Glenn Beck and Rep. Andy Barr confront ESG scores as discriminatory lending tools weaponized by the Biden administration against fossil fuels and firearms, while Letitia James faces backlash for claims about fetal heartbeats and Gavin Newsom's 2035 diesel ban threatens low-income communities. The episode mocks a CIA candidate named Ellen McMuffin running against Mike Lee to highlight surveillance fears, ultimately arguing that political agendas in finance and regulation systematically undermine economic freedom and constitutional rights. [Automatically generated summary]
Man, I got about half of what we had planned on today, but it was all good eating.
Letitia James, the Attorney General for New York, we kind of took that one apart and told you what was really going on.
Also, why Stacey Abrams and what she said about a heartbeat is so incredibly dangerous.
Incredible.
Hilarious, but dangerous.
Yes, we have Andy Barr to talk to us about ESG scores, which also very, very dangerous.
And the left's war on air conditioning, which is an interesting position to take.
Yeah, Americans love that.
They hate air conditioning.
Arizona.
Yeah.
Texas.
Texas.
The entire South.
Yeah, we hate air conditioning.
Just like the Northerners hate heat.
Today's podcast, brought to you by Goldline.
Tons of Americans still don't know it's possible to use your retirement account to acquire precious metals that they could be saving up for retirement, building a protective wall against inflation and other forms of economic insanity that pop up.
The Fed, we just discovered, hid a report that likened our current situation and what they're doing with interest rates to a depression, not recession, depression.
It was just discovered.
They said, oh, we didn't talk about it because we disagree with it.
There's trouble coming, gang.
I want you to call Goldline.
Find out if you can protect some of your assets.
You know, your 401k, your IRA.
What can you do to protect some of it?
Goldline can help.
Protecting Assets with Goldline00:03:00
Tell them I sent you from the podcast.
Give them the code MYB, Mind Your Business, and they'll get you a Mind Your Business silver bar.
They're giving them away just as a thank you for calling in.
No strings attached.
Just request the information at their website, goldline.com, or just call them and tell them I sent you.
It's 866Goldline.
866Goldline.
Here's the podcast.
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Welcome to the Glenbeck program.
Along with my executive producer, the Honorable Steve Bergeer, who for some reason changed his name early on to Stu.
Welcome.
Thank you, Glenn.
I appreciate that terrible telling of that story.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
We also have in studio somebody that you've probably never seen before.
Ezra is with us.
She is our social media manager.
Yeah, yeah.
No, seriously, what's your real social media coordinator?
Coordinator.
Okay.
So she coordinates our social media, which apparently she told me today, quote, this has never been said before.
You're big on TikTok.
Meaning like you look fat on TikTok?
Yeah, I look fat everywhere.
Right.
Not just TikTok.
Instagram.
All of them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you're streaming today on Instagram and TikTok.
Correct.
The behind the scenes, which is riveting.
It's riveting.
It's crazy.
And it will fill that void left by Colonel Sanders and Captain Kangaroo.
Really?
So, yeah.
Will it?
Will it, though?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it does.
Colonel Sanders produced a lot of good for this country.
Now, Ezra, you told me a minute ago that there's just a lot of mean-spirited things that are being said in the live stream?
Yes.
Who would have known?
They're not very nice.
Not very nice.
On the socials.
Is it mainly fat or is it more Nazi?
What are they accusing him of today?
You're a Nazi.
I'm a fat Nazi.
I'm a fat Nazi.
How dare you support Republicans?
Okay.
All right.
Well, that's good.
Now, is that on TikTok or is that on Instagram?
That was on Instagram.
That was on Instagram.
TikTok must love me.
That's Instagram.
Yeah, they just love me.
Okay, you can follow it at the Instagram page for our TikTok page.
I have no idea.
I have no idea.
Just dial pound 150, and I think that'll, I'm not.
Anyway, all right.
Dialing Down the Middle00:03:02
Let me just dial down the middle.
Yeah.
You know, just do that.
You'll get there.
Let's keep trying.
These new complex things.
Yeah, I mean, I thought it was exciting when we had a phone in the car.
California has a moral obligation now, according to Governor Newsom, who is going to clean up in the 2024 election.
I mean, right?
I mean, he is one with the American people.
He has said that they have a moral obligation to ban diesel-powered trucks to rectify, which I think is a great word because it makes me think of rectal, which makes me think of an ass, which makes me think of Gavin Newsom.
Anyway, ban diesel trucks to rectify what?
Global warming.
What do you think?
I would think global warming.
Yeah, right.
No.
Decades of racist practices.
Okay.
Okay.
So they are going to ban medium and heavy-duty trucks, and they all have to be fully electric by 2035.
Now, here's the good news.
Those 17 states that just signed on with all of California's emission standards and everything else, bet you're going to have to do it too.
You didn't know about that in your state?
Yeah, you're now a slave to California.
Who did that?
Your governor and your legislators.
So buy-by electric cars in Virginia, I mean gasoline cars in Virginia.
Buy-buy diesel trucks in Virginia and other states.
I mean, Minnesota, just stay in your house.
I mean, really.
You get what, like a week maybe where it's nice?
Stay in your house.
Well, that's why they built bridges, enclosed bridges all over Minneapolis.
So you never have to walk out.
They'll tell you something about it.
That's true.
Yeah.
I never, the first time I went there, I was like, they just built, they just turned this entire city into a mall.
Yeah, they did.
You're just walking from hotel to hotel.
Now, is it true that only white people can buy diesel?
Is that accurate?
Well, yes.
Well, most parts of Texas, but I don't know about California.
No, here's the deal, Stu.
Decades, I'm quoting, decades of racist and classist practices, including redlining and sitting decisions, have concentrated heavy-duty vehicle and freight activities in communities of color.
Freight activities?
It's fascinating.
And it's not just color.
It's low-income communities.
Now, I don't know why they didn't build our airports and our bus stations and our freight yards right in the middle of really nice suburbs.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Evan McMullen's Utah Campaign00:06:43
Wait a minute.
It could be because if they did that, everybody who lived in those really nice suburbs would move away and then they would have to cut the price of the housing.
And so those would become low-income neighborhoods.
I mean, how racist are you?
You don't want to live next to the freeway?
My gosh.
What's next?
Oh, I can't sleep at night because of the roar of the jet engines.
My gosh, you rich people make me sick.
Oh, I can't live by the bus station.
No, no.
Wow.
Racists.
This guy's going to be good for the country.
You know who else would be good?
If Utah would just elect Ellen McMuffin, running against running against Mike Lee, Ellen McMuffin is really, really good.
He was a CIA agent.
I don't know if you know.
And I think what the country needs right now to repair trust is a CIA agent in the Senate, you know.
He's running a lot of ads, running a lot of ads now, trying to monetize his campaign, get somebody to somebody besides George Soros and others like him to kick in on the Ellen McMuffin train and see if they can get him elected.
So he is doing some really good ads, reminding everybody, hey, I was a spook.
And I think that's really good.
I think that's right in line with what Americans want right now, is another spook running around.
Wait a minute.
Hang on just a second.
Right now, a spokesperson for the Ellen McMuffin campaign is joining us now.
Hello, Blood.
How are you?
I'm very good.
How are you?
First of all, John, fantastic.
And I just wanted to thank you for your incredible, consistent support for Evan and his campaign against extremist Mike Lee.
I know you've been, you just, of course, said that there would be nothing better than to have a CIA spook in the Senate.
Oh, yeah.
And I just wanted to thank you for your support.
Sure, sure.
So do you, I mean, have you thought this through that maybe, you know, at a time when are you okay?
Are you really fat?
I'm a fat man, so I can ask that question.
No, I'm in the excellent physical condition.
Okay.
All right.
Anyway, I was just wondering, have you thought this through?
I mean, the NSA, the CIA, all that, I mean, they're spying on Americans.
It's really corrupt right now.
I know, you're right.
It's great.
You know, we have been trying to highlight that part of Evan McMullen's campaign that he was in the CIA because, of course, it's something that we really need right now.
We need more spying on American citizens.
We, of course, have a platform that's very well defined.
And, you know, as a person who is in the CIA, imagine all the spying he could do if he was ridden the Senate.
It would be much, he would be spying three, four, five times as much.
And that's what I think American people want.
And that's what I think the voters of Utah won.
And I think the voters of Utah should understand what's at stake here.
This is a very important election, most important election ever in history and stuff.
And it's important for the people of Utah to know that we are watching.
We're watching what they do.
We're watching how they vote.
We're going to make sure that they understand what's at stake here.
The globe is warming.
Hang on just a second.
What do you mean that you're watching them and you're going to well, I'm just saying that people should watch what they do.
That's all.
What do you mean they should watch what they do?
Every action has a consequence.
I think you learn that when you're a child, right?
And if you were to not vote for Evan McMullen, we would know about that.
You would know about that.
And there are consequences to our actions.
See, this is the kind of thing that I would think that people would kind of go, wait a minute, I don't think I want a CIA guy, you know, in the Senate.
He will know if you didn't vote for him.
That's all we're saying.
Is he like Santa Claus or does he have connections?
Well, again, Santa Claus knows if you've been good or bad.
He knows when you're sleeping.
He knows when you're awake.
And he also has half the information about you that Evan McDonald does.
So just think about that.
Look, if you're a Utah voter, you want to vote for Mike Lee, you can do that.
People could also vote against Saddam Hussein.
Right.
You know, who knows?
See, I mean, this goes again.
Ellen McMuffin has been saying that Mike Lee is, in so many words, an extremist.
He is an extremist, Glenn.
He is an extremist.
Yeah, we've been looking into his activity.
And this guy's extreme.
You want to have some examples of that?
Yeah, I would.
You ever hear of a potato?
What?
You ever hear of a potato?
Of a potato.
Yes.
Yeah, you know what Mike Lee does with them?
No.
He cuts them up into little sticks and he fries them in boiling oil and then he applies a rock of some sort in small white crystals and then dips them in tomatoes and vinegar.
Okay, so does Mike Lee eat it?
He does it.
He eats it and then drinks it.
He drinks hot chocolate, Glenn.
And by the way, before I go, I just wanted to thank you for your constant and continual support of Evan McMullen.
Your endorsement here in Utah has meant so much.
Yeah, I haven't endorsed him.
And I just wanted to say, well, you haven't endorsed him.
That's true, but you have helped our campaign quite a bit because you keep calling him Ellen McMuffin.
And we've done a lot of research on Evan McMullen, and we've realized really nobody likes him.
That's one of the central things we've learned in our research.
Fetal Heartbeat vs. Flicker Debate00:13:45
Really?
But the best testing part of our entire campaign is that his name sounds like McMuffin.
That's the only thing we can find that's positive.
People like McMuffins.
And they like Alan.
All right.
So you're calling them Alec McMuffin.
You are helping our campaign market.
Hey, all right.
Thank you very much.
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program.
So Stacey Abrams says there's no such thing as a fetal heartbeat at six weeks.
That's weird because I know there's a fetal heartbeat on the sixth week, the seventh week, the eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, all the way still heartbeat.
Even now, I still have a heartbeat.
It's weird.
It's not fetal, but I still have a heartbeat.
So no such thing as a fetal heartbeat in six weeks.
Not true, says she.
now she says that this is a manufactured sound if you haven't heard a fetal heartbeat here is a fetal heartbeat from okay what is that sound What is that sound?
Fetal heartbeat?
No.
No, that is the sound you hear at a cheap motel.
Something's going on in the room up above.
Listen to it again.
Tell me I'm wrong.
Tell me I'm wrong.
That's what it is.
That's what it is.
And we put them into this magic box.
Okay.
We just, we go and we tape from seedy motels.
We tape the goings-on in other rooms.
We put it in this magic box.
And then just because we're trying to get rid of the hand sanitizer that New York had, that's all expired now that they bought with taxpayer money, we take that sanitizer.
That's what it is.
As you say it's a gel, but you just wipe that all over a woman's belly.
And then you take the magic stick.
And on that magic stick, when you position it right, you hit a little switch and it makes the magic box play what you recorded at the motel.
That's science for you.
That's Stacey Abrams.
That's Abrams branded science.
Really?
Yeah.
It's manual.
I'm quoting.
Do we have her actually saying this in audio?
Here she is.
There is no such thing as a heartbeat in six weeks.
is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman's body away from her.
Wow.
Wow.
You know, I thought it was a big deal that she thought she was the governor, you know, when she wasn't the governor.
And then she had this amazing turnaround where she said she never said that.
I thought that was kind of amazing.
This is for people who follow the science.
Now, I don't know if you follow the science, but for people who follow the science, I'm pretty sure that's not a manufactured sound.
I'm pretty sure what that is is a heartbeat.
Now, I'm only saying that because that's what science tells us.
And the evil magic box, I don't know if I trusted it.
Well, the evil magic box was designed by men.
You know, men who wanted to take, I mean, what was the quote that men have the sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman's body?
Amen.
What a weird.
See, like, what strange view of the world?
Can I just tell you as a man, as a man, and, you know, let's say a dirtbag man, the worst side of me as a man.
If I'm getting women pregnant and I have no desire to settle down, yeah.
Can I drive you there?
How can I pay for that abortion?
Okay, guys would be all in for that.
That is much better than having a child with a woman you were just sleeping with and you don't really want to have a relationship.
And then that kid comes knocking on your door going, Daddy, men would rather have you have an abortion.
That's what makes sense to me.
How, I'm trying to understand.
I'm trying to understand.
You'd think men, if they designed the machine, would make it sound like nothing because they want to be able to get out of whatever weird night they had last night.
I could be a cancerous growth.
I could be a cancerous growth.
I may be a tumor.
I may be a tumor.
That's what it would say.
This is, of course, why so many on the left oppose the policy of having ultrasounds before the abortions.
Yes.
Because they know they'll hear the heartbeat.
They will see if there's a, you know, the scan to see.
They can see the movement.
They can see the baby formed when people are...
And it's 80%.
The mother is 80% more likely to have the baby than kill the baby if she hears the heartbeat.
They know this.
So that's why she's not discrediting men.
She's not just saying, I mean, she's absolutely wrong about men.
We did that so you would have children?
Don't think so.
So she's wrong about that.
But what is she doing?
She's discrediting the machine.
I mean, in such a neophyte way, it's almost like I was set this airport and I just had to tell them, look at how heavy that thing is.
That's not going to be able to fly.
They're putting you into a hypnosis trap.
Tramps.
They're saying they're flying you someplace.
You're not actually going anywhere.
They're putting a mind trick in so you think you went to your Cleveland office.
I mean, this really is.
We never went to the moon level.
Conspiracy.
It is.
You can see it on the video.
You can see the heart beating.
You can hear it.
This is what is going on.
It's a manufactured sound.
If you want to defend abortion, go ahead and defend it.
Defend what you're actually doing.
Stop denying what is reality.
That's all you have to do.
If this is such a great defensible policy, then just come out and defend it.
But they never can.
You notice even after the Dobbs thing, they're not talking about abortion.
They're talking about, well, what if you have an ectopic pregnancy?
What if a woman has a miscarriage and can't get it removed?
Like, first of all, none of this has anything to do with the laws passed on abortion.
But secondarily, you notice how they can't go to the actual thing they say was so important.
They keep defending these other things that aren't true and are a much totally different process as we've been talking about.
But like, if they really believed this was so defensible, they might occasionally defend it.
That's why they were successful for a long time because they said, look, you don't want somebody else making decisions for the woman and for the people involved.
That's let the doctor and the woman figure this out.
And we pray or we hope that it is rare, but it has to be safe and legal.
That's how they got you into the boat.
Because that's how most people feel.
Most people are not for abortion at the very end.
But if most people feel, okay, I don't know exactly when life begins.
I mean, I think I do because the egg is alive and the sperm is alive.
So it is life when they join.
But you can argue about this back and forth.
Most people feel like, hey, once it's, you know, kind of identifiably as a baby, then we should kill it.
And they would say, I hope that it doesn't happen, but in cases of incest or rape or something like that, then, you know, go ahead, but it should be rare, but it should also be safe and legal.
That was winning.
Celebrate your abortions.
I've had 1800 abortions and I loved everyone.
I think it was my, well, it was my 300th.
That's one I'll always remember that was so great that I celebrated at the time.
I mean, that's where they lose everybody.
And because they've celebrated their abortion and are losing regular people, you can't put that genie back in the bottle.
What do they have to do?
They now have to take the insane step of discrediting medical machines and technology.
This is after two years, by the way, of them claiming the biggest scandal in the world was people saying the voting machines were hacked.
After they had previously said that voting machines were hacked in previous elections, they lost.
Do a search real quick on Twitter, social media.
Is Stacey Abrams, does she have a warning that this is mis or disinformation because this is important medical information, right?
This is important medical information.
She's saying that ultrasounds are not real.
That the sound of the baby is not real.
That's really what she's doing here.
This is what she's saying.
And this is a relatively recent thing from the left where they started calling it a flicker instead of a heartbeat.
Remember that whole thing?
The New York Times just called it a flicker in a random article.
And we're like, wait, what a flicker?
It's been a heartbeat.
We've known it's a heartbeat.
It's one of the most amazing moments of early pregnancy, right?
You're there.
Maybe your spouse is with you.
You hear the heartbeat for the first time.
It's an overwhelming emotional experience.
Or it's created by men to control women.
Or it's just a mechanical sound of some sort.
Now, this is, honestly, gang, think this through because this is where life gets very scary.
This is where you go to authoritarian rule and you can kill millions of people because you're truly now discrediting things that everyone knows is true.
Okay?
So if you disagree with it, you can say that is an evil magic box that has made-up sounds in it to convince people.
If they will buy that, you're at the Salem witch trials.
You're at the Salem witch trials.
Well, if she doesn't float, she wasn't a witch.
That's what you're looking at right now.
And what's frightening is she can say this with a straight face and no one discredits her from her own side.
No one is saying today, you know, I was for Stacey Abrams and then I heard that and that's just evil magic box stuff.
That's witchcraft.
What are you talking about?
What are you talking about?
I can't support her.
And this is a woman who is delusional and has dangerous thinking.
You know, we can't put her into a role of any kind of authority if she thinks this and she really believes this.
And if not, she's just, she doesn't care about lying.
Nobody's saying that.
Nobody's saying that on the left.
Not a soul.
You don't think that they can convince those people that you are a terrorist because of the way you vote?
Of course they can.
They're so emboldened right now.
She thinks she can get away with saying this and people in the audience don't laugh at her or stand up in that public setting and go, come on.
Everyone on the panel nods and vigorous agreement.
Their heads.
You don't think they can convince half the country that you should be eliminated, liquidated, put into a camp, whatever authoritarians love to do?
Weaponized Finance and Political Agendas00:15:24
I got a news for you.
I'd be saying the same exact thing if people on the right were doing this.
We are headed towards dangerous, dangerous times.
We better wake up and stand together because this is a frightening, it's hilarious.
But because people are taking it seriously, it is a terrifying statement.
The best of the Glenn Beck program.
Welcome to the Glenn Beck program.
I want to play something from yesterday that Joe Biden said about taxes, a global tax.
Listen to this.
Cut four.
With partners in the Americas, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific, we're working to build a new economic ecosystem where every nation, every nation gets a fair shot, and economic growth is resilient, sustainable, and shared.
That's why the United States has championed a global minimum tax.
And we will work.
You know what that means?
That means trapping every business where they are.
No one can move and get a better deal someplace else.
That's what that means.
Also, the bankers all met with the House yesterday, and the Oversight Committee for finance and banking regulations, they had one guy who I just can't get enough of.
They had what's his name from Jamie Dimon from JPMorgan Chase.
And he said something incredible.
He said, no, no, we don't, we don't have any policies that we would stop funding oil and gas.
Really?
Because ESG kind of sounds like one.
Congressman Barr is with us now.
He's the Congressman Andy Barr from Kentucky.
He was there.
Did you ask Jamie Dimon to explain ESG to you?
Hey, Glenn, good to be on your program.
Yes, we wanted to make sure that we talked to all of these leaders in finance about their policies and whether or not they were going to cave into the woke thinking on Wall Street and be bullied by the Biden financial regulators and politicize the allocation of capital, or whether they were going to defend free enterprise and the free flow of capital as it is supposed to be efficiently allocated.
based on supply and demand.
For your listeners who don't know, ESG stands for Environmental and Social Governance, which is a trendy way in which the progressive left have weaponized the banking system to discriminate against companies and causes that they don't like, that are unfashionable, such as the fossil energy industry or the firearms manufacturing sector.
Or trans parents that are speaking out against trans issues or that you're Coca-Cola, you got to learn to be not so white.
All of that stuff.
That's the S in ESG.
Exactly.
And this is a form of discriminatory lending.
Banks should be making lending decisions based on objective, risk-based metrics, not the standards of woke corporate cancel culture.
And the Biden administration has weaponized financial regulators to steer investors into these ESG funds.
And what the American people need to know is that they may be unwittingly financing the agenda of the far left.
And the result for retail investors, Glenn, is that they are now invested in higher fee, less diversified, and lower return investments.
And only 21%, FINRA, which is the self-regulatory organization for stockbrokers, in concert with the University of Chicago, they did a study, a survey of retail investors in America.
And only 21% of mom-and-pop investors saving for college, saving for retirement, counting on financial performance in their 401k or their IRA, only 21% of Americans even know what ESG is.
So there's a real disconnect between the institutional investors, the state pension funds, the BlackRocks and the Vanguards, the asset managers in Wall Street and some of these big banks and retail investors.
But retail investors are actually the owners of the capital.
And many of these progressives on Wall Street have misallocated their capital in ways that diminish returns and advance political agendas ahead of financial returns.
So wasn't Jamie Diamond lying when he said, no, we don't have any policies that would discriminate or defund oil and gas?
They are fully signed on to ESG programs.
He even went as far as saying it would be an absolute, what did he say, disaster or American nightmare if we stopped oil and gas?
Well, not all of these banks or asset managers are created equal, to be fair.
Some of them have more aggressive ESG policies than others.
I will say that at least in the case of Mr. Diamond, that he wrote in a letter to shareholders, and I highlighted this in my questioning of him, that we need a Marshall Plan for U.S. energy dominance to help ourselves and our allies decrease our dependence on Russia, for example, or foreign sources of energy.
And so he at least and his institution, J.P. Morgan Chase, they admit that they will continue and they committed to continuing to finance oil, natural gas.
I focused on coal.
Kentucky is a coal state.
22% of America's electricity generation still comes from coal.
We're going to need coal in the future, just like we're going to need other fossil energy sources, natural gas and oil.
And he did commit, at least to me, that his institution would continue to finance fossil energy.
And we need to.
We don't need to be bullied by climate alarmists, non-investor stakeholders, or Biden financial regulators to choke off financing or investment into American energy companies.
And yet that is what the ESG movement is.
They are trying to implement their Green New Deal, their radical climate alarmism agenda through financial regulation and through the financial system.
And this is absolutely compromising American energy dominance, American energy independence.
And we have literally gone, Glenn, from a position of American energy dominance to energy desperate in just two years under these Biden policies in concert with Woke Wall Street.
We're about to do the same thing to farming.
Yeah, exactly.
So my argument is we need more, not less financing.
I mean, we talk about the Biden War on Energy, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, canceling infrastructure projects, holding up 4,400 drilling permits, frustrating the construction of new refineries.
All of that's true.
But ground zero in the Biden war against American energy and American energy independence and affordable, reliable energy is the weaponization of financial regulation.
Because let's face it, this is a capital-intensive industry.
And investors just will not allocate capital into this capital-intensive industry unless they know there's some certainty with the regulation.
So some of the other CEOs, I will say, are not as open to financing energy.
And so we made a big point about keeping politics out of the business of banking.
Be a bank.
Don't be a political party.
Okay.
So we're talking to Congressman Andy Barr from Kentucky.
He is on the House Financial Services Committee and also a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Let me ask you, did you get to Visa and MasterCard and American Express with the new gun registration?
Yes.
So one of my colleagues, Congressman Williams from Texas, did press the bankers, the bank CEOs, on this issue.
Of course, this is a new merchant code for your listeners.
And for those of us who believe the Second Amendment is fundamental, They have created, the banks didn't do this, but the credit card companies created a new merchant code for firearms.
And some banks have participated in pushing for this.
And the danger of this, of course, is that it allows for woke banks who pursue this ESG agenda to discriminate against Americans who are exercising their lawful Second Amendment rights.
The concern is it is a way in which banks can stop the financing of Americans simply exercising their rights.
The bankers yesterday, when asked about this question from Congressman Williams, they said, look, this was not our decision.
We just follow the rules.
But the truth is, this is of deep concern because it's another way in which the financial system is weaponized to discriminate against Americans who are simply exercising their rights.
But it was Amalgamated Bank that was pushing for the change of the rules.
They were the ones who brought ESG to America in the first place, strangely a union bank.
And they're the ones who were pushing for this and got it changed.
So are they saying now we're held to some international banking standard and we can't do anything about it?
Yeah, they are.
And I joined with several of my colleagues in writing a letter to that bank and objecting to their pushing of this to, again, politicize capital allocation.
And politics should not be in banking.
It should be about objective factors.
Is the borrower credit worthy?
Is it based on sound underwriting?
Does this borrower have the ability to repay, regardless of what they're doing?
And so, in addition to fighting ESG, we've also been promoting fair access to banking.
You know, long ago, there was discrimination in banking and what they call redlining, where African Americans were denied access to credit for racist reasons.
This was a horrible practice.
Well, today, the discriminatory lending is against conservatives.
It's banks in concert with liberals in government who weaponize the banking system to discriminate against those who are exercising their Second Amendment rights or the fossil energy industry, or as you say, parents who just want visibility into their schools.
And so we cannot allow this to happen.
We want to depoliticize finance, and this is going to be a major, major focus of Republicans on the Financial Services Committee when we take the gavels back, when we retire Nancy Pelosi and take back the majority.
You're going to be the committee chairperson, most likely, are you not?
Well, I'm in the leadership of the committee, and Patrick McHenry is our ranking member now.
So he will be the chairman of the full committee, and he is on board with our focus on this.
And many of my other colleagues are really focused on this.
Congressman Heizinga, who will chair the Capital Markets Subcommittee, French Hill from Arkansas, Brian Stile from Wisconsin.
And we are going to shine a bright light on this and make sure that investors know that some of these leaders in finance are not doing right by them as investors.
The job of a fiduciary, an investment advisor, the job of the investment advisor is to maximize returns for the investor.
It is not to pursue a political agenda at the expense of the investor.
And that's what we're seeing with this political agenda infecting the financial markets.
Some of them are even saying a friend of mine went and talked about ESG, was asked about ESG at this investment seminar thing.
And the guy said, look, I mean, it's going to cost money.
You're going to probably lose money in the investment first 10 years, but it's going to really take off.
And he's like, you're talking to a group of people that most of us have gray hair here.
We're 10 years away or five years away from retirement age.
And you're talking to us about selling to us something that you say is most likely not going to be the best return for the next 10 years.
And I had to ask you about that?
That's kind of a problem.
A big problem.
And consider this also, Glenn.
Most of these ESG funds carry much higher fees.
So the reason why BlackRock and some of these other asset managers are promoting this is because they say it takes their skill to put together these environmentally friendly funds.
And so they charge on average 43% higher than non-ESG funds.
And not only that, they violate the basic test of investing, investing 101, which is diversification.
They're heavy on tech and they're light on energy.
And if you see what happened in the markets and the equity markets over the last eight, nine months, a huge tech sell-off and energy prices went up.
So if you were invested in energy, you did better.
Well, many investors who are unwittingly invested in ESG, their losses were much more severe because there was this huge tech sell-off and they didn't have any energy stocks in their portfolio.
The Dangers of Central Bank Digital Currency00:00:33
Andy, I am up against the network break and I've really got to run.
But can you give me a yes or no question?
Are you up to speed on the digital currency and what's going on with all of that with the government?
I'd love to have you back next week to talk about digital currency if you can.
I'd love to talk to you about the dangers, the dangers of a central bank digital currency and why we need to promote private sector innovation, not have the government run digital currencies.