Unbelievable Netflix documentary exposes amateur porn industry

June 05, 2015

WRITER

Stu watches a ton of documentaries, but the last one he watched left him more than a little concerned as a father. A new documentary on Netflix called ‘Hot Girls Wanted’ exposes the twisted world of the amataeur porn industry. How does a teenager go from being a cheerleader in Texas to sex on the internet? It’s much easier than you expect. Stu and Glenn discuss the documentary and debate some of the more questionable scenes on Friday’s radio show.

Watch a trailer for the film below, and scroll down for Glenn and Stu's analysis:

Below is a transcript of this segment:

STU: There is a new documentary on Netflix. It's called Hot Girls Wanted. And I actually did know it was a documentary before I opened it, I promise.

JEFFY: I didn't.

STU: It was Rashida Jones, who was on The Office. She's Quincy Jones' daughter. She's involved in the project. And it kind of chronicles these 18, 19-year-old girls that answer Craigslist ads for modeling or a free ticket to Miami. They go on these trips and wind up after a couple of half steps in hard-core pornography on the internet. And they're -- their transition, it's so sad and depressing. You want to talk about a movie that will make you want to lock up all your children and never let them out, it's that one. You know, there's this girl. Captain of the cheerleading team. Sweet girl from Texas from right around where we are. And, you know, she -- a couple of bad decisions, and she's in dozens of movies that will never go away.

GLENN: Okay. What are the decisions that get you from sweet, stay-at-home, pure as the driven snow cheerleader. Give me the two steps that get you to hard-core porn.

STU: She's unsatisfied with her hometown. She feels like there's no adventure there. You know, she sees the glitz and the glam of Miami. She gets a free ticket there. Lots of money thrown at her. And she's around -- and then she gets down there. She's around these other girls who are already doing it, who have all made these decisions and can all justify them because they've gone through this process in their over and over again. And all of a sudden, there she is. And they show the interactions with this one particular girl from Texas with her mom, when she kind of finds out about it.

GLENN: Oh, jeez.

STU: And, you know, she kind of takes that approach of, you know, you can tell it's killing her. But she's trying not to never talk to her daughter again. You know, she's trying to not blow up in her face.

GLENN: She's trying not to say, you whore!

STU: She's trying.

JEFFY: Wait until I tell your father.

GLENN: He's going to say, you whore!

STU: The other side of it that is really tough, especially as a dad, is seeing this girl go with her dad out shooting. Their little activity they always did together.

GLENN: No, no, no, no, no. Don't. I don't want to hear it.

STU: She has to tell her dad.

GLENN: She tells her dad at a shooting range? What kind of sick movie is this? Yeah. And here's what you'll do. You'll tell your father while he has the shotgun in his hand.

STU: That is a really good point.

GLENN: It didn't occur to you?

STU: No, I didn't think of -- I guess the part of it that's --

GLENN: Oh, my gosh, you don't want to tell me that sweetheart while I have a gun in my hand. Not that I want to shoot you, I just want to shoot somebody else.

STU: Maybe this explains what happened in this situation, that she never got the courage to tell her dad in that particular moment, which is probably smart.

GLENN: Of course not. Can you imagine dad -- you tell dad, and dad is standing there. And some stranger just goes, hey, I've seen your daughter before.

STU: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: At the --

[Gun goes off]

-- supermarket.

STU: One of the most depressing parts -- and there's lots of depressing parts of this movie. But one of the worst is, at the shooting range, he doesn't know. And she's supposed to tell him, but doesn't. And they're having these nice father/daughter moments where she's kind of trying to inch it into the conversation.

GLENN: Does she have cameras following her on this?

STU: Yes.

GLENN: This is cruel. Is she telling him like, oh, dad, I made a huge mistake, or is she like, hey, and I have to tell you about my new career?

STU: She goes through I would say the entire range of it. I think at times she thinks she thinks she'll become a celebrity and marry a rapper.

GLENN: That's another reason to shoot somebody.

STU: Well, it's -- it's like -- just to see though this -- hey, my daughter is away. I don't know. She's with her friends somewhere in Miami, I guess. And, hey, she's back for the weekend. We should go shooting. And he seems like this really nice guy. And he's just sitting there not having this knowledge that, of course, you know as a viewer. And it's just --

GLENN: Why would you watch this?

STU: It's a fascinating story. We should pull clips from it. You would be absolutely fascinated by it. And it's so depressing and scary that it's something that I think the audience would like too. There are times I warn you -- there are some scenes that are pretty rough, if you can't handle Jeffy explicit type material. There are a couple of moments. Not like a lot of nudity. But there are some moments in it that are really hard to take.

GLENN: Oh, so they made this almost impossible to watch now. A hot cheerleader having sex. You're going to have to try to get through that if you really want to see this. It's really -- oh, come on.

STU: I'm warning our audience who does care about such things.

GLENN: I do care. I'm not going to watch that because of that.

STU: But it is a good title.

GLENN: You're trying to do good, you don't show her in that --

STU: I don't know if I buy that.

JEFFY: Yes.

STU: Look, the idea of a good documentary --

GLENN: Jeffy, you have no place to talk here. Yes. You're right. He should show -- I wanted more of that.

JEFFY: I mean, you have to show what she's going through. Right?

GLENN: Shush.

STU: Look, a great documentary works that way well. You know, when you're drawn in by something, you might find it enticing. You might like porn. And you go on the site. You watch these girls go through this, and it's difficult at the end to like it. I'll tell you that.

GLENN: Let me ask you this: How does the producer of this film live with himself?

STU: What are you --

GLENN: Seriously. No, seriously. No, no, seriously. Stu, think of this.

STU: Wow. I don't understand this argument.

GLENN: Just this of this.

STU: Uh-huh.

GLENN: You know that one of my daughters -- let's make up Hildegard. So we're not talking about any of my daughters. Hildegard is --

JEFFY: Frightening name for porn, actually.

GLENN: It is. Hildegard. She's witchy.

STU: Not very marketable.

GLENN: Yeah, I know. So Hildegard is in a porn, okay?

Do you in your wildest dreams, not because of any other reason other than I cannot do that to Glenn say, Hildegard, wait, let's get some cameras and let's capture this while on camera.

STU: Well, you're a friend of mine. I wouldn't do it to you.

GLENN: Okay. But as long as you don't know the person, you're fine.

STU: In a way, yeah.

JEFFY: That's the process.

STU: News cameras --

GLENN: Aren't we supposed to have a heart?

STU: That's ridiculous. So you can't have an interview with someone who is going through something you disagree with.

GLENN: Come on. You know -- you both know, there's something different about your daughter and your relationship with your daughter, and your daughter comes and tells you something like that. Is there a worse place in your life?

STU: No.

JEFFY: Why are you bringing my daughter into this?

STU: Your daughter Hildegard.

GLENN: Beatrice.

STU: But that's not your responsibility.

JEFFY: Oh, my gosh.

GLENN: Seriously, is there anything worse than --

JEFFY: No.

STU: Terrible.

GLENN: -- other than your wife or one of your children has been raped or killed, that is up there with that.

STU: Sure. One of the worst experiences you can experience as a father.

JEFFY: No question.

GLENN: So you're sitting there, and you think you as a producer, I don't care how much good you think you're doing --

STU: Oh, I totally disagree with that.

JEFFY: I disagree with that.

GLENN: You really think so?

STU: I honestly straight-out think that the movie did something positive, which is you're informing people. As a parent, I am damn sure glad I know this stuff is going on. I -- I mean, obviously you imagine that this stuff does occur. Somebody is getting into those videos. Right?

These guys, they show clips of it. They post an ad on Craigslist. Hey, free flight to Miami. Next morning, wakes up, he has seven 18-year-old girls from all around the country in small towns wanting to come down and get into porn. Like, that's how crazy it is. One of the really crazy parts about the movie is they show -- you think, okay, you'll get into porn. You'll sacrifice whatever you're sacrificing to get into it. But at least you'll walk out of that rich. No. There's so much supply of 18-year-old girls from around small towns in America, that these girls aren't even making money out of it. They're walking out of it with almost nothing.

The girl from Texas goes through this. Does three months. She's only able to stay in it for three months. Three months of porn. Films a few dozen movies and makes $25,000. She's done all this for $25,000. Gets home after all expenses with two grand in her account. All of this for $2,000.

GLENN: When we come back, I want to hear what dad's response was.

[BREAK]

GLENN: So we were talking about this Netflix show that Stu wants to -- to not show me, but take me through next week. So maybe next we'll do it. It's a sad tragic story about these girls who are 18 years old. They get out of high school. They want to have an exciting life. Craigslist says, hey, free tickets to Miami. Two moves later, and they're in hard-core porn films. And we were talking about the dad, this documentary shows her coming back to her dad and telling her dad.

STU: Or trying to.

JEFFY: Trying to.

GLENN: So what is the dad's reaction?

STU: They actually don't show it. Which I assume means he was, of course, devastated.

GLENN: Of course, he was.

STU: And did not want to show it. To respect him.

GLENN: How would you react to it?

STU: If I didn't kill myself, I would probably just sob in the corner.

GLENN: I have to tell you, I would be hostile at the cameras first.

JEFFY: Yeah.

GLENN: Get these cameras out of my face.

JEFFY: That's why these cameras are here. For that?

GLENN: Right? Are you kidding me? You thought this was a good idea?

STU: You would be pissed at your daughter for allowing it.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. You would be so angry. And then I would just do nothing, but weep. Holy cow.

JEFFY: Hopefully in the end you would be able to embrace it.

STU: No. No, Jeffy.

GLENN: No. Jeffy. You're misunderstanding.

[BREAK]

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?

How America’s elites fell for the same lie that fueled Auschwitz

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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.