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Glenn's Show Prep

Did Dick Morris really deliberately mislead voters on the potential Romney victory?

November 14, 2012
Wilson

Writer

I was wrong about the election big‑time, big‑time wrong about the election. I'm always wrong on politics. You shouldn't listen to me on politics.  I don't get it. Quite honestly that's Rush's bag, that's Sean's bag. I can't tell you what to do on politics. I don't know why. I always feel good about my predictions and they're always wrong. And as I said last hour, I know about as much on politics as I do on salads. Not a lot. However, revolutionaries and things that are over the horizon I'm pretty darn good on. Knowing dirtbags, pretty good. I'm a trusting guy, believe it or not. I generally look for the good in people and that's what I generally see first, the good in people. And then I'm disappointed.

I want to talk to you about the truth and if it even matters in America anymore. For a lot of people it doesn't matter. They will say it matters but they don't want to look into it. They've lost their ability to think critically and to weigh things themselves. They will just be spoon‑fed something. That's the thing that anybody who's ‑‑ you know, I would like to invite members of the media to go ahead and do my job for a day. You do talk radio. I don't ‑‑ television, please. Television you sit in a big empty box by yourself surrounded by people who are producers who may agree or disagree with you but that's pretty much it. Talk radio, you have to face the music. Talk radio you're one on one: I'm talking to you, you're talking to me. You call me, write me, and I have to face the music. And I have to do it for three hours a day and I have to defend myself for three hours a day. I have to talk off the top of my head. I'm not reading a TelePrompTer. I'm telling you what I think. It's, this is the hardest job in all of media. Bar none. Quite honestly if I wanted to make my life a lot easier, I would quit radio. Because this is the hardest job. And I believe this is the hardest job not just that I do but in all of media. It's very difficult.

And the reason why it's difficult is because you cannot lie for three hours a day. You are who you are. And people see it. People see it. But you can lie in sound bites. But do people care about the truth? Or are we just spoon‑fed things?

For instance, do I just spoon‑feed you your opinions? If I do, please don't ever call yourself a fan of mine. I want you to think for yourself. I want you to see what I see and then say, "Well, I agree with that or I "I disagree with that" or "I don't know if that's even true. That can't be true." And you go and you research it yourself.

When I miss, I miss honestly. Now, I want you to listen to this whole monologue because I want you to understand what I'm saying about Dick Morris. Dick Morris as you probably know, he predicted pretty much the same thing that I predicted, but he was wrong. I was wrong. But I was wrong, and I believed it.

Last night I read a story on Politico that when Morris was asked about this, he told, he told the truth about why he predicted a Romney landslide. And I read it yesterday afternoon on the way home and I was ‑‑ it was disturbing. Stu and I were on the phone immediately, look at this. Look at this. And I gave him a long list of things that I said, I have to ‑‑ we have to talk to the American people about this. Moore said according to Politico that he only predicted a landslide because he wanted to help Romney.

There was a period of time when the Romney campaign was falling apart, people were not optimistic, nobody thought there was a chance of victory, and I felt that it was my duty at that point to go out and say what I said... - Dick Morris

Got it?  That's shocking.  He thought it was his duty to go out and say what he said because people didn't believe that Romney could win.  I'm reading the story from Politico and I cannot believe it.  He just wanted to help Romney?  It's one thing to be wrong.  It's another thing to knowingly lie to your audience.  It's another thing ‑‑ that is the opposite of TheBlaze.  The truth has no agenda.  I thought it was my duty to say these things.  Stay with me to the end of this monologue.

Now this is not the first time that I've seen major media figures admit that they will not tell the truth to their own audiences. I was told by a very well known and respected financial expert that he would not talk to me about financial collapse because, quote, it would make it more likely, even though he believed much of the stuff that I said was going to happen, he said we had a responsibility to never have that conversation on the air. I said, well, what happens if it does? You're telling people that it's okay, that everything's going to be all right, they won't be prepared. "Yes, but if we have that conversation, because we have credibility, then it's more likely that it will happen." Well, what are you talking about? Are you preparing? Are you bat nipping down the hatches? Are you being more cautious? Well, of course. Oh, but you want to go on the air and tell everybody, don't worry. We've seen this before.

I had another executive tell me that despite the fact that we all knew that what I was saying was true, quote: We have a responsibility to not tell the American people the truth. A responsibility to not tell the truth? Man, I'm ‑‑ I'm sorry. I seem to recall, I was told by somebody else that I have a responsibility to not lie. How was that worded to me? I think it was ‑‑ oh, yeah. Quote: Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not lie. I don't care how big of an executive you are. I can guarantee the guy who wrote those ten safety tips has a bigger title than you do. Another big media mogul said to me, "Glenn, please. Let's stop playing this game. We both love the Constitution but we both know that sometimes you have to do what you have to do, end quote. No. What you have to do at all times is tell the truth. Trust your audience. Trust the American people to have some intelligence. Stop treating them like imbiciles because you're creating imbiciles. And loving the Constitution means always working to strengthen and honor the Constitution. Look, we all honor our marriage certificate, but sometimes guys do what they have to do. It strengthens the marriage." No, it doesn't.

So when I'm ‑‑ I'm thinking about all these things when I'm first reading the Politico. The latest example from Dick Morris, I read that quote and I thought to myself, "We're all wrong sometimes," and I can handle him being wrong. But what he's telling me here is that he knowingly lied to make me feel better and to help Romney. Thank God this guy's not an oncologist. We'd all be dead of cancer. We cannot tolerate this anymore. We must be able to trust the news, which brings me to my last point. Where I really stand on Dick Morris.

Again, here's the clip from Politico that we played a minute ago.

There was a period of time when the Romney campaign was falling apart, people were not optimistic, nobody thought there was a chance of victory.  And I felt that it was my duty at that point to go out and say what I said. 

That's what the Politico ran.  But listen to what the Politico didn't run immediately before and immediately after when we started to do our homework, we didn't take it from the Politico, just like you shouldn't take it just from me.  You should go back and look because apparently you can't trust anybody.  Listen to what Dick Morris actually said.

I called it as I saw it from the polling, and I did the best I could - and I also worked very hard for Romney. ... I spoke about what I believed, and I think that there was a period of time when the Romney campaign was falling apart, people were not optimistic, nobody thought there was a chance of victory. And I felt that it was my duty at that point to go out and say what I said. And at the time that I said it, I believe I was right. - Dick Morris, full quote

And at the time I said it, I believed I was right. There is no scandal here. Dick Morris is not lying to you. Dick Morris does not need, nor probably does he want me depending him. But what Politico did is absolutely inexcusable. You didn't have to take homework, you didn't have to stitch three speeches together. He said it before and he said it immediately after. You had to intentionally go in and try to -  you literally razor blade everything else out. You had to go in and tightly edit to be able to make him sound like he was saying something he wasn't saying.

Yesterday I called my business partner Chris Balfe who works for me and he runs ‑‑ he's my Roy Disney. He's the guy who is building the company. Walt had the ideas, but it was Roy that knew how to build the company. And I called him up and I said, how are you doing? He's up in New York. And he said, Glenn, I'm pushing the biggest damn rock up a hill I've ever tried to pull ‑‑ push. I said, we'll make it. He said, I know. What you've given me a task to do is you've said take a five‑year plan and collapse it to a one‑year plan. I don't know how to do that, Glenn. I know we could make it in five years and we're going to get to the end of this next year and we're going to say, damn it, we did it again. He said, but right now it's a heavy rock. I know. I know.

The reason why I've asked him to push that rock up, the reason why I've been asking you for your help and your tolerance and quite honestly the tolerance of talk radio stations is I believe this country is in real trouble and we're in trouble because the truth is not being reported. It's important. What you do every day is important. Your word is important. What you look into yourself is important.

You know there's a lot of ‑‑ there's a lot of program directors and a lot of people in the media and all over that think, "Oh, well, you know what? It's entertainment and we're here for ratings, we're here for money." The hell we are. The hell we are. If there isn't a reason for us to live at this time right now, if you don't understand what's happening to freedom right now, if you don't know what's happening in our country, "Oh, well, it's always been this way," I'm sorry. It hasn't been. I'm sorry. It hasn't been. Tonight I'm going to show you how it all ends. Tonight at 5:00 on TheBlaze I'll show you how it all ends and I'll show it to you with history in an episode you won't soon forget. 5:00 tonight.

We do these things because we believe in them. If you don't, that's fine. You can listen to us for the laughs or entertainment or whatever. That's fine. But we believe in it. And there are too many people in this industry that don't believe in it. They don't care. They're lazy, they're jaded. I don't know what it is. I'll just tell you this: TheBlaze wouldn't have half the success it's had so far if the media didn't hand‑deliver so many opportunities to show how easy it is to win when the truth is told. It's not that hard. The media is destroying itself and they are destroying our country and our children's future at the same time. You cannot exist as a free people if you cannot reason for yourself. You cannot exist as a free people if you don't know how to critically think. You cannot exist as a free people if you have a corrupt press. You cannot. It doesn't work.

The media is destroying itself on all fronts. It's on fire. But that's why this is called TheBlaze. It's a purifying fire. Stand in the flames of the truth. It will purify. And what is real will stand. What is not will burn itself out. We're happy to pick up the smoldering pieces and dust them off, after they've been purified and put them all back together. I know I'm wrong on politics. I'm not wrong on the direction of many things.

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

  • for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
  • for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
  • for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
  • for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
  • and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.