Blog
LatestArticlesVideos
Radio
LivePodcastSerialsStations
TV
Podcasts
The Glenn Beck ProgramThe Glenn Beck PodcastThe Beck Story
Fine Art
Real Estate
Shop
More
AboutCharityBooksSponsorsContact
SEARCH
Live Radio

©2024 MERCURY RADIO ARTS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY

Live

Glenn's Show Prep

Interview with Colorado Sheriff Terry Maketa

May 24, 2013
Wilson

Writer

Colorado was once a staunchly conservative state but things seem to be shifting, at least when it comes to gun laws. The state jammed several new restrictions down the throats of the citizens - but some Sheriffs are standing up and vowing not to enforce the measures. Glenn interviewed one of these brave Sheriffs on radio today.

Full transcript of the interview is below:

we have a Colorado sheriff Terry Maketa on. He is a guy, he's one of the 55 of the 62 sheriffs in Colorado who are signed on now to a lawsuit to stop the new gun control measures in Colorado. He says that they're vague and unenforceable and he's going specifically after the high‑capacity magazine ban and the background check. We had him on the TV show a couple of days ago and I want to make sure you heard of his cause and his name because I think these guys need some help and need some people standing behind them. Terry, how are you, sir?

MAKETA: I'm doing real well. How are you doing?

GLENN: Very good. How far is El Paso County from Denver?

MAKETA: It's about 70 miles to the south, straight south of Denver. And what's surprising to a lot of ‑‑ what's surprising to a lot of people is we are the most populated county.

GLENN: Really?

PAT: Really? What cities ‑‑

GLENN: What towns?

PAT: Yeah.

MAKETA: It's Colorado Springs, and a lot of people don't realize, but the Denver metro area is made up of numerous counties, and El Paso County, Colorado Springs has the highest population.

PAT: Hmmm.

STU: That's interesting. We're always told, Sheriff, that law enforcement is very much behind the left's movement of gun control. They don't want guns on the street and yet in your state it's 55 of 62 sheriffs are standing with you, right?

MAKETA: That is absolutely correct. And one thing that isn't talked about a lot is there are also a lot of chiefs of police that are behind us at the municipal level, but they don't have the freedom to speak their opinions that the sheriffs have.

PAT: Now, this was brought on, Sheriff, by the fact that Colorado just passed, was it four gun measures, and two of them in particular you take exception to. What are those two? And can you describe them a little bit? What do they do?

MAKETA: Well, yeah, there were four bills passed. And of those four, there are two that the sheriffs really have a problem with. The first is the background check, which was really sold to the public in vague terms as a universal background check under the auspice of "We're trying to keep ‑‑ stop criminals from buying guns." And the reality is that it is not limited to just the sale of private firearms. It's far overreaching and it extends to, I like to give the example of a real life scenario of a military friend who goes off on deployment, leaves a firearm with his fiance with whom he shares the house and they are violating the law not only because he doesn't obtain a background check every 30 days but because the magazine possesses more than 15 rounds, which leads me into the second law, and that's the magazine ban. And they banned ‑‑ they set the number arbitrarily at 15 rounds when so many very common firearms are sold and designed with magazines that hold more than 15. But more importantly is they put language in there that if, if it has a removable base plate and can be modified. And when you get into language like that in law, it just subjects law‑abiding citizens to being criminalized and that's really the problem we have with those two in very general terms.

STU: Is there any possible ‑‑ this is interesting because I can't think of anything, in any category of anything you could possibly own that could not potentially be modified in some way. Of course it ‑‑ but anything you buy can be modified if you wish to modify it. How can that ‑‑ I mean, how can you add a restriction like that?

MAKETA: Well, that's our contention is number one, there's some other language that says, you know, what was the intent of the manufacturer? Did they design it with the intent that it could potentially be modified? How is law enforcement supposed to know the intent of the manufacturer? And, I'm not familiar with a magazine that does not have a removable baseplate. They all do because of maintenance and cleaning and so forth. And then for a family ‑‑ or let's say you have a 30‑round magazine. You can never transfer them. I think that's an infringement on your property rights. I mean, we're all ‑‑ we all share a common goal of keeping criminals from obtaining guns. But to be honest common sense should tell us criminals usually don't go to the retail outlets and subject themselves to a background. And when I talk about the lack of empirical evidence to support it, look at how many people are prosecuted who are turned down for checks and it's a dismal, dismal number.

STU: I always find it fascinating. There he an a law in New York that passed, there's this sort of new flurry of gun control laws after Sandy Hook obviously and the one in New York was fascinating in that it said you can have ‑‑ you can't have over, I believe it was seven ‑‑ ten rounds in a magazine, I think it was ‑‑ or seven rounds in a magazine. But, of course, a lot of these guns had a 10‑round magazine. So they had to adjust the law that you can have a 10‑round magazine but you can only put seven bullets in it. That is ‑‑ there is absolutely no way a law like that can have an effect on a criminal. It can only have an effect on a law‑abiding citizen. No criminal is going to stop loading bullets at seven when he's going to shoot up a school. He's going to load as many bullets as he can into there. I mean, do you see any other motivation from these laws, of these laws other than just to take guns?

PAT: Criminalize.

STU: Is there any sort of law enforcement purpose that could possibly be applied to these rules?

MAKETA: Absolutely not. I mean, that is what is absolutely ridiculous is there is absolutely no fact to back these laws, to arbitrarily set numbers at 7, 10, 15 is absolutely absurd. And that clearly shows there's an agenda. And what we saw in Colorado probably is a Republican indication of what occurred in New York, where facts were not allowed into the debate. It was purely emotional and it was purely political posturing and agenda‑driven with one goal in mind: To disarm law‑abiding citizens. Let's focus on the criminals, let's pass laws that hold them accountable and not punish law‑abiding citizens for the actions of one.

And I'll tell you another thing that was forgotten in all of the tragedies involving mass shootings is in most cases the gunmen had multiple firearms. They didn't just have one weapon that they had to reload. They had two and three and four weapons.

STU: Mmm‑hmmm.

PAT: That's not important to those who are just trying to take our guns, though. They don't care about any of the facts. They skip over them. They ignore them. They lie about them. But your contention is right now that not only are these laws unenforceable but you and your fellow sheriffs have no intention of ever enforcing them, right?

MAKETA: Well, we've made that position clear because you can't enforce them without violating citizens' constitutional rights.

PAT: That's fantastic.

MAKETA: Under the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.

GLENN: How do you expect this ‑‑ how do you expect this to end up? I mean, we are headed on a collision course here.

MAKETA: Well, I'll tell you I think we've assembled a phenomenal group of people to defend the citizens and their rights and I think we've raised some very key points in our lawsuit, and I'm pretty confident that this could be a pivotal time, a historic time at least in Colorado to start pushing back. And we've got tremendous ‑‑ it's shocking how much citizen support we have. But I think we're going to be successful ‑‑

GLENN: How can we help you?

MAKETA: And I think the lie told in the legislature is going to come true. And to answer your question, I think the key is to get the word out, get the truth out, and I think citizens will apply the common sense and say, okay, not only was I misled on what these laws are but the facts just don't ‑‑ the facts they were sold to us on just don't add up.

GLENN: All right. Thank you so much and, Terry, let us know how we can help El Paso County, Colorado sheriff Terry Maketa who is leading the fight, new lawsuit now to stop the new gun control measures in Colorado.

You know, as I'm listening to him, I'm thinking the sheriffs like him are going to be the first that are targeted. You know, the ‑‑ I don't know if you saw those pictures on TheBlaze a couple of days ago when there was the small protests that were happening around the country at the IRS offices and these protests were happening and there were police cars there, and in very fine print it said "Homeland Security." In big print it said "Police." And I thought when did we have ‑‑ when did we develop a national police force? When did that happen? We've never had a national police force before. We don't want a national police force, a national police force that would report right directly to the president. You need a national police force, that's the National Guard. And they are called out by the governors, not by the president. By the governors. What they've done is they've destroyed the Tenth Amendment, and this national police force is going to be there to back the other police force, and the first ones that they will bust will be the sheriffs. And the sheriffs are the only ones elected by you. They are elected directly by you. To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. And these guys are going to be outlaws. They really are. I really, truly believe they are going to be in real trouble. Preachers, look. Follow their lead. Follow their lead. If you are a preacher or a pastor or a rabbi, if you are a so‑called community leader, if you don't ‑‑ if you don't know in your heart of hearts that if a tyrant, left or right, ever took control of this country and you don't know that one of the first doors that would be knocked on would be yours, you are not doing your job. You're not standing for man's freedom. What is it you are doing? If you're not the first to be targeted, what purpose do you serve?

The great switch: Gates trades climate control for digital dominion

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.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Antifa isn’t “leaderless” — It’s an organized machine of violence

Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.