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Glenn's Show Prep

They Can't Let Go of the Meryl Streep Thing

January 10, 2017
Staff

WRITER

We all know by now the brouhaha created by Meryl Streep's speech at the Golden Globes in which she bravely attacked Donald Trump in front of her like-minded peers. Then, shock of shocks, Donald Trump declared Meryl Streep overrated and irrelevant. The media, rather than letting it go, have become obsessed with debunking President-elect Trump's declaration. Equally unable to let it go were the host and co-hosts of The Glenn Beck Program, who made it their mission to debunk the debunking of Meryl Streep's mediocrity.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

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

GLENN: So I get in early today, and, Jeffy, you would know this because you do the Pat & Stu show. They haven't let go of the Meryl Streep thing.

JEFFY: It's tough to let go of. When you say they, I'm in there with them. It's still tough to let go of.

GLENN: It's tough to let go of.

JEFFY: She is agonizing.

GLENN: Here, this is what kills me is the fact that the media actually tried to do a -- a -- what do they call it? A debunking of that. And they went to see if indeed Meryl Streep was irrelevant and overrated.

JEFFY: I mean, it's --

GLENN: First of all, that's an opinion. That's not -- I mean, this is the thing they decide to spend their time on. Really?

PAT: Pretty weird.

GLENN: It's just so bizarre.

PAT: And, of course, she is overrated.

JEFFY: And irrelevant. I don't know about irrelevant.

GLENN: Make the case.

PAT: Unless you have a standard set of criteria.

GLENN: Because I look at her -- with the exception of that Abba nightmare that just won't leave me alone.

PAT: Mamma Mia! is a good example.

GLENN: Oh, oh.

JEFFY: Yeah.

PAT: And that's one of the ones they feature prominently in that big --

JEFFY: Yeah. The only reason I know that show is because my parents loved that show.

GLENN: Oh, I hated that show. I hated every second of that show.

JEFFY: I know.

GLENN: I would have eaten off my arms, if I could -- if it would have meant I could be free from that --

PAT: And if you didn't like a musical, there must have been something wrong with you.

JEFFY: Right.

STU: Mamma Mia! was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, seeing that you made me go see it.

JEFFY: That's right.

GLENN: Oh, yeah, I did. As a punishment.

STU: As a punishment for something. I don't remember what it was.

PAT: Let's talk Ricki and the Flash.

JEFFY: Another singing one.

STU: I think we can all agree Mamma Mia! was one of the worst things that's ever been created. It's also her highest grossing picture. In case you're worried --

GLENN: But that's not her.

STU: Yeah, I know it's not her. Success, it's not her. And that's kind of the point I'm trying to make. Her entire career is filled with --

GLENN: Sophie's Choice, not good?

STU: '81 to '85, she has two movies in there: Cramer versus Cramer.

PAT: No, that was '79. But '79 to '85 was probably the highlight of her career. Cramer versus Cramer.

PAT: Right.

GLENN: Excellent.

PAT: Sophie's Choice.

GLENN: Excellent.

PAT: And Out of Africa. Is that the other --

STU: You're going to give her out of Africa?

GLENN: I'll give her Out of Africa. What about Silkwood?

STU: Yeah, Silkwood.

PAT: Filmed in this studio on this stage, and that's what it is --

STU: However, I mean, okay. Let's just give her that for the fun of it. That gets you to 1985. So she's got a few movies pre-1985 that you could say are good. Then you have a good decade of nothing, unless you want to throw She-Devil in the mix for a good third.

GLENN: Oh, horrible.

PAT: Are you forgetting Iron Weed?

STU: Thank you very much. So a bunch of nothing until -- now, yes, she appeared -- for example, she was a supporting actress in Defending Your Life. Defending Your Life --

PAT: That's an Albert Brooks --

STU: That's an Albert Brooks movie though. It's not a a Meryl Streep movie.

GLENN: No, but she was good in it.

STU: She was okay in it.

JEFFY: She was okay.

GLENN: She wasn't bad. She was good in it.

STU: Is it a career-defining role? The answer to that is no. The next one of those you get --

PAT: You might say a lot of people liked that.

STU: The next one you get really is Bridges of Madison County.

GLENN: Oh, was agonizing.

PAT: Which was horrific.

STU: Horrible. Horrible.

GLENN: Wait a minute.

STU: Now, ten years --

GLENN: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Let's have the discussion --

STU: Terrible.

GLENN: -- is it horrible -- wait a minute, is it horrible or is it horrible because we saw her and Clint Eastwood with his and her shirts off.

PAT: Yes. That was a big part of it.

GLENN: I was scarred.

STU: That was part of the movie, but it's still a bad movie.

GLENN: I don't have any recollection other than that.

STU: Let's get -- Pat, give the recollection quickly of what happened in the movie, Bridges of Madison County.

GLENN: I know this one.

PAT: Let's see, a hard-working loving considerate husband and father, protector of his wife and children, as kind of a favor -- a good thing for his children and a favor for his wife, takes the two kids to the state fair for a week.

STU: That's nice.

PAT: And while he is doing that loving act of kindness for his wife, she is inviting some stranger -- some drifter who showed up at the door in to do her for the week. I mean, it is a horrific premise.

GLENN: Wow.

STU: What a wonderful --

PAT: I mean, that's the thanks he gets for being a good man. Hideous movie. I hate that book. I hate that movie.

GLENN: I remember reading the book and liking it. I don't remember it framed that way.

PAT: I don't think the book framed itself that way, but that's what it is.

GLENN: Right.

STU: So that's the breakup. From '83 to '95, we find the good piece of work, which is Bridges of Madison County, which as Pat I think just described was not as good as maybe some others say. Then you're taking some more time off from her wonderful success as a magical actress, and you clear -- I mean, you could go to adaptation, which I didn't particularly like, but it was a critical darling --

PAT: I didn't see it, to know what that is.

STU: Then you're going all the way, I would say, to probably Devil Wears Prada.

PAT: Which is a good movie.

STU: Now, Devil Wears Prada is a career-defining movie. I think you could put it that way. However, is it really, be honest, a role that any other somewhat similarly aged actress could do?

PAT: Glenn Close could do it easily.

STU: Oh, absolutely. Sigourney Weaver. Absolutely. There's a dozen people that you could think of at the top of your head.

PAT: Julia Roberts would have had no problem.

GLENN: Yes, yes, yes.

STU: You had to be old and mean. And that was essentially it. And it's not that big of a deal.

GLENN: Betty White could have done it.

STU: Absolutely. She would have been fantastic in that role. But because it was Meryl Streep, it was some amazing thing that she did. In reality, it was just another movie.

And she, again, wasn't the star of the movie. She was the secondary character.

GLENN: So where did she develop this --

STU: Right.

GLENN: Where did she develop --

JEFFY: Yes. This is the question.

GLENN: I was actually not on your side, until you started presenting the case.

STU: Because there's a lot of stuff in here.

PAT: Julie versus Julia.

STU: Okay. Julie versus Julia is a pretty good movie.

PAT: Where she did a pretty serviceable imitation of Julia Childs. But so did Dan Aykroyd. He could have played that part.

JEFFY: Thank you. Thank you.

GLENN: No, that's not true. That's not true.

STU: No, he's right. Aykroyd was better.

No. She did a good impression of that.

But, for example, Jim Carrey did a much better impression of Andy Kaufman. No one is throwing him into the freaking Hall of Fame for it.

PAT: Oh, yeah. That was genius.

GLENN: That was genius.

PAT: Yeah, that was genius.

STU: He was genius in that role. And everybody was like, oh, well, it was just an impression. That's what she did.

And, by the way, she wasn't even the main character in the movie. She was in the movie for like ten minutes.

Okay. So where are we here? Then we're Mamma Mia! Okay? Which we've all discussed as a disaster.

PAT: But you're right. 144 million. That's her biggest box office.

STU: Biggest box office of all time. Inflation adjusted is a problem, but still.

PAT: Of all time.

GLENN: Literally, that could have been done by muppets. It's the music that carried that.

PAT: Right. Right.

GLENN: That's all that was, was a music video.

STU: Again, if you put a different person who was a better singer in that role, it would have been better. It wasn't that she nailed the part above and beyond anybody else.

GLENN: But, again, I think the muppets would have been better.

STU: Exactly.

PAT: Then you get some roles where she was actually terrible in.

And Into the Woods is one of them.

JEFFY: Oh, my gosh.

PAT: Into the Woods, she was absolutely bad in that movie.

STU: It was a fairytale. Right?

PAT: Yeah. It was a Disney -- she was terrible.

GLENN: Oh, yeah, yeah. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.

JEFFY: Terrible.

PAT: Surprisingly bad. Because I was under the impression, still, buying into the three Oscars and eight Golden Globes, she's a great actress. And I'm thinking, "She is terrible in this. What happened?"

GLENN: Right.

STU: And then Ricki and the Flash is the ultimate exclamation point in this conversation. She plays the aging rock star. A complete disaster. And, yeah, yeah, she has three Oscars. She's had 19 nominations. How about winning occasionally? How about that?

The great switch: Gates trades climate control for digital dominion

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.

Antifa isn’t “leaderless” — It’s an organized machine of violence

Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.