Who’s Laughing at Trump’s Historic Greenland Deal Now? | Guest: Tristan Harris | 9/21/26

The Glenn Beck Program

The episode explores a series of interconnected global shifts involving energy security, geopolitical maneuvering, and technological advanceme

Key takeaways

• Diesel prices have surged due to Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries, with 22 of 34 targeted plants hit.
• The United States is currently the world's largest diesel exporter, but domestic stocks are at their lowest seasonal level since 1996.

Main topics

• Diesel fuel crisis
• Geopolitics of Greenland and Panama

Notable quotes

Diesel doesn't work like that... It arrives at the grocery bill a season late under somebody else's name.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a warning about the interconnectedness of global

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) 300,000 in metric tons of foreign ground beef are about to come into the United States without the normal tariff. That's a huge amount of beef. And here's the part that bothers me. When that beef ends up at the grocery store, you have no way of knowing which country it came from. I'm all for buying beef for my family, but I want to know where it came from. That's why I like Good Ranchers. Good Ranchers partners with more than 100 local farmers and ranchers and delivers 100 % American meat straight to your door. Pasture raised, no antibiotics, no added hormones, and more than 25,000 five-star reviews on Trustpilot. They've become the number one company delivering 100 % American beef. For a limited time, you can get 50 % off your first Good Ranchers order. That's 41 pounds of 100 % American Angus ground beef to help stock your freezer. Just visit goodranchers.com slash Glenn. Claim your ground beef bundle. Just start your plan right now with your free meat order. Remember, goodranchers.com slash Glenn. Speaker 1 (1:54) America, welcome to the Glenn Beck program. It is Monday. I want to just start with this. Bill Maher, thank you. Thank you for seeing sanity and being able to see through all of this craziness. Here's what Bill said on his show on Friday. Listen to this. Cut one. Speaker 4 (2:11) I mean, I look at... Speaker 8 (2:12) And Speaker 4 (2:12) we're Speaker 8 (2:12) less crazy. Speaker 4 (2:13) Who's less crazy? Speaker 8 (2:14) Democrats. What? You haven't noticed? Speaker 4 (2:16) Have you seen the Democratic... I... Speaker 4 (2:20) You're being sarcastic. Oh, I know Speaker 8 (2:22) no Speaker 4 (2:22) you think we're less crazy Maybe Speaker 8 (2:24) not inside but we're at least when we go out and give a speech talking about the economy and corruption They're Speaker 4 (2:31) communists who think the Islamists are the good guys. Are you kidding less crazy the Speaker 8 (2:35) candidate Speaker 4 (2:35) of some of the candidates? You're not following the Democratic Socialists of America. Oh, Speaker 8 (2:41) no, I'm following them. I have to see them every day. I work at Fox News Crazy Speaker 4 (2:52) And they're not recanting any of that crazy gender stuff. I mean, they're doubling down. Speaker 1 (2:58) Somebody else sees it. America, somebody else sees it. And then there's the other side. Barack Obama, I've got to get into this. Trump said he expelled three people from the White House press pool, said you're not welcome, it's going to go to court, blah, blah, blah. But I heard this from Barack Obama this weekend. I about lost my mind. Listen to this quickly. Cut three. Speaker 4 (3:19) My imagination. Speaker 4 (3:22) could not foresee some of the stuff that's going on right now. I'm trying to think what would have happened if I had said, you know what, Fox News, get out of here. It's unimaginable. No, Speaker 3 (3:34) it's really not, and I have the tape to Speaker 1 (3:37) prove it. We do that, and we talk about what the really important news that came out of Russia this weekend because you had President Trump called back to the White House from Camp David. Benjamin Netanyahu decided to change his plans. He's coming to the United States later this week because of what happened, not only with the Houthis, but also in Russia. This is going to affect all of us deeply, and you need to understand it. We'll start there in 60 seconds. First relief factor. We spent about 100 years inventing machines so you don't have to move. The elevator saves you from the stairs. Groceries come to the front porch. You can turn off the bedroom light without getting out of bed. Apparently, human civilization has been one long campaign against standing up. And I'm all for it. But your body was built to move. Bend, stretch, walk, work. It's actually, you know, that's what it's... was made for and we need to use it. That's one of the reasons why I take Relief Factor. It's a daily supplement designed to support your body's natural inflammatory response and help with the aches and pains associated with frequent pain. I've been taking it for years. I've experienced what a difference it can make and over a million people have tried it and two Speaker 3 (4:49) -thirds of them have gone on to order more. Take their three-week quick start at $17.76. See why so Speaker 1 (4:55) many people have had their lives changed and get their life back with Relief Factor. ReliefFactor.com. 1-800-4-RELIEF. 1-800-4-RELIEF. Speaker 1 (5:08) Okay, I don't know if you saw what happened, but this is going to affect you deeply. And it's fuel that, I mean, unless you drive a truck, you don't usually buy. The national average right now for diesel is $6.29 a gallon. A year ago, it was $3.73. California, it is over Speaker 3 (5:27) $8. In Europe, it is $17. Okay? For the first time in history, Every region in the country is over $6 a gallon for diesel. Most of us don't buy diesel, but you're going to pay for every gallon of it anyway. Gasoline is a bill that we all see every week. It's printed on a Speaker 1 (5:55) sign 40 feet in the air, and when you go up and they change it, you're like, oh crap. You combine the errands, you get mad because Speaker 3 (6:04) you're having to pay that gas price. Diesel doesn't work like that. Diesel moves the thing before you own it. It's in the tractor that planted it. It's in the combine that cut it. It's in the semi that hauled it to the elevator. The locomotive that took it to the mill. The truck that took it to the warehouse. You know, the truck that took it to the store. The van that put, you know, put that box on your porch. And so by the time a can of soup or whatever you have is in your hand, diesel has touched it six or seven times. And not once did it print a number that you could read. So the diesel price never arrives as the diesel price. It arrives at the grocery bill a season late under somebody else's name. Speaker 3 (6:53) What's happening right now is very concerning. There are two different stories that people keep mashing into one, and it's not one story, it's two stories. First, let me start with Iran. The Iran war raised the floor under everything. Crude got tight when the Gulf got dangerous, and everything made from crude went up. Gasoline is at $4.32. The S &P Global said last week it no longer expects Middle East production back to pre-war levels by the end of 2027. That's the broad one. And that one shows up at the pump that we see, and it shows up immediately. That's the Iran war. Diesel is something entirely different. The Ukraine war is doing something very narrow, and for diesel specifically, much, much worse. Speaker 3 (7:49) You can't drone a barrel of oil out of the ground, but you can burn down the machine that turns that oil into diesel. And that is exactly what Ukraine is doing. They have spent now a year doing this methodically, plant by plant. I think Russia has 32 diesel plants and 22 of them have been hit now. The International Agency, our energy agencies, says that through the first eight months of this year, Russian refineries were successfully hit. An average once every three days. They can't repair them. They can't keep up. Oxford Institute, 22 of 34 refineries attacked in 2026. That's three quarters of them. Three quarters of them. Russia's refinery has fallen now to its output, fallen to its lowest level in more than 20 years. Diesel production is down roughly 30%. Then, over the weekend, a Moscow refinery, a quarter of a million barrels a day, 16 miles away from the Kremlin, in what Russia is calling the largest drone barrage of the war. Now... Why am I starting the show with this today? I mean, you know, why does that land on a truck stop in Amarillo? Speaker 3 (9:14) Here's why. You have to understand the entire oil market, whether it's diesel, whether it's anything, anything made with petroleum is a global market. Russia was the world's second largest diesel exporter after us. We're number one. They were number two. Roughly one barrel in every nine of the planet's diesel came from Russia. In July, Moscow banned. closed all diesel exports to keep its own army and its own farmers moving. And this month, they extended that ban through the end of the year. And their exports went from about 2.5 million tons a month to under 1. Those barrels didn't disappear from Russia. They disappeared from the global pool. There is only one pool. Turkey and Brazil had been taking half of that fuel. Speaker 1 (10:13) They went shopping because you couldn't buy it from them anymore. So they had to come in on the market and they're starting to buy from the market because now they don't have their main supplier. Europe went shopping. Africa went shopping. Speaker 3 (10:25) Latin America went shopping. And they all came to the same place, the American Gulf Coast, because we are the largest diesel exporter on earth. And our exports hit a record of 1.9 million barrels a day in August. We sold it. We drain our own tanks doing it. U.S. stocks are now at their lowest season level since 1996. That's 13 % under the five-year average. And they expect them to be Speaker 1 (10:54) below average by 100 million barrels through most of 2027. Speaker 1 (11:03) This is diesel. Speaker 3 (11:04) This is heating oil. Same barrel. Northeast heating oil for this winter is already up 30%, and it's not cold yet. One more number because it tells you what's actually broken. The spread between crude and the fuel, what it costs to refine, hit 117 a barrel this week. That's the highest in the data going back to 2009. Normal is about 15. Okay. Roughly 35 cents a Speaker 1 (11:40) gallon in a good year for gasoline. I'm sorry, for diesel. 35 cents in a good year. It's now $2.78. Speaker 3 (11:51) Which means this is not a crude problem you can drill your way out of. We are not short of oil. We are short of the ability to turn oil into diesel worldwide, all at once. And a refinery takes a decade. It's not a news cycle. A decade. Speaker 3 (12:11) So Washington is reaching for the only lever that acts fast. John Thune, he said that he is open to exploring a ban on Speaker 1 (12:19) American diesel exports. Keep it home. I understand it. A farmer in Iowa watching, you know, the product leave Houston for Rotterdam while he's paying 50, you know, 650 Speaker 3 (12:32) is entitled to, you know, ask what country is this? Why am I paying all of this? The Congressional Joint Economic Committee found diesel added over $1.4 billion to the cost of planting this year's crops. $1.4 billion added to what farmers had to pay for the crops. That's a 63 % increase. Worse in Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota. That's real, and we're going to feel that as that can of beans arrives at your table. Speaker 1 (13:08) The president's own interior secretary says that's not going to lower your price. And I think he has the better argument. Gulf Coast diesel Speaker 3 (13:17) can easily get pretty much anywhere except to New England because of the Jones Act. There's not enough American flag tankers. So the Northeast buys from Europe, cut off the exports, and Europe stopped selling to New England and our refineries, you know. What are we doing? How does the Northeast get it? Where are they going to get it from? Because Europe will stop selling to us. You'll feel patriotic in October, but you will be very cold in January. Here's the thing. Speaker 1 (13:58) We have two wars going on that are extraordinarily concerning. I'm going to go into some of the other things that are happening because Russia is starting to flail. They are losing badly. Speaker 1 (14:16) and it's an old superpower, and it's not going to go down easy. Speaker 3 (14:22) If diesel continues to go up, that's going to cripple everybody's budget in the entire world, not the United States. I want you to know, this is Biden's war. Diesel is Biden's war. Gasoline is Trump's war. Okay? Diesel, that problem is coming from Ukraine. Speaker 1 (14:43) Gasoline is coming from Iran. Speaker 3 (14:53) But if oil continues to go up per barrel and we get to $130 a barrel, this is a number you should actually watch. Speaker 1 (15:04) Because the closer it gets to $130 a barrel, God forbid it ever does. But if it does, that's a danger zone for this time, not just the United States, Speaker 3 (15:14) for the entire world. And a 2008 kind of economic collapse. Except this time, there's no backstop. This time, there is no TARP. There's nothing anyone can do. And it will affect the entire world, from China to us. Oil at $130 a Speaker 1 (15:35) barrel is a very bad thing. Speaker 3 (15:38) Diesel at $6, $7, $8, $10 a barrel, and it could get there if the Ukrainian war doesn't stop. It could get there. We'll do the same thing because you won't be able to buy or sell anything. Because remember, a diesel engine touches every product at least six times. Speaker 3 (16:04) These wars have to stop. They have to Speaker 1 (16:07) stop. And the Middle East is getting crazy too. The Houthis attacked Saudi Arabia. Speaker 1 (16:21) So I don't know what the moderating thing is. Here's what I would like to suggest. The president can do these things. He can waive the Jones Act. We Speaker 3 (16:29) have diesel in Texas and a shortage in New England. The reason why New England's paying so much is because of an old law, 1920, that says, you know, you have to have an American flagship to be able to pull into port, grab oil, and then pull into another American port. No, we have other ships. other ships do it. Let us hire other ships. Repeal or waive the Jones Act. Waive the recipe. Emergency EPA fuel waivers. Let off-road and heating oil run in highway trucks. Ease the blending mandate. You know, gallons already exist and you can be on the road in days. Speaker 3 (17:13) And then the president should announce the Defense Production Act as an act of an emergency for all refineries. We have refineries that cannot be repaired. They're waiting for parts. Our refineries are maxed out. Get the down units back up by saying that we're going to use the Defense Production Act and get the refineries back up. You can get them up in two weeks. Speaker 3 (17:43) Those are the things the president can do right now. And I would urge him to do it because this is going to be Speaker 1 (17:52) you're not feeling diesel yet. You're going to be feeling diesel this winter. This this will impact you hard in 90 days. All right, more in just a second. Now, let me tell you about my Patriot supply. The worst time to make an important decision is when everybody else is making that same decision. You know, when the shelves are empty and the lines get long and your options disappear. Preparedness means you're going to make that decision early. That's why I want you to look at MyPatriotSupply. Their emergency food kits will let you put away food for months right now. And they have a four-week and three-month food kit providing roughly 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day. The food has a 25-year shelf life and comes in stackable tubs. It's easy to store. And during their National Preparedness Month event, MyPatriotSupply wants to send you over $1,000 in shelf-stable food and preparedness gear for free. It starts with their flagships. solar generator that's powerful enough to run your fridge or medical device or laptops or phones or whatever you need to prioritize. Also, you get a huge amount of emergency food and water filtration. Don't forget that. And the gear that you need during any kind of disruption. Go to preparewithglenn.com. See the details. It's your responsibility to care for your own. Do it today. Preparewithglenn.com. 10-second station ID. So... Speaker 1 (19:29) Biden's war is the Ukrainian war, and that's what's causing the diesel prices. Speaker 1 (19:35) Ukraine says that Russia right now is losing about 1,500 men a week. I'm sorry, every day. Speaker 3 (19:44) Every day. Ukraine's numbers run high. So cut those in half. That's still a small town erased every single week. And the money is running out. And then the oil, because Russia runs on oil. The revenue for oil and gas for Russia fell 45%. The deficit for those three months was bigger than the deficit Moscow had budgeted for the entire year. And now these Ukrainian drones keep hitting their terminals. And what are you going to do to pay for the war? So Putin just raised their national sales tax to 22%. Speaker 1 (20:28) He had just promised no new taxes. Kind of sounds like George W. Bush didn't work out well for him. But this is a man losing the war. I think there's a possibility we see this man hung in the streets. I really do. I think you could see a time when Putin is deposed and maybe killed. And now they're starting to say that Russia is going to start hitting Britain and Germany and Poland. There's all kinds of things that are happening. None of this stuff is going to happen. It's all going to be an accident. It's all going to be, no, what are you talking about? Or it all be deniable. You know what I mean? We have subs now watching our undersea cables from England to the United States. Why cut those? Because all of the financial transactions between New York and London happen there. That's a massive wipeout for the UK. So we have our submarines on it. Speaker 1 (21:29) sabotage in Germany. They're flying drones in but saying it's a mistake. Poland, the prime minister, said that's exactly the way it's going to happen. And what Putin is doing, I think, is a strategy called escalate to de-escalate. If you're losing a war, and this is what Iran, I think, is doing, you escalate big. And you make it so painful that people are like, Speaker 3 (21:54) you know, is this even worth the fight? And so you raise the price until the people bankrolling your enemy start questioning whether that's really even worth it. That's happening now in Iran and Ukraine with Russia. Speaker 1 (22:09) This is the part where you're in a bar fight and the guy, you know, the guy losing grabs a bottle and breaks it over the bar and then starts, you know, get away, get back, get back. He doesn't want to fight. He wants to walk away. But everyone is watching because the real target here in Europe, Russia is going to push Article 5. Does that mean anything? All kinds of accidents will happen. Will we go to war? I hope to God not. All right, first, your mattress is probably the strangest piece of furniture that you own. You know. You don't buy it because it looks good. You don't show it off when people come over. Half the time it's covered with sheets and blankets and six decorative pillows that you're not even allowed to sleep on for some strange reason. But a mattress has one job, give you a great place to sleep. That's why I want you to look at GhostBed. They make premium mattresses right here in America, designed around the things that actually matter. You know, once you close your eyes, comfort and support and staying cool through the night. And you can spend a fortune. you know, Speaker 3 (23:12) making your bedroom look great. But, you know, at 2.30 in the Speaker 1 (23:17) morning, you're not admiring the curtains. You're not appreciating the nightstand. You just want to have your bed feel really good and perfect. That's the real test of a mattress. It's what it promises to do for you at night. It's how you feel in the morning as well. I want you to try Ghostbed. Offering an extra 10 % off their lowest prices of the season. Go to Ghostbed.com slash Glenn. Ghostbed.com slash Glenn. Use the promo code Glenn. Ghostbed.com slash Speaker 3 (23:45) Glenn. Speaker 8 (23:47) Coming up, everyone laughed at Trump's obsession with Greenland, but he just locked in a deal that changes everything. Glenn explains it all next on the Glenn Beck program. Speaker 1 (24:21) So. I have to tell you, I'm gravely concerned about things. And I shouldn't say that. I just want you to be prepared, and I want you to be seeing things for what is really happening and not looking at the small picture but the big picture. Because the world is on the verge of dramatic change. Everything's being rewritten right now. Speaker 1 (24:51) And this is a global scale. This change is global scale. It would have been the Great Reset, but it's not going to be the Great Reset. It's going to be something different, I believe. Speaker 1 (25:08) And so when you're facing something coming your way, what's the best thing you can do? Prepare. You try to analyze what's coming your way, what the possibilities are, and you prepare. So we look at all of the possibilities. We look at the possibilities of AI. We look at the possibilities of a very strong China, even without AI. an attack on Taiwan or whatever, and then we're involved with them or maybe they come after us. We look at the Middle East just melting down and then us not being able to have any oil. We look at Europe, just complete catastrophic failure Speaker 3 (25:49) in Europe. We look at Russia going after Europe. I mean, there's so many things that could happen. You want to be prepared. Speaker 3 (26:00) That is true with countries as well. Speaker 6 (26:02) And I want to show you some good news here. Speaker 3 (26:05) Friday afternoon, I was with my wife and I saw this come across on an alert and I showed my wife and I said, this guy is freaking amazing. Friday afternoon, Greenland announced that the United States now has permanent control over the security of Greenland. Denmark has agreed. Greenland has agreed. The three governments sign off on it at the United Nations this week. I said from the beginning, this is what he wants. Would he have taken Greenland as a 51st state? Absolutely he would have. But what he wanted was control of it. When I said that, everybody laughed. They said he's a real estate guy. He wants to buy the island. No, he never wanted the deed. He wanted the Arctic. He wanted the shipping lanes open at the top of the world and being able to say to China and Russia, those are ours. He wants the minerals under the ice. And he wants a guarantee that China and Russia never put a base there. Under this deal, no non-NATO country can build anything on Greenland. Denmark keeps the title. America keeps the keys. That was Friday. That was one Friday. Now, I want to show you what preparation looks like. Jason and I had this conversation earlier today before we go on. I'm not sure if Donald Trump sees something coming. I've never had that conversation with him. And he's really an optimistic guy, so I don't know if he would say that. But I think he might see something coming because I'm seeing stuff coming. And what I would do to prepare, he's done. Look what's happened in the last two years. Panama. First thing he did. A Hong Kong company ran the ports on both ends of the Panama Canal. So China controlled the access between the two oceans. Impossible. If we're at war, you can't have that. Trump said China was running the canal. Experts rolled their eyes. Then Panama's own Supreme Court threw the contract out as unconstitutional. Panama seized both ports. Beijing threatened a heavy price. Panama didn't blink. China's out. China doesn't have the Panama Canal anymore. In Venezuela. In January, American forces took Nicolas Maduro out of Caracas and flew him to New York to face trial. He's in jail. Last month, the United States signed a 100-year agreement on 17 oil fields holding 65 billion barrels. America gets the majority of that output at cost. You know what that's like? Getting oil at cost? Speaker 3 (28:56) Oil that used to sail to China is now slated to refill our strategic petroleum oil reserve and anything else we might need. Now, look at the rest of the continent. Argentina elected Malay. Chile just elected caste over a communist by 16 points. In Bolivia, the socialist party that ran the country for almost 20 years won only two seats. Ecuador stayed right. Peru went right. Colombia, which had elected a former guerrilla four years ago, just elected a conservative that promised to go after the cartels. Trump didn't cast those votes. People cast those votes. People vote for what they see working. And for the first time in a generation, the model in this hemisphere is coming from Washington instead of Havana or Caracas. Speaker 3 (29:49) Europe. For decades, our allies promised 2 % of their economy for defense, and most of them missed it. Now NATO members have committed to 5%. And you know what? If they don't pay it, don't worry. Because I don't think we're going to defend it. Because what are they doing? While we have money coming into the United States to build factories, and we're starting to repatriate and reshore jobs here in America, what are they doing? They're still shipping jobs away. They're not creating anything. There's no future in Europe. With trade, Japan, Korea, the Gulf states, Europe. Country after country have come to the table to pledge investment in American factories. Trillions of dollars. Now, not every dollar is going to show up. But the money is pointed towards us now. Put it on the map. The Arctic in the north, the canal in the middle, the oil in the south, friendly governments from Buenos Aires to Bogota, allies paying their own way. He's built a fortress here in our own hemisphere. Energy trade routes, the northern flank, the neighbors, all on our side of the table. The last one to go is Canada. Speaker 3 (31:11) Put this into perspective. China spent 25 years buying ports, buying mines, you know, bribing loyalty in our own backyard. In 20 months, much of that rug has just been pulled out from underneath them. And nobody's seeing this. Speaker 6 (31:34) Nobody's seeing this because nobody's looking at the board. Okay, the press covers Speaker 3 (31:37) every piece as a separate outrage. Greenland, that was a joke. Panama was a bluff. Venezuela was reckless. Nobody's lining them up. Line them up. This president is preparing for something dramatic and different. I think he knows the world's about to change and the old world is going to go down the crapper. And so the entire globe will at least, it may break out into, you know, multiple superpowers. I don't know. But this hemisphere will be self-sufficient. I've never seen a president do this. You know, presidents inherit, you know, presidents manage the world they inherit. This one redrew it. Nobody has moved this many pieces this fast. Speaker 3 (32:29) Now, everything's on paper. Congress has changed. Presidents changed. Danish. Parliaments. All of that. They still have to vote. But if we hold what's been built, the next hundred years are