Rick Santorum launches "Patriot Voices"

June 11, 2012

Writer

After a campaign that didn't quite get a candidate where they he or she wanted to go, many are willing to happily sink into the backgrund or launch new careers. Some end up on cable news, while others try their hand at radio. And while many still support the principles they campaigned on, fewer have taken an active role in shaping the elections once they've left their candidacy. Rick Santorum, who arguably was the closest to winning the nomination behind Romney, has decided to continue to stand for conservative principles with his new 501(c)4 organization Patriot Voices, "a grassroots and online community of Americans from across the country committed to promoting faith, family, freedom and opportunity in accordance with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights."

Transcript of the the interview is below:

GLENN: Rick Santorum is here. Oh, jeez, now he's got another website to push. Jeez, I thought we just got out of this Rick Santorumforpresident.org thing and now Pat, every time he's going to talk to him, is going to say patriotvoices.org.

Rick, how are you, sir?

SANTORUM: I thought I was listening to, like, a speech at the academy awards. I mean...

GLENN: Except you don't get a trophy at the ‑‑ you don't get a trophy.

SANTORUM: I want to thank my mom, I want to thank my mom and... no, that was good. Congratulations on the contract.

GLENN: Thank you very much.

SANTORUM: That's good job. Good job. Congratulations and many, many more.

GLENN: Let's talk about you because you're making me wildly uncomfortable talking about me. I don't do it very often. Let me ‑‑

STU: Okay. By the way, you can hear all this on GBTV.

GLENN: Come on! I was the only one who stood up in that meeting and said it shouldn't be named that!

SANTORUM: I never hear you pitching anything on the show.

GLENN: Shush, shush, shush. It's making me very uncomfortable.

SANTORUM: Yes, of course.

GLENN: All right. So Rick, people say that you launched this thing this weekend, patriotvoices.org, which is a 50 ‑‑ 501 ‑‑

SANTORUM: (C)(4).

GLENN: (C)(4).

SANTORUM: Right.

GLENN: Which means ‑‑

PAT: You're running for president in 2016. Basically, essentially that's what it means, doesn't it?

SANTORUM: No, it doesn't. It means we want to be active as much. I can't go out and say this was the most important election in the history of our country and as I was out on the campaign trail and then because the campaign wasn't ultimately successful in making me the nominee, I'm going to pack up my bags and go home. I mean, we have hundreds of thousands of folks who have signed up to help us, we have over 3 1/2 million votes and we have a lot of folks that we hear from a regular basis that want to keep the things that we talked about during the campaign out there and have concerns about the Republican establishment and going forward and whether conservatism is going to, you know, it's going to be front and center and so we're going to use this organization to try to, you know, keep those issues out there, help candidates that support those issues. And I've made it very clear one of the objections is to make sure that Barack Obama's defeated and that we elect a House and a Senate that can get some of the things that are necessary to get done in this country.

GLENN: Okay.

SANTORUM: So this is part of how we're going to help going forward.

GLENN: All right. So help me out. Because Rand Paul came out and he's getting all sorts of heat. And, of course, you're a neocon, too. Rand Paul came out and endorsed Mitt Romney, and immediately he is the Antichrist with the libertarian right and, you know, is, you know, fighting for the destruction of America somehow or another. Can you please explain how a vote that isn't cast is a vote for Barack Obama and what the differences are between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, in case anybody is unclear?

SANTORUM: Well, I mean, Barack Obama's trying to fundamentally restructure America into a country that is unlike the country that we were founded to be and that made us the greatest country in the history of the world. That's the premise of my campaign. That hasn't changed. Barack Obama has a fundamentally different view of what America should be. And it's rooted, as you've talked about in his history which, of course, nobody wants to talk about, but it's been displayed clearly in his public policies which are oriented toward accumulating more power and control into Washington, D.C. It's the destruction of dissemination of the family and media institutions between the individual and government. I mean, it is a comprehensive agenda. Let's just be very clear about this. What Barack Obama wants to do to this country and make it into a European social welfare state and that's probably the kindest thing I could say about what his objective is. Mitt Romney and I have some differences on issues. Mitt Romney understands the greatness of America. He understands the foundational premise of America, limited government, free people, strong families and strong communities. He may not have in my opinion adhered to that on everything he's ever done but his foundational understanding of free enterprise and capitalism and limited government and strong family and media institutions, I have no question about. And that is a fundamental difference between these two candidates that has to be laid out and laid out clearly. Anybody who chooses to step aside in this battle has stepped ‑‑ has basically disarmed themselves and in so doing enabled ‑‑ who otherwise I think would vote for Romney have enabled the other side to have the upper hand.

GLENN: Okay. So your, your objective with Patriot Voices is to stand, to obviously stand, you know, against Barack Obama but will you also ‑‑ let me just ask the question: Will you also stand ‑‑ when Romney wins, will you stand against the GOP and Romney if they start more of this bailout nonsense and everything else?

SANTORUM: Yeah. I've been clear about that. We're here to support candidates that are the best candidates available out there to forward the American exceptionalism view of public policy is to, you know, limited government, free people, strong families, et cetera. At the same time we're going to be here past the election, we're going to be here during the election, and we're going to be an issue‑oriented organization. We are going to hold, whether it's Governor Romney or others, accountable for their campaigns as well as what they do if they're successful in their campaign.

GLENN: Let me ask you this: I know you're for Ted Cruz and you're for Liljenquist, are you not, in Utah?

SANTORUM: I haven't done the official endorsements of that but I have, in fact the last time I talked about this officially was on your show, but for me it's important that we have a strong principle ‑‑ if we can't elect a strong vocal principle conservative in Texas and Utah, what hope do we have? We're not going to elect them in Massachusetts and Maine. We have to go to the states where we can elect these types of real, you know, transformational conservative figures in states that can elect transformational conservative figures, and certainly Utah and Texas are two of them and to me the race is pretty clear as to who those figures are and it's Liljenquist and Cruz.

GLENN: Orrin Hatch has to be a friend of yours.

SANTORUM: Orrin's a good man. I like Orrin. I really do. But, you know, he's been very kind to me over the years but it's time for Utah to have another Mike Lee, someone who's making a difference down there in Washington, D.C.

GLENN: What do you think of Rubio?

SANTORUM: I like what I hear. I mean, I think he's a dynamic, articulate spokesperson. I think he has, you know, he has really a gift to be able to communicate in a very compelling way a vision for the country. I think he's got the vision thing down very well. I may not agree with him on every single issue. He represents a different constituency in Florida than I did in Pennsylvania, but I think he's a great future leader of our country.

GLENN: Is he a ‑‑ is he a ‑‑ is he a true small government conservative?

SANTORUM: Like I said, he represents different constituencies in Florida than I do and there are some issues that we don't necessarily see eye to eye on, but look, my sense is in listening to him and hearing him talk and following him in his career that he is ‑‑ he's understood like a lot of folks as we've gone through these last four or five years that were reaching a point where, you know, things that we may ‑‑ that you may have been able to go along with in the past just simply aren't viable and we need to do what Scott Walker's done, let's provide real strong principled leadership, let's get ‑‑ let's not just talk the rhetoric and understand the vision but let's have that vision actually play, you know, play itself through in the public policy that you support. I can't comment other than the fact that I think a lot of, a lot of conservatives hopefully are coming around to this and getting away from some of the things that they may have done in the past.

GLENN: There is a ‑‑ there is an article in Hemispheres magazine. I'd just like to get your, you know, your idea on this. Hemispheres asks Michelle Obama the question about, you know, saving the planet and, you know, she's really grounded in this gardening bullcrap that she's, you know, pumping out which I believe all the best gardeners come from, you know, right inner city Chicago.

SANTORUM: Inner city Chicago, yeah.

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: But she's asked by how fragile the world is, et cetera, et cetera. And she says, wow, you're asking me to go deeper than I've ever gone before. Jeez. Well, I'm sure it's part about being a mother and watching my own kids grow. They're at the age where they're starting to sprout like a garden in summer. It's such a powerful thing to watch a kid change shoe sizes in just a matter of months. It reminds you that time is fleeting. Things happen. A seed turns into life. It's instantaneous in a way. But then you have to care for that life.

SANTORUM: Ooh.

GLENN: Do you have any gardening comments on that?

SANTORUM: Yeah. We have, you know, seeds that turn into life all the time in America and that unfortunately he and ‑‑ she and her husband don't recognize the dignity of that life when it germinates. But maybe I go off in a different direction there. Look, this is ‑‑ it's wonderful happy talk because it isn't have any real moral implications. The fact of the matter is that what they are ‑‑ what they are putting forward is a ‑‑ and I said this during the campaign and I got a lot of pushback on it but I called President Obama's environmental policies a radical theology. And let me just be clear ‑‑ and I didn't back away from it, and I'm not because it is a ‑‑ it is a in part a faith. It is a ‑‑ it's not a faith in a higher being. It's a faith in nature. It's a faith in sort of this radical element where, you know, nature is the object of our existence, not the other way around. God isn't ‑‑ you know, God is the creator of nature but, no, nature is a creator itself and we have to honor nature. That to me is a very, very scary view of how the world is ordered. And it allows for a lack of moral principles and implication because there's no higher being to call it to. So a lot of this radical environmentalism is rooted in something that I think we have to be very, very careful as to what we're teaching our children and I think we have to teach about creators and we have to teach about the creation, not teach about Mother Earth being something that we have to, you know, to serve.

GLENN: Rick Santorum ‑‑

PAT: And to hear more you wouldn't go to RickSantorum.com anymore. You'd go to patriotvoices.org, isn't that right?

GLENN: Yeah, yeah.

SANTORUM. It's dot‑com, not dot‑org.

PAT: Dot‑com. Patriotvoices.com.

SANTORUM: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that. Thank you so much.

GLENN: All right, all right, all right you two. Thank you very much.

SANTORUM: I know you don't hawk things on your show. So I really appreciate that you took the time to do this.

GLENN: Patriotvoices, is it dot‑com, dot‑org?

PAT: Dot‑com, patriotvoices.com.

GLENN: All right. Okay, Rick. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, sir. Possibly the guy that if Romney doesn't win, possibly the guy that will be the next president of what's left of the United States of America in 2016.

Trump branded a tyrant, but did Obama outdo him on deportations?

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MSNBC and CNN want you to think the president is a new Hitler launching another Holocaust. But the actual deportation numbers are nowhere near what they claim.

Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews, in an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta, compared Trump’s immigration policies to Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust. He claimed that Hitler didn’t bother with German law — he just hauled people off to death camps in Poland and Hungary. Apparently, that’s what Trump is doing now by deporting MS-13 gang members to El Salvador.

Symone Sanders took it a step further. The MSNBC host suggested that deporting gang-affiliated noncitizens is simply the first step toward deporting black Americans. I’ll wait while you try to do that math.

The debate is about control — weaponizing the courts, twisting language, and using moral panic to silence dissent.

Media mouthpieces like Sanders and Matthews are just the latest examples of the left’s Pavlovian tribalism when it comes to Trump and immigration. Just say the word “Trump,” and people froth at the mouth before they even hear the sentence. While the media cries “Hitler,” the numbers say otherwise. And numbers don’t lie — the narrative does.

Numbers don’t lie

The real “deporter in chief” isn’t Trump. It was President Bill Clinton, who sent back 12.3 million people during his presidency — 11.4 million returns and nearly 900,000 formal removals. President George W. Bush, likewise, presided over 10.3 million deportations — 8.3 million returns and two million removals. Even President Barack Obama, the progressive darling, oversaw 5.5 million deportations, including more than three million formal removals.

So how does Donald Trump stack up? Between 2017 and 2021, Trump deported somewhere between 1.5 million and two million people — dramatically fewer than Obama, Bush, or Clinton. In his current term so far, Trump has deported between 100,000 and 138,000 people. Yes, that’s assertive for a first term — but it's still fewer than Biden was deporting toward the end of his presidency.

The numbers simply don’t support the hysteria.

Who's the “dictator” here? Trump is deporting fewer people, with more legal oversight, and still being compared to history’s most reviled tyrant. Apparently, sending MS-13 gang members — violent criminals — back to their country of origin is now equivalent to genocide.

It’s not about immigration

This debate stopped being about immigration a long time ago. It’s now about control — about weaponizing the courts, twisting language, and using moral panic to silence dissent. It’s about turning Donald Trump into the villain of every story, facts be damned.

If the numbers mattered, we’d be having a very different national conversation. We’d be asking why Bill Clinton deported six times as many people as Trump and never got labeled a fascist. We’d be questioning why Barack Obama’s record-setting removals didn’t spark cries of ethnic cleansing. And we’d be wondering why Trump, whose enforcement was relatively modest by comparison, triggered lawsuits, media hysteria, and endless Nazi analogies.

But facts don’t drive this narrative. The villain does. And in this script, Trump plays the villain — even when he does far less than the so-called heroes who came before him.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Can Trump stop the blackouts that threaten America's future?

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If America wants to remain a global leader in the coming decades, we need more energy fast.

It's no secret that Glenn is an advocate for the safe and ethical use of AI, not because he wants it, but because he knows it’s coming whether we like it or not. Our only option is to shape AI on our terms, not those of our adversaries. America has to win the AI Race if we want to maintain our stability and security, and to do that, we need more energy.

AI demands dozens—if not hundreds—of new server farms, each requiring vast amounts of electricity. The problem is, America lacks the power plants to generate the required electricity, nor do we have a power grid capable of handling the added load. We must overcome these hurdles quickly to outpace China and other foreign competitors.

Outdated Power Grid

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Our power grid is ancient, slowly buckling under the stress of our modern machines. AAI’s energy demands could collapse it without a major upgrade. The last significant overhaul occurred under FDR nearly a century ago, when he connected rural America to electricity. Since then, we’ve patched the system piecemeal, but it’s still the same grid from the 1930s. Over 70 percent of the powerlines are 30 years old or older, and circuit breakers and other vital components are in similar condition. Most people wouldn't trust a dishwasher that was 30 years old, and yet much of our grid relies on technology from the era of VHS tapes.

Upgrading the grid would prevent cascading failures, rolling blackouts, and even EMP attacks. It would also enable new AI server farms while ensuring reliable power for all.

A Need for Energy

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Earlier this month, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt appeared before Congress as part of an AI panel and claimed that by 2030, the U.S. will need to add 96 gigawatts to our national power production to meet AI-driven demand. While some experts question this figure, the message is clear: We must rapidly expand power production. But where will this energy come from?

As much as eco nuts would love to power the world with sunshine and rainbows, we need a much more reliable and significantly more efficient power source if we want to meet our electricity goals. Nuclear power—efficient, powerful, and clean—is the answer. It’s time to shed outdated fears of atomic energy and embrace the superior electricity source. Building and maintaining new nuclear plants, along with upgraded infrastructure, would create thousands of high-paying American jobs. Nuclear energy will fuel AI, boost the economy, and modernize America’s decaying infrastructure.

A Bold Step into the Future

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This is President Trump’s chance to leave a historic mark on America, restoring our role as global leaders and innovators. Just as FDR’s power grid and plants made America the dominant force of the 20th century, Trump could upgrade our infrastructure to secure dominance in the 21st century. Visionary leadership must cut red tape and spark excitement in the industry. This is how Trump can make America great again.

POLL: Is K2-18b proof of alien LIFE in the cosmos?

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Are we alone in the universe?

It's no secret that Glenn keeps one eye on the cosmos, searching for any signs of ET. Late last week, a team of astronomers at the University of Cambridge made an exciting discovery that could change how we view the universe. The astronomers were monitoring a distant planet, K2-18b, when the James Webb Space Telescope detected dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide, two atmospheric gases believed only to be generated by living organisms. The planet, which is just over two and a half times larger than Earth, orbits within the "habitable zone" of its star, meaning the presence of liquid water on its surface is possible, further supporting the possibility that life exists on this distant world.

Unfortunately, humans won't be able to visit K2-18b to see for ourselves anytime soon, as the planet is about 124 light-years from Earth. This means that even if we had rockets that could travel at the speed of light, it would still take 124 years to reach the potentially verdant planet. Even if humans made the long trek to K2-18b, they would be faced with an even more intense challenge upon arrival: Gravity. Assuming K2-18b has a similar density to Earth, its increased size would also mean it would have increased gravity, two and a half times as much gravity, to be exact. This would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for humans to live or explore the surface without serious technological support. But who knows, give Elon Musk and SpaceX a few years, and we might be ready to seek out new life (and maybe even new civilizations).

But Glenn wants to know what you think. Could K2-18b harbor life on its distant surface? Could alien astronomers be peering back at us from across the cosmos? Would you be willing to boldly go where no man has gone before? Let us know in the poll below:

Could there be life on K2-18b?

Could there be an alien civilization thriving on K2-18b?

Will humans develop the technology to one day explore distant worlds?

Would you sign up for a trip to an alien world?

Is K2-18b just another cold rock in space?

Big Pharma’s role in rising neurological disorders: Will RFK Jr. uncover the truth?

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Our children are sick, and Big Pharma claims to be the cure, but is RFK Jr. closer to proving they are the disease?

For years, neurological disorders in our children have been on the rise. One in nine children in the U.S. has been diagnosed with ADHD, and between 2016 and 2022, more than one million kids were told they suffer from the disorder. Similarly, autism diagnoses have increased by 175 percent over the past decade. RFK Jr. pledged to investigate the rising rates of neurological disorders as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and this week, he announced a major initiative.

Earlier this week, RFK Jr. announced that the HHS has embarked on a massive testing and research effort to uncover the root causes of autism and the sharp spike in recent diagnoses. The HHS Secretary vowed that the results will be available by September of this year, leaving many skeptical about the study's rigor. Conversely, some speculate that the HHS may have unpublished studies revealing critical insights into these disorders, just waiting to see the light of day.

Glenn brought up a recent article by the Daily Wire referencing a New York Times piece in which experts questioned the legitimacy of ADHD diagnoses. Glenn agreed and suggested that people are just wired differently; they learn, work, and study differently, and the cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all school system simply fails to accommodate everyone.

New York Times' ADHD Admission

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Earlier this week, the New York Times published an article that made a shocking admission: there are no concrete biological markers for ADHD. The clinical definition of ADHD is no longer supported by the evidence, and there are no physical, genetic, or chemical identifiers for the disorder, nor is there any real way to test for it. The paper also admitted that people diagnosed with ADHD would suddenly find that they no longer had any symptoms after a change of environment, profession, or field of study. This suggests that "ADHD" might simply be a matter of interests and skills, not a chronic brain sickness.

The most horrifying implication of this admission is that millions of people, including children, have been prescribed heavy mind-altering drugs for years for a disorder that lacks real evidence of its very existence. These drugs are serious business and include products such as Adderall, Ritalin, and Desoxyn. All of these drugs are considered "Schedule II," which is a drug classification that puts them on the same level as cocaine, PCP, and fentanyl. Notably, Desoxyn is chemically identical to methamphetamine, differing only in its production in regulated laboratories rather than illegal settings.

Worse yet, studies show that these medications, like Desoxyn, often provide no long-term benefits. Testing demonstrated that in the short term, there were some positive effects, but after 36 months, there was no discernible difference in symptoms between people who were medicated and those who were not. For decades, we have been giving our children hardcore drugs with no evidence of them working or even that the disorder exists.

RFK Jr's Autism Study

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Autism rates are on the rise, and RFK Jr. is going to get to the bottom of it. In the year 2000, approximately one in 150 children was diagnosed with autism, but only 20 years later, the rate had increased to one in 36. While some claim that this is simply due to more accurate testing, RFK Jr. doesn't buy it and is determined to discover what is the underlying cause. He is an outspoken critic of vaccines, asserting that the true scope of their side effects has been buried by greed and corruption to sell more vaccines.

RFK Jr. doesn't plan on stopping at vaccines. Similar to ADHD, RFK Jr. suspects other environmental factors could increase of autism or exacerbate symptoms. Factors like diet, water quality, air pollution, and parenting approaches are all under investigation. It's time to bring clarity to the neurological disorders that plague our nation, cut through the corruption, and reveal the healing truth.

Neurological Intervention

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Big Pharma has been all too happy to sit back and watch as the rate of neurological disorders climbs, adding to the ever-growing list of permanent patients who are led to believe that their only choice is to shell out endless money for treatments, prescriptions, and doctor visits. Rather than encouraging lifestyle changes to improve our well-being, they push ongoing medication and costly treatments.

All RFK Jr. is doing is asking questions, and yet the backlash from the "experts" is so immense that one can't help but wonder what they could be hiding. Both Glenn and RFK Jr. have their suspicions of Big Pharma, and the upcoming HHS study might be one of the most important steps to making America healthy again.

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