On Monday's show, Glenn spent the opening monologue criticizing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's remarks stating that that some conservatives have no place in New York. At the end of the segment, Glenn told the story of a flag he has had on set for the past few months, and how it shows the true spirit of Americans and conservatives who are living in the state.
I don’t think any American, left, right, straight, gay, believer, atheist, believes that less diversity, less voices, more intolerance is better. I don’t think anybody thinks that that that’s what they had in mind when they came up with Excelsior. I’m disturbed because I have 200 employees in New York, and let me tell you, Governor, who we are.
It was the day after 9/11. Dust was still in the air, smoke at Ground Zero. I was there a few days after this, and it was an awful place to be. And I’m sure the governor was there too. And it was a time that united all of us. The day after, it was 9/12, a day when we were amazing to each other, and parties didn’t matter anymore, when we were John Doe.
A woman and her spouse left their apartment, it overlooked Ground Zero, and they didn’t know what to do. Everything was closed. Everything was utter chaos and covered in ash. It was awful. I saw this area a week later, and I will never, it took me a decade to get the smell out of my nose every time I thought of it. It reeked of death.
So here these two are, they’re walking down the street, and they go into a restaurant. And they’re sitting in this restaurant. And they look out the window, and they see this woman covered in ash. And she is distraught and disoriented, and she’s talking to herself. And she has wrapped this flag around her like a shawl.
And they see her coming, and they immediately get up and leave the restaurant and say we’ll be right back. And they go out, and they comfort this woman. She was sitting on the sidewalk, and she was absolutely incoherent. And they couldn’t console her for quite some time. They talked to her about anything, and they talked to her about this flag. And she said I was down at Ground Zero, and it was in the rubble. And I pulled it out. And she was using it as a cover, a shield.
She said that her husband was a police officer. She hadn’t been able to get a hold of him, and she was going down to see if she could find him. She walked across the bridge. It was clear that the odds were not in her favor at the time. Well, they calmed her down, and she stood up. And she said I have to go home. They asked if they could help her, go with her, and they wouldn’t happen.
And she was grateful for the good Samaritans, for they would provide a shoulder to cry on. As they started apart, she took this flag off of her shoulders, and she gave it to this couple. They returned home, and they put that flag on display for everyone to see right outside their window overlooking Ground Zero.
A few years later, they joined something we started called the 9/12 Project, and they tried and tried and tried to get this flag to me because they said the flag didn’t belong to me, it belonged to America. It belonged to anybody who understood who we really were on 9/12. It belonged to everybody that understood that we need to come together, and we need to come together not just after an awful tragedy.
I share this story for two reasons: One, this is who we are. We’re people that live side by side, and we help each other when we’re in trouble. We don’t wait for FEMA, and we don’t wait for the Republicans or the Democrats. We just do it because it’s right.
But the other reason I wanted to share this is the one detail of the story that I left out, the members of the 9/12 project, that couple that was looking for a flag, two Conservatives, they are strong on the Constitution and the right to life and everything else, but they’re also two lesbians, two women, Conservatives, members of this audience who live in New York.
Yesterday, I thought about this flag. As I thought about the governor’s statements, I thought boy, Governor, do you believe they have a place in your state?