The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guests: Chris Stewart & Brian Will | 1/9/24

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Glenn and Stu discuss Biden’s latest attack on Trump supporters and Michelle Obama’s pathetic admission about her fear of the outcome of the 2024 election. Entrepreneur Brian Will joins to explain how inflation and minimum wage are choking the life out of small businesses. Former U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) joins to explain why he’s pushing for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to be impeached for his recent hospitalization that surprised everybody.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Has continued his attacks on Donald Trump and his supporters. Now, this is something again. The New York Times just said that Donald Trump does, but apparently not Joe Biden. But let me just tell you what happened at his speech last night in Charleston, South Carolina. He said that Donald Trump and his supporters are defeated Confederates. Oh, so wait, we would be Democrats? After the Civil War, the defeated Confederates wouldn't accept the verdict of the war. They lost.

So they say they embraced what is known as the lost cause, the self-serving lie that civil war was not about slavery but about state rights. They call that the noble cause. That was a lie. Yes, Joe, it was a lie. It is really weird. But you would know it best because you're a Democrat. And that was the lie of the Southern Democratic Party. Next, we're living in an era of second lost cause.

again, there are some in this country trying to turn a loss into a lie, a lie that if allowed to live will once again bring terrible damage to this country. This time the lie is about the 2020 election. Let me say what others cannot. We must reject political violence in America. I agree. Like the clan, which was an arm of the Democratic Party, or BLM, which is an arm of the Democratic Party, he says always, not sometimes, but always. It's never appropriate. So I would assume that would be like, you know, BLM today. The violence of January 6th was the extension of an old playbook from the threats of violence and intimidation.

Now, there was a period there, but I would add just the kind of stuff we were talking about with the clan, which was a violent arm of the Democrat Party. I just thought throw that in. Hmm. Yeah, they don't doesn't get mentioned all that much

the history of these institutions. Yeah, no, it really, it's strange. It doesn't. Now, Michelle Obama came out and she said she is terrified by what may come out of the 2024 election. Is she giving a warning?

She's not, I mean, let me just, she's not saying that she's giving a warning about Donald Trump in 2024, is she? Yeah, she is. She is. That's the same thing the New York Times did today. Yeah. So she's on this podcast with Jay Shetty. The J. Shetty? Yeah.

Wow. Of course. Of course, you don't get Michelle Obama if you're not, if you're a different J. Shetty. Oh. She says, what's going to happen this next election? I am terrified about what could possibly happen. That's weird because so am I. Because our leaders matter.

Who we select, who speaks for us, who holds that bully pulpit. It affects us in ways sometimes I think people take for granted. Here she is, listen. The things that keep me up because you don't have control over them. And you wonder, where are people, where are we in this? You know, where are our hearts? What's going to happen in this next election? I am terrified about what could possibly happen because our leaders matter who we select,

who speaks for us, who holds that bully pulpit. It affects us in ways that sometimes I think people take for granted. Is he wearing a snuggy in that interview? He seems to be wearing a blanket with sleeves. Is it a snuggy? Is it a slanket? What is it? Because, uh, I'm serious.

You know, This is why... Because if you can do shows in Snuggies, I'm going to start doing the show in a Snuggie. I don't know that was allowed. I have to tell you, this is why people put their good money into signing up for Blaze TV, because they get the kind of deep questions like slank it or Snuggie,

which is it. And I don't think I've heard anybody else ask that, Stu. Congratulations. Thank you very much, Glenn. Yeah. Yeah. She said she knows too much because she was married to the president who knows everything about everything in the world. Wow. She listed wars in too many regions, the future of artificial intelligence, the environment, education, whether people will vote, people being too engrossed in their phones as other issues that keep her awake at night. Then they focus the discussion on what offends her, you know, and many times I've been in conversations,

and it's turned to that very familiar phrase. I wonder what offends Michelle Obama. And she spoke about it. And she dislikes injustice. Thank God somebody does. She dislikes ego, right? Greed. Don't you know it?

and racism. She condemned unfairness and bullies. And she also decried childish leadership in which somebody's just base and vulgar and cynical. You know, she's not cynical. The police don't always do you like that. White people don't always do you like that. That would be cynical. Anyway, she says she just wants to resonate good.

I want to be a face of reason and compassion and empathy. and that's much more important than my feelings because my feelings I can take care of those. She's on the road of being a Republican. Listen to that. Her feelings don't matter because she's in charge of those. That's the first progressive Democrat I've ever heard say that. She also talked about, and this is going to come as a surprise to you about being another. She said, you know, you learn how to be excellent.

the time because you can't be less, you know? And as she said, I just find it interesting that some people can be indicted a bunch of times and still run for office while black men can't. And I thought of that, I thought of that when her husband won the presidency two times in a row. I thought, boy, you know, I thought this was a country where a black man can't run for office. And I must have been mistaken. It's called oppression. Apparently. It's called a It's oppression. It's oppression. You know, only eight years in the White House. Do you know that they created that constitutional amendment limiting presidents of two terms just to stop the first black president?

That's why they did it. I know. It's sad. It's hard to believe. But it's true. It was a white guy that's, uh, he was really our first black president, um, FDR. Oh, really? FDR. Oh, okay.

Yeah. All right. He didn't know that. Mm-hmm. I always thought it was Clinton. No, he was second. But no. No.

He was the second. black president. Yes. And neither Clinton or FDR were black. But they were. But they, well, it depends on how they identified that particular term. I mean, this is the kind of one of his terms where he was a black president. And when he was a Native American president, one, he was, and he was a lesbian woman for one of his terms. Really, strange, because his wife was too. But anyway, this is the kind of thing that I think she's talking about the reason that she could bring to the table. Now, Stu, I mean, that's exactly how I would introduce her to the political process is getting her on some big show like the Jay Shetty show, which is anything but Shetty. You know what I mean? Yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

you're going to put him on a show with a host that's wearing a snuggy. And that's how you're going to launch the campaign. That's how you do it. Right. That's how you do it. That's how you do it. it. And, you know, I know you still think that, you know, I'm crazy and I might be crazy for saying that she, because she keeps saying she's not interested in it, you know, but, wow, she's concerned. And what kind of person are you that could save the republic, that your party would come to you and say, look, he clearly can't run. We can't, we can't start a new campaign right now with anybody else. And, you know, she might say, well, you've got a great qualified black woman in Kamala Harris. And I mean, you'd have to say, well, no, we just picked her for color.

She's not strong enough to be the president. Everybody hated her, even in our own party. And then she would remember and then she would go, oh, you know what, you're right. And I could be probably the only replacement because you can't replace him with another white man if you have a black woman. there on the side of the stage. Well, okay, I care about my country. My president will run it anyway. To be clear, I don't think you're crazy on this theory.

I think it's plausible, especially if things continue to go badly. I mean, you know what Joe Biden's approval rating is right now? On average, 38%. Holy cow. It's that high. I really would have thought it was lower than that. It is. I, wow. But like that is down. He's down from when it was terrible. Like this is really ugly.

Well, wait a minute. It wasn't Donald Trump's at like 39? Yeah, Trump's wasn't good either. Trump's always terrible on an approval ring, though, from the moment he walked into office. That was not the case with Barack Obama or Joe Biden. And it continues to go down for Biden. Things continue to get worse for his candidacy. And of course, he has other limitations that neither of those candidates had, including an. age that starts with an eight. If they could just, and I mean this sincerely, if they could just shut up or in prison anyone that would speak out against his policies or point out that, you know, they're not working. For democracy, right? For democracy, people would love him. Yeah. If he was the only choice, my belief is he'd get 100% of the vote, and that would show

real unity in this country. That's how democracy works. single person, one man, one vote, one available candidate. That's democracy, as it was outlined by our founders. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. So I don't know. I mean, I, so I don't think your idea of Michelle Obama making this, you know, his heroic run is, is implausible. I don't know that it's the most likely outcome, but I do think it's possible. Yeah, no, it's a long shot. Yeah. It's a long, It's a long shot, but it would be one that I think would win the election immediately. Unless she went out and she started talking to people.

They'd have to run it in that very democratic fashion of keeping her under lock and key, you know, kind of like they did with Joe Biden. Just, you know, once in a while she'd appear from the basement. But you couldn't have her actually speaking on her own because she hates America. And it's clear once you start to hear her. Yeah, can we investigate that a little bit? Because I think the assumption is because if you look at Michelle Obama's approval ratings, for example, occasionally that's polled. And they're very, very good.

I mean, she's overwhelmingly liked by the American people. Now, I don't understand that myself. It's the abs. It's the arms. Oh, yeah, the arms. Her arms are so beautiful. So whatever it is, she's got good approval ratings. Hang on just a second.

Hold on. Can we just think about her arms for a minute? Just a moment. Man, they were beautiful. And they still are, Glenn, in every way. I miss them. She's the most beautiful woman in the world. Wow.

I'm just... Sometimes you just get that... That sense of what that woman really is, you know? All woman. Just hear her roar. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. You've gone into restaurants lately, and you've been shocked at the price of anything.

soup, sandwiches to steak, anything, you can fall into what's going on. This is a scam. How can a BLT be 16 bucks? We wanted to get Brian Will on. He's a serial entrepreneur, two-time Wall Street Journal bestselling author, leading consultant in business and sales management. He's founded seven different companies across four distinct industries. He is currently, the head of a chain of restaurants. And they are the Derby Sports Bar, Cantina Loca, the Tavern House in Central City Tavern. You might have one in your town. He is also in his spare time, a member of the city council in the town of Alpharetta, Georgia. I hope we have time to talk about that a little bit. But he was just on talking about the price of a BLT on, Varney and company, and everyone on my staff, Brian, found that fascinating on how you broke that down.

How you doing, Brian? I'm good, Glenn. Thanks for having me. This is awesome. So can you break this down? Why should we look at the price of $16 for a BLT and say, okay, I understand it. It's reasonable. Yeah, this whole conversation, Glenn, start.

with a friend of mine who sent me this text when he was sitting in my restaurant saying, hey, Brian, I'm sitting here eating your BLT and it's $16. You know, it's only bacon, lettuce, tomato, and bread. And I said, you know, Dan, let me break this down for you. I want to give you some perspective. That sandwich might cost $16, but we've got $20,000 of rent in that building. We've got $6,000 a utility. We've got $60,000 of payroll.

And then we've got our general OPEX expenses that all, all have to get paid for out of the gross profit margin in that sandwich. And so we actually did a breakdown on that. If you'd like to hear this little breakdown. I do. I do. That $16 sandwich has about $5 of actual food cost, which leaves about $11 of gross profit. But out of that $1, $2 of that goes towards rent and utilities.

$2.50 goes towards, we call our fixed operational expenses like the TVs and the music and the mats and the towels and all that stuff. labor to make that sandwich was $4.50, which only leaves me a profit at $2. So on a $16 sandwich, I have $2 of actual net profit that I get to keep and less or until something breaks or something goes wrong. That's my gross potential net profit. So how many BLTs do you have to sell to be able to keep your doors open? Yeah, so I was laughing about that. If you take our $86,000 a month in general expenses, figure in a 30% food cost, we've got to sell 93,000 sandwiches a year to get to zero.

Every restaurant has a break-even point. The break-even point in that restaurant's about $1.5 million a year. So if I do $1,49,000 in revenue, I lose $1,000. Everything above $1.5 we can make a profit margin on. But if you never get to the $1.5, you just spin in your wheels. So what is changed? I mean, it's not just the price of food, is it? No, food has gone up, but our biggest increase in expenses has been labor. If you remember, obviously, when COVID hit, everybody's getting all these extended unemployment benefits,

when we came out of COVID and tried to bring people back, they didn't want to come back to work. Right. But we immediately went to a $15 minimum. And that's for kids coming out of high school. And this was three years ago. that's now jumped up to about a 1650. So I have people with zero experience, 18 years old come to work from me,

and we start them out at $33,000. Where our chefs are now at $60,000, $60,000, our managers are now at $70,000 to $80,000. So if you look at my restaurant three years ago, we were paying $500,000 for labor on $2.9 million of revenue. Today we pay $650,000 for labor on $2.5 million of revenue. my revenue is down 350 and my labor's up 150. And that's why we have to keep driving the price of these things up.

Everybody wants to get paid and they want a big salary. They want a living wage. But all that does is drive everything up. At some point, we still have to make a profit. This is what happened in Seattle, except they did it by choice. When Seattle raised the minimum wage, I don't remember what it was, I think $15 or $16 an hour, all the restaurants said, we can't afford this. And a lot of them left closed shop and left Seattle.

Some of them stayed. And some of them just went out of business because of it. But that's not the only cost. You now have food going up. You have labor going up. Rent is... Utilities went up 40%. 40%.

Just our gas and electric, right? Our insurance went up 40%. Everything is... I mean, the whole supply chain from us down, everybody's costs go up and that compounds. Why did insurance go up? 40%. Because they can? I mean, that's a good question. Because you have no choice but to buy it, because if you don't buy it, you can't stay in business. So it goes up. You know, it's crazy how much costs have gone up. So how do you see us weathering this? You know, business is interesting. I have a

picture in my office of a guy on a tightrope and he's got that big long bar right that goes on both sides and I always say we have to balance business owners are on this tightrope and you have to balance what you can charge on one end with what the consumer is willing to pay on the other and so as long as you can keep that balance you can stay on the type rope and stay in business but if you charge too much they stop coming you fall off if you don't charge enough you get more business at a loss you go out of business so there's always a balance and in our case we've made sure we put our in what we call high traffic areas. So we're getting, you know, organic traffic running around our restaurants, which helps us

drastically. But you look at these small operators that are out there, you know, fighting all these costs that don't have that organic type of traffic. And that's why they're going under. I mean, you're a serial entrepreneur. What do you hear from entrepreneurs that are just beginning today? I mean, it's a completely different world. Can you make it?

It is. It's a different world in a lot of ways, and I actually do a lot of sales and management training. And one of the other things we know in today's environment is there's so much information online that people can research almost anything before they ever walk in your door. And they already know what your competition's charging. They already know what they should be paying. And so, again, you're back to this balance of you either need to create something that

extremely unique that will drive people in and make them want to buy from you or your chances of success are diminished greatly. So I called COVID the great washout, Glenn. All the weak operators that used to be able to make it because we were in a booming economy. When COVID hit, it just washed out all those weak operators and only left the ones that are strong. Now, you've got people that are coming in behind us and trying to come in and undercut, but all they're going to do is lose all their money and go out of business and hurt the rest of us. It's, it's, it's an interesting time to be in business. But if you're a true entrepreneur, it washed out a lot of people who were just, you know, my dad used to have his own bakery. And that is hard keeping that

afloat, you know, a one little, one-man shop in whatever you're doing. And food is the worst at that. It wiped out a lot of people who were just working for themselves. Yeah. just working for themselves and only making enough money to live on and most of the people that got washed out didn't have any financial security behind them savings you know they just weren't able to weather that bump uh which is one of the things i teach entrepreneurs today is you better have enough security behind you that if the next covid comes along or if something weird happens you're not going to get wiped out of the drop of a hat we we laid off 150 people in one day in march of 2020 it was it was a horrible day your uh your thoughts of what's coming in 2020 Any insight on? Yeah. I've had this question a good bit, and I have friends in the M&A field, and I see everybody waiting to see what's going to happen with this election. We just don't know what's going to happen.

I think if, you know, if Biden gets elected again, he doesn't have to worry about getting reelected, so who knows what's going to happen, you know, with the people pulling the strings up there in Washington and what they're going to do. So I think we're in a tenuous time right now, particularly in small business, that we need to be very careful and we need to be keeping some powder dry to keep us safe just in case something else pops up.

If Donald Trump were to be elected, he doesn't go to jail and the left doesn't set the country on fire, better or worse for business? If he can start taking some of these regulations away, if he can start making it easy for us get those interest rates back down. I mean, the other issue we have, and I love this topic, I did a video on it the other day, about inflation. Inflation is going to affect us forever, right? We had a 5%, we had an 8%. Even if it's 3%, that doesn't mean prices are going down. Right. Right. That means they've just compounded, right? They're never going back down. Maybe they won't go up as much, but they're not going back down. People get

very confused on how that works. But if we can get the economy booming again to where people aren't afraid to spend their money and they aren't, you know, hoarding it trying to wait to see what's going to happen, then people go out and they'll have more fun. They'll spend more money and I think we'll all be okay. It's just take a little bit of time. Yeah. Brian, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Glenn, I appreciate you having me. You bet. Bye-bye. Brian Will, he's an entrepreneur and

explaining what is really going on. It's going to get harder and harder for people to see and easier and easier for politicians to create boogeymen and say, you know, it's these evil store owners. he's evil, whatever, when in reality, all of the regulations, just what's happening with meat

in California is truly terrifying. Stu, would you write down, I'd love to get somebody from, you know, the pork producers or the beef producers of America to explain to America the dilemma that they are in right now, chicken producers, anybody who's producing eggs, all of this. California just passed a law before the new year, and it's now in effect that animal pins have to be a certain size. If the pork and beef producers, pork producers say, if we have to put this in, then that's going to cost about $3,500 a head for every pig. and that would obviously put us out of business or raise the price skyrocket. And so they're put into this position to where they either are not going to sell to California, which is a big buyer, or they have to abide by California law.

And that will cost the entire country more money because they have to, build all of these different pens and barns and everything else. I personally, and I'm in a different situation than any of the other farmers or ranchers are, but I personally would say screw you, California. I'm tired of California dictating to us what we can and cannot do. That is a failed system. And why we're allowing it to drag all of us into that failed system, is beyond me. It's not going to last because it can't. Numbers are numbers. Math is math. It just

can't continue. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Now, Stu, I don't want to speak on a turn, but I have heard the reason Secretary of Defense, you know, he doesn't want to say why he was in the hospital. It was for elective surgery. And I've heard a lot of people joke about it. this. What is he having transgender surgery? I mean, why not just share what you have? And to be clear, that's wrong to do because that's not elective. Transgender surgery is the most important thing

you can do for your health. It's not an elective. This is. And so I understand that he was in for, I think, a fourth time for penile reduction surgery. He just wants it very, very small. And I think his exact quote was, Doc, make it smaller than it is when I'm in a cold pool.

And the first four or five times he did this, they couldn't get it small enough. And so he was in one more, take one more stab at it. I don't know if that's necessary per se. Is that confirmed this report? No, but I have it on, you know, pretty good, you know, pretty good sources. It's helpful. Yeah, thank you. Chris Stewart is with us now.

Hello, Chris. How are you? Glenn, that's twice you've made me really laugh this week, but how am I supposed to follow that kind of thing? Well, I don't, I didn't mean to make you laugh. I'm just trying to tell the truth. I think that's what he was in for, but I'm not entirely sure. A couple days ago, you gave us flowers out in the garden or something, and I was laughing as well, so it's good to be with you. Yeah, good. So, Chris, I mean, I immediately thought of you when I read this over the weekend. And because, you know, you know a lot about how the Pentagon works and, you know, how the military works. And I haven't seen a Secretary of Defense kind of go missing for a week and nobody really noticed. Have you?

Well, let's just say it's unusual. But who's surprised about this, Glenn? I mean, you talked about the judgment. I would add, in addition to it, it displaces poor judgment, the arrogance that this secretary has demonstrated again and again. But it's perfectly on brand for his leadership and for the Biden administration. And one thing I would emphasize, Glenn, that I think some of your listeners may understand, but not all of them. And that is the culture and the expectations of the military. They're different than it is in the civilian world.

You give military members tremendous trust because you give them. them tremendous power. But that demands certain behavior. And one of those is that you just don't show up at work. You know, without telling someone, without, you know, telling the people who are going to cover for you, without telling your boss. If a young sergeant or a young lieutenant did that, they'd be facing severe repercussions. And yet he didn't show up.

He didn't tell the assistant secretary, who, as everyone knows when I was vacationing in Puerto Rico, she didn't even know. And worse, he didn't tell his boss. I don't know, maybe he told Biden and maybe President Biden forgot, because that would be a possible explanation as well. But it's just so outside the norms of what you expect from any responsible person, let alone, for heaven's sake, the Secretary of Defense. Well, did, I mean, we are currently, you know, shooting down like they're clay pigeons, missiles from, you know, the, you know, the, the Houthis and the Iran proxies. I mean, our ships are kind of busy right now.

In a week, is there no thought that maybe somebody might call in and say, hey, what should we do? Yeah. Yeah, so not only the ongoing, you know, skirmishes we're having with the Houthis, which is a whole nother conversation, by the way, but, you know, there's also the efforts that we have in the war in Gaza. who's coordinating with the Israel Air Defense Ministers on those efforts. What about the fact that we had a strike into Baghdad during this week on January 4th?

Who coordinated that? I mean, that's the kind of thing that if you're going to strike in Baghdad, my understanding was that the Secretary defense would be the final arbiter for that decision and as a minimum would have been informed on it. And apparently that didn't happen. These are the kinds of things that you have to have leadership from inside the Pentagon, and it turns out that just simply wasn't happening. And by the way, Glenn, if you'll allow me, that's not the first time.

Because everyone, I mean, I've said the secretary should resign immediately after the debacle in Afghanistan, again after the kind of bloom. The fact that we have not met our recruiting goals, all of these things fall on his shoulders, he should have resigned two years ago. So who's actually running things, Chris? Yeah, people ask that question all the time, both about the White House and in some cases about the Pentagon. Well, I think absent or aside from his absence this last week that, you know, this general is running things. I've seen it reflected in the decisions they make or the lack of decisions or the poor decisions.

Now, if you ask about who's running the White House, I truly don't know. And we used to say that Glenn is kind of a joke, but now we say it very seriously. Because you look at this president and you know that he doesn't have the capability to be running the most powerful government in the world. So then who is? But there's no question. Secretary Austin's running the Pentagon, again, short of last week. And you see it reflected in the decisions that they make in the poor judgment that is now filtered down through the entire Pentagon, through the entire Department of Defense.

And it breaks my heart to see the institution that I spent much of my life serving. and so did my brothers and my fathers and now our nephews and nieces to see it so abused by by arrogance and judgment that just isn't up to what these fine young men and women deserve well i understand why he you know didn't want to talk about the penile reduction surgery um but if it wasn't that let's just say it wasn't that why not why not say why you're going in what's the big deal Well, and so, you know, if people, and I have an understanding of this, Glenn, as you know, that I recently resigned from Congress because of health concerns with my wife. So I'm sensitive to the fact that there, you know, in a day that is very, very public or when you serve in a public position, that, you know, there are sensitivities regarding health concerns. I get that. But you don't hide it. I mean, so maybe we don't need to know why he wants. women for elective surgery. But if you have a reaction that puts you in intensive care,

that's different. And that has to be discussed. And if you're not going to discuss the reasons why, and I think, again, being in intensive care just kind of demands an answer. But if you're unwilling to talk about that, you still have to tell people, here I am, and don't worry because my assistant secretary knows I'm here, no, she didn't. And don't worry because my boss, the President of the United States knows and has made accommodations, no, he didn't. I mean, that's the minimum that we would expect is communications about it. And one last thing on this, Glenn, and I think this is important, the Secretary doesn't disappear into a hospital and not have a large team of people know that.

I mean, he was certainly accompanied in the hospital with probably more than a dozen people, maybe several does it and none of them acted responsibly either some of them should have raised their hand and said hey the american people and a leadership at the white house deserves to know where we are today chris stuart is with us chris you've been a congressman uh you've you've worked uh in intelligence you have been um with um the uh the services for ever, you and your family. What do you look at now and say, this is something that keeps me up,

or this is something that I keep looking at and saying, well, that's good. There's some good news coming. Well, okay, let me do the good news, because I do think that we are on a tactical basis, which is we haven't won the war, but we've won a few battles. I do think we are turning the tide on something.

You mentioned earlier about ESG or, or, you know, some of the real, you know, kind of battles, social battles that we've had. And I think people are just exhausted by it. And frankly, I think they're sickened by it. And we are winning on a couple of those things. And I think we're going to, it's going to clearly be one of the primary conversations during the election.

And I think, again, we're winning some of those battles. At least we're slowing some of them down. But I think this year, Glenn, just has a potential to be, are just such a mess and it's going to hinge on the election. You know, Glenn, the last book I wrote that you and I've talked about, the kind of the premises is the contested election

where we truly have half the country who just says whoever wins, he's not legitimate. I will never recognize him as our president. And President Trump is going to be found guilty of some charges. It's just almost inevitable. We don't know which ones,

but he will be. And then the Democrats are going to say, look, he's a criminal. He can't be the President of the United States. Well, we know that's not true. The criteria to be the President of the United States is really simple. You've got to be 35 years old. You've got to be a U.S. citizen. And no state, no person, no other agency or organization can add requirements. That's it. And so the President's going to continue to run.

And the Democrats are already setting it up to say, well, two things. Number one is he's a Nazi. He's an authoritarian. And therefore, we can never live. let him serve. And the second is, you know, he's a criminal. And, uh, and I think at, meanwhile, the Republicans look at this and go, well, you all, the projection on this is just beyond irony about them accusing Republicans of being totalitarian when we've seen the history of what they've done. Uh, and I just plan about the election this year. I worry

about the chaos and the riots. Uh, I think it's going to make 2020 look like a, look like a garden party or at least potentially could. And then, uh, ultimately, putting us in a place where there's actual real uncertainty about who is the president. And I don't know how our country walks through that without some just real pain. And deep, deep scars. That would destabilize. I mean, if we were going through that, if I were China, I'd go into Taiwan right away. Yeah.

Because we would just not have the capability. So you'd lose, you'd lose that. any of the bad guys just come after us. I mean, we're entering that time I talked about in 2008, where all of our enemies will see that we are so weakened that without coordination, they'll just all look at each other and go now, go, go, go, go, go. 100%. 100%.

That's a great fear. And you have to recognize that these leaders do watch what's happening internally, and they do take measure of that. It is part of their dynamic. How will the U.S. respond? and how are they going to respond if they're divided or if they're chaotic or if there's uncertainty about who the actual president is? And by the way, the American people will be exhausted by this effort as well. And it's much harder for them to say, well, okay, while we're in the midst of all this,

yeah, let's go ahead and intervene in a war in the South China Sea. And here's something else to keep in mind with that, Glenn. That's really important. Most of the wars that we've been involved with for the last generation, very little sacrifice for most Americans. Now, for those people serving, it's incredible sacrifice, but most Americans, it's not. But a war with China, for no other reason than this, the best analysis shows a 9% reduction in GDP from a war in the South China Sea. To give that some measure, there was a 7% reduction during the Great Depression. Every one of us will feel it if we have a war with China.

And it won't be the kind of thing where we think, gosh, I pray, for our soldiers because they're over there fighting a war. Every one of us will be praying it intensely because every one of us will be affected by it. There's no way we could go in and protect Taiwan at this point. Is there? Yeah, there actually is, Glenn. I mean, it's very, very difficult. I mean, the hope is that we can manage a deterrence, which would, you know, convince China.

It's just not worth the cost, which is, of course, what we're trying to do now. but you know if you think that you know or someone who would suppose well you know Taiwan won't be nearly destroyed in the effort and as example of that some of these exquisite chip manufacturers where the world relies on them

they are placed in a position geographically where the focus of the war will be there's very little chance that they would survive and harmed and so when you say well you know when we really go in and protect Taiwan yeah we can probably protect the island from being actually militarily taken over, but it's going to, again, it's going to come at a real cost.

What happens if you lose those chip plants? What's the world look like? Well, it's very, very different, obviously. I mean, because those are used not just in our products, they're used primarily in the manufacturing of, you know, millions of products. So that's one of the reasons that you get this 9% reduction in GDP, and it's not just the U.S. It's globally that that has that impact.

And it takes years to build that. I mean, it would take 10 years for us to build up that capacity that we would lose. The good news is China, it will take them a generation. They have no capability, or very limited capability to build it up. It would not be in President Xi's lifetime. So they would be hurt more than we would, but still, it would be a dramatic impact on the global economy. Is it reasonable to say, just let them have it? just let them take it.

Why defend it? Let them take it. Yeah. They can control all of those chips, those chip plants. Yeah. Some people argue that. And the interesting thing, too, Glenn, is that we're going to see what Taiwan thinks next week because they're going to have their election.

And there are different views on that. If you do polling in Taiwan, there's a number of them, about 30% of them. We say, yeah, let's just go to China. It's not that big of a deal. I think it would be a catastrophe for us to let that happen, though. Yeah. Chris, thank you so much. We'll say, in the

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