GLENNFebruary 22, 2017

Weird Groupthink: Tribal Instinct Explains Milo Yiannopoulos

According to Psychology Today, the phenomenon known as groupthink "occurs when a group values harmony and coherence over accurate analysis and critical evaluation. It causes individual members of the group to unquestioningly follow the word of the leader and it strongly discourages any disagreement with the consensus."

The decision to rescind Yiannopulos' invitation to speak at CPAC was prompted by videos in which he praised pederasty, the act of grown men having sex with post-pubescent boys. However, those videos had long been available on the internet. Why did they make a difference now?

Jonah Goldberg, conservative thought leader and senior editor at National Review, recently published an opinion editorial in The LA Times, diving deep into how the invitation was extended in the first place:

From the outset, many on the right who do not consider themselves part of the Cult of Milo opposed his invitation. The disturbing thing is that, absent these videos, we would have lost the fight.
Even now, Schlapp defends the initial decision to invite Yiannopoulos. On Monday’s ”Morning Joe,” he insisted: “The fact is, he’s got a voice that a lot of young people listen to.” A lot of young conservative people, he should have added, precisely because he enrages so many young liberals.
And that’s part of the problem. We are in a particularly tribal moment in American politics in which “the enemy of my enemy is my ally” is the most powerful argument around.

"This is fascinating," Glenn said Wednesday on radio.

Glenn made the case that what happened to moderate Democrats under Barack Obama is now happening with Republicans under Donald Trump.

"Now that Barack Obama is gone, it's left a vacuum of just who was around him. Hillary Clinton and the Blue Dog Democrat are gone. The Blue Dog Democrat no longer exists. The Hillary Clintons no longer exist. So who are you left with? You're left with Marxists and radicals. And now the Democratic Party is saying, "Oh, man, this is . . . wait. Hold it." And they're seeing --- not all of them --- but enough are seeing what we saw," Glenn said. "The same thing is going to happen with the Republican Party."

Enjoy the complimentary clip above or read the transcript below for details.

GLENN: I want to -- I want to tell you the story about this New Yorker who is becoming a conservative now. And I think these people existed under Obama, but they were -- they were willing to accept more -- let me see if I can find this. From -- yeah --

PAT: You think there were Democrats that were shocked by the radicalism of Obama?

GLENN: Yeah, yeah.

PAT: I mean, his radical ideology where he virtually has Marxist policies. Because we never heard from them.

GLENN: Because I think the same way we're not hearing from conservatives who are shocked by Donald Trump and some of the things that he does and the radicals he has around him. Nobody is saying anything about that.

And it's because you're going to get shouted down, and a lot of people are like, "Well, but I like kind of the stuff -- I like the direction he's headed. So just don't say anything." Okay?

PAT: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

GLENN: And they don't see that -- like they're seeing right now in the Democrats, once you lose, who really is in charge? And so the Democrats -- when I read this thing from the Democrats, it will blow your mind.

But here's what is happening. Here's what happened to the Democrats. And we're at the beginning of it. This comes from Jonah Goldberg. Now, this is just about what happened with Milo and CPAC. The decision to rescind the invitation was prompted by a surfacing of videos, available long on the internet, which Milo praised -- how do you say it? Pederasty? Pederasty. Sex between an older man and prepubescent boys as young as 13. From the outside, many on the right who do not consider themselves part of --

PAT: Had you even heard of such thing?

GLENN: No.

PAT: The reason we don't know how to pronounce a word is because I've never heard of it.

GLENN: I've never heard of it.

PAT: It's the distinction. It's supposed to be post-pubescent. Right? So pedophilia is prepubescent. And after is post.

GLENN: And this is post.

Those who consider themselves part of the cult of -- opposed his invitation. The disturbing thing is, absent these videos, we would have lost the fight, said Jonah Goldberg.

Even now, Schlapp defends the initial decision to invite Yiannopoulos. On Monday's Morning Joe, he insisted, the fact is, he's got a voice that a lot of young people listen to, a lot of young conservative people.

And Jonah says, we should be asking the question: Why are so many young conservatives?

Precisely because he enrages so many young liberals, and that's part of the problem. We're in a particularly tribal moment in American politics, which the enemy of my enemy is my ally. It's the most powerful argument around.

John Tubey, the evolutionary psychologist recently wrote that if he could explain one scientific concept to the public, it would be the coalitional instinct. In our natural habitat, to be alone was to be vulnerable. If you had no coalition, you were nakedly and at the mercy of everyone else, so the instinct to belong to a coalition has urgency preexisting and superseding any policy-driven basis for membership.

This is why group belief is free to be so weird. We overlook the hypocrisies and the shortcomings within our own coalition out of a desire to protect ourselves from our enemies.

This is fascinating. We'll come back to it in a second.

[break]

GLENN: So going over Jonah Goldberg's editorial yesterday in the LA Times. And he's talking about how we are overlooking hypocrisies on our own side. And I contend -- I want to share this with you because I believe this is what happened to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is in worse shape than the Republicans are, by far. They are now fighting for the soul of the party. Are they going to be this Marxist radical party, or are they going to come back to the center?

And I think that Barack Obama gave them -- was such a distraction that nobody cared about who was -- except for us, who was advising him. You know, who were the guys that were really -- that influenced his life and shaped him? And who were the people -- the Bill Ayers and the Bernardine Dohrn and all those people that were in and around this White House? And it gave us, I believe, a false belief on who the average Democrat is.

And that's because I think the average Democrat looked at Barack Obama the way many Republicans are looking at Donald Trump. They may not like him. They may not like all of those -- but they're not -- they're not concerned about Steve Bannon. They're not concerned. They think he's going to be held in place. This is America. We're not going to go against Europe and NATO. That's just not going to happen. And we're going to be fine.

And he's moving the ball in our direction. I think that's the way most Republicans look at him. And they're like, "You know, tell me the things -- yes, he's done some things I don't like, but he's moving the ball in our direction, and we're winning, generally, on the things that we want." Right? Would you agree with that?

I think that's the way many Democrats felt under Barack Obama, except Barack Obama did not have the harsh edges that Donald Trump does. Barack Obama didn't make the average Democrat feel uncomfortable. He was -- he was super slick.

If you would have seen the people -- it's why they brought Michelle Obama at the very beginning back into the White House. You can't talk because she was making average Democrat feel uncomfortable. Her last speech on the campaign trail, the first time around, was the speech where she said, "You know, we're going to have to change our tradition, we're going to have to change our thinking, our history. We're going to have to change everything." And they're like, "No, no, no, that's making Democrats worried."

So they didn't see the Marxist radical rot until now. And now they're being shouted down if they disagree with things like Keith Ellison. And they're saying, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I was really kind of more of a Hillary mainstream supporter, if you will." I think those Reagan Democrats who still voted for Democrat are really in search of a place to go.

Let me explain what happened to the Democrats by using Jonah Goldberg's words on what's happening to us right now. Today, the right sees the left as enemies. And I should say vice-versa.

Milo Yiannopoulos is a hero for many because he fights political correctness and is transgressive.

STU: This is a note, I have no idea really who this person is, and certainly no idea how to pronounce his name. But we should probably settle on one.

GLENN: I like Yiannopoulos.

STU: I don't know if that's it. But I'm fine --

GLENN: It's Yiannopoulos, right?

JEFFY: But we're settling with Yiannopoulos?

GLENN: Yiannopoulos. Yeah.

A flamboyant provocateur, who wears his homosexuality on his sleeve and acts very much like a left-wing performance artist. He gives the right an edgy cultural avatar to pit against the left. At a time when entertainment and celebrity matter more than facts and arguments, he is an entertaining celebrity.

Until recently, he was also a self-described fellow traveler of the racist and anti-Semitic alt-right. He advanced their worldview primarily from his perch as a senior editor of Breitbart News, the website formerly run by Steve Bannon, a senior adviser to President Trump, who also sought to make Breitbart the platform for the alt-right.

STU: Formerly.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

STU: Formerly. Yeah. Formerly. Sure. Formerly.

GLENN: Last year, alt-righters got attention for hurling bigotry at Trump's skeptical journalist on social media. For instance, my National Review colleague David French was subjected to almost daily pictures of his adopted black daughter Photoshopped in a gas chamber with a Nazi uniform-clad Donald Trump poised to push the button.

It was horrible stuff that happened to David French's family.

Yiannopoulos's defense of all of this was that it was funny and rebellious. Quote: Just as the kids of the '60s shocked their parents with promiscuity, long hair, and rock 'n' roll, so too do the alt-right youngs' meme brigades shock older generations with Holocaust jokes and Klan humor.

It was a way for he and his colleague -- it was, he and a colleague wrote for Breitbart, undeniably hysterical.

Well, writes Jonah Goldberg, I can deny that. Countless conservatives defend Milo who admits he's not a conservative, in much the same way Democrats defended the anti-Semitic radio priest Charles Coughlin, as long as he supported the New Deal as Christ's deal.

Conservatives cling to rationalizations to defend their champion. They say he distanced himself from the alt-right. He did cynically, only after "Daddy" -- his term for Donald Trump -- was elected. They credit his claim that he can say anti-Semitic things because his grandmother was allegedly Jewish, and he can say racist things because he sleeps with black men.

These are the kinds of arguments a coalition accepts when it has lost its moral moorings and cares only about winning. Free expression was never the issue. If it were, he would -- he'd be at CPAC and Breitbart expressing the case for ephebophilia. I don't even know what that is. Apparently, conservatives still draw the line there, but not at anti-Semitism or racism. The tent, sad to say, is still big enough for that.

That's Jonah Goldberg yesterday.

My thesis here is that there are a lot of conservatives right now, at least, who are looking at Donald Trump and saying, "I -- I'm -- I'm pretty okay with the direction of where he's going." Nothing bad has happened. Would you agree? We disagree with some of his appointments, but so far, okay. Right?

STU: There's been some good. Been some bad.

GLENN: Yeah, there's been some good. There's been some bad. And I think the average person feels that way on the left. Because we are falling to deaf ears on the thing -- the only thing that the left is hearing. And the left is hearing racist anti-Semitic -- they're looking at the people surrounding Donald Trump.

Basically, the same thing that we did when we were at Fox. We were looking at Van Jones. We weren't looking at President Obama. We were looking at Van Jones. We were looking at George Soros. We were looking at the people behind the man. Now, that was important for us back then because it's who you put in the office around you. And there were some mainstream people around Donald Trump -- I mean, around Barack Obama, that would -- that, of course, the left would say, "They're not all radicals." And they did a good job of washing those radicals clean like Van Jones.

No, he was a former communist. He's not really a communist. He never went to prison. He went to jail. Okay?

They did everything they could to whitewash him, to make their own constituency feel good because Barack Obama was doing the things that were making them happy. But we were saying at the time, guys, you can't give him this much power. You can't do this. Don't turn a blind eye.

Now that Barack Obama is gone, it's left a vacuum of just who was around him. Hillary Clinton and the Blue Dog Democrat is gone. The Blue Dog Democrat no longer exists. The Hillary Clintons no longer exist. So who are you left with?

You're left with Marxists and radicals. And now the Democratic Party is seeing, "Oh, man, this is -- wait. Hold it." And they're seeing -- not all of them -- but enough are seeing what we saw.

The same thing is going to happen with the Republican Party. And I think there's going to be a -- a pull from both of those parties. And what happened in 1854 is going to happen again. And it's going to be a party of common sense and common values, traditional values.

Let me say it that way. But I want you to understand, traditional values, not in the way conservatives view them.

I believe traditional values meaning the American values, which is the Bill of Rights. The people who actually on both sides say, "No, we don't want to spy on our neighbors." No, you don't have a right to spy on me. No, stay out of my bedroom. Stay out of my -- stay out of my pants and my bathroom stall. Stay out of my life. You don't have a right to tell me who I can marry, and you don't have a right to tell me what my priest or my pastor can say from the pulpit. You don't have a right to do that. Leave us alone.

Those traditional values that are enshrined in the Bill of Rights. I think -- and I could be wrong -- I may be being too optimistic. But I think that there is a coming movement of the Bill of Rights. And it's not going to be taken by the Libertarians. Because the Libertarians -- the Libertarians don't do enough for this moral foundation theory that we talked about. I'd like to take you guys -- you guys have to take this test. This moral foundations theory that we talked about, was it last week or this week?

STU: Last week.

GLENN: Last week. Last week, we had Jonathan Haidt on. He's a professor at NYU. Thought he was liberal. Started doing research and realized, "Holy cow, I'm conservative." And I think that is exactly the point.

When you start actually looking beyond the labels -- and he has devised the way to look beyond the labels. And it's called the moral foundation theory. And when you see that, the average conservative actually has five moral foundations.

But we only concentrate on three. Well, the left only has two. And they only concentrate on those two. And unfortunately, the three we concentrate on don't include those two.

And if we would concentrate on those two, we could bring them along. And because Libertarians don't have that moral foundation theory. They don't have any really of those five -- and I'm talking about as a party -- that's why they fell on deaf ears. That's why they couldn't get anybody from the right, and they couldn't get anybody from the left. Because they're speaking to an empty space, an empty auditorium where there's just not enough people.

What they have is the Bill of Rights. They don't have the moral foundations. And believe it or not, a different -- I can't even say that. Not what we claim as a -- as a morality party today. If I said that, you would think, "Well, that's a church-going, God-fearing, red, white, and blue, you know, served in the military -- not that. Not that. Think bigger foundational morals. Think of the Bill of Rights. Think of compassion. Those underscored by common sense are going to become fashionable again. I'm convinced of it.

RADIO

“He was one of ours, and he was taken”: Megyn Kelly remembers Charlie Kirk

Glenn Beck and Megyn Kelly remember their friend, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, a day after he was assassinated at Utah Valley University. They also discuss the manhunt for the killer.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Yesterday was such a surreal day. I was getting to record my special last night. It was in the afternoon. And I'm sitting here in my studio, and I look at the stairs through this glass door that I have here. And my wife is on the phone, and she's standing in the stairway.

And she has her, her hand gripping the stair rail. And I could see it in her eyes, she was on the phone. And I could see confusion, and I could see trouble.

And in my ear, I'm hearing, five, four, three -- and I said, "Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. I need 30 seconds. I need to talk to my wife."

And I motioned for her to come in. And in a confused and dazed sort of way, she kind of stumbles into the room.

And I said, "What's happening, honey?"

And she said, "It's Cheyenne."

I didn't know what that meant. As a dad, you can imagine. I said, "Is she okay? What -- what's happening?"

She meant, it's Cheyenne on the phone.

Cheyenne had just gotten past the crush of the crowd. She called her mom. She said, "Charlie Kirk's just been shot."

"What?"

She sent me some video, and I knew it was true, but hoped for the best until a few minutes later somebody else sent me video that I hope you did not see, of the bullet striking him.

It must have been like what it was when you first saw the Zapruder film, or if you were standing in the Grassy Knoll. You just knew.

I was on with Megyn Kelly, and we were holding on to the hope that he was somehow or another going to survive that. And Megyn said at one point, I don't know why I'm not announcing what everybody else is announcing. But I just can't.

Megyn joins us now. Hi, Megyn.

MEGYN: Hi, Glenn.

GLENN: What a weird 24 hours it has been. Where are you this morning, in unraveling this knot in your head?

MEGYN: I still don't have my arms around it. I -- I don't feel like I've totally digested the fact that he's gone and the way in which he was taken. You know, Charlie truly was such a larger than life figure. We say that term. But it -- it was true about him. At six-five, he truly seemed larger than most of us. And he was, in his gifts, in his tirelessness. And just knowing exactly where the scene. Every story was.

And his raw courage. So many times. We like to think we're courageous in our commentary. You look at Charlie, and you think, now that's try courage. He -- he would just say it like it was.

The things you might be thinking in your head, but you might not want to say explicitly, he said. And he took a lot of slings and arrows for it and was demonized for being all the terrible things, as opposed to people taking him on and saying, "Does he have a point?"

GLENN: You know, I said earlier today, you don't kill the weak. People don't want to try to heal. They just want to speak in anger at times. And anger is part of the grieving process. And I know I'm angry.

But Charlie would face that anger. And what people think is weakness, by showing love and compassion and listening and just having a decent conversation, that's one of the reasons why he was killed. He wasn't -- he wasn't killed because he was weak. Just like Gandhi wasn't weak. He -- he -- he was killed because he was effective.

Megyn, where do we go from here?

She dropped. Can we get her back on the phone. I got an email from somebody today. This morning.

And I want to share the email. I won't share the name. It's short. But I -- I also think I should share the -- my response. Because I think it's how most of us feel.

It -- it comes from a very well-known conservative leader. Glenn, I am devastated this morning.

I am in deep mourning for Charlie. I am in mourning for his family and our country.

And I don't know how to surface from this. I don't know if I do either.

But I would like to share my thoughts with you, a little later on. Megyn is with me.

Megyn, how do we process this? How do we surface from this?

MEGYN: You know, I think as many lost -- we -- we all have to go through the denial and the bargaining. You know, I'm still refreshing my X account, like hoping somehow there's a reversal. You know, like somehow it was all wrong. Somehow we got it all wrong. You know, sometimes the media gets it wrong. It -- it's absurd. We know what the answer is.

But that's a natural reaction when you had a sudden loss in particular. And anger is completely appropriate now too. It's completely appropriate.

You know, we are going to catch this guy. You know, that FBI presser they just held which is very encouraging.

They -- and two things that happened this morning that are of note, Glenn. First, Steven Crowder who is very solid on his law enforcement leak reporting. He has -- he has a proven track history. He's the one that got the manifesto from the trans shooter in Nashville before anyone else. And that's not all.

He's had other leaks, posting a document saying he received from an ATF source on the investigation.

And that says that they retrieved the gun in the would see, behind the campus. Wrapped in a towel. And that there were three unspent cartridges in the gun. That had transgender and antifascist ideology. Something written on them.

Now, that piece of -- that last piece of it was not confirmed by the FBI at the presser they just held, but every other thing was.

The Crowder report was confirmed in every detail, including naming the kind of gun. He had that right. He had the location right. He had the trail and the tracking of the suspect right.

They did not volunteer the business about what was written on the cartridges, nor did anyone there ask. Because those reporters almost certainly don't follow Steven Crowder because those reporters will probably tell you, he's not to be trusted.

Now, this is an early report. And it could turn out to be wrong. But that's the update as far as we know it.

And the FBI revealing that they have a picture of him, that they did, of course, track him on his way to the shooting spot with surveillance cameras, of course, on these college campuses. We would expect that in dorms or class buildings.

And they appear confident. At least to me. That they've got the guy. And if they've got the weapon, Glenn. Well, they may or may not have fingerprints.

But they almost certainly have DNA. They almost certainly DNA, which I'm sure they're uploading right now, into every database, they can.

You know, within we saw -- they're not supposed to use the public databases. Sorry, private like 23andme or Ancestry.com. Though, in Culverter (phonetic), they did. And that is how they found Culverter. Sometimes they do.

And even just a public database of DNA. Can lead you at least to a family member somewhere near a shooter or suspect. And then it's just a matter of charts and a few hours in getting to that person's relative. So I believe they will find the shooter.

And then we'll know the ideology. And then we'll have a place to put some of the anger. Like, an explanation or something that will help us understand what deranged person. And I don't mean that in a clinical sense. Did this yesterday.

I just feel like, I don't know where to go, until I figure out who did this and why.

GLENN: It was about midnight last night, when I talked to the president.

And he was very clear, that we will find whoever is responsible for this. And justice will be served.

He was extraordinarily confident in that. Which gave me an awful lot of hope.

I don't know if you saw his speech last night, that he gave from the oval.

But I thought -- very powerful. Hit exactly the right tone.

Hit exactly the right tone.

But I think the days of us fooling around and nibbling at the edges. I think those days are over.

MEGYN: I agree. And one of the things that Trump said last night that was so good was, he used the word "terrorism." That's exactly right. You know, that's -- that is how a lot of us are feeling.

And I know you've had the same experience I've had in the last 24 hours, Glenn, where virtually everybody I know in the media business has reached out. I think there are a lot of folks who are in Arlene, in particular, in conservative media, who are very rattled by this because he was one of ours.

And he was taken. You know, he -- obviously, we all have concerns about personal security now with the shooter at loose. You know, at large as well. But I just mean that -- like the betrayal and the need to rise up and protect ours. And the people we value and love.

You know, this is like -- I don't want to say a call to arms. Because I'm not encouraging violence. But, I mean, a unifying call for us to stand shoulder to shoulder and stand up.

GLENN: Yeah. It is absolutely a wake-up call. To anybody who thought, you know, "Oh, it's just going to pass us by," it's not. This is -- this is the call of our age. And how we respond, is going to determine the future of freedom in this country. But I have great confidence that we will respond just as we did after 9/11.

We responded with conviction. We responded with an intelligence sort of way. We overreacted in some ways, that I would like to avoid this time.

But we came together as a nation, and did what had to be done.

For the preservation of our nation.

Now, if we can have the moderation lesson learned this time. Perhaps we will be good. But I think the days of Antifa not feeling any ramifications for their work and others, those days are over! As of yesterday.

Megyn -- I just -- go ahead.

MEGYN: Go ahead, Glenn. I was just going to say. One of the things we did after 9/11 was when the stock market opened two days later. We -- we all bought stocks. We just -- it could have been a 5-dollar to being. But everyone did it to send a message that the financial center would stand. And I think we are going to see a reaction on college campuses when it comes to free speech by conservatives unlike we've ever seen before. In a similar vein.

GLENN: I agree. I'm proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with you, Megyn. And be in the trenches with you all the time. You are a light in a lot of darkness. And I appreciate our years of friendship. And everything that you've done for the country. Thank you!

MEGYN: Likewise, my friend. Thanks for having me.

RADIO

“Our country has changed forever”: Charlie Kirk's BlazeTV friends reflect on his death

BlazeTV hosts Liz Wheeler, Steve Deace, and Allie Beth Stuckey join Glenn Beck to reflect on the assassination of their friend, Charlie Kirk. They also discuss where the conservative movement goes from here and what they believe the impact of his death will be.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: I spoke to you yesterday. And we were both pretty raw at the time. How are you doing this morning?

LIZ: I -- I am in a fog of grief, Glenn. I think that a lot of us are -- it still feels very unbelievable what happened to our very dear friend, Charlie Kirk. I feel like I'm floating up outside of my body in a sense, watching all of this unfold.

It's quite something to see the reaction, from the American people over this assassination. I think you're correct when you say that our country has changed forever. I think this is one of the most significant -- not just political assassinations, but political events that we've experienced since the inception of our country.

And I think I've been praying about this, since you and I spoke for so long yesterday.

I've been thinking about this endlessly.

Obviously, on my knees, praying for sweet Erica and Charlie and Erica's two babies. But I think one of the things that's happened in the last 24 hours is people in our country, and I don't even want to say conservatives.

I don't want to say right-wingers because it's not just that, have realized that Charlie is so normal. He's not radical. He's not extreme.

He's not bombastic. He's not edgy. He's just a regular guy. And he's kind. And they killed him because of those beliefs and opinions, those principles and values, Glenn, that we share with him.

And you and I work in this industry, and you've written a lot of books about this political enemy that we face, and we talk about it a lot.

But for the majority of the American people, this is the first time, Glenn, that they're realizing, exactly who this political enemy that we face is.

And it's jarring, and it's gut-wrenching. Because they realize, that just as easily as they assassinated Charlie Kirk and are now dancing on his grave, they want to do that to us, too. (crying)

GLENN: Liz, I -- and I know you do. I have such faith in the Lord. And I know -- I don't know how our lives end.

I don't know how things work out. But I know everything that happens is used for his good. There is no way to thwart God's plan. You can make it -- you can make getting there harder. You can make getting there more painful.

But if we trust in him, great and glorious things are going to happen. Because of this.

LIZ: Charlie once said --

GLENN: Go ahead.

LIZ: Charlie once said, when someone asked him what he wanted to be known for the most -- and he wore a lot of hats, so he could have picked a lot of different accomplishments and identities. And he said he wanted to be known for his faith.

And that's -- it's so powerful. You and I are clinging to God right now. Everyone sitting here with us is clinging to God. I'm literally sitting here, gripping a rosary as we talk. Evil happens in our world, and we all ask that question, "Why? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good and innocent people?"

And, you know, as Father Mike Schmitz reminded us yesterday, "When evil happens, that is not God's perfect will. It is God's permissive will, which is very different."

God allowed Charlie's death to happen, but he did not want it to happen. God values human freedom and can bring about a greater good through these allowed events. But God does not allow evil. He uses it to achieve his higher purpose. When sometimes we don't know what that is, and I -- I'm human. I find it very difficult not to have an immediate answer to, "Okay. What is that higher good?"

But it could be testing faith or demonstrating compassion, teaching people how to uphold his perfect will of good.

And if God were to remove evil from the human existence, he would also be removing our free will to love him and to love others. And he knows that despite the evil that he allows to exist in the world, this greater good can be achieved for eternity, which is where Charlie is now.

And, Glenn, there are a lot of bad people online right now. You know, celebrating Charlie's death and saying how ironic it was, that Charlie was killed by a gun when he was a champion of gun rights. But you want to know what the real irony is? The real irony is that Charlie, at this moment in eternity, I guarantee you, Glenn, is praying for those who did this to him.

GLENN: You know, yesterday I said, "I think I might have done the hardest things I've done. I walked to the front gate, and I lowered my flag to half-mast for a dear friend."

And I think that is going to be easy compared to the forgiveness and the compassion and the restraint that is going to be required from all of us in the coming days. I think that's going to be very difficult. And I don't know how you do it, if you don't have God.

LIZ: I don't. I can't imagine moving forward without God. The Bible says, "He is my rock. He is my refuge."

And I can tell you, that that's the only thing that's helping me swim through this fog.

Charlie was such a good man, Glenn. Such a good man. You know, he once actually hired me -- this was a decade and a half ago. He hired me to work for Turning Point USA, but I wasn't going to -- my start date for starting that job wasn't going to be for, like, three months down the road because that's a new financial cycle. And in the interim after we had signed that contract, but before I had started, I got offered my first television job on OIN. And so I preemptively quit on Charlie.

And I remembered talking to him. And saying, "I know this is such a sucky move for me to preemptively quit on you after we had agreed. But, Charlie, what would you do?"

And he was so gracious, Glenn. He was so generous. He said, "You are -- you're going to kill it. You're going to -- you will use this platform to glorify God and save this country."

And he was always so encouraging. Yesterday, I was looking back at our text thread, because for as busy as this man was, he never neglected talking to his friends.

And during some of the most challenging moments in my public life, who was texting me encouragement, but Charlie Kirk? This -- it is hard to think about how to move forward, but one of the things -- and I know that it's hard to articulate clearly in this moment. But one of the things that I know with crystal clarity at this moment. Is we are not going to be silenced by an enemy who harms us.

We are not going to back down. We are not going to be quiet. We are going to honor Charlie's legacy. We are going to care for and love Charlie's families.

We are going to understand in a clearer sense exactly what we are up against. And it's going to -- with God on our side, it is going to lead us to victory, in a way that our country has not yet experienced. Because we do have this binary choice.

The left wants violence. The left wants Civil War.

The left wants to hurt us and kill us.

But what's going to happen instead, is these people in our country. People who are politically apathetic. Or lukewarm liberal. Or maybe right-wing, but not that active in politics, the same thing is going to happen as a result of Charlie's assassination. That happened after the Black Lives Matter riots.

Or after the COVID vaccine mandates. Where people realized that the other side does not want the best for us.

That the other side, during the Black Lives Matter riots, was willing to falsely accuse us of being racists when that wasn't true. Or during COVID, to tell us that we couldn't go to church and worship God. And we had to take their medical products because they said so, and they didn't care about the harm. Glenn, this is that, times one thousand!

People are now looking out across our country, realizing, that there are subversive forces. And not just a radical lunatic madman incident.

There are radical forces who want to kill us. And the awakening that is going to happen, the eye-opening, you are going to see churches filled with people turning to God. You are going to see politics, a swell of good people, who want to stand for normalcy, and common sense. Two million, 5 million, 10 million Charlie Kirks are going to be minted because of this!

And that's hard to picture in this moment, and there will be hard choices to make because we're angry right now and the left is taunting us, but I have so much faith. I have so much faith in what Charlie did and in the prayers that he is going to be bathing our country in now from eternity.

GLENN: I want to spend a few minutes with another friend of Charlie Kirk's and a good friend of our program and -- and mine. Steve Deace, who follows me on Blaze TV. Steve, I know it has been a hard 24 hours. How are you holding up?

STEVE: I'm pretty devastated. I think I have sobbed more, Glenn, in the last 18 hours than I probably did since the night of my own conversion.

GLENN: Hmm.

STEVE: I'm angry, as I know a lot of people are. And there will be a time, after we -- we need to mourn, first, Glenn. Because otherwise the anger will come out destructively. And it needs to come out, but constructively. And I think we have to mourn first. I think Charlie's legacy as a father, husband, friend, patriot merits that. And I think TP USA and his family need that.

In the not too distant future, we're going to have to get the message that was sent here. He was the best of us. We saw him behind the scenes or in public, genuinely kind, generous.

I -- I -- too many pastors and ministry leaders thought they were too good for Charlie and TP USA. Didn't want to get their hands dirty, and claimed they were being super friendly. And yet, he was the one that sought out the seekers. He went to the places that those nicer than God pastors didn't go to. And he took the bullet that, frankly, that's part of their calling. That they're supposed to take. And I hope in a good way, it shames some of them this morning. That they wake up and they realize, that they have slept on the job. And that's judge somebody like Charlie had to do their job for them.

And as Charlie, you know, named his own organization.

This is a turning point. We're never going back to the way things were before. What we do, next, will decide whether or not they are better. And as one of Charlie's biggest -- biggest supporters and donors texted me this morning, we can only pray that out of one, many will rise up.

GLENN: That's a guarantee. That is an absolute guarantee, that that is going to happen.
You know, when the tyrant is killed, his reign is over. When the martyr is killed, his reign has just begun. And make no mistake, for liberty, Charlie Kirk was a martyr. He was assassinated and martyred yesterday.

And -- and, you know, I -- I -- I -- I think -- I hope, that America -- I wish America could know him the way we knew him.

Because he was a -- he was such a generous man.

STEVE: Uh-huh.

GLENN: It didn't matter who you were, or what rank in life you were, if you needed help, he was there. And --

STEVE: Yep.

GLENN: No matter how busy he was, everything stopped.

And he would help you.

And I saw it in him over and over and over again. And I wish people could see that, because it -- you know, this cartoon character, where they're making him into this bomb thrower, he was anything, but.

I mean, he would have the greatest conversations with people. I mean, I could have done it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit through that nonsense. But he could!

And he could logically and peacefully have a great conversation, with people who despised him. And that was so important for the healing of our nation. And I really think that that's one of the reasons that he was killed, not just because he was effective at what he did, but because he was healing us. Something that is really vital to happen. He was healing all of those divides.

STEVE: I couldn't have said it better myself. And if you just look on social media and see so many people in our movement, who have such incredible -- people I don't know, people that don't know me, such incredible testimonies of everything you just said in their interactions with Charlie.

You know, we had a very divisive presidential primary. And to be honest, I didn't always handle it well. One of the first people I heard from when it was over was Charlie. And he texted me, and he said, "Don't give up. We need you."

He didn't have to do that, he won. And he's got the bigger platform. He's got the bigger show. He didn't have to do that. But that's the -- those are the kinds of things that leaders do.

And the void that is left here is massive. And at my lowest point I've ever had in my faith, the Lord said something to me, that will stay with me the rest of my life. And he said, "Steven" -- I'm sorry.

"Steven, I need apostles, not assassins."

And I want to share that with your audience because to win the fight that will come after this, that is what will be required. If you know me, this isn't about being a pansy. The apostles rebuke. But they don't seek revenge. The apostles confront. But they don't condemn. The apostles did something that Hannibal couldn't do.

No other civilization in the fertile crescent could do, they conquered the Roman empire. They set the stage for Western civilization. And they did not do it because they were passive, and they sit on the sidelines, and they were nicer than God. And they wear pleated khakis and Hawaiian shirts year around with sweater vests.

They did it because they got their hands dirty. They did it because they did the kinds of things we saw Charlie do: Build infrastructure.
Direct, lead, guide.

I mean, we would have to have a literal conclave, Glenn. And literally, everyone in our business and movement. And come up with divisions to do all the various things Charlie himself was leading and doing in that organization.

I told Charlie at dinner recently, "It's like, you were like, if Rush Limbaugh and the Heritage Foundation had a baby. This is what you and TP USA are."

And that's what it's going to take to fill that void. But I can't -- I'm sure with the size of your audience, my inbox -- my wife is going through it, as we speak, it is full of people. You were right. I have to get off the sidelines. I have to do something. My buddy Sloan over at TP USA texted me yesterday, he goes, "You know, I can't tell you how many pastors we're hearing from. They thought they were too pious for us. Too good for us.
And now the stakes have been raised. They're getting it."

And I'm just so sorry, that it took two little children and their -- and their mom's family away from them for two -- for more people to get the message. And I want to -- I want to specifically challenge my generation, Gen X, no more grunge. No more, we're too cool for school. No more, "Well, everything sucks. Nothing we can do." No more.

That was a 31-year-old man doing the work as a young father and husband, frankly it wasn't his time to do yet. He has other primary duties that he should have been given the benefit of devoting to as a husband father, but our generation has set on the sidelines for too long. We must lead. It is our children now that are grown, that are leaving the nest. We are the ones with the free time.

We are the ones with the discretionary income. It is our time now to leave, to stop bitching and complaining about boomers. And I say that to me more than anybody else.

And to stop looking around like we're still listening to Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots and Sound Garden, and nothing is going to get better. It is time now to lead. This is our moment.

And we are the ones that are in a place to do this with the positions of our families and with our productivity and prosperity. We have to step to the forefront now.

GLENN: Such great good will come out of this, Allie.

I know this is a tough day for you, and thank you for joining me.

ALLIE: Yeah. God is in the business of redemption. He's in the business of thwarting Satan's schemes. He's in the business of bringing beauty out of the ashes. He's in the business of bringing glory to himself, and bringing people to himself.

And if Charlie had had the choice, if someone had been able to come to him and say, okay. This is what your death will accomplish, it will accomplish more people hearing the gospel, it will accomplish more people waking up, I know if Charlie had had that choice, he would have said yes. He would have said, "Yes, Lord, send me." And not only would he have, but he did.

He went into the lion's den, and now he is with the lion of Judah. Now he is with Jesus. And everyone is going to know who he was and why he lived and the gospel that motivated him. And that is the only thing right now that is giving me any hope or any peace or any comfort.

GLENN: I know that all I could think of yesterday was how glorious the greeting must have been on the other side. You know, good -- "Well, done, good and faithful servant."

ALLIE: Yes, absolutely.

And before any of us heard the news, before his sweet wife Erica got the phone call, he was already hearing those words. And I am so happy for him.

I'm so happy that he is with the saints and the martyrs and the persecuted through which the Church of Christ has been advanced for millennia. I'm so happy for him. I'm so sad for us. I'm so sad for us, having gained an incredible person. But we -- we lost a huge presence.

GLENN: That's how I know when people have faith. They don't weep for the dead.

They weep for the lost to themselves and to the world and to the families that are hurting.

They -- they mourn that loss on themselves. But they -- they -- when they think of the person who has died, they know exactly where they are.

ALLIE: Yeah.

GLENN: And with Charlie, I -- I -- I -- I mean, I knew him when he was 17, and he was a good kid, but what a change happened to him.

He -- he was on fire for Christ, on fire for that.

ALLIE: Yes. Absolutely. He grew into over the past five to ten years, such a theologically deep and apologetically astute man of God, as he became a husband, as he became a father, as he became even more of a warrior for truth, and that is really what -- that's what inspired me.

And when I heard the news yesterday, I thought, my thought was, that's it. I'm done. I'm throwing in the towel.

That is it for me. I'm not -- I'm not willing to do this anymore.

And then later after he died, I went through some of the texts that he had sent me over the years. He was always sending everyone. All of these friends. These very encouraging texts.

And he sent me this article from a liberal outlet, that of course, had taken some jabs at me. That had made me anxious. And he said, "Well done. Keep slugging."

And I just know that if he were here, that's exactly what he would say, not just to me, but to all of us.

He would say, "No. You can't get out now. You got to keep going. You got to keep going." That's exactly how he would feel, and that's exactly what he would tell all of us.

GLENN: I've received so many emails from people who have said, "I don't know how to get back up again."

ALLIE: Yeah.

GLENN: And I don't know what to tell them other than, faith in God. Faith in God.

ALLIE: Uh-huh.

GLENN: I think if our side, if you will -- boy, I hate that in this context, but if -- if we didn't have God, we would be very much like the left right now.

We would be mired in anger and -- and screaming for vengeance and it would be a really ugly place today.

ALLIE: Yes.

GLENN: If -- if we didn't have God.

ALLIE: Yes. And if Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, like if he wasn't resurrected, then we don't have a hope of a resurrection. If he didn't defeat death, then we can't defeat death. If Jesus didn't live forever, then we can't live forever.

And that's exactly what Charlie always preached. What he always posted on X. What he always said, if you were to be able to text him right now. And say, "Look, Charlie. I've got this really tough thing to talk about today. And I don't know how to say it. I don't know what to say. What are your thoughts on it? What should I say?" I know exactly what he would say, the one word he would text back, and that would be, "Jesus. Just tell them that. Just tell them that Jesus is the only way to fulfillment." That is what he would say. People may not realize that. Every time he went on a college campus, he wasn't just talking about capitalism or Donald Trump, and all those things are important. He shared the gospel.

GLENN: No.

ALLIE: He knew that every single person that walked in front of him, was made in the image of God with a soul that was going to live forever, in one of two places. He desperately wanted the people who hated him to go to heaven. And I just pray that I can have that same boldness for the rest of my life.

RADIO

Charlie Kirk’s Legacy: Courage in the Face of Hatred

Glenn Beck pays tribute to his dear friend Charlie Kirk following his tragic passing. With raw emotion and deep conviction, Glenn reflects on Charlie’s courage, faith, and unwavering commitment to truth in a world that often rewards lies. Drawing parallels to America’s founders, soldiers, and first responders, Glenn reminds us that Charlie’s life and legacy demand an answer to the question: “If not me, then who?” This episode is both a remembrance of Charlie’s extraordinary life and a call to action for all of us to stand firm in faith, defend truth, and carry forward the torch of courage that he so boldly bore.

Watch Glenn Beck's Full 3-Hour Radio Show from September 11, 2025 HERE

Glenn's Show Prep

Weird Groupthink: Tribal Instinct Explains Milo Yiannopoulos

Here’s what we know about the suspected Charlie Kirk assassin

“He was one of ours, and he was taken”: Megyn Kelly remembers Charlie Kirk

Transcript

“Our country has changed forever”: Charlie Kirk's BlazeTV friends reflect on his death

Transcript

Charlie Kirk’s Legacy: Courage in the Face of Hatred