Jay Leno made some news today for his interview with President Obama and commenting on his personal politics and views on the President and his policies. He has received a lot of praise from the left and criticism from the right for saying “He (The President) thinks the way I think." During radio this morning, Glenn defended Leno from the critics while still disagreeing with Leno's analysis of President Obama.
"Ever since [Leno] has been on television, he has handled himself with grace," Beck said. "He has handled himself like a gentleman."
Glenn praised Leno's generosity, both of his time and money. He talked about the time Leno spent two hours taking Glenn around his famous garage on his birthday. He also praised Leno for taking a 50% paycut to cover the expenses of his staff when NBC wanted to reduce costs on The Tonight Show.
"Look how decent this guy is, and he's the guy that NBC and Hollywood and the big corporations are running out of town. This guy should be on television for a long, long time. He's one of the only success stories on television," Glenn said.
While Glenn does think very highly of Jay Leno, he didn't agree with Leno's praise for President Obama.
"I believe everything that Jay is saying here, Jay's not a flame thrower guy. He's a lets get along, and I think he's sitting with Larry O'Donnell, who he probably know, and is like let me say some good things about to the president. And he's also a guy who backs away from all politics. He doesn't want to be involved in all of that, and so it's -- I believe an uninformed opinion. Maybe not. Maybe he's very informed and just disagrees with me. I don't know," Glenn said.
During the interview, Leno said:
Well, the thing I like about him, he thinks the way I think. People are basically decent. I mean, if people didn't want to do the right thing, you couldn't have a country because there's not enough police. So people want to do the right thing.And if you can convince them and tell them from your heart, it's like a lot of people I find don't necessarily agree with President Obama's Obamacare, whatever, but they like the man and they sense that he's trying to do, he's not getting anything out of this himself. He seems to be doing it for the right reasons. So that's why I think it goes along and that's why it passes.
Glenn actually agreed that Obama isn't acting out of a motivation of personal gain and that he truly does believe that he can engineer a better society through government.
"I don't believe the president is telling the truth to the American people. He is hiding his agenda, but I do believe that he truly believes he's doing the right thing for America. He is going to change history, he's going to change and fundamentally transform it because he believes we'll be a much more just society when we rule for the collective," Glenn said.
"He really believes that if he destroys America and the Constitution as we know it, because it's after all (he believes) a fundamentally flawed document, we'll be able to come up with something much more utopian and much better and these people are just standing in our way and we got to shut these people up, because they're standing in our way of peace and harmony an justice for all those things," Glenn said.
Glenn said that Leno was not ascribing to the President the Marxist philosophy that many of his critics see.
Glenn argued that if Leno were to focus more on politics than being an entertainer, he would not be as good as he is at television.