The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guests: Gov. Ron DeSantis & Spencer Klavan | 5/25/23

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joins Glenn to discuss the launch of his 2024 presidential campaign and his vision for the future of America. The American Mind features editor Spencer Klavan joins Glenn to ...discuss his new book, “How to Save the West.” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey shares the success of the Target boycott and explains why we need to double down.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to aboard Via Rai. Embarked and profite. Embarked and relax. Syrotay. Bukkinet. Oh, that also. And profite.
Starting point is 00:00:13 Viaray, La Voie Korn Mewa. I think this is kind of a newsbreaking show today, podcast. Yeah, there's a guy on that announced he's running for president. Yeah, just last night. And he is,
Starting point is 00:00:23 this must listen to a podcast and interview on the podcast. Yeah. Get some interesting. hints as to what his strategy and approach is going to be in this primary. Rhonda Sanchez, of course, joins us today. Really good. And we also tie some things together that just don't make sense and try to use the scientific method to take you through.
Starting point is 00:00:45 We have the son of Andrew Claven on, who's written a new book about how to save the West. It's really good. And Ali Stucky on Target. So don't miss any of it. Brought to by Relief Factor. If you're somebody who's living in pain, don't. Don't give up hope. Let me ask you, if you say you've tried everything, will you just try one more thing?
Starting point is 00:01:10 Try for three weeks, take it as directed, relief factor. 1995. Doesn't work for everybody. About 70% of the people turn around and order it month after month because they're like me. I was in massive pain out of it now because of relief factor. Relieffactor.com. Call 800, the number four, Relief factor. The 1995 three-week quick start, ReliefFactor.com.
Starting point is 00:01:32 Feel the difference. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Welcome to the Glenn Beck program. Governor Ron DeSantis from Florida announced yesterday. He is formally announced that he is running for president of the United States. And so it begins. And it's going to be an interesting 18 months. Welcome to the program.
Starting point is 00:02:05 Governor DeSantis, how are you, sir? I'm doing great, Glenn. Thanks for having me. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Enjoyed it in not the first 20 minutes. That must have been incredibly frustrating for you with the technical problems, but it was the largest audience gathered on Twitter. Yeah, I mean, I see like, I didn't really know what was going on because they Twitter handled all of that. And they were just getting so many people above and beyond what they've ever gotten that I think it kind of melted, the servers, but they were able to correct it, and we were able to do an announcement that I think, you know, obviously I laid out the case at the beginning for five or six minutes, but then we were able to talk about actual issues that people should care about. And I think
Starting point is 00:02:55 it's now up to eight or nine million people have viewed it across some of the platforms that have featured it. And obviously, when Elon's involved, you get a lot of buzz out of it. So we're getting huge feedback and raising money and doing all that, which is great. We were talking earlier today, Stu and I, about this choice that you have always had this approach where you don't care what the New York Times says. You're not sitting down trying to get, you know, a puff piece out of the New York Times. You know you're not going to get one, so you just ignore them. And I think that's really, really smart, but very different.
Starting point is 00:03:29 This, too, I think is going to be remembered as the Clinton MTV or, or, or, you know, Arsenio Hall program. This is really smart to do. Does this, is this assigned the end of the mainstream media going right straight to people? Well, I think what Elon's done is he's opened up Twitter. I mean, the social networks when they first came on the scene, had a lot of potential because we could go around legacy media and we could converse with ourselves. And that was a big threat to them. And so they really helped lobby companies like Facebook to start censoring. And then it got to the point where not only were they tried to enforce a narrative, the tech companies were colluding with federal agencies like the FBI and the CDC to censor and stifled dissent. And so Elon, I think,
Starting point is 00:04:19 has put his money where his mouth is, gotten one of those platforms, and opened it up. So I think open platforms are good for conservatives because it allows us to go around the filter. But I do think we have a huge battle on our hands about tech censorship writ large. What Elon's done is great, but how many people are worth $250 billion or they could afford to just put $54 billion down to buy a social platform? And so tech censorship, I think, is going to continue to be an issue. I think we've dealt with it in Florida. We're going to do more as president actually means something because you can't let the government subcontract out censorship to Silicon Valley. say you still have a First Amendment.
Starting point is 00:05:04 Okay, so let me talk to you about the government. FBI, DOJ, IRS, NSA, CIA, ATF, everything. Even the Capitol Police now are an intelligence gathering agency. How do you even run a campaign when you know the all-of-government approach to the last election? How do you, how do you, if you win, how do you dismantle this? Because it's, it's almost like a unplug it and plug it back in and reset it to factory settings. I mean, it's cleaning house. And I think that this is a fundamental problem.
Starting point is 00:05:47 So we will look at like an example of weaponization, which is obviously many examples. But that's kind of the end point. Like, why are we here? And the reason that we're here is because we have these agents. that have been detached from constitutional accountability. There was never supposed to be a fourth branch of government, but Congress has not held them accountable with the power of the purse or with legislating more precisely.
Starting point is 00:06:12 And presidents have not been willing to wield Article 2 power to discipline the bureaucracy. So I think I'll come in and on day one, we'll be spitting nails. I understand, and all your listeners should understand, that if we do everything right, if we're disciplined, if we're strong as anyone could be, it still takes a two-term project. I think it takes eight years to be able to reconstitutionalize this government. But the question it raises is, do we govern ourselves or do we not? Because right now, the most significant issues tend not to be resolved by our elected representatives.
Starting point is 00:06:48 They're done by these bureaucrats and through these agencies. government. Now, what you have with lack of accountability, you just have a consolidation of power amongst people that all have the same worldview. And so their worldview is different than our worldview, and they view people like us as factions that they want to exert power over. And so the weaponization, I think, flows from human nature. So what would I do? You know, day one, for FBI direct brainer, you've got to do that. I'll have an attorney general that has a back that recognizes if you are doing your job properly, you are going to be pillar times in CNN. And so if that's not something that you're comfortable with, then don't even apply for this job. Understand you're going
Starting point is 00:07:42 into the Lions Den, these people do not want to give up this power willingly. And so they're going to smear you. They're going to attack you. So I think getting the personnel right, if you can't do that, then it's just not going to work at all. Second thing, I think, is you've got to be willing to use Article 2 authority to its fullest extent. The idea that some FBI agent can collude with a tech company to censor like Hunter Biden, you should be firing these people. You have the authority to do it. Yes, it'll be contested. They'll sue you. But who gets the Article 2 power, the person that wins the electoral college or some middle managing bureaucrat in the IRS or the FBI? So asserting that authority, making sure that you have political control over those agencies.
Starting point is 00:08:31 That is a huge battle. It's something you've got to be disciplined about. It's something you've got to be strategic about. And it's not something that anyone's really tried to do because, I mean, it's like trench warfare. And you've got to be ready on day one. And incidentally, who's in, you know, a step or two below that across all these agencies. And I think you need to have thousands of people ready to go.
Starting point is 00:08:59 So are you making, you know, one of the things that really, bothers me about the Republicans is the Democrats were gaming and putting everything into, you know, the Obama bill when he walked in, that thing was 2,000 pages long. They had worked on that for years. Are you assembling teams and talking about what to do and so you could just launch if you would win? Absolutely. And so we're working with allied conservative organizations who are already collecting resumes from people around the country. And I will have a message if I'm in, you know, if I'm in Nevada, I'm going to say, look, some of you who are in this audience, you may need to pick up your family and move to Washington, D.C. for two, four, six years because you can't just
Starting point is 00:09:51 recycle everybody from D.C. It's not going to change if that's the case. And so you really need to have most of these people descending on D.C. from outside the country. country. What we're also going to do is I'll issue a directive to all these agencies that they need to reduce the footprint of their agencies in D.C. by at least 50%. Oh, my gosh. Because I think what's happened is, you know, the government, the size of it is one thing, of course, but the consolidation of it in Washington, I think has been totally in Washington, D.C. It votes 95% Democrat. I think Trump got four or five percent of the vote in 2020. And I think the founders would look at that, and I think they would see like that is a huge,
Starting point is 00:10:42 huge problem. So reducing the government overall, but whatever government you have, we want less consolidation in D.C., and I think that that will make a difference. So, Governor, the one thing that Donald Trump will have going for him in spades is the economy. People will trust him on the economy. He's already done it once. He's known as a businessman.
Starting point is 00:11:07 What are you bringing to the table? to this all-out war on the American dream. Corporations have been weaponized, red tape, all of the stuff that's going on. You'll have the Fed against you, the big banks. How do you change the economy? Well, look, I would just say push back a little bit. I mean, I think he did great for three years,
Starting point is 00:11:32 but when he turned the country over to Fauci in March of 2020, that destroyed millions of people's lives. And in Florida, we were one of the few that stood up, cut against the grain, took incoming fire from media, bureaucracy, the left, even a lot of Republicans, had schools open, preserved businesses. And so Florida, since COVID, has outperformed virtually any state in the country when you look at all these significant metrics. I mean, we're booming.
Starting point is 00:12:00 We've got people moving in here. Wealth is coming in here. And so I think when people look back, you know, that 20-20 year, was not a good year for the country as a whole. It was a situation where Florida started to stand alone. So I think that that's important contrast. Now, going forward, yes, you rip up what Biden's done on day one with things like energy. They are trying to price middle-class people out of having a middle-class standard of living.
Starting point is 00:12:29 We're not going to force people to buy electric vehicles. We're going to make sure that people have a choice to have affordable transportation. we absolutely reduce federal spending. We're going to fight with the Congress on that. I mean, I think the debt has gone up under both Republican and Democrat. I mean, we act like it's just Biden, you know, went up $8 trillion the debt under Trump as well. And so we've got to stop doing that. That is absolutely driven the inflation since March of 2020 with all the borrowing and spending.
Starting point is 00:13:00 I also think we need to have the Federal Reserve focus on stable the economic central planner. You look at how much money they've printed since COVID. And so you need a major overhaul with the Federal Reserve. And then, yes, it's quite bad for the average American because they're pursuing an ideological agenda to achieve ideological left-wing goals that are going to make it harder for the average American family to make ends meet. May I ask you a question? First of all, we are doing sit downs with each candidate. You've already done one, but as governor not as a candidate. Will you sit down and just talk about your policies with me?
Starting point is 00:13:50 Oh, yeah, of course. Absolutely. Would you be for a debate or a roundtable hosted by, for, for instance, us that would not necessarily get the backing of the Republicans? I think the Republican Party controls these debates so much than we keep going back to the mainstream media. And I don't understand why. You guys should absolutely do a debate, and the RNC should sanction it. I mean, here's the thing, Glenn, with corporate media. Some will say, because I say they shouldn't be involved in our process because they're hostile to us as Republicans.
Starting point is 00:14:35 They have a partisan agenda, which is fine. it's a free country. And people say, oh, well, you just don't want them to ask Republicans tough questions. No, their gotcha questions are not tough questions. Their questions are designed to further a narrative. Correct. Their questions, though, are not illuminating to Republican primary voters because they're not one of us. And so when you have people who live in kind of our world, you are going to be asking the tougher questions.
Starting point is 00:15:02 They're not going to be gotcha questions, but they're going to be substantive, and they're going to require candidates to actually go beneath a talking point to talk about their vision for the country on these various issues. And so I think you guys should do it. I'd love to be a part of it, but I absolutely think the RNC should sanction it because you've seen what happened in 2015 or 16 with some of those debates. It was a mockery what these legacy media outs are doing. And their whole goal is to try to make the Republican candidates look as ridiculous as possible. Right. They do not want us to be to look like, you know, we're serious people.
Starting point is 00:15:42 They want to be able to plow the field to get Biden reelected. So we know that that's their agenda. So why would you want to give them a platform to be able to be involved in our process? I could tell you in Florida, in all seats that were open seats, Republicans ended up winning, and there were primaries in all of them. We sanctioned debates with the state party. and we had conservative journalists and moderators doing debates.
Starting point is 00:16:07 And guess what? They were great. They were great. We're not going to care about in our party. We're discussed. you, and I'd love for all your folks out there. Invest with us at ronnasanis.com. We'd love to have your support. I pledge.
Starting point is 00:16:42 You nominate me. We will win. We'll go in on day one, and we'll get all this done. Very good. Thank you very much, Governor. God bless. Thanks. God bless.
Starting point is 00:16:52 This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and don't forget, rate us on iTunes. Spencer, how are you, sir? Glenn, I'm doing so well. It's great to be here. I was listening to you talk about me, before the break, I was thinking, who's this guy he's talking about? Terrifying. I promise, I'm not that scary. I know we've met before, haven't we? We met at your dad's house, dad and mom's house.
Starting point is 00:17:16 That's right. Yeah. That's right. Years ago, and I remember thinking, boy, these parents of this man, they are amazing. And now reading your book, I have to tell you, I love your father. I love him to death. he has got to be just beaming with what you have written. This is brilliant, Spencer, really is. I'm very touched by that. Thank you. I was extremely lucky in both of my parents, my mom and my dad.
Starting point is 00:17:49 My father, of course, disavows all ownership over me, and we like to joke that we're not related to one of them. No, I learned a great deal of what I know from him, And in part, I wrote this book out of the love that he instilled in me of great literature and of Western sense. So let's talk about it. You break up the saving of the West into five different categories. The crisis of reality, the crisis of body, the crisis of meaning, the crisis of religion and the crisis of regime. you start with reality and it's just, it's so spot on.
Starting point is 00:18:31 Can you take us there first? Absolutely. Yeah. Let me say a little bit for a second about what I mean by the word crisis, because I think that's one of the most overused words in the world. You know, you wake up every morning and there's a supply chain crisis and a COVID crisis and any number of other things. And, you know, of course, many of those things are quite serious and troublesome.
Starting point is 00:18:52 But when I use the word crisis, I'm drawing on this Greek idea, which is where the word comes from. The Greek verb crino means to judge or to make a decision. And so a crisis, a crisis, is a time for choosing. It's a moment of being presented with two fundamentally unreconcilable ways of looking at the world. And so when I talk about this crisis, hang out just a second. Let me just say the audience, the whole book is like that. And it's fantastic. Anyway, go ahead.
Starting point is 00:19:22 That's, uh, here I am. This is my Jan. No, I, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you know, this, once you start to see this, once you start to see this, you understand that underneath the kind of daily news cycle stories that we're constantly in dated with. We haven't really connected ourselves to the deeper questions that are at stake. You know, you hear about things like the metaverse and virtual reality, which is how the book starts. Or you hear about, you know, all this new kind of tech and the strange things that are happening. And what this stuff is really doing is, it's forcing us to questions that have wrestled and thought with this stuff. We don't have to face it just based on what the CDC or the W.A.F. says tomorrow or Dr. Fauci comes up with five minutes ago. We actually have resources for dealing with this. And whenever we start to think about these profound questions is the crisis of reality. And that's, is there anything that is absolutely true and absolutely false no matter who says otherwise? Or is it all just kind of my truth, your truth? And this is one of the most ancient questions in philosophy.
Starting point is 00:20:46 It's how the book begins because I think it's the first question you have to answer before you correct. So can you, I mean, you lay out the case so well. Can you give a two-minute version of reality and the collapse of reality and what we're really, we should be asking ourselves? Yeah, at the beginning of Western thought, there has been this temptation to say, well, how can we really know, anything that's true or false. And the temptation is always that if you, if you don't have to say that a man is a man and is good and wrong is wrong, then you can do all sorts of things. You can get distorting reality. But the thing that I argue in the book is house on this stuff. People think that they can say, oh, well, it's just my truth and your truth when it comes to, you know,
Starting point is 00:21:47 morality, but I want to fight for social justice and I want to believe in the good and the virtuous. Well, the thing about it is, if you're talking about, if you want to do anything good or virtuous, you have to believe there's such a thing as goodness and virtue. And that means that there actually is truth. We can know it and grappling for power with one another. So the crisis of meaning, we have lost meaning of words and of life. Talk about that. When you talk about meaning, you're saying that the words we use aren't just, you know, word games. They're not just for fun.
Starting point is 00:22:27 they're actually referring to something outside of ourselves, outside of the human body, outside of just our little minds and the way we happen to want to live our lives. And the reason that this is so difficult for people is that if you're talking about things that are outside of yourself, you're ultimately going to get to the thing that is highest above you, that is most outside of you. That's the supernatural, and that's the divine. And we've been sold this bill of goods that, you know, God and theology, this is a kind of backwards outdated superstition. Nobody believes in that anymore. And the more we do that, the
Starting point is 00:23:01 blinder we become to existing just because we're doing. And so we become these kind of blind worshippers of, you know, the science or BLM or whatever we want to bend the need to. And we don't realize that we've just become pagan worshippers by another name. And so to really recover a sense of meaning that won't inflame back into our lives. So we have just you know, we see half the country. And there's a lot of people, like for instance, I think Elon Musk is one of these. You have a lot of really great people who are probably more classical liberals that have looked at things and went, okay, wait, there's no evidence. In fact, all the evidence goes in the opposite direction.
Starting point is 00:23:58 We've got to stop this. And they're not changing, you know, they're not suddenly becoming conservatives. but half of the country is just locked in on things that do not make sense. They didn't make sense in theory, and now we're seeing the fruits of it all across the country. What is happening to them and how do we reconnect? Well, I think that those people that you're describing who are, you know, I would say enthrall to a kind of woke dogma, those people are being offered in alternative religion. And it doesn't call itself a religion, but it has all the characteristics of a religion.
Starting point is 00:24:39 It involves begging for forgiveness. It involves this ultimate kind of quest for apocalyptic utopia where everything is going to come out okay and the world is going to be cleansed in a divine fire. It has all the hallmarks of religion because people are craving, craving something that gives meaning and direction to their lives. And I think that as conservatives, as people that think this stuff doesn't make any sense, we have to recognize that we're not just going to argue people out of this by presenting them a budget sheet by saying, oh, the economy is going to go better if you do it this way rather than that way. What we actually have to say is the thing that you're yearning for, the meaning, the significance, the passion that you are yearning for in this woke madness, the reality of it, the truth of it is in. the great tradition, is in the divine truths of Scripture, is in the great adventure of philosophy. We've got to present this stuff as the joy that it is, and that's cultural, that's spiritual, that's not just political. So I think that, you know, the right and even just normal people
Starting point is 00:25:46 that can see this stuff is going terribly wrong, we're going to have to offer a countervailing vision, a vision of the great tradition and the great adventure that we're all on of carrying that flame forward, because that's the only thing that can answer. or the real needs of the human heart. Spencer Claven, the name of the book is How to Save the West. Spencer, if you don't mind, hang on for 60 seconds. We'll come back with more with How to Save the West. It's available wherever you buy your books.
Starting point is 00:26:13 This half hour is brought to you by Good Ranchers. This summer, it's not only time to get up and fire up that grill. It's time to make everybody on the block go, what, who is cooking? What, that smells? Yeah, yeah. I like to do it. If I have a neighbor like stew, vegan, oh, I put my grill right at the fence, right at the fence.
Starting point is 00:26:36 I'm not for him, but for everybody else in the family that he is depriving. I have a grill. I grill all the time. I'm not vegan. There's so many mistakes in this analogy. I can't even, I can't cover them. Who are you going to buy? Who are you going to believe?
Starting point is 00:26:49 Him or me? That's a good point. You come here because you know who's telling you the truth. Most of the time. Some of occasionally. Yeah. occasionally. Anyway, good ranchers. Good ranchers has American beef from American ranchers. You're going to love this beef. It's so good, so tender. All comes from local farms and ranchers.
Starting point is 00:27:10 Ranchers. It also, you're doing good by going to good ranchers. They donate 10 meals for every box ordered 10 meals to Americans in need. That's over a million meals so far. So you're doing good while you're eating well, you're having great beef, and they have a special $30 off of any box at good ranchers.com. Plus, here's the extra added benefit. You've heard of this thing that is totally transitory called inflation. If the price of beef keeps going up and, oh, it will, you've locked in your price. So as long as you're doing business with good ranchers, you lock in your price of the meat. meat right now. American meat delivered to your door. Good ranchers.com. Use the promo code back. Save 30 bucks. Good ranchers.com promo code Beck. 10 seconds. Station ID.
Starting point is 00:28:14 Spencer, you're the, my favorite kind of intellectual. You don't lord it over anybody's head. And even though there is, there is one sentence in your book that I think has three words that I've never heard of before. I still, I get it. You're not talking over people's heads. You get it. And I just, I think, Go ahead. I actually did not go to grad school for the purposes of feeling better than everybody else.
Starting point is 00:28:42 I think that puts me in a vanishingly small minority. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. It does. You're not. For us, right? I mean, yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:49 You're not spouting knowledge to show everybody how smart you are. You are connecting the dots and telling stories that, you know, most of us haven't learned or we learned a little bit and forgot. And you've thought deeply about them. and we are at a time. I've been saying this forever. We have to define what life is because AI is coming and people will say that's alive.
Starting point is 00:29:16 So what do you do? But if it's alive, are you a slave owner by keeping it and we're having it work for you for free? Should it vote if it's a lot? I mean, we are going to have to re-answer all of the most basic. questions. And I think that's what your book gets to. That's absolutely right. Thank you. Yeah. Well, it speaks actually to what you were saying about not lauding the great books or the canon over people. That's incredibly important to me. That's, you know, really personal from my perspective, because these things, these books that
Starting point is 00:29:54 sit up on the shelf and we kind of think of them as, you know, big scary words, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nickinian ethics, you know, we treat them as if they're beautiful. We treat them as if they're beyond us or even maybe they're kind of, you know, outdated or they're not worth reading. And we've been told this, but it's got to go. And for me, growing up in a house filled with these books, one thing I really quickly realized is that these great minds are not there to intimidate us. They're actually our greatest friends in the world. They're there to teach us about what it means to be human and how to be good at being human. And that's not something for eggheads like me to specialize in.
Starting point is 00:30:37 That's something for everybody to care deeply. Find so much more sanity and common sense than you will from our kind of modern gurus on a lot of this stuff. And what's amazing is you find that you are not alone. That, I mean, I remember when I first, I had to be 30 when I first started reading Plato. I mean, really reading it to learn something. And I was shocked at how relevant it was. It was like, oh my gosh.
Starting point is 00:31:09 I'm struggling with that now. Oh, my gosh, I understand that problem. And we lose that because our history has been so poorly taught that we think these things are just incredibly boring. But the answers are all there because these are eternal truths, or at least the search for an eternal truth. you say save the West and we are looking at a time where it looks like America could, I mean, just go down at any time. Is there anything about this time that gives you hope that you're seeing that we are different than the past? Or is it kind of inevitable? questions that I have wrestled with myself and I know probably everybody listening to us right now
Starting point is 00:32:09 is worried about this very thing. What's going to happen to us? And a lot of the times this gets framed in terms of like, are you an optimist or are you a pessimist? Do you think everything is going to go great or everything is going to go poorly? And one thing I've realized is that both optimism and pessimism are kind of mistakes because they're predictions about the future. If you're an optimist, you think everything's going to go well. Maybe you don't work hard to preserve of the great tradition. If you're a pessimist, you think it's going to go badly. Why would you do do anything? And so my question always is, where do you put your hope? Where does your hope why? Because hope is actually one of the central Christian virtues. And my hope is in this tradition
Starting point is 00:32:50 that I am delivering, which has endured both the rising and the falling of great nations. It doesn't matter, it's a matter of indifference. It doesn't mean it's a matter of indifference what happens in our politics. It just means that the things of the world, which are beyond our control, are going to transpire, you know, whether we choose them or not. That's how it works. What's in our control is the preservation of the Western tradition, of virtue of the small, human-sized, face-to-face, reason, prudence, these sorts of things, which people like Plato talk about, they take place at the dinner table. They take place as everything seems to be going terribly wrong on the world stage, the more people invest in their states, in their towns, in their families,
Starting point is 00:33:44 and their churches, the more we start to see that actually, you know, the West is not some grand narrative that's outside of our understanding or control. The West is us. I have to thank you. Please tell your father, he should have laid claim to you and then tell your mother, she did a great job of raising you. It's fantastic. Fantastic.
Starting point is 00:34:07 Thank you. How to Save the West. You want real answers, really well thought out answers, how to save the West available everywhere. I want you to hear from CNN the corporate cost of culture wars. They're asking, should businesses back away from this? Because what happened to Bud Light and what's currently going on with Target? Listen to the analysis.
Starting point is 00:34:37 What advice could you give companies that sort of get swept up in this? Well, the issue is who are you beholden to? Are you beholden, you're beholden to many different stakeholders, but in particular, you're beholden to your investors. And investors are not showing, are not pulled back from looking at how companies. There's a lot more on this, but let me just, let me stop it there. You're beholden to many stakeholders, okay? That's ESG talk. And you're really, you have to answer to the shareholders.
Starting point is 00:35:15 So who are the shareholders of Target? You ready? Vanguard with 9%. BlackRock, 9%. State Street, 8%. Then another Vanguard fund with 3%. Then Wells Fargo, then Bank of America, then another Vanguard 500 index fund.
Starting point is 00:35:38 they're only talking about 12 people. You've got maybe 12 people that are really diehard into ESG at the top of these companies. And they're the ones telling these companies, you do this. Good luck with that, Target. Allie Stucky is with me now from Blaze TV. Hi, Ali. How are you? I know you've been all over this.
Starting point is 00:36:06 And it has been shocking. I walked into Target last Friday and I didn't know if it had been going on. Apparently it had just gone up. And I looked at my wife and I said, we are not shopping here. Yeah. This is way over the line. Right. Right.
Starting point is 00:36:23 And apparently I wasn't alone with that. Yeah. You know, some people started boycotting a long time ago. I started boycotting a year ago. So I was even kind of late to the game in some ways. Some people were boycotting when they were allowing men into women's restrooms, which they were ahead of the game on that. But I started boycotting last year when I saw that they were selling in the name of Pride Month these compression tops,
Starting point is 00:36:44 which they're selling again this year, for young girls who want to pretend to be boys, to look like boys. And I just thought there's really no more wicked message than that, that your body is bad, that God made a mistake with you. And we will help you cover up the body that God gave you so that you can pretend to be something else. Like how self-loathing is that? And then now, as you've already talked about, they have the same thing for boys with the tucking swimsuits and all that. And I just said, you know what, I don't boycott everything. I don't divest from every corporation that doesn't agree with all my values, but I'm already spending too much money at Target.
Starting point is 00:37:16 Those Target runs end up, you know, racking the bill with things that you don't really need. And I can't spend that much money on a company that is directly opposing everything that I am fighting for. So I know it sounds difficult, but I stopped shopping there a year ago and I haven't looked back. I have to tell you, I think if this becomes a business. bud light thing, the entire thing begins to fall apart because bud light expected a hit and then turn it around. But if people start to look at Target like I now look at Target and go, you are an enemy to my family. Yes. Then things begin to change. When somebody walks into the kitchen
Starting point is 00:38:00 with a Target bag and somebody else says, you shopped at Target? Right. That's when it's over. Yep, absolutely. and they just took it a step too far. Even for the people who are like, okay, I can tolerate the rainbows. That's fine. It's one segment, whatever. But when you're talking about bathing suits, meant to cover up male genitalia,
Starting point is 00:38:22 for pretty young boys it looks like, depending on the product that you're looking at, I mean, really, if you're associating with that. And I just want to say, because it's really suburban women, suburban moms that are propping up target. And I would say a lot of Christian women, A lot of women go there specifically for Chip and Joanna's Magnolia Line.
Starting point is 00:38:41 That's another one people should be writing to Chip and Joanna and saying, are you seeing what's going on? How can you remain silent with a partner that is doing this? I mean, I know they have contracts and it, you know, something you walk away from, but you should at least speak out. Right. And, you know, it's not like they don't speak out about other things because a few years ago, after the whole George Floyd debacle. They did make statements about, you know, the dangers of racism and white supremacy and doing better and doing the work. So they're okay with speaking out about some social justice issues.
Starting point is 00:39:17 But guys, you have represented yourself as strong Christians, as defenders of the Christian faith. And family. And family. And so at this point, I do think that their silence is strange. Yeah. So do you think this is something that we've seen the biggest part of? or do you think this becomes a bud light thing? I think that as long as those of us who have a microphone
Starting point is 00:39:41 or anyone who has influence, whether it's small or large, continues this, continues to double down. Don't take their little statements. They're moving the segments to other parts of the store as, oh, we won. No, you double down. I'm asking people at least for the month of June. And I know some people think that they're totally dependent on Target and that's another conversation for another day.
Starting point is 00:40:01 At least for the month of June, women, Christian women, suburban moms, do not shop at Target at least for the month of June. I think that can make a difference. I will tell you, they will wait it out. But Bud Light is now six weeks into it. Is that right? Six, seven weeks? Yes.
Starting point is 00:40:20 Six weeks. And they're down 30% or 29% now. And they're freaking out now. They expect us because we don't do this. They expect us just to go along. And I think we've hit a turning point in all of this to where people with Bud Light, it doesn't make sense that we didn't do anything about Nike. And yet here comes Bud Light and all of a sudden there's something that has happened in the minds of Americans.
Starting point is 00:40:54 And I'm hoping that this is the next shoot-a-fall because if it happens to target and Bud Light, the number one beer in America, it happens to those two. It will put all corporations on notice. Something's changed. We're not, they're not going to take it. Look, the idea of boys being able to become girls and vice versa and all of the bodily mutilation that we've seen come from that, whether you consider yourself an independent or whether you're a Christian or not, that's just too far for people. I mean, obviously as a Christian, I'm for traditional marriage and all of that. but even just for the non-religious, non-conservative person, the idea of a little boy being told to talk is just too far. It's insanity.
Starting point is 00:41:39 And I think that's why. I think that's why it's changed to this year. I think that's why there's more vitriol and because there's a lot of disgust and a lot of depravity that people don't want to be a part of. It's evil. It's evil. And it is so, it is a slap against the face of every woman, every girl. to bind, would anyone go to a place that's like, hey, women, you should bind your feet like they used to in China? Right.
Starting point is 00:42:10 No, we know that's horrible. You now want to bind women's breasts? This is so far over the line that, and then on top of it, the fact that they are doing business with a designer who is a Satanist and has, no problem saying it. And some of his designs are like, what was it, Satan? Satan respects pronouns. Also, murderous things of like times up for homophobes or a homophobe headrest,
Starting point is 00:42:44 which was actually a picture of a guillotine. So, I mean, this is a murderous person that the people at Target were like, yes, we want to partner with you. I can't believe how deeply it goes. Because that's not just a corporate decision to say, hey, let's get into. the LGBTQ because of the the S in ESG. No, no, no. This is a fundamental problem in Target.
Starting point is 00:43:10 If your company has now started to bring Satanists in, known Satanists, and you're selling their product that talks about Satan, you've got a deep, deep problem at the core of you. And by ignoring it. It doesn't get better. It will only get worse. Don't. Do not shop at Target.
Starting point is 00:43:39 Don't. Tell everybody you know. Don't. I'm telling you, this is a big moment. If we actually take this moment seriously and start drawing lines in the sand and saying, no, you might make all your money on Wall Street, but you will not make it from me.
Starting point is 00:44:00 You'll change the world. You'll change the world. Yes, and amen. Keep the fight going. Thank you, you too. You bet. We'll say, in the phone,
Starting point is 00:44:10 all the world can be a guy of the finance. Not need to have a gross mongrel in or to play to golf or to be an pro of the crypto. Not even
Starting point is 00:44:18 no more. In any way, you have always made a lot of things, and the appellee to sitre TED
Starting point is 00:44:23 you add to renew with your instinct of negotiation. With the support 24 hours per No amount of minimum,
Starting point is 00:44:30 nor free-mensual. You're made for negotiate, and the Apply Negoti-Titre T-D is made for you help. Telecharge it right now.
Starting point is 00:44:38 Na-na-na-na-na-na-ha-na-ha-ha...

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.