Glenn relates tragic history of Emmett Till in response to Oprah's controversial remarks

Warning: The above video clip contains a graphic image of Till's body after he was murdered.

Tuesday on The Glenn Beck Program, Glenn turned his attention on the shocking comments Oprah made regarding the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case. She compared that trial to that of the murder of Emmett Till. It was a quick comment, but does that mean the most influential celebrity should be excused for comparing two things that couldn't in truth be more different? Glenn corrects Oprah in a powerful TV monologue.

Below is Glenn's monologue:

Now, with everything that’s going on, the difference between right and wrong, truth and fiction, because we have not been truly taught our own history, is a little harder to find.  You have to do a little homework.  And that brings me to Oprah Winfrey and what she said passing in promotion for a new movie, what she said in passing about Trayvon Martin.

Now, I want you to understand, according to Forbes magazine, I’m what, I think number 37 most powerful celebrity in the country.  She’s number one, the most influential celebrity in America.  And here’s what number one just said.

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Oprah Winfrey:  It’s so easy during this time, Trayvon Martin, Trayvon Martin parallel to Emmett Till.  Let me just tell you, in my mind, same thing.  But you can get stuck in that and not allow yourself to move forward and to see how far we’ve come

Okay, so here she’s saying some part of it good, part of it good, part of it unbelievably wrong, unbelievably offensively wrong.  But does the truth matter?  Most people don’t know history, and so they don’t know.  Oprah Winfrey would get pummeled from the press for this statement if she wasn’t Oprah Winfrey, and she wasn’t on the left.

To say that Trayvon Martin’s death is no different than Emmett Till is a slap in the face of the memory of Emmett Till and anyone who suffered during segregation in the civil rights era.  But she’s Oprah Winfrey, so she gets away with it.  But not on this program.  These are two cases that are absolutely – they have nothing in common.  I can’t think what they have in common, honestly, nothing.  Let’s compare here.

George Zimmerman saw what he thought was a suspicious person, suspicious because he was roaming the neighborhood late at night in the rain.  He calls 9-1-1.  He tries to locate an address.  At some point, he encounters Trayvon Martin, and a struggle ensues.  Zimmerman suffered a broken nose and multiple head injuries during the altercation.  Remember?  This was held from the public for I think three days.  ABC finally released the picture of him coming in.  He’s got bangs on his head and a broken nose.

Zimmerman claims Trayvon told him he would die tonight.  He goes for the gun.  Zimmerman shoots Trayvon in what he claims was self defense.  Nobody was there, except these two, so we don’t really know.  But Zimmerman immediately calls 9-1-1 and reports what happened.  Again, do you see any similarity yet?

Still on the first case with Zimmerman, he wasn’t initially charged with a crime.  That was because all of the available evidence at the time suggested that he acted in self defense, but everybody gets all upset, and so let’s go and take it to trial.  During the trial, both the prosecution and the defense, the prosecution and the defense both say race played no role in this.  Help me out, Oprah, race played no role.

Zimmerman is acquitted of the charges by a jury of his peers because the juries agreed no evidence to suggest that Zimmerman acted with malice or intent to kill Trayvon Martin.  Now, that’s the one she says is exactly the same, same, to me, one in the same with the Emmett Till case.

I had to brush up on the Emmett Till case.  I remembered this morning vaguely on the radio.  I remember that it involved, I thought it was a gas station, but it was a supermarket.  I brushed up.  Let me tell you the story of Emmett Till.

He’s 14 years old.  He’s an African-American boy.  He’s from Chicago.  It’s 1955.  He goes to Mississippi to visit relatives.  Well, he’s bragging because Chicago is very different at the time than the South is.  His mom warns him don’t, don’t…be careful when you’re down there.  It’s not Chicago.  She even tells him that a week before his trip that a black man was shot dead in front of a courthouse not far from where he was going.  The killers were acquitted.  Why?  Because of racism.

She says be careful.  Well, he and his relatives and friends head over to a grocery store when he arrives.  It’s a small mom-and-pop place, 7:30 at night.  It’s run by a 24-year-old former soldier who’s away in Texas.  His 21-year-old wife, Carolyn, is running the store.  Well, Emmett is standing outside, and he pulls out a picture of a white girl and brags to relatives and some friends there, and they’re all young, that he had sex with her.

Well, his friends don’t buy it.  Down South, whites and blacks don’t even shake hands, let alone have sex.  And they don’t believe it.  And he said I’m telling you.  Well, they say, you prove it.  And he’s like how am I going to prove it?  You go in and flirt with her behind the counter.  Well, he does it because again, he’s from Chicago.

He goes in, he buys some gum, and then when he puts the gum down, she grabs the gum and the money, and he takes his hand and puts it on hers, first thing in the South you don’t do.  And then he looks at her and says how about a date?  In Chicago in 1955, maybe not a big deal.  In Mississippi, that sort of contact all the way around was off limits.  And the people, his friends and relatives who were all young, they’re all getting nervous for him outside, but he didn’t stop.

He then reached for her waist and said you know, I’ve been with a white girl before.  She pushes him away.  Feeling he’s proved himself, he then leaves the store.  But when Carolyn’s husband, Roy, returns home and hears what happens, a friend joins him to track down Emmett and knocks on the door where he is staying.  Now, does this sound so far at all like the Zimmerman case?  At all?  Doesn’t to me.

Well, this is where these two guys, racists, knocking on the door, they demand to see the “N-word” who did all the talking.  And they take Emmett out to a pickup truck, and they drive off into the night.  Does that sound like the Zimmerman case?  They bring him over to Roy’s house where they pistol whip him, beat him with a gun, slashing his face hard with the gun.

Emmett’s defiant.  He’s from Chicago, and Roy’s friend becomes enraged.  He explained it later after the trial – because of double jeopardy, he  actually was open about it, and he explained it in Look magazine.  This is what he said:  “I never hurt a n****r in my life.  I like n*****s – in their place – I know how to work ’em.  But I just decided it was time a few got put on notice.  As long as I live and can do anything about it, n*****s are gonna stay in their place.”  That’s what he said.

Emmett doesn’t have any idea what he’s dealing with because he’s never seen it before.  He’s never seen deep-seated hatred like this in the South.  He remains defiant.  He starts to brag about having sex with white women, further enraging the men.  “I stood there in that shed and listened to that n****r throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind.  ‘Chicago boy…I’m tired of ’em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble.  Goddam you, I’m going to make an example out of you – just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.’”

They’re no longer trying to scare him.  They’ve made the decision to murder Emmett.  Does this sound like what George Zimmerman did?  But wait, there’s more.  They then take Emmett out and drive him to a ginning company.  I find it ironic that if I remember right, it was the Progressive Ginning Company.  There, they grab a large industrial fan that had been discarded, and they drive him to a remote location.  They force him to strip.

They say to him, “you still as good as I am?”  He says yes.  Now, he’s covered in blood.  His cheekbones have been broken at this point.  They had taken a finger and gouged one of his eyes out.  “You still ‘had’ white women?”  Yeah, he says.  Rage, hatred, racism, they put a gun and shoot him in the head.  Emmett’s dead instantly.  But they still weren’t done.  They take barbed wire, and they run it around Emmett’s neck, and they attach it to the fan, and then they throw his body into the river.

Three days later, fishermen find his body eight miles downstream.  His head is almost flattened by the pistol blows.  Emmett’s mother insisted, insisted – good for her – on an open casket so the whole world – before I show you this picture – don’t put this picture up yet – so the whole world would never ever forget, so they could see what happened.  I’m going to show you this picture, but I warn you, look away, because it’s not a picture you can unsee.  This is what mom wanted us to see.  Now, you tell me, you tell me this has anything to do with Zimmerman, that this is anything like it.

This picture, thank God, spread nationwide in the media, and the public was outraged everywhere, except in Mississippi.  Both men were acquitted of the crime by a jury of their peers, and because of double jeopardy, the men bragged about their murder in Look magazine.  Really?  Help me out, Oprah.  How are these stories like each other at all, at all?  It’s offensive.  And I would go as far as calling it evil to compare these two events.  One is blatant racism and pure hatred and evil.  The other had nothing to do with race and was tragic all the way around.

Let me tell you something, we have people who are playing on race right now, and we can’t be part of that.  We just have to teach our children, because we’re not going to change the world.  We’re going to teach our children.  We’re going to change our children.  I don’t think the Zimmerman thing had malice involved.  I think it was stupid.  I think he was stupid.  Zimmerman was stupid for going, but it’s not the same as torturing and executing a 14-year-old and then bragging about it.  And it’s a disgrace.

It diminishes what African-Americans suffered through.  It’s offensive.  It’s wrong.  Right or wrong, the truth matters.  Don’t fall into the trap of playing this game.  And this is what we get from the most trusted and the biggest celebrity in America.  By the way, one of the most compelling tellings of this story will be found in this book.  How ironic, how ironic, that one of the best tellings of this story that is currently out on the market is told by a guy who they’re also calling a racist right now.

People like Oprah are too busy promoting their own agenda and their own movie.  I feel sorry for her.  We’ll continue to tell the truth.

The loneliness epidemic: Are machines replacing human connection?

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Seniors, children, and the isolated increasingly rely on machines for conversation, risking real relationships and the emotional depth that only humans provide.

Jill Smola is 75 years old. She’s a retiree from Orlando, Florida, and she spent her life caring for the elderly. She played games, assembled puzzles, and offered company to those who otherwise would have sat alone.

Now, she sits alone herself. Her husband has died. She has a lung condition. She can’t drive. She can’t leave her home. Weeks can pass without human interaction.

Loneliness is an epidemic. And AI will not fix it. It will only dull the edges and make a diminished life tolerable.

But CBS News reports that she has a new companion. And she likes this companion more than her own daughter.

The companion? Artificial intelligence.

She spends five hours a day talking to her AI friend. They play games, do trivia, and just talk. She says she even prefers it to real people.

My first thought was simple: Stop this. We are losing our humanity.

But as I sat with the story, I realized something uncomfortable. Maybe we’ve already lost some of our humanity — not to AI, but to ourselves.

Outsourcing presence

How often do we know the right thing to do yet fail to act? We know we should visit the lonely. We know we should sit with someone in pain. We know what Jesus would do: Notice the forgotten, touch the untouchable, offer time and attention without outsourcing compassion.

Yet how often do we just … talk about it? On the radio, online, in lectures, in posts. We pontificate, and then we retreat.

I asked myself: What am I actually doing to close the distance between knowing and doing?

Human connection is messy. It’s inconvenient. It takes patience, humility, and endurance. AI doesn’t challenge you. It doesn’t interrupt your day. It doesn’t ask anything of you. Real people do. Real people make us confront our pride, our discomfort, our loneliness.

We’ve built an economy of convenience. We can have groceries delivered, movies streamed, answers instantly. But friendships — real relationships — are slow, inefficient, unpredictable. They happen in the blank spaces of life that we’ve been trained to ignore.

And now we’re replacing that inefficiency with machines.

AI provides comfort without challenge. It eliminates the risk of real intimacy. It’s an elegant coping mechanism for loneliness, but a poor substitute for life. If we’re not careful, the lonely won’t just be alone — they’ll be alone with an anesthetic, a shadow that never asks for anything, never interrupts, never makes them grow.

Reclaiming our humanity

We need to reclaim our humanity. Presence matters. Not theory. Not outrage. Action.

It starts small. Pull up a chair for someone who eats alone. Call a neighbor you haven’t spoken to in months. Visit a nursing home once a month — then once a week. Ask their names, hear their stories. Teach your children how to be present, to sit with someone in grief, without rushing to fix it.

Turn phones off at dinner. Make Sunday afternoons human time. Listen. Ask questions. Don’t post about it afterward. Make the act itself sacred.

Humility is central. We prefer machines because we can control them. Real people are inconvenient. They interrupt our narratives. They demand patience, forgiveness, and endurance. They make us confront ourselves.

A friend will challenge your self-image. A chatbot won’t.

Our homes are quieter. Our streets are emptier. Loneliness is an epidemic. And AI will not fix it. It will only dull the edges and make a diminished life tolerable.

Before we worry about how AI will reshape humanity, we must first practice humanity. It can start with 15 minutes a day of undivided attention, presence, and listening.

Change usually comes when pain finally wins. Let’s not wait for that. Let’s start now. Because real connection restores faster than any machine ever will.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Exposed: The radical Left's bloody rampage against America

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For years, the media warned of right-wing terror. But the bullets, bombs, and body bags are piling up on the left — with support from Democrat leaders and voters.

For decades, the media and federal agencies have warned Americans that the greatest threat to our homeland is the political right — gun-owning veterans, conservative Christians, anyone who ever voted for President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden once declared that white supremacy is “the single most dangerous terrorist threat” in the nation.

Since Trump’s re-election, the rhetoric has only escalated. Outlets like the Washington Post and the Guardian warned that his second term would trigger a wave of far-right violence.

As Democrats bleed working-class voters and lose control of their base, they’re not moderating. They’re radicalizing.

They were wrong.

The real domestic threat isn’t coming from MAGA grandmas or rifle-toting red-staters. It’s coming from the radical left — the anarchists, the Marxists, the pro-Palestinian militants, and the anti-American agitators who have declared war on law enforcement, elected officials, and civil society.

Willful blindness

On July 4, a group of black-clad terrorists ambushed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Alvarado, Texas. They hurled fireworks at the building, spray-painted graffiti, and then opened fire on responding law enforcement, shooting a local officer in the neck. Journalist Andy Ngo has linked the attackers to an Antifa cell in the Dallas area.

Authorities have so far charged 14 people in the plot and recovered AR-style rifles, body armor, Kevlar vests, helmets, tactical gloves, and radios. According to the Department of Justice, this was a “planned ambush with intent to kill.”

And it wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s part of a growing pattern of continuous violent left-wing incidents since December last year.

Monthly attacks

Most notably, in December 2024, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione allegedly gunned down UnitedHealth Group CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan. Mangione reportedly left a manifesto raging against the American health care system and was glorified by some on social media as a kind of modern Robin Hood.

One Emerson College poll found that 41% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 said the murder was “acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable.”

The next month, a man carrying Molotov cocktails was arrested near the U.S. Capitol. He allegedly planned to assassinate Trump-appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

In February, the “Tesla Takedown” attacks on Tesla vehicles and dealerships started picking up traction.

In March, a self-described “queer scientist” was arrested after allegedly firebombing the Republican Party headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Graffiti on the burned building read “ICE = KKK.”

In April, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D-Pa.) official residence was firebombed on Passover night. The suspect allegedly set the governor’s mansion on fire because of what Shapiro, who is Jewish, “wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

In May, two young Israeli embassy staffers were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Witnesses said the shooter shouted “Free Palestine” as he was being arrested. The suspect told police he acted “for Gaza” and was reportedly linked to the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

In June, an Egyptian national who had entered the U.S. illegally allegedly threw a firebomb at a peaceful pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado. Eight people were hospitalized, and an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor later died from her injuries.

That same month, a pro-Palestinian rioter in New York was arrested for allegedly setting fire to 11 police vehicles. In Los Angeles, anti-ICE rioters smashed cars, set fires, and hurled rocks at law enforcement. House Democrats refused to condemn the violence.

Barbara Davidson / Contributor | Getty Images

In Portland, Oregon, rioters tried to burn down another ICE facility and assaulted police officers before being dispersed with tear gas. Graffiti left behind read: “Kill your masters.”

On July 7, a Michigan man opened fire on a Customs and Border Protection facility in McAllen, Texas, wounding two police officers and an agent. Border agents returned fire, killing the suspect.

Days later in California, ICE officers conducting a raid on an illegal cannabis farm in Ventura County were attacked by left-wing activists. One protester appeared to fire at federal agents.

This is not a series of isolated incidents. It’s a timeline of escalation. Political assassinations, firebombings, arson, ambushes — all carried out in the name of radical leftist ideology.

Democrats are radicalizing

This isn’t just the work of fringe agitators. It’s being enabled — and in many cases encouraged — by elected Democrats.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz routinely calls ICE “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass attempted to block an ICE operation in her city. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu compared ICE agents to a neo-Nazi group. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson referred to them as “secret police terrorizing our communities.”

Apparently, other Democratic lawmakers, according to Axios, are privately troubled by their own base. One unnamed House Democrat admitted that supporters were urging members to escalate further: “Some of them have suggested what we really need to do is be willing to get shot.” Others were demanding blood in the streets to get the media’s attention.

A study from Rutgers University and the National Contagion Research Institute found that 55% of Americans who identify as “left of center” believe that murdering Donald Trump would be at least “somewhat justified.”

As Democrats bleed working-class voters and lose control of their base, they’re not moderating. They’re radicalizing. They don’t want the chaos to stop. They want to harness it, normalize it, and weaponize it.

The truth is, this isn’t just about ICE. It’s not even about Trump. It’s about whether a republic can survive when one major party decides that our institutions no longer apply.

Truth still matters. Law and order still matter. And if the left refuses to defend them, then we must be the ones who do.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

America's comeback: Trump is crushing crime in the Capitol

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

Trump’s DC crackdown is about more than controlling crime — it’s about restoring America’s strength and credibility on the world stage.

Donald Trump on Monday invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control and deploying the National Guard to restore law and order. This move is long overdue.

D.C.’s crime problem has been spiraling for years as local authorities and Democratic leadership have abandoned the nation’s capital to the consequences of their own failed policies. The city’s murder rate is about three times higher than that of Islamabad, Pakistan, and 18 times higher than that of communist-led Havana, Cuba.

When DC is in chaos, it sends a message to the world that America is weak.

Theft, assaults, and carjackings have transformed many of its streets into war zones. D.C. saw a 32% increase in homicides from 2022 to 2023, marking the highest number in two decades and surpassing both New York and Los Angeles. Even if crime rates dropped to 2019 levels, that wouldn’t be good enough.

Local leaders have downplayed the crisis, manipulating crime stats to preserve their image. Felony assault, for example, is no longer considered a “violent crime” in their crime stats. Same with carjacking. But the reality on the streets is different. People in D.C. are living in constant fear.

Trump isn’t waiting for the crime rate to improve on its own. He’s taking action.

Broken windows theory in action

Trump’s takeover of D.C. puts the “broken windows theory” into action — the idea that ignoring minor crimes invites bigger ones. When authorities look the other way on turnstile-jumping or graffiti, they signal that lawbreaking carries no real consequence.

Rudy Giuliani used this approach in the 1990s to clean up New York, cracking down on small offenses before they escalated. Trump is doing the same in the capital, drawing a hard line and declaring enough is enough. Letting crime fester in Washington tells the world that the seat of American power tolerates lawlessness.

What Trump is doing for D.C. isn’t just about law enforcement — it’s about national identity. When D.C. is in chaos, it sends a message to the world that America is weak. The capital city represents the soul of the country. If we can’t even keep our own capital safe, how can we expect anyone to take us seriously?

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Reversing the decline

Anyone who has visited D.C. regularly over the past several years has witnessed its rapid decline. Homeless people bathe in the fountains outside Union Station. People are tripping out in Dupont Circle. The left’s negligence is a disgrace, enabling drug use and homelessness to explode on our capital’s streets while depriving these individuals of desperately needed care and help.

Restoring law and order to D.C. is not about politics or scoring points. It’s about doing what’s right for the people. It’s about protecting communities, taking the vulnerable off the streets, and sending the message to both law-abiding and law-breaking citizens alike that the rule of law matters.

D.C. should be a lesson to the rest of America. If we want to take our cities back, we need leadership willing to take bold action. Trump is showing how to do it.

Now, it’s time for other cities to step up and follow his lead. We can restore law and order. We can make our cities something to be proud of again.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

POLL: Can Trump make D.C. great again?

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For years, Washington, D.C., has been a symbol of everything wrong with big government—riddled with crime, manipulated stats, and soft-on-crime policies that let gangs terrorize innocent citizens while the elite turn a blind eye. Now, President Trump is stepping up, deploying federal agents after a savage attack on a hero like Edward Coristine, vowing no more "Mr. Nice Guy" as he promises to jail criminals, clear out the homeless encampments, and restore order just like he sealed the border. This isn't just a crackdown; it's a reclamation of our capital from the chaos liberals have unleashed.

Glenn has already covered this on his radio show, exposing how legacy media and Democrats twist crime numbers. They claim that there was a 35% drop in crime while ignoring FBI data showing only a 10% decline, and murders are still sky-high compared to pre-pandemic days. Trump's policies draw parallels to the 1990s, when Congress took control and turned things around, proving that strong leadership can counteract progressive failures. With Democratic mayors crying "power grab" in failing cities like Chicago and Baltimore, it's clear: Trump's bold move is a lifeline for liberty, not a threat. Our capital should be a shining example of America, where leaders can work in peace and foreign representatives can see what this nation stands for without fearing for their lives.

Our nation's heart is at risk from the gaslighting establishment that benefits from disorder, absurdly framing Trump's actions as a "military takeover." Is this the leadership America needs, or will we let the swamp dictate the narrative?

Glenn wants to know what YOU think: Can we trust the media's spin? Should Trump expand this fight? Make your voice heard in the poll below:

Do you support President Trump's deployment of federal agents to crack down on D.C. crime?

Do you believe liberal media and Democrats are manipulating crime stats to undermine Trump's efforts?

Is Trump's plan to jail criminals and relocate the homeless a necessary step to restore order in our capital?

Do you see Democratic policies as the root cause of rising violence in cities like D.C., Chicago, and Baltimore?

Should Trump extend this federal intervention to other failing blue cities to protect American liberty?