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Glenn's Show Prep

How to combat ISIS with 2016 hopeful Rand Paul

December 07, 2015
Ted Tuttle

Editor

On radio Monday morning, Senator Rand Paul accused President Obama of trying to "bait-and-switch" the American people to focus on gun control rather than the real issues threatening our country.

In a speech Sunday night from the Oval Office, the president said the U.S. was doing everything possible to stop ISIS and proposed taking away guns from anyone on a no-fly list. To help illustrate how ludicrous this plan would be, Paul suggested an analogy.

"What if we had a no-fly list and we were going to take away First Amendment rights from certain journalists?" Paul asked. "I think journalists would want some kind of court proceeding before they had their First Amendment taken away. It should be the same for the Second Amendment."

He continued.

"I'm all for taking away guns of terrorists. In fact, I don't want to let them enter our country to begin with," he said.

Pat then asked what Paul's strategy would be for defeating ISIS if he were to become president. Watch his response.

Listen to the full segment or read the transcript below.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

PAT: Senator and US presidential hopeful Rand Paul joining us right now. Senator Paul, welcome to the Glenn Beck Program.

RAND: Good morning, guys. Thanks for having me.

PAT: Thanks for being here. How impressed were you with the presidential speech last night? That had to -- wow, that was --

RAND: Not much, I guess is one way of putting it.

PAT: Not much. Yeah.

RAND: I think that he really has tried to do a bait-and-switch on us. He thinks that we want to talk about gun control, and that's how we're going to stop this, and that this is a domestic situation and we have to do gun control. In reality, we ought to talk about who we're going to admit into the country and whether or not we have strict enough scrutiny on those who come to our country.

STU: It's amazing to see the proposals coming around. Particularly I'm totally worked up about this idea of the no-fly list meaning that you can't execute your constitutional rights. So can you -- because I think to the average person, Senator, you hear a terrorist no-fly list, someone who is on that list can just go and buy a firearm, it does seem insane on its face. Can you explain why that's not the case.

RAND: Well, I guess the way to do it is through an analogy. What if we had a no-fly list and we were going to take away First Amendment rights from certain journalists? I think journalists would want some kind of court proceeding before they had their First Amendment taken away. It should be the same for the Second Amendment. I'm all for taking away guns of terrorists. In fact, I don't want to let them enter our country to begin with.

But the question is, how do we determine who is, and is there some kind of court proceeding? Ted Kennedy was on the watch list. So was Cat Stevens. And so if you have a list like that -- and you also understand in the past, over the past several years, they had these things called fusion centers where they gave out lists to policemen within certain states and said, "You need to be on the lookout for people who have a pro-life bumper sticker, an anti-immigration bumper sticker, constitutional party, or people who support Ron Paul." And these were people who were on a watch list in Missouri. And it's like, well, for goodness' sake, are we going to take away their constitutional rights because some government person put them on a list? So there's a great deal of danger. I would be for it as long as your rights are not taken before you have a court proceeding.

PAT: Rand, we were talking earlier about Cat Stevens being on the no-fly list, and we think he might have deserved it just based on the song Moon Shadow. Do you agree with that?

RAND: You know, I've heard that song about 10 million times, and I may not need to hear it again.

JEFFY: So he agrees.

STU: I think he's on board on that one. That's good. This is amazing.

PAT: That's great. Yeah.

STU: The phrasing from the president last night was really disturbing. He couldn't possibly understand the argument that would -- that would make it so that terrorists on a no-fly list could get a gun. And it's like, well, isn't due process that argument? Is this the same argument we've heard from the left forever that this no-fly list shouldn't even exist and that people are being swept up into it unnecessarily.

RAND: Well, and what they've done really is a bait-and-switch. It's all about gun control instead of being about terrorism. And, really, even if you look at it from the gun control aspect, California has everything the left has ever wanted. Every gun control measure that has ever been sought, California has. And yet these people were still able to purchase guns and have them. Why? Because if you're going to commit suicide, if you're going to kill people and commit suicide, you really don't care too much about gun laws.

PAT: That's very true.

STU: Although they would never speed to get away from the incident because of the speeding laws.

PAT: Right. The speed limit, they'll stay within.

RAND: Exactly.

PAT: So what is the answer to defeating ISIS in the Middle East? If you were to become president, what is your strategy here?

RAND: The first thing I would do is I would stop immigration from the Middle East. I think we ought to just put it on a moratorium and say, until we have a better handle on who is already here and whether the people here are obeying our laws, I would just stop immigration from the Middle East. I would also say that if you're coming from Europe, you have to go through global entry. You have to go through a background check.

Because the problem is, we've had wide open migration into Europe of large populations. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of people who are against western civilization. Against what the governments of Europe as well as our government is -- and so I think you can't just have freedom of travel from Europe to here without some closer scrutiny. So the first thing we got to do is scrutinize travel and scrutinize immigration to our country.

The second thing I would do is I would acknowledge that the only lasting peace, the only lasting victory is going to come from Muslim boots on the ground. Arab boots on the ground are going to have to defeat ISIS.

And the reason is that if American boots on the ground do it or if Europeans do it, they will simply say, "It's infidels. It's Christians. It's Crusaders." And another generation rises up. So it has to be Islam saying, "This does not represent us." It can't be Americans saying, "This doesn't represent Islam," it has to be Muslims saying, "This doesn't represent Islam."

PAT: I like that. Yeah.

STU: Let me give you some standard horse race analysis here. You tell me why it's wrong.

People are saying, Rand Paul had this great moment where people were all of a sudden turning Libertarian. Now with all the ISIS attacks and Paris and everything else, now the typical conservative voter is looking back to sort of the policies they used to have, which was more interventionist and jumping into these situations more often. How do you make a case as Rand Paul to win in that environment?

RAND: You know, the funny thing is that if I weren't reading any of the pundits, which I probably shouldn't be doing, but if I weren't reading the pundits or looking at the national stories as I travel the country, I think our crowds are bigger, more enthusiastic. I think we -- you know, we had over 1,000 kids at a recent college in Iowa. Two different college events. Nearly 1,000 kids. We are drawing large enthusiastic crowds. And I guess I don't see that we're not doing very well until I read the stories from the pundits.

(laughter)

But it's also -- I think this is the first presidential election that I think we've really led by the nose by pollsters. And I think the polling is less accurate than it's ever been. They did polling in Kentucky, and the Republican candidate was said to be down five points with one week to go, and he won by eight points. So they were off by 13 points.

If the polls are off and they're underrepresenting, particularly college kids, where we think we're doing well, and among independents, I think we could be doing much better than it's actually represented. But the bottom line is, we're going to wait and find out from voters. When we hear from voters, you know, I may well reassess. But until then, we're in it to win it. And we'll find out what the voters say February 1st.

PAT: So how long -- how deep can you get into that, into the primary season, Rand?

RAND: We can go all the way through if people will vote for us. Obviously, you have to look and see what your vote totals are. We're not in it just to stay in it for longevity. And as long as I believe that I can win and as long as the votes come in indicating that, we'll be -- we'll stay in the race.

PAT: The next debate is a week from tomorrow. Do you feel like you're under any pressure to do anything spectacular or are you feeling pretty good heading into this?

RAND: Yeah, I'm thinking of singing in my opening. What do you think, a Cat Stevens song?

STU: Yes!

PAT: Just so it's not Moon Shadow, maybe Peace Train?

RAND: Now, Peace Train might be a good one for me to open with.

PAT: Yeah.

RAND: No. I probably will not sing. My wife has forbidden me from singing outside of the house. So -- but, no, I think if we can have a debate like the last one -- the last debate had a little more equality of time for the candidates.

PAT: Yeah, it did.

RAND: And it was more open for discussion. They let you jump in. So I was allowed to jump in and point out, you know, that I didn't think Marco Rubio was a conservative because he wanted to borrow a trillion dollars in new money. And I'm hoping to get to point that out again and again. And I also might want to point out that I don't think he's very good on national defense because he's for an open border, and I think we have to control our border better.

STU: One last thing, Rand. As a doctor and, of course, obviously all doctors are science deniers, we're having this Paris thing go on. And they're talking about these restrictions on CO2. The projected result of which, if all the science is right, in 85 years, instead of the temperature rising 4 degrees, it would rise 3.95 degrees if fully implemented. We have a president who says he wants to go ahead and walk down this road. Why is it the wrong decision?

RAND: Well, I think we shouldn't succumb to alarmists and people who believe the end of the world is near. I think that that kind of conclusion really is not very scientific.

I've introduced legislation to say that any treaty that comes out of Paris that he wants to bring back has to be passed as a treaty. So we would actually have to have two-thirds of the Senate agree to it if it's going to be given to the American people or be enforced or foisted upon us.

But I think if you look at the climate change science, if you want to call it science, really, they've been wrong about almost everything. You know, their modeling has been way off in the last couple of decades. And I think to say that we're going to be drowning, the Statue of Liberty is going to be drowning, the polar bears are going to be drowning and all this nonsense, is to go and leap too far.

Now, does man have something to do with adding carbon to the atmosphere? Sure. But does nature also have something to do with the cycles that we have with our climate? Have we had times in which we've had much more carbon in the air? Have we had times in which we've been much warmer than this? Yes. I don't think we should jump hysterically to conclusions. We should try to control pollutions, and we should the control of pollution with the economy. We just shouldn't say we're just going to cripple our economy in search of something that may or may not be so absolute.

PAT: How do people get involved if they want to help out with your campaign?

RAND: RandPaul.com. Or go to our Facebook. And we would love to see you there.

STU: And if you do make a donation, Rand Paul is promising to sing at the next debate, which I think is exciting.

PAT: Peace Train, so it's going to be good.

RAND: Yeah, there probably is a donation limit at which, if we exceed that, that I will sing.

(laughter)

PAT: Thanks, Rand. Appreciate it.

RAND: All right. Thanks, guys.

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

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

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.