BLOGMay 11, 2017

Navy SEAL Who Killed Bin Laden Talks With Glenn: 'We Knew It Was a One-Way Mission'

Robert O'Neill --- American hero, former Navy SEAL and author of the new book The Operator: Firing The Shots That Killed Osama Bin Laden And My Years As A SEAL Team Warrior --- joined Glenn in studio to talk about the incredible mission that ended the life of Osama bin Laden. The honor and heroism displayed by the SEAL team that took out bin Laden becomes even more amazing knowing each team member believed --- and accepted --- it would end their lives.

Here's what O'Neill had to say about their reasons for going:

I knew it was a one-way mission, and most of the guys there did too. But we accepted it because we had the conversation, we're doing this for the single mom who dropped her kids off at school on a Tuesday morning and then 45 minutes later jumped to her death out of the Windows On The World because that was a better alternative than 2,500 degrees fahrenheit inside, holding her skirt down as her last gesture of human decency so no one could see her underwear as she killed herself. You know, she wasn't supposed to do that. The people on Flight 93 that took over the cockpit to crash it in Pennsylvania to save people in Washington. You know, they didn't need to fight. The people in the Pentagon. We went for them because that wasn't their fight. The Port Authority, the police department, NYPD, FDNY. You know, that day, we were asked to take out the guy that funded that, that laughed about it, that thought it was part of his time on earth. We went for that, so we accepted the one-way mission.

The sentiments expressed by O'Neill did not go unnoticed.

"The reason why we cry when our military goes by --- at least, you know, some of the country does -- is because of the honor behind it," Glenn said. "At least me, I get teary-eyed because of the honor behind it. The idea that we can be better than we are today."

In addition to serving his country with honor and distinction, Robert O'Neill launched Your Grateful Nation, a nonprofit dedicated to matching the unique skills of Special Operations veterans with corporate careers, transitioning them from military service to civilian life.

The Operator: Firing The Shots That Killed Osama Bin Laden And My Years As A SEAL Team Warrior is available in bookstores everywhere.

GLENN: Hello, America. And welcome to the program. Glad you're here. We've got a lot to talk about. We've spent the last hour talking about James Comey and Donald Trump. This is turning into a very big nightmare. Apparently, this decision was not made because of the emails from the Justice Department. Those emails, Donald Trump asked them to write. This has been a decision that had been a long time coming, and it looks like for personal reasons, the president has a severe problem with leakage in the -- in the West Wing. The Washington Post has 30 sources on the story that are not saying good things. This is -- this is really not good.

The reason why I bring up the long-time coming -- and it wasn't a snap decision. I think the easiest decision to make in -- in my lifetime, that I've seen a president struggle over, was President Obama struggling over the decision to kill Osama bin Laden. What did it take him, six months or something like that? And finally they were like, "Mr. President, yes or no?" The guy who was there and fired the shot, the operator, Robert O'Neill, is here. Firing the shots that killed Osama bin Laden. And his years as a SEAL team warrior. He has been involved in some of the -- the biggest stories of the last ten or 15 years. And a lot of people don't know all the things that he has done. The guy who has helped the shape the world we live in today. O'Neill joins us right now.

(music)

GLENN: Robert O'Neill. How are you, sir?

ROBERT: I'm well. Thanks for having me here, Glenn.

GLENN: The Operator is the book. Firing the Shots That Killed Osama bin Laden.

I want to -- first, let's just talk a little bit about the country as you see it today. And we don't need to get into politics. We just need to -- I just want to get your sense of, as a guy who has seen countries -- and I know -- you know, I know Special Forces think about and train for -- for countries coming apart at the seams. Are we a country getting more healthy, or less healthy?

ROBERT: I think we're getting healthier now, as far as foreign policy. I worked under President Obama -- I'm sorry, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. And what I've seen -- what I did see over the past few years is the weakening of American leadership overseas. And that's not just -- that affects the entire country, because if our allies see we're not strong, they're going to back down too. And you have instances with China building the islands, you have the Crimea thing with Russia. You've got North Koreans. Everyone is kind of moving ahead because there wasn't a threat of deterrence. I'm not saying we need to go to war, but we definitely need the deterrent, to be able to say, we will do this, if you keep doing this. We lost it for a while.

GLENN: Yeah, I think the most impressive thing this president has done foreign policy-wise is Syria. I think that woke the president up, "Oh, wait. Wait. Wait. This guy means it. He's not just going to sit around." And we've restored a little bit of -- I mean, I think the president of the United States always needs to be a best friend to everybody, unless you are on the wrong side.

ROBERT: Well, yeah. And I think he's doing it the right way too. I mean, he's going to do something up front, and then possibly negotiate in the back. Like the strikes in Syria weren't because we're going to invade you now. It's like, look, we got your attention. Now maybe we're going to do something about it.

GLENN: What should we do in North Korea?

ROBERT: North Korea is -- I think needs to be something done from within, more of an agency thing. As a special operator, I had trouble in Afghanistan blending in, in Afghanistan.

GLENN: No. Long hair, blue eyes?

ROBERT: If we had been in Scotland, I might have been okay. But in North Korea and just with the logistics needed to get in, you're going to have a difficult time. So we're going to need something with an infiltration, hopefully a military coup. Because as the world gets smaller with social media and the internet, the North Korean people are starting to realize, wait a minute. We've been lied to for generations with Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il. And then this guy, Kim Jong-un, believing they're gods and having the people believe they're gods. That's what they're doing right now.

GLENN: How bizarre is it going to be to those people?

ROBERT: Well, they don't know any better. You only know what you're taught. I mean, I've been in places in Afghanistan where I might as well have been in the tenth century in some of these valleys. Not only do they not know how old they are, they don't know what time is. And that's -- that's in valleys. North Korea, I don't even imagine. The starvation, the slave labor, all the stuff that's normal to them, because they're taught propaganda.

GLENN: What's the most concerning -- geopolitically concerning thing to you right now?

ROBERT: It's got to be North Korea with the nukes, if they get intercontinental ballistic missiles. That's a problem.

GLENN: If we go to war with them -- if it comes down to, we have to go in and try to take them out, what does Seoul look like, day two?

ROBERT: I think Seoul is going to be a hit, but hopefully with some of the new air defenses we have might work. But it's the whole thing. What if they shoot a missile at you? We'll shoot it down. Okay. What if they shoot 10,000 missiles at you? Something is going to get through. That's a tough one too. And, again, hopefully it doesn't come to a war in Korea. We've seen what happens before. I mean, thankfully, our military is designed to fight big armies, and they'll do it really, really well. But with, now something needs to be with the sanctions imposed by China because they're their biggest trade partner. But it needs to go further because China won't enforce them. If we put sanctions on North Korea and someone is trading with them, then you need to put sanctions on those people that are not enforcing the sanctions. So hopefully it won't come to a war, but Kim Jong-un is a nut.

GLENN: You know, Russia said summer before last that we're already in World War III. He said this to a group of European reporters. And he said, you guys have to convince your leadership -- I've been begging to stay out of war. We're already in World War III. And it's happening digitally.

ROBERT: Putin is saying that?

GLENN: Putin is saying that.

ROBERT: Yeah, he's still mad about the Cold War. Because he's KGB. He been out of it the whole time. He wants that back. So he kind of wants to be at war because there hasn't been a reason for him not to be.

GLENN: But we are -- we are in a cyber war.

ROBERT: Cyber war, no doubt. We're having everything stolen from us.

GLENN: How concerned are you that -- that that's -- I mean, that's -- that is a weapon of mass destruction in the wrong hands.

ROBERT: Sure it is. Uh-huh.

GLENN: How concerned are you that we're not really -- the world is not really paying attention to any of the rules on cyber warfare?

ROBERT: They're not paying any attention. But I'm just hopeful eventually that when we need to take the gloves off, we have people smart enough to do it. We've proven it before with technology. But now we kind of back off because we want this big global society and make sure everyone is equal.

I mean, once -- I mean, when we get into electronic, eventually magnetic warfare, whatever is out there. Hypersonic aircraft. I don't know what's going to happen. You know, I just -- I've been to war a bunch of times. I hope it doesn't come to it. It's not pretty. It's very fast and permanent.

GLENN: Yesterday, I had a guy on who he wrote the book Homo Deus. And it is about how man is becoming god and is going to merge with machines and everything else. And he said, we are -- we're seeing this already. The military is leading the way to where it doesn't take necessarily a massive army. You can do it --

ROBERT: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: You can do it through the air. You can do it through drones. You can do it through robots and everything else. And he said, "You know, 20 years from now, Army will not be the same. You don't need all those bodies."

ROBERT: No. You probably won't. I was reading an article on the way here today that side the biggest problem with unmanned cars -- driverless cars is human drivers.

GLENN: Right.

ROBERT: If there were no human drivers, it would be fine. It wouldn't be a problem.

GLENN: Correct. Seriously, the problem with humanity is humans.

ROBERT: Yeah, it is. That's a good point.

GLENN: Right.

ROBERT: Well, I've been to four-way stop signs here in Dallas too. I can see what they're saying.

GLENN: Yeah.

ROBERT: That can be an evolution --

GLENN: Yeah, I know. So what does -- what does that do to the mentality, when there is no life to a country like ours? We can just pay for everything and just keep going. There's no life being expended. Does that bother you at all?

ROBERT: That's a lot to grasp. I think it does bother me once you lose the human element. And we're seeing it now with everyone's -- their faces in their phones. Humanity is kind of going -- I don't know. I haven't thought about it that deeply. But if we got wars with machines, eventually they're going to turn on us, we'll have a Terminator type thing going on. Spooky.

JEFFY: You've seen it in action with your military training, has gotten far superior with help from drones --

ROBERT: Oh, yeah. Drones. Lasers. Night vision. Part of the reason we were so successful in combat wasn't necessarily that we wanted it more. Because we're fighting people that know that if they die at our hands, they go to heaven. There's no doubt about it. We just happened to have the lights off, night vision, and lasers. And we're quieter --

JEFFY: Right.

GLENN: And the lasers -- that technology is -- you can paint people, and nobody sees it.

ROBERT: Nobody sees it. Not only that, you can line up an entire room with a floodlight that has a dot in the middle. I've come around corners lit up and have bad guys trying to ambush. And you're like, "Are you kidding me right now?" It's like playing paint ball with my sister. She's not great at paint ball. I was a SEAL for a while.

GLENN: Right.

STU: That's not a game you want to enter into.

ROBERT: No, that's not.

GLENN: I don't think I'm playing paint ball as a guy with SEALs.

ROBERT: We've had them before. Speaking with kids, some of this technology, especially the games they play. I've had kids come up to me and start talking about guns. And because of the games they play, they know more about the guns that I used in combat, to the point they're asking me about, how was the trigger shaved? And I'm like, I don't know, kid. It makes this sound when you shoot someone. Would you leave me alone?

(laughter)

That's pretty funny.

GLENN: Do you think the next generation will be better at killing? I mean, you've read -- I'm sure you've read On Killing?

ROBERT: Yeah. I have. I think probably because a lot of the internet stuff, they're not as sensitive to it. I mean, even with the horrible videos ISIS puts out -- I remember the first beheading video, even before Zarqawi did it. There was -- and I remember seeing it, thinking, that's the most horrific thing I've ever seen.

Now there's so much of it. It's like, oh, another beheading video. Oh, I mean, oh, another suicide bomber. Think about that. Suicide bomber. They're getting desensitized.

And I think a lot of it is the internet. And they might not be as good at it when it's up close, but it seems like it doesn't mean as much.

GLENN: My charity, Mercury One, moved 6,000 people out of Syria and Iraq. Christians and Yazidis. We moved them. 6,000. And we've started a program over there, to where we are going back in and using operators on the ground, not Americans, but people like you, to go in and rescue these moms and children that have been taken. And I just got a report last week that said, the things they were doing to these moms and children, it's a new generation now.

It's just like you said. It was one of the most horrific things they had ever seen. Now, it's the next generation. And I was told, it's beyond your imagination, on how evil.

ROBERT: It's evil. And it's so bad that people won't want to hear it. They won't want to know about it. They pretend it's not there. Even now, it's worth going in, just getting back on ISIS, it's worth going in and wiping them out because of when our kids -- our grandkids will have to fight. I always bring up, if you haven't seen the videos of they call it the cubs of the caliphate. They're these 5-year-old kids that are executing people in horrific ways.

If we don't stop that, what do you think those kids are going to be like in 13 years? Will they be normal?

They're executioners at five. And we'll just kick the can down the road. I hate that analogy. But okay, grandkids, have fun fighting the jihad. You know, it's a real thing.

GLENN: You were part of the rescue attempt to get Marcus Luttrell.

ROBERT: Yes. I was part of the coalition. A lot of us in different places. But we run the airfield when the rescue helicopters went to get him and were shot down. And I actually saw them come back. They were survivors of the second. A turbine 34, I believe, that survived. And then they had us walk in. So we spent about two and a half days awake walking -- we knew -- we knew the trail was missing. We thought Axelson (phonetic) was missing, and we didn't know if there were survivors. So we were walking -- it's like 120 degrees, walking through the mountains of Kunar Province. And that was my first deployment with the lead SEAL team.

GLENN: So when you go in there -- tell me the difference between trying to save that SEAL team and what you think it might have been like to save -- what his name that deserted --

ROBERT: Bowe Bergdahl. I attempted to rescue him too. I was on the base when he walked off too.

GLENN: So tell me the difference between those two.

ROBERT: Well, the difference was Marcus and his crew were in there on a noble mission, trying to kill -- trying to capture/kill Ahmad Shah, a Taliban leader in the neighborhood. They got into a fight, they could handle themselves. They were in there because they wanted to be there. It was noble. And then the rescue attempt was to get in the fight. Really good guys getting in the fight. It got shot down with whatever they say shot them down. And it's something that we want to do with Bergdahl. We know he walked off the day he walked off. The way that we used to work, we'd wake up when the sun was going down. Grab your coffee. Go listen to the brief. And then you start -- you work overnight and then go to bed, you know, during the day.

When we got up that one day, they said, hey, we had this private walk off base, and he got rolled up by the Taliban. And we had to stop the entire war effort and stopped trying to hit high-value individuals and go after this guy, trying to just get intelligence on the fly, always moving.

We were so close to the point to where I actually had the ransom in my hands, that the Taliban paid, to fail me to get rid of Bergdahl, to buy him. But the difference there was that we knew that we're going after this loon -- just misguided deserter. And Luttrell was a hero.

GLENN: So, yeah, you knew he was a deserter.

ROBERT: The second it happened.

GLENN: The second it happened?

ROBERT: Oh, yeah. I mention it in my book. There's stuff that was said, that we were intercepting traffic about how the Taliban really wanted him because they just wanted to abuse him. And that we found this guy on the side of the road. He walked off. We knew he walked off. We spent days -- I think 19 attempts, my team had. We lost one of our dogs on it. He got shot and killed in a gunfight, but I know some soldiers were killed in other attempts to rescue Bergdahl.

GLENN: So how did you -- how do you deal with that?

ROBERT: With?

GLENN: How do you deal with, you know -- how do you deal not -- be frank with you. Not beating the snot out of Bergdahl?

ROBERT: Well, we didn't get him. If we did, we would have wanted to. But it would be important to --

GLENN: To not.

ROBERT: To get him back. Well, you can't. I mean, he's an American. He's an idiot. That's -- being an idiot is not a crime. But deserting is.

GLENN: Yeah.

ROBERT: So we'd want to bring him back and have him properly punished.

GLENN: Because he wasn't treated like he was a criminal.

ROBERT: No. He -- well, he got his punishment with the Taliban. He had -- you know, he got his punishment in their custody. Yeah, but when they came back, they made it political. They wanted to -- you know, he's a hero. He's a distinguished --

GLENN: How did that make you feel?

ROBERT: It was terrible. I mean, the name Bergdahl, when we -- we knew who he was, we know what he was, a misguided deserter. But when they -- they even tried to change it over the course of the years to, well, he didn't desert. He fell back on a patrol, and they grabbed him. Which was not the case at all. He walked -- he mailed the stuff home. He walked off. No question. But they spun it politically like you can imagine politicians will do.

GLENN: Back in just a second. The name of the book is The Operator. O'Neill: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior. Back with him in just a second.

First, our sponsor this half-hour is Goldline. South Korea's policy on North Korea, about to get a major overhaul. First day in office, the new South Korean president is talking about going to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong-un. I guess that's a little harder than he expected. New satellite images have discovered artificial islands northwest of the North Korean capital now. We believe that they may be missile launch sites. God only knows what's going to happen in North Korea. Hopefully nothing. But if we do go to war, it is not going to be a war like -- let me ask you, Robert, is this another Afghanistan or Iraq?

ROBERT: No. I don't think Korea would be.

STU: Say it again.

ROBERT: I don't think it would be like Iraq. It's going to be something way different. A bigger army, initially. And hopefully, the -- when -- if it was liberated -- if and when it's liberated, the population would realize, okay. This is a good thing, and you're going to get democracy. But you never know with the way they were raised. I mean, we thought it with the Shia. We kind of ditched in the first Gulf War. And the second one, they didn't rise up. And it's a tough one to read the future. I wonder where they're getting that island technology though. It's almost like they have Chinese neighbors.

GLENN: Yeah, that's what I'm concerned about is Russia, China, Iraq. A global meltdown on this one.

[break]

GLENN: Tomorrow, on this program, at this time, this hour, the top of the hour, at five minutes after the hour, tomorrow, we will be joined by Bill O'Reilly in his first interview since leaving Fox. We have a lot to talk to him about. That is tomorrow. Bill O'Reilly in his first interview, leaving Fox.

The operator is with us today. He is O'Neill. Firing the shots that killed Osama bin Laden. We were just talking about Bowe Bergdahl. And you said that you had the ransom in your hands. Was that --

ROBERT: We were near the base. He was on a base that we were on. And he walked off to one of the nearby satellite bases. The small operating post. And when they told us he was gone, we just started launching from there. Our strike team from our SEAL team. And we just started going after -- gathering Intel. And based on what we found on certain targets, we'd go after the next and the next, for a matter of days.

And we got to a point where we got into a house. Big pile of cash. Obviously, some shady characters in there. And the whole, well, my son works construction in Dubai, so he sent these millions and millions of rupees or whatever they were up there. So we had that. We were convinced that was it. We knew we were close, and then they eventually got him across the border to Pakistan.

GLENN: So that ransom was paid by --

ROBERT: The Taliban. To the locals. To take --

GLENN: Isn't that --

ROBERT: I think a lot of it is illegal.

STU: You just saw -- so you saw the payment actually? That's incredible.

ROBERT: We secured an area. Separated the people like we do. And then we went through the stuff. And there's a pile of cash. And part of the trail where Bergdahl was going and had been. It's pretty obvious what the money is doing there. They don't need that money there.

JEFFY: Right.

STU: It could have been bitcoin investment.

GLENN: Which is paying off right now.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Paying off really well.

Okay. Back to talk a little bit -- more on his book on killing Osama bin Laden. What that was like. How it was -- what it felt like to be told, hey, by the way, you guys are on your own. Something happens.

And a little bit about what he's doing now to -- to continue to pay in to America. The Operator is the name of the book. O'Neill. Back in a minute.

[break]

GLENN: O'Neill was raised in Montana. Joined the Navy at 19 in 1996. Deployed as a Navy SEAL more than a dozen times. Four hundred combat missions. Four different theaters of war. He was decorated more than 52 times. He's received two silver stars. Four bronze stars with valor. Holy cow. Joint service accomodation medal with valor. Three presidential unit citations. And a Navy Marine Corps accommodation metal with valor. Kind of a big deal.

Lone survivor. He was part of that mission to save Marcus Luttrell. "Captain Phillips" and the Somali pirates, which we're not going to get into today, but it's in his new book called The Operator. I'd love to hear about that. That is one of the most remarkable shooting I've ever seen.

ROBERT: Just getting there from a kiss on my daughter's forehead in her preschool for an Easter Tea Party, to the Indian Ocean in less than 16 hours. Because they let us know then. Then they called us out. And then we're out. Then we're over there. Then we rescued them on Easter.

GLENN: And then -- probably the -- if somebody would have actually gone in and killed Adolf Hitler, those guys would have been known as, you know -- known forever, that story would have been told.

The killing of Osama bin Laden is probably that big. And our president had a hard time deciding whether to do it or not. When you guys went in, it's my understanding, he said, don't call the State Department. You're on your own. If things go wrong, you're on your own. Is that true?

ROBERT: I'm not sure how it went down with that. I know that -- we had talks among the group, what would happen if we ran out of fuel and had to negotiate our ways out. Who were they going to send over to Islamabad to talk with Zardari (phonetic)? Who's going to do what? There's a lot of stuff that we compartmentalized, as far as, we know this, and we know that. We don't need to get involved with the politics.

GLENN: So -- but you went over there, fully expecting to die.

ROBERT: We knew -- I knew it was a one-way mission, and most of the guys there did too. But we accepted it because of -- we had the conversation. You know, we're doing this for the single mom who dropped her kids off at school on a Tuesday morning, and then 45 minutes later jumped to her death out of the windows on the World because that was a better alternative than 2500 degrees Fahrenheit inside, you know, holding her skirt down as her last gesture of human decency, so no one could see her underwear as she killed herself. You know, she wasn't supposed to do that.

The -- the people on Flight 93 that took over the cockpit, to crash it in Pennsylvania to save people in Washington. You know, they didn't need to fight people the people in the Pentagon. We went for them because that wasn't their fight. The Port Authority Police Department. The NYPD. FDNY. You know, that day, we were asked to take out the guy that funded that, that laughed at it. That thought it was part of his time on earth. We went for that. So we accepted the one-way mission.

STU: Because this is your life at stake here?

ROBERT: Yes.

STU: Is it offensive when you hear, say, Joe Biden say this is the most difficult decision in 500 years? I mean, this is -- this is -- if you had only a 1 percent chance of success and you knew there was a 99 percent chance that you were going to do to die, would you have still wanted to go on --

ROBERT: Dying didn't mean we didn't succeed. We knew that if -- I even moved myself from the perimeter to that rooftop team that was going to land there. And we called ourselves the martyr's brigade. Tongue in cheek, because once we get on the rooftop, the whole building is going up. But we're going to --

GLENN: You thought they would blow it up?

ROBERT: He would blow it up. If anyone is going to kill himself in a house-borne improvise explosive device, it's Osama bin Laden. But we accepted that because we got him. I mean, it's better -- it's -- we're going to die eventually. And we might as well get this guy for everybody else.

STU: Jeez.

GLENN: Okay. So you climbed up a stairwell. And you come to the third floor. And you say you come around the corner. And there standing in front of you is a guy who is skinnier.

ROBERT: Skinnier than I thought and taller. But how I got there was incredible. Because we didn't land where we were supposed to -- I was sort of in the back, and I watched my team work. And watching other guys knowing this is their last day on earth, watching them still do their jobs, methodically, slow and smooth. Smooth as (sic) fast. Get through this door. Get through that door. Went up the stairs. Cleared some more rooms. And then when we finally got to the top, I was right in the front with one guy in front of me. And he went up the stairs, knowing there were suicide bombers. He opened up a curtain and jumped on what he thought was suicide bombers. So I watched a guy jump on the grenade. It didn't go off. And that's historically heroic. He did that. And I turned the corner, just based on -- it's not like I came through the skylight and saved the day. I just did what every other special operator would have done. And there was Bin Laden. And he's taller, 6-3, skinnier, short beard, gray nose. That's his nose. He's a threat. He's not surrendering.

GLENN: And he's standing behind his wife.

ROBERT: Behind his wife. And he's sort of pushing her towards me. And he's a matter of feet away.

GLENN: How far?

ROBERT: Three or 4 feet. Just standing right there, and basically in the doorway. And just based on his movement -- he's not surrendering. He is a suicide bomber. And I need to treat him like a suicide bomber. That's why I shot him in the head. And I've dealt with suicide bombers before. There's stories in the book. It's so big and loud, and it's over fast. That if you don't shoot them in the head, you're going to die with them. And it was over before it started. I shot him.

GLENN: Did he have a vest?

ROBERT: No, he didn't. But I thought he did. He wasn't surrendering.

GLENN: All right. So you shoot him in the head. It's not like in the movies. They don't go flying back on the bed.

ROBERT: He fell straight down. His head went -- as I was looking at the bed, right to the bottom left-hand part of the bed -- his wife was there. And we just -- I grabbed her to move her aside. Gave her a brief search. Sat her on the bed. And I remember looking over, and his son was standing there. Like a 3-year-old. And I remember as a father just thinking, this poor guy has got nothing to do with this. And I picked him up and then moved him. And at that point, other SEALs are coming in the room. And that's when it kind of hit me. And a buddy came up to me and laughed. And he goes, are you all right? And I was like, yeah. What do we do now? And he smiled. And said, well, now we find the computers. You've done this hundreds of times. I'm like, yeah, you're right. I'm back. And he goes, yeah, bro. You just killed Bin Laden, so your life just changed. And we did the rest of our clearance. Found what we could electronically.

GLENN: What happened to his body?

ROBERT: We put it in a body bag. We carried him out on a helicopter. Brought him back and showed him to the admiral. Some of the analysts. Brought him to another spot. The FBI did a lot of DNA tests on him and photos. We handed him off to some rangers. They flew him out to the Persian Gulf and then disposed of him. That was it. It was a good call too. People ask about that too. And I get all the wild conspiracy theories about he was this and he was that. And you didn't kill him.

GLENN: I'm telling you, he's in the freezer next to Walt Disney, and the Jungle Book crew is right there. That's what's happening.

You've started a -- you've started a 501(c)(3).

ROBERT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: You've started a mission. It's -- your charity is YourGratefulNation.org. What is it?

ROBERT: Yes. I got out of the Navy at about 17 years, which is three years shy of a pension. And I realized how difficult you think it is to find a job. Because all you know is what you're doing. But you have skills especially as a veteran but especially as a special operator that employers want, which is stress management, team building, show up on time, loyalty, things like that. And they'll hire. And I talk to a lot of guys that want to get out, but they -- they'd rather go to combat than fill out a resume. Because at least combat makes sense. So what we do with Your Grateful Nation is we find out what line of work they want. It's individualized. Find out what they want. Where they want to live. We'll find that company. Get them a mentor. Put them through a nine-month program. And then they get placed in their second career. And it's -- the best email I get every other day -- you know, we placed Staff Sergeant Jones with this job with Fox Sports. Or we did this, and this guy is working at Merrill Lynch. And having the families -- the wives at some of the events we have, they'll just say, we couldn't have done this -- our family could not have done this without Your Grateful Nation. It's the best feeling. It's my passion --

GLENN: I'll tell you, the servicemen that I know -- and everybody has -- well, not a Bowe Bergdahl. But every -- you know, every profession has dirtbags in it. But there is a higher percentage of honor and integrity, I think, in the armed forces than any other --

ROBERT: Oh, no doubt about it. And the one thing you can't teach in college, that they said the military guys have is loyalty. They're so loyal. And, honestly, Your Grateful Nation started as, let's help the vets get jobs. Now it's, do you want to make your company better? We'll give you someone to --

GLENN: Are we still -- is the Navy that you went into, in '96, is it still the Navy that it -- I mean, a lot of parents that listen to this program are very concerned, especially over the last eight years. But they wonder what the rot has been. We've -- you know, we've taken out just war theory. I mean, we've changed fundamentally.

ROBERT: They -- a lot of the social experimentations affected it quite a bit. A lot of the verbiage -- like they said -- my favorite word, and I even use it in the book is shipmate. I love the word shipmate. They took it out of boot camp because it's derogatory. You can't call people shipmate. I love that term.

GLENN: Why is it derogatory?

ROBERT: They changed it to sea warrior.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. Sea warrior.

ROBERT: I mean, that's just -- that's again hiding from the big elephant dungarees in the room. Come on.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

ROBERT: I mean, as far as the other stuff, there are places you don't need the military to test social experiments. I mean, should there be women in combat? Well, we've had women in combat. Should there be gays in the military? We have had gays in the military. Nobody cared. But the media wanted to make a big thing out of it. A big political thing. Said, yeah, they're here. They're doing fine. Why do we need to -- morale is so big in the military. In units in combat, you need to have morale high to succeed. And when you start putting nonsensical baggage on, it wears on the morale. There's no reason for it.

GLENN: Who is it we had in the last couple of weeks that was talking about the -- you know, all of the restrictions put on our military that, you know, it's --

ROBERT: Rules of engagement.

GLENN: Rules of engagement are just insane.

ROBERT: Yeah, that's a tough one. People shouldn't be wondering if they're going to go to jail for taking a shot when it's -- I had a -- a thought though, since we're experimenting. The person who is in an office typing up the rules of engagement, you should have someone shooting at them while they're typing.

(laughter)

How are you going to defend yourself? You sit there and type --

GLENN: The operator is the name of the book. Firing the shots that killed Osama bin Laden and my years as a SEAL team warrior.

Robert O'Neill writes it in a way that you are standing there behind and seeing everything and feeling everything that he felt. The Operator is the name of the book. And his charity, if you want to get involved, is YourGratefulNation.org. YourGratefulNation.org.

Thank you so much.

ROBERT: Thank you for having me.

GLENN: Appreciate it. You bet.

How Mamdani's Victory & Nigeria's GENOCIDE Are WARNINGS for America | Glenn TV | Ep 466

How did New York City elect Zohran Mamdani as its first Muslim and socialist mayor?! To get the answer, Glenn Beck dives into Mamdani's controversial backers and ties them to a global propaganda campaign run by big players in political Islam. This same propaganda campaign, Glenn exposes, can also explain the rising Islamist-Marxist alliance in America and the ignoring of genocides in Nigeria and Sudan. Plus, Johnnie Moore, president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, reveals how jihadist militias are systematically massacring entire Christian villages in Nigeria and attempting to build a new terror caliphate. And Glenn asks former Navy SEAL and Blackwater founder Erik Prince whether he believes Trump should attack Nigeria if it doesn't stop the slaughter.

RADIO

Chip Roy exposes the billionaire web fueling America’s collapse

Rep. Chip Roy joins Glenn Beck to expose the hidden network of NGOs, billionaires, and government grants allegedly funding the destruction of America from within. From Soros-backed district attorneys to U.N.-funded immigration pipelines, U.S. tax dollars are being weaponized against Western civilization itself. Rep. Roy breaks down why he has introduced the 'No Tax Exemptions for Terror Act' as he reveals the deep financial web connecting global elites, broken borders, and the slow dismantling of American freedom.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Let me go to Chip Roy. Chip is joining us. He is introducing a new bill called the -- what is it called? I love the name of this, Chip. What is the name of this bill?

CHIP: I don't remember what the name of it is. It's to stop CAIR from having tax exempt status, and any terrorist organization.

GLENN: Yeah, the No Tax Exemptions for Terror Act. I love that.

CHIP: That's it.

GLENN: That's the clearest a bill has ever been: The No Tax Exemptions For Terror Act. I love it.

CHIP: Yeah. So we came up with it on Friday when we were filing the bill. And we were going back and forth, and my chief of staff came up with that title, credit to her.

But, look, here's, the thing. Take one minute to pretend that I'm sitting in Glenn Beck's studio on television. And I'm going out and I'm going to do white boards. Okay?

GLENN: Uh-huh.

CHIP: So for your listeners out there, pretend I got that video capability. Imagine if you will, enormous numbers of bubbles of NGOs and all of these nonprofits that are out there under the cloak of things like Catholic charities or Jewish groups or evangelical groups or maybe secular groups.

They're doing all these nice and warm and fuzzy things. They're ail involved with moving people by you our country, right? They're all a part of the 250 organizations at the Center for Immigration Studies said were a part of the mass invasion during the Biden administration.

Now, over here, create a group of bubbles that are all of the groups that are pushing the district attorneys that are radical Marxists. The Soros-funded DAs that are putting criminals on our streets. And there's a whole cadre over there under the Ren Collective that the law enforcement legal defense fund ally. Now over here, on this board, show the bubbles, that...

GLENN: Wait. We lost you! Show the bubbles of, what?

CHIP: That want to see radical Sharia on our streets. Now on top of the board, put the Arabella Group, which are Democrat operatives, with Clinton and with Biden, you know, operatives.

And they're all in organization with, and coordinated with the bubbles above them, which are the funding streams from Bill Gates, from George Soros, from radical billionaires across the country, and taxpayer dollars, money through the United Nations, grand money from the United States, going to all of those NGOs. Remember those first bubbles that I put on the board.

And all of that money is then being coordinated in a war against you and me and freedom and Western civilization.

So, yes, I believe CAIR and every other one of these organizations that are radicalized against Americans ought to be, not just disbanded from their Sebring status, but probably broken up.

And we should go through it and look at the conspiracy that they're involved in and probably violating our laws in Rico violation. But at a minimum, we should take away their tax status, so I introduce legislation to do that as a shot across the bough. And we need to go further than that. I hope that's clear without a video board.

GLENN: Yeah. It is. I have -- made it, as you were doing it, I just -- I just kind of put it together, the way you suggested. All these little bubbles. And you can see. It's pretty bad.

And what's crazy is that we did not assume that our tax dollars were going to any of these places.

I mean, they have gotten so wicked and so smart, the way -- you know, I always knew that Soros and the Tides Foundation. And you suspect that gosh, you have all of this money. And it's all going out the door.

And nobody knows where the money is going. And we focus. When he with find out what the budget is. Wait. You're doing turtle studies on what know.

And nobody is asking, what about the other trillion that are studies that nobody is tracking. That are just going out to these NGOs. We are funding our own demise.

CHIP: A hundred percent. And that's exactly right. I'm glad you said that. Because Republicans, with all due respect with my colleagues, get distracted with shiny objects.

And go say -- and I've done it too. Because it's easy to say. And you go out there, and you say, oh, yeah, I lifted the turtle funding. Or I lifted to this waste. And people are like, oh my gosh. That's terrible. That's, like, $5 million.

The real engine is that flow of money. So that, okay. Dollars that are going, in -- you know, to organizations, that a lot of people view. And because they do some good work. They go to some organization. Take charities or take some evangelical groups or whatever, or some Jewish organizations. You're setting up money. Oh, they're doing good things, and they're helping people.

But then you start -- you feel -- and they're all a part of all of this, and the grants that flow through so that when your top herdsmen or my friends for the Center of Immigration Studies, and you're down at the Darien Gap. And you see that the United Nations money, the United States taxpayer money, grants were going to these organizations to funnel people from around the world, to come up through Mexico and into the United States or be flown by a plane into the United States. And then you wonder why we have so many Somalis and so many Muslim, Sharia adherents, that are dumped into our country. It's heavily because of what we have been funding. It's heavily because of our money that we give to the United Nations.

So we need to stop that. And we need to be -- look, what I have done with the bell is one step of a thousand we need to take. Right? The bill that I did two weeks ago, to say, let's start vetting people for adherents to Sharia law. Let's pass HR2.
Let's do a bill.

I'm going to introduce a bill this week. That says, we should freeze all immigration until we actually have a handle on all the ways it's being abused. Whether it's birthright citizenship, says we have to educate illegal children.

The Sharia adherents in making sure we're not importing people that are hostile to Western civilization. Making sure people aren't on the public dole. These are all things we need to do, Glenn.

And we're not doing it. And we're funding the demise of our own country. It needs to stop.

And Congress needs to back up President Trump with at least as aggressive as an agenda, as he's putting forward. We can't just pass the big, beautiful bill and then pat ourselves on the back and then hope we win the midterms. Let's go back to Congress. Let's pass the stock trading ban. Let's pass HR2 to secure the border.

Let's codify some of the President's executive orders. Let's pass health care freedom and dismantle the stranglehold that insurance companies and hospital corporations have over our health care. Let's go to war for the American people. And then they'll want to go support us at the ballot box.

GLENN: You know, there's this big reject AIPAC thing that is going on right now.

And look, I think, if you're going to do that. Then you've got to do the American Cubans. The Iranian American PAC. There's a ton of these. And I just want them to all play by the same rules.

Whatever those rules are. Everybody plays by the same rules. But, you know, one of the things that we don't look at is you look at AIPAC. And I think it's average, not election years. It's about 60, what? Sixty million. $60 million?

That can't be it. It's got to be billion.
Nothing ever sounds big anymore. But they're spending all this money in the United States.

And everybody says, oh, well, they're just. They're controlling the United States.

It is million. Thirty to 60 million on average, okay?

But if you look at Saudi Arabia, that state money, and they're spending $93 million.

And since 1986, 2.1 billion dollars, on our universities.

And they're not alone!

And nobody is saying anything about that!

And I wonder why. Why? Why?

CHIP: Glenn, I cannot thank you enough for bringing that up. Especially, I'm not going to get into the controversy that last week, and the controversy going on. With the Heritage Foundation and all that stuff.

Look, here's the bottom line. You nailed it, right?

There is a vast, vast amount of money, flowing into the United States, from the Middle East, and to our universities, and into political organizations.

And designed very heavily to advance a march of people who want to upend our way of life. Okay?

GLENN: China is involved in it too! Yeah.

CHIP: 100 percent. The Chi-Coms are 100 percent a part of that. And, by the way, this is why we should be banning, not just Chinese Communist Party ownership of our land. But, frankly, any foreign nationals shouldn't be owning our land.

Like, why are we letting people own Texas and buy Texas? This is one of the things, by the way, that I get a really strong reaction from people on the campaign trail. I talk about the Soros DA. I talk about the border. I talk about Islamification. But then I talk about something else. And it's related to what we're talking about. The corporatification of Texas and of our, you know, great red states.

We are allowing corporations to come in and buy up our homes. Literally!

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

CHIP: Buying up our homes. We allow them to buy up our hospitals, prevent doctors from being able to form their own hospitals. We're allowing them to buy up our land. Our cattle.
Our meat packing plants. Some foreign-owned. Some domestic. But it's major corporate, and a lot of it is foreign.

And I don't want to be governed by board rooms in New York City, any more than I want to be governed by the federal government.

I want Texas to own Texas. I want Texans to own Texas. And that's one of the principles things that I want to find out on this attorney general.

GLENN: I tell you, there's this big, beautiful hospital that was built just -- just where my home in Texas was.

And I was so excited. Had this really great hospital, that close.

And after it was built. I think it was like Texas doctor's hospital. And it was all these independent hospitals, who wanted to do a hospital, the way they wanted to do a hospital.

And I walk in. Because I didn't know they had opened.

But we had an emergency. I was like, take him to the emergency room. I think he's open.

Take him to the emergency room. The entire place is empty.

And the reason why is because these corporate hospitals said, if you do anything with that hospital, you're out of our -- of our system.

You won't be having any privileges at our hospital. And they put that hospital out of -- brand-new, beautiful hospital. Doctors wanted their own independence. And the big corporate hospital put them out of business.

It was insane.

CHIP: Yes. This is a major problem. And I know we're covering a lot of topics. But it's all related, Glenn. This is a war against our way of life.

And Republicans better get busy providing alternative solutions. Both calling out the war. So that people know it and see it.

They all feel it. But also then, provide alternatives. Look, I put out five years ago, a 50-page document called the case for health care freedom.

And five years ago, I put the case for health care freedom two years ago. And that document outlines an array of options, where we empower patients, empower doctors, expand the savings account, expand direct primary care.

Give people tools, allow them to be able to control their care. And drive prices down, free up doctors, so you're not having corporate-owned hospitals. And insurance companies making your own decisions.

That's an environment that most American would prefer.

And nobody would be left out. Prices would go down. House sharing ministries can fill the void. Meta share and a lot of other options. And we can have the Shining City on the Hill.

Let's talk about that to the American people. Let's talk about driving housing prices down by eliminating private equity and all of these big corporate ownerships of local dirt in our communities. Allow only individuals to own homes in our dirts and our communities and farms to be locally owned by Texans. We can then have cattle that you grow in Texas, slaughter in Texas, put in stores in Texas, and eat by Texans. That's the way we ought to do things. I'm all for free trade. So are you. So are most of us that log free enterprise. 100 percent.

But I want to make sure that we don't have corporate decision makers with crony capitalist doctors from government that are regulated, telling us how to live. And then wonder why the socialists are on the march and wonder why Mamdani is elected.

RADIO

Mamdani’s FURIOUS victory speech reveals NYC's DARK future

New York City has elected Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, as its next mayor. But even liberals like CNN's Van Jones quickly realized that Mamdani's victory speech was much angrier than the "warm" and "calm" persona he had on the campaign trail. Glenn reviews this sudden shift in character and warns that Mamdani may have just admitted he wants to tear down capitalism...

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: I want to start with the analysis from Van Jones on the Mamdani speech last night. Listen to what he said.

VOICE: I think the Mamdani that we saw on the campaign trail who was a lot more calm, who was a lot warmer, who was a lot more embracing was not present in that speech. And I think that Mamdani is the one you hear from tonight. There are a lot of people trying to figure out, can I get on this train with him or not? Is he going to include me?

Or is he going to be more of a class warrior even in office?

I think he missed a chance tonight, to open up and bring more people into the tent.

I think his tone was sharp. I think he was using the microphone in a way that he was almost yelling. And that's not the Mamdani that we see in TikTok. The great interviews. And stuff like that.

I felt like there was a little bit of a character shift here, where the warm, open embracing guy, close to working with people, was not on stage tonight. There was some other voice on stage.

STU: Huh. Huh.

GLENN: Hmm.

GLENN: It's almost like a mask has come off. What a surprise.

STU: Yeah. Just quick recommendation for anyone in New York. If Mamdani tries to get you on a train, don't go.
(laughter)

STU: It's a terrible idea. Stay away from the train.

GLENN: Very good point, Stu.

I might have even gotten on to that train without even realizing. Very good point. Very good point.

STU: I don't think it's --

GLENN: No. No trains. No trains.

Okay. So here's Mamdani. And this is how angry. Listen to how angry he is when he's talking about Donald Trump. Listen to this.

VOICE: So, Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up!
(applauding)

GLENN: Just turn it up on the TV? Because that's something he said.

VOICE: We will hold landlords to account. Because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable, taking advantage of their tenets.
(applauding)

STU: Screaming.

VOICE: We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks.

GLENN: Corruption. Change the tax laws.

VOICE: We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them, become very small indeed!
(applauding)
New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants --
(applauding)

VOICE: -- worked by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant!
(applauding)

GLENN: A very angry immigrant, whose own horror says, he doesn't identify as an American. I mean, I -- can I just spend a minute on this?

Because he's absolutely right.

New York was built by immigrants. America was built by immigrants. I mean, unless you're a Native American, you're an immigrant. Okay. And I made the case, that you might have come from Asia, even if you're an American, you know, native.

You know, go back far enough, you weren't on this continent.

So -- so I agree, all built by immigrants.

But we have a difference now, of immigrants. Listen to this from Teddy Roosevelt. There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I don't refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the best Americans I've ever known were naturalized Americans. Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.

This is just as true of a man who puts native before the hyphen. As a man who puts German or Irish or English, or French before the hyphen.
Americanism is a matter of the spirit and the soul.
Our allegiance must be purely to the United States.

We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. Think about this. Think about this, and what's happening with the Somali communities.

Think about Minnesota. Think about Dearborn. Think about New York. Think about -- think about what's being said about -- and to immigrants, today!

If he is heartily and singly loyal to this republic, then no matter where he's born, he's just as good as an American as anyone else. The one absolute certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, Italian-Americans.

Notice, by the way, he's not attacking people of color. These are all people from Western Europe! So this isn't something new. And it's not about racism. Scandinavian. Yeah. Boy, you must hate white people. Those are the whitest white people on the planet, for the love of Pete.

The American who do not become Americans, and nothing else, are hyphenated Americans. And there ought to be no room for them in this country.

The man who calls himself an American citizen. And shows by his action, he's primarily the citizen in the life of our body politic. He has no place here. And the sooner he returns to the land in which he feels his real heart allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. This is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American, and nothing else.

I mean, you know, when he said that, in the early 1900s, he was talking about a whole different class of immigrants, race-wise. But it doesn't matter. Hyphenated American race.

If you are an American, you don't see race. People have in the past. And it's been wrong to do it. And you know who really saw that clearer than anyone else?

The progressives! Margaret Sanger, being one of them. The progressive movement!

They're the ones, who wanted to separate races.

For the love of Pete. So he's now angry, and he's -- he's jamming a wedge between Americans and immigrant Americans.

Listen to -- listen to the next cut here.

VOICE: As so often has occurred, the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour, that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour.

They want the people to fight --

GLENN: Okay. Stop for a second.

Stu, can you explain that?

Play that again. Explain this sentence to me.

Play it from the top.

VOICE: As has so often occurred, the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour. That their enemies are those earning $20 an hour.

GLENN: Stop.

What does that mean? What does that mean?

STU: I mean, the case is that -- I mean, Republicans -- you know, the Republican Party, the evil, rich people.

GLENN: The billionaires.

STU: The billionaires. Are saying -- are trying to convince everybody. That the problem in our country are the poor people.

GLENN: So -- so exactly the opposite of what he's doing.

He's trying to convince the people who are 20-dollar an hour, that the 30 to billionaire class is their problem.

Is their enemy.

STU: Yeah. Very true. You might find --

GLENN: A little bit. A little bit. Go ahead. Play the rest, please.

VOICE: They want the people to fight amongst ourselves, so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking a long broken system!

We refuse to let them dictate the rules of the game anymore!

They can play by the same rules as the rest of us.
(applauding)

GLENN: Yeah. Amen. I'm all for that.

VOICE: Together, we will usher in a generation of change.

And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears. Not the appeasement it craves.
(applauding)

GLENN: Now, he goes on, the very next sentence, which we didn't grab: After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it's the city that gave rise to him. If there's any way to terrify a despot, it's by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. How did Donald Trump accumulate power? How did he do that?

Capitalism. Capitalism. He accumulated power by making money. By creating businesses. By building, you know, New York. A lot of New York was built by Donald Trump. So that's how he accumulated power.

So what he's saying here, you want to talk about the mask coming off -- what he's saying here is when we to now dismantle that system of capitalism, because that's what gave him power.

One last cut, 47, please.

VOICE: After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump, how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him!
(applauding)

GLENN: Listen to this.

VOICE: If there's any way to terrify a despot, it's by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.

STU: They're so obsessed with this guy.

VOICE: This is not only how we stop Trump. It's how we stop the next one.

GLENN: It's amazing. It's going to be interesting to watch New York City over the next four years. Very, very interesting. Because he is -- he's going to be pushed by the left. They are going to demand that he does these things. And he wants to do them. So let's see what he gets done, and how many great changes are coming to that city.

RADIO

What the DESTRUCTION of New York means for the rest of us

New York City is likely to elect either Zohran Mamdani, a communist, or Andrew Cuomo, a failed governor, as mayor. Either way, it could destroy the city. So, how will this affect the rest of America? Former Trump economic advisor Stephen Moore joins Glenn to explain why he believes another mass migration out of New York is coming…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Stephen Moore is with us now. Stephen, how much time do you have with me today?

STEPHEN: As much as you want, Glenn. Great to hear your voice. Great to be with you.

I disagree with you on something you just said.

GLENN: Okay. All right. Let's start there.

STEPHEN: You know, I do think -- look, New York has lost two and a half million people on net over the last ten years, to other states. Almost two and a half million people.

Which is, what? Four congressional seats right there.

So there's a mass. The big story in America, Glenn. Right now. And people should go on our website. Vote With Your Feet. And you can see, just click on any two states. You can click on New York. And you can click on Texas. And it will show you the -- where the moving vans are going to and from. And also, how much money they're taking with them because we know the income of these people as well.

So New York has lost two and a half million people. And, by the way, half of those people came from New York City. So if -- did they elect a socialist and they raised the taxes, again, New York City already has the highest taxes in the United States in North America. So if they raise them again, on, quote, the rich, they won't be there any longer. And I'll make another prediction to you, Glenn.

Are you in Texas? Where are you now?
(laughter)

GLENN: It's like a shell game.
I never really know. I just moved last week. I left my business in Texas.

Because I am never going to sever myself from Texas. I left my business in Texas. I promised my wife about 400 years ago, that some take we would live by the beach. So we moved to Florida. Business in Texas.

STEPHEN: You moved from no income tax state. To another no income tax state.

GLENN: Yeah. Are you crazy? I'm not doing anything else?

I would have dug a canal from the Atlantic, all the way to Dallas, if they forced me to move to a tax state. Anyway...

STEPHEN: So anyway, I'm in Dallas today.

GLENN: I know.

STEPHEN: Where are you in Florida?

GLENN: I'm not saying that on the air. But I will tell you that we're going to have dinner, Stephen. When you get back into dinner, Stephen, we'll have dinner.

STEPHEN: So, anyway, now I lost my train of concentration.

GLENN: So we were talking about the people that are moving and the tax base.

STEPHEN: Yeah. So basically, that's why I believe -- look, 1 million is probably a long shot.

But I think you're going to see a lot of wealth move out of New York. Now, here's the thing. You probably are aware of this. But about two months ago, the -- Texas has their own stock exchange. So we had the New York Stock Exchange for 150 years. Now you've got the Texas Stock Exchange, which I believe is in Dallas.

GLENN: I know.

STEPHEN: I believe, if they raise these taxes again, you pay 17 percent income tax in New York City.

GLENN: Jeez.

STEPHEN: Who is going to do that?

GLENN: My gosh.

STEPHEN: After 40 percent federal tax. So people will move. And I'll give you one -- one example.

Do you know Ken Griffin? He's the billionaire who created Citadel.

GLENN: Yeah.

STEPHEN: He's a big guy. Free market guy. And he was the single, biggest charitable giving in the city of Chicago. He gave to the Art Institute. He gave to the homeless shelters. He gave to the food kitchens and the museums and so on.

I mean, he was -- he was by far the biggest donor to all of the charities.

Well, finally, they kept raising, raising taxes in Chicago. And as you probably know, he moved out of Chicago. And he moved to Palm Beach.

Florida. And so then the interesting part of this story is, it put a 50 million-dollar hold in the Illinois budget.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

STEPHEN: And all the -- there's a funny story in the Chicago business. That all of a sudden, charities like, why isn't he donating to us anymore?

Why isn't he living there anymore?

So my point is, you chase the evil rich out of your city and your state. You pay a high price for that. By the way, he took several thousand, you know, jobs with him. So when you -- when you hear stoke the rich -- you know, the rich are -- as the old saying goes, "The rich aren't rich because they're stupid."

GLENN: Right.

So let me ask you this, Stephen. Because it used to be that New York was -- I mean, was the capital of the whole world.

STEPHEN: Yeah. Yeah. Financial capital.

GLENN: And because of the stock exchange. How real is the loss of the New York Stock Exchange. As something like the Texas stock exchange?

Is that something that really could actually happen?

STEPHEN: Yeah. It could happen. And look, the truth is that the New York Stock Exchange, even today, isn't anything like it was '60s, '70s, '80s, just like I mentioned I'm from Chicago. Remember the movie Trading Places, they're trading. It doesn't really exist anymore. Because that's all done by computers and electronically. So the trading floors aren't the same as they were. So Wall Street is just a shadow of what it once was. But what I'm saying is, today in America, in Dallas, Texas, there are more financial services jobs than there are in New York City.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

STEPHEN: That's amazing!

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

So --

STEPHEN: It's happening.

GLENN: So how long -- how much more, Stephen, how much more can New York take before it's -- it's no longer the financial capital?

How much more -- how many people have to move?

What has to happen, for it to really understand, wow. We made a huge mistake here?

STEPHEN: You would think they would have gotten that message already.

GLENN: No.

STEPHEN: And one of the things that you first did your show, many, many years ago. You were in New York.

So you're familiar with New York. And when was that? In the '90s when were you --

GLENN: In the 2000 -- 2000s. Mid-2000, you know, 2005. 2010.

STEPHEN: Yeah. Because I remember when Rudy -- this is an important point because I know you have a lot of listeners all over the country in New York and New Jersey. In the New York area.

So when Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor, New York was a mess. And you could see every week, because I was working at the Wall Street Journal at the time. Every week, you could see the improvement in the city. He got rid of the crime. He got rid of the graffiti. He got rid of the drug dealers. He got rid of -- he lowered the taxes. It wasn't complicated, Glenn. I mean, this wasn't rocket surgery.

GLENN: I know.

STEPHEN: This was obvious stuff.

And New York was New York again. And it was booming. And what's sad about this election that's happening today, is if Mamdani wins, they will reverse every single thing that Rudy did. And they will be back in the ditch. How stupid would people be to fall for that!

And part of the problem, Glenn, quite frankly, something you and I have talked about for years. Is our education system. You have 24-year-olds are voting, they think socialism works. Where? Show me. Where?

GLENN: Yeah. So what happens if he is elected? I mean, how -- what does it mean to people who have never gone to New York City?

Is -- is the loss of New York City to a Mamdani, is that going to affect everybody else's life?

STEPHEN: That's a good question. you're there in Florida.

Florida has gained. I really want people to go to this website.

Because it's amazing.

So Florida, under a great, great, great governor, Ron DeSantis. And you had a great governor, Rick Scott, before him. Florida, are you ready? Are you sitting down, Glenn? Florida has imported over the ten-year period, one trillion dollars of income from people coming in from other states. $1 trillion. It's the biggest mass migration ever in the history of this country.

GLENN: Unbelievable.

STEPHEN: And, by the way, people are not just living in New York. What you know other states they're leaving?

California.

GLENN: I think New York is moving to Florida, and California is moving to Texas.

STEPHEN: Moving to Texas, exactly.

And so you're just bleeding these blue states. That's why I don't get it.

So the thing that worries me. I was thinking about this, a lot over the past couple of days. If these states vote the wrong way, the only way that New York even survives, fiscally is with another massive federal bailout.

GLENN: Bailout. I know.

STEPHEN: How are you they going to pay their bills?

GLENN: They're not. They're not. And, you know, that's -- this is what I've said for a long time.

You know, the Constitution is not a suicide PAC. And California and New York and Chicago are going to eventually need giant bailouts.

And why should I pay for that know. I didn't live in those places. I didn't live there for a reason.

STEPHEN: Right.

GLENN: Right. That's taxation without representation.

I don't want to bail them out.

It was -- it's their fault, they did this. I've always wanted to live in California.

I never have, because it was insane. I knew that it was not going to work. So why do I have to pay for it?

STEPHEN: Exactly. Bingo. And incidentally, you're right. You can understand why people might leave New York for Florida. You know, in Florida, it's beautiful weather. In Florida, and rains a lot. And probably in New York. But how do you screw up California?

I mean, California is one of the probably most idyllic places in the planet. And people are living. This is the first time in 250 years people have been -- more people are leaving California than going to California. That's never happened before!

STU: That's unbelievable. Unbelievable.

STEPHEN: Yeah.

GLENN: Okay. So can you spend some time with me --

STEPHEN: Can I make one more point about this?

GLENN: Yeah.

STEPHEN: The governor of California is now the lead candidate to run on the Democratic ticket for president: Gavin Newsom. The guy who is -- what's he going to run on? "I'll do for America what I did for California?"

GLENN: Yes.

And so many people will buy into it!

I mean, I don't know what's wrong. It's so frustrating, because you try to apply logic. And you're like, but none of this makes sense! None of it. What are you doing?

I would love to be able to sit down and have a conversation, but none of this makes sense.

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