The Glenn Beck Program - Best of The Program | Guests: Ben Shapiro & Brendan Carr | 7/28/21

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

Pat Gray joins to discuss Adam Schiff’s “emotional” time at the January 6 Capitol riot hearing and the lies that were told throughout it. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr joins to review the unrest in Cuba and how easy it would be for President Biden to reactivate internet access for the protesters. Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro joins to discuss his new book, “The Authoritarian Moment,” which lays out how the Left is the true authoritarian threat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

60% of the vans on Amazon come to vendor independent like Sac Magic. Hello, here Camille of Sackmagic. Our compresses, show of fraud are fabriced in Quebec, and our presence on Amazon enlarge our clientele

to the world entire. Trouvee de petitions like that other onerre on Amazon.ca. Hey, Stu. Hi, Glenn. What a great show today for the podcast.

Don't you think? That is very, very true. Yeah, yeah. Can you tell me one thing that happened on the podcast that you're excited about, Stu? You talked about It was kind of a theme.

The whole show. Do you even listen to this show? I listen to a show. It's just I have a headphones on listening to a different podcast while you're doing a show. Well, you're very little involvement today. It fits, strangely. We were talking about authoritarianism, and it is growing out of control tonight at 9 o'clock on Blaze TV. I'm doing a special on something that's coming out of the White House now.

It came from the National Security Council, and it is how to combat extremism. And it is terrifying, terrifying. But we talked to Tom Fitten, who has been looking into January 6th. What is going on? Wait a minute. The FBI used the airlines. They used Bank of America. They got information on thousands of Americans just because they were in Washington, D.C.

that day? That's absolutely unconstitutional. But wait, there's more. Also, today's the day that Ben Shapiro's book, the authoritarian moment has come out, and we have Ben Shapiro to talk about it. All authoritarianism, all

the time on today's podcast. And do you have a program coming up tonight, Glenn? I do. I bet it's going to be pretty good. People should watch it, huh? Right after a brand new, Studeau's America. That's all he says, I pretty much.

PlaycTV.com slash Glenn promo code is Glenn. You'll save $10. Get new Studios America, new Glenn TV. It's going to be great. Check it out. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Pat Gray, we want to talk a little bit about the hearing yesterday in Washington, D.C., which I have a really very difficult time. Could we please play Adam Schiff?

I have a problem with Adam Schiff even being on. this committee or even being in Congress at this point. But here he is with all of the credibility on what January 6th was really all about. Better the next time, God help us. And if we're so driven by bigotry and hate that we attack our fellow citizens as traitors, if they're born in another country where they don't look like us. Sorry, I'm so emotional. He's actually crying here.

Is he? Yeah. Is he squeezing out the tears. God help us God help us I have faith because of folks like you Yeah

Okay so he has faith Oh my People like there are testifying yesterday Are you okay Pat? I'm not I'm not Pat does not look okay It's too emotional

So do you know that they actually moved Barracades Okay Okay Okay okay Hang on just a second A podium A podium was taken.

Don't take our podiums. Please, by all that is good, right and holy. Don't abscond with the podium. There's a lot of absconding going on. Here's the thing. First of all, I think both sides are in a state of delusion. And I think because everybody has whipped everybody up into a frenzy. And it's not when I say everybody's whipped up. No, really only the media and the politicians

in Washington have whipped everybody up. By calling this the worst attack on American institutions since the civil war is so ridiculous. We all, I was horrified. My wife was horrified. Everyone I know was horrified while this was going on. We were horrified that we're like, where's the president? Where's the president? Why isn't the president coming out? We were horrified that he didn't immediately get on and say, stop it. We don't do this. Stop it. Okay. That's true. Now, this is from the group of people who also were horrified that nobody in Seattle, nobody in Portland, nobody in the rest of the country, it seems, actually stood up in their own cities and said, stop it right now when it comes to Antifa. Now, they're trying to prosecute and persecute anyone, anyone who voted for Trump

because of what, honestly, maybe, let's, let's get, I'll give you the benefit of that out. Maybe 200 people did. I think there were probably 50 that were committed to it. And the rest were. hapless dupes that just followed in and got tied into it. And some people just, you know, caught up on the emotion, got very angry and committed crimes. Committed crimes. And they should go to jail. Yeah. Or be fined.

I mean, a lot of them were, again, absconding with a podium might not necessarily. I'm sorry, Pat. I didn't mean to bring you back for that place. Wow. That dark, dark place. All I can think of is the guy with a pole. under his arm walking through the rotunda. You know, the reason why these guys care so much is because it happened to them for the first time.

Right. It happened to them. They're not small business owners. They're not worried about the police being defunded. Nobody's defunding the police in Washington, D.C. No. Imagine if those people did that to the Capitol and then the rest of America said, you know what? we need to do, defund the police in Washington, D.C.

Imagine how those people in the Capitol would feel. That's exactly what they have been encouraging for the rest of America. Yeah. If there's a defund the Capitol police movement right now, maybe we could take them seriously on their other claims, but they don't care if people in Minneapolis die because the police don't show up. They don't care. They don't have nothing to do with it.

They don't care at all. And, you know, this, remember, during the George Floyd riots, places all over Washington, DC were on fire. There was all sorts of violence that happened when that was going on in the same place. It wasn't aimed at them. It wasn't aimed at them. So he didn't care about it. Yep.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Absolutely every time. There was one guy that actually said the truth. I don't think he noticed that he was saying the truth.

Can you play the police officer? I don't remember which one he is. Yeah, that one. Listen to this. They had marching orders, so to say. when people feel emboldened by people in power, they assume that they're right. Like, one of the scariest things about January 6th

is that the people that were there, even to this day, think that they were right. They think that they were right. And that makes for a scary recipe for the future of this country. I know. Ask Seattle. Ask Portland. Ask Chicago. Ask any place in America where defund the police. Ask the people in Minneapolis.

Do they feel that they were wrong? They were emboldened by the system, by the local community, by the mayors, by the city council. Now by the president. They were emboldened when they were being bailed out by our now vice president. I mean, think of that. Think of that. Donald Trump hasn't provided bail for any of these people. Kamala Harris provided bail

for people in Antifa and Minneapolis and all over the country. And some of whom were attacking federal buildings. Yes. So, yeah, I don't think that police officer really understood what he said. And from the beginning of the hearing yesterday, Benny Thompson, I guess he's the chair of the committee.

Yeah. Started out by saying, we are here to deal only in fact. We will only deal in fact. And the first thing he did was lie about how many people died. Seven people. Seven people. Seven people.

No. That's sick Nick. We know sick Nick died. And they lied about that as well. What do you mean? He was beaten to death. He died as a result of the injuries incurred in the riot. Yeah.

No. Oh, yeah, he must have. The day after, he must have. He had two strokes. He had two strokes. Yeah, but doctors say that those strokes were. certainly caught on by the Yeah.

It did say tied to the events, right? No, they didn't. No. They came out and said it had nothing to do it. Corner said the opposite. This was a ticking time bomb would have happened anyway. I thought in the report they said that while it was a stroke, it was. Look it up.

Look it up. I think I remember the coroner coming. Yeah, I am too. The coroner did not blame. But regardless, it was not a traditional, how you think of a traditional, like, you know, David, was it David Dorn who died? in the riots, the police officer, retired police officer.

He was shot. That's how you, that's how you think of death in a riot, right? Like, you beat over the head with a, with a fire exigure. There were no injuries that caused sick Nick's death. Maybe blood pressure. I mean, he had,

he had high blood pressure because of the event. That's about as good as you can get. That's about as good as you can get. Then two officers died by suicide. Afterward. In the following week. Yeah. Okay?

You can't blame that on the. You can't blame that on the right. How do you blame that on the riot? Right. A protester was shot by police. Two protesters suffered fatal heart attacks and another died of a suspected drug overdose. Yeah. The only person actually killed as a result of what was going on was Ashley Babbit.

Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yep. And she shouldn't have been there. She shouldn't have been there. That's right. And I feel bad for her.

I feel bad for her family. but she shouldn't have been there. And, and, you know, she knew a gun was pointed at her and climbed through a barricaded build. I mean, like,

it's true. It's wrong. Go through the, the, the, the justified shootings that have happened. And we've talked about on the air from police officers to African Americans and communities.

Like, this one was worse. By her actions was worse than many of those that were justified. I mean, like this is, I don't know how that became this like cause, celeb among some conservatives where we're supposed to say that police officers are not allowed to shoot people who are going through barricades in the middle of an ongoing riot inside the

Capitol building? Like I don't I don't understand that particular point of view all that well, especially when we have, I think, correctly argued over and over again. If you go and you're charging at an officer, uh, they have the right to shoot you. Right. Like we've, how many, how many videos have we talked about where the left is coming out and saying, no, they should have let that girl stab the other girl and they shouldn't have done anything. I mean, that's the left's arguments constantly. And for whatever reason, that is surrounded this particular case.

They did, you know, look, she did something that I'm, you know, I feel bad about because I don't want people to die. But that is, the officer in that case, I believe, acted in a justifiable manner. That being said, it's tragic. And, but it also supports what conservative say, which is like this, this was the one death that occurred in, this riot.

There's another, like there's a woman It's terrible. A woman who's in the middle of all this wound up having health problems, collapsed on the ground, and was basically trampled while she was having some sort of heart attack.

Heart attack. That's a terrible, terrible story. However, it is not just a file. I haven't either. It's a terrible thing to say, oh, well, this many people died. Right? Like, okay, yes, she did die in the incident.

But it had nothing to do with. But it was not like murder. murderous people came up and tried to kill. Like, that was not what happened here. It was a terrible tragedy. In the way they mean it. Yes, exactly. No one died in the way they mean it.

Yeah, I think that's a, that's an appropriate. Yeah, because Ashley Babbitt, that's not their example of what went wrong. What are the protesters that they didn't like that shouldn't have been there, died. So nobody died defending it. Nobody died in Congress. Nothing happened in that way. Like, if you were to say a mass shooting occurred and one person died, it was the shooter. Yeah.

That's not how they would summarize that story. That's how they're summarizing it here. They would have said injured and only one fatality and it was the shooter. Right. And so look, look, again, was it a good incident? No. But like, you know, as we were talking about this a little bit before we went on the air, there are some people on the right, very few who are basically saying it was nothing.

It was just a, I think this is honestly, this is where I started. That's coming from. It's pushback. It's pushback. Yes. It's like, how dare you say that? Right. Because on the other side, the media has been telling us for a very long time that this was the Civil War. Just like with the voting stuff, they say it's Jim Crow 2.0. Everything's the most extreme thing that's ever happened.

And it's like, it is closer to nothing than it is to the Civil War. No question. It's not a controversial. Or 9-11. Or 9-11. People are just sick of this. Romney, Romney might have been Genghis Khan. Romney was the war. worst ever. He was going to be so draconian. He would be so anti-democrats. Are you kidding me? He practically is. He is a Democrat. He is a Democrat. Everybody, everybody, everybody, they play

this nuclear card every time, every single time. Let me tell you, this is how this is going to end. It's going to end with nothing except an impression. It's going to be a big impression, but it will be played again. There's going to be something because they, history is not, you know, people say, history always repeats itself.

Let me say it differently. History is repeating itself. This is exactly like the Black Tom event, which pierced and broke every window in lower Manhattan. It's the reason we can't go up into the torch anymore of the Statue of Liberty because the explosion was so big it actually broke the arm. of the Statue of Liberty. And Woodrow Wilson knew exactly what it was.

Everybody who was involved knew what it was. It was German terrorism. They came over here to blow up the munitions that we were sending to the Allies for World War I. They couldn't have those munitions come. So they blew them up just in New Jersey. It destroyed so much. It was a big, big deal.

Woodrow Wilson said it was the capitalist that did it. And then it was just brushed aside for a while. And we're looking into it. We're looking into it. But nothing really happened. And then when FDR needed to round up the Japanese, he used that fear and said, we've just found out what happened in like 1916. We just found out what happened with Black Tom. And it was the Germans.

And if the Germans can do that, the Japanese will do it here. So we've got to act on this now. This is just the predecessor of something bigger that is kind of. coming and they are building the foundation. Thank you so much. The best of the Glenn Beck program. Axios calls this guy the FCC's 5G Crusader. He has led the FCC's work to modernize the infrastructure rules and accelerate the build

out of high-speed networks. His reforms have cut billions of dollars in red tape and enabled the private sector to build these high-speed networks in communities, across the country and extend America's global leadership in 5G. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a lot of people in Washington, at least with this administration, that want to see America win the 5G race. That's a topic for another broadcast. His name is Brendan Carr, and he is an FCC commissioner, and we need good commissioners on

the FCC. Ajit Pye has left. Brendan, how are you? I'm doing great. Really good to join you. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you. You are suggesting something, and I think this, I don't know if it started with you or who it started with. I know that Marco Rubio has been talking about restoring the Internet to Cuba.

And there is a way we can do this, but it requires the government and Google to participate, correct? Yeah, some of that is right. So, you know, look, in Cuba, we're seeing unprecedented protests. And what we see around the globe now is the first thing people do when they take to the street to fight for liberty is they take out their smartphone. They take pictures. They take video. Because the thing that brutal dictatorships like Leath is the attention of the world, the spotlight on their brutality. So we've seen this in Iran.

We've seen it in Venezuela. We've seen it in Myanmar. So the first thing that people do is they take their phone out. The first thing the dictators do is they shut down the internet. Now, they don't cut the internet entirely because that would cut off their own communications. They block access to WhatsApp and Facebook and messaging services so those pictures and videos can't get out there. So what I said, what others have said, like you mentioned, Senator Rubio, Governor DeSantis, is we should look for ways to restore internet services to Cuba, which would help to accelerate the ultimate destination of the brutal Cuban regime, which is its end.

And there's two ways we can do it. we can introduce new services, new internet services from off island. That can take some time. There's some logistical challenges to be sure, but we have the technical capacity to do that. And track two is we should bolster support for circumvention tools so that people can continue to use the internet services on the island and just get around the filtering, which, by the way, the filtering has all the digital fingerprints of the communist regime of China. So they were very much involved in helping Cuba shut down internet services.

And didn't Facebook and everybody else? they did this in Egypt. They did this for the Arab Spring. They actually helped foment that revolution and made sure that people knew how to use it and gain access to it. Now it doesn't see, is anybody, have you heard of any high-tech? I mean, the big high-tech, are any of them saying, we got to join in and help these people?

It's pretty quiet from what I've seen. You know, former Secretary Pompeo sent out a tweet a week or so ago saying that the government and others went in in Iran and helped bolster internet services during the protest there. We have the technical capacity to do it. And it's simply a question of do we have the political will at the highest levels of this administration to green light these efforts. If we do that, American enterprises can deliver these solutions to the Cuban people and show our support for them. And President Biden initially came out with some positive words. We're going to look at this. But it's over two weeks. And if we have a lot of people,

And we haven't seen any action at this point. And, you know, I'm very concerned that we're not going to see action. So, you know, this is just a question of political will. It's not a question of technical capacity. Yeah. And is Project Loon, which was a Google project, I believe, in Kenya, which sends this, like, you know, the tennis court-sized tower up over the country way above. of where airplanes are flying.

And it just kind of hovers there and kind of acts as a receiver to pass that message along. Easily, we could probably do it with two of these things because Florida is so close. Do I have that right? You're exactly right. So this is what I call that track one idea, which is how do we introduce new services into Cuba from off island? And there's a variety of technological ways you can do it, and you put your finger on one of them. Google Loon had this operation where they put up stratospheric balloons. These go 60 to 75,000 feet above the air.

You can actually keep them relatively static over a geographic area, given the way that the winds circulate at those levels. I've been to Kenya myself to see this technology in action. It works. We at the FCC authorized this technology in 2017. After a hurricane wiped out communications in Puerto Rico, seven to eight of these balloons went up, circled around Puerto Rico,

and help beam services into that community. And we saw it in Peru after some natural disasters. These balloons went up. There's other technologies. We could beam Wi-Fi off of the U.S. Embassy in Havana. Previously, we had inserted satellite-powered Internet devices into Cuba. The advantage of these high-altitude balloons, as you point out, as you can stay in international airspace and beam directly from the balloon,

out from the handset to the balloon, and to your point, given the geographic distance to Marathon or the Keys, you can beam right from the balloon back to the Internet in the U.S. So that's the advantage of the balloon. And frankly, we need it now in Cuba. But we also need this, I think, as a strategic capia, Radio Marti that broadcast into Cuba. The modern day equivalent of broadcasting information into countries that aren't free is to enable the free, unfiltered use of the Internet in those countries. So I think we need this as a long-term strategic capability as well. It's a lot better than obviously putting troops on the ground as well.

Sure. And it's, I mean, with the way things are going, quite honestly, we might need one for, you know, suppression here in America. What is being done is craziness, craziness. This is amazing. I mean, look, we cannot be speaking out of both sides of our mouth. At the point, we're saying brutal regimes like Cuba, you can't filter, you can't censor the Internet. At the same time that we have this White House, Jen Saki, out there saying, Oh, yeah, we've been coordinating with big tech to censor American speech.

We can't do that. We need to be very clear that we believe in a free, open, uncensored internet for our own American people here and for other people abroad. And so I think we should go forward, and whether it's through legislation or otherwise, make very clear that government officials should not be calling up big tech companies and asking them to put a thumb on the scale against speech they don't like. Because let's get real. It's not about misinformation.

It's not about disinformation. It's about political speech of the people that are bombing in with these phone calls. Is it possible to privately do this? I mean, you know, we can just this audience, and that's not involving the Cuban population in America, we could fund that privately. I doubt Google would take our check, but is there a way to do this privately? Well, on the track one stuff, so Google shuttered Loon at the beginning of the year, year because it wasn't a great commercial product. People weren't going to drop Verizon or

or AT&T for these balloon services. But I think it's a strategic capability for the country, the commercial viability is less of a concern. But the track two stuff we talk about, which is the circumvention tools. There's a lot of open source applications out there that the Cuban people are using right now. Those technologies need additional funding. And we're not talking, you know, billions of dollars. We're talking one to three to six million dollars. So there are some efforts underway to try to use private sector funding. to bolster these technologies. I can't endorse any one particular company or direct people towards those crowdfunding sites,

given limits on me as a government official. But there are private sector ways that people could donate money so that these circumvention tools continue to work and the people of Cuba can continue to get those pictures and videos out to the world. You know, I loved Jeep Pie, and I've done this, I've done broadcast for 45 years. And I can't even remember a name of an FCC chairman before. maybe I did during Reagan, but Ajeet was amazing. And I thought we were headed in the right direction with the FCC under Donald Trump. And now it looks like, you guys are the only one standing between real freedom of the Internet and net neutrality, because it's back, isn't it?

You know, look, President Biden issued a quote-a-quote competition executive order, a week. or so ago, and it included a direction, basically, to us at the FCC to go back to Obama-era net neutrality rules. The reality is, you know, 2015, 2016, America had flatlined in terms of our build-out of high-speed internet infrastructure, including cell sites. In 2016, we had something like 7008 new cell sites go up in this country. After we engage in reforms under, you know, Ejid's leadership and me working with him, we had 46, thousand new cell sites go in in 2019. So it's 65-fold increase because we got, you know, all that regulatory red tape out of the way. So I'm very concerned that we're going to go back

to this Obama era approach. And it's as if they don't understand the real threat to a free and open internet today. It's not coming from the ISPs. We don't have neutrality today, at least under their conception of it. And we don't see blocking and throttling by ISPs. But we do see it's blocking and censorship by big tech. And if you really care about a free and open internet, the problem you need to tackle today is a censorship happening by Facebook, by Twitter, by these providers, not by the ISP. How close are we to really being a leader in 5G compared to? I can't remember the name Huawei. I mean, we are in the fight of our life with Huawei.

You know, we made, we were behind. Again, 2015, 2016, people were basically counting the U.S. out. But when we modernized our infrastructure rules, because it had been costing too much and took too long to build infrastructure for the internet here, things boomed. And we leapfrog ahead of many, many countries, and we now have the strongest 5G platform in the world. If you don't have it in your particular community, the data may be meaningless to you, but the data does show us that we're doing well. But I am concerned that we are not going to continue to keep the pedal down when it comes to allowing new internet infrastructure for bills when it comes to getting the spectrum out there that we need to power these 5G services.

So the good news is we made great progress. We're in good shape right now. Gas and then, you know, China's going to take advantage of that. Elon Musk's satellite service is amazing. Absolutely amazing. Is this, what do you think of that business? Does that have a future far as litigation? Is there anything that can shut him down on?

this is a really interesting technology now it's just out in Washington State visiting the manufacturing plant where they make these low Earth orbit satellites and the idea is that you can put these you know satellites up hundreds of them and they're going to get you almost sort of fiber-like speeds anywhere almost anywhere in the globe and we are pretty hopeful we're not putting all our eggs in that basket we're looking at other technologies other ways to bridge the digital divide but we think this could be a good technology. We've authorized them. We've funded them in terms of building out in areas where they're sort of rural and remote. So it could be a game changer. We'll see. It hasn't quite

gone to scale yet. It just isn't there as a timeline. They're still building it out. But we're hopeful that it's going to be a key part of bridging the digital divide. Brendan Carr, the FCC commissioner, it is good to talk to you. And please let us know about any threats to our constitutional protected rights to free speech and petitioning our government we need good guys on the inside that are alerting because there's just so much going on that nobody can pay attention to all of it thank you so much brennan

appreciate it thanks plant you bet you can follow him at brenden car FCC or find him at fccc dot go Brendan car the FCC commissioner I think this is something that we really need to pursue. I think the Project Loon is a really, really, I don't know why. I mean, I think we should be speaking up and asking congressmen and senators, like Rubio, how can we help you? What do we need to do to get the government to approve that? We've already done it before. Why are we not doing it for Cuba?

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening. Mr. Ben Shapiro is joining us. He is the intellectual powerhouse of The Right Now and been a friend for many, many years. And I respect him. And he is the one guy who writes a lot of books that I will always read his books because they are always really well thought out, intellectually solid. and never go for cheap shots. Mr. Ben Shapiro, how are you, sir? Hey, June, okay.

How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I'm excited. I haven't read your new book, but I've heard you talk about it an awful lot. I listened to your podcast. When was it last night when you were doing the book signings? And I want to actually take you through some of the things that you played,

some of these authoritarian moments as we go. But first, give the setup of the book. What are you talking about in it? So basically, the book begins with looking at January 6th, which the left has declared is the authoritarian moment in modern American history, that the democracy is on the verge of being overthrown, that Donald Trump is this great authoritarian figure and that the right is the true threat to American freedom. And then I ask people to analyze, you know, what exactly happened on January 6th and beyond? Because what really happened is that a breakway group, a much larger group, committed criminal activity. They were all arrested. They're all going to go to jail.

and within three hours, order had been restored, and the government went on as though not. Then, in the immediate aftermath of that, AWS, Amazon Web Services, the platform parlor completely. Most major Democrats started calling for significant curbs on First Amendment freedoms. You started to see neutral service providers talking about cracking down on quote-unquote extremism. Donald Trump was thrown off all the social media platforms. Corporations started to put out statements basically suggesting that you had to mirror particular political viewpoints on January 6th, or a corporation said we're just not going to give authoritarian threats.

So the answer, and the answer is not, you know, the idiot who invaded the Capitol building. The people who are a true threat to your way of life right now are the people at the head of every major institution ranging from the scientific institutions to the educational institutions to your corporate bosses, and they have the power to really wreck their life in some pretty significant ways even outside of the off-the-season government.

You know, we have been pretty close to this point before with Woodrow Wilson, but you can excuse the American people at the time to some degree because authoritarianism was this new idea. And with the progressives using science and saying, look, it's a whole new age. You know, we came from farmers and now we're in the scientific age and anything is possible. You can kind of dismiss it. But what Joe Biden is doing right now, a lot of this really comes from the Woodrow Wilson playbook. and I think it's just as racist and just as nasty as when he was doing it.

I mean, I think that when we're full of all ladies lying, that voter ID laws are akin to Jim Crow racism, or that what happened on January 6th is the worst insurrection that we've seen in the United States since the Civil War, or that Republicans broad writ are just trying to return us to the days of the Civil War. I mean, this kind of stuff is extremely ugly. It's extremely divisive. It is the opposite of what he promised that he was going to be when he became president, right? which is this sort of unifying moderate figure. He's not been any of those things.

I think what's going on truly unjustifiable is not just that we've seen the consequences of this sort of activity before. It's that at least you can say that during Woodrow Wilson's administration, we were in the middle of a world war. And during FDR's administration, we're in the middle of another world war. Right now we are involved in zero major wars anywhere around the world. We're the unchallenged global hegemon. And yet we're carrying ourselves apart internally going after dissenters, which is kind of a unique thing. Oh, I think we are at war.

America is at war, but it's at war with itself. I mean, it's completely lost its way because we've had people teaching our children for a while now that we're a horrible, horrible place. And I don't know if people are buying it or not. I mean, they usually buy these things. I want to take you to one of the authoritarian moments. This is from 1933. It's a parade. Tell me why this is important.

In September, 1933, the government's... sponsored a spectacular parade of New York's Fifth Avenue to promote an unprecedented federal effort, the National Recovery Administration. Roosevelt called the NRA a partnership in planning between government and industry. Its goal to speed recovery by establishing profit levels for business and wage levels for labor. In a show of national solidarity, more than two million employers across the country, promised to abide by the NRA codes. Russia hails victory in Moscow's Red Square during her Mayday parade. We'll get to that other clip in a minute. So tell me why that parade was important.

So the General Goldberg talks a lot about this in liberal fascism, but the sort of economically fascist system was reliance on private businesses being overseen and working in cahoots with big government. And big government would essentially charter these industries and then tell them what to do. And industrial magnets, say, well, I guess it's better than the communists. And then they would go along with it. Well, the National Recovery Administration was an effort overtly by the federal government to force businesses into doing what they want. And you were supposed to put a symbol up in your window, the blue eagle.

You're supposed to put it up in your window. And Americans were, I think that we can see some pretty resonant echoes of that today in modern American politics when you have the government, members of the Democratic Party, calling on corporations. So particular businesses, if they refuse to do that, but we saw the results of this when Major League Baseball just pulled out of Georgia, for example. We're talking to Ben Shapiro, author of the brand new book that's out today, The Authoritarian Moment. I think it's even more clear with ESG scores.

I mean, this is the government getting into bed with global corporations, banks now providing a ESG score. And if you're not playing ball with the government and with, you know, the environmentalist and social justice members, your score will go down. and in Europe, they're now proposing that you cannot do business with any business that has a lower ESJ score than you do. Yeah, I mean, you see it also in places like California that have attempted to actually pass laws, leveraging people onto boards of corporations. If your corporation is large enough, then we now have to put a certain number of people of particular races or sexual orientations on the board of the corporation. I mean, this is truly totalitarian stuff. And what's even more totalitarian in effect is that the corporations then shovel this,

garbage down on the people who work for the corporation. So it's easy, you know, Glenn, you're, you're able to speak freely because that's what you do for a living. I'm able to do it because that's what I do for a living. They can threaten our living, but they're never going to be able to take away all of our livings. We have too many people who are interested in hearing what we have to say. But if you're just a guy working in a corporation, it's very easy for the corporation to get you to mirror their prescriptions because you've got to put food down the table for your family. Well, that's the thing that I like about this book is you're not just coming with the problems. You actually have the solution. And I think the way you have phrased this is really appealing. I've been talking about Martin Luther King. I hate

boycotts. And I know you do too. Stu does. But Martin Luther King says if we wouldn't have done the boycott, if we wouldn't have had the teeth, it wouldn't have worked. We wouldn't have had the Civil Rights Act passed. And they are coming after us and we just keep taking it and we don't come after any of the companies that are shoveling this crap. Explain your position on this. So I'm with you. I hate boycot. I mean, I'm in an industry where you and I are routinely hit by people trying to go after our advertisers. But here's the reality. There has to be a mutually assured destruction here. These corporations are only caving to one side. There's a tremendous asymmetry. You'll see a corporation that receives 10 tweets. And then you'll get a call from your ad broker

saying, well, they've removed their advertising because they got 10 tweets. And the answer to that isn't, oh, well, you know, their private business, they can do what they want. They can. But they can also feel the blowback from the other side. And so what we've done at our company, for example, is we said to advertisers openly, quite openly, that if you want to advertise on our show, you're, you can pull your advertising any time you want, but you're not allowed to announce it publicly. If you do

announce it publicly, you're going to have to pass out. And not only that, you understand that if you make a public statement about our shows or our audience, we'll go to war with you. I mean, this is, we cannot, when we think our brand value in, you know, dealing with advertisers that we believe in, or cut us that way with our own audience,

without us blowing back on you. And I think that broadly speaking, that's what the right needs to do at this point, then they need to feel it in the ratings. If the NFL starts to go woke, they need to feel it in the ratings because I would prefer that we go back to neutrality, but we're never getting back to neutrality unless the left out. And this really is important. You talk about this with offices. You know, so many people just feel they're alone, and they're not alone. They're in the majority, but nobody's afraid, everybody's afraid to say something and you don't know who to trust. And so they just go in and they abide by these

stupid things that they have to do, you know, examine their whiteness at Coca-Cola, et cetera, et cetera. And you're suggesting that they form a coalition. Right. I mean, this is what we have to understand about how these institutions weren't left in the first place. It wasn't because of the broad majority of these institutions in favor of these radical-up policies. It's because you have to be 10, 15, 20 percent of the people at any given corporation who are very loud and very intransigent.

And then you have a bunch of people in the middle who just say, well, it's easier to give into them than to fight them and do we really want the headache? Well, you can do the same thing from the opposite point of view. You can renormalize an institution. If you have 20% of the corporation that says, listen, we just want to be neutral here. And it won't be 20. It'll be more like 50. And you get those people to sign a letter to the corporate heads saying, listen, we're not doing this whiteness is bad. Diversity training with Robin DiAngelo, down sense. We're just, we're not going to do it. We think that it's bad and we're not willing to do it. Then the corporation has to decide between the 50% and the 20%. Right now, the corporation is

deciding between the 20% and the 0% if people don't get mobilized and unified. Explain your theory on veganism because I think this is a great example. Give full credit to the person who kind of gives this metaphor, Nissen Nicholas Talib. His metaphor is basically, let's say that you have a family of four, and one of the members of the family, usually the daughter, comes home and says, I'm a vegan today. And because I'm a vegan, mom, I need you to make me a vegan meal. And so mom now has a decision.

She can make a meat meal for the rest of the family and a vegan meal for the daughter, or she can say to the whole family, listen, I don't have time, we're all eating vegan tonight. Well, now the daughter has successfully renormalized the family. The entire family is now eating vegan because you had one intransigent person who just refused to budge. Now you can take that entire family. There's a block party that night. The people throwing the block party, they say, listen, we're all eating vegan because our daughter is eating vegan. You can give us a separate meal, that's fine, but the head of the block party has to decide whether to make a couple of separate meals.

And maybe she says, well, you know, it's probably not worth the hassle. It's one night who cares. People can deal with vegan for one night. And now you've got 16, 20 people who are all eating vegan because one person was intransigent about eating vegan. The same thing holds true in politics, and you see this all the time. This is true in corporations. This is tyranny of the minority. Support for the thing, usually about 15, 20 percent inside an organization.

Two, you need to have them asking for incremental, non-s supremely radical things. So this is what the left does. They don't go right away to. We need Robin DeAngelo teaching you the whiteness is bad. They start with, we need diversity training. Are you against diversity? Why don't you like diversity? Diversity is good. Are you racist? And then it moves on to, well, you know, diversity training really has to encompass teaching about systems. And don't you think that systems have histories? And then they move from systemic racism to, well, you know, if we're going to acknowledge systemic racism, we certainly have to acknowledge that you are a beneficiary of white privilege. And if you're a beneficiary of white privilege, this means you suffer from whiteness. You can see the sort of step-by-step in growth. But the key is you don't go zero to 100 all at once. You start by by slow the pedal gets to the metal, most people have to be acclimated to it. And if every concession seems like a minor concession, pretty soon you move the really long way. And this is true for

virtually every social issue in the United States. I mean, how do we go from, you know, a time when, I mean, the force was controversial to men can be women and women can be men. I mean, it doesn't happen overnight. That takes a while. But it takes a lot of conciliation. It takes a lot of cowardice. And it takes a lot of incrementalism. Robert Reich just tweeted out, In November 1923, Hitler's attempted coup failed, but no one was held accountable. Yeah, they were. He went to prison. Ten years later, he took over Germany.

Trump's January 21 coup failed, but six and a half months later, Trump faces no consequences, and his co-conspirators are still in Congress. Is Trump an authoritarian? He used some strong man rhetoric because they just talk. Right. But, you know, in terms of what did he actually do? The answer, of course, is no. hysterically funny and pathetic when General Millie was talking about how this was like a

Reichstagfire situation and he's a Hitlerian figure. It's like, what? I mean, you know how historically ignorant you have to be in order to come up with that? First of all, it doesn't even make any internal sense. The rest of fire was set by a deranged communist and then used as an excuse by the Nazis in order to pass the enabling act. So what was Trump theory there? I'm going to send some of my friends over to set the capital on fire so I can then, what, declare myself total dictator? That doesn't even work internally. Beyond that, there was no institutional support. for anything that Trump was saying or doing. And beyond that, this is not Nazi Germany, circa 1932.

I mean, the reality of Hitler's rise is so wildly misunderstood by people who have, I mean, people have to understand that when it comes to Hitler's rise, the key factor in Hitler's rise, there were two major key factors in Hitler's rise that people tend to ignore. One is that Hitler was pushing against the communists at the time, and so there were a lot of people who felt the necessity to choose between one and the other. And the other is that had already been centralized, a term dictator. They'd already been operating under the auspices of minority governments with nearly dictatorial powers. Right.

That is not the case with regard to President Trump in any way, shape, or form. So the historically, the historical analogy just doesn't work in any way. But I guess if you say Hitler and over and over, then a president who was attempting to cut regulations and lower taxes suddenly looks like the guy who was trying to imprison every Jew and gasp them and invade half of Europe. I mean, that's how, you know, it's the God's-in-law argument. You know, you've lost when you started invoking Hitler. I want to take you to the Old Testament here for a second. And when God wants to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, two angels go in. And the amazing thing about this story is they're taken in for shelter.

And the mob doesn't, the mob is insisting. Not that they come out and say everything is okay what you're doing. instead, they must participate in what Gimora and Sodom and Gimorah are doing. And we're at that point now. It's no longer, hey, just let's be good to each other. Hey, that kind of hurts my feelings. Maybe don't say that. Now it's you must say the things I believe and you must participate in it.

Yeah, that's one of the more disturbing things that's happened. The way the left is one here is, again, a sort of incremental three-step process. step one was saying to people, you know, you need to be civil. Just be civil. You know, like when we have a political conversation, don't mention this inconvenient fact because it really insults me and I feel bad about it, so just don't do that. And people on the right, and Americans generally tend to want to be civil. And so they're like, okay, I guess I just don't say this quote-unquote offensive thing.

Then it turned into, well, speech itself is violence. If you go ahead and you say that, it's not just that I'm offended, it's that you have done an active violence against me and you must be shut up. You must be silence. And then that turned even further into silence is violence. This is it nonsensical. ridiculous thing that you heard during the Black Lives Matter protest last year, if you don't mirror exactly what I am saying, word for word, and I can change it on the dime, by the way, right?

It doesn't have to be consistent. There doesn't have to be an internal logic. If you don't mirror that word for word, you've committed an active violence. So in other words, if you're not part of the mob, then you ought to be targeted by the mob because you're performing an active violence. I think one of the ways that the right completely misses the vote is that we're constantly looking for the through line for the left. We're constantly saying, like, what's their internal logic?

What are they trying to accomplish? And the answer is power. There is no internal logic. Yeah. Ben Shapiro, thank you so much. I'd love to have you on for a podcast about the book when we have more time. I know you're busy today. The book comes out today, the authoritarian moment by Ben Shapiro. Ben, thanks so much. God bless.

Thanks, Glenn. Bye-bye. Really good book. The things that I've learned just from hearing him talk about it. And he goes into history in the book. Pick it up today.