Glenn Beck, Stephen Moore, and January Littlejohn dissect President Trump's speech on tariffs, immigration, and gender ideology. Beck highlights the stark contrast between Republican cheers and Democratic silence regarding DJ Daniel's honor and hostage deals. Littlejohn shares her daughter's distress over forced social transition, advocating for an executive order recognizing only two genders. Meanwhile, Moore defends tariffs as negotiation leverage while cautioning against harming allies like Canada. The episode frames Democrats as out-of-touch bigots and positions Trump's agenda as a necessary defense against predatory ideologies and economic threats. [Automatically generated summary]
We talked about President Trump's speech last night, how horrible the Democrats, I don't know, coordinated action, their non-reaction.
I mean, it was amazing.
Also, the woman up in the gallery that a school was transitioning her daughter without her knowing, January Little John joins me, and Stephen Moore is on to talk about tariffs and how a guy like Stephen Moore, who's against tariffs, is kind of like, I don't know, I think maybe we should let him see if it works.
All on today's podcast.
So where do you stand on the First Amendment?
You're for it.
Patriot Mobile is too, but they're bigots.
How about the Second Amendment?
Yeah, figures.
You know who else is a big fan of that?
What a coincidence.
Patriot Mobile, but they're Nazis.
Come to think of it, Patriot Mobile, unlike all of the Nazis, are for all of your rights, the real rights, and fights for them.
It's also amazing at its cellular service.
They're on the top of all three cell towers that, you know, all three companies have.
So they offer service that's just as good as the big mobile companies.
And their customer service, in my opinion, is even better.
For one thing, it's entirely based in the U.S. and that's hard to beat.
I have believed in Patriot Mobile for years now.
I even got a cell phone so I can support them.
Even though I don't use it, I have absolutely no idea where it is right now.
It's ringing someplace.
But they're America's only Christian conservative mobile phone company, Patriot Mobile.
Somebody asked me the other day, what's your phone number?
I'm like, I don't know, but don't call it anyway because I have no idea where it is.
PatriotMobile.com slash Beck, 972 Patriot.
Get a free month of service with the promo code back.
PatriotMobile.com slash Beck.
972-PATRIOT You're listening to The Best of the Glenn Beck Program All right, let's get into this marathon that was yesterday.
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump came out swinging.
He was funny.
He has his mojo.
He brushed any attacks on him like they were, you know, McDonald fry crumbs on his tie.
Hope For A Kid With Cancer00:15:09
He really has become the president and not the president that we had as 45.
Last night, he touted his first six, six weeks in office as a whirlwind of action.
And holy cow is it, especially when he's going through it.
I mean, it was relentless, the number of things.
He talked about slashing the bureaucracy, imposing the tariffs on Canada and Mexico to protect our border, stop the killer of fentanyl, and rebuild our industrial base.
He's also talked about cracking down on illegal immigration with a promise of mass deportations.
That's a new phase that we're going to be entering soon.
He renamed a Texas Wildlife Refuge after a 12-year-old Houston girl that was murdered by undocumented immigrants.
It was kind of a poignant moment with her mother, Alexis, in the gallery.
He also talked about securing the release of the hostages from Gaza, one from Russia, rebuilding the Abraham Accords from his first term.
Then there was Ukraine at the very end.
It was almost like an afterthought.
There's so much to cover.
Trump read a letter from President Zelensky that came in yesterday at the end of this program.
We read it to you yesterday, but it signals Ukraine's readiness to negotiate peace and sign the mineral deals.
That's a massive turnaround after the Oval Office blowup last week.
He also added that Russia is sending strong signals that they're ready to talk to.
Wouldn't that be beautiful?
And then a new announcement.
He dropped a bombshell about apprehending the mastermind in the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan.
What a moment that was.
He said they're now en route to face American justice.
He also made a 13-year-old kid, DJ Daniel, a brain cancer survivor from Houston that just keeps defying all odds.
He was up in the gallery and he was dressed in this little teeny police uniform.
He had been made an honorary policeman for the Houston police because he just wanted to be, he always wanted to be a policeman.
Last night, the president had the head of the Secret Service give him a badge, if you will.
It's an honorary Secret Service post.
He is now a Secret Service agent, a kid who defied a five-year death sentence.
Let's see.
The chamber erupted with that, or at least half of it did, because the real story, I think, that we have to talk about is the planned and coordinated action or reaction or inaction of the Democrats.
It was unbelievable, unbelievable.
They just sat there, some with their union printed signs or dressed in all pink for some unknown reason, some kind of statement that nobody knew about or really honestly care.
They just sat there almost throughout the entire thing without moving.
When Trump spoke of bringing the hostages back from Gaza, Americans reunited with their families.
You would think everybody in the chamber would be like, okay, now, nope.
Not any movement from the Democrats.
Not a clap, not a twitch.
When he turned to Ukraine, he looked right at them and said, wouldn't that be nice?
I mean, and they didn't move.
They didn't do anything.
said, you want to keep this going on for another five years?
And Elizabeth Warren actually shouted, yes.
What kind of madness is that?
All they're talking about today is he went, well, Pocahontas does, in a funny line.
Nobody's talking about her actually screaming, yes, I want five more years of war.
Wow, okay.
A little gut punch there.
Wake up, America.
Who are you standing with?
The ones shouting yes for five more years of war?
The Republicans booed, but the Democrats just stared ahead.
They didn't say anything, nor are they going to.
They'll defend Elizabeth Warren shouting out.
Then came little DJ.
The surgical scars on his head peeking out from his hair.
He was standing with his dad.
He's fought cancer now.
I think I said five years, but I think it's six years.
He's fought it for six years.
That's more than most kids dream about their futures.
Trump honored him and the GOP side leapt to their feet chanting, DJ, DJ.
This is all about a little kid's dreams.
This is not about politics.
The Joint Chiefs stood up.
They can't clap, but they stood up in honor of DJ.
The Supreme Court justices rose to their feet.
They cannot clap either.
But they weren't rising to their feet for Trump.
Maybe for the office partly.
I mean, they rose several times out of decorum and what they have to do to show respect for the office.
But for that moment, they rose for the kid.
I mean, is there no decency?
Because the Democrats didn't budge.
They didn't budge.
None of them.
You have no respect for the boy's courage?
No acknowledgement even of the dream to serve, but I understand.
I mean, you are so out of touch with the American people that maybe that's what you do.
Maybe that's what you do.
Because, you know, you want to defund the cops.
Here's a black kid that wants to be a cop, so you don't stand.
Oh my gosh.
I couldn't believe my eyes on their reaction to most things.
And then the chaos.
Why was President Trump 10 minutes late for the speech?
You know?
He was late for the national broadcast that was being watched worldwide by every leader because the leftist groups had blocked his motorcade to try to stop it from arriving at the Capitol.
Now, I doubt any of those people were arrested.
They all should have been arrested.
Enough of the chaos.
Enough is enough.
But the Secret Service, they're no dummies, at least right now they're not.
The Secret Service knew in advance, and so that motorcade was a decoy.
They had to take the president in another motorcade without the lights and sirens, so nobody really knew it was him and went a different direction.
But the Democrats are disrupt, disrupt, disrupt, disrupt, destroy, disrupt, destroy at all costs.
And they talk about the chaos of Doge.
Last night, I saw another first.
I mean, I keep saying this over and over again.
I mean, okay, I've done this my whole life.
Since I was 13, I was broadcasting.
I had to pay attention to the news and what's going on.
Again, another first.
Sat there last night, went, well, never seen that before.
Representative Al Green from Texas stood up, screaming over the president, waving his cane.
Honestly, I thought we were going to get a Sumner moment.
I really thought if the guy had a little more energy, maybe he'd go beat the president to death with the cane like they tried to do to a senator in the 1850s.
But nope, he was just screaming.
You don't have a mandate.
We got to get into that later.
What is a mandate exactly?
What is a mandate?
Then Speaker Johnson, again, here, I've never seen it before.
He stands up twice and says, decorum.
You are out of order.
And Al Green just would not sit down.
He kept shouting.
At first, the other Democrats were shouting with him.
The second time, Mike Johnson stood up and said, I'm going to call the sergeant of arms.
This is your last warning.
He kept going.
Sergeant at arms escorted him out.
Okay, it's a first.
I mean, I looked all night trying to search the records.
I could find no comparisons to this in the modern age.
Now, I didn't have the, you know, congressional records all the way back to George Washington, so I don't know if it is actually, you know, the only time, but with no congressional records to be able to go back into the 1800s, the closest I could find to something like this was Joe Wilson.
Do we have the audio of Joe Wilson?
Do you remember this?
This is Joe Wilson during Obama.
The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.
Similar reaction.
It's not true.
And one more.
Misunderstanding.
That was it.
That was it.
That's what Joe Wilson did.
He said, you lie, which we found out later, he did.
What happened?
Wilson faced hell for that.
They censured him the next day.
Bipartisan condemnation.
Democrats like Nancy Pelosi said it was a disgrace to this chamber.
Wilson apologized the next day, but the outrage lasted for months.
Green?
Well, by this time when Wilson did it, by this time the next day, Republicans were already on TV and radio calling Wilson out saying, you know, he's right, but you don't do that.
Okay.
The outcry from the Dems, listen to this.
No, I'm not waiting for audio.
There is no outcry from the Democrats.
We'll see what comes, but last night it was just another fracture in an already completely broken room.
And I get part of it.
I do.
I get part of it.
Policies divide us, and our policies couldn't be further apart from one another.
And I didn't cheer for Barack Obama or Biden.
I didn't.
I didn't.
Not on their accomplishments.
I firmly believe what they said were accomplishments were dismantling the United States of America.
So no, I'm not going to stand and applaud on those accomplishments.
I'm not.
But when the president walks in, I am going to stand up.
I am going to cheer for little kids with cancer.
Survivors, heroes, hope.
None of it moves you.
Hope for our country or even a little kid with cancer?
I mean, that is bigger than party, gang.
When Trump talked about ending wars, bringing hostages home, honoring a kid's dying dream, I don't know about you, but I felt a flicker of something.
This morning, I was listening to the news, and they played that part back where he was honoring this little kid.
I'm doing it again.
And I actually teared up.
I don't like those things.
I really don't.
I don't like the staging of these speeches.
But that was a moment.
I don't know what I felt.
Pride?
Possibility?
Hope for that little kid?
A realization that my problems aren't so big?
But the Democrats couldn't find anything at all.
I actually feel bad for them.
I feel pity for them.
How dark must your world be that you can sit through that completely unmoved?
How cynical must you be to think that's just Trump doing the Trump thing?
How cynical do you have to be?
How hopeless.
That's why their policies are their policy.
I mean, Trump said last night, we're ending all of this stuff.
We're ending it.
We're returning to common sense.
We're going back to not being crazy.
Every kid needs to know you are perfect just the way God made you.
Nope, nothing from them.
If we can't stand together on tried and true, eternal principles, that's bad.
That's really bad.
But when we can't stand together for courage, peace, decency, what's left?
Are we so far gone that even a child's fight against cancer can't bridge a gap?
The answer is yes.
I pity them.
But I fear for all of us, how are we ever going to be the United States again when common ground feels like a fairy tale?
I have to tell you, I'm still very hopeful.
It's been an incredible, what, six weeks with this president?
Trump's pushing for peace in Ukraine.
Hostages are coming home.
Kids like DJ reminds us what trouble really looks like, what grit really looks like, and how to make the best of a bad situation.
Maybe that's enough to build on if we let it be.
But I have to tell you, if you voted for any of these Democrats and you were also feeling, oh, this is all bullcrap, you're very, very cynical.
Let this be a wake-up call for Democrats.
Please don't sleep through this because if we can't agree on some things, we're not going to agree on anything.
And we're never coming back together.
Every day all across the country, people feel, you know, like me, you know, better than we used to.
You know, it doesn't hurt as much as it used to, really.
It doesn't hurt mentally, but it also doesn't hurt physically because I've started taking Relief Factor.
And so my pain in my body is not what it was by any stretch of the imagination.
In fact, most days I don't even feel it.
This is a daily supplement that helps your body fight pain by fighting inflammation, which is the source of most of the pain in our bodies, a lot of our disease.
Protecting Our Children's Mental Health00:15:15
It's 100% drug-free, developed by doctors to help reduce or eliminate pain.
Over a million people have tried Relief Factor's Quick Start Kit.
70% of them have gone on to order it again and again.
And if you're somebody who is in pain, you know what it's like.
Get out of pain.
Start feeling better.
Time to feel like yourself again.
Try Relief Factor.
Get the three-week quick start, 1995.
less than a dollar a day.
It's 1-800-4 RELIEF.
1-800-FOR RELIEF.
ReliefFactor.com.
Now back to the podcast.
This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Welcome to the Glenn Beck program.
Friday, I'm going to be headlining, giving the keynote address at the Kids in Country Gala.
It's an opportunity for you to be part of a movement that is reshaping Florida's educational landscape.
This group is taking action.
They're not just talking about it.
They led a coalition of 17 organizations in a legislative effort to protect children from the obscene materials in schools, reinforcing the importance of parental oversight and moral education.
And just last year, the Liberty Challenge, they raised $200,000, a milestone that directly funds the launch of eight new micro schools.
They're innovative, God-centered learning environments and are empowering Florida families with real alternatives to educational options.
You can get your tickets now at goflca.org.
GoFLCA, that's one word.org, and stand with us.
You can also call 239-250-3320 and get your tickets.
I will see you there in Florida on Friday.
Last night, it was pretty amazing to see the people that were in the gallery.
January Littlejohn is one of those people.
When her 13-year-old daughter was captured by the idea that she was born in the wrong body instead of helping her learn to love who she was, her school decided to affirm her self-hate and said, you know what?
You hate being a girl.
You're a boy.
You know, that's better.
You could be a boy.
The school helped her change her pronouns, pick new bathrooms, even decide if she wanted to sleep with boys on overnight trips, all without parental consent.
It's evil, predatory.
And mom, January, took him to court to fight it.
Until now, moms like her were alone in the fight.
And most of us, if you had a problem like this, you didn't know what to do.
Not anymore.
America is finally coming to her senses.
Trump leading the way.
She was in the gallery last night.
She's about to catch her plane back home in Florida and she joins us now.
January, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much for having me, Glenn.
You bet.
You're a mental health counselor, right?
Stay-at-home mom.
Right.
And you have mental health background.
So you had to be shocked that people in the school, your own, people in your own field, just adopted this transgender ideology and ran with it like it was, of course that's what it is.
Of course, this is all common knowledge.
Were you as shocked as the rest of us were?
Well, absolutely, Glenn.
And you have to remember, I think America has short-term memory sometimes.
This was back in 2020.
We did not know this was happening.
I was volunteer of the year at the middle school where they socially transitioned my daughter.
And so I had no idea that not only had my field, the school system, the medical field, even our judicial branch.
I had no idea I had been infiltrated by this radical ideology.
And to clarify something, at the time of the social transition plan that they did with my daughter, without our knowledge or consent, she was identifying as non-binary.
And so her identity changed four times over two years.
Oh my God.
These kids, like my daughter, they are confused and they are looking to the adults in their life to tell them the truth and help make sense of their confusion.
How did you find out?
How did you find out?
My daughter told me.
We have a very close relationship.
So my husband and I, we knew our daughter was struggling.
But at that time, Abigail Schreier's book had not come out.
So there was very little information about the social contagion that had been bubbling for a couple of years at that point.
I am so concerned about what has been done to our medical schools, what's been done to medicine just in the last five years.
It is, it's very frightening.
You get the new doctors buying into all of this stuff, thinking like this, indoctrinated on this.
You have a generation of doctors that are really dangerous.
Can we change that?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And that's why the work that do no harm is so important, what they're doing, because we have to re-educate.
We have to root this ideology out of our institutions.
Because the bottom line is the U.S. is now an outlier in how we are treating this mental health issue.
This is a mental health issue, Glenn, that has been normalized, promoted, and even celebrated.
My daughter was told she was brave, Glenn, and she wanted to cut her breast off at age 13.
That is unfathomable what they were doing.
And to be fair, it was very similar to when I used to treat clients with anorexia.
There are so many parallels to the disassociation these girls feel and go through and the same type of disassociation with an eating disorder.
It was heartbreaking and it felt like we were in the twilight zone because my husband and I were the only ones in our daughter's life trying to protect her from this irreversible medical pathway that this school put her on.
So what was it that, because like when people had anorexia, when that was a really big thing, immediately everybody was like, it's the magazines, it's the TV shows, it's the, you know, the images that we're showing girls that is, that's unreasonable.
And so there was something that caused that.
This time, they just said, no, it's normal to feel that way.
When it was never normal to feel that way, it's normal to feel that way.
And let's go.
What was the force behind that?
How did that happen?
Yeah, Glenn, you know, a lot of people think that this came out of the blue.
That is just not the case.
Dr. Ryan Anderson was trying to sound the alarm back in 2018 for his book that was canceled when Harry Became Sally.
And he lays out how exactly this ideology infiltrated our institutions.
But what you have to remember is when I was trained as a mental health profession, this was seen as a mental health issue.
It was extraordinarily rare.
And this notion of people having a, quote, gender identity that is separate from their sex, that they choose to be a boy, girl, neither or both, which is what is being taught to our children now, that was non-existent.
So this has all been laid out for our children.
They are creating confusion where no previous confusion were to have occurred.
And this is not happening organically.
So again, we have to inoculate our children from this insidious ideology and the lies of gender identity itself.
You know, doctors will say, experts will say, if your child comes home and says that, just embrace it because they're going to kill themselves if they don't, which is just the scariest thing.
And as parents who never dealt with anything like this before, we just don't know what to do.
We accept love on our children and make sure we have a relationship where they're talking to us.
What do you do as a parent?
Well, first and foremost, you have to understand that that is a lie.
There is no evidence.
Even WPAT doctors admit there is no evidence.
Chase Stranglio admitted in front of the Supreme Court in this comedy oral hearing, there is no evidence these children will commit suicide if not immediately affirmed or socially or medically transitioned.
In fact, the research showed, Glenn, that the vast majority of these kids will desist just like my daughter did.
They will come to feel comfortable in the body they were born in if you do not socially or medically transition them.
Again, this is a mental health issue, and it is unbelievable that doctors were cutting the breast off of girls as young as 12 years old in our country and sterilizing children, many of whom had co-occurring significant mental health issues, including autism.
I will tell you that Trump has signed an executive order saying there are only two genders.
Never thought that was necessary.
But he said something last night that only half of the people applauded for.
Democrats didn't applaud for this at all, which, you know, go back five years and that would have been insane to not to not applaud.
But look at how different we are just because of his election.
Listen to what he said last night.
And our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you.
What did that feel like to you when the president said that?
It felt incredible.
It felt like reality and sanity are returning to our great nation.
And I am just so incredibly grateful to President Trump and his administration for the steps that they are taking.
But we know these executive orders alone are a great start, but will not end this war on our children.
Were you surprised when you got the call from the White House?
How did that happen?
How do you get invited to that?
I was very surprised, Glenn.
I am a stay-at-home mom.
I literally went from being a door holder, just like I do every week, to getting on a plane to Washington, D.C. and heading to the White House.
It still feels a bit surreal.
And, you know, to be honest, as exciting as it was, I was standing there not just on behalf of what my family went through, but on behalf of all families and the irreversible harm they have experienced because of this insidious ideology.
So I felt the weight and the gravity because I still get calls weekly from parents waking up to this nightmare whose children have been captured weekly.
And I'm sure you're aware, Glenn, we have states now that are taking children from loving parents simply because they will not affirm this lie.
So we are still in crisis in this country, and President Trump and their administration are taking incredible steps, but we have much work to be done.
Do you have any faith that Congress will codify any of this?
I mean, he's talking about criminalizing sex change operations on children, which, again, is insane that you would have to do that, but we do.
But the more insane thing is I think that may not pass because of, you know, some people in Congress.
I would hope it would get every Republican vote, but it would probably not get a single Democrat vote.
Is that going to happen?
Do you think?
Well, you saw the vote the other day, not one Democrat voted to protect girls' sports.
That is unacceptable.
So what I think needs to happen is we have lawsuits that are working their way through the court system.
And unfortunately, these things take time.
My lawsuit against the school district is still in litigation.
We're in the appeals phase.
But what I think needs to happen is we need to get down to the merits of these interventions themselves.
Because even scrimmeting at the Supreme Court is really just about states' rights.
And do they have a constitutional right to restrict these interventions on children?
We have to get to where we are arguing the actual merits of these interventions.
And we know from evidence and systematic reviews that the risks far outweigh the benefits.
Not that we need evidence to tell us that sterilizing children before they have the ability and maturity to consent to this is a bad idea.
You know, I'm sorry, I hate to bring this up again, but I'm fascinated when a regular person, because I felt this the first time I went to the White House and every time I go to the White House, it's a surreal experience.
When you got to Washington, they take you to the White House.
Do you all, the people in the gallery that were invited, do you all meet?
And is it the first lady that welcomes you?
What happens?
So we did.
And I'm sure you saw last night, there was such a diverse amount of people from all walks of life, Lynn.
And it was really incredible.
And many of them had truly tragic stories.
But I truly feel that God is using their pain for purpose, just like God did for my family.
And it was a really amazing experience.
You know, that little boy DJ that the Democrats just were so ugly about, that little boy brought so much joy.
And he hugged every single person he encountered.
That is what the American spirit is about.
His father could not have been more proud.
And for the Democrats to say that that was somehow negative is just ridiculous.
All they're doing is playing politics.
It was a beautiful evening, and I was so proud to be there.
Mrs. Trump, the first lady, she is, she plays a role in turning this around, doesn't she?
Isn't she involved in this?
Well, both her and the second lady, you know, I had a chance to sit near both of them last night.
That was an extraordinary honor.
I never thought I would have.
And they were so kind down to earth, and you can just tell they love their families.
This administration is all about restoring the American family, putting a family first agenda, and I could not be more happy and proud to be a part of that.
You know, we all have our role to play, and some people, it's a bigger role than others.
But everybody has a role to play.
We're all born for a reason, and we were born perfect with everything that we need, you know, from God to be able to accomplish those things.
But it takes courage to stand up.
And I can't thank you enough, January, for the courage that you and your family have shown and the grace that you have shown to stand up and change the world.
Thank you, January.
Well, thank you, Glenn.
If I could just say for any parents struggling with this issue, please go to our parent resource page, do noharmmedicine.org.
You are not alone, and there is hope.
You can parent your child on the other side of this confusion.
Thank you.
God bless you.
Represent physicians, nurses, medical students, patients, policymakers, everybody, anybody that can focus, keep them focused on keeping identity politics out of our medical education, our research, and our clinical practice and out of our schools.
It's donoharmmedicine.org, and you can follow at January Do No Harm.
Follow January on X at January Do No Harm.
Tariffs, Trade, and Bringing Jobs Back00:13:52
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Stephen Moore, my dear friend, how are you, sir?
Hi, Glenn.
Never better.
I can't stop smiling.
That speech last night.
And I've lived through a lot of, well, that wasn't really technically a State of the Union speech, but it was very much like one.
And that was one of the superb speech.
I think everybody's talking about the rude and obnoxious behavior of the Democrats.
What a party that's become.
I mean, when you and I first met, what, 30 years ago, I mean, there were a lot of centrist, common sense Democrats.
I was good friends with Joe Lieber.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, those people are embarrassed to be part of that party.
I mean, even when he said things that were not political, you know, that were just pro-America, they just sat on their hands.
And I don't know.
I was really so disappointed by that.
But otherwise, what a great night.
You saw the CBS poll, 76% approved of that speech.
Powerful.
And it was powerful.
And so, look, the guy's on a roll.
I've worked for him now for eight years.
You know, you asked me about the tariffs, and I kind of feel like, oh, am I even second-guessed this guy?
Right.
That's the way I feel.
That is honestly how I feel.
I have my opinion.
He has such a strong opinion on tariffs.
And I think he's earned the right for people like me to say, you know what?
Try it.
Just try it.
Because when he's trying things, they usually work.
Is this one going to?
Yeah, no question.
By the way, I'll juggle a little bit.
There's no noise in the background.
I'm at the airport, but I really wanted to come on your show.
So that's right.
I mean, I kind of, and like, it's really funny when I see Trump, you know, every couple of months.
I don't work for him now, but he is every once in a while seeks my advice.
And every time he sees, Steve Moore, he's a great economist, but he doesn't agree with Mad Tariff.
I know.
He's allowed to be too.
Mr. President, I know.
But look, there's three kinds of tariffs here.
There's the kind of tariffs that are what you might call protectionist tariffs for like the steel industry, the aluminum industry, this industry, that industry, the chips.
And I don't like those.
I don't think they work.
I think that we tried the steel and aluminum tariffs in the first term.
And look, Trump's heart is in the right place.
He wants to help save these steel jobs, et cetera.
The problem we found out from those, Glenn, and we have pretty good evidence of this, we did save about 3,000 steel jobs, but we lost 20,000 manufacturing jobs because the steel became more expensive with the tariffs.
So in other words, it was kind of counterproductive.
And I don't think those really work.
Now, the one country that I think we all as Americans can agree on needs to be hit with tariffs is China.
They are an enemy.
They're like China.
I mean, they're like Japan circa 1936.
You know, by the way, you know this.
We sold to Japan in the 1930s the steel that they used to for their bombs.
So let's not make that mistake.
Right.
And, you know, with respect to Canada and Mexico, that's where I'm a little uneasy because Canada and Mexico are critically important allies in the United States.
I mean, when you think about it all across the globe, we have to, Canada and Mexico are critical to us.
We want to make sure Mexico doesn't go the way of Cuba.
And the Canadians, you know, sometimes they drub us the wrong way, but they're good people.
By the way, you're not Canadian, are you?
Oh, no, no.
God forbid.
Stephen, I'm hurt by that question.
Let me ask you, because I want to know what his...
It's funny I ask that because I have a lot of friends who are Canadians, you know, and they're in the United States.
It's almost like it's one big country.
And maybe at the end of Trump's policy, we will be one big country.
I feel bad for you that you have so many friends from Canada.
Anyway, the thing I want to know from you is what is there something that he is trying to get?
Like the reciprocal tariffs, I love.
I just love those.
And he was trying to get them to be stronger on the border for Canada and Mexico.
And I didn't have a problem with that.
He says they aren't doing enough of it.
I'd kind of like to know, is there a lie?
Is there something he says?
That's enough.
Is he trying to rebuild our industrial base and try to convince these companies that are building in Mexico or Canada to build in the United States?
What is he doing?
What does he want?
Yeah, so you and I think alike on this.
So here's the thing that I want to make sure people understand this loud and clear.
And I think a lot of the foreign countries don't quite completely get this.
There's only one country that really matters today, and that's the United States.
I mean, we are the hub of the world economy, and every other country is a spoke.
So that gives us, and I've learned a lot from Trump just being around him.
He is, Glenn, the single greatest negotiator I've ever met.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I think the guy's a genius.
He's a genius in that regard.
And that's how he got rich.
He's an incredible.
And if you read his book, and that was written, what, 30 or 40 years ago, but it still is relevant today.
It's called The Art of the Deal.
And one of the things I learned from reading that book is if I'm negotiating with you, Glenn, if we're negotiating a contract or something, and I have leverage over you, I'm going to probably win that.
I'm going to probably win that negotiation, right?
Correct.
So leverage is everything when you're negotiating.
Well, guess what country has the most leverage in the world?
We do.
We do.
And, you know, do you think Joe Biden ever used our leverage?
No.
Hell no.
I don't even think that other presidents on our side use the leverage that they should have.
Yeah.
And so what that means is that let's say, let's take China as an example.
I believe as a free trader that when we have free trade with China, we generally both, you know, they bring in a lot of cheap stuff and that, you know, that's good for American consumers and we sell them things.
But they're not playing by the rules.
They cheat.
They steal.
They are predatory and they're dangerous.
So we can say to them, look, you're going to do X, Y, and Z, or we're going to slap you with a 30% tariff.
Now they could say, well, we're going to slap you, but they can't do that.
They can't win a tit-for-cat war with us because if we can't trade with them, it would hurt us.
If they can't trade with us, they go into Great Depression.
And Trump understands that.
And that's why he's so effective at using these threats of terror.
Same thing with Mexico.
And look, I love the Mexicans.
I'm pro-Mexico.
But the Mexicans have to trade with the United States.
They must.
And so Trump is saying, if you want to have that access to the biggest consumer market in the world, you are going to help on the fentanyl crisis.
You're going to help on the border.
You're going to do the other things that they should do anyway.
Last night in the speech, he talked about farmers, and he spent a lot of time on farmers for that speech.
He said, look, it's going to get harder on farmers before it gets easier, but trust me, just stay with me.
It will get better.
But, you know, he was saying, you know, you're going to have to plant, baby, plant.
And I'm not sure that farming works like that that fast.
I mean, you're now talking about it.
And, you know, we're in, what, March?
Planting season is coming very soon.
And to say, oh, we're going to lose all that money from China on soybeans.
What do I plant?
I mean, can the farmers turn that around that fast?
I'm not an expert on the agriculture industry, but I will say this, that, you know, he wants us to be dominant in energy.
Incidentally, we should also be, we can and should be dominant in minerals.
You know, we just did a study of unleashed prosperity.
You know what country in the world has the most minerals?
Probably us.
We the bad bar.
We've got the mountains of Dakota.
We've got Utah.
We got Colorado.
But we can't get them.
I know.
You know why?
For the last 20 years, the radical environmentalists have not allowed us to mine.
And that's why I'm a little frustrated, even with Trump a little bit.
We said, well, we got to get these precious minerals from Ukraine.
Well, in the short term, he's right.
But let's, why would we do that when we have them in Montana?
Why wouldn't we just go and why do we have to be dependent on China, Russia, and Ukraine for our minerals?
And we should become more self-sufficient.
We should not just do that.
I was thinking that when you said, you know, plant, baby, plant, because we are going to drill, baby, drill, and we should mine, baby, mine.
We should use, there is no country in the world that has more abundant resources, Glenn, than we do.
You know that we've talked about this for 25 years, you and I.
He is fascinating to me.
I don't know if people really understand how much he understands the singularity and what is coming.
The super AI, artificial super intelligence.
Oh, right.
And how close we are to that and how important that is.
You know, all this talk about rare earth minerals, et cetera, et cetera, bringing in the Taiwan company to make those super chips here in America, that is absolutely incredible, needed, and they're the right people to do it.
I think he's going to, I don't think people really, truly understand how strategic he is and how he is looking to build the America for tomorrow.
Well said.
And, you know, it's funny because people ask me all the time, you know, how are Reagan and Trump different and how are they the same?
Because I did have the opportunity at the very tail end of the Reagan administration to meet Ronald Reagan.
I'm very proud of that, by the way.
I want them to put up my tombstone, Glenn, and I work for Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, the two greatest presidents of modern time.
Anyway, here's one thing.
Think about this, Glenn.
Here's what I find really remarkably similar about Trump and Reagan.
Well, there's two things.
One is they both love people.
They just love people.
And Trump and Reagan both.
Second thing, and this is even more important, both of them were always, always underestimated by their political opponents.
And you remember Reagan?
Oh, they laughed when Reagan ran for president.
He's a great reactor from Hollywood.
He can't be president.
And same thing with Trump.
They still think he's stupid.
He's not stupid.
The guy is brilliant.
He is.
And so I agree with that.
I mean, look, sometimes he does things that I think are dumb.
And I do think a screw came loose a little bit after the 2020 election, where for about six months there, you know, I didn't like his behavior, but he's back on his A-game.
And it is something to behold.
And I have never been more, seriously, since the election day and since inauguration, I haven't been able to stop smiling.
True.
Stephen, let's get into the really salacious content here and talk about washing machine tariffs.
This is an interesting example, I think, of the tariff strategy here, right?
They put on a 20% tariff back in, was it 2017, 2018 on incoming washing machines?
It seems to correct me if I'm wrong on the understanding of this, but basically prices almost immediately went up by 20%, which is kind of what you'd expect.
However, there was a laudable goal in mind, which was to bring jobs back to America.
It does seem like a lot of studies show about 1,800 jobs in the washing machine industry were created by Samsung and other companies that moved business here.
However, at a cost of $1.5 billion to consumers annually, that's a cost of $800,000 per job.
And isn't this really consistent through the literature on tariffs?
This is kind of what plays out.
Yeah.
So one of the reas there's two reasons.
Let me back up because this is very simple, and this is really fundamental to economics.
If, Glenn, you and I trade together, you know, you trade something to me and I trade something to you.
We are both by definition better off, right?
That's why trade is, you know, if we all just made everything we, okay.
That's why civilization is important.
Exactly.
Thank you.
So this goes back to not way even before Milton Friedman was one of my greatest, my favorite economists, but Adam Smith.
And Adam Smith in his great book, The Wealth of Nations, talked about this idea of comparative advantage.
And I'm going to keep this really simple, okay?
So Brazil and Colombia have great coffee beans, right?
The best coffee beans in the world.
We have the best microchips.
So it makes sense that we would buy our coffee beans from Brazil and we would sell them microchips.
You see what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so that's why trade is so important.
I mean, if Art Laffer, another one of my mentors were on, he'd say, you know, free trade is one of the pillars of prosperity when the freedom to trade makes everybody better off.
But all Trump is saying was we want a level playing field here.
We're the lowest tariff country.
Did you know that, Glenn?
I didn't know that, but I would assume that we should be.
We should be.
But I've never thought of it as, look, what you charge us, we'll charge you.
That way, it is, again, free trade just with the tariffs, but that's caused by you.
You get rid of them.
I get rid of them.
Yeah.
And I think in the end of the day, and this is my, you know, why I say my prayers at night, I hope this is the way it turns out.
After two or three years of this Trump administration, I believe we will move more towards freer and fairer trade.
I hope so.
Stephen, thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
From the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.
He's the co-founder.
You can find him at committee to unleashprosperity.com.