The Glenn Beck Program - Best of The Program | Guests: Lara Logan & Justin Haskins | 3/31/21

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

There’s a race to replace the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency with a more progressive digital option, and America is involved. The Heartland Institute’s Justin Haskins joins to explain h...ow ESG scores will affect you and why Facebook’s low score is frightening. Journalist Lara Logan shares her experiences at the border and how the Biden administration is allowing drug cartels to flourish. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 We'll say, in the phone, all the people can be a guy of the finance. Not to have a gross monger in art, to play to golf, or to be a pro of the crypto. Not even,
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Starting point is 00:00:26 is made to help you Welcome to the podcast. Today, it's a Glenn Beck program along with Pat and Stu. What a treat. Group all back together again, mostly, at least. The band is back on tour. Today we had Justin Haskins on to talk about ESG standards. Now, ESG standards sounds like the worst tease for a segment of all time, but this is a big deal because it's the way the left is using the economy against capitalism. They're using capitalism against capitalism in a way, forcing companies to invoke all of this woke nonsense. We'll have that. We have Lara Logan on today. The journalist, of course, who is talking about the border and the cartels on the border. Why is it an important thing to actually have a secure border? We get into that and all the dangers going on there with Laura Logan. We talk about the situation going on with Joe Biden's speech today. He is, speaking in Pittsburgh and going to introduce multiple trillions of dollars of spending. Now, you can't watch this speech by yourself.
Starting point is 00:01:36 It's just not right. Bad things can happen. That's why we're doing a watch-along party on YouTube. Watch the speech live with myself at YouTube.com slash stew does America. You're going to make sure you check that one out because we're just going to be relentlessly mocking Joe Biden mostly and giving you all the fact checks live on as we go through it. That's today. as well as there's a brand new Glenn TV tonight right after a brand new studios of America
Starting point is 00:02:02 if you're a subscriber to blazTV.com slash Glenn. The promo code is controlling that 20% off your subscription now or you can watch it on YouTube or get it on podcasts. Lots of great places for it. Don't miss it. And Pat Gray, of course, as well as part of that subscription, make sure to subscribe to Pat's YouTube page as well. Here's the podcast for today. Here is the exciting part again of the speech.
Starting point is 00:02:40 I was kidding. I do have the embargoed speech. Here's the exciting part of the speech he's going to give today. It's going to be a little bit less exciting than that when he gives it, but you get the sense of the direction of the speech, I think. He's good. It's electric when I hear him say, I just think, wow. God bless America.
Starting point is 00:03:12 What an amazing moment in our history. They're saying it's his FDR. moment and he kind of sounds like FDR would if he was still alive, right? Like that's kind of... Well, his FDR moment is because he's going to come in in a wheelchair and you'll just hear yeah, well, after he squeaks on stage on his, uh, within his wheelchair, uh, he is expected to, uh, release a two trillion dollar quote unquote infrastructure plan. Uh, because as you know, are roads and bridges and they're crumbling. Um, Pat Gray joins us. The crumbling. Um, the crumbling roads and bridges are very crumbly today.
Starting point is 00:03:55 Pat, we've been talking about this for years. I wish every president in the last four had done, you know, trillion dollars, you know, packages for the infrastructure, you know? Yeah, if only. If it just would have done it then. I know. Apparently the shovel-ready projects weren't as shovel-ready as we thought. So embarrassing.
Starting point is 00:04:18 So $2 trillion. CNN leads it with this headline. Infrastructure was a Trump punchline, but is a window into Biden's soul. Oh, my God. Yes. Who said that? CNN. Oh, my God.
Starting point is 00:04:33 Infrastructure is a window into his soul? Look at. I don't want a car. Lovely Jill. So, legit, two trillion dollars. There's going to be tons of tax hikes in here. one of the wonderful things they're doing. I think you guys will appreciate this one.
Starting point is 00:04:56 Is they are, how do you pay for something like this? You got to jack up taxes. They want to jack up taxes on corporations from. It's just the biggest tax hike since 1942, though. Just just the biggest. Yeah, it's not like the biggest ever. No. And when that happened, I was 75 years old.
Starting point is 00:05:15 It was fine. Now, sure, it's $2 trillion. Okay. But, you know, Joe Biden's a moderate. I want you guys to remember, this is the moderate candidate. Listen to the New York Times. Mr. Biden will lay out his infrastructure plan in an afternoon speech in Pittsburgh. It is the first step in a two-part agenda to, this is a quote from the New York Times,
Starting point is 00:05:38 overhaul American capitalism. That is how they're promoting. This moderate is overhauling American capitalism. Can I tell you something? The only thing he seems to be moderate. which is so bizarre is the loosening of the marijuana drug laws. It's like all of a sudden, have you noticed those stories? He's doing everything, you know, free heroin for every.
Starting point is 00:06:05 And then you're like, I bought a new marijuana cigarettes. Yeah, he's like firing staff members over potential past use of marijuana. And it's like, what? What are you doing? All of these things and that's what you care about? The people you're putting on staff, the best thing about them is they use marijuana at one point in their past. I hope they're not qualified.
Starting point is 00:06:29 They're using more now. Hey, just sit in your room and eat pizza and nachos. Just get high all day. Please. Now, you do not want to watch this speech alone. I'm going to be doing a live stream on YouTube at the Studeau's America channel watching the speech with you. So please join me there because this is not the type of activity you can handle on your own. Let me give you one of the little things behind the scenes.
Starting point is 00:06:50 here they're doing kind of with us. Now the tax increase, increasing taxes on corporations in a massive way, it is not enough to actually pay for this $2 trillion dollar plan. So what they're doing is they're taking in the plan
Starting point is 00:07:06 and increasing taxes for 15 years to pay for eight years of the spending. So they're acting as if the spending stops after eight years but the tax is in there for 15 years I'll be 384. Yes, you will, Joe.
Starting point is 00:07:24 So are they sunsetted? Are the tax increases sunset in, do they sunset in 15 years? And it goes back to the other level? It's not entirely clear. Not clear. There are limitations on it because they may. We wouldn't want that to be clear. No.
Starting point is 00:07:37 Well, the speech hasn't occurred, I'm sure. I mean, you can hear a mumbling in the background now. You've got to assume. Why, house, I just sound like sunsets. I don't know. So, yeah, we don't know exactly. that is because of the way the reconciliation
Starting point is 00:07:52 process works they a lot of times do have to sunset these parts they don't normally go past 10 years though traditionally it's always 10 years Republicans flirted with extending it at one point but never did now of course this is what happens right you right
Starting point is 00:08:08 you flirt with it once and then they just take it and run with it. Let me tell you I like reconciliation with my beautiful wife Jill because she was she was flirting with things back in her flapper days. And I thought to myself, it's a great point.
Starting point is 00:08:28 It's a great point Biden makes. And by the way, we should be clear, Glenn. Today's speech is about the $2 trillion of infrastructure spending. However, that's only part one of a two-part process. And you won't understand part two if you didn't watch part one.
Starting point is 00:08:45 The second part will be another two trillion dollars about climate change and I guess that's more of the remaking American capitalism overhauling it. So it's four trillion altogether. Yeah, he's only announcing two trillion today though.
Starting point is 00:09:04 Then I do the prequel which is $30 trillion. He's already spent two trillion. And he's been in office for a couple months. They're spending all of this money and it's almost like we're spending money like it's going out of style. Let me break for one minute.
Starting point is 00:09:20 And no more, I'm going to go bladder. And tell you about why they're spending money like it's going out of style. Because it is in just a second. First,
Starting point is 00:09:33 Bill Bar is our sponsor right now. Yes, I'm trying to lose the old freshman 50. Yeah, yep. Yeah. Problem is, I hate eating healthy food. I mean, until they invent a skinny suit, you know, I'm stuck just eating bacon and butter, you know, just have to do it.
Starting point is 00:09:57 Just have to do it. Fortunately, part of eating healthy, at least for me, is snacking on built bars. They are the best thing that, you know, that will tide me over till the skinny suit comes or the fat burning pill. Don't you want that? When does that come? And I'm going to $4 trillion. That is in part three. Part three.
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Starting point is 00:11:09 Oh, and that's a program. All right. You sick, twisted freak. Now let me tell you about the plan to retire the U.S. dollar. In my research, this is my belief of how things are going to work out in the next couple of years. I've passed this by several people, and they believe it's solid, but I want you to know up front, this is what I believe is going to happen.
Starting point is 00:11:51 and it is all tied to things that I know are already being put into place. Right now, there is a race going on for digital currency. It's a three-horse race, and Bitcoin is not in it. It's the U.S., China, or the IMF, the World Bank. We are looking for what is going to be the World Reserve currency. What is going to replace the U.S. dollar? Russia and others are pushing out digital currency, et cetera. but there are a tiny portion of the global currency power and they're really not relevant in my
Starting point is 00:12:26 opinion the u.s federal reserve is behind china on the actual digital currency implementation china already has the digital renimbi which i just love how many rimbis do you i have a levanti frillion uh levy frillian that is good yeah so they do they do all of the intergovernmental transactions via the Bank of China. So in other words, the Communist Party passing money to the Communist Party posing as the bank and then the Communist Party getting that money back. It is, Remimbi is the people's money in Mandarin. However, even though they've already pushed this out and they're already using it,
Starting point is 00:13:13 the U.S. is way ahead when it comes to potential adoption. 70% of international financial transactions right now are settled in U.S. dollars. This is what gives our dollar any kind of value now, whereas only 1.5% of the global transactions are settled in Chinese money. Several analysis believe that the U.S. will have a digital U.S. dollar issued by the Federal Reserve by 2022. I want you to listen because this is really important to your future. They want to get it out, this according to several analysts. They want to get it out before the midterm election because the Republicans may retake the House or the Senate or both. The Fed doesn't require technically any kind of congressional approval to issue any new digital currency,
Starting point is 00:14:09 but that doesn't mean that Congress wouldn't move to block or slow it, just to live. limit the Fed's authority here. Lately, Yellen and Powell and the head of the FBI have all started warning Congress and the public about the dangers of Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies because they can be used by sex traffickers and they can be used by terrorists. And so the plan is to issue a digital U.S. dollar and then automatically convert U.S. dollars from the old U.S. dollars to digital U.S. dollars, D-U-S.Ds. Okay.
Starting point is 00:14:50 The banks would issue the D-U-S-D at some ratio that the Fed would set. Now, here's why this is so important for you to be ahead of the curve on. The money in your bank account will suddenly become U.S. or D-U-S-Ds overnight. But that doesn't mean that it's going to be. dollar for dollar. In fact, the Fed is going to be deciding how much loss everybody takes. The Fed will also offer U.S. dollar cash holders, physical cash, but not in the banks, to cash in old U.S.Ds for new DUSDs for some time period, six months or a year. And the way they'll do this is require cashholders to deposit the money into U.S. banks
Starting point is 00:15:38 so they can control the conversion to DUSD and track all terms. transactions. After the cutout date, the old U.S. dollar will be retired either overnight or via an overtime graduated retirement schedule. The conversion rate is just going to get worse and worse. So they're going to say, hey, you'll get 80% of your dollar if you turn them in now. And then, you know, the next month, you'll get 70 cents on the dollar. And so it will push people into pushing their money. The convertibility rate analysts are now speculating. that it won't necessarily be equal. So in other words, not everyone will get 80% or 70%.
Starting point is 00:16:20 Part of the plan here is to do social engineering and wealth distribution. They're going to have a progressive, like we have a progressive income tax. This will be a progressive conversion rate. It'll be the same way we do progressive tax structure. Poor people are going to get a one-to-one ratio. You might even, if you're one of the, afflicted groups get a one point, a one to one point five ratio, meaning you get 50 cents more for every dollar. And wealthy people could get a point five to one conversion rate. So the more you
Starting point is 00:16:58 have in US dollars, it may be the less US, the digital US dollar you'll receive in return. Now, the reason why they're retiring the dollar is because we are. spending into oblivion and they don't have an exit plan other than the death of the dollar. In the near future, they don't need to care about the debt or inflation because they can effectively buy unlimited amounts of old currency with new currency and force the cash holders to take the loss because they can make all other currencies, including cryptocurrencies, illegal whenever they see fit. So by controlling the currency and having the power to declare what currencies are legal and what are not and how much those cash
Starting point is 00:17:47 consert currencies are worth all cash holders will accept whatever terms they want. This is the end game, I believe, for the U.S. dollar. And I don't think they're going to get, you're not going to, it'll be interesting to hear if anybody in the press picks this up and makes fun of me on it. because won't they be shocked. Oh, there is a caliphate. Oh, 2008 did happen. I'm telling you, it is coming.
Starting point is 00:18:24 The question is, how much can we get other countries to take a loss on U.S. dollars that they currently hold? The sovereign U.S. dollar holder is probably going to take a 50% haircut, but private party dollar holders will accept maybe a 90% loss on their U.S. dollars, and it will create a race to dump dollars and put them into other currencies. The way we're going to get global support on this is we will offer foreign debtors,
Starting point is 00:18:59 countries that owe the U.S. government money, will say, look, I know you bought those tanks and those planes, we'll give you a 50% cut on your debt, you just turn everything into U.S. digital dollars and we'll call it a day. That's what's coming. So when you see all of this spending, know that if you aren't aware of what is right around the corner, you are going to lose. It is why I urge you to watch tonight's TV show. Tonight's TV show is so important because we show you the mechanisms in the financial industry that are being laid right now to make things like this happen. I mean, how do you give a 10% haircut, a 50% haircut to all Americans?
Starting point is 00:19:58 How do you do that? Well, timing. Timing is important. Stu, did you notice, what were we talking about where he said timing? It was on the guns on the gun bill last week, right? He was saying the timing just isn't right. There was something else that he was talking about yesterday where he was talking about the timing just isn't right.
Starting point is 00:20:26 They either have fortune tellers to see what's coming next, but they, I don't know, I don't know if they and foresee trouble coming, but the, the, uh, yesterday, the world health organization got a whole buttload of countries like 40 some countries to sign on to a global treaty, where they'll all act the same. The Biden administration didn't say that they wouldn't sign that treaty. They said, the timing isn't right just yet. Wait, what does that mean exactly? that you will sign a global treaty where the WHO tells us to shut our businesses and we do? What does that mean?
Starting point is 00:21:11 Find out more tonight at 9 o'clock on blazedtv.com. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Justin Haskins on with us. He is the editorial director and research fellow at the Heartland Institute. He's also a researcher of mine and co-author. of a new book that is taking us a little longer than we expected because the more we dig into it, the more we find. And it is called The Great Reset.
Starting point is 00:21:50 Justin, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, Glenn. It's great to talk to you. I asked Pat to come in along with Stu because they are more, we're in the weeds. And I like them to be here and ask the questions that the person who really, doesn't understand what's going, maybe asking. You just went in and you opened a Merrill Lynch account yesterday. Correct?
Starting point is 00:22:19 I did. I absolutely did. And you're going to talk to us about the scores that you found. Before we get into it, I want to tease here just a bit and then I want to talk to you about it. I got a call from one of the big five banks in America. and they intimidated that they wanted me to make a correction on the show when they left the message.
Starting point is 00:22:48 When I got back to them, they didn't want a correction in the show. They said everything that we said, that was accurate, except that's not what they're doing. And we said, well, help us out. Where do we need to correct it? Well, no, it's no, we don't need a correction.
Starting point is 00:23:04 It's not that anything was said that was wrong. It's just not what we're doing. And I want to go into that conversation with you in a little while. But first, take the boys through ESG. Right. So the most important thing to understand about ESG standards, ESG, environment, social, and governance standards, is there a metric system that you build on top of,
Starting point is 00:23:34 existing ways that you evaluate company. So instead of just looking at how much money a company makes, instead of looking at how good their products and services are and customer satisfaction and all of that, you add on top of it all of this social justice, woke stuff. So how green are you? And, you know, how many women do you have in management? And what's the pay gap between the highest paid person and the lowest pay person, all of these kinds of things? And then you provide a numerical score based on these things. It's usually a numerical score. Sometimes there are other ways of doing it, but you provide a score, and that allows you to evaluate companies that maybe don't make a whole lot of money, but they're really woke. And that means more to us than
Starting point is 00:24:21 just being a company that makes money and people actually like. So that's what the ESG system is designed to do. It's designed to provide you with a way to see how, you know, which companies are the good companies and which companies are the bad companies based on these social justice and environment metrics. So take me to, take me to who is making these judgment calls? What is the agency that is saying this is, you know, bad, this is good? Right. So there are a whole bunch of different people out there.
Starting point is 00:25:02 they're all pretty much part of the same cabal that are doing these different rating systems. The biggest one, the one that I think is going to become the prominent system is being produced by a group in the World Economic Forum. These are the big, great reset people. It's led, this group, the International Business Council, I believe is the name of it, is led by the CEO of Bank of America, Brian Moynihan. And they produced a report with the World Economic Forum back in September that, created an elaborate ESG system that they think basically all of the major companies in the world should adopt and it includes I think 20 core metrics and 30 expanded metrics and to give you some sense of like what is in this set of
Starting point is 00:25:50 metrics in the social metrics section one of them is the percentage of employees per employee category by age group gender and other indicators of diversity the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration for each employee category by significant locations of operation. Boy, you got to love how they write this stuff, for priority areas of equality, such as men to women, minor to major ethnic groups, and other relevant equality areas. So in other words, if you don't have the right ratio of Asians to Hispanics or whatever, then that means you get a lower score. And there's a whole bunch of these things. I mean, there's dozens and dozens and dozens of these metrics. And they can essentially be whatever the heck they want them to be.
Starting point is 00:26:35 They can change them at any given time. And all of these- Cover the union. Cover the union one. Sure. One of the social metrics is the percentage of active workforce covered under collective bargaining agreements. So that's just another way of saying the percentage of your employees
Starting point is 00:26:52 who are in a union, in effect. So if you don't have a lot of union employees, proportional to the size of your business, then you're not going to get a high ESG score. And the whole reason that these companies are doing this, well, there's two reasons, I think. The first is they see that this is the way the world is moving, and they know that governments are going to start requiring these ESG scores. And there's been all sorts of regulatory movements over the past couple of years suggesting that that's going on, including very recently at the SEC. see, but the other thing is that there's tons and tons of money already behind it. The estimates
Starting point is 00:27:30 range from $30 trillion, all the way up to over $100 trillion, depending on the group you're looking at, of governments and investors who are saying, we are only going to invest in these kinds of companies. And so with all of that money floating around, if you're a business, why the heck would you try to compete with people to have the best product and service when you can just be woke and get all of this money flowing into your coffers that way? And that's what makes this so dangerous. So recently we've heard all kinds of things about what Coke is doing to be woke, to be diverse. And now this seems to explain all that, right?
Starting point is 00:28:06 This must be what is behind Coke's motivation to be requiring the race quotas and their leadership and all of those kinds of things. That's exactly right. Yeah, Coke actually in its annual report talks about its ESG scores. Coke has a whole system of ESG scores and ESG auditing. They actually have people working at Coke that make sure that they're following these ESG scores so that they get a really good score by these different rating agencies. And how exactly does the ESG score help them? I mean, who is looking at these scores?
Starting point is 00:28:42 And is it who is like behind this then? Why do they care about their ESG score? Right. Well, it started, this whole idea, I think, started, and there's some dispute as to when this began, but I think it started out of the United Nations sometime between 2000 and 2010, this idea. And the idea was how do we get businesses to go along with our agenda if we can't get governments to impose our agenda? And the whole idea behind the ESG system is that they want to take the sustainable development goals from the United Nations. That's like Agenda 21, Agenda 2030, all that stuff.
Starting point is 00:29:24 And they want to figure out a way to get that into the bloodstream of the corporate universe. And the way that they figured that they could do this is by getting investors and central banks and the IMF and World Bank and United Nations and all these people to get behind this and say, we're only going to support you, big corporation, if you agree to follow through with these ESG standards. and to adopt these things and to live by it. And if you do, then essentially we're going to take care of you. We're going to make sure the money keeps flowing in your direction. And that's exactly what's happened. And they've actually been building this whole ESG infrastructure behind the scenes.
Starting point is 00:30:05 No one noticed it really over the past 10 years or so to the point where all of the major corporations that you can think of, for the most part, already have this system in place. It's already there. So we just didn't know. before I go to a break, let me just see if all of these fit into this category. Let me give you some stories that have broken
Starting point is 00:30:26 in the last couple of days. Go fund me. Yanks page run by Virginia parents fighting woke curriculum. So go fund me. Saw this fundraiser for these parents and they're like, we need your help to fight this critical race theory
Starting point is 00:30:43 in our schools. Go fund me. Yanked it. Is that just their opinion? Or is it possible that this is all about ESGs? I think that virtually every decision that big corporations are making today is related to ESGs, including that example that you just gave. I think they're all related to ESG standards. Home Depot co-sponsored a website citing the Southern Poverty Law Center and the 1619 project.
Starting point is 00:31:18 So they're putting out, they're putting, uh, helping fund the poison of the 1619 project. Woke or ESG? Without question, ESG. Uh, let me give you, um, let me give you this one. Uh, president, uh, Biden says the private sector should lead on vaccine passports. Yeah. I mean, that's a huge, that's a huge topic amongst all of the Great Reset people who are deeply involved in this. They absolutely have been, they've been pushing for that since the beginning of the pandemic.
Starting point is 00:32:02 Hmm. So this is a world organization or the global, the World Economic Forum that has wanted these kinds of things that Biden is saying to libertarians delight, the government shouldn't do this. but they don't libertarians don't understand this is part of a much bigger government that is coming yes that's exactly right and joe biden has been involved with these people for many many years he's a big supporter of this entire system that's called stakeholder capitalism is another way that they they reference this uh the head of the world economic forum the most visible uh vocal supporter of the great reset internationally a guy named cloud Schwab, when Joe Biden created the Biden Institute, which I know you all are very familiar with,
Starting point is 00:32:55 at the University of Delaware, that he brought in Klaus Schwab because he wanted to figure out how he could make that the World Economic Forum of the United States. And there's all sorts of articles about that online that you can find. So Joe Biden, John Kerry openly says that he supports the Great Reset, that Joe Biden supports the Great Reset, John Kerry. has made comments to that effect within the past few months. And he's also said at a World Economic Forum meeting, this is John Kerry, said that under Joe Biden, the Great Reset, meaning all of this stuff with ESG standards and printing of money and all of this that goes into it is going to happen.
Starting point is 00:33:37 And that it's going to happen with greater intensity and faster that most people realize. And so this is everything we're seeing over the past few months was all in the works for a very long time, and it's not surprising at all. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Laura Logan, previously working for CBS News as their chief foreign affairs correspondent, contributing editor to 60 Minutes. She left there in 2018. She's an award-winning investigative journalist.
Starting point is 00:34:12 She is currently on her own and has a show Laura Logan has no agenda on Fox Nation. Hello, Lara. How are you? Hey, Glenn. I'm good. Thank you. you. I'm good. Good to talk to you again. So Laura, I wanted to bring the boys in Pat and Stewart with me and we wanted to talk to you about what you've seen on the border and particularly what this administration is enabling, how we are growing the drug cartels and what life is like. What does a drug cartel even mean right on our border? Well, it's very interesting, Glenn, because most people in the U.S. think of the cartels as the drug organizations of the 1970s,
Starting point is 00:34:56 who really pioneered, you know, smuggling marijuana over the border and distributing that across the U.S., bringing it to the northeast. And in fact, what's happened over the last few decades especially is that the cartels have transformed. They've diversified into many other different forms of revenue. And they have also become completely unrecognizable from the old drug organization. of old. Gone are the Pablo Escobar days. What you're looking at today are the most violent and powerful criminal organizations on the face of the earth. That's not an overstatement. That is
Starting point is 00:35:35 literally what you're dealing with. They have militarized. Many of them get training from special operations forces in other countries like Guatemala. And they also have so much money that they can stay far ahead of law enforcement in any country, both in terms of surveillance, counter surveillance, operational security, and, of course, you know, weapons, and also their ability to function in terms of, you know, what they do to move narcotics and weapons and everything else that they need to move. They also have made strategic partnerships with people like the Chinese, U.S. adversaries like Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations.
Starting point is 00:36:19 And what we've been doing, while they've been at war with us, we've basically been asleep at the wheel. There are individuals who have tracked this, who have seen the transformations of the cartels both in their reach globally because they now control more than 90% of the global trade in narcotics, but also in terms of their capabilities. And we are not paying attention to that. We're still using the old law enforcement model, which is basically where U.S. jurisdiction ends at the U.S. border. And so we have to go to the Mexican government, and we have to ask them on their terms to allow us to operate
Starting point is 00:36:58 and take action against the cartels. Well, today the carcels are so powerful, they function as a shadow parallel government, and they give their orders to happen to that. Well, just in the last few months, precisely at the very moment that the Biden administration opened up the U.S. border, the Mexican government doubled down on their sovereignty. And they stripped all U.S. agents of immunity from prosecution. And they also made it law for all Mexican law enforcement officials to have to go through a fusion cell
Starting point is 00:37:30 in the foreign office in order to have any contact and interaction with U.S. law enforcement, which, of course, you know, that's a death knell for cooperation and for informants. and, you know, for everything that goes along with prosecuting the cartels. So that should tell you where the Mexican government is, and it certainly doesn't explain where the Biden administration is, because they, like all the administrations before them, allow the border to be defined in terms of immigration and completely leave national security out of the conversation.
Starting point is 00:38:03 Lara, is there any realistic way for us to stop this without the help of the Mexican government? Not if you use a law enforcement model, because when you have no jurisdiction, you're at the mercy of the country whose sovereign territory you're asking to operate on. And so they have to be motivated to do it. And look, there's more than 30,000 Mexican civilians who are massacred every year in Mexico by the cartels. And that's just the bodies that the Mexican government owns up to or knows about, right? There's Mexicans buried in unmarked mass graves all across the country. I mean, everyone knows that the violence of the cartels is like nothing that anyone has ever seen before. I mean, it even pales in comparison to sometimes, at times, to what terrorist groups like ISIS have done.
Starting point is 00:38:55 Although some of the tactics are very similar, you know, they're on your knees in front of guys with guns being beheaded. And in fact, the cartels, it's not enough just to behead you. They've got to pull out sledgehammers. and obliterate every, you know, last little piece of your skull. And that's tame compared to removing your heart and your limbs while pumping your body full of heroin to keep you alive so that you can watch yourself being, you know, systematically dismembered. Oh, yeah, that's, that's, you know, all the time.
Starting point is 00:39:23 That is not an exaggeration. It is all across Mexico. It is all the time. And 98% of murders in Mexico go uninvestigated. That's not unprosecuted, Glenn. that is uninvestigated. So what does that do? It basically tells you that they operate with impunity.
Starting point is 00:39:42 So the law enforcement guy, the policemen, the Marine, the National Guardsmen, who are trying to do the right thing, who are not in the pocket of the cartels, what chance do those guys have? They've got no chance. You know where they end up in one of those unmasked? Who are these 30,000 people? I mean, because people think, oh, that's crime on crime. who are the 30,000 people that are getting killed?
Starting point is 00:40:08 Well, it can be anyone. I mean, if you're in their way, you know, they just kill you because there's no consequences for any of this. So it can be women, it can be children. In fact, so many women have been killed in Mexico that human rights watch had to come up with a term to describe it, which was femicides. You know, we'd never, ever seen so much crime and such violent crime against so many women. And there was a point at which the bridge at Juarez, which is just across from El Paso, Texas, was absolutely plastered with the faces of these missing girls, you know, who are missing because their bodies are often never found, or they're melted in vats of acid, or they're, you know,
Starting point is 00:40:52 chopped into pieces and thrown to the dogs. I mean, there's no regard for the living or for the dead. And as a father just said to me recently, after his daughter, you know, and grandchildren were burned to death. And the Mormon family in Mexico, I mean, he said to me, I never understood what it meant to have a body. I never understood what it meant to be able to say goodbye.
Starting point is 00:41:17 He said, my son came to nothing. He came back out to find his wife and three of his children burned to ashes. You know, and so that's what life is like for many people living in Mexico. Yes, some of the violence is cartel on cartel. But even that, you know, I mean, when your options are a lifetime in the dirt in a village in Mexico,
Starting point is 00:41:41 or you're, you know, or you're going to do what the cartel tells you and take money home to feed your family, it's not even calling it cartel on cartel violence doesn't quite explain the reality for everybody. Something that's got very little notice from any news agency is the fact that they're also killing political candidates this year alone. Oh, yes. 18 have been murdered thus far. And the elections are coming up, I think, in June. So it's not even safe to be a candidate for office. Oh, no.
Starting point is 00:42:15 It's, in fact, that's one of the most dangerous professions in Mexico, along with journalists and criminal investigators, right? And it's actually really interesting that you raise that, because it's a very significant point that is constantly overlooked in the conversation about the cartels. There's a big, you know, there's a big tug of war going on between how you fight this or how you take this on. And of course, there are a lot of very good people within Homeland Security investigations and the DEA and other agencies who have given their entire lives to fighting this. And they've done amazing work.
Starting point is 00:42:50 But the reality is that you're using a model that is not effective against the nature of the threat posed by the cartels. I mean, these are fully militarized organizations. They're extremely well-disciplined, and they have unlimited resources, you know. So this is not something that you can continue to fight with the same model that has seen the transformation of the cartels on your watch. And so one of the solutions of it is that the cartel should be designated as foreign terrorist organizations, because now you shift jurisdiction to the Department of Defense, And you change the nature of what it is you're able to bring to the fight.
Starting point is 00:43:38 And, of course, the Mexican government, you know, how do you know the cartels don't want that? Well, because the Mexican government, when it was raised as a possibility by the Trump administration, went absolutely out of their way to do everything possible to stop that from happening. And why do I raise this as an answer to your question? Well, very simply this. The argument against designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, is that they don't have any ideology, and therefore they don't meet the standard. Well, it's interesting because there's no doubt that they terrorize people on a daily basis.
Starting point is 00:44:14 There's no doubt that they use terror and fear as an intimidation tactic and also carry out violent criminal acts. But there's also no doubt, if you look at the number of politicians being targeted, that they see government in Mexico, the fact that the ideology, of that government is just really money and power. Well, you know, how different does that make them to a whole bunch of people all over the world in government? Lara, we say what we have on our border is a humanitarian crisis because the United States is keeping these people and these children in, you know, make-shift cages, makeshift jail.
Starting point is 00:45:01 That's not the humanitarian issue that I'm really concerned about. I'm concerned about what's happening to these kids and these families before they get here when they start dealing with a drug cartel and after they leave us. Well, the way I look at it is this. If you're going to care about, if you're going to make the border all about the humanitarian issue, then you have to be consistent. And so you have to look at the humanitarian issue all the way, as you just mentioned. You can't be selective about it. Of course, in the last administration, the press and also elected officials were extremely selective about it because they made a big deal about the cages which were built by the Obama administration and were chain-link fence, is how it got the name.
Starting point is 00:45:49 And the Border Patrol used chain-link fence because they said for the safety and security of everyone inside, they needed to be able to see what was happening inside the holding facilities. and of course now there's no outrage over the fact that they're still being held and in the same conditions and in the same facilities that are not built to house people long term. But there are so many. You know, it's interesting that you talk about that because there are people in Mexico, one woman that I know, who work with migrants and families and people along their journey when they get to Mexico.
Starting point is 00:46:29 And of course, the conditions are terrible. I know a Border Patrol agent who just saved someone from being raped just a few weeks ago. There's reports today. In fact, I just received it from a law enforcement source down there of a baby few months old that was rescued from the river after the smugglers threw her in. And they are reported to have beaten her mother, it broken her leg. So, I mean, there is no doubt. I've spoken to so many different agents who tell me stories of women, a pregnant woman once,
Starting point is 00:47:09 who had been raped so many times along the way. The agent took her to the hospital and said she didn't want to let go of him because he was literally the first person she'd seen in months who wasn't abusing her. And so some of these agents form relationships with some of these people just where they check on them and keep in touch. I mean, we've done something really truly evil as a nation over the last. last few years. We have demonized every border patrol agent for political purposes, not because it was real, not because it was honest, not because of the humanitarian issues, but for political
Starting point is 00:47:44 reasons. And to me, I don't know, I'm not a person that has all the answers. If I had answers, I would be, you know, in government or in policy or whatever, I wouldn't be a journalist. I'm really good at pointing out all the problems, but mostly because my job is to figure out what it's really like. The conditions along the way are terrible. There's no question about that. The number of rapes are extraordinary. The violence, and it's not just women who are raped, it's also men. And then, you know, the conditions in the facilities, they're not great, but you're going to cross someone's border. You're going to be put in some form of holding facility or detention facility if you cross anyone's border illegally. Most people, though, in the U.S., I'll tell you,
Starting point is 00:48:30 The vast majority coming over that border right now are being released into the U.S. And their airfare is being paid and they're being given massive amount of assistance. And don't be fooled. We know when you hear that NGOs and humanitarian organizations are helping. That is true. But many of those organizations get money, get federal funding for that purpose. So your tax dollars are being paid and used an extraordinary amount of taxpayer money. I don't say that, you know, I'm a person who my heart breaks when I see these children and these
Starting point is 00:49:07 families and the mothers and the fathers, right? I'm not a person that thinks it's only the women that matter or only the women that suffer. You know, I mean, human suffering is painful for me. But at the same time, I'm also very much aware that there is a huge amount of suffering in the U.S. already. The response of the government to the coronavirus has really created in this country a devastating economic situation. And there's, you know, there's a lot of people in this country who are going through similar things to people down at the southern crossing the southern border. Laura Logan, thank you so much. Laura Logan has no agenda, the name of the show on Fox Nation.
Starting point is 00:49:54 Thank you for joining us. We'll talk to you again, my friend. Ina.

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