Brendan Carr (3:24)

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program.

Glenn Beck (3:29)

I'm just looking at the latest polls here on voting, and it is. It is absolutely insane. It is insane. Let's see. Nearly 6 in 10Americans. 59% disagree with President Trump that Republicans should take over the voting in 15 states in order to nationalize the 2026 midterm elections. 19% say they would favor the idea. I'm with the 6 and 10. I don't think we should do that. I don't want to nationalize it. That's only going to lead to trouble. And that is not what the Constitution says. It's got to be run by the state. The federal government needs to oversee it. That's also in the Constitution. But I don't like nationalizing elections. Asked who is more likely to rig November's midterm elections, how do you think that goes? 44% say the Republicans. 33% say the Democrats. 11 point margin. Wait, it gets worse. Far More Americans disagree 50% than agree 34% with the statement Democrats bring undocumented immigrants to our country to vote and help them vote illegally. Republicans agree 73% rather than disagree 11%. Americans are more divided over the question whether fraudulent voting by undocumented immigrants is rare and it does not influence the outcome of elections. 42% agree. 36% say it is common and it does influence the outcome of elections. And then they split right down the middle. When asked the same question about fraudulent voting, mail in voting. Okay, 40% to 40%. Far more Americans say they would favor 62% than oppose 23% requiring proof of citizenship. The number is 62 now. Usually in the form of a passport or a birth certificate in order to register to vote. Nearly all Republicans. 89% favor the idea. Democrats are divided. 39% now in favor. 45% opposed. That. That is completely different than what we have been seeing. Making it harder to vote by mail. 46% opposed. 38% favor making it harder to vote early in person. 57% opposed. 21% favor banning or cutting back on mail in ballot drop boxes. 42% oppose shortening the early or absentee voting period. 41% oppose. I don't believe this. I just don't believe this. I find this really hard to believe. But if those numbers are true, I mean, you're going to see. You're going to see. This is what they're going to. This is what they're going to go after. If they try to, you know, drag this, you know, vote out, this is what they're going to go after. They're going to go after, you know, the Republicans are rigging it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So far, that's not working. If this is true, maybe it is working, but I don't. This just doesn't feel right to me because it's too much of a swing. But God only knows, America changes on a dime. Now John Cornyn is warning that there is going to be a GOP massacre. John Cornyn, of all people, a GOP massacre. If Texas votes for Ken Paxton as the ag, he wins the primary, he says, gonna be a massacre. Okay, I'm not listening to you, John Cornyn. I'm not listening to you. You. You are the reason the GOP is gonna be massacred all over the country, not Ken Paxton. Now, that's a separate issue. Maybe, maybe not. But I'm not listening to John Cornyn. Tell me anything about what the Republicans can do. Because it's people like John Cornyn that has. That has gotten the Republican Party where it is. Remember, Donald Trump is not a Republican. He's not a Republican. He's. He is a guy who's turning the tables over. He's not going with Republican policies. He's. He's spent the last 10 years trying to get enough momentum so he can actually change. Republican policies are. Let's go to war, let's spend even more money. I mean, it's all progressive. It's all progressive, and John Cornyn is one of the main leaders of that. So please, give it a rest. You know, Republicans, this time around, if they don't stand for the things that they've told us they were going to do. And I'm telling you, the Save act is one of them. It's critical. Look at what you've already done. Look at how you've handled the Epstein thing. You think that helped? You're not only risking the midterms, you're risking the party. If you keep pretending that procedure is principle, you're going to help lose the republic. And this time, if you fail this time, you're not going to be just blamed by the left. You're going to be blamed by your own voters. It's going to happen, John. Your own voters, They've had enough. You will be blamed by your own voters. And you'll deserve it. Look at, look at the difference between John Cornyn, how long has he been in office and what has he accomplished? Look at the difference. President Trump comes into office. He moved like a man who understood the clock was ticking. Executive orders. Why? Because he couldn't get Congress to move regulatory rollbacks. He moved faster than any other president in U.S. history. He has a clear vision. He is literally reshaping the entire world, trying to get rid of the people who are trying to force the U.S. taxpayer and citizen to live under their unelected officials and rules. He's changing all that. He's done all the heavy lifting. He's taken all of the arrows. He's forced the fight. And what is it John Cornyn, you and the Republicans have done? You passed one big beautiful bill that he practically had to jam down your throats. And you want to run on that? That's. That's not leadership. That's hiding behind a man doing your job for you. So let me, let me talk about the excuse of the hour. If I read one more time from a conservative. You can't touch the filibuster. Demanding a talking filibuster is dangerous. You're changing the rules. I'm going to lose my mind. Do you ever read? Do you even know what history is? Enforcing a talking filibuster does not eliminate the filibuster. It actually restores the filibuster. The modern filibuster is the silent one. It's a 20th century convenience cloture, a word nobody knows about that was added in 1917. Gee, who was the President in 1917? Cloture gives you the 60 vote threshold and they weaponized it in the late 20th century. What we have now is not tradition, it's drift. And that drift was that ball was starting to drift. From whom? Woodrow Wilson? From 1806 forward, if you wanted to block a Bill, you had to stand up on your feet and you talked, you held the floor, you sweated, you read, you read from cookbooks if you had to. You physically sustained opposition. That's not nuking the filibuster. That's requiring it. That's requiring courage. It's requiring that the Democratic or whoever uses it, the senators who literally can barely stand, have to stand. You can't sit while delivering a filibuster. How many of the 90 year olds can stand that long? Hmm? And here's the real problem with the Republicans, and I'm going to say it. The reason why the Republicans are trying not to do it is because it's going to require them to show up in the middle of the night. It's going to require them to do hard things, and they don't want to do that. They just want to go home. Historically, the talking filibuster was used to delay banking legislation. In the 19th century, it was used during World War I. It was infamously used by the Southern Democrats to try to stop civil rights legislation. And they did. In the 50s and early 60s, Strom Thurmond had his 24 hour speech against the Civil Rights act of 1957. Notice something? Notice anything. They're all standing. When. When somebody believed that something mattered, whether they were right or wrong, they had to stand there and they had to pay the price. Today, a Senator just sends a little email to leadership, I object. And then suddenly it's 60 votes to get this thing on the floor to vote. That's not constitutional reverence, that's laziness. The Save America act has passed the House multiple times. It's overwhelmingly popular with the US population, voter ID polls through the roof, including among Democrats. And yet the Senate Republicans whisper, yeah, but we don't have 60. You don't need 60. Make them stand up and talk. Make them hold the floor. Make them defend opposing voter ID in front of the American people for days, weeks, months. I don't care how long it takes. That's not destroying Senate norms. Republicans, conservatives, pundits are. You're not this stupid, are you? This is not destroying the filibuster. If they wanted to destroy the filibuster, I'd be with you. But I did my homework because I thought originally. Wait a minute, we're changing the filibuster? I don't want to change this filibuster. I want the filibuster. Go back the way it was with, you know, Jimmy Stewart and Mr. Smith goes to. Why? That's what this is. That's what this is. And either you don't understand Senate history, which is unacceptable, or you do understand it and you're choosing comfort over confrontation. Both are failures. Meanwhile, what do the voters who want to vote Republicans see? Republicans joining Democrats on bloated appropriations, millions for gender transition clinics while you're telling us you're against it, Billions for refugee resettlement, a refusal to strip pork, votes to protect activist judicial judges, votes to protect agencies that Americans now see as ideological enforcement arms. And then, of course, we get the speeches on fiscal discipline. You think the voters are stupid. They're not stupid. And they're growing. They see the stall tactics. They know what it is. They see the spending, they know what it is. They see members who are more afraid of a nasty op ed in the stupid Washington Post than a primary challenger back at home. And here's the fatal miscalculation. John Cornyn and all you like him. Republican voters are done being managed. They're done being told to wait. They're done being told, well, now is not the time. When is the time? We're done watching the left use power ruthless, ruthlessly, while we don't even want to use anything that's legal. If Republicans lose the majority, you are going to be blamed by the left for extremism. If you lose your base, you're going to be blamed by constitutional conservatives for cowardice. Go ahead. Cowards. When you're blamed by both the left and the right, history tends to be a little unkind to you. This is bigger than one bill. This is truly about whether the Republican Party still believes it's an instrument of constitutional government or just a speed bump in front of progressive expansion. Trump has done all of your heavy lifting. He's taken the hits. He's reset the board. Now, the question for you is simple. What did you do? Other than protect procedure, other than protect comfort, other than protect incumbency. It's not too late. But I'm telling you, the clock is ticking. There's time before November. Reconciliation exists. Talking filibusters can be enforced. Spending can still be cut. The SAVE act can be forced to the floor and you can win. But that requires energy, backbone. It requires senators who are willing to sweat on the floor instead of sweat in the green room, explaining why nothing can be done. Because here's the reality. If you, as a Republican, if you keep running out the clock, you're not going to just lose the chamber, you're going to lose your primaries, you're going to fracture your party. And in the vacuum Created by inaction, something far worse always grows. History teaches us when institutions refuse to act while the public loses faith, Republics don't stabilize, they destabilize. And this time, if it collapses, nobody's going to believe it was an accident. They will say to you, you had the house, you had the Senate, you had the presidency, you had the mandate, and you chose alibis over action. Finish the damn job, or I warn you, history will finish it for you. Let me tell you about the burner launcher. Let me paint a picture for you. It's Saturday afternoon. Youth soccer game. Dozens of parents lined up, you know, along the sidelines. You know, they got chairs and coffee cups and, you know, everybody's trying to pretend they're. They're not more competitive than their kids. Everything is normal, right? Until two dads. Two dads decide, you know, it is in fact the World Cup. Voices rise and shoulders square, and one of them takes a step forward, a little too aggressive. And now you got a crowd, you got kids watching. Situation escalating faster than it should. Here's the thing, Moments like this can get out of hand and go from that to life and death at a drop of a hat. It starts out sometimes as ego, as heat, and somebody who doesn't know how to back down. And that is the situation to where, you know, you do not want to get involved. But if it starts to really get out of hand, you. You have a burner launcher. Chemical irritant. Projectiles that will stop the threat coming at you and create distance without using any kind of deadly force. It's legal in all 50 states, doesn't require a permit. Right now, burna is offering 10% off site wide in honor of President's Day. Just go to Burnaby rna.com/glenn learn more about it. Try before you buy it. A sportsman's warehouse located near you. It's Burna by R N a dot com Glenn now back to the podcast. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening. My man. How are you, Glenn?

Buck Sexton (19:22)

I'm great. Thank you so much for having me on. And thank you for convincing me 15 years ago not to go to an Ivy League business school and to come work for you instead at your company. It all worked out. It all worked out.

Glenn Beck (19:35)

I mean, imagine how different you would be if you had gone to that Ivy League education. Maybe it would have been different for you because, I mean, you talk about in manufacturing delusion, you know, the tricks of indoctrination. So maybe it would have Been different from you.

Buck Sexton (19:53)

Yeah, I would hope that I could have continued to stay sane. I mean, look, the basis of this book, the basic idea, it comes out of the madness of COVID But it's not a Covid book. It's. Okay, everybody we know, we read about these other places. We're familiar with mind control in the Soviet Union, with the Cultural Revolution in Maoist China, and how insane that got with the reality of North Korea today. We know that that all exists and that all has happened, but how is it that in this country, we basically, collectively, not all of us, but as a country went insane during COVID And I was like, well, if it's possible on that, you know, it's possible in other things too. And there's actually smaller bouts of. Of politicized insanity, blm, climate change, the gender madness. I mean, I have a whole chapter, Glenn, and you would. You would love this. By the. Legitimately, I'm sure people says, glenn, you will actually love this book. I go back into the writings of a World War II Dutch psychiatrist named Dr. Joust Meerloo, and he coined the term menticide. He wrote a book called Rape of the Mind. He sat down with Nazis, Nazi prisoners of war, to say, how did you do this? Basically? How did you make a whole country go insane? And he approached this as a psychiatrist, as a practitioner, and came up with this framework. Well, the framework, Glenn, is applicable to some of the brainwashing, some of the things we see going on here in America today. And so that's why the book, it's. It's history, but it's a history that informs what's happening right now. And the gender madness we're seeing is a huge part of chapter two.

Glenn Beck (21:31)

So, Buck, I just want you to know you had me at former German scientist. I just know you had me there. So where are we seeing this really? Because I think it's. We're being hit by education, we're being hit by jihadis, we're being hit by. We're being hit by Marxists. Are they all using the same tactics?

Buck Sexton (22:04)

Yes, there's. There is a similarity. Now, the reason I broke it down into. Into the chapters. The chapters are essentially all variations on the theme of what we call brainwashing. That's the most general term practitioners, Glenn, psychiatrist, they're actually call it mind control or coercive mind control, and that will include things like cult indoctrination. In the book, I get into under the identity construction chapter, I'll get into jihadis. I get into some of the cult stuff Om Shinrikyo and that stuff that people should be very aware of as well, because it's effectively a totalitarian state without the state. It's the full control of individuals that is achieved through this mind control process without having a massive secret police. You know, it's one thing for the Soviet Union to do it, it's another thing for Maoist China to do it. But to operate on an individual or much smaller basis, that's obviously what you see going on in cults. But I break this down and do conditioning. And I start with Pavlov. Fascinating stuff about Ivan Pavlov, Nobel Laureate and really the beginning of, of our scientific conception of understanding that what your brain is taking in affects your body directly. Right? And there's this that you get into the sort of the reflex and the conditional reflex, which is initially what it was called. We call it, you know, conditioning. Now it's a whole series of behavioralism training, but conditional reflex. But here's what Pavlov learned that was really interesting, Glenn. There was a. It was at the time was Leningrad, St. Petersburg. They've changed name a bunch of times, but there was a flood at his lab and the dogs in the lab almost drowned. And it was one of these things where the water was rising, the water's rising, these dogs. And I'm a, I'm a huge dog person, so I get like upset just thinking about this. But the dogs were freaking out and freaking out. The lab technician, not Pavlov, got there, freed the dogs last minute, and they had not only a complete erasure of the conditioning that they had had because of this trauma, they also had extreme behavioral changes apart from that, meaning some that were docile became aggressive, some that were aggressive became docile. So this set this light off. And you know, who thought it was really interesting that there was this new series of behavioralism training going on, Lenin himself. Lenin, yeah, Stalin, the Soviets. And they started paying very close attention to this and they came up with Glenn some step by step and some here's how you do it. And that's a lot of the meat of the book is looking into those practices, you know, isolation, keeping people confused, keeping people frack atomized in society. There's all these different things,

Glenn Beck (24:45)

you know, I've heard from because I've changed my approach to the show recently, you know, in the last. It's been happening over the last three, four or five months. And I'm trying just to explain things more than anything else, just try to help clarify things so people can Understand it. Less opinion, maybe, and more just. Here's what's actually happening and how it works. And. And my gut has told me that is so important because the world doesn't need more opinions and it doesn't need more electric shocks to it. The only way out is through reason. Is. Am I accurate on that at all? Do you see any evidence that. I mean, how do you get out of this?

Buck Sexton (25:35)

This is where I go. This is where the book sort of finishes in the last chapter. And the final arguments are. People need to understand that the advice, the call to arms, if you will, from Solzhenitsyn, the great Soviet dissident of live not by lies. You have people ask me, how do we avoid this stuff? Because this lays out the different tactics. It lays out confusion and degradation as the twin pillars of menticide. For example, it lays out.

Glenn Beck (26:05)

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Just wait. Explain each of those as you go through them real quickly. Just explain them.

Buck Sexton (26:11)

So.

Glenn Beck (26:12)

So.

Buck Sexton (26:12)

So in the menticidal process, in order to unmoor you from your ethics, your sense of self, your sense of reality around you, they want to keep you confused. Now they can lock you in a cell, cut you off from all daylight and, you know, blast music in. There's things that they can physically do, but also there are ways that you can just try to keep people confused through propaganda, confused through messaging, so they don't have the basic moral understanding. And degradation is really a degradation of your ability to understand the most fundamental truth. And this is why I get into the transgender madness that sees this country. Because, Glenn, under a mentic idol framework, if you are willing to affirm the most obvious madness, which is that a man can become a woman and that there's no biological advantage, these sorts of things, you are not just conceding on that issue. You are degrading your own brain's ability to make the most basic distinctions and undermining the confidence that you have in your perception of reality. This is a key step in Meerloo's menticide. This is a key step in how. And this is why. It can be done with extreme force, but it can also be done with extreme messaging all throughout the society around us. And so that's what we get.

Glenn Beck (27:29)

But it was. Some of. Some of that is through extreme force, because if you didn't. If you didn't go along with it, you were ostracized, you were out.

Buck Sexton (27:40)

Yeah, it's just a difference of what the punishments are. I mean, one of them. There's a whole. There's A whole chapter, Glenn, where I get into what really happened in China and the incredible. Now, the Chinese, the Maoists, borrowed from the Stalinists, who, of course, were like, hey, we have this new Soviet man that we're going to build. This guy Pavlov, you know, Pavlov, by the way, actually hated the Soviets, the whole other thing. But this guy Pavlov, we can build on his scientific knowledge, and we can just basically turn people into robots. Not really that easy.

Glenn Beck (28:10)

Right?

Buck Sexton (28:10)

That's. That's a. One of the good news parts of this is that every human being, you could say, because of our underlying makeup, you could say, because of our soul, you can't just flip a switch and get the same outcome. It's not actually a machine, but there is a process here. And what they would do in Maoist China. And there was a psychologist, Robert Lifton, who traveled there right at the early phase of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. And he said one of the things they would come up with is people would have to. They would force confessions. Glenn. This also goes to degradation. Forced confessions. No. And the people would write things that were crazy. And the point was they had them go through it over and over and over again, and they would tell them, your confession is not sincere enough. So they would know that they're lying. Everyone knows that they're lying. They're confessing to crazy crimes, you know, treason that they never could have done. It'd be like me sitting here writing that I assassinated Abraham Lincoln. They're like, well, that is not a sincere enough confession. Try again. Try again. This is how they break people down. Glenn, this is. To your point, when you don't use the preferred pronouns, maybe you get fired. You say man up. Maybe you get an excuse from the corporate meeting. Like these. These are threads. These are trends in mind control that have seized this country in Pavlovian conditioning. Wear a mask even when everyone knows you're outside. I mean, all these things that we did, these physical manifestations of obedience, are meant to train our minds into a way that we can be molded and weaponized for politics. And to what you're saying about all the messages everywhere and why it's so important not to live, to live not by lies. Now, because of technology and AI. I mean, Glenn, I'm sure you come across this, too. Sometimes, even among my own staff on the show, we'll say, guys, is this. Is this AI? Is this real? And we do this for a living, trying to figure out what's real, what's not. I know this is only going to increase. And once you add neural implants, which are just over the horizon into the game, mechanistic mind control. I mean, really controlling the synapses becomes more of a scientific reality. So the ultimate control is control over your mind in a manufacturing delusion. You will understand how the bad guys do this and how you avoid this. Glenn, it took me 18 months to write. It took the CIA six months to clear. So this is a true labor of love. And I really think that everybody. It's meant to be read, and it can even be read chapter by chapter. You have to read the whole thing at once. Although I think some people get through it quickly. It is readable more than once. It is readable as a reference. And I throw some cool CIA stories in there that I've never told before because the time has elapsed and I can talk about it now.

Glenn Beck (30:42)

So there you go.

Buck Sexton (30:42)

You're streaming the Best of Glenn Beck to hear more of this interview and others. Download the full show podcasts wherever you get podcasts.

Glenn Beck (30:50)

Stephen, welcome to the program. I don't even know where to begin with you.

Stephen Shaw (30:56)

Well, I like your introduction because this is a crisis unlike any other crisis that we're facing a lot of crises, Glenn, and this one, I think, should be at the top of the agenda simply because we don't know what the solution is. I think every other crisis, we could kind of come up with ideas of solutions. Nuclear proliferation. If you want to go down other avenues in the environment, you could at least have a conversation. But this one, really, there's no example of a nation that's ever recovered from this.

Glenn Beck (31:25)

I'm going to get into the stats here in a second with you. I want you to explain, you know, how bad the problem is. But do we even know what's causing the problem?

Stephen Shaw (31:36)

Well, we've. We've a pretty good idea of what it's not. Okay, so that's a good starting point.

Glenn Beck (31:43)

All right, so let's get into that. Let's get into that here in a second. Tell me.

Stephen Shaw (31:46)

Yeah.

Glenn Beck (31:47)

What is the problem? What are the. What are the numbers showing?

Stephen Shaw (31:51)

The numbers are showing two things that to me, are really take us down to a much deeper understanding than saying that we've got a birth rate problem that's much too generalized. What are those two things? Mothers have been remarkable, I guess, fathers too. But we got so much data on mothers. That's what we talk about. Do you know that mothers in the US are having more children now than they were in the 80s? Even mothers in Japan are Having the same number of children as 1970, same across much of Europe. So once you have your first child, you're actually going on to have two, maybe three children just as much as your mother's generation and even in some cases, grandmothers. So it's not about mothers. Yeah, I mean, this is through incredible shifts in education, opportunities for women, political shifts, cultural shifts in many parts of the world. Mothers are, to me, incredibly resilient and by inference, fathers too. No, this is about childlessness. It's about those people, and I believe the majority of them did plan to become parents. In fact, I'm quite certain of that. This is about the people who probably would have wanted to become a parent, but things didn't work out. And that really takes us down to a much deeper understanding of why is it that many people who plan to become a parent. And I know this will resonate with many of your listeners, and to be honest with you, the people I have met who have been in this category, they often talk of grief. So my heart goes out to any of your listeners who dreamed of a family and for whatever reason, not meeting the right partner, things not lining up, divorce, breakup. And if you look at the data from Japan to Europe, US even now, southern India is saying the same thing. You're finding the number of people with no children who dreamed of it is the real heart of this issue.

Glenn Beck (33:55)

Okay, so is that possibly linked at all with the way our society now is saying don't get married early, you know, do your career. And so you're in your 30s sometimes before you get married, and then things, you just wait a couple more years and all of a sudden you've just timed out. Does that have anything to do with it?

Stephen Shaw (34:17)

I mean, I mean, you're exactly, you're exactly on the money. It's not only linked to it from data. We can take data now from about 40 different nations where we've got good data. And all we need to know is what's the average age that a woman is having her first child? And a little bit about how early are people starting family, how late. But it's really that middle age for the US right now that's 28 years old. For many countries that's 30 or older for first child, that alone predicts about 80 to 90% of birth rates. So it's all linked to age. And again, to me, what's quite remarkable, we're very good. Every nation talks about its own issues. It's the price of real estate, it's work, life, balance. It's Southern Europe. It's youth unemployment, it's gender issues in Korea. But no, you look at the data and it cuts through all of this. The reality is, without exception, every nation has a straight line in terms of the age of motherhood. It goes up every year, up and up and up. And with it, birth rates come down. And we're noticing this right now, Glenn. It's in the news almost daily in some cases. The reality is this started in the 70s, but we didn't really know this because people who delayed parenthood in the early 70s mostly had a chance to catch up and have a child mid-20s, late-20s. We're now at a point where people are starting so late, it gets more and more challenging for different reasons to really have your first child, you know, 33, 35, 37. Of course it can happen, but for more and more people, it simply doesn't.

Glenn Beck (36:09)

So where is it the worst and why?

Stephen Shaw (36:15)

South Korea and the worry that I have. Yes. So the average woman in South Korea is having 0.7 children. Oh, my gosh, US is 1.6. That's not good because we need around 2.2.1 children per family. Basically everyone having two kids on average for a pop to remain stable. South Korea is at one third of that level.

Glenn Beck (36:47)

Why, why, why is South Korea so bad?

Stephen Shaw (36:50)

Well, they've got the double triple whammy going on. What has happened is not only has the age of motherhood now reached nearly 33 years old, that's for first child. It's reached so late that the likelihood of a woman ever becoming a mother in South Korea is now less than 50%. Only 45% of women there ever become mothers. And the extra challenge they now have because it's happening so late, 40% of women there only have one child. Usually it's around 20%. In most nations, even neighboring Japan, it's around 20%. So not only is it incredibly unlikely now for a woman to have a child in South Korea, it's more and more likely that she'll only have one.

Glenn Beck (37:41)

So is this at all caused by Western civilization? I mean, the way we have, the way we've prioritized our lives now, and in many cases, away from, you know, creationism, away from the family is sacred that, you know, that humans are supposed to multiply and be fruitful instead. You know, put yourself first, put the, you know, your, your, your business first or whatever. Because is this happening across all cultures or is it just the Western culture?

Stephen Shaw (38:22)

Glenn, this is every culture you research. And even southern India now Has birth rates as low as 1.6, the same as the US and has been at that level in some cases.

Glenn Beck (38:34)

It's not. It's not. Is. It's not Islam, is it?

Stephen Shaw (38:38)

No. Well, do you know, I get to, you know, I'm lucky. I get to speak in places around the world. I get to meet governments around the world. And I've been to the Middle east three times in the past year with governments deeply worried about the rapid falling birth rates in the Middle East. So what's the common link? Because you're not too far. Well, to be honest with you, you were really right. We've lost something in all communities. And what is it? Driven by, perhaps innocently, perhaps otherwise. We have turned our 20s into a decade of education, education, education, without thinking about family, future family. And then career development, career development, career development. And when I get to talk to young people that in the US today, a woman turning 30 without a child has at most a 50% chance of ever becoming a mother age 30 if you haven't already had your first child. And that's the same in all of these countries. In fact, in Japan, it's even younger. It's only 26. So we have put so much focus on other things other than family and frankly, haven't been honest to ourselves, partly because few people have known the data. I hope that changes, unless a society's. Yeah, the reality. CDC data will tell you that around 90% of women either have or want kids. And that really hasn't changed very much. It's come down a little bit, but not what you might hear in the press. Nobody wants kids, really. That's twisting certain facts. I see all the time 90% or more of women do want children one day. But when you hear the reality today for the US is we're looking now close to as few as six out of ten ever becoming mothers. That gap in I think people's dreams for family and young people's assumptions that, hey, society's got me covered, they're telling me to get an education, they're telling me to work hard, and of course, then I'm going to be able to meet someone and settle down because that's what most people want to do. And then finding out as many as 30% of women dreaming of a family end up childless.

Glenn Beck (40:58)

Stephen, does the fact that for some reason this new generation is not having as much sex as every other generation before, is that going to pile on to this and make it worse?

Stephen Shaw (41:17)

We haven't seen that yet. And I'm not Sure it will. But when you look at all of the challenges my kids are in their 20s, you see the challenges of this generation. Relationship, sex, certainly in terms of devoting time to spending time alone, perhaps gaming, etc. To me, those are not causes, they're actually consequences. It used to be in all societies that a young man and woman would have a family by mid-20s. They'd have different responsibilities, they would mature in certain ways. Right now, let's say you're 20 years old and there's someone you're quite interested in. You're not thinking at that age, mostly they might be the person I settle down and have family with, because for many people, that's 10 years away. So what do you do? You fill up your 20s with other things. What's the point in investing in a relationship? What's the point of, you know, developing a path in life that would prepare me for children? That comes in the 30s? And I think my speculation is a lot of the current issues and challenges with younger people stem from the reality we're no longer doing what we used to do in our 20s, which was start to raise a family.

Buck Sexton (42:42)

You're listening to the Best of the Glenn Beck Podcast. Hear more of this interview and others with the full show podcast available wherever you get podcasts.

Glenn Beck (42:51)

You know, I find this next topic so fascinating because there is a difference between equal time and the fairness doctrine, and people always confuse the two. And you would only know about either of those, I think, if you've ever been, you know, regulated by the fcc. Most people don't even understand what they are, but there are rules on public airwaves, and they're different than cable and everything else because those are public airwaves. And me, I love deregulation. I'd love to see the FCC pretty much go away, except for a very few things to make sure that we are, you know, you know, that we're still safe, but at the same time, we are living with a bunch of conservatives that always say the same thing. And that is, you know, the left uses every weapon in the chest, and then. And then they. They make up other weapons that aren't even in the constitutional chest. You know, we gotta fight back and use our. Well, here's the FCC using the actual law the way it is supposed to be, applying those. And then conservatives get upset. I want you to hear it from the horse's mouth on what is actually. What is the law? What is actually happening? And then we can have the conversation of should that be that way or not. Brendan Carr is with us. He is the chairman of the FCC and he is here to talk to us about what's happening with the View and Colbert. Brennan, how are you, sir?

Brendan Carr (44:27)

I'm doing great. Good to be with you again. Appreciate it.

Glenn Beck (44:30)

Yeah, you bet. Okay. So did the FCC give CBS legal guidance about the interview with Talarico?

Brendan Carr (44:39)

The equal time was no, not at all. I woke up Tuesday morning and logged on to social media and that was the first time that I'd even heard about this. And I woke up to a politician claiming that the FCC had somehow not aired is what they said. The FCC refused to air this segment

Stephen Shaw (45:00)

and that wasn't true at all.

Brendan Carr (45:01)

Not only was that not true, but the subsequent claim that well, it was CBS that refused to air it was also proved to be a hoax as well. That in fact CBS apparently had advised Colbert they could run the exact interview that they wanted and they just needed to be mindful that it could trigger an equal time obligation for other candidates. And again, that would be a circumstance in which Colbert himself wouldn't even have had to conduct the universe. But to your point, step back. Broadcast TV is fundamentally different, as you noted, than cable and streaming and social media because you have a license by the government. And the reason you have a license is because we can't have multiple people on the same airways at the same time. So the government in broadcast, but not cable, not streaming, picks winners and losers. They say you get a license and necessary that means your friend or your neighbor don't get the license. And so when you broadcast, you're supposed to stand in the shoes not just of yourself, which what you do on cable and everything else. It's a public trust model. You're supposed to operate in what we call the public interest and to look out for the views and interests of those that were denied by the government a license. And so one of those specific statute requirements is called equal time. And the idea here was that Congress didn't want to media gatekeepers picking winners and losers in elections. They wanted individual people, the voters to make those decisions. But they knew that the powerful broadcasters could put a thumb on the scale and tip elections by putting preferred candidate on the airwaves and denying others. So they said equal time. If you're going to have one candidate on, provide equal time for the other. And it's funny for me to see people claiming that this is censorship. It's the opposite of that. There is nothing about the equal time rule that would ever prohibit anybody from having any candidate on the air. It simply Says their opposition candidates should get an equal opportunity potentially down the road. Now, Congress then stepped in.

Glenn Beck (47:00)

Hang on just a sec, hang on, hang on. Let me, let me just speak as a broadcaster. But what it does do, this is what the fairness doctrine did. And again, they're separate. But what the fairness doctrine did is it made broadcasters, I know because I lived it, say it's not worth the hassle. I just don't want to just forget the interview. And so it is limiting only because they choose to limit. I mean, you're going to have to have three different candidates on. If you do that candidate, you're going to have to have three candidates on for the equal time rule, and then they get to decide, is that worth it or not. Correct.

Brendan Carr (47:34)

Well, one reason that's slightly different than the fairness doctrine is the fairness doctrine said if you're going to cover a controversial issue of public importance right then and there, you got to give the left perspective and the right perspective with equal time mean is you can have just one candidate on your broadcast, TV or radio program, but at some point in the future, a different host, a different time, they get equal, comparable airtime. So it doesn't require you to do it in the moment the same way that the fairness doctrine would have done. But Congress came in and said, you know what, let's create some exceptions to this. And they created exceptions for what are known as bonafide news programs. So if you're a bona fide news program, Congress was thinking about Meet the Press and different programs like that, that you're just actually doing sort of journalistic work. You're not trying to put a thumb on the scale for a candidate. You're just trying to interview someone with, you know, normal journalistic questions. You don't have to abide by equal time. Okay, flash forward over the last 30 or 40 years, everybody came to the FCC and they were getting dector ruling to say that they were bona fide news programs and therefore exempt. And people effectively read the exception as swallowing the rule. And they said, anything goes. Any TV program, any radio program is now bonafide news. The exception swallows the rule. And what we did at the beginning of the year was we said, listen, that's not what the statute says. That's not actually what the FCC case law says. So just be mindful. It's political season. There's legally qualified candidates that you're going to have on and be mindful of the equal time rule. And again, on the Colbert episode, they were apparently given advice that they could do this But Colbert apparently did not want to have Jasmine Crockett on who's running in opposition and the Democrat primary to James Talarico. And it appears to be that he ran a hoax, that he knew he could fool the mainstream media, the legacy media, by claiming he was censored, he could drive clicks and donations and get a leg up on Jasmine Crockett. And the national news media just went along hook, line and sinker because it fit with all their priors that this was Trump censorship. But this was a decision by Colbert and by Talarico to put a hoax out there that they knew the media would run for purposes of Talarico apparently scoring political points against Jasmine Crockett. If I was Jasmine Crockett, I'd be pretty upset by that.

Glenn Beck (49:57)

All right, so tell me about the View. What's happening with the View?

Brendan Carr (50:03)

The View is similar. So the View apparently is claiming that they are a bona fide news program and therefore can have one political candidate on and not afford equal opportunity to other candidates. And what we have said is that the View has not established. They've not made the case to the FCC that they do in fact qualify for the exception to the rule. And so we have started an enforcement inquiry, taking enforcement actions to explore this issue with them and move forward. Again, they have not made the case that they are a bonafide news program. And we're actively looking at that.

Glenn Beck (50:44)

So the one thing, Brendan, that I've always loved about you is you're a small government guy. And I will tell you one of the effects of this. I don't know if I'm sure you saw it. The Washington Post editorial today about the abolition of the FCC rules. I mean, it is. Let me see if I can pull it up here. It is absolutely incredible. They are now talking about how maybe. Listen to this. The Trump presidency ought to be an education for progressives in the ways government over. In the way government overregulation can distort politics and business. Passed by Congress as part of 1934 Communications Act. Equal Time Rule says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The FCC is charged with enforcing it. The government shouldn't be dictating the political content of late night television nor any other entertainment Americans choose to consume. But that's exactly what the Equal Time rule does. It says that it is outdated and needs to be deregulated. Could we maybe have an opportunity here where we can get rid of a lot of this regulation because they're suddenly for it?

Brendan Carr (51:54)

Well, obviously, I don't think everything they're saying There, in terms of their understanding of the way this rule operates is right. But listen, if a collateral unintended consequence of me doing my job is we've got a lot more converts to small government conservatism, I guess I'll take that as a win. But to your point, think about it this way. A lot of times when Republicans are in government and they get gavels, they take their gavel and they go to the farthest flung corners of the earth and they bury the gavel in the sand and they say if we were to actually just apply the law in a even handed way, then Democrats will get the gavel again and they'll weaponize it. And where that fundamentally misreads, among other things, is we have a job to do, the statute requires this. Let's apply it, let's not weaponize it, let's not abuse it, let's not be biased about it, but let's apply in an even handed way. And that's what I'm doing. Now. What Democrats do when they get gavels is they weaponize it. And we saw this at the fcc. When the Democrats were charged in the FCC during the Biden years, they went after Fox broadcast TV station and threatened to not renew their license for programming they didn't like on Fox News Cable, which is not regulated by the fcc. You had Democrats that pressured cable companies to drop Fox News and OAN and Newsmax and that campaign worked. You had senators on the Democrat side calling for the FCC to investigate Sinclair, a broadcaster for news distortion because they were viewed as a conservative outlet. So Democrats actually weaponized. Whenever Democrats get gavels again at the fcc, let me tell you something, they're going to weaponize. What we need to do is that when we're here, let's just apply the law, let's not weaponize it against Republicans or Democrats. But the law is on the books. If people want to get together and go to Congress and say change the law, then they should do that. But up until then, we're just going to do this in a fair, even handed and balanced way.

Glenn Beck (53:43)

Honestly, Brennan, if you said to me, Glenn, you know, you haven't applied for new status or whatever has to be done and you know it's in question that, you know, the Democrats are saying it's in question that you're a legitimate news program and I say, well what does that mean? And you'd say, you can't have just one politician on that's running for office. You at some point would have to have, you know, the others on as well. I would take that as a giant blessing, really. Thank you. And I don't. I wouldn't have them on anymore.

Stephen Shaw (54:15)

I just.

Glenn Beck (54:16)

I wouldn't. I think it might make the show better. I think it might make Colbert even better by not having them on. But that's the only consequence of this, right, is just candidates running you. If you air them and you're not a legitimate news source, you or the network have to have the other candidates on in an equal kind of time scenario, correct?

Brendan Carr (54:46)

That's effectively right. That's how the rule operates. And again, the idea here is let's let individual people, voters get more information and they pick the winners of primaries and of generals. Let's not have the media gatekeepers abuse their position of power, the position of public trust, of being on the airwaves to unfairly advantage one candidate or party over another. So it's a leveling of the playing field. It's about more speech, not less. But again, people can go to Congress and try to change it.

Glenn Beck (55:18)

I would love for anybody who wants to make the FCC smaller or any government agency smaller and well enough to know that you're the same guy I

Brendan Carr (55:27)

am, and we are doing it. We're actually running the largest deregulatory initiative in the agency's history. We've gone through our big stack of code of federal regulations and we are deleting and deleting and deleting. We've getting rid of hundreds of regulations at this point. A lot of dead wood. A lot of regulations we don't need. On the broadcast side, though, again, it's just, it's a fundamentally different medium. And on social media, my position is very clear and continues to be we want wide open, robust, uninhibited debate, and that's what we want to see. But if you want to be on the unique medium of broadcast tv, you got to comply with the rules of the road there.

Glenn Beck (56:05)

Yeah. Brendan, thank you very much. I appreciate it. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. Good talking to you.