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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.

Americans expose Supreme Court’s flag ruling as a failed relic

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

In a nation where the Stars and Stripes symbolize the blood-soaked sacrifices of our heroes, President Trump's executive order to crack down on flag desecration amid violent protests has ignited fierce debate. But in a recent poll, Glenn asked the tough question: Can Trump protect the Flag without TRAMPLING free speech? Glenn asked, and you answered—thousands weighed in on this pressing clash between free speech and sacred symbols.

The results paint a picture of resounding distrust toward institutional leniency. A staggering 85% of respondents support banning the burning of American flags when it incites violence or disturbs the peace, a bold rejection of the chaos we've seen from George Floyd riots to pro-Palestinian torchings. Meanwhile, 90% insist that protections for burning other flags—like Pride or foreign banners—should not be treated the same as Old Glory under the First Amendment, exposing the hypocrisy in equating our nation's emblem with fleeting symbols. And 82% believe the Supreme Court's Texas v. Johnson ruling, shielding flag burning as "symbolic speech," should not stand without revision—can the official story survive such resounding doubt from everyday Americans weary of government inaction?

Your verdict sends a thunderous message: In this divided era, the flag demands defense against those who exploit freedoms to sow disorder, without trampling the liberties it represents. It's a catastrophic failure of the establishment to ignore this groundswell.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

Labor Day EXPOSED: The Marxist roots you weren’t told about

JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Contributor | Getty Images

During your time off this holiday, remember the man who started it: Peter J. McGuire, a racist Marxist who co-founded America’s first socialist party.

Labor Day didn’t begin as a noble tribute to American workers. It began as a negotiation with ideological terrorists.

In the late 1800s, factory and mine conditions were brutal. Workers endured 12-to-15-hour days, often seven days a week, in filthy, dangerous environments. Wages were low, injuries went uncompensated, and benefits didn’t exist. Out of desperation, Americans turned to labor unions. Basic protections had to be fought for because none were guaranteed.

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

That era marked a seismic shift — much like today. The Industrial Revolution, like our current digital and political upheaval, left millions behind. And wherever people get left behind, Marxists see an opening.

A revolutionary wedge

This was Marxism’s moment.

Economic suffering created fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. Marxists, socialists, and anarchists stepped in to stoke class resentment. Their goal was to turn the downtrodden into a revolutionary class, tear down the existing system, and redistribute wealth by force.

Among the most influential agitators was Peter J. McGuire, a devout Irish Marxist from New York. In 1874, he co-founded the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States. He was also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor, which would become the most powerful union in America.

McGuire’s mission wasn’t hidden. He wanted to transform the U.S. into a socialist nation through labor unions.

That mission soon found a useful symbol.

In the 1880s, labor leaders in Toronto invited McGuire to attend their annual labor festival. Inspired, he returned to New York and launched a similar parade on Sept. 5 — chosen because it fell halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

The first parade drew over 30,000 marchers who skipped work to hear speeches about eight-hour workdays and the alleged promise of Marxism. The parade caught on across the country.

Negotiating with radicals

By 1894, Labor Day had been adopted by 30 states. But the federal government had yet to make it a national holiday. A major strike changed everything.

In Pullman, Illinois, home of the Pullman railroad car company, tensions exploded. The economy tanked. George Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages for those who remained — yet refused to lower the rent on company-owned homes.

That injustice opened the door for Marxist agitators to mobilize.

Sympathetic railroad workers joined the strike. Riots broke out. Hundreds of railcars were torched. Mail service was disrupted. The nation’s rail system ground to a halt.

President Grover Cleveland — under pressure in a midterm election year — panicked. He sent 12,000 federal troops to Chicago. Two strikers were killed in the resulting clashes.

With the crisis spiraling and Democrats desperate to avoid political fallout, Cleveland struck a deal. Within six days of breaking the strike, Congress rushed through legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.

It was the first of many concessions Democrats would make to organized labor in exchange for political power.

What we really celebrated

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

Kean Collection / Staff | Getty Images

What we celebrated was a Canadian idea, brought to America by the founder of the American Socialist Party, endorsed by racially exclusionary unions, and made law by a president and Congress eager to save face.

It was the first of many bones thrown by the Democratic Party to union power brokers. And it marked the beginning of a long, costly compromise with ideologues who wanted to dismantle the American way of life — from the inside out.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Durham annex EXPOSES Soros, Pentagon ties to Deep State machine

ullstein bild Dtl. / Contributor | Getty Images

The Durham annex and ODNI report documents expose a vast network of funders and fixers — from Soros’ Open Society Foundations to the Pentagon.

In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The truth behind ‘defense’: How America was rebranded for war

PAUL J. RICHARDS / Staff | Getty Images

Donald Trump emphasizes peace through strength, reminding the world that the United States is willing to fight to win. That’s beyond ‘defense.’

President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.

At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.

A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.

From ‘war’ to ‘military-industrial complex’

Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.

Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.

Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.

Peace through strength

When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.

Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.

The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.

Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.

That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.

Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.

Names matter

When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.