BLOGJuly 27, 2017

'Friction' Author: Today’s Consumers Are ‘Walking Billboards’ for the Brands They Love

Companies need to focus on becoming “passion brands” instead of just flooding consumers with advertisements, co-author Jeff Rosenblum told Glenn Thursday on radio. The latest generation of consumers is comfortable with social media and loves to interact, so they are the best advocates for the brands they like.

In his book Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption, Rosenblum explored this phenomenon of “passion brands,” or companies and products that people love enough to share with everyone by tweeting, wearing a T-shirt and telling friends through word of mouth.

“They’re like walking billboards, and they’re actively proselytizing for brands,” Rosenblum said, describing this key type of consumer.

One of his favorite examples is the brand Yeti Coolers, which sells a particularly rugged type of cooler intended for camping, fishing and other outdoor trips. Instead of traditional ads, Yeti focuses on creating short videos about people going on incredible adventures. It’s more about image than anything else. Even if people don’t really need a cooler that can weather the elements, they’ll be drawn to the vision of adventure.

“They tell these stories about people who are going on bigger and bolder adventures than most people ever will,” Rosenblum said.

GLENN: The whole world is changing. And really in an exciting and dynamic way, if you understand that the bull crap of yesterday, which Washington hasn't figured out yet. The bull crap of yesterday, the lies of yesterday, and the systems that create friction and make your life complicated just don't work anymore. Nobody wants them. Don't prop them up. Get out of that and find passion. Passion brands and friction. We're going to talk about that with a guy who knows it quite well. Beginning right now.

Name of the book that I've been telling you about for weeks, and I'm thrilled to have Jeff Rosenbloom. He's one of the co-authors of the book "Friction" passion brands in the age of disruption. It is one of those books that you read, and you're, like, jeez. How could I not know that? How did I not think that? How is this all of a sudden -- it's one of those things that somebody invents something, and you're, like, of course. How come I didn't invent that?

I want you to know that Jeff is not here to sell books. I highly recommend you buy his book, but he's not taking any of the money from it. It's actually going to something called special spectators, which we hope to talk about a little bit later. He will also be with us on The Blaze TV for a special episode tonight at 5:00, so he's not here to make any money. He's here to change some lives, and you have dramatically impacted my thinking since I picked up your book, so it's great to have you here, Jeff.

JEFF: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

GLENN: So tell me. I guess we just need to start at, you know, the brands of the past and the brands now. Passion brands. What is it?

JEFF: , well, passion brands are the brands that absolutely dominate the competition; right? They don't have just customers. They have an army of evangelists. These are the folks that are at the bars, at the restaurants, at the dinner table, they sit around the campfire, grew up on their social media channels, they've got the T-shirts, they've got the hats, they're like walking billboards, and they're actively proselytizing for brands.

GLENN: So you talk about one passion brand that has really boggled my mind until I read your book, but I want to ask you some questions about it. And that is Yeti. Coolers. Great coolers.

JEFF: The best.

GLENN: But -- what is it? Four times the price of a good cooler?

JEFF: yeah.

GLENN: And I've often wondered. People who buy this, they become evangelists, and it's a cooler. And I wonder how much of that is because it truly is absolutely great and how much of that is to soothe the cognitive dissidents in their head of I just paid fours times as much and everybody who doesn't have one says "What the hell is wrong with you."

Does that play a role in that at all?

JEFF: Absolutely. To dial it back, and then we'll talk about Yeti. Passion brands are built by fighting friction. Friction is anything that gets in the way of what you want to accomplish in life. It's anything that gets in the way of your hopes, dreams, aspirations, on even your mundane day to day goals.

So when you think about Yeti, it's a cooler for outdoors. So by definition, if you're using it, you're going on some sort of outdoor adventure. So they fight friction in two ways. The first is this cooler is fundamentally better than any other cooler out there. It's literally certified Grizzly bear proof. Now, the chances of anyone actually needed that type of technology --- fairly negligable.

GLENN: Right. I would like a cooler that I can pick up and throw at the grizzly bear.

JEFF: That's the next product.

But it's nice to know if you're going on that adventure, that product that you're buying can go further and deeper and bigger on an adventure. But to your point, it's not just about the cooler, it's about the totality of the experience. And what they've done that I love is rather than relying on a bunch of interruptive ads, they've created these incredible videos. Each of these videos are about eight minutes long, and there are dozens of them. And they've been watched millions of times over. And what they do is they tell these stories about people who are going on bigger and bolder adventures than most people ever will. The world's greatest fly fisherman, the world's greatest ski guide, the world's greatest barbecue pit master who happens to be an 89-year-old woman named Tutsi. It's not, like, we're Yeti, and we make coolers. Yeti doesn't even appear in these videos. But what happens is they give us a vision. A bigger and bolder vision of ourselves. We all wake up in the morning wanting to be better we were than the day before. It's at the heart of the human experience. It's what drives capital I am. So these great videos help us envision that.

And, by the way, I've watched hours of them. Most people will watch a few of them. The typical interactive ad experience is 1.6 seconds. Compare that to an eight-minute video.

GLENN: I watched the fly fishing one. It's 22 minutes.

JEFF: Yeah.

GLENN: I watched it. Every second of it. And here's what I do. I hear from the guys because I'm not a sports guy. But I hear from the guys on sports every -- every Monday, I hear ugh, and I know they're on ESPN just trying to get the six-second clip, and they have to sit through the commercial. That's not 22 minutes. And it's just in the way of getting to their six seconds.

JEFF: Yeah. Prerolls. You know, the advertising industry, we keep making ads and the audience keeps running away.

Now, to be clear, this is not about the death of advertising. That false eulogy has been written before. We're just asking advertising to do too much. We can still do incredible things with advertising, but increasingly those traditional interruptive ads are being ignored and avoided.

GLENN: In fact, just removing the friction from your product will do more than any ad. If you make a truly great product, and you make it frictionless and not only -- I mean, let's go into the passion brands a little bit. Of finding that group of people -- and let me ask you. Do you need -- to really have an authentic brand, does that need to come from the founders that are, like, what you know? I wanted this. I know this is great, and I don't care if anybody buys it. Or does it come from a group of people who are just scanning the horizon and saying, yeah, these people over there. Let's come up with something for their -- does it matter?

JEFF: Well, I think it comes from both. But most passion brands that we see, and they can be big brands like Under Armour or big brands like Amazon or some of them are smaller startups, they tend to be run by the founders because they have a strong vision, and they don't want to waver from that vision. But it can be from large, established corporations.

One of the interesting things that we found is that really the key is to take all of your efforts and instead of first focusing it outward at messaging, focus it inward at your own behaviors. And a piece of research we found is what's called the power score. And they looked at 9 million different data points. They interviewed 20 self-made billionaires and CEOs and army generals. What they found is only 1 percent. Only 1 percent of leaders are great at what they call the power score, which is establishing your priorities, staffing effectively, and building internal communication cadence. So if you can have great leadership, then you can build a great passion brand. And ironically, you can create great ads. But you have to focus inward before outward.

GLENN: Some amazing things that I just didn't know, for instance, some stats in your book. Let me just run through a few of them. 90 percent of all of the data in the world has been collected in the last two years. That's astounding. 40 minutes in nature every week will lower AD/HD by 50 percent. Don't put your smartphone or your iPad next to your bed. Take that on.

JEFF: That is interesting because so many people loved it, and we weren't sure if that actually fits in the book. But what we tried to do with the book is look at industrial friction, organizational friction, and personal friction. And in that example, we found this great story about Keith Richards. The world's greatest guitar player or one of them. And one night, he's out doing the one thing in this world better than play guitar. He's partying like a Rockstar, and he passes out cold, and he wakes up the next day, and he has a song in his head. And his guitar is literally lying in bed lovingly with him. He grabs his guitar, rolls over, presses record on his tape recorder, lays down a few notes, passes out cold again. Wakes up a couple hours later, presses play, and he finds the guitar riff for satisfaction is waiting for him. Of course, then it's followed by the sound of him snoring. He's not even conscious enough to press stop on the recorder.

Paul McCartney had a similar experience. He woke one day, and he has a song scrambled eggs in his head. Can't stop. He's turning to all of his band mates and friends and be, like, what song have I ripped off here? And they're, like, dude, you didn't. It's your song, it's your original. And he went to John Lennon and turned it from scrambled eggs to yesterday.

Not quite as catchy when talking about breakfast; right? And it knowledge only happens to rock stars. The guy who figured out the periodic table of elements, the guy who figured out the double helix of DNA. All of this happened first thing in the morning when people woke up. And what happens in your brain, you've got something called alpha waves. It's the most powerful form of cognitive creativity that you have. This is where you can think of some big, bold, break through ideas. It's the same thing you get if you're in a hot shower, hot bath, you're in traffic for a while, your alpha waves start kicking in, and you ignore all of that crap in your head.

Now, the issue is 72 percent of us go to bed with their cell phone lying next to us. 50 percent of us, the very first thing that we do is we check it. One third of women before they even go to the bathroom, they check social media. The problem is when you do that, you completely shut off those alpha waves. You lose that opportunity to have that cognitive creativity.

GLENN: And why is that.

JEFF: Because it kicks in your fight or flight system, which is something we learned about in high school; right? It's when the blood flow changes. It used to be something that kept us from getting eaten by woolly mammoths, now it keeps us from getting run over by a car; right? Your subconscious takes over, you have different chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol in there. Your buddy on Facebook who just went on a better vacation than you'll ever go on. That's stressful; right? The server that's on fire, the contract that didn't get signed. Whatever it is on e-mail, that's all stress. So you're turning off that creativity, and you're creating stress.

Now, here's the interesting point. They used to think that your brain was your brain, and that's all you got. It turns out that there's a high degree of plasticity in your brain, which means it can change just like that cheap analogy that says your brain is like a muffle, you have to work it. It turns out it's true. You can actually change the size and shape of certain areas of your brain, and it happens very quickly. So when you go to your mobile device first thing in the morning, you turn off the creativity, you turn on the fight or flight. For the rest of the day, you're not going to be as creative.

So with a 90 million bits of information, 90 percent of the data that's been collected the past two years, everybody has unprecedented access to data and technology. Creativity is the ultimate competitive advantage, and you have to feed your creativity just like you have to work out your body at the gym.

GLENN: When we come back, I want you to talk about --

STU: All about the gym. You're talking to a good crew.

JEFF: That's why I went there.

GLENN: So you're speaking our language. When we come back, I want you to talk about monkeys and how this relates to monkeys and then back to us. In just a second.

GLENN: A game-changing book in your thinking is "Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption." There is so much friction in our lives from chaos, from just -- just from the news trying to understand the political -- it's all friction. And being able to reduce that and navigate through that is really hard. And I think people are getting really frustrated in some ways with life, and they're just tuning out. They're just stopping. And that's really because the media or politicians or party or whatever you're dealing with just are not changing. They're holding onto the old system.

JEFF: Yeah.

GLENN: And it doesn't work. I was blown away -- where did you get the monkey thing, and then explain the monkey thing.

JEFF: Yeah, it was interesting. When I was writing the book, we set up a research team, thousands of pages of research. I'm a numb nut. I barely graduated college; right? But I'm hanging out with my really smart friend, he's a Ph.D. at Stanford, a neuroscientist, and he's telling me about this study that they conduct all the time. And what happens is when you go to get your Ph.D., they often give you this experiment where they take an electric probe, and they put it into a monkey's brain to read what's going on inside that brain. And then what they do is play this loud, blaring, obnoxious sound in the monkey's ear. And what you see on the readout is not surprising. When you play that awful sound, you get a very strong and very negative reaction from the monkey's brain. So then they repeat the experiment. They play that loud, blaring, obnoxious sound. And what you find, again, is not surprising. They have a very strong and very negative reaction.

But what it was absolutely shocking to me is that if you repeat the experiment a few times over, and then you look at the readout, the reaction looks like the side of a cliff. The monkey's brain literally stops reacting to this awful sound because the monkey at a structural level knows that it needs to focus on other things in life. Food, water, shelter, fornication; right? If it continues to respond so strongly to that stimulus, it literally can't survive. It's called repetition suppression.

GLENN: So are we in -- before we go into this on the decisions that we make and every day. But are we seeing this -- is this one of the reasons why we are just tuning so many things out in Washington? We're tuning principles out. We're tuning all kinds of stuff out because we just can't do anything about it, and we keep hearing it shouted over and over and over again, and we focus on other things? Am I reading that right?

JEFF: That's exactly right. The human brain is exposed to 400 billion bits of information every second. We make 35,000 conscious decisions per day. We ran an experiment --

GLENN: That's 35,000 yes or no decisions.

JEFF: It could be more complicated than yes or no. These are outright conscious decisions per day. So brands, politicians, we're all trying to enter this stream. We expose people to 5,000 branded messages per day. The previous generation was only 2,000. Already, that was too much. So what we have to do is focus less on interruptions, and more on empowerment. Another way of looking at it is magnets over megaphones. We have to create content and experiences that are so powerful, people go out of their way to participate in them. And then, share them with others. And that's the secret ingredient to brands like Yeti.

GLENN: Patagonia you think is the pinnacle of a passion brand?

JEFF: Patagonia is one of them.

GLENN: Why?

JEFF: Well, I fell in love with this guys because, first of all, they recognize that there's friction in the category. And what they to is they focus all their efforts on fighting that friction. So the friction is this:

If you want to enjoy their outdoor gear and apparel, you need a healthy outdoors. And ironically when they create their products, it actually damages the outdoors; right? Create manufacturing by-products, your old jackets make garbage; right? So everything they do, they fight friction by empowering people.

GLENN: Okay. So when we come back, listen to the ad campaign that they came up with, and it's brilliant. Brilliant. Patagonia "Friction" is the name of the book. Jeff Rosenbloom joins us again in a few minutes. "Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption". Back in a minute.

[Break 10:31]

GLENN: I will tell you. If you really want to see the world in a different way, especially if you're an entrepreneur or a leader of any sort, you really want to see the future and whether what you're doing will survive or not. You need to read the book "Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption".

Jeff Rosenbloom is with us, and you were giving us the example of Patagonia. Patagonia making outdoor clothing, and they really are dedicated to, you know, save the planet and everything else, and so that's where their people are. And the friction that they had internally was, you know, all of the stuff that we make the chemicals and everything, the garbage, that's actually hurting. So how are we helping, exactly?

So talk about the campaign that they ran with a coat.

JEFF: Yeah, so you hit on a really important point. For their target audience, making the environment healthier is absolutely paramount.

GLENN: Paramount.

JEFF: Right. So the campaign that I love, I came across not when I was doing research, but we actually created this documentary called the naked brand. And we looked at one of their campaigns called the footprint chronicles where you know if you got the surfer board shorts, and you go surfing, and you come back on the beach, and they dry, like, 45 seconds later? Well, guess what? Mother nature didn't make those shorts. We made them. We manufactured them. They're manufacturing by-products, so you can actually follow the manufacturer of their products around the globe, see the supply chain, they're not saying look how great we are. They're literally talking about the damage they do. It's really counterintuitive. I find it fascinating, and I fell in love with the brand. And I wanted to buy this blue Patagonia jacket. I had a perfect vision of it in my mind's eye.

And I'm literally shopping on Black Friday. The number one shopping day of the year. Brands sell more on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving than in months combined. And I went to Patagonia.com and on the home page, like, they read my mind, I can't exaggerate this. There's the blue jacket that I wanted to buy. And then right next to it on the home page in a giant font, don't buy this jacket. What the heck is going on here? And then there's a button, like, direct response principles click on it. Learn more. So I click. And their point is this. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Reduce is number one. So if you want to buy that jacket, we're happy to sell it to you. But we're going to damage the environment from the manufacturing, from the garbage of your old jacket. Maybe, you don't need that jacket. Maybe you should buy less.

So I'm Jewish, I'm from New York, I felt guilty, I didn't buy the jacket. They lost the sale. But here's what they gained. They gained my unwavering loyalty. And they gained my evangelism. So here we are on your show talking about Patagonia. But more influential than me are the people who are truly influential. The guys; right? These are the guides leading hiking and biking and fly fishing and surfing adventures all around the world. And in definition, guides are influential, and they're covered head to tow in Patagonia gear because Patagonia is empathetic and empowers people about the one thing that is most important to those guides. And when you talk about evangelists, they are 12 times or more trusted than paid advertising ever will be.

PAT: Wow. And also, their competition is similar in that way; right? They try to reduce -- north face, they reduce friction for their customers as well.

JEFF: Yeah, it's a great point. Thanks for bringing it up because we can't just all jump on the environmental bandwagon. We can't jump on what other brands are doing.

PAT: That would look really disingenuous.

JEFF: Totally. People don't wake up in the morning and want to hug the trees and save the manatees; right? It works for some brands. North face took a different tact, which is if you want to enjoy outdoor sports and apparel, we're going to help you become a better athlete. So they created what they call the mountain series; right? And it's a bunch of instructional videos and information and articles and events that help people become better athletes. So I fell in love with this video series. It was from some of the best rock climbers and skiers, and they were shown very specific exercises to help me become a better skier. What's interesting is I don't think it worked all that well for them because they made less of those videos and became less prominent. But they stick to this platform. They're always empowering and always educating with different events and different information to help people become better athletes. You don't see the edge or you do see the ads and say, hey, we're north face, these are great products. But more importantly, they create content and experiences. So the ads are only part of that brand-building system. It's not the totality of it.

STU: You go through a lot of this stuff, obviously, in the book "Friction." And I have a friend who goes to Soul Cycle, which is a cycling spin class place.

JEFF: Bordering on a cult.

STU: The number one people say to her is shut up about Soul Sycle.

GLENN: It's like orange theory.

JEFFY: Yes.

GLENN: Orange theory is, like, okay. Stop with the bumper stickers. It's a gym, man. Let go.

STU: So the question I want to ask you is how do I get her to shut up about Soul Cycle? But separately -- because I look at their business model, and I see a huge friction point, which is they're charging people $31 to come in and ride a bike in their establishment for an hour.

JEFF: Yes.

STU: And, to me, that sounds completely insane. Yeti, they have more evangelists percentage-wise probably than any company I've ever seen. How do you cross over a huge friction point like that and bring your point along?

JEFF: Great point. Great brand. I should have included them in my book. I was scared to death to go in there. You guys selling salad? We'll do that.

GLENN: Salad? I like the part on Cadbury, for the love of god.

JEFF: Here's the interesting point that you just amongst is these passion brands, they don't get there by talking about discounts and promotions. And once brands go there, it becomes really addictive. They actually charge a premium price. Patagonia, Yeti, Soul Cycle, sweet green, all of this stuff is quite a bit more expensive than the competition.

GLENN: And it has to be worth it first. It has to be worth -- if you're buying a dozen eggs, you better get 14 and great farm fresh eggs if you're charging --

PAT: Or at least you're better than whatever else.

GLENN: Yeah, you've got to be. You have to be that first. There's none of this, you know, hey, Fred Flynn stone is saying, you know, that doctors say smoking is healthy. It has got to actually be accurate; right?

JEFF: There's a great poster I saw. No amount of advertising can get me to buy your crappy pizza; right? And the truth and the matter is it actually can. It can get you to buy that crappy pizza once. But it's not going to get loyalty and evangelism. So you're hitting on a key point with Yeti is that the product has to be better than the competition. It doesn't have to be two or three times better. But it has to be 10, 20, 30, 40 percent better.

But to your point, that relationship that people have with Soul Cycle is irrational; right?

STU: Yes. Yeah, I can confirm that. Yes.

JEFF: The reason it's irrational is that it's emotional. Most brands have a transactional relationship; right? They make a good product, they charge a fair price, they have some pretty good advertising, people comparison shop, and then they buy.

Soul Cycle and other brands have an emotional relationship where people pay more for the product. They ignore the competition. They buy all of that Soul Cycle and gear, and they turn themselves into walking billboards. And they do that, they create that irrational relationship through irrational behavior.

Think about that Patagonia example. Running a campaign that says don't buy this jacket, that's irrational.

GLENN: So Starbucks, really, was kind of a pioneer in this kind of area, weren't they? Where everybody was going to Dunkin' Donuts and getting your coffee at a normal price. And then all of a sudden here comes Starbucks charging money out the nose. But it became more than a coffee place.

JEFF: Yeah, well, it went from transactional. I like Dunkin' Donuts. I'm from the northeast. But it's transactional. You're in, you're out, you move on. Howard Schultz was, like, wait a second. Let's make this experiential. Let's look at what's going on in Europe. Let's sell them the cup of coffee and then give them a place to hang out. And then all of a sudden almost like Soul Cycle, it's almost coltish in the language that they're using, and they're becoming part of a tribe and tribes are extraordinarily powerful. We don't just want customers. If you want to be a passion brand, you have to build a tribe.

GLENN: So is that do you know where Y they use things like venti? They change the language to make it even more of a badge to be a part of this tribe. Is that what's going on?

JEFF: That's exactly right; right? And I don't know, like, I'm not that gifted creatively to figure those types of things out. But, yeah, Howard or somebody on his team figured out long ago let's create that badge. Let's create those shortcuts.

GLENN: The name of the book is friction. I can't recommend it highly enough. I've never done this with any book before. I insisted everybody on the staff read this book, so we're responsible for about 249 companies being sold.

JEFF: Thank you very much.

GLENN: And everybody has read it. I also for the first time I've never done this. We're asking all of our Dallas employees to come down to the studio floor today. There's about 90 here just in this building. They're coming to listen to you at 5:00 for the show at 5:00 today TheBlaze.com, and I just want you to talk about how to find the customer, how to reduce friction, how to -- I mean, I'm convinced -- everything in your book, I've known instinctively. And if I boil it down, I always thought that capitalism was the greatest charity brand ever, if it's done right. And meaning if I love a group of people, I'll say how can I serve them? How can I make their life better, easier? And by serving them, what they need in a really easy way, I could become rich. It is capitalism. It's not charity. It's capitalism. And that's really kind of the thing. If you know who your target is, you know who you're serving, and you actually love them, listen to them, and help make their life easier, that's it, isn't it?

JEFF: It's interesting you bring it up because I'm leaving this very blue region of New York City, and I'm entering this red region of Texas. And I'm looking out the window of this wonderful, amazing, beautiful country of ours. And I was thinking about the fact that we just can't seem to agree very much lately. And then I realize, wait a second. There is one thing that we can all agree upon. Which is corporations have incredible power. And they should use that power to improve people's lives one small step at a time. And this is not for altruistic reasons, this is not for idealistic reasons because that is not sustainable. It's because when brands improve people's lives, they get rewarded. Not just by shifting customers or, say, prospects to customers, but by shifting customers into evangelists, and that's what fighting friction is all about.

GLENN: Unless you go to the Harvard school of business, and you are assigned both wealth of nations and moral sentiments, which is imperative that you read both Adam Smith books, you're not going to get this. This is a new really kind of Adam Smith look at how capitalism should work, "Friction" passion brands. We will you on The Blaze TV today at 5:00.

JEFF: Thank you.

GLENN: I want to talk really quick before you go. The proceeds as we're telling people to buy your book. The proceeds are not going to you. Where are the proceeds going?

JEFF: From July 15th to August 15th, all of the proceeds, not Amazon, not the publisher. I can't control those guys. Goes to special spectators.

GLENN: Which is what?

JEFF: Takes kids with life-threatening illnesses, and takes them to exclusive college sports experiences. So they'll get on the field at, like, Alabama, and they'll get into the locker room, they'll meet the coaches, and there's all different games going around the country. And what they found with these, because I'm on the board of make a wish, and we saw it there also. It's not just about giving these guys a moment of happiness, but it's also part of a healing process; right? It literally heals kids when they're fighting these diseases to actually have a moment of happiness in their life.

GLENN: Thank you very much, Jeff. We'll talk to you later this afternoon.

JEFF: Thank you.

GLENN: By the way, if you have any questions, go ahead and tweet them, and I'll have the staff look at them this afternoon before we go on the air. You can just tweet them @glennbeck, and we'll try to get your questions in as well.

RADIO

AI military drone maker reveals the FUTURE of warfare

The next war will look VERY different, now that we have AI. Glenn speaks with Brandon Tseng, co-founder and president of Shield AI, a company making AI-powered drones and autonomous planes for the US Military. Brandon discusses his drone planes like the X-BAT, and also gives his take on new foreign weapons, like Putin’s new nuclear-powered cruise missile: "It sounds dumb."

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: The cofounder and president of Shield AI, Brandon Tseng is with us. He's a former Navy SEAL. How old are you? You look like you're 14. How old are you?

BRANDON: I'm 39.

GLENN: Thirty-nine. Anyway, you have -- you are making a huge the difference in the AI world, especially with defense. Especially well the expat. A new plane. Do you call them drones, or are they planes?

BRANDON: Expats are a vertical takeoff launch and land AI-piloted fighter jet. Sometimes when people think drones, they just think quad copters. Except, there's a whole world of drones.

GLENN: It's weird. You either think of the quad copters, or you just think of those gigantic gray drones.

BRANDON: Yeah. The Predators and Reapers, yeah.

GLENN: And we're not like that anymore, either. Right? Have we updated those?

BRANDON: No. So Shield AI builds a miniature version of said drone. That's also vertical takeoff launch and land. It's called the Vbat, weighs about 180 pounds. But it's meant to do the mission of these $40 million drones for a fraction of the cost. And so we've been using that with US forces, oh, man. Now, probably since 2019, but most recently, we've been working with the US Coast Guard. We've interdicted billions of drugs in the Caribbean. So you just set a record with the US Coast Guard, interdicting 20 tons --

GLENN: Are you blowing up the boats, or are you just --

BRANDON: Shield AI is not blowing up any boats. But, yeah, the Coast Guard is setting them on fire after the whole thing is said and done.

GLENN: Wow. So -- so let me -- let me go into the -- the future of warfare.

Because it -- it's a little freaky. And I don't even know. There's a story that just came out today. Because we're negotiating with Russia.

And Russia is always beating their chest. And they have something new.

This one, just sounds crazy. CNN, this morning. Putin claimed successful test of long range nuclear-powered cruise missile, amid diplomatic breakdown. And what this cruise missile is, you launch it. It's not just nuclear-tipped. It's nuclear-powered as well.

So the idea is, it would just stay up in space. And it will just stay up there until it's directed to hit something. Which I guess, you not only blow a city up.

But you also have the China syndrome happening at the same time. I don't even get it. What do you think of this weapon?

BRANDON: Yeah. It sounds crazy. It sounds dumb. It sounds overengineered. I mean, it actually reminds me of some of the things the US was doing in the '50s. I don't know if you know this. We had something called the Davey Crockett nuclear rocket. Which was a hand-held nuclear rocket launcher. They said, only a Navy rocket would be crazy enough to shoot this thing. Because you're firing a nuclear bomb over your shoulder. And you hope it goes far enough.

That's --

GLENN: 1950s were kind of scary.

BRANDON: Yeah. You can Wikipedia this stuff. It's in there. Kind of scary. Right with the nuclear-powered cruise missile. Fifteen hours. Like, okay. Now, why do you need it to be up in the air for 15 hours?

You're seeing where this thing is. It becomes an easier target for people to shoot down. And then to the point, now, what do you have if this thing actually blows up, at any point, whether we take it out, or they take it out. Now you have nuclear material over some area?

Like, again, something I could see. Some crazy scientist and engineers working on, something that I believe has near zero utility on the battlefield in any -- like, even -- even by the Russians.

GLENN: What about the hypersonic missiles now?

BRANDON: Yeah, no, the hypersonics are -- look, what I'm a big proponent of is first principles of warfare. So like mass, maneuver, speed is another principle of warfare. And so what the hypersonics are getting after is that first principle of the speed.

It's like, look, if you can hit your targets faster than they can react. There's something to do that. In that range, at that standoff, at that offset, that is something that is pretty interesting. Now, the challenge that the United States has had. Has been around to getting these to a feasible level.

And I know there's some efforts to bring down the cost of hypersonics. But it's also what makes it incredibly difficult, is when you start to go hypersonic. You know, multiple interdicts of Mach 1.0, to Mach 2, 3, 4. That is a hard, hard, hard, hard physics problem.

GLENN: Right.

You know, I've always felt like, whenever we saw something, you know, when you -- when you first saw the stealth bomber, we were probably on the second iteration. You know what I mean?

We were always -- we didn't always just show what we had.

Is that true anymore?

Do we have things that the world doesn't know, that --

BRANDON: I don't think we have too many things that the world doesn't know about.

Certainly, there are classified programs.

And I think the US does have a couple -- not technologies. You know, up its -- its sleeve. Just like, you know, concepts. Operating concepts.

Is what I would say. We still are like pretty good at.

And so what you're seeing today is in the military world.

You see a lot in the -- you know, just the consumer software world. Where industry is really leading, in this day and age.

So you see industry leading the customer, more than what I would say in the past, right?

In the '80s. '90s. Early 2000s. You would seat customer leading industry to what --

GLENN: We want to do this.

BRANDON: Yeah. Exactly.

GLENN: Are we -- are you concerned at all, with -- with AI and technology being so readily available, and cheap?

You know, everywhere.

That everybody can -- can do some really bad damage. You know, you don't have to be a -- you don't have to be the United States of America.

BRANDON: Yeah. Look, I think every new technology is a double-edged sword. It can produce a ton of value for the world. It can do a lot of value for the world. And at the same time, we put that technology into the wrong person's hands, it can do damage to the world. And so I think the same was true of the internet.

The same is true of now providing compute power into massive amount of compute power into someone's hand, just via an IPhone or an android phone. And so I don't look at AI -- like, I don't worry about AI and autonomy.

And I think it's wrong to prohibit the advancement of a technology, simply because, you know, some wrong can be done with it.

GLENN: Right.

BRANDON: There's a ton of things, where a lot of wrong, we've seen this.

A lot of things can be weaponized. Whether it's an airplane. Whether it's a car. Whether it's the internet. You name it.

But these technologies aren't bad for the sake of being a new technology.

GLENN: Yeah.

I've talked to the president about this several times. The one thing that freaks him out, keeps him up at night is nuclear world. He said, I rebuilt the nuclear arsenal. And he said, you don't even want to understand what we can do. He's like, it's -- it's always been bad. He said, it's -- it's colossally bad. And once it starts, it's over.

And he's really -- he does, I think -- what little sleep he does get, I think there are times where he has lost sleep over war on nuclear, with nuclear weapons.

Is there any of this new technology, is there anything about AI or any of this stuff that freaks you out, that you think, this is really scary, if it -- if it goes wrong or whatever?

BRANDON: Yeah. The way I think about it is, look, nuclear deterrence, has deterred nuclear war since we -- since 1945.

GLENN: Yes. Right. Yeah.

BRANDON: And that largely stopped world wars for the past 80-plus years.

GLENN: Right.

BRANDON: And so our conventional deterrence has been dominated by our aircraft carriers and our submarines in terms of how we deter large state-on-state conflicts in this day and age. It's with these -- along with the number of other, you know, levers that we pull. Economic levers. Diplomacy levers. But the military lever has been dominated by our aircraft carriers, our air power, and our submarines.

GLENN: Sure.

BRANDON: So where I see the world going. It's like AI and autonomy is enabling this next generation of deterrence. Because our legacy weapons systems, they're not as well-respected. Our aircraft carriers are not as respected as they once were. Right?

GLENN: I'm a sitting duck.

BRANDON: Yeah, when the enemy has antiship missiles that outrange what these carriers can launch with our jets.

And they have surface-to-air missile systems that can target any fuel tanker, like, that's when you see your conventional deterrence capabilities start to erode.

AI and autonomy is that massive unlock for the military, for our allies.

It enables, you know, the United States to feel millions of drones. You can't feel millions of drone pilots.

We don't have enough people.

Aren't enough people signing up.

What you can do is enable small groups of people to feel these drone swarms that I believe will be the most strategic conventional deterrence for the next 25 years. And again, that's why I started Shield AI. We have the tag line. The greatest victory requires no war.

It is about having such a dominant military that any adversary thinks twice before starting, either a straightforward conflict or an asymmetric one.

GLENN: Are you concerned about -- you know, Elon Musk says. And I don't know how true this is.

But Elon Musk says we are the new Grok.
I think it's five or six that is coming. Is 60 percent close to AGI. Are you concerned about AGI and ASI? And what that might mean?

BRANDON: I'm not concerned about AGI, but I'm an eternal optimist. And so I put that disclaimer out there. It's really hard to say what 60 percent of AGI means.

GLENN: Right.

BRANDON: What I do think is really interesting, really fascinating.

It's now what is possible in this day and age with AI and autonomy. And I'll share something cool that I looked up the other day, and why I'm an optimist around it.

I asked Grok 4, I said, "What was the economic impact of the internet from 2000 to 2025 on global GDP by a cumulative basis?" Its estimate was 134 trillion dollars' worth of economic value, attributed to that core underlying technology, being the internet.

A ton of value created for the world. I then asked it, what is the value of AI and autonomy going to be for the world from 2025 to 2050, estimated that. It's estimate -- maybe it's biased if it's AI estimating itself.

Was -- yeah. Yeah. Four and a half quadrillion dollars, forty times bigger than the internet. And so that world. Again, I'm a techno optimist. I get excited about that.

It's hard to really understand or fathom what that world looks like, but I think it's going to be a net positive for the world in a way that so many underlying core technologies of life have been.

Now, it doesn't mean that there's -- it's all sunshine and -- and rainbows. There's going to be some bad actors out there with it for sure.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. So last question, I hate to ask you this. But I have to ask you this: Being a guy who is in into drones, everything else. What we saw last year over New Jersey, what the hell was that?

BRANDON: I -- I don't understand know what it was in New Jersey.

But I don't like the idea that there was anybody able to fly drones at all.

GLENN: Yeah. Those were large too.

BRANDON: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if it was another state.

I don't know if people were pulling pranks. Like they've done in the past. I don't know what it was.

GLENN: But do you think it could have been us?

BRANDON: No. I think it was someone else. Is what I think it was.

GLENN: That's a little frightening.

BRANDON: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know what it was though. So, yeah.

GLENN: Have you ruled out extraterrestrial.

BRANDON: I probably haven't paid enough attention to it. But, yeah. I don't know what it was.

GLENN: That's a little frightening. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

We'll be watching.

You bet.

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

He Hunted SATANIST Mexican Cartels and SURVIVED | Dave Franke | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 272

Dave Franke stared down the cartel in Mexico’s blood-soaked Zacatecas — and lived. Now he tells Glenn the unfiltered truth: The cartels are “absolutely” operating inside the United States. Through raw, firsthand accounts, he rips the veil off the narco-satanic cult of Santa Muerte — the Saint of Death — and the savage brutality it fuels. Trump calls the cartels “the ISIS of the Western hemisphere,” and his Homeland Security Task Force has already seized thousands of terrorists and cartel operatives, two million fentanyl pills, and 70 tons of narcotics. But Dave warns: We’ve barely “scratched the surface.” Facing entrenched corruption, human trafficking, and a highly profitable drug trade, Glenn and Dave debate a radical fix — legalize drugs — and ask the explosive question: Does our government let the cartels thrive in exchange for intel, just like in "Ozark"? It’s the story that neither Fox nor CNN would let Glenn tell finally coming to the light, but is it already too late?

RADIO

I asked Vance and Rubio about 2028. They told me the SAME THING...

Will Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio team up for a 2028 presidential run? Glenn Beck asked them both, separately, and shockingly, they gave him the SAME answer. Glenn reveals what they said, as well as what they said about President Trump...

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Blaze.com has a news story out: J.D. Vance responds to the possibility of a Vance/Rubio presidential ticket. Responds to a --
I -- I love his response. He was speaking on Pod Force One. It's a podcast from the New York Post. And they asked him about, you know, how do you feel about a Vance/Rubio ticket?

And he said, it -- well, you know, we get along really, really well. The reason why we're successful, is because all of us work together really well.

STU: Which is not necessarily the case of the first term. You cannot say that about the people working in the White House.

GLENN: No. And most. Most.

I mean, I was saying this to a friend of mine, we were talking. And he asked me about a Vance/Rubio ticket. And I said, I talked to J.D. Vance and Rubio in the hallways of the White House. Just recently.

And about that. And I said, and they both said exactly the same thing.

Let's get through the next three and a half years. Things could change quickly in the next three and a half years.

STU: It's true.

There is a feeling I think on the right. That there's a lot of exciting things happening. Many of them positive.

GLENN: Three and a half years say long way.

STU: We are a long ways away. We are a long way away from the midterm elections.

I mean, think about this. We are what know.

We are -- to this point, closer to Trump's inauguration, than we are to the midterms.

GLENN: To the midterms.

STU: That seems impossible!

GLENN: I know. Impossible.

STU: In my head. But that's true to this moment.

GLENN: It's true. So it's crazy how much could change in the next four years, let alone the next one year.

STU: Hmm.

GLENN: And things are going really, really well.

STU: That's for us. I know you're moving on to something else. The left hates this more than they've hated anything ever. Every person I've known on the left has been driven completely insane by this.

GLENN: Wait. Wait. By all of this, or by all of the leadership. Of the other side?

I mean, what -- what is really driving them insane

STU: They're totally driven by Trump. I'm not revealing anything new here. I think it's more extreme now, than it was in the first term.

GLENN: It is. But it's not -- they're not driven insane by Donald Trump.

I mean, Donald Trump does -- he does help them along, because he likes toying with them.

STU: Sure. Sure.

GLENN: So that doesn't help.

However, it is -- the response from the media. And the response from the Democrats that have made him into Hitler.

Not Donald Trump.

STU: No. I mean, their analysis of Donald Trump is that he's the worst human being of all time. I think that's helped along by leadership. Helped along by the media.

GLENN: They would elect Pol Pot over Donald Trump.

At this point.

STU: Pol Pot implemented a lot of policies that they liked.

GLENN: That's true. That's true. We should all be against the killing fields. But at this point, I'm not sure they would be against the killing fields.

STU: I don't know if the Hamas wing of the democratic party is against the killing fields.

I'm not sure about that. But I will say, if you look at overall. You look at approval ratings of Donald Trump. They're not at their highest point right now. That's not just Democrats.

That's the entire country.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: So if that were to continue, if a couple things go wrong, if the economy turns down.

We talked a lot about the economy being at risk, especially outside of the AI bubble.

I was reading something yesterday about, you know, the AI situation. It's funny. It's basically giving us all of these gains. It's almost all AI-related. All these -- we talked to experts about this. It's almost all a bunch of money being passed in between like seven companies.

And at the end of the day, let's just say that were to collapse. It would hurt our economy. And who knows where we would be.

GLENN: Even if it doesn't collapse, think of all the jobs that are probably going to be lost in the next three years. We're starting to see jobs lost because of AI now. It's going to become very, very unpopular.

And AI I think is going to become very, very unpopular. And those who, you know, are using AI. This is getting very dicey for me. I'm starting to regret everything that I've done in the last two years.

But it's going to become very, very unpopular, because it will take jobs. If companies decide to use it as people, and not as a tool for people. But, anyway, let's -- let's move on.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: The one thing. The one thing that they said, that is the point I wanted to make on this was, and they say it in TheBlaze article.

A lot of the good work we've done is because we do it as an administration, and we're all able to work together. What both of them said to me, on separate occasions, when I said this was, I said to Rubio and to Vance. You are killing it!

You're just killing it right now. And they both said, no, no, no. Both of them separately. No, no, no, no. He's killing it. Pointing to the Oval Office, "He's killing it. We're just following what he is directing us to do."

And I'm like, "Yeah. But you're also doing a very effective job at doing that. I've seen presidents give orders. I saw Donald Trump trying to give orders last time. And it didn't work out well."

And he's like, "No. We're a great, great team."

STU: That's good to hear.

GLENN: Yeah, but what I wanted to say was, I can't think of a time in my lifetime, I mean, I was not around the White House of the Reagan years. So I don't know. But I can't think of a time where I have seen honest credit, given by the top leadership in hallway conversations, to the president.

You know what I mean?

It was -- because it was honest. It was real. It wasn't like, you know. Oh, no.

It's not me. It's him. It was real.

No, no, no. You don't understand. His grand strategy amazing.

And we're just following it.

You know, that told me a lot.

A lot.

And told me a lot about the quality of people around him.

STU: And to be honest about it. It's also the right answer.

You didn't get the sense that they -- they are saying the thing they know is going to keep them in the good graces.

GLENN: No, I didn't. I didn't.

STU: That's good. That's really good.

GLENN: Yeah, I don't think either of those guys would have said -- they would have said thank you. It wasn't like that. It wasn't like that. It was no, no, no, no. You don't understand. He is running the show.

STU: I think the Venezuela boat situation is an interesting highlight of this.

Again, we've talked about all the questions about it. There's some stuff to discuss.

However, like, that is something that is super important, to Marco Rubio. Like, that is -- I would say, central to his -- that entire situation is very central to his belief system.

And his --

GLENN: Yes. Freeing the people of Venezuela.

STU: Really important to him. And the fact that Trump really takes that seriously. And is doing something about it, is really important to Rubio. I think it's --

GLENN: But I don't think -- see, that's the way I think most administrations would look at it, like I want to help Rubio out. I know you're really passionate about this. Let me do this. And I agree with you. But I really think, it's the other way around. I think Donald Trump is like, here's why this is important.

STU: Oh, I think --

GLENN: And it's a little bit with Rubio, what you're dealing with, what you're thinking. Let me show you the grand strategy of how it has to happen. And I think the big, big vision is coming from Donald Trump.

And it accomplishes everything that everybody else is looking to do. But it's much bigger vision.

The big vision is coming from him, I think.

STU: Yeah. I think, the other thing that is very central to Donald Trump belief system. Besides the idea that he doesn't want people coming across the border illegally. He's very against illegal subs. Not just a crime, that is associated with them.

But he's like, obviously, been really hard against that -- his entire life.

GLENN: No. I think -- I mean, I think -- I mean, you wouldn't do this, because of the Constitution.

But I think if he could, I think you would be like, yeah. Drug dealers. Execute.

STU: Well, he's kind of said that. What was the guy in the Philippines?

GLENN: Yeah, kind of like that. Look, he just kills them.

STU: And that's what some of the criticism is over the boats. Right?

Surprised to hear, there's not a lot of great trial attorneys involved in the process, when -- there's not defense being presented when -- when the drone is overhead. They believe these are threats. They believe they have this -- this -- that's going to go through the courts. It's going to be challenged.

GLENN: I know.

STU: And they will have to deal with that. But he is -- he is -- more importantly than stopping those drugs from coming in. Because you see the boats. You're like, well, what could that even do to our country? Swallowed up like -- that wouldn't even get through a Washington, DC, cocktail party, the amount of drugs they could carry on one of those boats.

GLENN: Well, if Hunter.

STU: If Hunter is there obviously.

GLENN: Or somebody else from the Biden administration.

STU: Right. Who knows who it could have been, with all the cocaine in the White House. But, I mean, the point there is, the message.

The message is quite clear what -- what they're sending to -- to Venezuela. Which is not just don't send boats. It is stop everything you're doing. By the way, did you notice that very large ship off your coast?

Like, we are sending all sorts of messages to them.

Much deeper than a please stop delivering some cocaine here.

GLENN: Do you think the fact that we sent one of our biggest bombers from North Dakota to just buzz the coastline. Just in the international waters.

STU: It's a beautiful coastline. Some sightseeing.

GLENN: Did you see this?

Two of our bombers from the air base in North Dakota ran what I would describe as -- and I think they want him to describe it in Venezuela, the same way. As a trial run!

Two times, now, we have sent two bombers. Big bombers. Right to the line of Venezuela. Right to international waters.

They flew all the way down from North Dakota. Down, made that run.

And then headed on home!

He is sending all -- the guy is brilliant.

He is sending all kinds of signals.

You guys should take care of him.

STU: What you know signal he's saying to me?

That he doesn't care about global warming. He see not care about the emissions from that plane.

GLENN: Hold on just a second.

Doesn't that feel good?

RADIO

Why Trump’s currency swap could CRUSH China’s grip on South America

Why did President Trump recently do a currency swap with Argentina and make a deal for Argentinian beef imports? Financial expert Carol Roth joins Glenn to explain why she believes these deals are actually America First and in our national security interests. Plus, Carol and Glenn discuss the effects of Trump's tariffs and the government shutdown.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Carol, welcome to the program.

CAROL: Hi, Glenn. How are you?

GLENN: Good. Can you tell me what's going on in Argentina?

First of all, the currency swap. We didn't make a loan to Argentina. We made a currency swap. Which I'm not really -- I'm not really fond of the -- what is it? The piece zero. What is their currency down in Argentina?

CAROL: The Argentinian peso. You don't have a bunch of those in your vault with all your gold and silver?

GLENN: No. No. I don't. I don't.

But we do now, because we currency swapped, right? What's it mean?

CAROL: Yes, so this is -- this is not -- you know, just giving known Argentina for its government to spend. This is a financial support, which, by the way, currency swaps are not something that is unusual.

GLENN: Right.

CAROL: You know, we do this all the time with our allies, with Japan and Canada and what not. What is unusual in this particular situation, is how it's affected.

So basically, what happened is that we gave the Argentinian Central Bank dollars. We took as collateral the peso, and that is meant to support the Argentinian peso and help to stabilize this currency.

GLENN: Right.

CAROL: And a couple of things of note, one is how it was done is interesting. Because normally when we do currency swaps, and we have these lines, it's done through the Federal Reserve, or central bank.

This time, it was not. It was done through the Treasury, through something called the ESF. The Exchange Stabilization Fund, which is sort of a black box fund that allows Treasury to move quickly. You don't need Jay Powell. You don't need the approval of Congress in order to do these things.

GLENN: And that's what it was built for, to stabilize currency in friendly countries?

CAROL: And in the US, by the way,
because I can talk about the history and how we've used it in the US before. But just to kind of get to the Argentinian point. We did this, you know, before the election to help, you know, stabilize things for Milei, so that his government could win.

But we didn't do this because we think Milei is a good guy, or he has fabulous hair, even though we do think that.

The reason we did that is to secure our interests. Because you know who has been making a play in Argentina and throughout Latin America? You know who has had a long-term currency swap with Argentina. It's another country, I'll give you all a hint, and it rhymes with China. China's influence all around the world with their Belt and Road Initiatives where they're trying to dominate traditional infrastructure, digital infrastructure, financial infrastructure, we are trying to kick out their influence. For national security reasons. Also, it just so happens, that Argentina has the second largest reserve of lithium, as well as a smaller set of reserves of other rare-earth elements, that we need access to, for our economic and national security.

So that is what is underpinning all of this. It's because we don't want to be speaking mandarin one day.

GLENN: It's amazing how Donald Trump. People just don't understand this.

Everything he's doing in south marker, he's realigning the globe.

CAROL: Yes.

GLENN: He's doing -- he's doing his own version of America first, Great Reset, and he's just doing it by himself.

I mean, it's pretty incredible, isn't it? Carol?

It really is.

This is why, remember, when we first had the discussion by Scott Bessent.

And I eased everyone ever seen concerns.

Scott Bessent made his fortune on foreign currency exchange. There is nobody who understands the machinations of how you use currency to support countries, and also, you know, the impact on political influence. Like Scott Bessent.

So he has been side by side with President Trump. Who has said, you know. China's influence in South America is a national security issue.

It's a priority.

And, you know, at the time, when we're seeing a reset of the global financial order, and you had China making this very big play. At the same time, when we really have a serious issue with our fiscal foundation. At a minimum, we need to make sure that we have our hemisphere, locked down, before we can do anything else.

And China has really been focused on making inroads in Latin America, and that is what this is all about. And it's not just about the currency swap.

You talked about the importation of Argentina beef. That's a piece of it as well.

And we have to support US ranchers. We have to make it easier for them to do business. We have to remove regulation. This extra piece from Argentina, this is a long-term play. And I know that it's hard for people who are ranchers and who are dealing with this day to day. But this is a long-term play for national security. Because otherwise, it's not going to be Argentinians. It's going to be China that owns everything.

GLENN: Yeah. So I'm looking at Venezuela. What's happening there.

And I don't think that's about drug running. I mean, you know, it is about drug running. But it's not.

It's about, again, taking control of this hemisphere. True or false?

CAROL: Absolutely. And, I mean, this a -- this isn't even you or I guessing about this. This has been a stated goal of the Trump administration.

One of the great things about the Trump administration is Trump, whether he intends to or not. Is incredibly traps parent

He will tell you, what -- he will tell you the things he will do, even if they're couched, you know, in a different record. You can look through that record, and see what that candy is on the inside. And he told us about that candy. So he's been very clear, in addition to the commodities, and the -- the words, the elements, and all these things that are very plentiful in South America. We need to make sure that we have within our allies control so we can have access to.

You do not want China to have military relationships, and other very strong relationships. Within South America.

Because we know what that means long-term for the United States.

GLENN: How is Trump doing overall?

CAROL: So I think overall, I think he's doing quite well. I think from a foreign policy perspective, and I said this during the last administration. Think of him as a business guy. But from a foreign policy perspective, he's an absolutely just killing it. Crushing it. He's been doing a great job in terms of securing the borders. Obviously, we would like to see more deportations. But they're certainly trying and have some roadblocks. And I think from an economic standpoint, the fact that he has this long-term lens, even though some of the machinations I don't agree with, these are the important things. This is finally an administration who says, wait. Our military stockpile is at risk. Because we don't have the components and the supply chain to be able to make products.

We're dependent upon other products in other countries. And assuming they're going to sell us those products, so that we can be able to defend ourselves against them. That doesn't make any sense.

So finally, we have people who are addressing the long-term problems.

And I think the most important thing for a country right now subsidy that we have the runway.

Because we cannot, in three years. Or three and a half years, turn over the reins to another set of people, who want to undo all of this, who hate the United States. Who want to walk that back.

We need people like President Trump. Like the people he's developing. Who understand the long-term issues, that we face that have been built up over many years.

From this broken fiscal foundation. From both parties. But that's where we are today. And he is doing the hard work to try to fix that.

And it's not necessarily apparent to everyone who doesn't understand at this level. But it is so critical, for this very important reset that we're going to have.

GLENN: So I know that you're not a fan of tariffs. I'm not a fan of tariffs.

CAROL: Correct.

GLENN: However, the things that have been happening, the tariffs are not doing what everybody thought they would do.

Why is that?

CAROL: Well, I don't necessarily agree that they're not doing what people thought they would do.

I think that they're -- there has been a bit of overhype on how things are presented.

So do tariffs make it more expensive for businesses and consumers to buy certain goods and services? Yes.

And that has happened. And I've seen it with my own eyes. With my own company. In joy venture partners and small businesses across the country.

There are small businesses that have major burdens. These are the things we thought would happen. And they are happening. In terms of creating runaway inflation, I don't think anybody said that at the levels they are.

They said that when he kicked them up to 100 percent. Which he walked back.

GLENN: Right.

CAROL: But we also know when you look at inflation data. That the way that calculated. There's a lot of picking and choosing and substitutions. So, of course, when you say, oh, well, this particular product is being hit too much.

Some of it is substituted to this. Of course, it's not going to show up in the same way, as it affects people in their day-to-day lives. So, again, I think it's that nuanced understanding.

It's the same thing, you know, when people said, hey, why am I at the grocery store? And everything is 30 percent higher. And they're telling us that inflation under Biden is 4 percent. We know that has to do with the calculation.

So I think that tariffs are causing some issues. And some pain.

And hopefully, that can be sorted out in time.

But, you know, absent that particular strategy, I think other things that he's doing, on the American front, to shore up our security from an economic and national security standpoint, make a lot of sense.

STU: And, Carol, I think a lot of people lose sight. Just because it was such a big issue.

Look, trade is important.

But it's also not a huge part of our economy. Imported good news are about ten percent of our economy.

Does that number sound about right?

CAROL: You know, it's a small percent.

I would want to go back and verify the neighbor.

I have so many things rolling around in my head today. That's not top of mind.

But it's not a meaningful percent of our direct -- where does impact, there's a component, where it flows through the economy. And it affects domestic goods and services.

So even, if, you know, on a headline basis, it doesn't seem like it's that important, it can flow through the rest of the economy and create a drag and create some issues there.

STU: Yes.

GLENN: I want to take a break. And, Carol, I want to come back.

Carol Roth is the economist I trust. She's a former investment banker. And really has a clear eye, on not Wall Street. But on Main Street.

I want to talk to you about the shut down. We're about to see possible delays at our airport. Our air traffic controllers. SNAP is about to expire. What happens here. When his the average person begin to really feel the shutdown. And is there a -- is there a line where it just has gone too far.

GLENN: So, Carol, tell me where we are on the shutdown.

CAROL: Well, it's tough. And I think I've said to you before, Glenn. As somebody who would love to see many parts of the government be shut down permanently. There's part of me that goes, this is fantastic. And I hope it goes on forever.

GLENN: Me too.

CAROL: Obviously, there are people who -- you know, we want to make sure that we get paid. We want to make sure the military get paid. We want to make sure that air traffic controllers get paid. So there's a little bit of give and take. Probably the most surprising thing that has come to light is how many people are on food assistance in this country.

GLENN: Yes.

CAROL: When we have something that's supposed to be a safety net, it's almost in my mind, supposed to be like under the tightrope. The trampoline under the tightrope. You fall, and then it pushes you back up. And it's a temporary solution. I feel like we've turned that net into a hammock, where people are just taking a nap. And sleeping in it long-term. And, you know, that is something that even though devastating for the families who truly need to be on it. The fact that this is getting some light on it, I think, you know, that could be a small silver lining here. And I think that will put pressure on the Democratic base. The Democrats are holding out for a bunch of insanity, for illegals over trying to feed the people who are actually in their base. So I'm hoping that puts enough pressure for everybody else though. I think when this really starts to flow through the economy and becomes a drag on numbers and becomes a drag on the stock market, is where you're going to -- to see a little bit more --

GLENN: Any idea when that happens?

CAROL: It's hard to say. Because as we know right now, with the government shutdown. We're not even getting numbers.

GLENN: Right. Right. Right.

CAROL: But, you know, we cannot afford for GDP to contract. We cannot afford for the consumer, which is 70 percent of the economy.

To feel like they cannot spend. Because that flows through tax receipts. And if we have lower tax receipts. It will blow up the deficit. If we blow up the deficit, we can end up in a debt spiral. So that's the big issue here.

GLENN: Well, the food stamps. If you look the at the SNAP program through ethnicity. 45.6 percent of Afghans who have been imported here in America, are on food stamps. Forty-two percent of the Somali community. Thirty-four percent of the Iraqi community, and 23 percent of the Haitian community. That just can't happen!

That just can't happen.

CAROL: Yeah. You know, in terms of those numbers. I think there's a common sense approach that we need to take here. In terms of immigration.

Which I've raised the question with AI. You know, how much immigration do we actually need?

But to the extent that we do invite great people into our country, who share our values. We need to means test that, and you should not be allowed to come here and then be a dependent on the government.

That should be a position of coming to this country.

And I think that's something that seems like it would maybe a 20 or 90/10 issue. So, again, shining light on these things at the point of people who are actually willing to do the hard work and address this problem, is a net benefit.

Is a silver lining, even though the backdrop. You know, we don't want people who actually need this, to go without food.

But, you know, it brings into question, the system. You can get people beans. You can get people rice. You can get people staples. And have them be well-fed in a fraction of the cost, that it's currently costing. And keep out the dodos and the candies and the people who just arrived here to take advantage of the system.

GLENN: Yeah. Carol, thank you. As always, God bless.

CAROL: Always a pleasure.

GLENN: You bet. Buh-bye. Carol Roth. She is just -- I just love Carol. I looked for somebody like Carol for a long time, that understood Wall Street, understood the banking, and then also understood Main Street. CarolRoth.com.

You can find her at the website. Carol Roth. Or follow her on X @CarolJSRoth.

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