our First Amendment actually means. Yeah, it's true. It's true. John Roberts has lost all his marbles. I mean, he's got one job.

You've got one job. Defend the Constitution. And he can't do it. He can't do it because of his legacy or whatever. He doesn't want to be seen as conservative or he doesn't want his court to be seen as right wing. I can handle Gaines. I really can. I can handle Ginsburg because she's consistent and she believes in something. John Roberts is just political. John Roberts is the worst Supreme Court justice that I have seen in my lifetime because I don't believe he believes anything. He'll he'll go with the Constitution on some things usually small and insignificant. And then when it's there in the First Amendment, he goes against it. Why?

How could you possibly do that? How could you possibly do that, John? It's in the First Amendment. You know, I know if you get up to like, I mean, who would expect you to read, you know, 20, 23, 24? I mean, it starts to get long and tedious. This is the first one. This is the first one. Yeah.

It should have been so crystal clear. He's just too worried about his legacy. That's the only thing that's on his mind, it seems, when he makes these decisions. And he's made good. decisions on little teeny things, but anytime it really matters, he's with the liberals. He has rewritten

the Constitution. He rewrote the law, rewrote the law for the Obama administration. You don't do that. You can't do that. He rewrote it so he could pass it. And now this, he just doesn't even read the First

Amendment. People of faith, you need to stand up. You must stand up. There is an attack of biblical proportions coming on people of faith. You must stand up now. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. So Seattle, we saw the juvenile, new juvenile hall burned down this weekend that they were building. And Seattle is actually looking to abolish prisons. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. So this really comes on the heels of Seattle City Council's support for cutting the police department by 50%. The next thing on their wish list is to close the largest county jail in downtown Seattle, which would reduce the county's total jail capacity by at least 60%. And this is something that the county executive had been kind of circulating documents. I broke it before he announced it. But these are real plans.

Within the next six to 12 months, we could have 50% of the police force and about 40% of the county jail capacity. And it's all predicated on the same ideas that we talked about last time with the kind of undoing whiteness training. The documents that I've obtained really show that critical race theory, the idea that the world is reducible to the kind of evil force of whiteness and creating these racist institutions is at the heart of. this plan and their solution is very clear. They make it explicit if you have a racist criminal justice system, the only thing that can be done is to tear it down. When I ask you this every time I talk to you, when are the people in Seattle going to wake up? You know, I've been asking that question for many years with the hopes that things could turn around. I am curious. There's a, there's a real disconnect. And I think a lot of people are now contacting me.

just saying, you know, what's happening? What can we do to turn it around? People who haven't been engaged. I know that people, homeowners that are selling their houses and leaving the city of Seattle, it's up 1,500 percent compared to the same period last year. Some people are definitely moving with their feet. But there is a kind of religious fanaticism and conviction to socialist politics, and it's rationalized in the sense that when their plans don't work, people, people basically say we didn't go far enough and they double down and I'm I'm very afraid that that's what's happening here when do you move do you have you have you put a line a red line down on the ground and said you know I mean because honestly this is getting so crazy and I'm going

to use a hyperbolic example here and I know that it is not to this level by any stretch hopefully it never does come to this. But in the 1930s, the Jews were looking at things just starting to just completely fall apart. And some of them said, I'm getting out of here now while they're getting as good. And eventually, you know, they were trapped and they couldn't leave. At what point, is there a red line that you look at and go, you know, if it gets to here, I got to get out of here. Yeah, I mean, you know, there is. And I think that it's really kind of fallen and collapsed very quickly.

Five years ago, I had a friend visiting in Seattle, and he said, wow, this is one of the cleanest big cities in America. It's great. You can go anywhere, high quality of life. And then he came back last year, and he said, it looks like somebody dropped an atomic bomb on your city. I mean, the change has just been extremely rapid. And I think the question of when to move, people are starting to now really speed up this

exodus, you know, the numbers from the real estate companies are a huge exodus. If you look at the price of a U-Haul from Seattle to Boise, it's about 10 times more than the price from a U-Haul from Boise to Seattle, suggesting a huge outflow. And, you know, a friend of mine who's a pillar of the Jewish community in Seattle, you know, as you mentioned, he says, you know, all of my community, the kind of conservative Jews in Seattle, we're now meeting very often. trying to say when is the time that we actually leave. And he said something I thought was very astute. He said, you know, as Jews, we have a special instinct for when things are about to go bad.

And those sentiment, those feelings, those premonitions, they're now firing at an extremely rapid rate. And people are making plans either to leave Seattle for another city, for an outlying area. And some of the folks are saying it's gotten so bad. We're actually thinking about going to Israel. Well, Israel, I mean, if the Times... of the seasons are what I think they are. Israel's not going to be a very safe place either,

but at least they'll stand there. Would you mind putting us in touch with him? I'd like to talk to him about that, because this is a very unique time period, and I think people of all religions really need to wake up, especially with what happened with John Roberts this weekend, when they don't recognize the First Amendment that sets it,

completely apart from the government. I don't know what's coming. So tell me more about this document that you found. The community supports meeting. Tell me the highlights of this document. So this is a document that comes from the King County Executive's Office and really provides the theoretical basis for the executive's plan to really just completely and permanently shut down the largest jail

with no plans to replace it. And it basically looks kind of like a hybrid of a university lecture on critical race theory or a diversity training in kind of a very progressive company. But it has kind of a chart and a pyramid that says underneath the justice system are the thing that is foundational to the justice system in Seattle and the United States is white racism, white supremacy, white fragility, and a whole other series of of kind of the buzzwords that have been circulating lately. And then it goes up the pyramid, and then at some point they say, you know, when criminal offenders offend, it's actually the fault of society,

not that criminal offender. And the logic is, well, if you have a racist society that in essence forces people, especially people of color, to commit crimes, if you abolish the institutions of the carceral system, if you abolish the jails,

if you abolish the police, if you abolish the municipal court, those people will stop offending because their oppression has been lifted. And, I mean, it's absurd. It doesn't work in practice at all and gets the causality so skewed. It's hard to even understand on logical grounds. But this is the kind of pseudo-scientific kind of pseudo-academic nonsense that is driving the decision-making at the highest levels of government in Seattle and Portland, New York, elsewhere. And it's really shocking

because they're really boiling down a very complex, social problem, crime to just, you know, white people are evil, and they've set up these evil institutions that force people to do wrong and their only solution. It's not reform at this point. For many years, it was about criminal justice reform. They've moved well beyond that in very rapid succession to do criminal justice abolition. And, you know, my last thing I'd say is that you had three weeks ago cutting the police department 50 percent, this week cutting the jails by 60 percent. And my sources in city government are saying the next target is to get rid of the municipal courts almost altogether. Jeez. And what do you have instead?

So they're basically saying that we are not going to prosecute or bring to the courts any misdemeanors and will bump up felonies to the county court system. So they're really looking to essentially eliminate criminal penalties and the criminal process for, you know, really the vast majority of crimes and only prosecute the most serious crimes, the most violent crimes at the county level. So this is something that I had heard rumblings about two years ago. Activists were agitating, but I was told this is something that is far-fetched. It's not going to happen. It's just a few people. But it's very quickly capitalizing on the chaos of the coronavirus shutdown, capitalizing on the death of George Floyd.

These are people who have been laying the groundwork for years. And now they're really seizing this opportunity to push forward. And unfortunately, when you shut down the jails, you fire 50% of your cops, and you abolish the courts, those are almost irreversible decisions. So it really is a very dangerous period for these cities. What are the business owners saying? Because at some point, even the most liberal business owner has got to say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Somebody comes in and shoplift. Somebody comes in and does something in my store.

I've got to have some police. Yeah, I mean, business owners are apoplectic. They have been fighting kind of headwinds in Seattle for many years. And it really started with kind of economic policies, taxes, minimum wage. Those are kind of your traditional business versus labor fights, right? These have been the kind of mainstream battleground between business and labor organizations. and there was a sense, looking back in retrospect, a naive sense, that, well, this is really as bad as they can make it. They can raise the minimum wage.

They can put in kind of owner-as scheduling laws. They can increase the property taxes on business owners. But now business owners are finding themselves in a real whole new terrain. I know that in downtown Seattle right now, there are entire blocks that have been boarded up for two months. I mean, businesses that are saying, you know, the wrong. risk of getting looted, the risk of getting ransacked, the risk of getting burned down, is a greater risk than just shutting down and going to zero revenue for the foreseeable future. So this is really catastrophic, and the business trade groups, they're predicting that maybe up to

50% of all restaurants in downtown Seattle may never come back. So this is a really frightening thing. And then if they do come back and there are 50% of the police officers on the street, it's going to be an absolute nightmare. And my friends and sources within the police department say if these cuts go forward, they're going to have no proactive policing, and they're going to have a limited number of officers basically bouncing from emergency call to emergency call to emergency call. And it could be sometimes up to two hours before an officer can show up. the scene of a crime. Real quick, because I have to take a network break. Is there any chance that the chief of police runs for higher office?

I mean, she seems to be striking a cord with a lot of people where she's just coming out. She's apologizing and saying, look, I have nothing to do with this. In Seattle, you're on your own. I wish I could help. But I can't. I can't. Is she looked on as reasonable or not reasonable? She's looked on as very reasonable. And I think what's happening is increasingly, a chief of police, Carmen Best. She's a longtime SPD officer, moved up the ranks and is now chief. She's seen as the only thing standing between the city and the mob. I mean, she's really the last kind of bastion of hope for the city of Seattle. And I know that rank and file officers, as well as some of the political power brokers who are in the more kind of center-left moderate.

camp. They're encouraging her to consider a run. The mayor's race is next year, then off your election. And I think that she can run on a very clear platform as standing up to the mob, standing up to the radicals. And I, for one, absolutely hope that she considers it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Chris. And thank you for all of your hard work and being places that none of us want to be. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Hello, Kara. Hi, how are you doing today? I'm very good.

I'm very good. Good. I'm so glad I get to talk to you. I've been listening to you all the way back since Fox News, and you've taught me and my kids so much. We want to thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Sure. I am wondering about this coin shortages that we're having. I don't think I've ever in my life had. coins that were not available. Are we moving into a cashless society? Yes, but I don't think that's what this is all about. I'm not sure. I honestly have not spent the time looking at the coin shortage.

I've been looking at the dollar abundance and been researching some other things. But the short answer on the coin shortage, I don't know why we're going through this right now. longer answer for you, really the root of your question, are we going to a cashless society? We absolutely are going to a cashless society. But it will take the collapse of the U.S. dollar to bring us to that. And we're going to most likely go back to a gold standard, at least for a while. Then it will all be digitized and, you know, the banks will close. And we've done this before, unfortunately.

We did this in just before World War II in the Great Depression. And this is what happens when you go off the gold standard, as we did in 73, Stu, or 71 with Nixon. Gold has just gone through a record spike again. It just passed the September 2000. 11 price of $1,943. It's almost up to 2000, and I'll tell you it is, I think, is going to continue to go through the roof as we go into the fall and then some. And you don't want to know what the world is like when we have gold at $2,000, $3,000, $5,000 an ounce.

It's nobody's hoping for that. Thank you so much for your phone call. There's also an aluminum shortage. There's a lot of shortages of different things because the factories aren't open. There is a shortage from what I understand of sheet rock, of building in some places. I know that I had to pour some concrete a couple of weeks ago, and I paid three times the price of concrete because we can't get. get the coal ash. What kind of ash is it that they put in?

They could tell you anything to charge you three times the cost, I know. I know. And they probably did. Yes, sir. Sorry, the coal ash is out. So therefore.

Yeah. No, there's something that they add into it. So they don't have to add so much sand. And right now the stuff that I poured was, you know, had real sand and a lot of real sand. And sand is, we're running out of sand. sand. And I've talked about this for the last couple of years and nobody seems to be concerned about it. It's a really big deal. You can't make sand. We can't get the sand from the desert because

that is smooth on all sides. The sand that we can use only really comes from oceans and and the bottom of rivers where it's just been broken and it's all jagged so it locks together. and we run out of sand. We run out of a lot of things, a lot of things. And nobody thinks about it. What's the deal on the aluminum? We're running out of aluminum cans now, right? Yeah, and on the coins, it seems like they, they, less people going out and having, you know,

face-to-face transactions is stopping the circulation of these coins. People are just, you know, keeping them at home. And the mint has turned down the amount of coins they're making because of coronavirus and and you know, lowering staff numbers. So that is apparently what's causing the coin shortage. So it's going out. People make change and then they get that change and then they just keep it at home. They're bringing it home.

So it's not circulating. Yeah. It's not cycling through. Yeah. So that's the, the aluminum thing is interesting because they're having, usually like, you know, you're selling beer, let's say, in a keg. Well, they're still selling plenty of beer. That has not been one of the market, one of the, one of the,

that's been hard hit by the coronavirus. People are still finding the way to buy their alcohol, oddly. Yeah. But they're taking, instead of selling it in kegs, they're selling it in individual cans for people at home. So they're running low on aluminum. It's why apparently also why some soda flavors have been, you know, not really been seen on shelves in a while because they are trying to go to their core flavors. This is killing us, guys. This is, this is what I was talking about.

We're losing the Western way of life, and we can't have any flavor of soda we want. We've gone too far. We have. We're not coming back. Yes, it's true. We're not coming back.