The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guest: Heather Mac Donald | 5/2/23

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

Glenn reviews the latest banking failures around the country and how all the burden will inevitably return to the taxpayers. As Bud Light continues to face the fallout of its sponsorship with activist Dylan Mulvaney, an ESG group allegedly proposed to Coca-Cola's shareholders that the company should not ship to states that are pro-life. Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald joins to discuss the loss of meritocracy in favor of diversity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bleak, good old bleep. Good old bleep. What's bleep doing today? I love this attitude. Love this attitude. Makes me happy. Yeah. We've discovered a new attitude.

Changing the way not only the show is going to be, hopefully, to the end of time, but also the way I'm going to live my life until the end of time. It is a good mantra for your life. Huh. I'm anxious to see how that works out. That's it. every bad situation that you think you get all nervous about, oh gosh,

or the world is going to be destroyed. Instead say, huh, anxious to see how this works out. Your son's arrested for drunk driving. Huh. I'm anxious to see how that works out. It solves literally all your problems.

Right, it does. Wow. Hey, we have massive inflation coming. Huh. I'm interested to see how that works out. There's something really comforting about that. You don't want to miss a second of today's podcast.

Prop to you in part by the Fine Folks at American Giant. In the 1960s, 95% of clothing Americans was made right here. You should sound like an old film reel. Now 97% is made overseas. That sounds a little too much. Like RFK Jr. Complete reversal of the way things used to be in this country. Now we don't make anything.

It is the mission and the goal of American Giant to invite manufacturing back to America. They started doing it themselves. In 2012, a clothing factory shut down in North Carolina. The guy who runs American Giant was like, we can't let this happen. And so he went in, he bought new equipment, he retrained the staff, and it changed the community. That's the thing. When you give people the opportunity to do something great, to do something that they're proud of every day, the whole community changes. And that's the mission.

Change the community. Change the country. Change the world. All with American labor and American products, it is American Giant. If you're looking for great clothing, American-giant.com slash glen. That's American-giant.com slash blend. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Stu, did you catch the New York Times the daily today?

I did not. No. I haven't listened to it in months. But I thought, you know, today, maybe I'll see what they have to say. And I learned so much about the banking crisis. Did you? Yeah. Yeah.

So listen in and learn. So, Gina, another day, another bank failure. Starting to be the pattern these days. Very much. And after these two banks had failed, Silicon Valley Bank, then a couple days later, Signature Bank, the hope, and I'd say the expectation was that this crisis might be over. It was not over. In fact, the third bank, First Republic Bank, collapsed.

And it was even bigger as a bank than the previous two of this. failed. So tell us about why First Republic Bank ultimately went under. I think that what happened at First Republic was sort of a slow motion reaction to what happened at Silicon Valley Bank, that first bank that failed. The other thing is a lot of the sort of assets on First Republic's balance sheet, a lot of its loans, a lot of its, you know, sort of business isn't actually all that bad looking. It just didn't hold up well in the face of rising interest rates. And JP Morgan, has also, in this case, got some guarantees from the government. The government is going to share in losses on the portions of the business that aren't looking so hot.

Wait. Now, does that mean that the government, and by that, I mean you and me, the taxpayer, are now subsidizing J.P. Morgan Chase's purchase of First Republic. So far, the government has been careful to say that no taxpayer money is being used to bail out any of these failing banks. So is that true in this case as well? It is, but it's a little bit complicated. This deal is going to cost the government about $13 billion, which is going to be covered by the insurance fund that's paid by every federally regulated bank.

So it's not taxpayer money per se. But the banks will tell you, and some people outside of the banks will tell you, that while this is paid for by assessments on banks, at the end of the day, that comes back to hit the bank customers, because the banks are going to raise the money by charging more fees on mortgages, on bank accounts, on things like that. Okay. And so it's possible that you'll still end up subsidizing this, whether it's directly or not.

It's possible. And even if you don't want to. So if you have any relationship with a federally regulated bank, which almost all of us do, you're in one form or another eventually helping to pay for this deal. Yeah, exactly. So if you're J.P. Morgan Chase, this is a pretty good deal, obviously, but there's something a little bit funny about it, which is that J.P. Morgan Chase is already the nation's largest bank. And after the financial crisis in 2008, the whole idea was that big banks shouldn't get any bigger,

shouldn't be buying up their rivals because they might become too big to fail. So this deal seemed kind of at odds with that. So it is a little weird. I think the message we all took from... from 2008 was that really big banks can be dangerous. And certainly that was baked into the legislation that we saw passing after 2008. We saw a restriction that said the largest banks in America can no longer acquire really big banks

because we don't want too much of the nation's deposit base concentrated at any one bank. Right. I don't want that. However, there was an exception to that rule. And the exception is that if a bank is failing, a large bank can acquire. And that's really what we saw come into play here.

J.P. Morgan was also able to offer the least cost option to acquire First Republic. Sorry. You got to stop. I got to stop. Okay, wait a minute. Wait a minute. So we learned that big banks were bad. And big banks can't grow any bigger. But how do they grow bigger, Stu? How would it? They grow bigger by buying other banks. Okay. So they can't do that. No. But if that bank fails, they can do that. Of course. Right. That makes total sense, doesn't it?

So they can become much bigger, much more cheaply. That was the goal of the legislation. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, not that the Federal Reserve is playing favorites at all. J.P. Morgan Jays. That's incredible too. And it's like they had to buy the bank. They were able to designate what parts of it they didn't want.

So this is the partnership with the government. The government's going to share the burden. No, you gave all of the good assets to J.P. Morgan Chase. We took all the bad assets. Right. I mean, who does this deal? That's incredible. It's like one building in an apartment complex burns to the ground.

And then you say, well, I'm going to come in, but I'm not going to take out for any of the responsibility for the one that burned down. I'm just going to take all of the nice buildings that are still operating with all of, of renters in there paying their rent completely fine. I'll take all of those over for 80% off the cost. Oh, great. Yeah. You'll do that? Wow. That's wow. Thank you so much. Now listen, if any

of my renters start not paying the rent, you're going to have to take those. You'll take it off. But you can do it on insurance. You just get money from all the other apartment complexes which are going to charge all of the other people in those apartments, more money to rent their house. So

in case some of my renters go down, you can pay me. Wow! What a good deal for the United States of America. Yeah, we win again. Yeah. And by the way, an insurance fund, when does this dry up? How many banks does this need to happen to before we have nothing left in this account? Okay, so from what I understand, there was nothing left in the account after we bailed out Silicon Valley Bank. Okay. But, but it gets complicated here, Stu. It gets complicated. The government will just print more money. Oh.

Wait a minute. That doesn't seem complicated. Yeah. No. Well, you got to get the ink and the paper. But they're digitizing. And that's where it gets complex. Do we digitize it or do we print it?

They don't know. They don't know. They'll have meeting. and stuff. So it gets complicated and probably a little bit too much for you to understand. Yeah, above my pay grade there. Yeah, above your pay grade just a little bit. They say, by the way, $128 billion are in this fund. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. Now, I know they just said this bank had $120 billion that were people pulled out that caused this crisis in the first place. Right. One bank. Yeah. They lost $120 billion. There's $128 billion in the entire fund.

Yeah. So, and we just spent apparently $13 billion of it. You're not going to be, the taxpayer is not going to bear that burden. No, what happens when that runs out? Well, you're not going to bear that burden. They will get that money from the banks. And the banks will get that money just from people, you know, really rich people, people who have bank accounts, okay? You've got a bank account, sure, you're a fat cat who's going to even, you know, but you probably have so much.

I'm speaking directly to those few people in this audience that have bank accounts. Yeah, there's only a few. You've got a bank account. You're not even going to notice that's missing. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah.

So it's not you, the average taxpayer. It's just people that have bank accounts. Okay. Yeah, I have another question. Yeah. Just a sidebar here. So they also, to get through this crisis, the last couple months. Yeah.

When we were told they were going to. make it because we had all these incredible actions. No, it's all passed, except for the stuff that they know about that might be coming. They also borrowed about $50 billion from the Fed. What happens with that? Like, does J.P. Morgan Chase have to pay that back?

Well, they got that back. What? Hmm? They go, what? That money just is like... Why is your voice getting so high when you're... I'm just saying that they just don't have any, you know, that money is like... It's... There's nobody to pay it. There's, I mean, right. So there's no, there's no money there.

So it's just like it just disappeared. Wait, what? What do you mean it just disappeared? It's on a balance sheet someplace. Right. But we don't know where. And who pay? Probably the same damn people that own those bank accounts.

Oh, okay. Good. You know, we're going to squeeze them to get that money back. Because they keep telling me, if we have, if you have, if you have, Well, it's a $250,000 for a bank. Your money is safe. That money is guaranteed by the federal government. Okay, well, I don't believe them.

I mean? I don't. What do you mean? You have $250,000. Are you pulling your money out of the bank? I mean, I'm very, I don't know what to do, honestly, at this point. You leave your money in the bank. You make sure that you don't have more than $250,000.

The government will just make more. What? That is basically what we're all supposed to believe. right? And they will. They will just print more. To cover all losses from all bank accounts? Yes.

They'll just keep printing. Well, what is that? Does that have any... Modern monetary theory. I'm being dead serious. This is modern monetary theory. I'm a tad concerned as what the fall might be to that. Why? What could possibly happen?

I mean, inflation, economic collapse. inflation is transitory, and the Fed is working on that. They have a plan. In fact, when the call came in from Vladimir Zelensky, who wasn't Vladimir Zelensky, let me tell you something. If your organization can't figure out if that's actually the leader of Ukraine on the phone, you shouldn't have a credit card, let alone be in charge of the Fed. I'm just saying.

But once again, a central banker is fooled by this group of people that are posing is Vladimir Zelensky and then recording it. And it's not on the phone. Apparently, it's a video conference call. How are they falling for a video conference call? Yeah, don't know. Don't know. But maybe, you know, just the computer rings.

And you just, oh, hang on. I've got a FaceTime call coming in. It's Vladimir Zeletsky. We didn't hear from your people or anything. How'd you get my number? Well, let me tell you all my deepest dark at secrets that I'm not going to tell everybody else, but I'll tell you, Vladimir, because you're trustworthy. Here's what Powell said.

Now, this is not what he's telling the American people. Listen to this. And, but what we're going to find is that growth in 2022 was, was positive but modest. It was subdued. So, you know, 1% around that level. In terms of this year, most forecasts call for the U.S. economy to continue to grow, but at a pretty subdued level. So growth of less than 1%. Less than 1%.

But we would tell you. Is anyone, does anyone on the planet think? that growth of less than 1% is really growth? I mean, I think that's probably in the margin of error. Yeah. And I honestly, considering what other economists are saying, growth of under 1% would be positive. Yes, yes, it would.

Compared to what they're actually predicting, which is recession. Right. So he's maybe in the spin zone where he's like, you know, but Vlad, Listen, we can keep sending you to those bullets because our growth. Our growth is like crazy right now. Crazy high zero point something numbers. Yeah, it's great. We are on track for another record year, and I mean that.

Here he is. But we would tell you that a recession is almost as likely as very slow growth. Huh. Wait, that's not what you tell us. That's a fact. And I think that is partly because of us having raised rates quite a bit. But this is what it takes to be inflating. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Why are we having a recession according to the Fed chair? Because the Fed is raising rates. Now, wait a minute. I got to get my arms around this. this is a whole new concept that raising rates puts people out of work, makes it harder for them to put food on the table. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Welcome to the Glenn Beck program.

The owner of a Bloomington, Indiana dive bar, who voiced support for Bud Light and threatened to remove customers for speaking out against Bud Light is now on Facebook saying we appreciate your support because I kicked all these hateful bigots out and if you want to stop by and have a beer, please do.

Because he's kind of following in the footsteps of Bud Light. And yeah, he's lost his patrons because he said they spewed bigotry and hatred regarding Budlite's advertising partnership with Dylan Mulvaney. And, you know, so the bar is still celebrating the 365 days of girlhood of Dylan Mulvaney. And I thought that already passed.

Well, I don't know, Stu. Does it ever pass? Does it ever pass? I don't know. I don't know what the rules are. It's very difficult to keep track of it. So he's having a hard time. Incidentally, in complete coincidence.

So is Anheuser-Bush. Yeah. No, no kidding. Yeah. Now, I saw this story today from the Washington Examiner. Anheuser-Bush employs ex-GOP AIDS for damage control. And they've hired Sean McLean. And that's what, you know, a legislative director for Senator Ted Cruz.

and then another person that was also with Kelly IOT from New Hampshire. She's also a Republican. And they're working now for Bud Light trying to get things back. Bud Light, may I just say, I didn't really have to even go into this story at all. When I saw that you hired two ex-GOP aides for damage control, I thought, boy, you still don't get it. It's about beer, not about politics. Okay?

I don't pull the horse out. Okay, just do the horse thing. Okay, it's too late now. You've destroyed the Clydesdale horses. But pull them out, you know. But they can't give up, right? They're not going to just like, oh, let's fold the company. So you go to.

Ted Cruz aide, right? Someone who probably understands conservatives. How do we? For what? For what? How do we apologize for this appropriately, essentially? What is Ted going to say? Well, I don't know what Ted's going to say, but neither do they.

And I don't know. What would you say? Forget, it's too late. Throw that piece of advice out. What is your advice to Bud Light? Lay low. Just don't say anything. Don't say it.

Damn words. Apologize and mean it. And just lay low. And then just, and then hope that people forget. They're not going to, Bud. They're not going to. You've destroyed your brand. Destroyed it.

That one thing. Destroyed a hundred years. That one thing. And that might be the answer. Of course, they can't accept that answer. They have to try to repair it. Yeah. As the gods of the copy book headings with terror and slaughter return is the

Rudyard Kipling last line of the poem, gods of the copy book headings, which is truth. returning to a people that have completely disregarded the truth, made truth, things like, you know, horses and ponies have wings and wishes or pigs. Those kinds of things. No, they're really not. Ponies don't have wings, okay? And when your society has gone so far off the track, it takes a toll. when you finally return back to the truth. And America is returning back to the truth. Whether you like it or they like it or not, it's returning back to the truth.

Did you hear what Coca-Cola did? This is amazing. So shareholders have requested that Coca-Cola's board of directors issue a public report prior to the December 31st, 2023, admitting confidential information. and at a reasonable expense detailing any known and potential risks or cost to the company caused by enacted or proposed state policies, severely restricting reproductive rights and detailing any strategies beyond litigation and legal compliance that the company may deploy to minimize or mitigate these risks. Here's what it is, a nonprofit that proposes ESG policies to company.

which is called As You Saw. That's clever or just stupid. 87% of the controlling shares voted against their proposal. What their proposal was, we're not going to ship Coke to states that don't allow abortion. Boom. And the shareholders were like, what? I said we're not going to ship Coca-Cola states, boom. Nope, nope, 83% are against that.

83%. And so now they're like, we like to see how you're coming up with these great proposals, please. Kind of seems a little crazy. I think this is an interesting thing to think about this as we look at a long-term response to wokeness. How do you systemize this and what are you trying to do? who is the right target? And what are you trying to accomplish when you look at it at these companies, right?

So we did a show last night on Studez America, by the way, if you're looking for a show at 8 p.m. Eastern just because maybe one of your favorite shows just got canceled. It's available, 8 p.m., YouTube, Blaze TV, Pluto TV. Yeah, it's there every night for you.

But we went through the five levels of corporate wokeness, okay? And so you have, number one, company that is woke and proud of it. Right? think Ben and Jerry's, right? Any liberal policy that comes out, they're in full endorsement, they're Bernie Sanders, they don't like Jews very much.

There's a lot of things that they do. And they've smoked enough dope to where they don't care. They don't care. They don't care. So you can boycott Ben and Jerry's all you want. They're not going to change their way. But they're not going to change a policy because to them, wokeness is more important than selling you ice cream.

Like straight out. Next level down. Neutral to the public, but woke in the boardroom. These companies that act like the word is normal companies, but their activity in the background is always... Verizon. Yeah, right. We talk about these phone companies, right?

Where they're donating all their money to plan parenthood and all this stuff. But they act like the normal company that's just trying to serve you and sell you cell phone service. Can you hear me now? There you go. Can you hear me now? Because I've got the screaming of all of these babies that are dying right now in my other ear. So speak up a little bit louder. Now that's not Bud Light.

That's not Budweiser, right? They're not neutral to the public and woke in the boardroom. They're doing the opposite. They did a bizarre sort of outreach to Dylan Mulvaney publicly and then are trying in the boardroom seemingly to reverse that. So that's the next category. Neutral in the boardroom, woke to the public. And I think that's the type of person that is affected by the ESG score, right? They're not necessarily a woke company.

But like they see these pressures coming in. They're trying, they think maybe it's the right stance to sell product to be woke. They don't care about transgender issues. They're taking positions to try to act, like to get new demographics in. I think there's another category. I've got two more. Oh, okay. So tell me if these are covering yours.

The next one is neutral. This is what everything used to be. Back in the day, everyone was just like, you know what? We just want to sell products. If you want to buy them, buy them. If you don't want to buy them. Name that product. Now, I don't know.

There's any. I mean, I don't know. Maybe there's some, but almost everybody seems to have some political bend. And then the last one is like, you mentioned Verizon earlier, the category five, not woke and proud of it. That would be Patriot Mobile, right? Where Patriot Mobile is just like, yeah, we're at, we're not woke at all. We want to, we want, we're pro-life. We're a pro-life Christian company and we stand on that.

I think there's the other category of pretty hostile to the woke thing, but have to do it because of, what it would mean for the stock price. They bought into all the lies. And I think that's where Bud probably is. Yeah, I think of that as... They're not neutral. You think they're hostile to wokeness? Hostle to wokenness?

I think a good majority probably are hostile to it, but when sitting down and they're just doing it to get through. I think of that as that neutral in the boardroom. But you're right. Neutral to anti-woke in the boardroom, right? Like, they're not embracing it. And I think that's where Bud Light is. So number one, I think that's probably the best target for an outreach campaign from conservatives who are frustrated by this.

People who actually are doing this because they think it's the right thing to do to sell more beer, right? But you're not, here's the thing. You're not, in today's world, there is no forgiveness. That's the problem. There is no forgiveness. Well, but you just said. when they did this Dillam Old Anything, that it's over. Yeah.

That does not show forgiveness, right? No, I know, because. Is there something they could do to make this right? No, because nobody believes anybody anymore. You have no trust. Right. No, that's true. It's not like the Clydesdale can go out and say,

but they feed me oats and the same kind of yummy oats and hops that are in this bud light. You know, there's no, what can they possibly do that you will believe? Nothing. When you betray the truth that hard, this is why sane Democrats are jumping off the Democratic wagon right now because that correction is coming. It's coming. But like, isn't there something in this situation?

Logically, shouldn't we be asking for something? Like, what happened with Bud Light is they came out and they made a statement, which was not incredibly strong, but not incredibly weak either. They were basically saying, like, we went out of this. We didn't mean to get in the middle of this. And then the people responsible were suspended. Now, maybe you might say that's not enough, but like, there has to be something we're asking for if,

what are we, what's the point? Why are we asking for it? I don't want to be like them. I don't want to say, we'll let you go ahead and sell your beer as long as you do X, Y, and Z. Make beer. Right. That's what I want. Leave us alone.

I just want you to be neutral. Right. Coinbase is neutral. They say, look, we're taking no stance on anything unless it has to do with crypto. Correct. That's the right approach. And that's the right approach. Once you've crossed the Rubicon, I don't think you get your credibility back.

This is a massive organization. Right. They hired someone. And look, I'm not defending Bud Light because I don't like what they did here. And I don't like the fact that they hired someone initially, right, whose stated goal was to remake this brand because it became too fratty. right? Like that's a terrible idea. They shouldn't have done that in the first place. But like, at some point, if they do something, if someone does something that's wrong and you think it's wrong, usually what we would say is, hey, okay, make it right. But this isn't a person. No, it's a company. Yeah, it's a brand. You should care less about it then, right? Shouldn't you care less about whether? Yes. You never believed in Bud Light's credibility as a bunch of human beings. They're just a nice watery beer that's really available. I don't. I don't.

know how I don't know how I can express this in a different way. We are, Americans feel betrayed. Right. And when you've betrayed, I'm sorry, you can be nice. And over time, just make beer. Yeah. And over time, maybe, maybe. I'm not against you, Bud Light. I'm not going to support you because I'm an alcoholic. But beyond that, I wouldn't be drinking Bud Light right now because I feel betrayed by you. But over time. But over time. If you show your record is strong over time and you don't do this again. And you might want to look to do things that are standing behind. You know what, bud, here's what you can do. And I don't know if I would even accept it, but something like this. Put our American Museum that is teaching the truth about America,

you become the national sponsor of it, and pay for it to go on the road for the next year. Now, they would say, of course, then we're taking a stance on the right. We're not being neutral. We're not just making beer. Since when is American history right or left? What's associated with you? You are obviously a right. I'm on the show. with girl power, but not somebody who believes in the Constitution. I am literally on this show and have been for 25 years, and I don't want to associate with you. I understand their stance here.

No, but I know. But that would make sense, right? And I'm not saying that that would be a quick fix. No. It wouldn't, you know, there would be a lot of people that go, I'm going to go, but Bud Light, what were you doing? What were you doing? But over time, maybe they can rebuild it. But otherwise, I mean, I have no suggestion.

They're bed, bath, and beyond. That's what they are. Wow. A brand that you thought would be around forever. Forever because you need bed stuff and you need bath stuff. And sometimes you go beyond. That's it. Bye-bye.

You're listening to the best of the Glendbeck program. There's a book out called When Race Trump's Merit, it's written by Heather McDonald. And she's with the Manhattan Institute. She's a fellow there. And she's on with us now. Hi, Heather. Hi, Glenn. Thanks for having me on.

Sure. So do we ever get back to Merit in this country? We could with relative ease, but it requires courage. So all it takes is courage to stand up to the phony charge of racism and to say that standards are not racist. The racial disparities in our country are not due to racist standards. They're due to academic skills gaps. They're due to criminal offending disparities. But right now, the American civilization should not be apologizing for itself.

We are not today a racist country. But what we're doing is tearing down meritocratic standards across the board, whether it's in medicine, science, law, the arts, policing, all because those standards are being accused of having a racist impact on underrepresented minorities. But how, let me, let me take you to Budweiser. Budweiser, we were just having conversation. How do they get their credibility back? Well, they can't. They will over time, I suppose, if they just don't do more stupid things.

However, you know, this has infected everything. The reason why Bud, you know, was rejected here is, I don't want any of this crap. I just want the beer. Leave us alone. Just want the beer. Everything now is about politics. How do we get out of that? Yeah.

I mean, everything's about politics, but a lot of it is about race. We need people in medicine to stand up and say, I'm an oncologist. I have devoted my life to trying to cure cancer. I am not going to accept the charge that is coming out of the federal government, out of the national institutes of health, out of the National Cancer Institute, that medicine is racist. I am not going to accept the charge that's coming out of our scientific journals that says that science is racist. If people started saying that and refusing to put their heads down and go along with the elites and defend meritocratic standards that are colorblind, objective, and constitutional, the whole thing would collapse.

I will tell you, especially when it comes to medicine, the fact that if you are underprivileged or intersected, any way, shape or form, you get into medical school much faster than somebody who just happens to be really, really smart and gifted wants to be a doctor, but there have no intersections on them, then the good ones are being kept out. Just for our new balancing act that we're doing, we are going to really suffer a consequence because the best doctors are not going to be the best doctors, because they weren't loud in. Black and Hispanic seniors are being accepted to medical schools

with scores on the medical school admission test and GPAs that would be automatically disqualifying if presented by whites and Asians. That's based on the phony charge that those medical school admissions tests are racist. They are not. There are schools that are with, waiving them entirely for black students.

And when students are admitted with lower qualifications than their peers, they understandably and predictably struggle. In a sense, it's not their fault. It's the fault of the admissions officers that are subjecting the so-called beneficiaries of racial preferences to an absolutely unfair handicap. But they struggle, and guess what the next step is been, get rid of further standards. So we have now dismantled the step one of the medical licensing exam, which comes after the second year of medical school to test students' basic knowledge of anatomy, physiology, drug interactions.

Blacks weren't doing very well on that exam. So we have gone last year, we changed it from a graded system to a pass-fail system to cover up the fact that blacks are not learning as much. so they get passed along, and then the pressure is on medical school hiring committees to hire on the basis of race, not merit, put people on hospital staff on the basis of race, not merit. The American Medical Association, the American Association of Medical Colleges is all behind this. You read their documents, and it's like reading something out of a black studies class. It is mind-boggling.

I have doctors on a daily basis sending me pronouncements from their, associations of hematology or oncology or neurology, people trying to cure Alzheimer's disease that are saying everything from now on has to be about anti-racism. This is a lie, Glenn, and the scat thing is that people are still terrified. They're terrified of losing their jobs if they stand up to this narrative. But that is what it's going to have to take. This can't, nobody's going to do this for us. We have to take it back ourselves and start telling the truth that though this country had a deplorable,

heartbreaking history of gratuitous cruelty towards blacks, that I think actually the conservative narrative about America does not sufficiently account for. We are not that country today. The reality is, frankly, black privilege, not white privilege. I don't know a single high school senior who's black. who is putting down his race as white, thinking that that will improve his chances for admissions. But I know a lot of white males who are wondering if they can get away with putting down their race as black because they know perfectly well that that will give them an enormous, enormous admissions boost. These are not the ways of a white supremacist country.

Heather, these organizations keep coming up with the same. point, which is, of course, we want the best doctors. We want the best people here. But we also want a diverse staff. We want to make sure we're hitting those diversity goals as well. Can they do both? They cannot. Unfortunately, and Ben, Glenn, this is a difficult thing to talk about. It violates racial etiquette. People don't want to hear it. It makes them uncomfortable. But given the size of the academic skills gaps right now, and let me give you some data, blacks are. If you look at 12th graders, black students, 66% of 12th grade black students do not possess even partial mastery of 12th grade math skills. That means doing arithmetic, reading a linear function on a graph.

66% are below basic. The number who are actually advanced in math is too small to show up statistically on a nationwide basis. This means it is mathematically impossible to have proportionate. representation in our meritocratic STEM organizations. You can have diversity or you can have meritocracy. You cannot have both. Diversity, here's a translation key for your listeners, Glenn. Diversity is simply code word for racial preferences.

When any institution is saying we're doing diversity, it means we have double standards. We're lowering our standards in order to create diversity because right now you cannot not have both diversity in meritocracy, and we have to start standing up for meritocracy and say, we'll solve those skills gaps, but the way to solve them is not to tear down our standards. So usually, I mean, I would hate to be a Christian missionary in the good days, and my zone is, you know, the Wall Street area. Because nobody says. successful. Nobody, you know, at the top of their game, is miserable enough to question, what am I doing wrong? Right now, the American people are not deeply questioning,

but when medicine, for instance, starts to go down and you have, you know, bad service, we become more like Venezuela or Cuba, then we'll ask, but it will be too late then. How do we get people to understand today what's coming our way? Well, they've got to get the facts about what's going on. I mean, that is in my book. I would say that you start with the people with power, the people that are seeing it. Again, I'm getting this avalanche of material for people that do know what's going on from the doctors, from the scientists, who see that their entire life's work is being jeopardized and torn down by this diversity obsession.

So can you give me any examples, any stats or anything where you're seeing the impact now? Well, with medicine, yes. I mean, I've seen, for instance, people, for heads of medical schools, which is important, the heads of a medical school are going to set priorities. They're going to set the tone. They're going to get federal funding. I have seen the candidates that are chosen, and I have seen people with enormous cancer research success,

just the leaders in the field not get the job because they're white males. And the people that do get the job are, as you say, intersectional. as far as being able to point to somebody dying because he comes through the emergency room after a car crash and he gets a racial preference beneficiary. I don't see that. I can see in the area of public safety. I don't see it yet, but I can tell you that this disparate impact thinking that I write about is taking lives in public safety. You know, if your listeners, Glenn, are stretching their heads and saying, what the heck is going on in law enforcement today? Why are all these prosecutors not prosecuting the law, you know, overlooking theft, turnstile jumping, shoplifting, trespass, assault, disorderly conduct, and just saying we're not going to do anything about it.

The reason they're not doing anything is because of disparate impact, were they to enforce the law in a colorblind neutral, constitutional fashion, it will have a disparate impact on black criminals, not because the law is racist, but because the crime rights are so much higher. When you back off of policing in the name of disparate impact, when you back off of prosecution, in the name of fighting disparate impact, lives are lost. 2020 saw the largest one-year increase in homicide in this nation's history, 29 percent. Carjackings are spreading out of the inner city into the suburbs. people are having their jewelry torn from their necks, eating outdoors in restaurants. We see the flash mobs that have been going down the magnificent mile in Chicago for years

because they fear no consequences for their action. So certainly in the field of public safety, we are seeing lives being taken. And overwhelmingly, they're black lives, they're black children who are being gunned down and drive by shootings to not a peep. of protest from the Black Lives Matter activists. Why? Because they're being shot by other blacks. They're not being shot by the police. They're not being shot by whites.

They're being shot by blacks, and therefore those black victims are of no concern to Al Sharpton or Benjamin Crump, the ubiquitous civil rights attorney. So this is a philosophy that disparate impact is inherently racist that must be fought, and it will start happening in STEM. It will slow down our scientific progress. China is going full speed ahead with its nanotechnology. It is grooming its students for the most challenging mathematical tests possible. It doesn't give a damn about diversity.

It just wants to throw everything it's got at its gifted and talented programs. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., we are dismantling gifted and talented programs. We're saying, you may be gifted in math, but you're not allowed to excel because it will be racially disparate. We will not have 13% at this point black students in our gifted and talented programs. Therefore, nobody should be in a gifted and talented program. We don't want you to do calculus in the ninth grade if you're capable of it because you will not be in a diverse class of students. This is a death knell to freedom, to capitalism, and to everything that we have built if we don't turn this around. The name of the book is When Race Trump's Merit, the author you've been listening to is Heather McDonald's.

She's from the Manhattan Institute, where she is a fellow. Again, the name of the book is When Race Trump's Merit. Heather, thank you so much. Thanks for the conversation, Glenn. I appreciate it.