Steve Deace: Liberals Deconstruct Us Better Than We Construct Ourselves

Steve Deace, host of The Steve Deace Show, joined Glenn in studio Tuesday for an in depth conversation about the future of conservatism.

"I think that we have got to have a time period where there can be some family healing going on, after what's transpired over the last year. And I think I told you yesterday that I didn't really, truly understand how difficult the last six and seven months has been," Deace explained.

Glenn's wide-ranging conversation with Deace covered faith, principles, the media and how conservatives have failed to control their own conversation and identity.

Steve Deace is author of Nefarious Plot, available in bookstores everywhere.

Read below or listen to the full segment for answers to these questions:

• This election was really a repudiation of what?

• Do conservatives have an objective value system?

• Do people think socialism is related to social media?

• Do liberals define diversity by external identities?

• What song did Steve Deace have going through his head the day after the election?

Listen to these segments from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

GLENN: Steve Deace is a talk radio show host. Heard nationwide out of Iowa. And a friend of the program. Author of the new book, Nefarious Plot, which is very C.S. Lewis. I mean, it is a great, great book that everybody should read that is modeled after the Screwtape Letters. And if you like the Screwtape Letters, this is a modern version of it. And I think -- I mean, I hate to say this because it's C.S. Lewis, but I think just, you know, in the same category as good. It is really good, Steve.

STEVE: Wow. That's about the highest praise you can give a theo nerd like me, so I'd like to just walk off now, if that's okay. Send a (inaudible) at the --

GLENN: Yeah, okay. All right. See you later.

That's right. That's right. Welcome to the studios. Glad you're here.

You -- you called together a little get together of some of the people who were Never Trump and reluctantly Trump. And wanted to have a conversation with people of where we go from here. What are you trying to accomplish?

STEVE: Just that. I think that we have got to have a time period where there can be some family healing going on, after what's transpired over the last year. And I think I told you yesterday that I didn't really, truly understand how difficult the last six and seven months has been. Because it's not new necessarily for me. I'm kind of one of those grassroots rabble-rousers anyway.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

STEVE: So being on the outside, looking in, of some of my own friends, is almost like a state of being for me. But this took it to a whole new level. And I really wasn't aware until it was over, just what the weight of what the last few months was like, feeling like every day I was arguing with members of my own audience. You know, people who put food on our table, who we support, that support us, that make it possible for us to do things like this.

Arguing with our own peers and our friends. How many tweets I compose that I had to delete to my own friends because I just couldn't handle some of the things I was seeing. And then wondering how often they weren't doing the exact same thing to me. Right?

And when I got up the next morning, I was like, "Holy cow." It was like Katrina and the Waves. That one, I'm Walking on Sunshine song came on. It was like, "This weight is gone."

And I think there needs to be though some time to assess where we're at. Because I think strategically, we're in a place that we've never been before, as a movement. And that is, taking for granted that a conservative movement still exists, which I have my doubts about that. I think we also need to discuss, what does conservatism even mean?

I was on C-SPAN for an hour a week before the election, and I got that question. And I defined it as, I'm a conservative because I'm trying to conserve the things that history has proven are what's best for the human condition.

And a black man from Detroit calls up and says, "I'm a black man from Detroit." And says, "I've never voted Republican in my entire life, but if someone had explained it to me the way you just did, I might have -- I might have looked at this differently."

I think our damage -- our brand has been damaged quite a bit in this race. And I think it's not a victory as much as a reprieve. I think everybody to some extent is ecstatic the Marxists are out of the White House, right?

But that doesn't necessarily mean that Donald Trump had a character transplant because the communists are gone. And I think you're watching his capricious, mercurial, unstable nature play itself out, just in the Courts of Owls that we're seeing get assembled here in the -- in almost this sort of Kremlin-esque intrigue about transition teams and who's in and who's out.

GLENN: This happens to all of them. Why is this a negative? This happens all the time. The transition team -- this seems normal to me.

STEVE: We're on like our third transition team. This thing has been on it for a week, you know, and there's mixed signals everywhere. And I just think that one thing --

PAT: That's how the Trump camp rolls though.

STU: Well, yes.

PAT: This happened the whole campaign.

STEVE: Because that's how he rolls.

PAT: That's how he rolls.

STEVE: No campaign can rise above its own candidate.

PAT: Right.

STEVE: The candidate is always the one responsible for the outcome of a campaign.

PAT: Right.

GLENN: We should say you were a friend and supporter of Donald Trump's for a long time.

STEVE: At first. At first. A long time may be a relative term.

GLENN: Okay.

STEVE: What really changed my mind for good --

PAT: You endorsed Ted, right? The Iowa caucus.

STEVE: Yes, I did. In fact, I remember I called Ted up in early July. And I told him, I said, "You know, I'm thinking about -- I'm leaning going this way. I'm really thinking about it. You know, I do think we need to burn it down. I I think we need something dramatically different." And about a week later, there was an event in Iowa where they had 13 of the candidates show up. It was a leadership summit. And I was the co-MC with Frank Luntz. And I'm sitting there backstage. I'm actually getting ready to meet with Donald Trump again. He's going to come off backstage. We're going to grab a private room, presumably to try to close me as a supporter. And I'm sitting 20 feet from him when he talks about, "I've never asked God for forgiveness because I've never done anything wrong."

PAT: Right.

STEVE: Which was -- to me, that was the biggest thing that stood out to me, even more than the McCain comments, as offensive as those were. That was the thing like, wow, you just walked into a room of 3,000 evangelicals and dropped that bomb. You may not -- you don't understand what you're walking into.

And then he talked about, "Well, I like soldiers who weren't captured." And I knew -- or, I suspected when they walked off of there, that him and his people were going to ask me, "How do you clean up this mess?" I didn't know what the answer was.

So this was not a great -- this was not a real Men of Courage moment, guys. I hit the eject. I just walked out. Because I was like, I wouldn't know how to fix this. It's done. Don't fix it. Go home. Go back to Trump Tower. This is not fixable. Salvage your brand.

GLENN: But it didn't hurt him. It didn't hurt him.

STEVE: You know why it didn't hurt him? Is Sam Nunberg, who is still a friend of mine, who was the guy that helped set up Trump's original campaign -- Sam called me the next day. He had sent me a column that he had ghostwritten for Trump for USA Today in response to this.

And it was -- and he essentially doubled down on it. And Sam -- and the column was, "Hey, look at all the money that I've given to veterans groups. Look at everything I've done. Who are you people to question me?" And Sam to me -- he said, "Hey, Steve, do you like this column?" And I said, "I think it's forceful. I like it." I go, "Why?"

And he said, "Because I took everything that you put in your book, Rules For Patriots: How Conservatives Can Win Again, the previous book I wrote, and I used that to construct this piece." And I am convinced that that is what turned everything around.

The first time the media came at him -- see, this election wasn't a repudiation of Hillary Clinton. I don't even think it was a repudiation of Barack Obama. I think it was a backlash repudiation of the media. And Trump ran against the media the entire time. Ran against them in the primary. Fox tried to kill him in the first debate. They couldn't. And so's they ended up shilling for him after that. I think he beat the media. And I think most people as conservatives, guys, define their conservatism, not by an objective values -- or, set of values, but by opposition to the liberal media.

GLENN: Explain that.

STEVE: Meaning that I think we're so -- we don't -- first of all, we don't have an objective value system. Ask the average conservative, "Why are you a conservative?" And you're probably not going to get a cogent answer.

I mean, I was listening to the roundtable you had before I came on, and you talked about the Declaration of Independence. When I go around the country, if I teach in churches or I speak in churches or I preach in the church where I go to back home, if I ask believers, "What is the foundation of the Christian faith," almost every time they're going to tell me it's the Bible.

No, it's not. Christ is the foundation of the Christian faith. Paul says, "If Christ isn't raised, you're -- then your preaching is in vain. You're all still dead in your sins."

Christianity is about God supernaturally wove his hand into history to roll the stone away and bring a dead man back to life. Did that fact happen or not? If it did, then the Bible is the clarification of how we are -- how we are then to live in light of that fact.

If it didn't happen, then we're free agents to make this up as we go along.

The -- Christianity's foundation is Christ. The clarification is the Bible. That is the relationship, I believe, between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence is the foundation of America. There is a God. Our rights come from him. Government's only responsible is to protect and preserve those rights so we can reach our God-given potential. And that's it. That's all there is. There isn't anymore. That's it.

And then the inevitable questions that come along when we have conflicts: How do we resolve those things? The Constitution clarifies those conflicts, but the Declaration is the foundation. How often is that foundation ever uttered ever by any conservative?

GLENN: You would have loved -- I just gave this speech Sunday. I wish you would have been there, because it was that -- there's six points in the Declaration. And the Declaration of Independence has those six points, and that's all you need to know. That is the spirit of America. The Constitution is the framework on how to protect that idea.

And we missed that. And progressives have tried to destroy the Declaration. And we don't have a Declaration.

The conservatives are supposed to be saying -- what is a conservative? Well, we hold these truths to be self-evident.

DOM: Right.

GLENN: That all men are created. They're endowed by creator with certain rights that are unchangeable. Those rights come from God. The government is established to be able to protect those rights. That is their main duty: Protect those rights.

STEVE: Uh-huh.

GLENN: That the laws are all based in natural law and -- the laws of nature and nature's God. So the laws out of the Bible. The Ten Commandments.

STEVE: Uh-huh.

GLENN: And what you witness in nature. You can protect yourself because -- a bear can protect itself, so why can't I?

Nature's laws. Nature's God. And the last one is, if a government becomes hostile to that, you have the right to abolish it and reestablish a new government that will protect those rights.

STEVE: Right. That's it.

GLENN: That's the whole idea of America in a nutshell.

STEVE: I know it sounds like we're having a Cleon Skousen class in here. But that's what it is. That's supposed to be what we're conserving. I don't know -- I don't know what most of conservatism is. And it's easy for me to say -- I don't have, you know, one of the ten biggest shows in the country. I haven't written five New York Times best-sellers. But it seems to me that most of conservatism is selling out conferences and selling widgets.

GLENN: Yes.

STEVE: And it's not an advancement of a set of principles, let alone policy.

Does anybody know what the Sam Hill conservative policy actually would be? Forget even defining our principles. Let's see we define those. How would we go about governing accordingly? Has anybody even seen in their lifetime -- except for maybe the first half of Ronald Reagan's first term, before the rigor mortis of Washington set in -- has anybody ever actually seen what governing along those lines would look like, beyond just framing the principles?

GLENN: No. No. No.

And you ask a conservative, "What does it mean to be a conservative?"

Well, I believe in God. And I believe in traditional marriage. And I believe that people should work hard and we should have less, you know, welfare or whatever they want to say.

They make it about the policies.

What does it mean to be a conservative?

STEVE: Uh-huh.

GLENN: There are certain ideas that are universal and everybody knows: That we were created. We were created by a God. That God gave us rights. We've established government to protect those rights. And the minute those rights -- the government starts to abuse those rights, we have a right to abolish it. That is the conservative idea.

And if we can all start to say those things -- because, you know, I was looking -- if you look at the Bill of Rights. Everybody is looking for a place where we can come together now.

Well, what are we going to do on global warming? What are we going to do on Planned Parenthood? What are we going to do about -- we're so far beyond that. We are so -- we have no cornerstone anymore. We have no baseline anymore. So we're just winging it on all of those. There's nothing to be able to say, "Well, our polar star says that we have to do X, Y, and Z --

STEVE: Right. What is the plumb-line of American culture? What is that? --

GLENN: There is none. There is none.

STEVE: There is none. Yeah.

GLENN: And it is the idea of the Declaration of Independence and the framework of the Constitution -- and I know I could go to any college campus -- I could go to Berkeley and say, "Do you believe in freedom of press? That the press shouldn't be restrained?"

Now, this is changing, but right now he with still have, "Yeah, press -- there's a freedom of the press. Yes, there's a freedom to assemble peacefully. Yes, there's a freedom to question the government. Yes, there's freedom of religion." That one is beginning to change too. Because we have abused both the press and religion.

STEVE: Right. There is -- there's a fascinating article at FiveThirtyEight today, which is Nate Silver's site.

GLENN: Yep.

STEVE: And it talks about how Americans may be too religious to accept socialism. And if I wasn't down here hanging out with you all today, here's what I would do on my show, if I was on the air on my show today: I would go on the air and ask my audience, "Why is this true? Why is America -- how come if a people are religious, they will reject socialism?" And I will guarantee you, most of my audience, until I explain it to them won't know.

GLENN: Won't know.

STEVE: And it's because, obviously if the state's going to be God, there can't already be a God. That's why socialism either proceeds secularism every single time.

GLENN: Yes. I don't believe we are too religious for socialism.

STEVE: I don't think we are either. But here's what's fascinating -- my point is, how often we had to see because Fox, Infowars, and Drudge wouldn't do it, and so we saw the mainstream media vetting Trump during the primary, according to his lack of conservative orthodoxy. The liberals were doing it.

Now, FiveThirtyEight, a liberal analytical site is now explaining to us essentially conservative apologetics, why we won't accept socialism because we're still too religious. They're making our arguments for us better than we currently make them. By the way, that's not good, guys.

GLENN: No. Because they're making those arguments so they can understand it and dismantle it.

STEVE: Yes. Yeah, they're deconstructing us better than we are constructing ourselves.

PAT: And the fact is I think that most people have been convinced by the left now that socialism and Christianity are one and the same.

GLENN: Yes. This is what the socialist --

PAT: Way too many people believe that Jesus was a socialist. I just read another article about that.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. Easy. And the rest of the people think that socialism -- and I'm not making this up -- think socialism has something to do with social media.

PAT: Yes.

GLENN: Socialism just means the promotion of Facebook and Twitter.

STEVE: There was a poll a few years ago that found something like six out of ten people that had held elected office felt the electoral college was a place that you went to get trained on how to get elected. So there you go.

[break]

GLENN: Steve Deace is with us. The talk show host and also author of the new book Nefarious Plot, which I can't recommend highly enough. Just a great book.

Steve, so where do we go from here? What happens now?

Because people are hurting. And they are looking for somebody, and they are dismissing people like -- I mean, even those in the conservative movement are dismissing people like Steve Bannon. The media is now saying Steve Bannon is a bad guy. They're absolutely right on this. But the media has such a bad relationship with the American people. By them saying, "He's a bad guy," only makes -- only makes people say, "Well, he must be a good guy."

STEVE: Yeah, I mean, they're doing their best to inoculate Steve Bannon from criticism at this point. And I said this -- PBS called me the day after the election, asked me to come on the round table and discuss from a conservative viewpoint how they missed the Trump phenomenon. And I pointed out to them, "You know, you guys are disconnected from America." And I asked them, "How many people in your newsroom at PBS are pro-life? How many of them go to mass once a week? How many of them go to church? How many of them even considered for voting for Donald Trump? Like a single person. You guys define diversity by external identity. Most of America doesn't. Most of America defines their identity by their value system or what they think they need or want at the time. And so you are literally not talking to most of this country. And that's why you missed that."

And I think -- I think -- I told them, "I think people got the rise of Fox News wrong, that it wasn't that it was G.O.P. TV. That's kind of what it is now. But that they -- they -- they talked about our values without suspicion. You guys do."

GLENN: Yes. Yes. Back in just a second.

[break]

GLENN: The fed is hinting that there might be a rate increase when they meet in December. Stock market looked like it was going to tank when Trump was winning Tuesday night. But after his speech, it rebounded in a uge way. Bigger than Jina. And we're going to talk a little bit about that coming up in a second.

Steve Deace is with us. Steve, what -- tell me, is there the possibility -- because I think we should consider this, that we have been completely wrong. Is there the possibility that Donald Trump becomes Ronald Reagan?

STEVE: I think we should absolutely consider the possibility we've been completely wrong.

Now, I will be -- I will be surprised if we are wrong, and I think what we're seeing in the transition team indicates we're not, that this is --

GLENN: Why?

STEVE: Because it's inconsistent. There is no consistent strain in who is surrounding him, other than, did you help me get to where I'm at?

And if you're a progressive Rudy Giuliani over here and if you're an evangelical pastor's kid Mike Pence over here, you help me get to where I'm at, so find a way to kind of work together.

I mean, Reince Priebus, when he opens his mouth, the Republican machine we all hate comes out in every last syllable. So you're going to go on camera and eat the crap sandwich on TV, and Bannon's going to be my Rasputin in the dark room over calling the Svengali shots. I mean, these two guys have literally nothing in common, other than they both helped Donald Trump get to where he's at.

GLENN: Do you believe that Bannon -- talk radio is saying Bannon is okay.

STEVE: You know, I think I met him once briefly. Been interviewed by him twice on Breitbart radio. All I know is what I've heard from other people. And all I've seen is what I've watched and witnessed Breitbart news become since it essentially become symbiotic with Trump -- and I don't think -- and I'm someone that used to be a regular reader. I don't think I've shared a link or clicked on a link at Breitbart in like nine months. I just got so disgusted by what I saw, that it just -- it literally became dead to me. Same with Drudge. I can't remember the last time I visited Drudge as a website. I just can't handle it. To me, I just look for news in other sources.

PAT: Yeah. That's where we are.

GLENN: So you just don't think there's a chance --

STEVE: I think there's a chance. Listen, my worldview starts with, God raises dead people to life.

GLENN: Right.

STEVE: So to quote the great prophets of Dumb and Dumber, I'm saying there's a chance. There is a chance. But this is why I think we should step back and let it play out. Now, I think the early returns are mixed at best. And the pressures -- the real pressures --

GLENN: What do you disagree with, on his appointments?

STEVE: First of all, I wouldn't have Rudy Giuliani anywhere near my administration.

GLENN: Why is that?

STEVE: Because he's the ultimate progressive Republican. That's why.

GLENN: Well, no, I think Chris Christie is. But he's a close second.

STEVE: He's a close second.

GLENN: Yes.

STEVE: I think that the dynamic between Reince and Bannon is terrible. It strikes me as trying to split the baby in half. And this is often -- as someone that's worked on a lot of campaigns, this is why businessmen are often the worst candidates. Because they think it is like running a company. And it is not.

You know, a CEO can't coin money. A CEO can't command an Army. A CEO can't compel you to do something lawfully or unlawfully against your will. A president can.

And I think that is where -- it's not -- it's not the same. Just because Steve Kerr is a great coach of the Golden State Warriors doesn't mean he can coach the Dallas Cowboys, guys. There's some skills that transcend, but they're totally different pursuits, different personalities, different activities.

You know, and not to mention Trump hasn't always been successful as a manager. He's filed multiple bankruptcies. He's had several failures. It's not the same at all.

And so when I see the Priebus/Bannon thing, this is what it looks like to me: Hey Reince, your reward is you get to go out there and be the guy on camera, and you're going to speak to McConnell and Ryan down there on Capitol Hill. And I'll be Nicholas II over here in a corner dark room while Rasputin is whispering sweet nothings in my ear. And we'll essentially have our own little management team over here, deciding which of your ideas we'll veto and which we won't.

Who is actually in charge? The last thing someone with Donald Trump's temperament needs is to have the people facilitating him in an uncertain chain of command. I mean, when you are as mercurial and capricious as he is, then the people around you have to be ironclad certain.

You know, it's a little like in football. If the head coach is not Mr. Game Manager, then the assistant coaches need to be real X's and O's people. And if the head coach is an X's and O's guy but not Mr. Light You Up In the Room, when he's recruiting athletes, that means the assistant coaches have got to be in there and woo mom and the young -- and her baby boy on the recruiting trip.

Trump is not Mr. X's and O's guy. He's not. So someone else has got to do that. Well, who is that right now? I mean, you kind of have these two towers of Mordor here between -- with Reince -- Reince is Isengard and Bannon is Mordor. They have literally nothing in common, other than they have a common sentiment with Donald Trump.

But you can't run a government that way. Government is not like a business. It's not.

GLENN: But he's going to try to run it -- I mean, one of the most amazing things I saw yesterday -- and I said this wouldn't happen. This couldn't happen. And it's happening. For him to ask for top secret clearance of his children --

STU: They are denying that, by the way, I believe, for what it's worth.

GLENN: Well, that's good. Do you believe it?

STU: Yeah. I don't know.

GLENN: Yeah. I mean, it sounds --

JEFFY: I believe it. I don't know that it will last.

STU: The initial source was an unnamed source. There's some reason to doubt it.

STEVE: I think with stories like this, guys, we're going to have to -- I think we're not dealing with a level of, shall we say, prudent communication we've ever seen from people in power before. I think we're going to have to really sit back and wait until the final deed is done. Because if we react to everything these people say, we're all going to have coronaries. We're going to be like, "This is the big one, Alice, by the time we get to 2017."

So I think we need to just sit back. I think we have to wait for them to actually sign the waiver before we react to the story, like this. Because I think they will seriously just throw crap out there all the time, see if they can get away with it, see what the backlash is. And then say, "We never really meant it."

It's been my experience -- again, I've had a lot of experience in politics. I've never seen anybody govern differently than they campaign. Ever. Ever.

GLENN: It is who they are. That's what my problem was with Donald Trump.

He would say, "I'm not this guy." But your whole life shows that you are.

STEVE: Right.

GLENN: You don't generally change.

STEVE: Right. Not unless something transcended.

GLENN: Yeah. Unless there is a pivot point.

STEVE: Yes.

GLENN: Something big happens in your life, and then you're like, "I'm not that guy anymore."

STU: Is there any chance, you know, becoming president of the United States is that moment?

(laughter)

GLENN: It is a possibility.

STEVE: It is.

STU: Right. Unlikely, but possible.

GLENN: There is a possibility. No, I have to tell you -- I think -- you know, I was thinking about that when -- you know, the next morning Donald Trump woke up. And I thought about it, that next morning. What must that be like, to wake up -- and it's one thing to have your wife roll over and say, "Well, good morning, Mr. President-elect." It's another to then have the Secret Service, the apparatus, the -- everything start to change around you. The weight -- I mean, Truman said he felt like the earth -- I'm sorry. That the moon, the sun, and the stars fell on his shoulders when he found out he was president.

There is a chance that that changes you. A big chance.

STEVE: I think there's also a difference, gentlemen, between winning the presidency and being the president. When your life is defined by Maslow's hierarchy of needs, as Trump's entire existence has been -- he has received now the ultimate self-actualization, right?

GLENN: Yes, yes. Yes.

STEVE: But here's the question: Next May, when the headlines are done and the parades are over and the Organization of American States wants a nine-hour meeting with their emissaries in the White House, does he really want to do that?

JEFFY: Not a chance. Not a chance.

STEVE: Or does he want to be down -- does he want to be teeing it high and watching it fly at the Mar-a-Lago with some Hollywood starlet? What would you rather be doing? I think that's -- you know, I had somebody offer me a job in New York City a few years ago. And I tried really hard for it. I really wanted it. It was dry time in New York. I thought it would be the greatest thing for my career.

And then when I got back home and waited for them to make the decision, I recognized that what the commute would be like, the changes would be like, moving my family to New York City, how different the values were.

And then I realized, "You know what, I think I wanted to win this job more than I wanted to do the job. I wanted someone to come to me as a guy and give me that helmet sticker and say, "Yeah, you got this accomplishment." But did I really want to do this? When all the trades (phonetic) wrote about it and all the accomplishment stuff was done, did I want to do that job?

And I wonder if Donald Trump has truly considered, does he actually want to be the president? Does he want to do it? And that's why the people around him will I think really run the show. That's why it's so important.

GLENN: That's why -- I have a guy who works here now, John Schreiber, who is brilliant. He runs my company. And he said -- he's been asking people as we restructure everything, "What do you want to do every day?" And people will say, oh -- like me. He asked me. "Well, you know, I want to do the radio show. I want to, you know, be able to talk and make a difference and everything else." He said, "No, no, no. What do you actually want to do every day?"

STEVE: Uh-huh.

GLENN: That's very different. And people don't ask themselves that question. They think of the accomplishment. I want to go and do this. I want to be here. That I want job. But they don't necessarily match it with what they actually physically think, "Oh, I'd love to just do this every day."

STEVE: Uh-huh.

GLENN: And they're very different things. And I think Donald Trump in May, may find that. He may not. He may love this. But he doesn't strike me as the guy that does like to be sitting in the office at the late-night meetings.

JEFFY: No.

STEVE: Uh-huh.

GLENN: But I think that's why people like Bannon are so critical to make sure, good guy, bad guy? Because if indeed Donald Trump is the guy who says, "I don't want to be there all the time," he will put it on the shoulders of Rasputin.

STEVE: Well, and this is why, what is the value system? This goes right back to where we started in the conversation, guys.

I mean, this is not a company. You're not selling widgets. The goal is not to end up in the black on a P&L statement. You are governing a free people, and sometimes that means you're going to make decisions that are unpopular. And so is everybody in on advancing that value system?

I know that we look back now on the Obama years, and we look at over 900 Democrats in the legislative branches across the country who lost their jobs under his presidency because of the voter backlash. I will guarantee you though, almost none of them would ever publicly say they regret it, because even though he did it, by hook or by crook, he did more to advance a progressive worldview into our government than any human being has in the last century.

And so, therefore, that's why they got into government, to advance that value system. They're on board with that. That's why they never ever fought back against him, even though it was costing them seats in their own legislatures.

What is the endgame of the Trump presidency? What is making America great again, what is the vision of what that would be?

GLENN: You think it might be -- you think it might be fascism.

STEVE: I think that -- my fear is that our side is going to embrace authoritarianism. Because they saw Obama get away with it. I think there were -- and I hate to say this, but I think there were a lot of older white people that stayed home and watched Fox News all day, that got really justifiably angry at the last four years and what they saw Obama do. And they said, "You know what, we need to go get our own version of that."

GLENN: Well, then did I help cause this?

STEVE: You know, I think we all have, to some extent, played a role in this.

GLENN: I think so too.

STEVE: We're a self-governing people. So there's no one -- you know, nobody is absolved from it.

I think that -- I've looked at some of the rhetoric I've used, that we have to win right now, or we're on the precipice of history.

And I've wondered, what is a sense of urgency? And when am I actually feeding into the sort of panic that causes people to embrace authoritarianism?

GLENN: Do you think anybody on the left is starting to feel this way? Do you think they're self-examining like we are on the right?

STEVE: They soon will. First, they got to do their fake Tea Party Astroturf, get rid of the electoral college crap, which is just clickbait to raise money basically. When they get done with that here in about six to eight months, we get into year two or three of a Trump presidency, I bet you they'll have a newfound respect for separation of powers and limited governments in some way, yes, I do.

GLENN: It's interesting to me, because the New York Times came out this weekend -- and this is what they expressed to me -- when they invited me up, 19 editors from the New York Times editorial board were there. And they wanted to know who we were, what is really happening, what's caused this. What their role was. They were very, I thought, introspective. And they said at the time, we know we have a problem. We're not connecting with the American people. And we need to change that. They came out this weekend and said that.

I think there is some -- there is some movement in trying to be better.

STEVE: I said to Judy Woodrow on PBS, on the panel I was on this week. I said, "Judy, where I come from, a dad who thinks it's a bad idea to have another creepy dude go into the bathroom next to his young daughter in the women's bathroom, that's called a parent. Not a bigot. There's a whole other country out there. You guys don't even interact to it. You lecture to it."

GLENN: Yes. You look down to it.

STEVE: And so as a result, they said, "Let's go find our own person that can smash these people so that we can at least get our side of the story out there." And I think Trump wisely capitalized on that.

GLENN: Thank you so much, Steve. Steve Deace.

Featured Image: Steve Deace on The Glenn Beck Program.

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.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.