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

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

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

Below is Glenn's monologue:

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

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

VIDEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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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.