The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guest:  Lee Zeldin | 2/13/26
Aired: 2026-02-13
Duration: 43:31


=== Relief Factor: Redrawing Life's Borders (02:33) ===

[00:00:00]  Lee Zeldon is joining us on today's show talking about the rollback that he and Trump did on the EPA regulations.
[00:00:07]  This is a game changer, and this is not something that can be corrected the next time a president comes in.
[00:00:13]  It's not executive order.
[00:00:15]  This is happening because of the Supreme Court.
[00:00:18]  Also, Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0 and a history of streetcars and cool cars all on today's podcast.
[00:00:29]  Let me tell you about Relief Factor.
[00:00:30]  Pain has a way of slowly redrawing the borders of your life.
[00:00:35]  You don't notice it at first.
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[00:00:41]  And before long, things that were normal now are painful and your new normal is not good.
[00:00:48]  This is what chronic inflammation does.
[00:00:50]  It doesn't always arrive with drama.
[00:00:52]  Sometimes it just stays quietly, turning movement into effort and effort into exhaustion.
[00:00:58]  Relief Factor was designed to support your body's natural response to inflammation.
[00:01:02]  So you're not just masking discomfort for a few hours, but you're actually giving your system a chance to find a better balance over time.
[00:01:10]  And the track record matters.
[00:01:11]  Over a million people have tried it.
[00:01:13]  75% of them go on to order more month after month.
[00:01:16]  I'm one of them.
[00:01:18]  Get at least a little small piece of your life back and then see if that doesn't grow into a bigger, bigger piece.
[00:01:24]  If you're done dealing with daily pain, go to relieffactor.com.
[00:01:27]  Get their three-week quick start.
[00:01:28]  It's relieffactor.com, 800, the number four relief.
[00:01:31]  800, the number four relief.
[00:01:33]  Relieffactor.com.
[00:01:35]  Hello, America.
[00:01:36]  You know, we've been fighting every single day.
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[00:02:28]  You're listening to The Best of the Glenn Beck Program.

=== Streetcars vs. Automobiles (14:04) ===

[00:02:33]  Let me tell you a history story here.
[00:02:35]  Lee Zeldon's coming up in just a minute.
[00:02:37]  We're going to talk to him about deregulation.
[00:02:39]  I may, well, he's not in person, so I can't kiss him, but I might have kissed him on the mouth for what happened yesterday.
[00:02:48]  I just love what happened.
[00:02:53]  We think most Americans think they live in a free market, that this is capitalism, and that is the lie you must dispel.
[00:03:03]  You don't know how much you've been manipulated and how the government has been involved in the manipulation in these big corporations.
[00:03:13]  Let me ask you this.
[00:03:16]  If I took you back to any American city in the 1920s, what would it look and sound like?
[00:03:24]  Most people would think you'd hear the ooga horns an awful lot.
[00:03:28]  You don't hear engines for the most part.
[00:03:31]  You hear a hum.
[00:03:33]  You hear steel wheels on steel rails.
[00:03:38]  The whisper of electricity overhead spark.
[00:03:42]  Children stepping off of street corners and they don't have fear of getting hit by cars.
[00:03:48]  Workers getting onto streetcars without owning anything and just going downtown to work.
[00:03:54]  Shops rise close together because distance doesn't matter because the trolley is coming every few minutes.
[00:04:02]  And so you just grab a trolley and you get there.
[00:04:04]  City is one kind of living machine.
[00:04:07]  It's efficient.
[00:04:08]  It's rhythmic.
[00:04:09]  It's almost elegant.
[00:04:12]  That was America in the 1920s.
[00:04:15]  By the 1930s, in America, nearly every major city from Los Angeles to Detroit to Cleveland had an electric streetcar network.
[00:04:25]  Now, I want you to remember this as where every city is trying to build those stupid rail systems that nobody wants.
[00:04:35]  I just want you to remember that.
[00:04:38]  The United States in the 1930s had more urban rail mileage than anywhere else on earth.
[00:04:48]  We were the leader in streetcars.
[00:04:50]  And then all of a sudden, overnight, vanished.
[00:04:56]  How?
[00:04:57]  I mean, all we want to do now is build light rail systems because they're the best.
[00:05:00]  They're the best.
[00:05:02]  When we build them, nobody rides them.
[00:05:04]  What happened?
[00:05:06]  You look at Paris, Tokyo, Zurich, anywhere else in the world.
[00:05:11]  Their trains and their trams, they never died.
[00:05:15]  What killed that here in America?
[00:05:18]  Oh, it was a free market.
[00:05:20]  Was it?
[00:05:22]  Was it?
[00:05:24]  Let me tell you the real story on what happened.
[00:05:28]  America chose differently, but I don't think we actually chose.
[00:05:34]  Here, transportation became a private battlefield, private, public, private battlefield.
[00:05:41]  This is where the story turns dark.
[00:05:43]  In the 1930s, there were three giants that were rising, that were changing, and they had money like nobody else.
[00:05:52]  You had General Motors selling automobiles to everybody.
[00:05:55]  You had Standard Oil of California selling fuel to all of those automobiles that people now needed.
[00:06:01]  You had Goodyear Tire and Rubber supplying the rubber, touching every single road.
[00:06:07]  These companies were the up-and-comers.
[00:06:10]  These were the ones who had all the money, all the power.
[00:06:13]  Streetcars didn't pay anything to those guys.
[00:06:16]  They were competition to those guys.
[00:06:19]  Every electric trolley meant passengers that didn't have to buy cars, wouldn't burn gasoline, and didn't have to buy tires.
[00:06:29]  The streetcar wasn't a vehicle.
[00:06:31]  It was a rival business model to those three companies.
[00:06:35]  So late 1930s, a new holding company comes up and quietly starts buying up all of the electric streetcar systems across American cities.
[00:06:45]  It was called the National City Lines.
[00:06:49]  National City Lines.
[00:06:50]  They're just, we're a streetcar company.
[00:06:51]  We're just buying up streetcar companies.
[00:06:53]  Uh-huh.
[00:06:54]  Uh-huh.
[00:06:56]  What America didn't know at the time behind the national city lines, where were they getting their money to buy up all of the streetcar companies?
[00:07:08]  GM, Standard Oil, and Goodyear.
[00:07:13]  They would buy the local streetcar company.
[00:07:16]  They'd stop investing in the maintenance.
[00:07:19]  Then things would start to break down.
[00:07:21]  There'd be problems.
[00:07:22]  And they would then say, we can't fix this system.
[00:07:25]  It's just outdated.
[00:07:26]  And they'd rip out the tracks.
[00:07:28]  Meanwhile, as the train systems that they owned were having these problems, GM, Standard Oil, and Goodyear would come to the cities and say, you know what you need?
[00:07:40]  You need buses.
[00:07:41]  Buses are absolutely going to change the world.
[00:07:44]  You have city bus lines.
[00:07:46]  They're not going to break down like these old outdated rail lines.
[00:07:49]  You need buses.
[00:07:51]  And so they replaced all the rail lines with buses and some cities pushed back.
[00:07:56]  But then suddenly, you know, who's to say that it was bribery?
[00:08:03]  Who's to say it was lobbyists?
[00:08:05]  I am.
[00:08:06]  I am.
[00:08:07]  I'm one to say that.
[00:08:09]  All of a sudden, every city got rid of them.
[00:08:12]  Okay.
[00:08:12]  The permanence of the rail disappear.
[00:08:16]  Rails, that signals stability.
[00:08:20]  Buses can be rerouted tomorrow.
[00:08:23]  What happened?
[00:08:24]  Developers stopped building dense neighborhoods around the transit.
[00:08:28]  So cities sprawled out, you know, everywhere.
[00:08:31]  And that's problem, not a problem, up to you.
[00:08:35]  But the automobile became a necessity.
[00:08:38]  It was no longer a choice.
[00:08:39]  You live in any city.
[00:08:41]  Live in Los Angeles.
[00:08:42]  Used to have the leading streetcar system in America.
[00:08:47]  Los Angeles.
[00:08:48]  It was great.
[00:08:49]  Try getting anywhere without a car in Los Angeles.
[00:08:52]  You can't.
[00:08:54]  You can't.
[00:08:55]  You can take the bus.
[00:08:57]  Good luck with that.
[00:08:59]  So this changed the design of American life entirely.
[00:09:02]  This didn't just change the streetcar industry.
[00:09:05]  This changed our architecture, our city designs, the way we live, the way we commute.
[00:09:11]  This changed lives.
[00:09:14]  And then they put a sticker on it that said, Americans just love their cars.
[00:09:21]  So you know that I'm not just making this up.
[00:09:23]  1949, federal prosecutors brought an antitrust case, okay?
[00:09:27]  And the jury came back and found, yeah, the companies were conspiring.
[00:09:34]  They were a monopoly on the buses and the supplies to the transit systems.
[00:09:39]  They had lied.
[00:09:40]  They had used lobbyists and all of this thing.
[00:09:42]  And they came down hard on them.
[00:09:44]  And the judge gave them the penalty.
[00:09:46]  You know what the penalty was?
[00:09:48]  For GM, Standard Oil, and Goodyear Tire?
[00:09:54]  $5,000.
[00:09:57]  5,000.
[00:09:59]  That's like a parking ticket.
[00:10:02]  No one went to prison.
[00:10:04]  The tracks kept disappearing.
[00:10:06]  This wasn't about transportation.
[00:10:09]  Streetcars created neighborhoods, downtowns built for people instead of parking lots, cities connected by shared movement.
[00:10:16]  Everything the left says they want today was pushed by these giant corporations and pushed out.
[00:10:27]  And now they're using the same tactics to get those cities back.
[00:10:32]  It's not going to end well.
[00:10:35]  Because whenever you're doing things undercover, whenever you're trying to be sneaky, whenever you're not being upfront with the American people and you're letting the elites decide, you've got problems.
[00:10:47]  It doesn't work out well.
[00:10:49]  So the distances grew, dependence on cars exploded, highways carved through urban neighborhoods.
[00:10:55]  The American dream was located, relocated to the suburbs, which is fine.
[00:10:59]  It's fine.
[00:11:00]  But you didn't choose it.
[00:11:02]  Three companies, through collusion, bribery, everything else, public-private partnerships with governments, they chose that.
[00:11:15]  Because now you need a car to participate in society at all.
[00:11:20]  Okay.
[00:11:22]  America was paving over the rails.
[00:11:26]  While we were doing that, Berlin monetized the trams.
[00:11:28]  Amsterdam expanded their streetcars.
[00:11:30]  Hong Kong kept its electric trams running continuously for over a century.
[00:11:35]  Those cities enjoy options that we don't have.
[00:11:40]  They have the light rail.
[00:11:41]  They have walkable districts, mixed transit systems.
[00:11:44]  It just works because they didn't rip the foundation out.
[00:11:48]  They just kept building as the cities transformed.
[00:11:53]  We dismantled our own advantage.
[00:11:57]  And I want you to understand, this is not smoke-filled rooms plotting evil.
[00:12:05]  This is more dangerous, I think.
[00:12:07]  This was incentives and human frailty.
[00:12:13]  The companies followed profit.
[00:12:15]  That's what companies are supposed to do.
[00:12:17]  Cities wanted short-term savings.
[00:12:20]  The company, the national city lines, was creating a problem so then the people funding the national city lines could come in and fix the problem and have the answer.
[00:12:31]  Does any of this sound familiar?
[00:12:34]  Consumers wanted freedom, but bribes were given and taken.
[00:12:38]  Collusion between giant corporations happened.
[00:12:41]  They had the money to lobby, to buy, and to bribe.
[00:12:44]  And the legal system, when it finally kicked in, it did virtually nothing.
[00:12:49]  And let me ask you this, see if this sounds familiar.
[00:12:52]  If you had bribed politicians, colluded, lied, misrepresented everything, and you destroyed an entire way of life all for profit, do you think you would have faced a $5,000 fine?
[00:13:05]  Or do you think you would have gone to jail?
[00:13:09]  Does any of this sound familiar?
[00:13:11]  Because that's what has to change.
[00:13:13]  And the only way to change that is to reduce the size of government.
[00:13:21]  They were all selling the same thing, a promise that the future would be easier if we tore up the past.
[00:13:28]  Is that not the promise of corporations and NGOs and lobbyists and big government advocates today?
[00:13:35]  Forget the past, tear the past, take the statues down, and we'll have a brighter future.
[00:13:43]  Would it not have served our generation and our children's generation better had the system worked the way it was supposed to and let people actually decide?
[00:13:53]  They may have chosen the same thing, but it would have been their choice, not a manipulation.
[00:14:00]  The streetcar wasn't just transportation.
[00:14:02]  It was a vision on how society could move together.
[00:14:06]  Did you even know about streetcar dominance in America?
[00:14:09]  Did you even know we led the world in this?
[00:14:12]  Did you know we were the envy of the world?
[00:14:16]  Did you know how we went from the trolley and American elites choosing buses over trolleys?
[00:14:28]  I didn't for the longest time.
[00:14:29]  When I found out, I was outraged by it.
[00:14:33]  Once those rails were gone, this is the secret also that you have to pay attention to because it's repeating itself.
[00:14:39]  What did they do?
[00:14:41]  The national city lines.
[00:14:44]  GM said, you know, it's going to be a lot better for the tires.
[00:14:48]  You're going to save more money.
[00:14:49]  Just rip those rails out.
[00:14:52]  You couldn't go back.
[00:14:54]  Okay.
[00:14:55]  One day the trolley came down your street.
[00:14:56]  The next day, it was a giant bus.
[00:14:59]  And everybody adapted.
[00:15:01]  And today, we don't even know what was lost.
[00:15:05]  And I think that's the biggest trick of it all.
[00:15:08]  When something slowly disappears, slow enough, people stop remembering it ever existed.
[00:15:15]  That's what you're witnessing in real time now with healthcare and energy over the last 20 years.
[00:15:21]  Healthcare, has it gotten better since Obamacare or worse?
[00:15:25]  Did Obamacare fix the problem or make it worse?
[00:15:27]  Did it live up to its promise?
[00:15:29]  No.
[00:15:30]  Because that wasn't the real goal.
[00:15:32]  Look at energy.
[00:15:33]  During the Biden administration, what did the socialist, Marxist, and climate radical politicians, lobbyists, and NGOs put into the legislation that you couldn't even see until it was passed, the Green New Deal?
[00:15:45]  not just to close all of the coal-fired electrical plants, but they would receive federal money if they also tore those plants down.
[00:15:58]  Bring up the rails.
[00:16:00]  Bring the coal-fire plants down.
[00:16:03]  I share this with you today because we are destined to repeat history if we don't know our own history.
[00:16:13]  If you ever notice how hard it is to find something you can trust, not a trend, not a logo, not a story, just something made well, something made to last, made by people who actually care whether it holds up a year from now.
[00:16:26]  They're not just trying to sell you something, but they care and they have the same values.
[00:16:30]  Most clothes, they're not designed to be like they were.
[00:16:34]  You know, maybe they're designed to be good for a few washes and then they quietly fall apart.

=== Built to Last and Repeat History (03:06) ===

[00:16:38]  That's why I have a lot of respect for American Giant.
[00:16:41]  They built their entire company around the idea that clothing should be tough and comfortable, last and made here in the United States.
[00:16:48]  And they have spent a fortune bringing machines and manufacturing back to the United States.
[00:16:54]  They work with all-American cotton, American factories, American skilled workers who know what they're doing.
[00:17:00]  So buy American today at American-Giant.com slash Glenn.
[00:17:04]  That's American-giant.com slash Glenn.
[00:17:06]  Save 20% when you use my name for your first purchase.
[00:17:09]  That's American-giant.com slash Glenn.
[00:17:13]  Now back to the podcast.
[00:17:15]  You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
[00:17:20]  I have the man of the hour on.
[00:17:22]  I mean, I have the man maybe of the decade on.
[00:17:26]  Maybe of the last 100 years.
[00:17:28]  This guy has just announced yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency is deregulating the largest, single largest deregulation action in U.S. history.
[00:17:42]  It changes everything.
[00:17:45]  Oh, yeah.
[00:17:46]  I might have to play some sexy music behind it when he's talking because this is just, this is, this is conservative and constitutional porn that is about to happen.
[00:17:55]  Lee Zeldon joins me in a second.
[00:17:56]  First, let me tell you about rapid radios.
[00:17:58]  We assume that communication will always be there when we need it.
[00:18:02]  You know, we just don't think about it.
[00:18:03]  We just expect when we call, it rings and we text, it sends.
[00:18:06]  And then, you know, if something goes wrong, we go reach somebody immediately.
[00:18:09]  But that assumption only holds as long as the system holds.
[00:18:12]  A major storm, a power failure, network overloaded, you know, a dead cell area, whatever, you realize it's not as dependable as I thought.
[00:18:21]  And when you really need something dependable, get the RAD 1 from Rapid Radios.
[00:18:25]  It's rugged, ready-to-go communication.
[00:18:27]  It's designed for real world moments when you don't want to wonder whether your message is getting through.
[00:18:33]  You charge it, you turn it on, you have a direct line of communication.
[00:18:36]  It doesn't feel fragile.
[00:18:37]  So when things get unpredictable, the ability to reach the people you care about, the workers that you work with, it's not a luxury.
[00:18:43]  It's stability.
[00:18:44]  Rad Ron, the RAD 1 is officially live.
[00:18:48]  I want you to check it out now, rapidradios.com.
[00:18:51]  Don't wait for the moment you wish you had a backup.
[00:18:53]  Get the radio built for real life.
[00:18:55]  Communication redefined, rapidradios.com.
[00:19:03]  Lee Zeldon, I've never had the desire, nor have I ever made out with a man, but today I would consider it.
[00:19:14]  You are the greatest man alive today.
[00:19:16]  Thank you.
[00:19:17]  Thank you.
[00:19:18]  Thank you for everything that you and Donald Trump have done and announced yesterday.
[00:19:22]  Well, listen, it was a big deal, and we were excited to be there in the Roosevelt room to announce it.
[00:19:28]  As you pointed out, the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States, $1.3 trillion.
[00:19:36]  And a smart guy like you who's been following Supreme Court cases and you know the timeline, this has been a long time coming.

=== Best Reading of the Clean Air Act (06:54) ===

[00:19:45]  The left, they created this endangerment finding to hoard power in a very unique interpretation of the Clean Air Act that is not allowed under any best reading of it.
[00:19:58]  And they did trillions of dollars of regulation on mobile sources, airplanes, stationary sources, oil and gas.
[00:20:05]  There's so much control that they hoarded.
[00:20:07]  And we just went out, went right for the root.
[00:20:09]  The endangerment finding, the best reading of the Clean Air Act.
[00:20:13]  We know that this is a durable decision that I signed yesterday after Loperbright and West Virginia versus EPA and Michigan versus EPA.
[00:20:23]  If you want the law to say that EPA should be regulating the heck out of greenhouse gas emissions, that is a topic for a debate and a vote in Congress, not a rogue unelected bureaucrat at a federal agency.
[00:20:37]  Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[00:20:40]  I mean, I was just talking to the insiders, you know, during the break, and I said, you know, one reason why a Kia looks like a Genesis and a Genesis looks like a Bentley and the Bentley looks like the Mercedes is that, is that cars can't design, you can't design cars to look any different because the regulations are so heavy, you can't add any drag to any cars.
[00:21:01]  You know, so everything starts to look meh.
[00:21:05]  And that's just, that's one of the things that I don't think even people even think about, let alone, you know, your lighting, your shower head, your water pressure, the money that you're going to save just because trucks are not going to have to spend as much money.
[00:21:20]  So trucking goes down.
[00:21:21]  Any idea how much money we're looking at possible savings for the American people?
[00:21:27]  Yes, a new vehicle is going to cost over $2,400 less on average now that this decision has been signed.
[00:21:37]  And on top of it all, as an added bonus, we got rid of the Obama switch, the climate participation trophy for manufacturers of adding that annoying start-stop feature in vehicles that make your car die at red light and stop sign.
[00:21:51]  That off-cycle off-cycle credits are gone.
[00:21:57]  You're talking sexy talk.
[00:21:59]  When you're talking about getting that thing out of my car, you had me at hello.
[00:22:05]  Amen.
[00:22:07]  How long before we start to see those savings?
[00:22:11]  Immediately.
[00:22:14]  Yeah, the president came in January of 2025.
[00:22:18]  This was a day one executive order.
[00:22:20]  So as far as signaling to auto manufacturers that the president was focused on it, that was a day one message that was sent.
[00:22:29]  We announced on March 12th that we were going to be pursuing this effort.
[00:22:35]  We did the public comment.
[00:22:36]  We followed all of the rules of the Administrative Procedures Act.
[00:22:40]  I read the final decision before signing it yesterday.
[00:22:45]  And this thing is airtight.
[00:22:48]  I referenced Loperbright a second ago, the Supreme Court case overturning the Chevron Doctrine.
[00:22:54]  When the 2009 endangerment finding was done, the Obama administration, the EPA administrator, was creatively interpreting the Clean Air Act to say, well, if it doesn't say I can't, I guess that means we can.
[00:23:08]  Well, the Supreme Court said in Loperbright, that's not how it works.
[00:23:11]  You have to follow the best reading of the law.
[00:23:14]  And then I also referenced West Virginia versus EPA as an example, the major policies doctrine.
[00:23:19]  If you're going to do trillions of dollars of regulation, that is something that is for Congress.
[00:23:27]  And as far as this decision itself, it was loaded with so many mental leaps.
[00:23:33]  They said that when carbon dioxide was mixed with five other well-mixed gases, some of them not even emitted from vehicles, that it contributes, not causes, contributes to global climate change.
[00:23:45]  You won't find that in Section 202 of the Clean Air Act.
[00:23:48]  And they say global climate change endangers public health and welfare without analyzing the local and regional impacts, which is the way that it was always done for decades.
[00:24:00]  When you actually dig into what the law says, the Obama administration decided, well, I guess we have to change the law.
[00:24:07]  They tried to get the votes in Congress.
[00:24:09]  And then when they couldn't get the votes, they said, well, I guess we're just going to have to do it anyway.
[00:24:13]  Well, fast forward to 2026, game over, endangerment finding is gone.
[00:24:20]  So with a lot of the stuff that Trump has done, because we can't seem to get Congress to really do anything, he's had to do it through executive order, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:24:30]  And then I worry about codifying things.
[00:24:32]  But this one is different because this one's all based on the Supreme Court wins, right?
[00:24:38]  Right.
[00:24:39]  And it's also based off of what the law doesn't allow.
[00:24:43]  You know, this is a best reading of the Clean Air Act, which does not say that we should be regulating an emission to combat global climate change.
[00:24:58]  And you could ignore all of the bad guesses of Al Gore and John Kerry and others.
[00:25:06]  You can replace all of the bad, flawed assumptions on science that were made in 2009 with the most pessimistic predictions that didn't bear out as we look at facts in 2026.
[00:25:19]  Regardless of where anyone is on their opinion or the fact on the science debate, the reality is the Clean Air Act does not authorize this, that Congress would have to pass a new law in order to have trillions of dollars of regulation.
[00:25:38]  So, yeah, no, it doesn't have to be codified.
[00:25:41]  And quite frankly, because of the Supreme Court precedent, if the pendulum swung one day down the road, some far-left Democrat gets elected president and they have somebody running the EPA and they're trying to go back to it.
[00:25:58]  The problem is that the Clean Air Act is still going to give them the same problem.
[00:26:01]  And Loperbright is on the books and it says you can't just make it up.
[00:26:07]  And now manufacturers can make vehicles that consumers actually want rather than what politicians demand.
[00:26:13]  And when you combine this decision with the resetting of the CAFE standards with Secretary Duffy and DOT and the president, when you combine it with getting rid of the electric vehicle mandate with the three Congressional Review Act bills that Congress passed and President Trump signed, you add the new investments that have been announced, billions of these different manufacturers and the jobs that come with it.

=== Consumer Choice Over Mandates (04:28) ===

[00:26:39]  It all adds up for a very positive one year for the U.S. auto industry.
[00:26:44]  So is it going to make the U.S. auto harder to sell in places like the EU?
[00:26:52]  Because they've gone full-fledged insane.
[00:26:56]  Right now, I mean, Ford F-150s, I don't think a single Ford F-150, best-selling car in America, has been sold in Europe.
[00:27:05]  And it's not just the size of it, it's all of the regulations and the tariffs that hopefully Donald Trump is really making a real dent in.
[00:27:14]  But if we relax our regulations, will it be harder for us to sell something in Europe?
[00:27:24]  Well, I'm confident that there's going to be more F-150s that are going to get built and less electric vehicles that sit on dealership lots and remaining unsold.
[00:27:33]  Now, it was a couple months ago.
[00:27:35]  I was at the G7 Energy and Environment Ministers meeting that was in Toronto, Canada.
[00:27:42]  And I could tell that these European countries are really feeling the strain of how they have chosen to protect the environment overgrowing the economy.
[00:27:55]  See, the Trump administration believes that you could protect the environment and grow the economy.
[00:28:00]  The economic cost of the climate goals that they were set are, you know, it's coming home to roost right now.
[00:28:09]  And these European countries are facing a reality where they'll make their decisions in the months and the years to come, but they clearly are in a really bad place right now.
[00:28:20]  And they're rethinking certain policies.
[00:28:22]  Now, how much of that they say publicly versus privately, I don't know.
[00:28:27]  We'll see.
[00:28:27]  But when I was in that meeting and we were having these conversations, clearly they are feeling the economic pressure of their environmental policies.
[00:28:35]  I have to tell you, I think when America becomes more than competitive, I mean, when we're going in a different direction and it's cheaper and it's better, I just think the world needed leadership and the world now has leadership.
[00:28:51]  And I think these countries are going to, they're just going to collapse on their own weight on things like this.
[00:28:57]  One last thing, Lee, and you kind of addressed it, but I want to make sure, because, I mean, this is conservative heaven right now.
[00:29:04]  But for middle class, lower class Democrats, this is really good for them as well.
[00:29:14]  And you speak to somebody who didn't vote for Donald Trump and thinks that, oh, this is going to, you know, you're not listening to science.
[00:29:25]  This is about more consumer choice.
[00:29:28]  This is about having more affordable vehicles.
[00:29:30]  And by the way, when you make the trucks more affordable that deliver all of those consumer goods that you purchase in your daily lives, the cost of living across the board is able to go down.
[00:29:43]  $1.3 trillion.
[00:29:44]  Now, too often when you start talking millions and billions and trillions, a lot of people just kind of view it all as the same.
[00:29:54]  These are big numbers.
[00:29:55]  $1.3 trillion is one massive number.
[00:30:00]  When you're talking about $2,400 to purchase a new vehicle, $2,400 less, it's more mobility, more economic mobility.
[00:30:09]  It's the ability to be able to get to work, to get to church.
[00:30:13]  It's the ability to have more money available for health care, for education, and the other costs of life.
[00:30:20]  And I was just asked about fossil fuels and the question was asked in a way as if we should be getting rid of it.
[00:30:30]  And I mean, just look back at the last few weeks, the temperatures across this entire country.
[00:30:36]  Thank God President Trump has been unleashing energy dominance.
[00:30:39]  Thank God we have baseload power, reliable coal and natural gas and oil that's kept our country warm.
[00:30:46]  The person that you're talking about, that low-income, that middle-income family, that person who's been struggling, imagine going through the last few weeks without heat.
[00:30:55]  The president's policies, especially when you add them all up, and it's only been one year.
[00:31:00]  We still have three more years of this.
[00:31:01]  There's a lot that's been fixed.
[00:31:02]  There's a lot more to fix.
[00:31:04]  And I'm just really honored to have a part of it.

=== Russia's Dollar Dilemma (12:09) ===

[00:31:07]  Well, I tell you, Lee, you were on the show, I don't know, about a year ago, and you said you were going to do this.
[00:31:12]  And you said that the president was on it, and the president had told me he was going to do this.
[00:31:16]  And it is nice to see politicians and people in government actually do what they say they're going to do.
[00:31:22]  Congratulations, and please congratulate the president on this as well.
[00:31:25]  Great.
[00:31:26]  Great news.
[00:31:27]  Thanks, Claire.
[00:31:27]  Thank you.
[00:31:28]  You're listening to the best of Glenn Beck.
[00:31:30]  Need a little more?
[00:31:31]  Check out the full show podcast anywhere you download podcasts.
[00:31:35]  So, Jason, I want to check with you.
[00:31:37]  I saw the poll go up.
[00:31:38]  We just asked the Torch Insiders to decide and rank what they wanted to talk about this hour, what they wanted me to start with.
[00:31:49]  And it was Cuba, was it not?
[00:31:50]  Yeah, over well, it's gotten closer, but 55% of the audience want Cuba.
[00:31:55]  The second closest one is SAVE-ACT at 42%.
[00:31:58]  So, most of them Cuba.
[00:32:00]  We'll talk about both of those.
[00:32:03]  Let me start with Cuba.
[00:32:08]  Let me start with something small on Cuba.
[00:32:12]  A really important statement came from the Kremlin this week.
[00:32:17]  The spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, he said, Russia didn't abandon the dollar.
[00:32:24]  The dollar abandoned us.
[00:32:27]  Okay?
[00:32:29]  Now, that's an interesting phrase coming from the spokesperson from the Kremlin.
[00:32:34]  Then he said, if conditions change and the dollar became practical again, countries, including Russia, might resume using it again.
[00:32:46]  Wait a minute.
[00:32:47]  What?
[00:32:49]  For years, the message out of Russia has been de-dollarization.
[00:32:54]  Okay.
[00:32:54]  Now the message is more, well, we left because we had to, not because we wanted to.
[00:33:01]  Wait, hold on.
[00:33:04]  Reports based on Russian internal proposals suggest Moscow is floating a broader economic cooperation with Washington if a Ukraine settlement emerges.
[00:33:14]  Okay.
[00:33:16]  If we settle on Ukraine, what Russia is now saying is maybe we can do joint energy projects.
[00:33:23]  Maybe we can jointly invest in different things and have cooperation.
[00:33:29]  And maybe, you know, the settlement systems that, you know, Joe Biden just blew up, maybe it would include dollar-based transactions again.
[00:33:42]  Wait, what?
[00:33:44]  What?
[00:33:45]  This is huge.
[00:33:48]  Russia has been using the dollar as a weapon for a long time, a long time.
[00:33:54]  And so are we.
[00:33:55]  This is the fundamental principle of BRICS, you know, and local currencies.
[00:33:59]  Russia was saying that's the future.
[00:34:03]  Okay.
[00:34:06]  But why are you saying you might go back to it?
[00:34:09]  All right.
[00:34:11]  So there's the first piece of the puzzle.
[00:34:13]  Something's going on, and it's tied to Ukraine.
[00:34:18]  Jason, tell me about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
[00:34:22]  What was that about?
[00:34:23]  What happened?
[00:34:25]  Cuban Missile Crisis?
[00:34:27]  Yes.
[00:34:28]  Well, do you want to know like the just kind of like this is what happened or what seriously?
[00:34:35]  Yeah, just basically what happened, basically.
[00:34:38]  And I know I'm hitting you off.
[00:34:39]  I mean, I don't know if I would recall all the details.
[00:34:42]  So go ahead and just off the top of your head, what happened?
[00:34:46]  Don't look it up.
[00:34:47]  Don't stall and look at it.
[00:34:48]  Not look at hands off the computer.
[00:34:49]  So Cuban Missile Crisis was when they were going to start positioning nuclear missiles on Cuba, or at least missiles that could have the range to hit the United States.
[00:35:01]  And that was obviously a red flag for us.
[00:35:04]  But the Soviets were responding to multiple other countries within Europe that already had nuclear-capable missiles that could target them.
[00:35:11]  So for them, it was like, this is only fair.
[00:35:14]  For us, this was like, oh, nobody.
[00:35:16]  And then it happened.
[00:35:17]  Oh, good, good, good.
[00:35:18]  Do you remember the country that it came down to?
[00:35:22]  Because it came down to one country.
[00:35:26]  Nobody remembers this.
[00:35:27]  Nobody remembers this.
[00:35:28]  But this is what the real argument was about.
[00:35:31]  You're right.
[00:35:32]  It was about, wait a minute, only fair is fair.
[00:35:34]  You got them all up and down our border.
[00:35:38]  You can't have that both ways.
[00:35:40]  We're going to put them off your coast because you can hit us within minutes.
[00:35:43]  We're going to be able to hit you within minutes.
[00:35:45]  And we said, nope.
[00:35:48]  And we think that this all ended.
[00:35:50]  We think this all ended because JFK was so tough and he was like, I'm putting the ships and you're not going to cross the line.
[00:35:58]  And that's part of it.
[00:35:59]  But there was a deal.
[00:36:03]  We will remove our missiles from Turkey.
[00:36:07]  Oh, yes.
[00:36:08]  And we won't pursue Turkey.
[00:36:12]  Okay.
[00:36:13]  And Turkey was on the border of the Soviet Union at the time.
[00:36:17]  And so that was like putting missiles in Mexico.
[00:36:22]  And so we said, we'll remove these missiles.
[00:36:24]  They're old and outdated anyway.
[00:36:26]  That's what we said.
[00:36:27]  And so we'll remove those and you remove yours and we'll call it even.
[00:36:33]  And so we both walked away a winner.
[00:36:36]  My question is, we gave up Turkey.
[00:36:45]  Now we're headed towards another blockade, possibly, because Russia just sent their ships, some ships down for aid and everything else down to Cuba.
[00:36:56]  Mexico is doing it.
[00:36:58]  Some other country is doing it.
[00:37:00]  And we've said, you're not going in.
[00:37:02]  You're not pulling into port.
[00:37:04]  Whether we do a blockade or not, I don't know.
[00:37:07]  But this field, it just felt very, very similar to me.
[00:37:12]  And I was talking to a friend of mine and he said, Turkey.
[00:37:18]  Like, what?
[00:37:20]  Turkey.
[00:37:24]  That was the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
[00:37:26]  Is it possible that Cuba, that this Cuban thing will be solved by what we do and solve in Ukraine, just like we resolved last time with Turkey?
[00:37:38]  Is it possible that all of this, because they know Donald Trump wants to control this hemisphere.
[00:37:46]  And the last time this happened, Russia gave it up.
[00:37:49]  But we had to give up something.
[00:37:52]  I'm wondering what the deal is going to be.
[00:37:55]  Because now he's talking about, okay, maybe we can use the U.S. dollar again.
[00:37:58]  Maybe we can use the SWIFT system again.
[00:38:00]  They were rebuilding.
[00:38:01]  Remember, we're going to rebuild something.
[00:38:04]  We're going to build something brand new to compete against that.
[00:38:06]  Now he's saying, well, we might use that.
[00:38:10]  What's happening?
[00:38:11]  Does that make any sense to you, Jason?
[00:38:15]  Yeah, so are you thinking that this new economic weapon basically that they're considering with Russia is part of this standoff, basically?
[00:38:30]  Refresh my memory.
[00:38:31]  What are you talking about?
[00:38:31]  New economic weapon.
[00:38:34]  So this is what hit with me with the Russia story was because they so, if you think back during the Ukraine war, when that first, you know, broke out, they had already wanted to get off the dollar, but it was even more essential after we showed them that their money did not matter in this system.
[00:38:52]  That was, you know, the correct, the Post-Bretton Wood system, so we could control, we could make money, just go away if we wanted to.
[00:39:00]  So for Russia, they were like, we have to get off, you know, the dollar.
[00:39:03]  That was everything they've been trying to do now.
[00:39:05]  This is what doesn't make sense about this for me is now they're saying, wait a minute, let us back in, but we don't want you anywhere near Ukraine.
[00:39:15]  I mean, it almost seems like suicide on their end.
[00:39:19]  So they really must be desperate.
[00:39:21]  I don't know, Uh-huh.
[00:39:24]  Well, A, I think they are really desperate.
[00:39:26]  I think I think this has exposed them to be the paper tiger that we never thought they were.
[00:39:33]  But they have survived and they've survived because of the ally with the Axis powers, if you will, you know, China and Iran and everything else.
[00:39:42]  So they're doing that.
[00:39:43]  But now they're talking about doing trade deals with the United States, talking about oil deals with the United States and coming back on our dollar.
[00:39:53]  And it all hinges on Ukraine.
[00:39:57]  That's my point.
[00:39:58]  Yeah.
[00:39:58]  Is I think Ukraine is the chit on the table.
[00:40:07]  I'd be wrong.
[00:40:08]  No, no, I think I completely agree with you.
[00:40:10]  And wouldn't this be a crazy development, especially in the historical reference?
[00:40:14]  I mean, the Cold War eventually flipped and the Soviets were outnumbered once China was flipped over off their side over to the U.S. side.
[00:40:22]  How crazy would that be if it was exactly opposite?
[00:40:25]  Russia gets flipped because of Ukraine.
[00:40:28]  Russia gets flipped and they now go against China.
[00:40:32]  Interesting.
[00:40:33]  And I could see that actually happening.
[00:40:36]  And it would be fascinating to see how, I mean, what the left is going to say.
[00:40:42]  I mean, you know, I remember in the 80s, the left used to just say, Ronald Reagan, he's a monster.
[00:40:48]  He's going to get us all killed and vaporized and everything else.
[00:40:50]  And it worked out the exact opposite, but it took longer than this is taking.
[00:40:54]  You know, this is recent memory now.
[00:40:57]  You didn't have to wait nine years for that thing to begin to fall apart.
[00:41:02]  And this is falling apart right now.
[00:41:05]  And every single expert, which seems to be the theme of today's show, stop listening to the experts.
[00:41:12]  Every single expert has got us into this trouble.
[00:41:16]  And now the guy who's bucking all of the experts and going an opposite direction seems to be collapsing everything in our favor.
[00:41:27]  It's fascinating to me because I think you're right.
[00:41:31]  I think this could end with Russia not being a trusted ally by any stretch of the imagination, but by being somebody we can do business with.
[00:41:44]  This is what Washington wanted us to do and our founders wanted us to do.
[00:41:50]  You don't have permanent allies because things change, people change, countries change.
[00:41:57]  And so what you have are business relationships.
[00:42:01]  You do trade with people and you use that trade to strengthen or weaken relationships, but you're friends with everybody.
[00:42:09]  Okay.
[00:42:10]  You try to be.
[00:42:11]  That's what Donald Trump is doing.
[00:42:13]  We're not going to be, you know, Hillary Clinton's like, gave her the reset button.
[00:42:17]  Remember that?
[00:42:17]  We're best friends.
[00:42:18]  We're never going to be friends with Putin.
[00:42:20]  We shouldn't want to be friends with Putin.
[00:42:22]  But we should want to be able to do business with Putin and have some sort of a relationship where we're not throwing the whole world into chaos.
[00:42:32]  And that's exactly what the left was doing under Biden, throwing the entire world into chaos and pitting each other against each other.
[00:42:41]  Why?
[00:42:41]  Go back to how does every great empire end?
[00:42:46]  Every great empire ends the same way with the with its in world history with all of the other countries.
[00:42:57]  There is always a rising power and a falling power.
[00:43:02]  Whatever the great power is that is falling because it's exhausted itself one way or another and made too many mistakes, there's a new rising power that's coming up.
[00:43:11]  And so there's always a war right towards the end because they're like, take them.

=== China's Weakness vs. Rising Powers (00:14) ===

[00:43:17]  They're weak.
[00:43:17]  Take them out now.
[00:43:19]  But notice China's not doing that because they're weak themselves.
[00:43:26]  Everyone in the world, I've said this to you over and over again.
[00:43:28]  This is unique in all of human history.