← The Glenn Beck Program
The Glenn Beck Program
Best of the Program | Guests: Sen. Eric Schmitt & Rep. Chip Roy | 7/16/25
00:44:36
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- [00:00]
Glenn Beck
On today's podcast, Chip Roy dives into the GOP's crypto legislation which might create a backdoor for a central bank digital currency. It's really important conversation but if you listen to the full show, the half hour before really gets into some deep things about the economy and Jerome Powell and what's happening at the Federal Reserve. But on this, the best of Senate Republicans are pushing a huge rescission package, cut more federal spending. Senator Eric Schmidt joins the show to lay out the details he's confident is going to pass. And there are Chinese drug cartels running rural Maine is your state. Next talk to the main wire editor in in chief. His, his name is Steve Robinson. He lays this out in chilling detail. You need to hear this as well. All in today's podcast. Let me tell you about real estate agents. I trust there's, there's, there's really something unreal about the real estate agent process. Pictures can, you know, look too good to be true. Open houses can feel staged. Sometimes if agents themselves sound more like salespeople and guides, you kind of turn off with that. If you're not careful, it starts to look like a three ring circus. You want somebody genuine. You want somebody authentic, somebody who understands you, what you're looking for, you know, understands the market. Because this is your home, your family, your future. It's very possible that buying or selling a home is going to be the largest financial transaction you're ever involved in. This is why I started Real Estate Agents I trust we connect you with agents who have earned their way in, not through pay to play, but through performance. These are the top sellers, the people we have vetted ourselves intensely to make sure they're the right person for the job for you. We look for experience, expertise and a track record of helping people just like you. We started with the 500 best real estate agents in the country according to the Wall Street Journal. And we just what they do and we just started looking for others like them. Go to realestate Agents I trust dot com. We'd like to recommend one in your area, real estate agentsitrust.com now back to the podcast.
- [02:14]
Eric Schmidt
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
- [02:18]
Glenn Beck
Hello America. You know, we've been fighting every single day. We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you. We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it. But to keep this fight going, we need you right now. Would you take a moment and Rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast. Give us five stars and leave a comment. Because every single review helps us break through Big Tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth. This isn't a podcast. This is a movement. And you're part of it. A big part of it. So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up, help us push this podcast to the top. Rate, review, share. Together, we'll make a difference. And thanks for standing with us. Now, let's get to work. Welcome to the Glenn Beck Program. There's a lot going on today and it's our job to keep you informed and help you understand what's happening in the world. You know, the Federal Reserve, we've just been talking about that. What's really going on there? What's going on with cutting? There were some great things that happened in the Senate yesterday. We'll talk about that with one of the senators who passed it through and got it to the President's desk. Rescissions, big about $9 billion of rescissions which were promised doge rescissions, which is very, very good. And then there's something else that's happening in the Senate that is called the Genius Act. The Genius act seems really good in some ways. It is. It's all about digital currency and stablecoins. Now the problem is, is this, is this going to lead us to a CBDC which was, is a, a Federal Reserve digital currency. And what's in the Genius Act? As far as what I read, what's in the Genius act, what the law says is not a problem. I mean, I think there needs to be some things added to it. But the problem is what it normalizes identity linked money, federal approved issuers, and a financial system that rewards obedience and flags dissent. And once these pipes are built, the fear is. My fear is at least it doesn't take that much for a central bank digital currency to flow right through those pipes. It's normalizing things. And in some ways we have to normal, we have to have some rules on these things. But I would really like to see that, you know, you have a very clear right to hold your money in your own wallet, offline and untouchable. And a line in the sand in this that says no CBDCs, not now, not ever. And a guarantee that says private money earned and saved remains private and unprogrammed. That has to be in this bill. Now some people stood up and argued those very points. Chip Roy, I think is one of them. And all of them were called to the White House yesterday where the President said he made real progress with everybody. Chip, I assume you were part of that calling to the White House.
- [05:46]
Chip Roy
Well, Glenn, thanks for having me on and thank you for that great summary. Because a lot of people don't understand what's happening because as you point out, so many things were happening at once. The Senate, as you noted, just passed or you know, the rescissions package, which we thought they were going to water down more than they did, and we're blessed that they didn't. And that's great. $9 billion, including public broadcasting. That's step one of the. A thousand that we need to take on.
- [06:10]
Glenn Beck
Really good. And that is at the president's desk now. Right.
- [06:15]
Chip Roy
They made a slight change to it. So we'll have to come back to. We will take it. We will take it up, pass it and send it to the President. Okay, we agree. We already passed it. They wanted it down a little bit, but it's close.
- [06:26]
Glenn Beck
Right. And it was, it was kind of on a, on the AIDS thing, which I think is understandable why they, I mean, yeah, you have to read the bill to know what that was actually about. But it's such an easy target. It's probably worth, you know, losing that $400 million.
- [06:43]
Chip Roy
Correct. That's, that's the Right. Summary. Now to this point, we told the leadership over the weekend that while we appreciated what they were doing with stablecoin in the Genius act, and while we would, we would prefer to see us move our House bill, which is a market framework, a broader bill, that sort of the second piece to this. And then thirdly, that we wanted to see, as you point out, a complete and total ban on a central bank digital currency or anything like it. You explained it better. So we told the leadership, don't put this on the, on the floor in a rule. Right. Which is how we operate in the House without fixing this, making these amendments in order. But unfortunately, they didn't listen to us, I say, with all due respect. And so some of us objected. Now, to be clear, I was not in the meeting at the White House because I was on the House floor running speeches for the people that were affected by the floods in my district in Texas. So I was, though, in constant contact with my friends who were at the White House, and I certainly let the White House know that a few of those good guys, like Scott Perry and others, had my proxy. But here's another important point because we're not going to talk about Epstein this Morning, I don't think. Unless you want to.
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Glenn Beck
No, I don't.
- [08:01]
Chip Roy
But on Monday night, there was a vote in the. In the committee, in the Rules Committee. I was not present. I got in late because of flights, because the floods and then the rains coming into D.C. so I wasn't there. So I didn't vote on this Epstein matter. We talked about that separately. There's a lot of information flying around.
- [08:18]
Glenn Beck
Yeah, that's fine. This is. Move on. This is really important.
- [08:22]
Chip Roy
Yeah, yeah. Bottom line is, here's the deal. We need to do what needs to be done on crypto. Okay. We need to deal with stablecoin. We need to deal with the market framework. But we believe a line in the sand is that we've got to have an emphatic statement from the government of the United States that the government is not going to be tracking your money to prevent you from being able to buy guns, to prevent you from being able to buy gasoline. If they want to go to all, you know, EVs, to prevent you from being able to live your life freely and be able to monitor your transactions, like the Chinese Communist Party. We don't do that here. This is a country that's supposed to embrace freedom. That's the point. And at the core of it is a currency that is stable. Modern technology is raising different ways for us to achieve that. And, you know, I wish we'd not gotten off the gold standard. We did. We've allowed the Fed to become unwieldy and print all manners of money. That's part of the problem. But here we are, and we've got the ability maybe through the markets, to create something good, to kind of reclaim autonomy with a stable currency that isn't being messed up by federal bureaucrats. But it needs to be done right. And we do not want to, you know, inadvertently or purposely empower these bureaucrats by allowing them to track and use this. That's the whole point. So we drew a line in the sand that we need to achieve this. As usual, we're given lots of excuses. Well, we got to get this one done first. Trust us, we'll do it later. I've got a lot of faith in the Trump administration, so I give a lot, but I don't trust the Senate, so we have to keep forcing the hand.
- [10:00]
Glenn Beck
So, because the President would say, look, I've already done an executive order on this. No cbdc, but an executive order is not the same as legislation. I appreciate his executive order, but someday he's going to be gone, and we need it in the law. And you know, I, look, I read the genius act and trying to understand it and I think a lot of it, what they're asking for is good. They're saying, look, you know, we want one for one. You gotta be able to cash this in, you know, so we just don't have all these fake, you know, coins out there. So it's tied one to one to the dollar. You need to be able to know that this is not terrorist, etc. Etc. And so there's some things that the banks already have to do, but this is more than what the banks have to do, it seems. And I don't mind that, you know, transactions. I do, actually, I do mind, but I can tolerate transactions over $10,000, you know, spiking up. But I don't want to see my money being able to be tracked everywhere. And I'm not doing anything wrong with it. I just know how it can be used if the federal government and I don't want this pipeline ever to be built.
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Chip Roy
Right. And there's, there are other aspects to the bill that we're looking at as well. That's not just the central bank digital currency, but this notion of self custody.
- [11:24]
Glenn Beck
Right.
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Chip Roy
That self custody means the ability to send crypto without the use of an intermediary. And Warren Davidson had an amendment and had language he wanted to improve the Genius Act. This is stuff he was already working on in the Clarity act in the House and trying to make sure that we're mining the store, if you will, through the process of creating these frameworks. Look, I want all this to move forward, but if the crypto bros want to be able to do all this stuff, they need to back us up to defend freedom. And they should want to.
- [11:55]
Glenn Beck
They should. I mean, this is what the whole thing with crypto was all about, was freedom. And I want the freedom. I mean, the custody clause is really important. Is there any custody clause in it now?
- [12:08]
Chip Roy
There is language in there and that's a result of all of our efforts, but it's not, it's not where it needs to be. So that's one of the things we're working on, is trying to amend it to make it better. Then we're trying to get a guarantee on the central bank digital currency. Those are two top things. There's a few other small things, but those are the two top things we're trying to do.
- [12:27]
Glenn Beck
And what self custody means. I make my money, I can pull it out of the bank and I can put it in my wallet or A digital wallet, and it's mine and nobody else has access to it. Nobody else can. And I can spend it the way I want to spend it because it's mine. If you don't have the self custody clause in there, it means it's not really yours. Because if, if somebody in the government says you can't use that to, to buy an suv, you can't use that to buy fossil fuels. We don't really, you know, inflation is getting so bad in this particular area. You're not essential in this area, so we're not going to let your money buy this. That's. Once they, you have that system, you have total control. Am I explaining that right, Chip?
- [13:18]
Chip Roy
You're explaining it better than I could. And I think I just. Your, your listeners just need to understand because everything gets real complex when you have an administration that's doing so many great things, and I mean truly, like just, you know, extraordinary things in the face of so much resistance, then you want to give them the benefit of the doubt. And we do, to your point about the executive order leadership who want to protect our freedom and advance this economy and build prosperity, but we have to protect against the power of government that has been used freedom and undermine it, whether Republicans or Democrats were in charge. So you're right. Wherever you, wherever you are, what happens.
- [14:00]
Glenn Beck
Today, wherever you are, stop moving because we're losing you. And I do, I do want to ask you in one minute your thoughts on, on Epstein. Now that we've gotten through the important stuff, your thoughts quickly on Epstein.
- [14:13]
Chip Roy
Look, the American people deserve to know more information than they're getting. I also trust the Trump administration to work through this. As a former federal prosecutor, what I would tell you is the one thing we got to be mindful of. When you say, quote, release the files, remember that there are victims.
- [14:28]
Glenn Beck
Yes.
- [14:29]
Chip Roy
Okay. And you've got to be careful about that. Yes. Remember that there are also individuals who might have been in some book or some list that, that never got on a flight that never had anything to do with this creep, you know, or at least directly or didn't, certainly didn't go to the island. So you got to be careful about that. I think what we need is the autopsy released the full details that surrounding the suicide. And I think we need the flight logs which are traditionally public. I think we should start with that, get that out there so people can understand those facts. And I think then the Department of Justice owes us sort of an explanation for what are they doing in light of the prosecution of Epstein. In light of the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell, what is it? Are they protecting anyone? Who are the people. Who else should be prosecuted and why aren't they being. And I think those. I think that methodical approach is the way the Trump administration ought to approach it. I think they owe us more information on that front. I think we should push for that, but I don't think we should be blind. Okay. We've got to be careful. Right. Grand juries operate in secrecy for a reason.
- [15:33]
Glenn Beck
Yes.
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Chip Roy
So let's just. Let's be smart about this. We believe in freedom. We believe in due process. We don't believe in just throwing things to the wind. And by the way, I'm not. You know, if you read. Alan Dershowitz is op ed in the Journal this morning. He walks through a bunch of this stuff, and he represented Epstein, and there's. There are judges who currently have a clampdown on being able to talk about some of the information.
- [15:53]
Glenn Beck
Yes.
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Chip Roy
So we need to work through that. Like, there's a lot of variables in this.
- [15:57]
Glenn Beck
I think that is totally reasonable, and I think there wouldn't have been any blowback had that been the response. But what the response was, you know, was, it's sitting on my desk. Then it wasn't sitting on my desk because the FBI is holding it from me in. In FBI headquarters. But I've got to go through everything because there's so many names and so much information there. And we're still going over the videotapes, too. There's nothing. Wait, what? What? That just didn't make sense. And then it was, shut up and sit down. I think the American people want to believe. I mean, I would rather have this be the truth, that there wasn't a big deal. There were some people, but it wasn't as big as we thought. I'd love to believe that, but you need to take the American people through it, because we have a lack of trust big time.
- [16:46]
Chip Roy
And by the way, the best process for them to go through is they need to go take some scalps. Right. And they need to demonstrate that they're serious about us. If they have a list of mobsters and a whole big old binder full of people affiliated with the mob, but they go nail 10 hides to the wall and say, we're doing our job, then we're going to give them the benefit of the doubt. Protecting somebody who shouldn't be protected.
- [17:08]
Glenn Beck
Yes.
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Chip Roy
But right now we're getting a whole lot of, like, whatever, and a whole lot of, like, shrugging and after the big presentation with the binder on the desk, we need more than just shrugging.
- [17:18]
Glenn Beck
Good for you, Chip. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. God bless. And, and anything we can do for. Anything we can do for your district. Anything. You know, Mercury One is, if I.
- [17:27]
Chip Roy
Can just, I can just say the community foundation of the hill country is a low overhead entity that is distributing cash directly to people who need it. It's not a big political bureaucracy. It's a local entity. So any dollars are going straight to firefighters, straight to people, straight to small businesses. And you can find that on my Twitter chiproid X. I will, I will.
- [17:52]
Glenn Beck
Direct Mercury One to look at it. And if we can help through them, we will absolutely help you. Thank you. God bless. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. All right, let me tell you about Patriot Mobile. There comes a moment in the day, probably most days, where you just kind of want to chuck the phone in the trash, right? Be so satisfying when unfortunately kind of need that stupid thing to get through your day anymore. Here's the consolation prize. You can chuck your cell phone provider in the trash. About that. If you're tired of paying good money to a company that uses it to fund politicians, organizations, activists, the that are working against everything you believe in, then Patriot Mobile is your way out. They're America's only Christian conservative wireless provider. You know the thing that really hacks me off, they're getting money from these, you know, cell services and taking your money and not really telling you anything about it. But then they're also taking your tax money. What do you say we stop giving the left all of our money? Put your money where your heart is. The service. The same reliable nationwide coverage as the big guys. No compromise. Just a simple, easy switch to a company that respects your values and deserves your business. It's patriotmobile.com Beck make the switch today patriotmobile.com Beck or call 972 Patriot promo code Beck Free month of service patriotmobile.com Beck 972 Patriot Senator Eric Schmidt is with us. He's from Missouri. He was the AG in Missouri and one of the best in the country. Country now continuing to be one of the best senators in the country. Senator, how are you, sir?
- [19:32]
Eric Schmidt
I'm good, Glenn. I got to get to see you in person.
- [19:35]
Chip Roy
I don't know.
- [19:35]
Eric Schmidt
It's been a while since I've been able to do a show with you in person. We got to figure that out here soon. And I also, I, I still think of that time. Remember when you came when I Was ag. You came with a lot of the, the historical artifacts. And I still think of that Washington, you know, what Washington had in his pocket as a surveyor. Yeah, I got to touch that. Yeah, yeah, the compass. And it's just, it was, obviously, it means a lot, like when you're making sure you're always headed in the right direction. That was, was very meaningful for me.
- [20:07]
Glenn Beck
So, anyway, thank you. I hope to see you soon. So, Eric, what happened last night? Is this going to go, it's going back to the House. Is it going to pass? What does it mean?
- [20:19]
Eric Schmidt
Well, we're, well, we're not done yet. So last night there were two procedural votes, one to pull the rescissions package out of the, out of the committee, Appropriations Committee, and then the motion proceed. So we're now on the bill today. So I'm the sponsor of the rescissions package. President Trump's package, $9 billion, 1.1 billion is Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That's NPR. That's, that's PBS. And then also you got all that crazy USAID stuff like Guatemalan sex changes and DEI in Burma and voter ID in Haiti, all that nonsense. It's all in this package. So what happens today is we'll have a vote a rama. The Democrats will offer a bunch of amendments. We, we got to beat that back. We got to hold the 50 votes that we had last night. And J.D. vance will probably have to come in to break the final tie. So that'll happen today. So we're not done yet. We're not done yet.
- [21:07]
Chip Roy
But I think we're going to get there.
- [21:08]
Eric Schmidt
I think we'll get there.
- [21:09]
Glenn Beck
I'm losing hope. It's always like, it's always like, okay, we got it. We got, we don't have it. We don't have that. No. Hey, we're going to put them in jail. They're going to jail. No, they're not going to jail.
- [21:19]
Eric Schmidt
I mean, every day I think, I think this is like, first of all, if we can't do this, everybody ought to, like, hang their head in shame. But I think this is one of those steps of restoring a little bit of confidence that we can actually find wasteful spending and do something about it. And this is the worst of the worst. And npr, look, it's being run by someone who called President Trump a fascist and hate. I mean, these are people who call Americans bigots every day over the airwaves. And there's just no reason they should get federal dollars. And we've talked about this for a long Time as conservatives and, and now's the time to actually end the federal. Turn off the federal spigot.
- [21:57]
Glenn Beck
I mean, I have to tell you, NPR and pbs, they don't need the money. They don't need the money. They can raise it just the way all the rest of us have to raise it. Why they have to have all this money to coming from my taxes when you know there is a private sector and there is a way that you can do that. You want to have that opinion. You want to do it. Good, then do that. And you can do it especially now with just the same high quality, without all of the government expense and the waste that goes with it. And I gotta tell you, I don't know what kind of mansion Big Bird needs to live in, but they've been selling plush toys for a very long time. I think they can afford to produce their own show.
- [22:41]
Eric Schmidt
Well, you gotta have high ceilings, Glenn, and that's not cheap.
- [22:46]
Glenn Beck
Right, right. I mean, not every apartment can have Big Bird in it. Okay.
- [22:53]
Eric Schmidt
Exclusive neighborhoods. Yeah.
- [22:55]
Glenn Beck
But you're confident this is going to pass?
- [22:58]
Eric Schmidt
I am, yes. But again, these things are closer than they should be. It's 50 votes. I mean, we lose three Republicans, so we got to hold everybody we had last night. But I think that vote last night was an indicator of where we're really at. And then we'll have this vote around it today with which will be, you know, the Democrats will want to save some stupid program in. We'll have to vote it down and then we'll get to final passage. Hopefully tonight it would go to the House because it's got to be done by Friday. There's a 45 day window for this rescissions package and it's got to be done by Friday and we're on track.
- [23:28]
Glenn Beck
Why does it have to be done by Friday?
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Eric Schmidt
Because under the, the, the statute enacted in the 70s, the President can basically through a previously appropriated fund, send a rescissions message to the Congress and then Congress has 45 days to act on it. That 45 days runs on Friday.
- [23:47]
Glenn Beck
Has anybody in Congress, Senate ever thought, you know what, why don't we just get this one done the day it comes in? When we do that, why are we always at the.
- [23:55]
Chip Roy
We've got 10 minutes left to pass this bill sponsor.
- [24:00]
Eric Schmidt
I would have loved to. I mean, honestly, so much oxygen was taken up through the big beautiful bill and the reconciliation package that this was the next thing. And the good news is these are very, you know, one of the few things we get to do with 51 votes. Right. With. Yeah. Good Republican votes. And so these are things you got to do.
- [24:15]
Glenn Beck
Yeah. All right. Okay. You have a book coming out when it. When is the book out? So I know I want to have you on when the book comes out.
- [24:24]
Eric Schmidt
Yeah, it's available for. For Preorder now. It's August 19th. It comes out. It's the last line of defense, how to beat the left in court. And it is a lot of the stuff that you and I have talked about over the years, Glenn. It just, it's the inside story. And I don't think, and I'm a little biased, but I don't think a book's been written like this before where he takes you kind of inside the legal battles. Like, you got to remember, when I was agm, Missouri, we brought the vaccine mandate case to the Supreme Court and we won. We sued 65 school districts in Missouri over mask mandates, and we won. We brought the Missouri vs Biden censorship lawsuit.
- [24:58]
Chip Roy
Right.
- [24:58]
Eric Schmidt
And uncovered this vast censorship enterprise before Elon Musk bought Twitter. And we exposed all of that. We took, we took Foushee's deposition. There's a chapter about that. We took Elvis Chan's deposition, the FBI agent that was charge of the pre bunking, the Hunter Biden laptop story. We kind of go behind the scenes there. We had the student loan debt scam lawsuit because Missouri had Mohela. We took that to the Supreme Court and we won. So it's really lessons learned on how conservatives. We have a new playbook now. We gotta be tough. We gotta go to court and we gotta win. And so those lessons from, you know, the Biden years and the COVID years can now play out in the Trump administration to defend these policies.
- [25:35]
Glenn Beck
There's a few guys in the states that were doing that. Why is it we can't seem to get our own DOJ to fight like this? I wish. I mean, I'm glad you're a senator, but I wish you would have been the ag. I mean, why can't. Why can't we get our doj?
- [25:51]
Chip Roy
Well, start moving. There's a lot of.
- [25:53]
Eric Schmidt
Listen, there's a lot of winning. I will say this. My. Actually, I don't know if you know, my, My Solicitor General, John Sauer is the Solicitor General of the United States now. So John is in the Supreme Court now, you know, taking those lessons in Missouri. And you know, there's some big wins that have happened in court on immigration so far.
- [26:11]
Chip Roy
I get it.
- [26:11]
Eric Schmidt
Listen, there is a big desire to make sure that that Weaponization that we saw under the. Under the Biden administration, that never happens again.
- [26:21]
Chip Roy
Right.
- [26:21]
Eric Schmidt
You can't have political opponents being thrown in prison for the rest of life. But there's a lot of reckoning that still needs to happen. There's a lot of things that happened that people need to be held to account for. I mean, Jack Smith, what these guys were doing to jail a political opponent, there has to be, I think, some repercussions for that. And so I'm confident that we're going to see more of that. But right now, the good news is, on these big fights, whether it's on being able to fire people, these government agencies, or being able to enforce our immigration laws and mass deportations, by and large, we're winning those fights. And I think that's a good thing. Okay, I gotta ask, but, Glenn, you know, people gotta go and go to Amazon right now in the last line of defense. And these are the lessons that have been learned and I think. And can. And it's a playbook for people that come next. Right.
- [27:12]
Glenn Beck
So look at you. Look at you learning how to sell books. God bless you.
- [27:16]
Eric Schmidt
You know, I saw you talk about this Tapper thing. You're like, tapper needs to come on here. You're the master.
- [27:22]
Glenn Beck
Yeah. Okay. I had one more question for you. The Epstein thing.
- [27:30]
Eric Schmidt
Mm.
- [27:32]
Glenn Beck
Are you comfortable with what we've seen?
- [27:37]
Chip Roy
I get.
- [27:37]
Eric Schmidt
Listen, I am. As a movement conservative, I certainly understand the frustration. Right. Because people feel like the government's lied to them at every turn. I mean, part of what was going on in Covid, we just felt like every. You know, we were being lied to every day and even go back to the JFK stuff. Things have been hidden. So I understand that. It's just hard for me as a prosecutor to. I don't know what they're looking at. You know what I mean? I just don't know. When you make a chart, I don't know what evidence is in front of them. So to the extent information can be given. Right. I'd love to see it for sure, but I just don't know. You know, I just don't know what they're looking at. So.
- [28:12]
Glenn Beck
All right.
- [28:12]
Eric Schmidt
God's honest answer.
- [28:14]
Glenn Beck
Your book comes out on the 19th. We'll have you on maybe. Maybe. If you don't mind traveling, I'll have you up at the ranch, because I'm going to be up at the ranch around the time that books the Last Line of Defense, how to Beat the Left in Court. The hardcover comes out. You can order it now last line of defense. Thank you so much. Talk to you again.
- [28:34]
Eric Schmidt
All right, brother, take care. Thank you.
- [28:35]
Glenn Beck
Bye bye. Senator from from Missouri, Eric Schmidt. Okay, back in just a second.
- [28:42]
Steve Robinson
You're streaming the Best of the Glenn.
- [28:43]
Glenn Beck
Beck Program and you can find full episodes wherever you download podcasts. Steve Robinson, he is a filmmaker and investigative journalist who's work focuses on his home state in Maine. He is the editor in Chief of the main Wire.com host of the Robinson Report, a newsletter and podcast on Substack. And he's also done a documentary, High Crimes the Chinese Mafia's Takeover of Rural America. And it is a really important documentary. That's with Tucker Carlson, is it not, Steve?
- [29:16]
Chip Roy
Yes, that is.
- [29:17]
Steve Robinson
In fact, it's at, it's available at tucker carlson.com and Tucker actually saw the importance of the work that we were doing and offered to partner with us on the documentary after I taped an episode with him. But I have to give kudos to you as well, because you were one of the first in the national media to invite me on to talk about our ongoing investigative work on this topic. I think it was more than more than a year ago you had me on to talk about that. And things have things are trending maybe in a better direction, I'll say, but still not quite contained.
- [29:46]
Glenn Beck
Well, that is good. What do you know about the Trump administration, you know, saying no more farm buying for China?
- [29:54]
Steve Robinson
Well, I think that it's seriously important in states where there's much more military, where there are large vital bases, because you're seeing huge amounts of farmland purchased around these. But I think that the far the focus on farmland doesn't quite capture the full scope of the problem because here in Maine, what we see is residential houses are being purchased and sometimes they're through llc, sometimes they're through, you know, natural born citizens or naturalized citizens who just happen to have be of Asian descent or Taiwanese descent or Malay descent. So I don't see very clearly how you can enforce these kind of, you know, capital controls and prohibitions on property buying by individuals tied to the People's Republic of China. Because what we've seen in Maine is they're very clever about how they launder money, about how they move illicit marijuana around the United States and how they acquire property and how they organize these businesses. So I think it's, it's not as simple as just saying, you know, we hereby declare that you can't do bad things anymore with our farmland. You're going to have to, you know, you're going to have, to have a response that is as sophisticated as the criminal networks that are looking to exploit American.
- [31:06]
Glenn Beck
I agree with you that, I mean, I think what he was thinking especially important is the, the farmland all around our bases. I mean, you saw what happened with Russia. You know, you put, you have a barn, you have, you know, a thousand drones in it, you unleash it. I mean, you take out that base quickly and, you know, that's really dangerous to have them right up next to our bases. Explain for anybody who doesn't understand what we're really talking about how big the problem is in Maine. Explain the problem.
- [31:35]
Steve Robinson
So in, in 2023, the Department of Homeland Security had a memo that ended up getting leaked that said that there were 270 residential properties in Maine that had been purchased by Chinese drug cartels. They were being used to grow marijuana illegally, and that marijuana was being trafficked out of the state to be sold at, you know, various other locations on black and gray markets. And these organizations were also involved in narcotics trafficking and human trafficking. Since that time, I've gone out and attempted to document the full scope of the problem. And I would say, you know, earlier this year, if you'd asked me, I'd say, well, we're probably looking at more like 400 or 500 properties. But since the publicity from releasing our documentary, I've had so many conversations with very well connected people in the real estate industry, connected people in law enforcement, and I'd say we're probably looking at, just in Maine, 700 to 1,000 residential, residential, commercial and multifamily properties that have been purchased by Chinese criminal organizations for the purposes of exploiting trafficked human labor to grow cannabis and sell to Americans. And the scope of the problem, I think, is it's localized in Maine because of the property buying and where the growing is occurring. But it's national and even international because foreign countries are complaining about American weed grown illegally, in many cases by Chinese cartels, being exported into their jurisdictions. But it's happening in every state, even states, Midwest states, good conservative states, where they think, well, we haven't legalized marijuana, so it's not a problem for us. Well, go look at your local tobacco shop and go look at your local hemp shop. Are they selling thca? They could be selling some Chinese grown marijuana from Maine under false pretenses. But the buyer and the seller, they know what's going on. It's just law enforcement and lawmakers who don't really know what's going on. And the risk of that is the lack of regulation. But also the Chinese toxins that are being found on these products in Northern California, in Massachusetts and in remain. They're crazy toxins that were only identified when some California officials brought in the weapons of mass destruction lab from the National Guard to test these substances that they kept finding at Chinese pot grown.
- [34:00]
Glenn Beck
What are they?
- [34:00]
Steve Robinson
Siskiyou County? They are totally unregistered nerve agents that have no approved agricultural use in the United States. In some cases they're even banned in China, but they're importing them here under false pretenses and they use them like fumigants in their hoop houses or in residential properties. So they're like mad scientist concoctions of these nerve agents that the, the indentured servants who are using them really don't know what they are, except for it says, you know, bug poison on the front in Chinese and how to use it. And they'll burn it and the smoke fills the house or the hoop house and just coats everything with this talk toxin. But the fact that they're unregistered and they're made in China means that testing labs, the cannabis testing labs, aren't equipped to determine if weed has been contaminated with them. So you could have some Chinese grown weed that has been exposed to these toxins and bring it to a lab and say, hey, is this safe to smoke? Is this safe to consume? And they'll give you a thumbs up. Yeah, we didn't detect any pesticide or fungicide on it. You're good to go. And this product is being exported across the United States, being sold on black and gray markets, being sold at hemp shops, tobacco shops, and we don't even know. We haven't even begun to wrap our arms around the scope of the health crisis that could be caused. And you know, I know that you're familiar with the book Unrestricted Warfare. Like if you were trying to wage chemical warfare against the United States, how would it look any different than convincing the American public to pay you to poison them?
- [35:36]
Glenn Beck
So, so, you know, I've been saying for a while now that the, the marijuana, but, but mainly fentanyl. This is the opium drug war in just in reverse. You know, England knew that, you know, they could send opium in to China and drug the people and collapse them from the inside. And that's exactly what they did. And China eventually just had to give, you know, because it, it was enslaving all their people. That, that is exactly what they're doing to us right now. Because they don't need the money, they're not doing it for the money. And what is happening to the money? Is the money then going to support other things here in America? Is it all being set sent back to China? What's happening?
- [36:26]
Steve Robinson
Well, I mean, that's the question that keeps me up at night. That should concern every American at the state level. To the extent that this product is being sold at a dispensary in Massachusetts or Maine, it's still an all cash business due to federal law. Yeah, exactly. No bank is going to take a swipe of a credit card to buy, you know, your baggie of weed at the dispensary, even if it's legal at the state level. So, so it's an all cash business. Well, what a brilliant way to stockpile untraceable cash behind enemy lines if you're a Chinese criminal organization. And what might you do with that cash? Well, you know, if there's, you know, some of, some of your Iranian friends with shoulder fired rockets that you want to smuggle over the border and take care of them, well, that cash might come in handy. Last week we saw an indictment handed down in the district of Massachusetts that there were seven Chinese nationals or people with historical ties to China who were indicted. And they were ringleaders of a one kind of tiny corner of the Chinese drug situation in New England here. And they had Porsches, $1.5 million house, $75,000 Rolexes. One of these guys had $600,000 in rubber bands hidden in his Porsche. So they're not, they're not stockpiling this cash so that they can wear, you know, Louis Vuitton necessarily, but there's a little bit of that happening. But more, I think we have to worry about the other malign intentions of these actors given that we know that they're affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party. I mean we can, we can prove this. Philip Lenzicki from the Daily Caller News foundation has expanded on some of the reporting that we've done at the Maine Wire and connected an individual who was arrested at a grow house in central Maine outside of Bangor with a front group linked to the New York consulate, the Chinese consulate in New York. And this guy has been out on bail after being arrested and he's back in China being quoted in state run media saying, hey, I'm going to go back to America and bring home some investment. This is going to be really good for you guys. And for some reason this guy's allowed to travel back and forth to China and he's a known agent of the Chinese consulate in New York and one of these benevolent associations which are just front groups for the ccp. So we know, we know that the CCP have their fingers into the Chinese drug cartels that are ravaging New England right now. And we haven't developed a response. We're beginning to, but we really haven't developed a sophisticated response.
- [38:50]
Glenn Beck
Who's on our side helping?
- [38:53]
Steve Robinson
Well, the Trump administration, I think, is on our side.
- [38:55]
Chip Roy
You know, this is one of the.
- [38:57]
Steve Robinson
Rare issues where Senator Susan Collins and President Trump agree and support each other in the response. Senator Collins. Senator, I know it's got to be a. It's going to be a big threat if it brings. You ain't kidding to make common cause. But I'll say Senator Collins has been on this since even before I was. She's been paying attention to this and every intelligence official, whether it's the Biden administration or the Trump administration, she asks them what they're doing and what can be done to combat Chinese drug cartels in New England. And I think she was very complimentary of the Trump Justice Department for moving forward with an indictment in the District of Massachusetts last week. And I think if you have Senator Collins and President Trump in agreement on something, then, you know, this is a rare area where maybe the federal government can move fast, but it's going to depend again, on having the political will to do it. We still don't have a U.S. attorney in Maine. We're going to need a U.S. attorney to pick up some of the balls that were dropped under President Biden. And we have a Democratic governor here in Janet Mills who is more interested in going to war with President Trump over boys in girls sports than in the Chinese drug cartels that have taken over the state. She still has yet to utter a single word about this criminal conspiracy in her state. And we proved that her brother, Paul Mills, was actually doing business with the Chinese cartels.
- [40:26]
Eric Schmidt
Has.
- [40:26]
Steve Robinson
Has served as a real estate attorney to transfer a property that was an illicit marijuana grow to the ownership of a Chinese national living in China. And no one will report on it in Maine. You've already given more attention to that story just by having me on than anyone here in Maine.
- [40:44]
Glenn Beck
It is. It's remarkable how well our enemies have surrounded us, and they're inside of the house now. And, and most people are not paying attention. And quite honestly, you know, this is the one place that I agree with President Trump. I want the answers to the Epstein files. But these things are going to kill us a lot faster than that, that has to be solved. But things like this must be solved today. And, you know, the Senate, you, you not having a U.S. attorney in the state of Maine now, that's because of the Senate. They're just, they're just dragging their feet on all of the attorneys. They've got to pass and confirm all of the U.S. attorneys. Get them out there. Pam Bondi, we can scream all we want about Pam Bondi. She can't do anything without a U.S. attorney. Can't.
- [41:45]
Steve Robinson
Well, I'll say in Maine, we need a. Trump needs to make a nomination first. There hasn't even been a nomination. And so I. Wow. I think that there's some wrangling going on. But, I mean, I would agree, you know, on two fronts. One, the Senate needs to start speeding along these nominations so that the Trump administration can walk and chew gum at the same time. You know, I think that there, we certainly should have the power and the intelligence to handle the Epstein disclosures. At the same time, we're fighting the infiltration of Chinese drug cartels who are working as agents of the Chinese, Chinese Communist Party because they have no, they have no good intentions whatsoever for the people of the United States. And, you know, just to think about the callousness and just absolutely, you know, vile, amoral quality of these people, they're enslaving their own kind. Like they're, they're trafficking poor peasants from China here through Mexico, taking their passports and locking them up at grow houses in rural Maine until they've worked off their snakehead debt. You know, these are people who are profiting from literal human slavery. So if you think that there's any kind of anti American activity or anti Western activity that is beyond consideration for them, you're wrong. We're dealing with a real evil here, real evil.