The Glenn Beck Program
What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25
Tue, 04 Mar 2025
Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) published an op-ed that called for even more Pentagon spending to avoid a government shutdown. Glenn explains why the elderly senator is not just wrong but also completely out of touch with the current vision of America. Glenn lays out precisely what our Pentagon should focus on: building nuclear power plants so we can power up the AI server farms once they become ready. If you think inflation is terrible now, wait until more spending is approved. Former investment banker Carol Roth joins to discuss the importance of a budget with massive cuts needed for America's future. Glenn and Carol also discuss being strategic with tariffs and DOGE cuts. Does America need to create a strategic reserve of cryptocurrency? Glenn takes calls from his audience on what they hope Trump discusses tonight in his speech to Congress. Is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy backing down after his White House fallout? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the key issues facing America's defense budget?
Yeah, we're 40 days into, around 40 days into this administration, and you're looking at this, and it's breathtaking at what has been done. Last month, we had, I think, 1,800 encounters at the borders. A year ago, last February, it was 109,000 encounters. That's how much of an impact he's made on that. We have all these things that he's done, but when it comes to the economy,
Congress has to move on some of his things. He hasn't really done anything with the economy except perhaps for Doge, which you've been warning about on this program for a while now. What's happening?
Yes. So, you know, we've talked about before that the economic situation is not really what it was presented to be. You know, we heard under Biden and certainly during election season, what a wonderful economy we had, all of these really great statistics on employment and growth.
And it's become very clear, well, it was very clear to all of us before we've talked about it, something that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bassett talked about in a speech a couple weeks ago, is that really the economic foundation is incredibly fragile.
And what we've had the Biden administration do, which was exceptionally nefarious, is that they decided that they were gonna spend to paper over the weakness of the economy. So if you remember, I think it was back in 2022, we had those two down quarters of GDP, which is a technical recession, which for some reason, by the way, they said was not a recession.
I'm sure if Trump had two down quarters, they would say it was, but it had a D in front of it, so it wasn't. And then we came out of it, and then it was pretty clear that we were gonna go into this double dip recession. And so what did they do? They decided to increase government spending. which is very inefficient spending.
And we've been running deficits as a percentage of GDP that are at wartime levels. We're talking 6% to 7% of GDP. The historical average is somewhere around 3% or 3.5%. So about double what you might see on average. When you have a good economy, you would actually expect that to be much lower because you're getting more receipts. And that's what happened. We had more receipts.
We were taking in almost five trillion dollars. We were spending U.S. government and they're spending even more. They're spending almost seven trillion dollars. So that was done to mask the weakness and the economy. Now that we don't have the ability to continue to kick up even more and more to show growth, the consumer continues to be tapped out from all the Biden-era policies.
And the fact that we have Doge, which is trying to cut down government spending, We're at a situation where things could get uglier before they get better or they could get uglier and they could take away the political will to make them better. And that's this delicate dance that we've been talking about, why we need this careful choreography.
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Chapter 2: Why does Glenn Beck criticize Mitch McConnell's op-ed?
That's not right. No, I could have said it. I listened in 2006, and I've hated you ever since. That could have been coming. Are you there, Matt? No, no. The eagles suck. No, I love you. Cut him off.
Go ahead.
I think that what we've given Trump as a mandate by the American people— The GOP has been so weak-kneed on so many things that he needs to lay that out specifically. So we all voted for this. We want the cut in the spending. I know it's going to hurt. I mean, I'm 55 next month. I've been at the same job for 36 years. And I mean, my wife and I, we paid for our kids.
We've done the best we could to pay for our kids to do things. But there's going to be pain. We have a budget. We live by a budget. We don't buy the things that we can't afford. Ultimately, God bless you. I appreciate what you do. You get me through the day. You, Pat, sometimes Stu loves America. It's hard to give him that. I'm a little nerved out. Distillers are a better team than Eagles.
That's interesting. I have some information you might want to consider over the past couple of months.
We have more Super Bowls. More Super Bowls. More Super Bowls, Dale. Yeah, you're going back too far.
Time to cut this guy off. What is he talking about? Matt, thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
By the way, he's from Pennsylvania. Okay? He's from Pennsylvania. Can you just read this to me? I don't have my glasses.
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