RADIOJanuary 09, 2024

How did the government FAIL THIS MUCH on 2023 jobs reports?!

After spending all year boasting about how many jobs it has created, the Biden administration has quietly DELETED 439,000 jobs from its 2023 jobs reports. These revisions mean that almost a quarter of all jobs added in 2023 didn't exist. So, what's going on here? Economic and small business expert Carol Roth believes there are 3 possible explanations: Either this was an oddity, laziness, or the admission of a nefarious lie. Carol joins Glenn to break down what she believes is happening and whether this is a sign that a recession is coming. Plus, she reveals the data that people should be paying much more attention to than jobs reports.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Former investment banker who went legit. Got off Wall Street and started talking about Main Street.

Hi, Carol, how are you?

CAROL: Yeah. Well, Glenn, thank you for legitimizing. I guess that's the right word.

GLENN: Yeah. So I don't understand the job report.

And how you can make a mistake, this massive, over the entire year.

CAROL: Well, as Mark Twain -- it's attributed to him, anyway. Said, there are three types of lies. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. And this goes back to how data is collected.

How it is modeled. How it's manipulated.

How it's revised. And why it makes absolutely no sense.

I have seen the -- the different reports, and, yes. There has been massive downward revisions.

Obviously, we just got the first December number.

So only 11 months of last year have been reported.

And ten out of the 11 months, have been revised downward.

The scope of that, I looked at multiple smart people's analysis, it's anywhere from 14 percent to 24 percent.

There's a piece everyone agrees on. There's another piece that I can't tell if people are possibly double counting.

But either way, it's just a massive shift.

And the strange thing here, you expect data to be revised based on how it's collected. But, you know, usually that averages out over time.

You know, maybe it's not a perfect amount. But like in 2022, the revisions, I think it was revised, you know, downward for maybe five months.

Then upward with no revisions.

When you netted it out, it was only off by 66,000. Having ten out of 11 months being revised downward. Is either -- an oddity.

It's lazy or nefarious. Those are your three choices.

Pick whatever your favorite door is.

STU: Okay. So. So. But what I understand is, if you -- if you have to revise. You take that into account. Especially if it's repeated a couple months in a row. You start to change the algorithm. And it's like, no. It's slowing. Things need to be slowed down.

Because that's what we keep seeing. So it's -- it's not unusual, to miscount for a while.
Because you're not actually counting. It is a projection.

CAROL: Right.

GLENN: But if you're doing it for a year. It shows that like you said, you're either lazy or you're trying to cook the books.

Because you should have made those adjustments. And what would account for this, is that we're going into a recession. Is that true?

CAROL: That's one possible interpretation. I think it's helpful perhaps for people to understand, you know, how this data is collected and massaged. Because we have these different methodologies. We have, what was called the non-farmed payrolls, or the establishment survey, which is that number that everyone focuses on.

What they do, is they only look at the payroll records of -- last time I checked, it was just shy of 150,000 businesses and government agencies.

And then they take that and put it into reducible adjustments. And all these different models that come up with this projection.

Then there's an entirely different survey, called the household survey, or the current population survey, which only goes about to 60,000 households.

And they're getting their employment status and the demographic data.

And it's very different. Because in the household survey, they're saying, are you employed?

But when they employ out to the, they say, how many people are on the payroll?

So, first of all, the household survey captures things like agricultural workers. People who are self-employed, which we know is a huge portion of the population. That don't have corporations.

Some other things. The establishment doesn't even have any of that. And if you have multiple jobs, that you show up on multiple payrolls.
You're counted multiple times in that survey.

So the data is bastardized, and I would argue not even relevant to how our country's economy is growing, given the large amount of self-employment we have.

But with all of that, we've seen, Glenn. A record high, almost 8.7 million people. Who are holding down full jobs.

We are seeing a loss and, again, the time period is disputed. But over recent months, of 1.5 million full-time workers. And adding 796,000 part-time workers. So going back to your question of recessionary trends. See, those are things that will make you scratch your head saying, that's moving in the wrong direction. But who is picking up the slack for that?

Well, that is the government. And the government jobs keep getting -- the last three months, like 50,000 government jobs, on average, for the last few months. Like, that's not sustainable.

And those are -- those don't have the same level of productivity. Because they're paid for by our tax dollars, and/or the printing of money.

GLENN: Right. Correct.

CAROL: So all those scenarios don't look great in terms of the trends for the economy.

GLENN: Right.

So we haven't seen the numbers for December, but 216,000 jobs were added.

This has not been revised yet, and 52,000 of those were government jobs.

Which brought us to an all-time high of 23 million employees for the federal government. It's an astounding -- astounding --

CAROL: But what I want to say on that. Is that -- as I said, in December, we just got the first print. We haven't gotten the revision to it. Same thing with the previous periods.

They keep revising that down. That means, not only is it 52 over, you know, 216,000.

But if they revise that down, it means, it will be even a larger percentage, that is government jobs.

GLENN: Correct.

CAROL: And that's what we've been seeing in terms of the trend.

Is that the government, and all of the deficit spending, that we're paying for in terms of inflation in our lives.

You know, is really what's creating the differential.

But what's crazy. Jobs haven't even been the issue.

They keep touting this is jobs. And look how many jobs were created.

Even though, many of them were reclaimed. Not created from when they shut down the economy.

But that really hasn't been the issue for quite some time for people.

It's really been the inflationary pressures. And the cost of living. Which is why so many are even tuned into this. And don't notice. Where we have these massive revisions.

GLENN: I have to tell you, I am in Florida right now.

And specifically, I'm in -- in West Palm.

And it is one of the bigger bubbles, I've seen.

Florida is a bubble in and of itself.

Here in West Palm.

It is.

I mean, there's a guy. I found out at dinner last night. There's a guy who bought a bunch of houses right on the ocean.

He bought $500 million in land. And he's building a 500 million dollar house. And he's not a seller. And, you know, he probably has -- you know, he probably has two or three children. So you can understand this.

CAROL: Right.

GLENN: You're in Florida. Especially in places like this. Boy, it doesn't feel like anything is wrong.

With the economy.

CAROL: Right. So this is the have and the have-nots. And it's part of what makes it so difficult, when you talk about the economy.

Because what we've witnessed over the last decade and a half, is the massive fed and government policy and youth wealth transfer from Main Street America, to the wealthy and well-connected.

So when you go to the West Palm beaches, when you go to the -- you know, these little bubble areas, in Southern California, and what not, you know, the prices of real estate are going through the roof. People are driving McLarens.

You know, it's this crazy display of wealth, that they have want to be through the inflation of the asset. Because there were these massive asset holders. At the same time, that the people, who are on Main Street America, didn't have the opportunity to participate in that upside are seeing their cost of living go through the roof. And not being able to keep up.

So it's really a tale of two different economies. When you average that amount, with this massive wealth. At the top. It looks like things are -- you know, kind of moving along.

And that's why, I don't think that the way that we portray data, is fair or gives us really a great sense of what's happening for most of the country.

And why some people in the Democratic parties seem to be scratching their heads. And going, I don't understand.

This is a fantastic economy. Bidenomics works great, when we know that the middle class is getting crushed.

GLENN: Well, if you're living in the Washington, DC, area, of course, there's lots of employment.

Because the government is employing lots of people.

CAROL: Yes, they are. And they are doing it on the backs of adding more at the time and more inflationary pressure.

That is, you know, been -- really, what we've been paying for quite literally. Particularly over the past couple of years.

So there is this delusion, and it's happening on Wall Street. It's happening in these different bubble areas. That people who are in these areas that have created this tipping of the playing field. That has tilted things in their direction. They're going, this is working great. I don't understand why everybody is complaining. When they have been doing it, at the expense of free true -- fair and true capitalism, that has been impacting the lives of the people who are working and who are the back bone of our economy.

GLENN: So I'm driving in some of these neighborhoods. I was driving by Mar-a-Lago yesterday. And that was from the 1920s. A lot of these homes, that are huge like this, were from the 1920s. And those were the Jay Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald days. And I started thinking.

When did the Newport, Rhode Island, thing fall apart? Was that during the Depression, when people started out like not living like that anymore? Do you know?

CAROL: I don't think so.

Because just being a Jackie Kennedy researcher, and if you think about all the time that -- that their family and the Kennedys spent out.

And the Hammer Smith Farm, where she got married, that whole area.

That was pretty extravagant, and their marriage was in the -- in the early '50s, '53-ish. So I don't think it was at that point in time.

GLENN: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

All right. Well, there was something else that I want to get to. Can we take a quick break?

And then we'll come right back in just a minute. Stand by.

We're talking to Carol Roth about the economy. So I don't know if you saw the Wall Street Journal today. But the headline. Do you have that headline by any chance, Stu.

STU: Don't have it handy, no.

GLENN: Yeah. The headline was, the latest dirty word in corporate America.

ESG.

CAROL: Yeah.

GLENN: It says, following the year of simmering backlash. Political pressure. And legal threats over environmental, social, and governance.

A number of businesses, corporate have shed ESG.

Now they're just calling it corporate responsibility. Is this a win, Carol?

Or is this just a shell game?

CAROL: So I would -- can I answer both? Can I give all of the above?

GLENN: Okay.

CAROL: I definitely think that there is some win. And I think the part that we need to take to heart is that by the noise that you've made, Glenn. And the others have made. And the action that your listeners and others have taken.

And talking about this, and really putting it under a microscope.

Has -- it's given pushback to corporate America. And they're seeing, that it's not only not working. That it's detracting from their businesses.

Even BlackRock. Which we know has been sort of patient this year in the US.

They're laying off a bunch of employees.

Something around 600 employees, mainly in their ESG division because of the pushback.

So I do think, that piece is a victory. But it's kind of like the ant problem, that many of us have in our house.

That, you know, you can spray them. Kill them. In one season.

But they will come back the next season.

So you still have to bring the exterminate out again.

And unfortunately, that's the case with ESG.

It's something that you and I had begun to talk about.

You actually brought to my attention. Were these natural asset companies. That are looking to, you know -- same kind of went.

Bastardize capitalism.

Use corporate money.

Use pension money, to buy control, or management of land.

Whether those be public or private, to try to take them out of productive use. Threatening our food and our land and our water.

GLENN: That's insanity.

They decided to wait on that, right?

They didn't say, no. They're not going to do it.

They decided to wait. The SECC decided. Correct?

CAROL: So they were due with the rule January 2nd, and they have extended the comment period to January 18th. I sent comments. I actually posted them on my Twitter feed.

If anyone wants to, they are welcome to copy and paste and send them in to the SECC.

Or to anyone, whether it be their representatives, whether it be their state treasurers, whether it be their governors.

I know that Marla Oaks, from Utah, who you've had -- one of the key voices against it.

You know, we need more people like that.

Because not only do we need the SECC to say, no. The New York Stock Exchange can't list them. That's just one way that these groups connect.

It doesn't mean that they don't exist. It doesn't mean that they can't go to the private market. Or sovereign wealth fund, you know, privately to try to do this.

So we really do need legislation that says, this is something that needs to go away.

So a little bit of a celebration, Glenn.

But the job isn't done yet.

The Future of AI: Who Will Hold Power Over the Army of Geniuses?

AI development companies like OpenAI and Google DeepMind are in a “reckless race” to build smarter AIs that may soon become an “army of geniuses.” But is that a good idea? And who would control this “army?” Glenn speaks with former OpenAI researcher and AI Futures Project Executive Director, Daniel Kokotajlo, who warns that the future is coming fast! He predicts who will likely hold power over AI and what this tech will look like in the near future. Plus, he explains why developers with ethical concerns, like himself, have been leaving these Silicon Valley giants in droves.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: So we have Daniel Kokotajlo, and he's a former OpenAI researcher. Daniel, have you been on the program before? I don't think you have, have you?

DANIEL: No, I haven't.

GLENN: Yeah. Well, welcome, I'm glad you're here. Really appreciate it. Wanted to have you on, because I am a guy. I've been talking about AI forever.

And it is both just thrilling, and one of the scariest things I've ever seen, at the same time.

And it's kind of like, not really sure which way it's going.

Are -- how confident are you that -- what did you say?

DANIEL: It can go both ways. It's going to be very thrilling. And also very scary.

GLENN: Yeah. Okay.

Good. Good. Good.

Well, thanks for starting my Monday off with that. So can you tell me, first of all, some of the things, that you think are coming, and right around the corner that people just don't understand.

Because I don't think anybody. The average person, they hear this. They think, oh, it's like social media. It's going to be like the cell phone.
It's going to change everything. And they don't know that yet.

DANIEL: Yeah. Well, where to begin. I think so people are probably familiar with systems like ChatGPT now, which are large language models, that you can go have an actual normal conversation with, unlike ordinary software programs.

They're getting better at everything. In particular, right now, and in the next few years, the companies are working on turning them into autonomous agents stop instead of simply responding to some message that you send them, and then, you know, turning off. They would be continuously operating, roaming around, browsing the internet. Working on their own projects. On their own computers.

Checking in with you, sending messages. Like a human employee, basically.

GLENN: Right.

DANIEL: That's what the companies are working on now. And it's the stated intention of the CEOs of these companies, to build eventually superintelligence.

What is superintelligence? Super intelligence is fully eponymous AI systems, that are better at humans at absolutely everything.

GLENN: So on the surface -- that sounds -- that sounds like a movie, that we've all seen.

And you kind of -- you know, you say that, and you're like, anybody who is working on these.

Have they seen the same movies that I have seen?

I mean, what the heck? Let's bring -- let's just go see Jurassic park. I mean, ex-Machina. I don't -- I mean, is it just me? Or do people in the industry just go, you know, this could be really bad?

DANIEL: Yeah. It's a great question. And the answer is, they totally have seen those movies, and they totally think, yes, they can get rid of that. In fact, that's part of the founding story, of some of these companies.

GLENN: What? What do you mean? What do you mean?

DANIEL: So Shane Legg, who is I guess I'll give you the technical founder of Deep Minds, which is now part of Google Deep Minds. Which is one of the big three companies, building towards super intelligence.

I believe in his Ph.D. thesis, he discusses the possibility of superhuman AI systems, and how if they're not correctly aligned to the right values, if they're not correctly instilled with the appropriate ethics, that they could kill everyone.

And become a -- a superior competitor species to humans.

GLENN: Hmm.

DANIEL: Not just them. Lots of these people at these companies, especially early on. Basically had similar thoughts of, wow. This is going to be the biggest thing ever.

If it goes well, it could be the best thing that ever happens. If it goes poorly, it could literally kill everyone, or do something similarly catastrophic, like a permanent dystopia. People react to that in different ways. So some people voted to stay in academia.

Some people stayed in other jobs that they had, or funded nonprofit to do research about this other thing. Some people, decided, well, this is going to happen, then it's better good people like me and my friends are in charge, when it happens.

And so that's basically the founding story of a lot of these companies. That is sort of part of why Deep Minds was created, and part of why OpenAI was created.

I highly recommend going and reading some of the emails that surfaced in court documents, related to the lawsuits against OpenAI.

Because in some of those emails. You see some of the founders of OpenAI, talking to each other about why they founded OpenAI.

And basically, it was because they didn't trust Deep Mind to handle this responsibly. Anyway how --

GLENN: And did they go on to come up with -- did they go on to say, you know, and that's why we've developed this? And it's going to protect us from it? Or did they just lose their way.

What happens?

DANIEL: Well, it's an interesting sociological question.

My take on it is that institutions tend to be -- tend to conform to their incentives over time.

So it's been a sort of like -- there's been a sort of evaporating growing effect.

Where the people who are most concerned about where all this is headed, tend to not be the one to get promoted.

And end up running the companies.

And they tend to be the ones who, for example, be the ones who quit like me.

GLENN: Let's stop it for a second.

Let's stop it there for a second.

You were a governance researcher on OpenAI on scenario planning.

What does that mean?

DANIEL: I was a researcher on the government's team. Scenario funding is just one of several things that I did.

So basically, I mean, I did a couple of different things at OpenAI. One of the things that I did was try to see what the future will look like. So 2027 is a much bigger, more elaborate, more rigorous version of some smaller projects, that I sort of did when I was at OpenAI.

Like I think back in 2022, I wrote my own -- figuring out what the next couple of years were going to look like. Right? Internal scenario, right?

GLENN: How close are you?

DANIEL: I did some things right. I did some things wrong. The basic trends are (cut out), et cetera.

For how close I was overall, I actually did a similar scenario back in 2021, before I joined OpenAI.

And so you can go read that, and judge what I got right and what I got wrong.

I would say, that is about par for the course for me when I went to do these sorts of things. And I'm hoping that AI 27 will also be, you know, about that level of right and wrong.

GLENN: So you left.

DANIEL: The thing that I wrote in 2021 was what 2026 looks like, in case you want to look it up.

GLENN: Okay. I'll look it up. You walked away from millions of equity in OpenAI. What made you walk away? What were they doing that made you go, hmm, I don't think it's worth the money?

DANIEL: So -- so back to the bigger picture, I think. Remember, the companies are trying to build super intelligence.

It's going to be better than humans, better that night best humans at everything. While also being faster and cheaper. And you can just make many, many copies of them.

The CEO of anthropic. He uses this term. The country of geniuses. To try to visualize what it would look like.

Quantitatively we're talking about millions of copies.

Each one of which is smarter than the smartest geniuses.

While also being more charismatic. Than the most charismatic celebrities and politicians.

Everything, right?

So that's what they're building towards.

And that races a bunch of questions.

Is that a good idea for us to build, for example?

Like, how are we going to do that?
(laughter)
And who gets to control the army of geniuses.

GLENN: Right. Right.

DANIEL: And what orders are going to be give up?

GLENN: Right. Right.

DANIEL: They have some extremely important questions. And there's a huge -- actually, that's not even all the questions. There's a long list of other very important questions too. I was just barely scratching the surface.

And what I was hoping would happen, on OpenAI. And these other companies, is that as the creation of these AI systems get closer and closer, you know, it started out being far in the future. As time goes on, and progress is made. It starts to feel like something that could happen in the next few years. Right?

GLENN: Yes, right.

DANIEL: As we get closer and closer, there needs to be a lot more waking up and paying attention. And asking these hard questions.

And a lot more effort in order to prepare, to deal with these issues. So, for example, OpenAI created the super alignment team, which was a -- a team of technical researchers and engineers, specifically focused on the question of how do we make sure that we can put any values into these -- how do we make sure we can control them at all?

Even when they're smarter than us.

So they started that team.

And they said that they were going to give 20 percent of their compute to -- towards me on this problem, basically.

GLENN: How much -- how much percentage. Go ahead.

DANIEL: Well, I don't know. And I can't say. But as much as 20 percent.

So, yeah. 20 percent was huge at the time.

Because it was way more than the company, than any company was devoting to that technical question at the time. So at the time, it was sort of a leap forward.

It didn't pan out. As far as I know, they're still not anywhere near 20 percent. That's just an example of the sort of thing that made me quit. That we're just not ready. And we're not even taking the steps to get ready.

And so we are -- we're going to do this anyway, even though we don't understand it. Don't know how to control it. And, you know, it will be a disaster. That's basically what got me delayed.

GLENN: So hang on just a second. Give me a minute.

I want to come back and I want to ask you, do you have an opinion on who should run this? Because I don't like OpenAI.

I like X better than anybody, only because Elon Musk has just opened to free speech on everything. But I don't even trust him. I don't trust any of these people, and I certainly don't trust the government.

So who will end up with all of this compute, and do we get the compute?

And enough to be able to stop it, or enough to be able to be dangerous?

I mean, oh. It just makes your head hurt.

We'll go into that when we come back.

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(music)
Daniel Kokotajlo.

He's former OpenAI researcher. AI futures project executive director. And talking about the reckless race, to use his words, to build AGI.

You can find his work at AI-2027.com.

So, Daniel, who is going to end up with control of this thing?

DANIEL: Great question.

Well, probably no one.

And if not no one, probably some CEO or president would be my guess.
GLENN: Oh, that's comforting.

DANIEL: Like in general, if you wanted them to understand, like, you know, my views, the views of my team at the Future Project. And sort of how it all fits together. And why we came to these conclusions. You can go read our website, which has all of this stuff on it.

Which is basically our best guest attempt after predicting their future.

Obviously, you know, the future is very difficult to predict.

We will probably get a bunch of things wrong.

This is our best guess. That's AI-2027.com.

GLENN: Yes.

DANIEL: Yeah. So as you were saying, if one of these companies succeed in getting to this army of geniuses on the data centers. Super intelligence AIs. There's a question of, who controls them?

There's a technical question, of can -- does humanity even have the tools it needs to control super intelligence AIs?

Does anyone control them?

GLENN: I mean, it seems to me --

DANIEL: That's an unsolved question.

GLENN: I think anyone who understands this.

It's like, we get Bill Gates. But it's like a baby gate.

Imagine a baby trying to outsmart the parent.

You won't be able to do it.

You will just step over that gate.

And I don't understand why a super intelligence wouldn't just go, oh, that's cute.

Not doing that. You know what I mean?

DANIEL: Totally. And getting a little bit into the literature here.

So there's a division of strategies into AI's control techniques, and AI's alignment techniques.

So the control techniques are designed to allow you to control the super intelligence AI. Or the AGI, or whatever it is that you are trying to control.

Despite the fact that it might be at odds with you. And it might have different goals than you have.

Different opinions about how the future should be. Right?

So that's it sort of adversarial technique, where you, for example, restrict its access to stuff.

And you monitor it closely.

And you -- you use other copies of the AI, as watchers.

To play them off against each other.

But there's all these sort of control techniques. That are designed to work even if you can't trust the AIs.

And then there's a technique, which are designed to make the case that you don't need the control techniques, because the AIs are virtuous and loyal and obedient. And trustworthy, you know, et cetera.

Right? And so a lot of techniques are trying to sort of continue the specified values, deeply into the AIs, in robust ways, so that you never need the control techniques. Because they were never -- so there's lots of techniques. There's control techniques. Both are important fields of research. Maybe a couple hundred people working on -- on these fields right now.

GLENN: Okay. All right.

Hold on. Because both of them sound like they won't work.

Trump Exposes COVID-19 Cover Up, But Will ANYONE Go to Jail?!

The White House now fully backs the COVID-19 lab leak theory after years of calling it a conspiracy theory. Glenn reads from the new website, which explains why the evidence points to a man-made virus and highlights the roles of China, EcoHealth Alliance, Andrew Cuomo, Dr. Fauci, and others in the cover-up. But Glenn has known about most of this evidence for years. So, he asks, will anybody be held accountable for this? Will anybody go to jail? But it’s not just government officials who covered this up. It was the Legacy Media, which is STILL lying to you, and yet, millions of Americans still trust it.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: This morning, there was a story. Stu, can you check this out for me? See what gold is at right now.

Early this morning, when I got up around 5:00 a.m. Eastern, gold was spiking again. The highest place it's ever been.

Gold -- I mean, the dollar was starting to fall. Not good. It was today. I think it was three -- 3,300 -- I don't know. Sixty. Something like that. Do you have the number, Stu?

STU: Yeah. 3,435, currently.

GLENN: Holy cow.

STU: Up another 3 percent.

GLENN: 3500!

Almost 3500. That is -- this is not good!

This is not good. The gold going up is a sign of confidence, and the rest of the world -- central banks are buying gold up. And, you know, again, what do rich people know, that maybe you don't know?

Hmm. That things are shaky with the dollar. And things are shaky with gold. So you might want to consider that. I mean, I'm not a financial adviser. This is not a commercial. But I'm just telling you, that this is a big warning sign. Big, big, big warning sign. We're -- we're -- 3500, approaching $3,500 an ounce.

It was -- what was it? You said this just this last week. I had to look it up, Stu. It was at the beginning of the year that it was 2500? Almost came a thousand dollars?

STU: Yeah. I mean -- let's see. No. You're right on there.

It was, yeah. 2024, we were still at around $2,000 an ounce. Early 2024.

GLENN: Two.

Unbelievable!

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Unbelievable.

STU: Five --

GLENN: We're not even halfway through.

STU: Yeah. Five. Pretty flat years for gold. Between 2020 and 2024. And then it started going up, in, you know, early to mid-2024.

Kind of like a rollercoaster story.

You're just climbing. Up at about 100 percent in the past five years.

But in -- in the past year, most of that gain has happened.

And, again, you've mentioned this for a long time.

Obviously, we talk about gold being a good hedge kind of against insanity. And a good piece of your portfolio.

However, you kind of almost don't want it to be this high. Because it's just in case. Such scary times.

GLENN: No. No. No. Bring lost my gold in that horrible boating accident.

STU: Terrible.

GLENN: You know, you would like -- gold is an investment. You would like it to go up. I don't want it to go up. I don't want it to go up anymore.

I would like it to come back down. This is a very, very bad sign.

All right. So the media over the weekend, they were like, oh.

Do you see what Donald Trump did to COVID.com?

Or .gov website. You put it on the White House dot-gov website. All the lies about COVID!

You mean all the corrections on COVID?

This is -- this is an amazing thing. And I would love to hear your just on this, Stu. About what they -- what they published at WhiteHouse.gov.

The origin, according to public health officials and the media, to discredit the lab leak theory, was prompted by Dr. Fauci to push the preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated naturally.

Point-one, the virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature. Number two, data shows that all COVID-19 cases come from a single introduction in to humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics, where there were multiple spillover events. Three, Wuhan is home to China's four most SARS research lab. Which has a history of conducting gain of function research. Gene-altering and organisms super charging in an inadequate biosafety level.

Number four, Wuhan Institute of Virology, researchers were sick with COVID, with symptoms in the fall of 2019 months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market. We talked about that.

I mean, probably within a couple of months of COVID happening. We had that information.

We were like, let's look back. Why were they redoing all of that -- that institute?

You know, they completely gutted all of the air ducts. Everything else. They've completely upgraded it, around November.

And then lo and behold, in September, we start to find out, that whoa. Something in the wet market happened. By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin, it would have already surfaced. But it hasn't. This is from the White House now. And it goes through all of it.

And then it goes through Fauci's pardon. And his obstruction. And EcoHealth's obstruction, and Dr. David. And, you know, the obstruction of your favorite person.

I think you'll -- I think you'll really like what they say about Andrew Cuomo on the website.

STU: Yeah, this is the best place on the entire internet for that reason.

GLENN: Cuomo's failures.

STU: Just says Andrew Cuomo's failure. And it's a great summary of his entire life, not just this particular issue.

But, you know, it's -- I've done a lot of it. If you followed this stuff closely, it was not new information. Right? It was a good summary.

GLENN: No.

STU: A breakdown of the stuff that we have learned over the past years on this. On this topic. I think the key thing maybe --

GLENN: You know what, I still don't think that it is recognized as the official thing.
I mean, this has been out now for a long time.

You know, we started doing most of this stuff we had in, what?

Six or eight months of the actual outbreak. We knew by the summer.

And we were broadcasting all of this. And we didn't have all of the documents. But we had everything that led up to the document. That said, hey. We have to change all of this.

We had the document before going, hey. I think you guys are wrong. Then a document that said, we should probably talk offline.

Then the next document we had, was no. Everything we were saying, is the complete opposite now!

We didn't have the middle document there. And that's been released now.

So we had all of this stuff, just not the smoking guns. All the smoking guns are there.

And I still don't think -- I mean, and it's partially because, who is going to jail over this?

Millions of people die. Millions.

Is anyone going to be held responsible for this?

STU: That's a great question.

I hope that's a high priority of the administration. There's several things of this level. I will also throw something like Joe Biden is mentally incapable to be president of the United States. And everybody was hiding it.

I put that in the same category.

But I think the key thing from this. Which I don't think enough people know, is the cover-up.

You know, I think -- yeah, that's the real -- it always is.

STU: You're right. We said a lot of these things in the months after COVID came out.

And A lot of it really early, frankly. But part of the problem as to why it didn't become, I think, the consensus at the time. Was all of these institutional mainstream sources, disagreeing with it. Right?

GLENN: Correct.

STU: And no offense --

GLENN: No offense. And the fact, Stu, we couldn't say anything about COVID and not get banned and demonetized.

STU: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: You know, all the shows that we did, unless you were a member of TheBlaze. See them.

We put them online. And you didn't see them.

STU: The solution of that problem was to say it anyway, and get banned and demonetized.

GLENN: Right. Right.

STU: What else are you going to do?

I don't know why else you would have this job, if you aren't going to go for that.

But there was that situation where, sure, we were saying it. And, sure, people in this audience, heard it.

And, yes. Some people on the right were familiar with the skepticism and the pushback on this stuff.

But because none of these mainstream outlets really adopted any of those positions, or took them seriously. Or even gave them a fair hearing. A lot of people just -- you know, understandably. If you're on the left. You look at this stuff, and you say, okay. Well, Glenn Beck is saying it.

I'm not going to believe it. The New York Times is saying it's a conspiracy theory.

I'm not surprised that they just believed that.

That cover-up, where people right under Fauci, are on record, saying they want to delete the emails, so that they can't -- so no one finds out what they're talking about.

That sort of stuff. While I think the lab leak theory. And some of those other pieces of skepticism. That the conservative side had early on.

Had been very much vindicated.

The cover-up as to why it needed to be vindicated. Has not really had the attention it deserves yet.

GLENN: 100 percent try.

Now, why?

Why?

STU: I mean, it's the same people. I will say, some of these -- some of these places have written about this now.

Some of these places have talked about -- talked about it. But it hasn't been -- you know, the, hey, did you know Donald Trump is Hitler sort of march?

And you would think, it would be. As you point out, millions of people have died here.

You would think it would be something that they would focus on, and draw a lot of attention to.
And continue to kind of beat the drum, until someone is held responsible.

And they don't seem to have any interest in that whatsoever. They kind of like -- it seems like, they're now under that stage.

Where they say, look, we have this op-ed.

We've talked about it. Like, and most of them have run an op-ed by now. Right? Like they've run.

But it's not been this constant thing. It's not this deep dive, constantly sending reporter after reporter after reporter to find out, what actually happened. That stuff doesn't seem to be of interest at all.

GLENN: If we make a mistake, we correct it.

Because it drives us crazy that we made the mistake.

And I don't -- I don't want anybody to believe that I'm standing behind something, that we found out was wrong and a lie.

I mean, we might be wrong from time to time.

But we have never knowingly lied.

I think some of won't groups.

They knowingly lied.

The New York Times, they were knowingly lying about Joe Biden and his senility. Knowingly lying. They knew. People in the media, knew. They just didn't want to hurt. Or I should say it this way. They just didn't want to help Donald Trump. They thought a senile old man with the buttons is much better than a Donald Trump.

They thought, not knowing who the president of the United States actually is. You know, they say they're defending the Constitution now.

Because if we don't have a Constitution. If we don't have rule of law. We have no country

Where is your rule of law with Joe Biden?

Who actually was running the White House?

Who was running it?

You don't want the rule of law. You want control.

That's what you want.

And, you know, I would be horrified, if I had been a part of any of that.

Horrified. They're not.

And, you know what, there's no -- there's no consequence.

They're not going to lose any advertisers. The New York Times hasn't lost any real money because of this.

They're just people continuing to watch.

I mean, if we were this wrong about things, I would hope that we would have seen a lot of cancellations.

I would hope that people were like, I don't know if we can trust you anymore, Glenn.

Because we would earn that.

Especially after a couple of years, by the way, all of that stuff we said was wrong.

Hey, in other news!

And that's what they're doing. They just run one little story.

And then they go on, but Donald Trump is Hitler!

Why should I -- that's the thing I just don't understand.

How do people continue to believe the people, who have been so wrong, about stuff that is this important.

They lied to you. They knowingly lied to you.

How? Donald Trump appointed someone to do DOGE.

Yeah. Well, he wasn't elected. Who was the president of the United States?

Because the guy we elected, he wasn't the president.

Why does it matter now, that DOGE, which the president has every right to do.

He's not the president. He's not making these calls on his own. He's reporting the president.

Why is DOGE such a problem, but, you know, Joe Biden crapping his pants and looking, trying to find old jellybeans in the couch from old Ronald Reagan days.

That's totally fine.

I mean, I don't know.

I don't know how people live with themselves. But they do, strangely.

STU: At the very least. Wouldn't it give you a sense of fallibility.

That like, hey. I can get sucked into something like this and be totally wrong, and I should really watch myself next time I decide, I want to write story number 9,345 that Trump is Hitler.

Maybe question whether my certainty is warranted. And I think that's the -- something they just never have that moment of self-reflection.

GLENN: I know. None. None.

It's come out.

Everything about the Russia gate.

Came out now in court documents.

That Hillary Clinton was the one that approved all of that.

And she knew it wasn't accurate. But she approved it.

Why? Why doesn't anybody know about that?

Why doesn't anybody care? Because no one in the media cares. Ends justice means. They just hate Donald Trump so much.

They'll do anything.

Anybody.

They will sleep with.

They will sharpen the knives of anyone that says they'll put it in the back of Donald Trump.

Was Pope Benedict the First Victim of the Deep State?

Pope Francis has passed away at the age of 88. But will the next Pope follow in his footsteps? Glenn recalls his trip to the Vatican shortly before Pope Francis was elected and the eerie things he saw. He explains why he believes there was a “soft coup” to oust Pope Benedict and replace him with someone friendlier to the Davos globalists. Was Benedict the first victim of the Deep State, Glenn asks? Was he the first Donald Trump? And will the next Pope be like Francis, or will he embrace the more conservative traditionalist movement that’s converting many young people to Catholicism?

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: So yesterday, for Easter, by the way, happy Easter, Stu.

STU: Happy Easter, Glenn.

GLENN: Day after. Day after Easter.

STU: Yes. 364 days until the next one.

GLENN: Thank you very much. Wow, how do you do that? Are you a mathematician?

STU: No.

GLENN: J.D. Vance. Valentine's Day Vance was with the hope on Easter.

And then the Pope dies. That's all I'm going to say. I will leave it there. I draw your own conclusions there, America. No. He apparently had a good conversation with the pope. The pope died, he was very, very sick in the hospital.

He had pneumonia. So we're back to the -- we're back to the voting for a new pope. Now, if I may, let me just tell you a story that I don't think most in the media even understand. And if they do, they certainly won't touch it.

But I was there, back in 2013, I think. What did we decide? Was it '12 or '13? Something like that. I was at the Vatican. I was supposed to meet with the pope. I met instead, with a bunch of the high advisers for the pope.

And it was Pope Benedict at the time. And I just want to talk to you about what I learned there, and what we need to understand on this last pope. Because there was a quiet coup inside the walls of the Vatican.

The first public victim of the Deep State. Was not a president of the United States. It was the pope. It wasn't a priest. It wasn't a whistle-blower. It was Pope Benedict.

Benedict wasn't just a conservative. Although, he was a staunch conservative.

He was absolutely immovable. He was elected in 2005 pep stood for everything the modern world wanted the church to abandon.

He was moral. He had moral clarity. He was a traditionalist, and a spiritual authority.

And my first -- my first realization, that Pope Francis was going to be none of these things is when the media was talking. You know, they kept doing the white smoke and the black smoke. And they finally had, I don't remember what it is. The black smoke or the white smoke. They knew they had a pope. And they were awaiting. Speculating.

On everybody CNN and ABC. They were all speculating. Who could it possibly be. And they started to speculate. And they would say, it's probably this cardinal. He's a really hard-liner. He will be really bad. Blah, blah, blah. Then they finally came up to this pope. I don't remember what his real name is.

But they mentioned him. And they said, well, we don't know much about him. And within ten minutes, everybody on every network started talking about how great he was going to be.

He was practically Jesus.

And then when he was named Francis, oh, see!

He is Jesus. Or St. Francis, take your pick.

And I remember looking at you, Stu. And saying, oh, boy. We're in trouble.

They like him.

This guy is going to be a nightmare. So you had -- you had Benedict who would not compromise on life.

No surrender on marriage on the part of applause for, you know, the modern world. And the globalists hated him.

The media called him rigid. Progressives called him dangerous.

And the machine went to work behind closed doors.

Because that machine is in every government. And make no mistake, the Vatican is a government.

Scandal after scandal, corruption, abuse, all real problems. Yes. But they were used to discredit this pope.

And destabilize his papacy. And he refuse Todd banned. And then suddenly in 2014, he resigns. Now, I remember when this happens, gang.

Let's put this into what we now know, okay?

We now know who replaced him. We now have seen the Deep State in governments, all across the world.

Okay? We have seen people being voted for.
And the Deep State didn't like them. So they say, no. Not him!

We've seen them throw people in jail. Okay stop by 2013. He resigns. And he's the First Pope in 600 years to resign. And it's because he was too frail. He was too frail. He was too tired. Biden wasn't. But Benedict was.

Okay. And yet, he lived. For nearly ten years, he lived. He wrote. He was speaking. He was warning. He stayed in the Vatican, inside the walls.

He stayed in the Vatican. He wore white, signed his name, pope emeritus. That's not a retirement. That's him, not really resigning.

That's resistance. That's what that was. And into that vote, void, came Pope Francis.

Okay. Immediately, everything about the church changed. There was global applause. Oh, my gosh. Climate change sermons.

Remember those. Oh, they were great. Doctrinal. Ambiguity. To where the point, where Catholics were like, wait a minute. What is he saying here?

Suddenly the church is less about salvation. More about stainability. And collective salvation. Less moral compass. More moral relativism. And it seemed as though the fix was in.

Now, even members of some press overseas were saying, this was a coup.

Apparently, Benedict left a box, it's called a white box.

Full of scandal files. And it was not a gift to Pope Francis. It was a warning.

He knew, he saw it coming.

So it wasn't a resignation. It was a removal from office. A soft coup by the progressive faction inside the church.

Who was eager to align Rome with Davos. And make no mistake.

Davos was there. The UN was there. You know, all the global priorities of the UN and Davos were there. That have nothing to do with God.

But now, the church was aligned with all of it.

I remember going, as I said, we were supposed to meet with the pope. And I went and I met with several cardinals. I think the good cardinals. And I saw stuff I had never seen before.

It was -- it was amazing.

I saw the church as political, and as spiritual at the same time.

I'm a former Catholic, so I respect the Catholic Church. I also -- you know, I'm no dummy.

It is a political organization. I think most churches can, you know, go that direction. But it was especially one that's, what? 2000 years old. 1900 years old.

I think it can probably go awry from time to time.

And go political. Because that's what it was for a very long time. And I remember seeing the guy who I think was in charge. Is Jason out there. See if Jason can New Jersey for a second.

There was a guy who Jason was with me.

Rob, can you open up one of those mics, do you know?

Jason, remember when we were at the Vatican? You were in the room. Remember that big map room. It was like we were in the godfather. Okay. I don't remember what that place was.

But, you know, it was like near the Vatican. Right around the Vatican. And it was a place where they went and they held, you know, dignitaries. They held functions there.

And it was amazing. It was like a three-story room, that we were in.

And they were the biggest maps of the world. I've ever seen.

And all of the -- it was incredible.

And they had to be 400 years old. Would you agree with that.

Okay. So it's just steeped in, quite honestly, dead brown kind of -- right?

Only that. And I had just gotten out of the archives. The night -- the take before.

And I don't even know how I got this invitation.

But I was given an invitation. And even the guy who consulted the pope, for doctrinal issues. When we were, I don't know.

A quarter of the way into the archives. He was with me.

And I asked him a question. And he said, don't ask me. Ask him. I've never been allowed in here.

And the next day, when we were getting a tour from the head of the Vatican museum. He'll say, I will never guess where they were yesterday.

And said, they were in the Vatican archives. And he -- she stopped. She was the head of the museum. She stopped. She looked at me. And she said, tell me about it. What was that like?

So like, I don't know how we got in there. But we were asked to go in. So we're experiencing all of this stuff, and that night, we were with, I don't even remember who they were.

But they were the most Christ-like. You know, cardinals. Preachers. Whatever they were.

That I had -- had been with, the whole time.

They were so kind. You could just feel the goodness coming off of them. They were real servants of God.

And we were all standing around and talking.

And you could tell everybody's guard in that group. Everybody's guard was up.

And all of a sudden, and I'm not kidding you. The room dropped 10 degrees.

And I happened to be facing, looking at the door, way across this huge room.

And here comes this guy, I don't know if he was a cardinal. Wasn't he in charge of all of the pope's schedule or something?

JASON: Something like that.

GLENN: Okay. So he was the main guy, that you had to get by, if you were to get to the pope. And the room dropped. It became cold.

And I said, holy cow!

Who is that guy?

And the whole -- the whole group of really nice guys turned around and looked at him. And one of them turned back and said, oh, you can feel that?

And I said, oh.

Yeah. No offense. I didn't know if they liked him or not.

I said, no offense.

He doesn't seem like a good guy.

And he was way across the room. And they were like, oh, good sense on you.

Oh, no.

He's leading the opposition

So he's the guy, I think. That was helping thwart Benedict. And he was on, in the inside.

Okay. It's exactly the Trump story.

Would you agree?

JASON: Yeah. It felt like -- it felt almost like a Game of Thrones when the Vatican --

GLENN: It did. It did.

JASON: And it was the weirdest, weirdest feeling.

GLENN: Yeah. And it's exactly what we saw in 2016. I had never seen it before. But it's exactly what we saw in 2016.

It's what we're now seeing in the EU. Where the people with power are just taking people out.

The pattern here is really familiar. Because we've seen it in Washington. We've seen it in Hollywood.

We've seen it in the media. It's the replacement of the immovable. With those who are more malleable.

The strong replaced by the inclusive. The faithful with the fashionable. That's what happened.

And the Deep State doesn't just run in governments. It runs in everything.

It runs in institutions. And when those institutions start to resist the world's direction. They're infiltrated.

They're neutralized. And they're repurposed. And it is in everything.

It happened at the Vatican. I saw it!

And Pope Benedict was the warning shot, that we all missed.

He was the first Donald Trump, I believe. Now, what happens next?

Are we going to get somebody, you know, as the church is starting to grow again, the Catholic Church is starting to grow. And it's growing with Generation Z, who are saying, we want our traditions back. We want marriage.

We want truth!

We want eternal truth, as it's laid out in the gospels of Jesus Christ.

As it's growing, will the church grow in that direction, or has Francis put such a cabal in there, that you might get somebody who says that, but is doing -- is it going to be, yeah. We just elected a new guy and he's doing exactly what the last guy did?

Just the way it happens in our government, and every other government on earth!

We'll see!

It begins today.

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

How God Helped ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ Star Raise Her Kids | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 254

"Everybody Loves Raymond" star Patricia Heaton reveals how she avoided becoming a Hollywood divorce statistic by listening to the wife of one of the Beatles. Joined by her husband, David Hunt, to share the inspiration behind their movie “Unexpected,” the couple discuss marriage, infertility, IVF, abortion, adoption, surrogacy, and even how marijuana affects sperm counts. Considering how environmental toxins may be a factor in declining birth rates, Patricia says that “the jury is still out on RFK [Jr.],” but he is going in the “right direction,” and she admits that some aspects of the feminist movement have been “tremendously damaging for women.” Patricia critiques the “huge problems” with socialism, and David says our education system is in need of “massive reform.” After joking that “Hollywood values” are “kind of an oxymoron” and teasing David’s upcoming role on “The Chosen,” the conversation turns to Israel and the rise of anti-Semitism, as Patricia explains why she founded the October 7 Coalition after watching Hamas bodycam footage from the deadly attacks. She calls out the pastors who don’t speak out because they are “afraid to offend Muslims,” and she says that if you want to know where the Jews' land is, just read the Bible.