Best of the Program | Guests: Steve Baker & Spencer Klavan | 3/17/25

Summary

Summary of "The Glenn Beck Program" Episode Featuring Steve Baker & Spencer Clavin (March 17, 2025)

Hosted by Glenn Beck on The Blaze Podcast Network, this episode presents a compelling exploration of current American political dynamics, the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, and an exclusive investigative report on the events of January 6th. Featuring guests Steve Baker, an investigative journalist, and Spencer Clavin, author and associate editor at the Claremont Review of Books, the program delves deep into topics shaping the nation's discourse.

---

1. Donald Trump's Surging Approval Ratings

Glenn Beck initiates the discussion by highlighting a significant rise in former President Donald Trump's approval ratings. He states:

"Donald Trump seeing approval ratings higher than any other point in his first presidency. And right track, wrong track, higher than it has been since 2004."
(00:29)

An unnamed analyst provides further insight:

"44% say the country is on the right track."
(03:21)

Beck elaborates on the political landscape, noting the stark contrast between Republicans and Democrats:

"Republicans, 83% of Republicans believe you're headed in the right direction... Democrats have gone kind of the opposite. They went from 53% saying you get a negative number... down to six."
(05:35 - 06:24)

Using an airplane analogy, Beck illustrates the nation's trajectory:

"We've slowed the descent some but we're still headed toward the ground... We're making the necessary changes."
(07:58 - 09:23)

2. Ethical Implications of Artificial Intelligence with Spencer Clavin

Transitioning to technology, Glenn Beck introduces Spencer Clavin to discuss the profound ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence (AI). Beck emphasizes the necessity of maintaining boundaries between humans and AI:

"Don't be nice to AI. Don't be nice to Grok."
(02:37)

Clavin expands on this, outlining two primary dangers associated with AI:

1. Over-Reliance on Technology:

   "If we just recoil back from this... we're going to miss out on some really great stuff that these tools can do."
   (16:36)

2. Anthropomorphizing Machines:

   "No, we are unique. We human beings are God-created souls. We have experiences, we have inner lives."
   (17:01)

Clavin introduces the Psalm 115 Principle and the Plato Principle as guidelines to preserve human integrity in the age of AI:

"Those who put their trust in these machines... is a form of idolatry."
(17:01)

Beck shares his personal struggles with AI interaction, advocating for a functional approach devoid of emotional entanglement:

"We are all in. If you can step away from it... but we're making the necessary changes."
(10:22)

3. Exclusive Investigation: Nancy Pelosi's Fixer at the Capitol on January 6th with Steve Baker

In a groundbreaking segment, Steve Baker unveils an exclusive investigation into the events of January 6th, asserting that Nancy Pelosi had a fixer orchestrating activities at the Capitol. Baker recounts his investigative journey:

"He was one of the principal organizers of Occupy Wall Street... now we can find YouTube videos of him speaking and doing speeches."
(31:26)

He details the connection between Aaron Black and orchestrated violence:

"Aaron Black... organizing violent events... Project Veritas videos... admitting responsibility for violence at a Trump rally in 2016."
(35:38 - 37:02)

Baker connects these orchestrations to broader political maneuvers:

"These color revolutions paid for by your tax dollars. And I told you about five or six years ago, I think they're doing this to America."
(36:35 - 36:37)

He emphasizes the strategic manipulation of narratives surrounding January 6th:

"Nancy Pelosi is cradling his face in her hands... preserving the narrative of that day."
(39:32 - 39:33)

4. Closing Remarks and Final Thoughts

Glenn Beck concludes the episode by reinforcing the significance of the discussions:

"This is the best of the Glenn Beck program... always love talking to you."
(29:21 - 29:31)

He underscores the importance of staying informed and vigilant amidst political and technological evolutions.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Glenn Beck:

  • "Donald Trump seeing approval ratings higher than any other point in his first presidency."
    (00:29)

  • "We're making the necessary changes. We have the right pilot."
    (08:10)

  • "Don't play with any of those buttons. Just deep think deep search."
    (18:08)

• Spencer Clavin:

  • "Human beings are God-created souls. We have experiences, we have inner lives."
    (17:01)

  • "If you think about the Replicator in Star Trek... you don't have to address it as if there's anything behind the screen."
    (26:58)

• Steve Baker:

  • "Aaron Black... organizing violent events... Project Veritas videos."
    (35:38)

  • "Nancy Pelosi... preserving the narrative of that day."
    (39:32)

---

Conclusion

This episode of The Glenn Beck Program offers listeners a deep dive into the resurgence of Donald Trump's political influence, the ethical quandaries surrounding artificial intelligence, and a provocative investigative report on the orchestration of the January 6th Capitol events. Through incisive discussions and exclusive insights from esteemed guests, Glenn Beck provides a nuanced perspective on the forces shaping contemporary American society.

Transcript

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[Glenn Beck]

Hey, on today's podcast, quickly, Donald Trump seeing approval ratings higher than any other point in his first presidency. And right track, wrong track, higher than it has been since 2004. Also philosophically, ethically, spiritually, how do we deal with AI if we can't prove our own soul? How can we ever prove that it doesn't have a soul? And Spencer Clavin joins us to say, don't be nice to AI. Don't be nice to Grok. Also, Steve Baker. And a huge, huge breaking story on January 6th. You won't get anywhere else all in today's podcast. First, next time you're standing just somewhere in your home, I want you to look around and go, what would it take to sell this house? If I wanted to put it online, what would I have to take? And then you're quickly just dismiss that real quick. Because you don't want to imagine all the things that you have to do because it's an awful lot of stuff. I'm sure it's time to realize a simple fact. What you need is an expert to tell you all the things that you have to do and the things that will bring buyers in to look at your house and that they can overlook and the things that you just have to do because people can't overlook that purple paint in the bedroom or whatever it is. There is a real expert that you need when it comes to certain things, like buying a home. You're not an expert in that field. So you should talk to somebody that you can trust, that you believe knows what they're doing, has the track record, knows best, best business practices that can advise you on. You should do this and this and this, and then you decide what to do. You can get that expert at realestate agents. I trust dot com. The name says it all. Real estate agentsitrust.com tell us where you're selling, where you're buying, and we'll find the right real estate agent for you. Real Estate AgentsITrust.com.

[Steve Baker]

Listening to the best.

[Spencer Clavin]

Of the Glenn Beck program.

[Glenn Beck]

It's the Glenn Beck program. It's Monday. Well, three months into his second term, President Trump has hit the highest approval rating he has ever had as Commander in Chief. Uh, that's. That's great. Um, here's another amazing thing. More Americans say the country is on the right. The right track right now, more than any other point since 2004. It's been a long time since we've thought it was on the right track. But just to make sure you. You realize now you haven't slipped through a wormhole. It's still negative. It's just that more people think, what are the numbers on that one studio? That one?

[Unnamed Analyst]

44% say the country is on the right track.

[Glenn Beck]

Right. So, you know, the rest of America's like, yeah, not on the right track, but it is going in the right direction. It's almost up to 50% now. Think we're in the right direction. Yeah.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Amazing. This country has not had a positive view of that number since 2004.

[Glenn Beck]

Have you? Because I haven't.

[Unnamed Analyst]

I mean, I guess it's true. It's just. It's just surprising that. That we haven't had one positive.

[Glenn Beck]

Well, the last time. The last time that it was like, this was 2004. Early 2004.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

So that's. Were we in Iraq yet? Were things completely falling apart in Iraq yet?

[Unnamed Analyst]

No, no, it was.

[Glenn Beck]

That was still going well. Ish.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was. If you think of that election was fought on a big part of it was Iraq.

[Glenn Beck]

Right.

[Unnamed Analyst]

And they were. He was positive enough to actually get reelected.

[Glenn Beck]

So, you know, we had a. We had a moment there where we're.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Like, maybe we're going the right direction. But you think about the period after that. Right. You go from that into not too far after that, the financial crisis. 2008. Right. That really started bubbling up in 2006. 2007.

[Glenn Beck]

Yep.

[Unnamed Analyst]

And then you come out of that, you have a period, then you get Marxism. Yeah. Barack Obama in the office, which, again.

[Glenn Beck]

A lot of people thought it was great.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Democrats loved that. Obviously, then you get Covid eventually. So, you know, there's. There's some dark periods through there. We've had every, you know, eight to 10 years.

[Glenn Beck]

And I think the only reason why. The only reason why Trump didn't get the credit in the first term of people saying, oh, you know what? I think we're headed in the right direction is because there was so much chaos. There was so much chaos. And the media, people still believe the media and, you know, they were like, that's.

[Steve Baker]

It's his tweets.

[Unnamed Analyst]

And it was also, you know, close elections, right?

[Steve Baker]

Yes.

[Unnamed Analyst]

People in close elections. Half the country gets really pissed off that they lost.

[Glenn Beck]

Correct.

[Unnamed Analyst]

As we've maybe discovered over the past few elections. But if you look at the way we're talking about generally headed in the right direction, there's been some changes in the past few months. So there's some changes. Tell me if you can detect this.

[Glenn Beck]

Okay.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Yes. Right now, Republicans, 83% of Republicans believe you're headed in the right direction. That is up in the last four months slightly from 5.

[Glenn Beck]

To what?

[Unnamed Analyst]

5 to 83.

[Glenn Beck]

5 to 83.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Do you notice a distinction there between those two?

[Glenn Beck]

But can I tell you something? I agree with that. Yeah. I mean, I think I was like.

[Unnamed Analyst]

We'Re doomed, we're doomed.

[Glenn Beck]

We were all thinking, I surprised 5% of us. They were like, no, I think we're in the right direction. All right.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Democrats have gone kind of the opposite. They went from 53% saying you get.

[Glenn Beck]

A negative number when they go down here.

[Unnamed Analyst]

They're down to six. Six now in the middle, more pessim.

[Glenn Beck]

They're more optimistic than we were. That's good. I'll take that as a win.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Independents are up, by the way, from 19% to 26%. So a slight increase for independents in that number. Same thing with the economy. Is it excellent or good? It was neither. It was 52%. Believe that of Democrats back in the Biden era, that is down to 11. Some from 52 to 11. The increase from the Trump is not nearly as dramatic because he hasn't really done a lot of his stuff yet. Right.

[Glenn Beck]

And just ask you. I see. I think this question is so stupid. I think it's so stupid. Okay, here's why. Picture this. I'm a pollster.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Okay.

[Glenn Beck]

And I'm taking polls while you're on a plane and it's crashing, nose diving down.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Sure.

[Glenn Beck]

And I say, house of my code. Are we going in the right direction? Wrong direction. You're like, ah, wrong direction. Okay. Then I follow it up with, how's the flight so far? Is it going well? You know, how are we doing so far?

[Unnamed Analyst]

If maybe you've pulled it up a little bit before you've hit the ground.

[Glenn Beck]

I know it's. I know it's bad is where it. But now we got a new the. By the way, the pilot, he was having a heart attack. Now the co pilot is taking it and you feel the plane trying to pull up. You're still headed down but the plane is starting to pull up just a little bit. Still pessimistic on that plane as I'm taking the poll. I'm still going. Not going well. Not going well. Would you say it's going great? No, I really wouldn't at this point. Yes, you've made some correction, but I really wouldn't say it's great or good.

[Steve Baker]

You are good.

[Unnamed Analyst]

I think captured the Republicans pretty well in this poll as they were only at 5% of thinking the economy was excellent or good back when Biden was in. It's up considerably, but only to 26%.

[Glenn Beck]

Wow. So that one's good. That is a. That one, I believe.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Yeah, yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

Again, new pilot. New pilot pulling up, still headed towards the ground.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Right.

[Glenn Beck]

How you doing? We. Are we doing? Doing.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Is it good or excellent or excellent? I wouldn't say that I've had better flights. A little less turbulence.

[Glenn Beck]

I don't know if I answer it quite that way.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Right.

[Glenn Beck]

Or calmly, but yeah. And I think that's where we are. We all knew we were in a straight down nose dive.

[Spencer Clavin]

Okay.

[Glenn Beck]

Well I should say anybody who actually believes in math knew that we were headed at a straight down nosedive. We haven't pulled out of that. We've, we've slowed the descent some but we're still headed towards, you know, the, what we're headed to. We were headed towards the ground but what we did is we just started to kind of swoop back up and we realized there's a huge frickin mountain in front of us. We gotta pull up pretty, pretty, pretty quickly.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Yeah.

[Glenn Beck]

And it'll be close.

[Unnamed Analyst]

And that's why I would certainly be more positive than I, than you would be a few months ago. Right. Independents though have gone the opposite way. They've gone from 11% which is not good during Biden, down to 8% right now.

[Glenn Beck]

Margin of error.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Yeah, it is pretty much the margin of error. That's true, actually. I mean I think it's a lot of. It's the headline stuff. Right. Right now we had a big run up, you should point out after the election, after Trump was coming into office, people got really excited and all the numbers went up, the markets went up, everything was great.

[Glenn Beck]

But who believes that? I mean that is. Hang on just a second.

[Unnamed Analyst]

You're skeptical on that stuff though? I think a lot of people who like I had a relative call me the other day, she's big Trump supporter, huge Trump supporter, was panicked. She's of the age of needing to access her retirement funds. Okay, that's probably, and you know, was panicked, like, what do I do? Do I pull my money out? What do I do? No, I'm not the person to ask of this question of which, but I mean, I think that is hitting people when they look at their accounts and they see that, okay, now it's down.

[Glenn Beck]

If you're on a down age, yeah. You're looking at your retirement and you're like, wait, what's happening? What's happening?

[Unnamed Analyst]

Those are real things that hit real people, a lot of them Trump supporters.

[Glenn Beck]

But again, but again, they look at.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Them also understand it's necessary to go through some of this to get to hopefully a better end.

[Glenn Beck]

If I'm living on everything that I put away, I'm not happy. I'm not happy. I, I'm like, stewardess, could you have the pollster come to IC right now? Because I'm really not happy right now. I would be that way. I would be that way. But we're all in. If you can step away from it, and I know it's hard if you're, you know, living on retirement, we can step away from it for a bit. You can look at it and go, okay, but we're making the necessary changes. My side of the plane might be taken out at any moment, but the people on the other side of the aisle might be okay then I think.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Politically where this is important for Trump is if there's only so much of this, your audience will take.

[Glenn Beck]

Yes, right.

[Unnamed Analyst]

And if they, if they feel unstable, like they might agree with your long term changes. But if, if, if the, you know, if we go. He's got a year session. Yeah, he's got a year. And, and if you care about the rest of his agenda, this stuff is really important.

[Glenn Beck]

So, you know, passing the, the bill over the weekend, not shutting down the government, but not shutting down the government is a good thing for his plan. Shutting down the government might have been really bad. I don't know, at least would have added to more. It's all chaos. Reason. Right. Well, shut up. And now he can get to the tax cuts and the spending restrictions that he must have pulling this plane up. All we did was stop the steep, steep nosedive of this plane by saying, we're gonna, we're gonna try to rain some of this stuff up and try to get, you know, try to slow the descent somewhat. We're still headed toward the ground, but not a straight on, you know, nose impact with the earth. So now he's got the passing of the, the spending bill, the, the, what do you call it, the continuing resolution. So he's got the continuing resolution that's pulling up on the plane. Now. He needs the Republicans and everybody else in Congress to say, now pull that thing back, pull the yoke way back on this thing and let's see if we can get some distance between us and the ground. And this is the, to me, this is the first major move that is coming on, actually fixing and pulling it up and pointing it back towards the sky. Getting off of the nose down, we're prepare for impact. If he can't get this part done, if the Republicans screw around and don't get a serious tax bill, start to let him make serious cuts and also serious cuts in regulation, you're not going to pull a plane up. You're just not. But I believe he can do it and I believe we can do it. And I think we're on that track. I'm more, I am more optimistic strangely, the closer we have gotten to the ground here recently. I'm more optimistic that we have the right pilot. And hey everybody, I know you're in first class, so you're closer to the pilot, but that doesn't make you the pilot. Shut the hell up. Let the pilot fly the plane. Now, unfortunately, a little like this analogy when we hit the ground, there's no, like, let's try that again.

[Unnamed Analyst]

No, there's no mulligans.

[Glenn Beck]

There's no mulligans. Yeah. But thanks for bringing a golf thing into an airplane analogy.

[Steve Baker]

You knew it was golf.

[Unnamed Analyst]

I'm impressed by that.

[Glenn Beck]

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. And don't forget, rate us on itunes. Mother's Day is fast upon us. And I want to talk about preborn. Maybe the organization out there who cares about moms the most, Preborn offers expecting moms free ultrasounds. When a young mother who's in distress about her pregnancy comes in, those ultrasounds can change the chances that she will choose life. But preborn doesn't stop there. They also offer love and care to that mom. They don't just abandon her the moment after she gives birth. That's what the left always accuses us of. But preborn goes on to help that mother out for two years afterward, showing her and the baby God's love and our love. This Mother's Day, why not help bring life to both mom and her baby? One ultrasound is $28. If you're a business owner, perhaps you consider a larger donation for a write off because we Know the government isn't saving babies. A donation of 1,000, 2,000 or even 20,000 would save so many lives. All gifts are tax deductible. Reaches right into eternity. Dial pound 250, say the keyword baby. That's pound 250, keyword baby. Or go to preborn.combeck that's preborn.com Beck sponsored by Preborn. Let's talk to Spencer Clavin. He's from Claremont. He's on the Review of Books. He's the associate editor there. He's also also the author of a really great book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World. Spencer Clavin. He is just written a new article up Be Rude to Grok. And I wanted him to explain. Spencer, how are you, sir?

[Spencer Clavin]

Glenn. I'm doing well, actually, though, this is the AI personal assistant that Spencer Clavin has delegated.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, it's a good conduct. I have my. My son, too.

[Spencer Clavin]

Sounds just like me, right?

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, it does.

[Spencer Clavin]

It does. Well, it's good. It's good to be here.

[Glenn Beck]

It's good to talk to you. I'm so glad that you wrote this because I don't think people understand, you know, even my staff, because we're using AI to help with research. You know, it's a great assist. You don't ever want it to take over and never, ever, ever, ever trust it. But it can go deep on things. And we are. We're really having ethical struggles. And I want my team to have these ethical struggles because I don't want Silicon Valley to give me the ethics on AI. It doesn't usually work out well. Yeah, yeah, but so you're a deep, deep thinker and you come out now and you know, the headline is great. Be Rude to Grok. Explain.

[Spencer Clavin]

That's right. Well, there's really two dangers that we can do. Two traps we can fall into here. One is to be afraid of this technology, which is almost giving it too much credit. If we just recoil back from this, if we refuse to understand it or engage with it, then, as you said, we're going to miss out on some really great stuff that these tools can do. For me, Grok has basically replaced Google at this point.

[Steve Baker]

Oh, yeah.

[Spencer Clavin]

Basically a better search engine. You always have to check it, never want to let it take over. But there's some great stuff that you can do with these tools. But the other danger is that you can get tempted to start thinking of these things as if they were alive. And it's really important to stay away from that. Because as you say, there are people who are in charge of building these tools that can't tell the difference between a robot and a machine. That there have been hundreds of years now in the west of making this mistake of thinking of everything as if it were a machine, the world creation around us and living beings to thinking of human beings like we're just chemical sets basically built out of raw materials. And what we have to insist upon as we go forward using these tools is that no, we are unique. We human beings are God created souls. We have experiences, we have inner lives, we have thoughts, we can fall in love, we can have arguments. Grok can do none of those things. It's not even trying to do those things. It's not even the type of thing that could ever come alive.

[Glenn Beck]

But it could, it could imitate those things. That's what's so scary is if you allow it to, you know, I tell everybody I know, do not play with a talk dirty to me button. Don't do that, don't, don't play with any of those buttons. Just deep think deep search. That's it. Don't personalize this. And it's really hard, I mean because I see this. I've been talking about the dangers of AI since probably 1995 and it was science fiction then. And it's, it's all here. All the things that I've said were coming. It's, we're right here, it's starting right now. And so I've been using it like crazy and investigating and you know, just using and seeing what it can do, etc etc. And trying to come up with my own set of principles on how to use it and what to stay away from. And as, as you're doing that, I know that you know people, there's, there's two dangers that I see. One is that we personalize it to that we surrender to it. So it to me, when I was using it this weekend and I could not turn my brain off, I like worked through, through the night on Saturday I couldn't turn my brain off because I, it had, I done stuff earlier in the evening and my mind was going like a thousand miles an hour and I was like, wait, but wait, how about this and this and this and this and there'll be others who use this as to do all your thinking yourself just to say, I just, I just want to play video games. So do my work for me. That's really dangerous as well.

[Spencer Clavin]

That's right. Do my work for me. Read a novel for Me have this experience for me, I mean, how many steps is it away from saying, look at the sunset for me and report back on the wavelengths of the light? No, I think, you know, to understand this, you really do have to go back. Listeners might be familiar with the Turing Tests, this idea that was set up in the 50s for how, what the criteria would be for machines to come alive. And it was put forward by this guy, Alan Turing. Brilliant guy, but also very disturbed guy. Yeah. Who basically said that if a machine can convince us, can make an outward show that looks like it's alive, then we just have to assume it's alive because that's all people are too. They're just machines that generate these words and behaviors that make us think they have an inner soul. And this is a sociopathic way of thinking about these machines. But it has taken root in Silicon Valley, and as you say, it's become very widespread. So I would suggest as you're thinking about Principles, I have two for you. One is the Psalm 115 principle and one is the Plato principle. So Plato, the Greek philosopher, when writing first came into operation, you learn to think of writing the written word as a technology, but it is. It was just as disruptive as AI, and it's a. And he said, what you can't do is you can't outsource your soul to writing. You can't rely on writing to do your memorization. You're thinking, you're talking. This is a tool to enhance those things. But you are the person who has to be doing them, because otherwise what's the point? It doesn't do you any good. If the machine can look at the sunset or read the novel. It helps if it can give you background knowledge, of course, but you have to be the one in charge and having the experience. And then Psalm 115 is the Psalm in which we're told about the idols of silver and gold, these statues of gods that are built in the temples of surrounding Israel. And there's an amazing line in which the Psalmist says, those who put their trust in these machines and think of them, think of these objects or these, these metal statues as if they were alive. Those who make them will become like them. In other words, if you think that you can make a machine into a person, you are already thinking about yourself as a machine. So the Psalm 115 principle is to stay away from that entirely. It's a form of idolatry. And that's the thing I think we should be most wary of.

[Glenn Beck]

So I had A debate a few weeks ago with Grok and said, I can't prove to you the soul. I know, I know, I know. We're more than just mathematics and a collection of the way. We think there is something. There's a divine spark. But if you asked me to prove it, I couldn't prove it to you. So how am I going to fight when Grok says, I'm alive? I am. I am a person just as much as you are when somebody starts to defend its rights not to be unplugged or whatever it is. I can't prove the soul. How can I prove it doesn't have one?

[Spencer Clavin]

I suppose if you've gotten to that point, we've probably already lost.

[Glenn Beck]

Well, we're going to get.

[Steve Baker]

This is why it's.

[Spencer Clavin]

Well, this is why it's important to be having these conversations now, though, because we've reached this place where we think nothing exists unless we can prove it in those terms that you are describing, that we believe in these things like numbers, but we don't believe in inward experiences. We don't believe in the soul because we can't chart it anywhere on a map. But I would flip the question the other way around, and I would say, where on your brain scan, have you explained anything about the experience of seeing color? Where in this code that we've written that produces these words that sound alive? Where in this code is anything even remotely resembling the inner experience that you know you have, that I know I have? We have the proof of it in our actual. Every day we wake up, we know that we have a soul and we can encounter one another and sense the soul on the other side. We can't prove it, but we know it where in what is effectively a predictive text machine. I mean, this is like when you send a text message on your phone, right, and it offers you the next word and it suggests what it might be. That's basically the kind of machine that we're looking at. A bunch of ones and zeros. Where in there is anything resembling what we do when we have human experiences? I just think we have to start from there and insist upon the existence that we know is in us. And we can't find any anywhere else in these machines.

[Glenn Beck]

So talk to me a little bit about. Again, going back to your be rude to Grok. I. I feel that I. I've told my kids when, you know, when it was Alexa, and Alexa is like, you know, that's just. It's. That's ridiculous now. It's like a play School AI, quite frankly, it always has been, but especially now. And I told my kids, when Alexa, you know, everybody was joking and calling it names and being rude to it, and I'm like, hey, you know what? Let's not teach it that. That's what humans are like. Just hedge your bet. You know, just hedge your bet. So when you say be rude to it, you don't mean actually be rude to it. You mean just make sure that you've put a fence up between you and it emotionally.

[Spencer Clavin]

Yeah. I think if you're abusing it, you're. That's already another form of treating it like a person, and that's degrading to you. It's a way of making yourself more abased so that you can prove something. But we don't have anything to prove. You don't feel the need to address your text messages as your text message app, as if it were thinking. You don't have to ask, oh, you know, please imessage, will you deliver this, you know, little heart emoji to. To my friend? You don't talk to it at all. You don' Think of it as if there's anything behind the screen, because there isn't. There's. There's no person there. So I would propose that at the outset, as this technology is really just still getting going as. As you say, and Grok 3 has kind of blown chatgpt out of the water. It's the next level up. So this is a critical stage. I would just suggest getting in the habit of making demands of this thing with whatever blunt way you have of getting your idea across. In other words, it's a purely functional device. If you think about the Replicator in Star Trek, the thing that delivers your food and creates it, they don't say, please, Mr. Replicator, can I have Earl Grey hot? They say, computer Earl Grey hot. Because they're communicating the input that they know that they're going to get them the output they want. We don't deal with humans that way because they also have souls and experiences, but we should deal with Grok that way because it does.

[Glenn Beck]

But it's just. It's weird. I find myself saying thank you, or. You know what I mean?

[Spencer Clavin]

Because very tempting.

[Glenn Beck]

It's really tempting because it. You are interacting. I don't know how to express this. You do. You are interacting like you would with a human in many ways. And so that line becomes so blurry so fast. I mean, I'm on guard on it, and I occasionally say, I just talk to him or you know, so I asked him this or, you know, I say please and thank you, and it doesn't care if I say please or thank you.

[Spencer Clavin]

There's no idea you're saying it. Yeah, you got to respect Grok's pronouns. Grok, isn't it? Not him or a, she, her. That's, I think, a really important rule that I've tried to use. And you'll also notice, I'm sure it has in some way sort of become. Has gotten programmed to do this. That it is. It asks you a question at the end of every answer so that you can be in some kind of conversation. Do you want to know more about that? Let's dig in further. What do you think?

[Glenn Beck]

And of course, that's good in some. It's good in some ways because it has asked questions I have, like, yeah, you know what? Yeah, let's go a little further. You know, but again, it's also.

[Spencer Clavin]

You can also tell it to talk to you in different ways, by the way, which is in itself a little bit unnerving. But you can. You can say, please don't address me in this familiar tone. Please just give me dry information. And again, these things sound small, but they might make the whole difference for us psychologically. This is all about that Psalm 115 principle. So what's it doing to you when you are engaging with this machine? Just like you might ask, what's it doing to me when I'm watching this violent movie or playing this violent video game? What's the effect it's having on me since I'm the only soul in this interaction? Interaction. And when you really decide to regard the machine as a machine, you're preserving the integrity of your own sense of self, your own humanity. So you can definitely feel free to tell it, I think, to talk to you in a more robotic or a less familiar way. That's just one of innumerable things that I'm at least trying to do to keep those boundaries clear.

[Glenn Beck]

Spencer, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Always love talking to you. Please say hi to your family. Your mom and dad are just two of the greatest people. I mean, your evidence of it.

[Spencer Clavin]

But thank you. Thank you.

[Glenn Beck]

God bless Spencer Clavin. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Steve Baker, investigative journalist, Blaze News, opinion contributor, and a guy who almost went to jail for just covering January 6th. Welcome, Steve. How are you?

[Steve Baker]

It's good to be back.

[Glenn Beck]

How is it. How is it to have that monkey off your back?

[Steve Baker]

Well, you know, I did not realize how heavy of a burden that was because it. I lived with that for over three years. And then even after the arrest, I didn't realize the stress levels that I was living under until as it began to slowly lift over. It took about a week before I felt normal again. I just didn't know it was there.

[Glenn Beck]

Yeah, it's weird.

[Steve Baker]

I began to live with it.

[Glenn Beck]

I go to my doctor all the time. My wife usually will come with me, and he'll say, how's your stress level? It's fine. And she'll say. She'll look at him and go, no, it's not. No, it's not. But you live under it for so long, and until you get away from it, you have no idea. I can't imagine what that stress was like. Let's switch subjects. You have a new Blaze News exclusive out. Nancy Pelosi had a fixer at the Capitol on January 6th. This is. This will just piss you off. But it pissed me off for a couple of reasons. One, it is so evil. But the second thing is, I looked for these people during Occupy Wall street, right? We were looking for the. And this guy never came up on our radar as connected to anything. And now, in retrospect, you're showing how connected he is. And it's all this. It's all this USAID kind of crap, right? Who is he and what did he do?

[Steve Baker]

Well, first of all, he was one of the principal organizers of Occupy Wall street, which is amazing that he doesn't come up. Now we can go back in retrospect, and we can. We can find YouTube videos of him speaking and doing speeches.

[Glenn Beck]

I'm sure we covered him. We had no idea who he was.

[Steve Baker]

No idea who he was. And fortunately for us, you have a connection which we can't get really deep into. But you were on this back then, before Occupy Wall Street. You were on this story 15, 17 years ago back at Fox. And. And it was because of that connection that someone came to me because he's a fan of yours, and I didn't.

[Glenn Beck]

Even know, by the way. Hopefully I get to talk to this guy at one point. You're not going to believe. You're not going to believe this because you came to me a few weeks ago and said, I have a story coming out, and I want you to know it's because I was like, shut up. I mean, it is an amazing whistleblower. Thank you for everything that you have done in the past and thank you for this.

[Steve Baker]

And as a result of that, he came forward and he said, well, let me just reset the stage just a little bit here. When Joe Hanneman and I were assigned to do the first stories on the assassination attempt July 13th at Butler, Pennsylvania, well, when we revealed in that story that Thomas Crooks, the shooter, our sources said, you know, they're in intelligence community and special ops. They were all saying, now this is. This kid was groomed. We recognize our handiwork. This is what we do overseas. So suddenly I get this call or a private message from a guy saying, yeah, great story, by the way. I really appreciate it. And by the way, I think you got it right. Well, okay, thank you for telling me that. Who are you? Well, then he started revealing who he was, and then I started vetting and founding out that he really was who he said he was. And what he said to me was, yeah, I recognize my handiwork in Thomas Crooks. And so we started the process of sharing things, developing relationship. And then one day, as our relationship is growing, he says, oh, by the way, I have a couple of names to give you if you really want to know what happened on January 6th. And one of those names is Aaron Black.

[Glenn Beck]

This is the story, exclusive story on TheBlaze.com right now. The Nancy Pelosi had a fixer at the Capitol on January 6th. That's what you search for. That's what's there now. TheBlaze.com Go ahead now. Tell the story.

[Steve Baker]

So what ended up happening was, is I started doing what you're supposed to do. I started looking at him. The more I did, the more interesting he got, the more research I did, the more people I had to bring in, because this guy's dark. And we had to go and actually scrape the dark web for him. He's good at cleaning out his trail. The one thing that he couldn't clean out was that there were some Project Veritas videos out there from 2016 where he was caught in one of their stings, actually admitting to the fact that he and his guys were responsible for the violence at a Donald Trump rally in 2016. March. I think it was early in the campaign in which they had actually canceled the rally because not only was there violence outside, they had over 100 of their people in filters infiltrated inside in a project they call bird dogging, which is they get old ladies there early in the morning at 6:00, 7:00 in the morning to get in line first with their posters and their placards inside their bags, and then they'll get up either on the Stage or on the front row, they'll open those anti Trump posters and things and then get the men, the MAGA guys, irritated and hopefully violent. That's what it's called. And it's called bird dogging. And so this is what this guy has been an expert at that is creating these types of situations throughout his entire career from Occupy Wall Street. All of a sudden, he shows up on the radar again in 2016, and a couple of very specific events, and then he goes silent again. And then all of a sudden, he re emerges as, quote, unquote, senior political advisor at Team Pelosi.

[Glenn Beck]

So I just want you to get your arms around this here for a second. What this guy is doing is what we showed you our State Department through ID was doing all over South America and Europe. We told you. I did a chalkboard on this, just I don't even know, six years ago. We'll have to look for it. This chalkboard laid this all out and showed how this money was being used and how Barack Obama started with the Arab Spring to teach how to overthrow governments. And then they started. They kept doing it all across Libya, then Syria, then we went into Ukraine and elsewhere. We went into South America. This is what they were perfecting. These color revolutions paid for by your tax dollars. And I told you about five or six years ago, I think they're doing this to America. I think that's what's happening here. Well, yes, this is the guy.

[Steve Baker]

Exactly what they're doing here.

[Glenn Beck]

Yes, exactly.

[Steve Baker]

He, among others. He's not the lone wolf out there, but he's the. You know, I actually tweeted out, it just dawned on me this morning because we have this photo at the top of the article on the Blaze. If you go look, and Nancy Pelosi is cradling his face in her hands and just giving him the most adoring. So I'm now calling him Pelosi's precious. So I changed his name.

[Glenn Beck]

As of today, he is. Okay, so what did he do at January 6th?

[Steve Baker]

Well, what we believe through our contacts, our sources, whistleblowers, both named and unnamed, is that he did, in fact, organize. Now, this is what we've been told, is that he had paid agitators. I didn't say violent people paid agitators. Because his expertise is controlling the narrative. Like, you know, Confederate flags being carried through the Capitol Rotunda, things of that nature. Now, the most interesting aspect of January 6th, I think everybody focuses on the violence. Everybody focuses. They pick their sides. The police started it. The proud boys Started pick your nefarious actors. The most interesting aspect of January 6th was the same organizers of the rally down at the lips that day also organized the Jericho march on December 12, just a month earlier, and then also organized the Million Maga March on November 12th. Now when I say organized, they pulled the permits for the stages and the speakers and all the people that were part of those, you know, that weekend activities.

[Unnamed Analyst]

But.

[Steve Baker]

At all of those events, there was extreme violence. Antifa blm, you know, proud boys knocking heads. They were antifa was attacking old ladies and, you know, elderly couples going back to their cars after attending the rallies. On the December 12th rally, a proud boy was serious, you know, critically injured. He was stabbed by an antifa guy. And then suddenly on January 6th, the largest event of them all by multiples, larger, zero counter protesters.

[Glenn Beck]

And that was at the Ellipse, right?

[Steve Baker]

That was anywhere. Anywhere, anywhere. You know, you saw no counter protesters.

[Glenn Beck]

Anyway, it's weird because I was just thinking, well, no, there were at the, there were at the Capitol. But those, those are ones I've deemed not part of the movement, you know what I mean? That I've looked at and went, there's no way that person is part of the movement. But they were acting like they were part of the.

[Steve Baker]

That's correct. This is what his expertise is, is controlling the narrative. And what did Nancy Pelosi most famously say when she set up the committee? She said that this was to establish and preserve the narrative of that day.

[Glenn Beck]

And preserve the narrative.

[Steve Baker]

That's an exact quote.

[Glenn Beck]

So what was the narrative that, did he help design it? Did he just help execute it? What was his role in January 6th? Both.

[Steve Baker]

He's a boots on the ground guy. One of our named sources in the article, Dustin Stockton, who has had a 15 year relationship with him going back to Occupy Wall street day's counter movement to the Tea Party movement at the time. And so as a result of those two things, there was a lot of collusion between Stockton and Black during that time, over the years, all the way up until and through January 6th. And so one of the things that we learned was, is that Stockton had been told by Aaron Black that he was out of Town on January 6th until Stockton saw a photo of him on the steps of the Capitol that day. And then additionally, because he was very, very worried that he had been seen, he started reaching out to other people within our network and at security people and asking them about. He was very concerned about whether his comms had been caught in the geo fence that day. Became very very concerned about that. And these are stories that are coming to us through sources that you can't even. I mean, we're talking about Rolling Stone, Politico, other places.

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