Trump Makes MAJOR Move as Midterms Get Closer | Guests: Donald & Amy Johnson | 9/29/26

The Glenn Beck Program

The episode explores the geopolitical and economic shifts regarding Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz and a massive $15 billion US stee

Key takeaways

• Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz is reportedly slipping, affecting global oil tanker movement.
• A $15 billion steel plant project in Lee County, Iowa, aims to revitalize American manufacturing using domestic ore.
• The US faces a potential $4 trillion AI debt bubble by 2030, which could impact the national economy significantly.
• Interest rates on the 10-year Treasury bond have reached levels not seen since 2007.
• GoFundMe canceled a campaign for Don Johnson to pay for his wife's cancer treatment, prompting a move to GiveSendGo.

Main topics

• Iran oil supply
• US Steel industry revival
• AI debt bubble

Notable quotes

The real danger isn't the price. The real danger is somebody in Washington deciding the price is too inconvenient.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a warning against the hidden risks of massive te

Transcript preview

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Get a free title history report plus a free trial of their million-dollar triple lock protection plan. Make sure that your home is your home and it stays that way. HomeTitleLock.com, promo code Glenn. Speaker 5 (1:55) Well, hello, America, and welcome to the Glenn Beck program. We've got a lot to cover today. I want to see, are we winning in Iran? It looks like the mainstream media is now coming out and saying, begrudgingly, looks like it might be working. Is it? We'll talk to you about that. Also, the steel mills being rebuilt here in America, the president announced yesterday. The five guys in Britain have been released. We don't know exactly why. This is a really confusing story. AI debt, I am telling you, we are seeing the next thing come along that says it's too big to fail. And watch everyone carefully so they don't nationalize this debt. That is the next big thing. If there's any kind of flaw in this, they're up to $4 trillion in debt on AI right now. Also, digital dollars are on the way, broken families, and women are blaming men and men are blaming women. It's a game being played to separate us even more. We've got a lot to cover. We're going to start with, are we winning in Iran in 60 seconds? First, there are things Christians didn't inherit from Judaism. You know, just because, you know, they were interesting traditions. We inherited them because they're part of our story. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Speaker 1 (3:20) By the way, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, what do they have in common? Oh, they're Jews. The prophets, Jews, Jerusalem, Jewish, the people of Israel, Jewish people all around the world facing hatred now that many of us thought belonged to another age. But the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has spent decades bringing Christians and Jews together. Not merely with words, but through action, providing food and medicine and shelter and life-saving assistance to vulnerable Jewish people in Israel and all around the world. But there's something else we can give them. we can make sure that they know they're not standing alone. And that's the idea behind the flagship, sorry, the flags of fellowship movement. Christians across America are raising the Israeli flag as visible declarations of solidarity with the Jewish people and a reminder that the bond between Christians and Jews is older and deeper than the headlines of any particular moment. Join believers all across America in this powerful act of remembrance and solidarity with Israel. Learn how you or your church can make a difference. Join FOF.org. That's flags of fellowship. Join FOF.org. Do it now. Speaker 5 (4:32) Sorry, I just have to make some notes here on Speaker 8 (4:35) things that I'm thinking. You know, it's a curse and a blessing to have ADD. I can't tell you all the things that were going through my mind as I was reading that commercial. So let me just write them down before I forget them. Speaker 5 (4:48) Okay. I want to talk to you about what's happening in Iran. There is an oil analyst now that tracks tankers for a living. He posted five words this weekend, and I've been waiting seven months to read these five words. Iran has lost control of Hormuz. I guess it's... I'm not good at counting. Speaker 8 (5:15) Anyway. Speaker 5 (5:17) Iran has lost the straight. He's not alone. Kepler, one of the firms that watches every ship on the water, now estimates close to 13 million barrels a day coming out of the Gulf. That's far more than anybody else expected. Remember, they were saying nothing is coming through the Gulf. Most of it is moving dark. Transponders are off. Shuttle runs oil pumped from one tanker to another in open water, etc., etc. Speaker 8 (5:47) And the New York Times is reporting that Iran's leaders are worried their grip on the strait is slipping. Can you even imagine what it took? for a New York Times writer to write that sentence. Speaker 5 (6:02) Can you imagine what the editor was like, his head in his hands going, oh dear God, no. Writing that about a Donald Trump policy? Last week at the United Nations, Iran sent an offer through Qatar, meet our conditions and we'll reopen the strait in seven days. Yeah, the president said, no, I don't think so. Speaker 1 (6:22) Why? Why would he say that? We talked about it yesterday. A regime does not offer to sell you a door until it feels the hinges are going. I've said from the beginning, and I'll say it again, I don't know if this is going to work. I don't know. Nobody does. I want it to work. I hope it works. It seems like a good strategy. Most importantly, we need it to work. But against all odds that most of the experts in Washington quoted with a straight face, this president may actually be pulling off the impossible. And that is very good news if it happens. And the same analyst who said Iran lost the straight listed the caveats himself. First, the shuttle is very expensive. Every barrel snuck out in the dark and passed from one ship to another ties up more tankers longer than needed. Tanker rates are at record highs. That cost does not disappear. It's passed on to all of us. It shows up at the refinery, and then it shows up at your pump. Second, crude and what you put in your truck are not the same thing. Russian refineries are on fire because of another war. The Saudi pipeline has been hit. China is running its refineries very slowly. So even if crude drops below $100, diesel and gasoline can stay high. Don't let anybody tell you the war is over. because of one number on, you know, a cable channel went down. Third, China is buying less oil than it normally does. The day that comes back to full presence, full appetite, there still isn't enough oil moving and prices will climb again. Fourth, the world has burned through something like a billion and a half to two billion barrels of stored oil. All of that, our strategic oil reserve is at a 40-year low. All of it has to be refilled. Whoever refills it pays whatever the price is that day. Good news. We have the oil from Venezuela, and we're going to pay the cost of pumping it. So it's not going to affect us on our strategic oil reserve. Now, this is not the finish line. However, this might be the first day we've actually been able Speaker 8 (8:32) to see a legitimate finish line. Speaker 8 (8:36) The real Speaker 5 (8:37) danger isn't the price. In June, we signed a memorandum on, you know, in Islamabad. Iran agreed to let ships through toll-free for 60 days while we talked. By early July, they were firing on tankers again. Why? Why? Because they used that paper to catch their breath. And that's what Donald Trump has just taken. They're winded. And while they're laying on the ground going, somebody get my mom. Somebody call my mom. Somebody call my mom. We know that's going to, if you let them rest, if you're like, just relax, just relax. We're not going to hit you again. We're not going to throw you off the fence post. Then what happens? They catch their breath. We want them on the ground like we were when we were, you know, six, seven years old. We can get the breath knocked down. Somebody call my mom. Somebody call my mom. We want that. Speaker 5 (9:27) The analyst has a name for that kind of deal. It's a memorandum of understanding. We sign another one and we don't get peace. We get a rerun of the summer. We have been here before. Not only in the summer, but if you go back to 1858, a senator from South Carolina stood up and told the North it can never make war on the South because the world couldn't live without the Southern cotton. And he put it right there. Cotton is king. The mills of England run on cotton from the South. Cut it off, London will come and rescue us. So when the war came, the South did something. Almost nobody remembers. It closed down its own strait. The planters held their cotton off the docks on purpose to starve the mills of England until England came and broke the blockade for them. Meanwhile, in Washington, the general in charge of the whole Union army was 74 years old and couldn't climb onto a horse anymore, and his plan was boring and incompetent. Don't charge. Speaker 1 (10:32) Just surround them. Close the ports. Take the river. Squeeze them. Speaker 1 (10:38) Was it incompetent? The newspapers thought it was. Speaker 5 (10:42) They thought it was a joke. A cartoonist drew a giant snake wrapped around the South, and the press called it the Anaconda. It Speaker 1 (10:50) was an insult, meant to be one. The crowds wanted to march to Richmond. No, they got that. And it ended in bull run. Early on, the snake leaked. Fast little ships slipped through at night. Blockade runners made fortunes. But the king never checked the warehouses. England was stuffed from a record crop the year before. And by the time they ran low, British merchants were buying cotton from India and Egyptian cotton. The South held. They held the world's cotton hostage, did they? Because the world went shopping. Speaker 1 (11:31) The rescue never came. And then the snake everybody laughed at became the backbone of the strategy that won the war. We still call it, by name, what it was, a put-down. That's Tehran's problem. Iran has one card. The world cannot live without our straight. That's what they think. But leverage that. leverage only works by refusing to get weaker every day you use it. Every tanker slipping out in the dark is a mill in England finding cotton in Egypt. That's why the offer came last week, not last spring. See, the anaconda only works if you don't let go. The South's last hope was never a battle. It was that the North would get tired. That's exactly what they're saying that we will do. America will get tired. No, an anaconda squeezes and squeezes and squeezes until you got to call somebody, call my mom, somebody, call my mom, somebody. And there's nothing left. Speaker 1 (12:45) That's the prices and the papers and the election that would have worn Lincoln down before the snake finished its work. That's what they're counting on today with the same thing. It nearly did back then. In the summer of 1864, Lincoln wrote himself a private note that he said, I'm probably going to lose. Tehran is playing the same hand that we played in the civil war. Iran watchers say the regime is convinced this president only cares about gas prices in the midterms. They're wrong. They're wrong. They're wrong. Unfortunately, in some ways, they're wrong. I think he's going to lose the midterms, but he's going to squeeze the crap out of them because their whole strategy is based on the calendar, and he's saying, I don't care. Speaker 1 (13:34) Serious people warn that maximum pressure breeds Speaker 5 (13:37) maximum resistance, that a cornered regime lashes out. And they're right about lashing out. We've watched it. Speaker 8 (13:44) Oh, last month we watched them do it. But a regime that lashes out on Monday and offers to reopen on Friday is not winning. It's haggling. Patience is not waiting. Speaker 5 (14:00) Patience is refusing to trade tomorrow for the relief of today. I still don't know if this works. I've told you from the very beginning. I don't know if this is going to work. I told you from the very beginning. This is why I'm not president of the United Speaker 8 (14:15) States, because I wouldn't have the courage to do it. I wouldn't. I think it's right, but I wouldn't have the courage to do it. But I know what failure looks like Speaker 5 (14:25) because we watched it this summer. A piece of paper, a photograph, 60 days of relief, and a regime that used every one of those days to reload. If Iran gets relief, it comes after they do something that we can verify, not after a promise of something we can't verify. It'll cost us. You'll feel it at the pump this winter and probably into the spring. If the people who watch the tankers are right, the real turn comes early next year. But only if the president holds. Remember, the South didn't lose because the snake was strong. It lost because the man holding the snake didn't let go. Mr. President, don't let go. More in a minute. Speaker 5 (15:24) You know what a disaster destroys first? The illusion that everything is permanent. The house was there yesterday. The road was there yesterday. The school, the church, the family photos, all there. And then a fire or flood or a hurricane comes through and somebody's entire life gets divided and destroyed. It's divided into before and then after. That's why I started Mercury One. For 15 years, Mercury One and our partners have been there to help people begin. Putting their lives back together before the tragedy strikes. Right now, there is an opportunity to make your help go three times as far. Mercury One has their three times impact campaign. Every dollar you give will be tripled thanks to generous matching. So $10 becomes $30. $50 becomes $150. Your generosity can have three times the impact when somebody's before suddenly becomes after. While this three-time impact campaign is underway, exciting news, every single gift is going to be matched dollar for dollar up for $300,000. So act quickly. That's one gift Speaker 8 (16:32) doubled by the match, tripled as well. Mercury won. I don't even know what this, what the hell is this commercial even saying? I don't even know. Can somebody look into this commercial? I don't know. Are we doubling the money? Are we tripling the money? What the hell is this even saying? This is why I should read this in advance. I don't even understand this commercial. Look, here's the thing. Mercury One Speaker 5 (16:52) is at least doubling your money. I think they're tripling your money. But this is confusing. MercuryOne.org. Their mission is not confusing. MercuryOne.org. Ten seconds, station ID. Well, let me say hello to Jason and Ricky. Jason, what do you think of what I just said about what's happening in Iran? Speaker 4 (17:28) I agree. I think that there were rumors that Glenn was or that the president was offering sanctions relief and things like that. The president put out a true social that was completely untrue, said it was fake news. I hope I hope that is the case, because I'm looking at the amount of oil that's coming out of the Strait of Hormuz right now. And we're about 80 percent ish, something like that, of pre-war levels. And that's I mean, and that's taking into account that some of the oil that was coming out pre-war. was Iranian oil, which 90 % of that was going to China. So China is not happy about this. They want this to come to an end. The rest of the world is starting to see what's happening with this pressure campaign. And I think you mentioned as well that the Saudi East-West pipeline is now back online. So that is now transporting oil as well. I don't know how long it's going to take for this to normalize and for this to start affecting global oil prices. Speaker 8 (18:26) If he can stop all money coming in, if he can stop all money coming in Speaker 5 (18:32) from foreign countries, this thing will collapse in weeks, weeks. The problem is you've got people like Qatar financing Iran, you know, helping them with banking. I think that is stopped. You have China doing the same, possibly Russia doing the same. If you can get that to stop, if you can. If you can squeeze and nothing slips through, they're done. They're absolutely done. But it's got to be a serious movement by the president. Speaker 4 (19:07) Yeah, the Iranian currency right now, this just came out this morning. It is now at a record low to the dollar, 2.5 million rial to the dollar. Inflation is around 70%. They are imploding. Absolutely. And this is not even taking into account, if all this goes to plan, what happens? What does oil look like? What does energy infrastructure look like in the future? It's not, I don't believe, as the Strait of Hormuz being the end-all when it comes to being able to affect global oil prices. I think the Trump administration is looking much further than that. We're looking at the Western Hemisphere being a major player. We're looking at a diminished OPEC. UAE announced that they are... jumping out of OPEC. So this cartel, when all this is said and done, when the dust is settled, the cartel might be completely done and energy infrastructure will look a whole lot more stable in the future. A lot is at stake here. Speaker 8 (20:06) How are people not seeing this? I mean, I really, I guess the Speaker 5 (20:12) pain is so bad at the dinner table that, you know, they can't see anything past that. And I completely understand that. When you were fighting for your life, you know, honestly, a lot of voters in America, a lot of voters in America are like a drowning man. A drowning man can know, I can't, you know, if you're coming out to rescue me, I can't kill you. But that's what happens. A drowning man will push. the rescuer, underwater to save himself. And it's just a natural response. And I think because people feel so underwater, if you will, they are panicked in their own life. They don't know how to navigate everything that's going on in their world that I think they're pushing the one guy who is actually fixing it underwater. I mean, I'm very nervous about the midterms. Speaker 1 (21:04) I mean, I keep Speaker 5 (21:05) holding out that these polls are wrong, but I don't think they are. I don't think they are. And here's why they're not. I don't think Republicans are going to show up. And that really bothers Speaker 8 (21:18) me. Because if you think, I mean, there's a chance now they lose the Senate as well. You see what is happening with Lindsey Graham's sister? She's within one point. If you lose the Senate, you have impeachment hearings, and they will impeach and remove him from office. Do you have any idea what that means? Do you have any idea what happens to everything that is going on right now? Do you know how fast they will shut down what's happening in Iran? You know, I heard a story on Fox News this morning and they said, you know, Iran is counting on the fact that America won't fight and she will retreat. They're demanding she retreats from the Middle East. This is what happened in Beirut that gave us the World Trade Center. times a thousand. And if these people gain control of Speaker 1 (22:12) even just the Senate, the House and the Senate, it's a nightmare. But if they gain control of the Senate, we're toast. We are toast. They will shut everything down and you will go back to sitting there looking at your kid's school going, why is a transgender dancer now teaching my third grader class? I'm telling you, it's coming. Please go out and vote. All right, let me tell you about chapter. Let's see if this one makes sense. Medicare has an interesting problem. 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Right now, Chapter will tell you what you need. Chapter, pound 250. Keyword, Chapter, pound 250. keyword chapter. It'll take you less than 20 minutes. Do it now. Speaker 6 (23:47) Next Thursday, Glenn and Data Republican expose the secret influence operation behind the rise of the DSA. Watch it live only at glennbeck.com slash torch. Speaker 5 (24:23) Welcome to the program. Glad you're here. Sorry, I gotta take a little alivert because my, Speaker 1 (24:28) my, I don't know what I'm allergic to. There's nothing growing. Speaker 5 (24:34) I'm allergic to something. All right. Welcome to the program. I want to give you some more news that I think is good news, but Speaker 8 (24:42) it's a wait and see kind of thing. Look. Speaker 8 (24:49) I want Speaker 1 (24:50) to tell you, I want to tell you something. I don't know why this show is successful. I'm not sure other people will tell you this. I'm not going to carry water for anybody. I'm not going to carry water for the administration or the Republicans or anything else. I'm going to tell you the truth, and I'm going to be hopeful. I like the president. I think he's doing a great job. And so when he's doing things that haven't, you know, turned the corner yet, I'm going to be hopeful, but I'm not going to tell you that, you know. I'm not going to tell you something I don't believe. And I also. Speaker 8 (25:25) I have so left the click and the audience building mania behind, I don't care. Speaker 5 (25:37) And I haven't cared in a very, very long time about, oh, I've got to be number one. We have to be first on this. I don't really care. If I chase that, I will chase the wrong things. And this has been my philosophy for a long time. I will chase the wrong things. And we will become everything that I despise. My philosophy now is the country is just in so much trouble. And I personally Speaker 8 (26:05) am so sick and tired of hearing clickbait. I'm so tired of being tricked into a headline. I'm so tired of somebody saying, I know this is exactly what's happening when they don't have any idea what's happening. And so I am trying really hard not to be one of those guys, because I think. The most valuable thing that anyone can give to you is perspective, the facts, then perspective, and then on top of that say, but I don't know. I could be wrong. I'm not God. I don't have a crystal ball. In this world, everything is changing so quickly. So I can tell you what I think this means today, and I'm going to be hopeful on what I think it means for tomorrow. Speaker 8 (26:51) Let's stop with the game. Okay, so let me tell you about the steel mills that came out yesterday. I think this is a really good thing, but there's some caveats here. Speaker 5 (27:02) Yesterday in the Oval Office, the president announced that the White House is now calling what will be the largest steel plant in American history is going to be built. $15 billion, Lee County, Iowa. That's in the bottom corner of the state on the Mississippi, a couple of counties. And one county that has peaked at about 44,000 people in 1916 has been shrinking ever since. So this is a good Speaker 1 (27:30) thing for this corner of the state. The numbers, 5,000 to 6,000 construction jobs while it's being built. 1,750 permanent jobs when it's running, plus about 350 at the mine in Minnesota that feeds it. Now, that's a lot of great news. Seven and a half million tons of steel a year at first, 10 million at full speed. The White House says that's roughly a tenth of everything America made last year out of one mine. Steel is coming back to America. Now, the ore is going to come out of the ground in Minnesota, and then it's going to ride the rails south, and it becomes steel in Iowa, including steel, the administration says, will meet military standards. So we're now, I see, Jason, remember we talked about this the other day, that I think the president sees something that nobody else is seeing and nobody's talking about it. Why would he say that? Including steel that meets military standards. Speaker 1 (28:33) I Speaker 5 (28:34) think the president is seeing things coming down the pike. Okay. So mine to mill, it will never leave the country. Now, who owns it? The name on the door is Masabi. Masabi Metallics. It's a Minnesota company. Uh-huh. The name behind the door is the SR Group. It's a family conglomerate from India founded in 1969 by two brothers named Ruia. Now, the Commerce Secretary says SR is going to finance the steel plant and no direct, the key word direct, no direct federal money will go into it. But the mine is a different matter. The Export-Import Bank, which is your government, is Speaker 8 (29:19) lending it $770 million. Could go as high as... $10 billion. Okay, $770 million to $10 billion. That's quite a spread. Speaker 5 (29:35) Anyway, Iowa lawmakers have been told they may be called back to approve tax breaks to make this thing happen. SR has been on the iron range before. It broke ground on that same mine in Minnesota in 2008, promised to finish it in 2013. In 2016, its Minnesota company went bankrupt, owing more than a billion dollars. Local contractors were left holding the unpaid invoices. The state was out about $65 million in road and infrastructure money. Its own bankrupt subsidiary sued the parent company, accusing it of siphoning off the project's funds. It's an accusation. It's not a verdict. We don't really know for sure because, I mean, everything is corrupt in Minnesota. How do we know? I don't want to get in bed with a corrupt company, but apparently there's enough out there that says that that didn't happen. I don't know. Minnesota has spent years trying to keep SR out. SR bought its way back in. And then this month, it actually delivered. They bought themselves back in. They went back into the mine. And on September 17th, they blasted loose 1.3 million tons of rock and produced the first iron concentrate with pellets due next month. They're mining, mining, mining, mining, mining, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing to go out of business, bankruptcy. They come back, they blow up