BLOGJuly 06, 2017

Ben Shapiro Officially Dubs the Trump vs. CNN GIF War 'Clowntastic'

Ben Shapiro is an author, journalist, and Editor in Chief of the Daily Wire, but his specialty is getting under the skin of liberals. The conservative powerhouse joined Glenn on radio Thursday and the two couldn't help but notice the blatant hypocrisy from both sides in the story of Trump's retweet of a video clip of him beating up a guy for a WWE stunt with the CNN logo superimposed on the victims face.

"If Barack Obama would have retweeted something that had an old clip of him beating the snot out of somebody and it superimposed a teabag over a guy's head, we would have gone ape crazy. We would have become animals and gone nuts. Right?" Glenn asked.

As always, Shapiro put the nail right on the head.

"For sure... Because we don't care about how we're acting anymore. All we care about is the reactionary nature of politics right now. It's why President Trump has like a 90 percent approval rating among Republicans and a 10 percent approval rating among Democrats. And the same thing by the end of the Obama term, was basically true. We're so polarized that we're using the polarization as an excuse for bad behavior," Shapiro said.

According to Shapiro, this behavior by the right is disappointing for an interesting reason.

"And, listen, I've spent my entire life -- my entire adult life fighting the left, and I was not expecting moral leadership from the left. I've never expected moral leadership from the left. Because they don't believe in the same values that I believe in. But I did expect moral leadership from the right. And I don't really see how moral leadership is advanced by tweeting out, you know, GIFs of WWE wrestling CNN logos. I mean, this was once an office occupied by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. It's a little bit clowntastic to watch the president," Shapiro said.

Enjoy the complimentary clip or read the transcript for details.

GLENN: Ben Shapiro. Good to have you on the program.

BEN: It an honor, of course.

GLENN: Good to have you here.

So I just want to run down just a few of the things that are going on in the world and just get your take on where we are, what we're headed towards.

First of all, quickly, let's touch on the topic that we've been on all day. Charlie Gard, the little 11-month-old child whose parents have the money to take him to America to get the treatment. The courts and the national health care system in Great Britain says no. He's got to die in a British hospital. Literally, he's got to die in a British hospital. Slate magazine just said that the right is going to use this as a case for death panels and against socialized medicine. Yeah.

(laughter)

Where do you stand on this?

BEN: I mean, it seems like a pretty solid case against death panels and socialized medicine. I don't see why we wouldn't possibly use that as a cutchall (phonetic). But, yeah, I mean, I think that -- my wife is a doctor. She's in residency, and she works in a hospital. And she deals with, you know, terminal people all the time.

And doctors will say that it's -- that -- they'll give -- they'll lay out all the choices for people who are terminal and they say, maybe you'd prefer not to be poked and prodded every five hours. Maybe you want to die at home. But this is all about the choice of the patient.

And here, in Charlie Gard's case, obviously, it's not the choice of the patient. It's not about the choice of the parents. When a government and a society decide that the quantity of life is less important than quality of life, you end up in a really dire situation. Because the goal of government at least should be to preserve quantity of life. It's your job to decide what sort of quality of life you want to enjoy. And we all have our different moral standards on that. But once the government decides that it gets to decide what quality of life is worth living, then you run into serious --

GLENN: You're in trouble. So I had my staff reach out to leaders of churches and faith over in England yesterday.

BEN: Uh-huh.

GLENN: And I got several responses. One of them was from a pastor who said, look, the churches and the pulpits, they are not dealing with this. They are not talking about it at all.

However, the Christians in England are talking about it. It's interesting that he -- he hoisted the white flags and said, the pulpits, including mine, have surrendered on this. But the people are talking about it.

BEN: Yeah.

GLENN: So there's a huge disconnect there. But he said, please tell Glenn that this is not a case of the government just taking away the rights of a child -- or, rights of parents. It is -- it is more so that the government has paid for this child's health care. And he said now that they have the money to take him to America, I see no reason he can't go to America. However, there isn't enough money to work on cases like that here in England.

So he was making the case that if you don't have money, that it would be right and righteous to say, let him die.

If you are in a socialized health care system and you don't have the money, is it wrong? What do you do?

BEN: Well, I mean, this is why socialized health care systems don't work. I mean, eventually someone is making the final call. It's not as if these parents were born into wealth. I mean, they raised this money from a bunch of charitable people so that they could take their kid out and try and save the kid.

As far as the issue with the pulpits, I mean, this is something that happens in the United States also. I think one of the great tragedies of the latter half of the 20th century is that pulpit figures across-the-board in Judaism, in Christianity, have fled from crucial moral battles that are happening in the now, in order to keep on the good side of government because they're afraid that the government is going to come against them. And so they've run from these moral battles. And you see it all the time. And it's really devastating. It sucks the marrow from the bones of religion.

GLENN: So then let's go to another moral question, of much less importance.

The CNN battle with the WWF video. Okay? I don't -- I'm having a really hard time with this because I don't see a good guy on either side.

BEN: Uh-huh.

GLENN: I see the president doing something that if Barack Obama would have had -- if he just would have retweeted -- not saying that Donald Trump did anything, but retweet it. If Barack Obama would have retweeted something that had an old clip of him beating the snot out of somebody and it superimposed a teabag over a guy's head, we would have gone ape crazy. We would have become animals and gone nuts.

BEN: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: Right?

BEN: For sure.

GLENN: So why don't we see now that we would have reacted the same way that the left is reacting to this and -- and forget about how others are acting, worry about how we're acting?

BEN: Because we don't care about how we're acting anymore. All we care about is the reactionary nature of politics right now. It's why President Trump has like a 90 percent approval rating among Republicans and a 10 percent approval rating among Democrats. And the same thing by the end of the Obama term, was basically true. We're so polarized that we're using the polarization as an excuse for bad behavior.

And, listen, I've spent my entire life -- my entire adult life fighting the left, and I was not expecting moral leadership from the left. I've never expected moral leadership from the left. Because they don't believe in the same values that I believe in. But I did expect moral leadership from the right. And I don't really see how moral leadership is advanced by tweeting out, you know, gifs of WWE wrestling CNN logos. I mean, this was once an office occupied by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. It's a little bit clowntastic to watch the president --

GLENN: Clowntastic. So have we just surrendered to clowntasmia --

BEN: Yeah, I think the Republican Party is broken down into -- and the conservative movement has broken down into maybe three groups: Group number one are people who say this is ridiculous and silly and there's no way he should be doing this. Group two is, this is ridiculous and silly, but at least we got Gorsuch. And then group three are the people -- and this is the growing group -- this is the one that I actually worried the most about is people who actively celebrate this, where this is a feature, not a bug. It's not, well, you're going to get the stupid tweet from time to time. But at least you get Scott Pruitt over at EPA, paring back the regulations. It's the people who say, I don't really care what Scott Pruitt is doing so much. Like, I don't pay attention to that. And Gorsuch, yay. But what I'm really interested -- what really gets you jazzed up is the tweets about Mika Brzezinski's bloody face lift or Trump tackling a CNN logo. Like, that's really what gets me going.

GLENN: Well, it's amazing because we used to say, when I was at Fox, watch the other hand. And the other hand -- well, A, I don't think they're coordinated. I think both hands are just flailing, doing whatever they want. But you could make the case that they're very strategic because as we are -- we're not talking about a health care reform that is absolutely awful. It's not -- it's not any better.

BEN: Well, I'm always hesitant to credit strategy to President Trump when sheer unbridled id would do it. You know, I think this wasn't, he thought, you know what, I really need a distraction for my health reform bill. So I'm going to tweet out a dumb gif. I think it was, somebody forwarded me a dumb gif. Ha-ha-ha-ha. Wouldn't it be hilarious if I put it up on my Twitter feed? And it really was that amount of consideration.

GLENN: Right. Right. Right.

BEN: So in order for it to be a diversion, a diversion usually requires something for you to divert attention from. I don't think he's diverting attention necessarily from the health care bill because that's a giant -- like, right now, it's a cluster.

GLENN: But what kills me is that there are a lot of people that are willing -- very smart people that are willing to say -- and help me understand it, Ben.

BEN: Uh-huh.

GLENN: That are willing to say, this is okay. The health care bill. Let's just say everything else is sane. But this is -- the people I trust now are not Mike Lee. They are what's-his-face? Turtle face from Kentucky.

BEN: McConnell.

GLENN: Okay. McConnell. They're trusting McConnell over people like Mike Lee. Help me figure that out.

BEN: Yeah. So, not to break too many groups down to other groups. But I think there are two groups of people here: One is the people who just want to see a win for Trump. And that means something has to pass. And since we're not going to pass simple repeal because Trump basically foreclosed that -- I mean, he forbade that during the campaign. He made a bunch of promises that are not in coordination with simple repeal. And he said, we're not going to let anybody go without health care. The government is going to make sure everybody is covered. I mean, he said this stuff in the campaign.

GLENN: Yeah.

BEN: So it's kind of difficult to say then now we're going to repeal and we're going to cut back Medicaid. So there's group number one that just wants to see Trump get a win. And then there's group number two who say, okay. Now we're going to be honest. We were lying for seven years. Republicans were lying for seven years when they said they were going to repeal this thing. Now we got to be honest. We're not repealing it. But the best that we can do is Medicaid restructuring and a tax cut. And that's the best we'll do here. And we'll call it Obamacare repeal so that all the idiots --

GLENN: Do you believe -- is there a group -- a growing group of conservatives that believe in socialized everything?

BEN: Yeah. I think there's a growing group of conservatives who at least don't care, who are apathetic. Who are more interested again in the fight in what they perceive to be the left than they are the fight against leftist policy. There's been a mistake that's been made, which is you identify the entirety of leftism as residing in the halls of CNN or the New York Times or at the universities. But when leftism actually starts to infect your party, then it can't be infecting your party because, hey, we're Republicans. We're conservatives. We don't believe in the -- we're not leftists. I mean, come on. We hate those guys.

And it doesn't matter -- this is why Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist, he was out there floating trial balloons about raising taxes on the rich. And there were a bunch of people going, well, yeah, why not do that?

What? I've been here for a while. This is a new one. But people saying, well, I mean, if that's good policy and if that will help us win Democratic voters and all the rest of it, then why not do it?

Again, I think that what people -- the stuff that you and I were looking at during the campaign, we were saying, this is really -- like, some of the activity that Trump was pushing or things like Gianforte, the Montana body-slamming reporter. Things where you and I were going, this is crazy. How is this happening? There were a lot of people who were seeing that not as -- in spite of that, we're happy because we're getting good policy. The policy doesn't actually matter. All that matters is that we have for so long hated losing to the left, that people literally body-slamming reporters or just going out there labeling everything fake news, all of this stuff is -- that's what we wanted. We elected that. Right? What we wanted was the Twitter.

Okay. The Twitter is not an obstacle to getting what we want. The Twitter is what we want. The policy is the obstacle to getting what we ant because we might not get more Twitter if he doesn't get policy passed that allows him to get reelection. And I think we have to be honest with ourselves about whether we're more jazzed up about the wrestling gif or whether we're more jazzed about Gorsuch. Because I think that --

GLENN: We're more jazzed up about the wrestling --

BEN: I think that's right. And I think Trump thinks that's right too, which is why he keeps doing it. Right? He gets more applause doing that than he does with conservative policy.

GLENN: Right. Back with Ben Shapiro here in a second.

GLENN: Good friend of the program. Good friend and also a good friend to the Constitution, deeply rooted in -- in logical thought, which is rare, Ben Shapiro from The Daily Wire is with us.

STU: And a lot smarter than us, so let me ask a question. The CNN thing, their reaction to the wrestling situation, which was them saying, well, we won't release a name. But, you know, if you act badly, we might.

BEN: Yeah.

GLENN: I don't even understand that.

STU: It was a weird way of phrasing it. And I'm not defending CNN and the way they handled it. It was very clunky at best.

I was a little surprised at the uniform reaction on the right though, at least the passionate response from the right saying -- sort of giving this real reverence to an online pseudonym, as if this really means you're anonymous. You could try to be anonymous, but that does not guarantee your anonymity.

You know, who are you mad at? You're mad at CNN here, who is essentially, let's say in the school situation, the principal punishing your kid for doing something wrong, right? They're punishing your kid for doing something wrong. I always see the right as the people who are mad at their kid, not at the school. The left is the one that goes and whines about the school. Hey, why did you get my kid in trouble? You're causing real detriment. Where, the right is the one supposed to be saying, wait a minute, moronic kid, don't post anti-Semitic stuff. Don't post stuff online you don't want to associate with yourself. What am I missing?

BEN: Well, I don't think you're missing anything with the basic calculus as far as the right is supposed to be chiding people when they do this sort of stuff. Although, during the last election cycle, as the number one recipient of anti-Semitic tweets in the journalistic community, according to the ADL.

STU: Yes, 40 percent.

BEN: Forty percent of all anti-Semitic tweets directed at journalists came to me personally during the last election.

GLENN: Congratulations.

STU: Congratulations.

BEN: Thank you. That's great. I have a trophy on my desk: Most hated Jew in America, which is a real accomplishment. Yeah, it's great.

But the -- you know, I think that this story is a little bit more than for that for a couple of reasons. One is that the attempt to link Trump with the guy who created the meme and then to link him with all the other stuff that this guy had ever created was obviously a stretch.

STU: And unfair.

BEN: And unfair to Trump. And obviously a hit job on Trump. So that was CNN going over its skis on that.

Okay. So assume that and say, okay. Fine. Well, they disagree. They think that Trump associating with the Reddit crowd, he gets -- whoever he's linked to, we're now going to search for all their ancillary material and link him to that. Which, again, I have a problem with that. That's mistake number one. Mistake number two is that apparently they got the wrong guy. So apparently they didn't even get the right guy.

GLENN: Yeah.

BEN: And then mistake number three is that they apparently called him. And before he returned their call, he said, okay. CNN is on my tail. I'm going to apologize and pull all the stuff down before I call that. He does that. He calls them back. And then they run that story where they say, and we'll keep him anonymous if he obeys our orders. Okay. That's no longer journalism. That's now activism. So if you're an activist group, that's okay. Right? It's still not moral.

GLENN: What do you think of the idea that Stu floated yesterday, that's really the Buzzfeed crew that kind of came in that was pushing back against CNN, because they are more activist. Don't get me wrong, I worked at CNN. They are activist as well, but not like the Buzzfeed people.

BEN: Uh-huh. I do think that the media have become just generally more activist since Trump was elected.

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

BEN: They now see it as their -- I wrote a column for National Review where I said the dichotomy right now in the American discourse is that the left sees themselves and the media see themselves as these battered-hat, trench coat-wearing guys who are snooping on the streets, and every nook and cranny for all the corruption over at Trumpany Hall. And then the right sees Trump as a sort of Playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne type, who is an idiot during the day, but then at night, he dons the bat cape and goes out and brings justice to Mika Brzezinski's face. So I'm not sure it's a bridge that can ever be gapped -- a gap that can ever be bridged. But as far as CNN's behavior on this, I think I reacted very strongly to this because CNN is not the gatekeeper of telling people what they can do or we're going to release X. It's either newsworthy and release it, or it's not newsworthy and let it go. You don't get to hold things over people's heads.

GLENN: So here's the thing I don't understand. I mean, today I saw this for the first time. This is apparently what was on that guy's feed.

BEN: Feed or whatever, yeah.

GLENN: This comes from a pro-Hitler group.

BEN: Yeah, I've seen it.

GLENN: You're not on this.

BEN: I don't know how they missed me.

GLENN: This is all the Jews that work at CNN.

BEN: Come on.

PAT: Wait. There are Jews that work at CNN? Oh, my gosh.

GLENN: Yeah.

So this is amazing because it has all their faces with a Star of David next to it. I mean, it's so Hitler anti-Semitic kind of stuff.

PAT: Oh, that's bad.

GLENN: By saying, hey, we're not going to release this stuff, they actually I don't think did go as far as they could have to tie Trump to this kind of stuff. If they would have spent two days showing this stuff and saying, "This is the kind of stuff he was doing, blah, blah," then it would have been worse. I don't understand their strategy. I'll get to that in just a second.

GLENN: Welcome to the program. And to Ben Shapiro, who is from The Daily Wire and a -- a really bright guy who is not afraid -- we have very different approaches, the two of us. But I think we believe much of the same stuff.

BEN: Right. You're a nice person. I'm not.

(laughter)

GLENN: No. It's just -- yeah. I want to talk to you a little bit about that too before we go. Because that's not it. I don't think you're a bomb thrower by any stretch of the imagination. We were talking about this earlier today. You're very logical, and you don't mind confrontation.

BEN: Right.

GLENN: But you're not a bomb thrower. There's a difference between a bomb thrower and -- you're not quite Ravi Zacharias.

BEN: Yeah.

GLENN: But you're on that road.

BEN: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, I'd like to think that I'm more interested in saying things that I think are true than I am at offending people. And if the things that I think are true offend people, than so be it.

GLENN: Yeah. There's a totally different -- some people go out to make headlines and to offend. I don't think you -- I've never seen you do that.

BEN: Yeah. Thank you. It's something that I do take some pride in. And it's one of the reasons why -- it's so funny, I'll speak on these college campuses. And there will be these major protests and quasi-riots and all this. And then when people who are on the left actually come to the lecture, they'll say they don't understand what that was all about.

GLENN: Yeah. I know. I know.

Okay. So let's go back to where we were before the break. You were about to answer something.

BEN: It was the CNN thing.

GLENN: CNN. Yeah. So what is CNN's strategy on the way they dealt with all of this?

BEN: I think that the entire media right now are so -- as I said, we're in a reactionary period, which is really dangerous because whatever happens out of a reactionary period, it's rarely good. But the media are so reactionary that they think every story is a kill shot. And so they're interested in just getting the story out fast.

GLENN: Don't they know there is no kill shot on this one? It's just not going to happen.

BEN: Yeah, exactly. But they think everything is. Right? You have Democrats who are saying, based on his tweets last week with MSNBC, he should be impeached. It's like, really? That's your grounds? Like that was it? Have you not seen his Twitter feed?

GLENN: Is that a high crime or a misdemeanor? Which one is that?

STU: It's the Twitter clause of the Constitution.

GLENN: Yeah.

BEN: They put a lot of other clauses in there. No reason they can't put that one in there too.

They really are -- in order for them to maintain ratings -- also, actually because they believe this. They are living in this mythical world where if they break the right story, then Trump will just collapse and he won't be president anymore. And the entire reality will change. And this is why CNN was pumping the Trump/Russia collusion stuff. Not just saying that, you know, there are people who Trump has associated with, who have Russian connections -- which is true -- but saying there is active collusion in trying to blow this up into some big scandal with no evidence.

GLENN: There is no evidence of that.

BEN: None. And they were doing this for a year. And particularly post-election they were doing it because their viewers are invested in the idea that -- they want to be watching CNN at directly the moment when Trump goes down.

GLENN: Yeah, but don't they -- that's true. But don't they understand that we kind of already paved that ground, and it gave birth to the birthers?

BEN: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

GLENN: Okay. And four years into it, Donald Trump is doing the whole birth certificate thing, which only hardens his supporters. That's all that that does. And so by CNN making everything into an -- a grounds of impeachment and a constitutional crisis, they're only hardening both sides.

BEN: They don't care. Why would they care? And I think that on the right, why would people on the right care?

You used to be able to say two things: Number one, it's bad for the American body politic to have these hardening of positions. And number two, it's not going to bring you victory. But clearly that's not true. Right? I mean, clearly -- like, we on the right keep saying, when are the Democrats going to propose something? When are they going to bring their solutions? They don't need to. Okay. Let's not pretend here.

The Republicans brought no solutions for eight years while Obama was president. And they yelled at him. And then the guy who said that he was born in Kenya is the president of the United States. So it's very difficult to make the argument that what we really need is a great unifier in order to win elections when I can't say that we're exactly the party of unification.

Now, that doesn't say something to unify with. The left wasn't providing a lot for us to unify over while President Obama was president and was providing his own form of polarization and racial extremism in terms of polarizing various racial groups for political gain.

But right now, there's not a lot of incentive on any side for a rhetoric of unity or for a rhetoric of reason.

GLENN: Well, a rhetoric of reason and unity -- and I don't like his policies at all -- was Mitt Romney.

BEN: Yes.

GLENN: And he was right down the traditional middle and everything else.

BEN: Uh-huh.

GLENN: He was much more conservative than this president is in many ways.

BEN: Uh-huh.

GLENN: And yet we didn't unify around that. We unify against somebody that will punch back.

BEN: And that's the whole thing. This is a rage moment. And one of the things that's happening for politicians and the media is there's a lot of money and a lot of political gain to be made in humoring people's anger. You know, I'm -- as a parent, one of the things -- I have two kids who are under the age of four. Which means you deal with tantrums a lot. And one of the things that you do with a kid who is having a tantrum is you have to say, you know, why are you having the tantrum? Is the anger justified?

Right? And usually the anger is not. It's a 3-and-a-half-year-old. The anger usually isn't. When people who are adults are angry, we no longer even bother asking them, is your anger justified? Are you mad for a good reason, or are you just mad? And then if they're mad, we say, okay. Well, we can grab that. We can use that. We can channel that anger into something politically useful, electing me or raising money for this cause. Or -- and so if there's nothing to be angry at or if there's less to be angry at than you think, then how are you going to take advantage of that? And I think that that's what you see happening on both sides of the aisle.

So on the left, they're saying, this is the worst president who ever was. He's Hitlerian. Nothing is happening, guys. Like nothing. Zero things have happened.

GLENN: Nothing.

BEN: I mean, Judge Gorsuch replaced Justice Scalia. Okay. Nothing happened. Nothing is happening. Right? There's been zero major pieces of legislation passed and signed by this president. There have been a bunch of repeals of small laws under -- under -- under Obama. But like, come on. This has been a transformational presidency? Not in any way has this been transformational. But the left is treating it like, you have a reason to be angry. They're a reason you're mad.

Not really. And on the right, you have people -- like President Trump did this during the campaign, to great effect, where he was going into these small towns that were shutting down because the industries had left. And saying, well, the reason -- you have a right to be angry. And not a right to be angry at the overregulation, which is legit, but you have a right to be angry because the Chinese and the Mexicans are stealing your job. And if we'd just win again -- if we didn't have all these idiots and we would just win again, then we would be able to bring everything back. All these factories would come flowing back in.

And, of course, none of that is true. And so what you have right now is the media trying for a buck to promote anger. And you have the politicians for a vote to try and promote anger. And never at any point does anybody -- it makes a pathological country.

Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist over at NYU, he talks about how when it comes to psychology, the single best method that's been devised for psychologists is cognitive behavioral therapy, where they trying try to take somebody who is having a chain of bad thoughts that's leading to depression. And then they try to say, why is it -- is it possible you're exaggerating the situation? Is it possible you're reading someone wrong? You break the chain of bad thoughts by saying, maybe your feelings are not justified. Maybe you should reexamine your own feelings and get control over your own feelings, and then you can control yourself as a human being. Politics is the opposite of that now. It's to take that rage and exacerbate it and magnify it and make it bigger and broader and louder.

GLENN: Yeah. So, Ben, that brings you right to you and me. And I wouldn't put us in different categories. You just approach it differently. You're approaching it with reason. But you don't mind the battle.

STU: I kind of want to see Ben Shapiro as a dad with a logical argument to the 3-and-a-half-year-old.

BEN: Thankfully, she's a pretty logical three-and-a-half-year-old. She's still three-and-a-half.

GLENN: I bet.

STU: Actually, the macaroni and cheese is the correct temperature.

(laughter)

GLENN: Right. Are you seeing and are you even looking for those people, not on the left, but the reasonable people -- I think there's -- I don't even know what the number is. On a bad day, I think it's 30 percent. On a good day, I think it's maybe 70 percent of Americans who if were presented with a group of adults that could all get along, even though they disagree and were saying, you know what, just come over and watch that stuff burn down over here. We're just going to start moving and getting some things done. Kind of the Republican Party in the 1850s that really was mainly made up of Democrats at the time that said, you're not serious. And the Whigs that joined them and said, my side is not serious either. And we actually want to solve this slavery thing.

Do you see -- do you see those reasonable people out there?

BEN: I do actually. It's a growing number of people who are disillusioned with the WWE of it all and are sick -- and they see it's kind of fake. That really it's a lot of people that are --

GLENN: And you see it on the left as well?

BEN: I think, yeah. I get a lot of letters from college kids because I speak a lot to college kids and they watch my videos. And I get a lot of letters from college kids who is, I was on the left, and I was motivated to believe the people on the right were nasty and mean and cruel. And then I watched some of your stuff, and now it's opened my mind. I'm doing some reading of my own. And I'd like to kind of examine ideas differently. And I think that there are those people who are getting over this.

I think that what's -- the future for conservatism is not going to be complete Reagan conservatism. It's going to be almost a conservative Libertarian merger. It's going to be a leave me alone thing. Because we're so sick of everybody in our business.

In fact, I think that that's actually the strongest pitch that conservatives can make right now to people on the left is not, come on over here and join us on the Trump train. It's, you hate Trump. It's, okay. I hated Obama. I thought he was terrible. Well, I have a solution for all of this, which is, how about we just take the power away from everyone in Washington, DC, and then you don't have to care who is the president. He's just some guy who lives in a house --

GLENN: Yeah. And we're not going to change your life. You live what you like. Don't change how I live my life. Let's just live side by side. I think there's a real case to be made -- I think that's what's going to come out of this.

I was in Hollywood of all places all last week, and I met with group after group after group, some of them were hardened -- at least one in each group of the probably ten meetings that I had -- at least one was hardened against me when I first walked in.

BEN: Uh-huh.

GLENN: And it became a joke of the team that was going with me because they were like, how long before they turn? How long before they turn?

BEN: Yeah.

GLENN: Turned every single one of them because of Jonathan Haidt, actually used his method of talking their language.

BEN: Yeah.

GLENN: Speaking reason. Being humble, friendly, likable, laugh, laugh at yourself, laugh at the other side. Immediately turned.

I had huge liberals come to me and say, "I am more afraid of the left than I am of your side now."

BEN: Uh-huh.

GLENN: Because of what's happening on college campuses. This is the kind of round people up. And it's usually Jews. You know, they were the liberal Jews that were saying these kinds of things to me.

BEN: Uh-huh. I think the political situation right now, it's sort of a game of ping-pong. And the eventually, the -- people are just going to get tired of bouncing between the two polar extremes, between the Bernie Sanders left and the Black Lives Matter left and the, you know, hard-core --

GLENN: Do you think there's enough Democrats that are still out there that say, I don't want Bernie Sanders? Because the Democrats are moving towards that kind of a --

BEN: I think -- well, I think Bernie Sanders is an interesting case because Sanders is smart enough to actually not play the intersectional game as much as he plays the socialist game. So he's actually a more unifying figure for Americans than Kamala Harris, for example.

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

BEN: And so Sanders is actually -- the great danger from the Democrats is coming -- I agree with the hard left of the Democratic party, who is Bernie Sanders-ite, that the actual future of the Democratic Party and their victory is going to lie with people like Bernie Sanders and not with -- not with this separate people by their race and then run on the typical Democratic platform.

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

BEN: I mean, I think if Sanders had actually been the nominee, I think there's a much more significant chance that he is president than Hillary. I think he probably wins Michigan pretty easily.

GLENN: I agree. I agree. I agree.

BEN: So, you know, that's the danger. But that's not just because of his ideas. It's because he has steadfastly refused to engage in some of the --

GLENN: Play the game. He's not playing the game.

BEN: Exactly. That's right.

STU: Can we do one more without -- no politics here. I'm fascinated by something that you've done recently, which I just took my kid to our first baseball game. He's five. I'm indoctrinating him to be a Toronto Bluejays fan for absolutely no explainable reason.

But you actually just wrote a book about your experience of going through the 2005 White Sox championship. How did that come about? I think that's a fascinating thing.

BEN: My dad and I are huge White Sox fans. I picked up on my dad's sports allegiances. So he's from Chicago, my mom is from Chicago. I was born in LA. So that means I've never really been to a home game. I've just been to visiting games. And so we're huge White Sox fans. And in 2005, I was at Harvard Law. He was having a rough year. We just decided we were going to watch every White Sox game. So between the two of us, we watched every White Sox game that season, and they ended up winning the World Series. And so we wrote this book where half the book is us writing notes to each other: How are you doing? And we just compiled all of that into a book. So took notes on the games --

GLENN: See, I wrote you about that. And you said it's a sports book. So really no big deal.

That's not a sports book. That's a dad -- that's a father and son book. Oh, that's great.

BEN: But it is -- it's a lot of fun. If you're a baseball fan, you'll get a lot more out of it because there is a lot of baseball in there. I mean, we do love baseball, so there is a lot of baseball in there. But, yeah, it's my dad telling stories about his dad and me and my dad interrelating. And so that's --

GLENN: What's the name of the book?

BEN: It's called Say It's So.

GLENN: Ben Shapiro. He'll be on with us -- I think we're doing a Facebook thing. We're so thrilled to have you on. And keep up the good work.

BEN: As I say, it's an honor and pleasure to be with you always.

GLENN: Thank you.

RADIO

“He was one of ours, and he was taken”: Megyn Kelly remembers Charlie Kirk

Glenn Beck and Megyn Kelly remember their friend, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, a day after he was assassinated at Utah Valley University. They also discuss the manhunt for the killer.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Yesterday was such a surreal day. I was getting to record my special last night. It was in the afternoon. And I'm sitting here in my studio, and I look at the stairs through this glass door that I have here. And my wife is on the phone, and she's standing in the stairway.

And she has her, her hand gripping the stair rail. And I could see it in her eyes, she was on the phone. And I could see confusion, and I could see trouble.

And in my ear, I'm hearing, five, four, three -- and I said, "Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. I need 30 seconds. I need to talk to my wife."

And I motioned for her to come in. And in a confused and dazed sort of way, she kind of stumbles into the room.

And I said, "What's happening, honey?"

And she said, "It's Cheyenne."

I didn't know what that meant. As a dad, you can imagine. I said, "Is she okay? What -- what's happening?"

She meant, it's Cheyenne on the phone.

Cheyenne had just gotten past the crush of the crowd. She called her mom. She said, "Charlie Kirk's just been shot."

"What?"

She sent me some video, and I knew it was true, but hoped for the best until a few minutes later somebody else sent me video that I hope you did not see, of the bullet striking him.

It must have been like what it was when you first saw the Zapruder film, or if you were standing in the Grassy Knoll. You just knew.

I was on with Megyn Kelly, and we were holding on to the hope that he was somehow or another going to survive that. And Megyn said at one point, I don't know why I'm not announcing what everybody else is announcing. But I just can't.

Megyn joins us now. Hi, Megyn.

MEGYN: Hi, Glenn.

GLENN: What a weird 24 hours it has been. Where are you this morning, in unraveling this knot in your head?

MEGYN: I still don't have my arms around it. I -- I don't feel like I've totally digested the fact that he's gone and the way in which he was taken. You know, Charlie truly was such a larger than life figure. We say that term. But it -- it was true about him. At six-five, he truly seemed larger than most of us. And he was, in his gifts, in his tirelessness. And just knowing exactly where the scene. Every story was.

And his raw courage. So many times. We like to think we're courageous in our commentary. You look at Charlie, and you think, now that's try courage. He -- he would just say it like it was.

The things you might be thinking in your head, but you might not want to say explicitly, he said. And he took a lot of slings and arrows for it and was demonized for being all the terrible things, as opposed to people taking him on and saying, "Does he have a point?"

GLENN: You know, I said earlier today, you don't kill the weak. People don't want to try to heal. They just want to speak in anger at times. And anger is part of the grieving process. And I know I'm angry.

But Charlie would face that anger. And what people think is weakness, by showing love and compassion and listening and just having a decent conversation, that's one of the reasons why he was killed. He wasn't -- he wasn't killed because he was weak. Just like Gandhi wasn't weak. He -- he -- he was killed because he was effective.

Megyn, where do we go from here?

She dropped. Can we get her back on the phone. I got an email from somebody today. This morning.

And I want to share the email. I won't share the name. It's short. But I -- I also think I should share the -- my response. Because I think it's how most of us feel.

It -- it comes from a very well-known conservative leader. Glenn, I am devastated this morning.

I am in deep mourning for Charlie. I am in mourning for his family and our country.

And I don't know how to surface from this. I don't know if I do either.

But I would like to share my thoughts with you, a little later on. Megyn is with me.

Megyn, how do we process this? How do we surface from this?

MEGYN: You know, I think as many lost -- we -- we all have to go through the denial and the bargaining. You know, I'm still refreshing my X account, like hoping somehow there's a reversal. You know, like somehow it was all wrong. Somehow we got it all wrong. You know, sometimes the media gets it wrong. It -- it's absurd. We know what the answer is.

But that's a natural reaction when you had a sudden loss in particular. And anger is completely appropriate now too. It's completely appropriate.

You know, we are going to catch this guy. You know, that FBI presser they just held which is very encouraging.

They -- and two things that happened this morning that are of note, Glenn. First, Steven Crowder who is very solid on his law enforcement leak reporting. He has -- he has a proven track history. He's the one that got the manifesto from the trans shooter in Nashville before anyone else. And that's not all.

He's had other leaks, posting a document saying he received from an ATF source on the investigation.

And that says that they retrieved the gun in the would see, behind the campus. Wrapped in a towel. And that there were three unspent cartridges in the gun. That had transgender and antifascist ideology. Something written on them.

Now, that piece of -- that last piece of it was not confirmed by the FBI at the presser they just held, but every other thing was.

The Crowder report was confirmed in every detail, including naming the kind of gun. He had that right. He had the location right. He had the trail and the tracking of the suspect right.

They did not volunteer the business about what was written on the cartridges, nor did anyone there ask. Because those reporters almost certainly don't follow Steven Crowder because those reporters will probably tell you, he's not to be trusted.

Now, this is an early report. And it could turn out to be wrong. But that's the update as far as we know it.

And the FBI revealing that they have a picture of him, that they did, of course, track him on his way to the shooting spot with surveillance cameras, of course, on these college campuses. We would expect that in dorms or class buildings.

And they appear confident. At least to me. That they've got the guy. And if they've got the weapon, Glenn. Well, they may or may not have fingerprints.

But they almost certainly have DNA. They almost certainly DNA, which I'm sure they're uploading right now, into every database, they can.

You know, within we saw -- they're not supposed to use the public databases. Sorry, private like 23andme or Ancestry.com. Though, in Culverter (phonetic), they did. And that is how they found Culverter. Sometimes they do.

And even just a public database of DNA. Can lead you at least to a family member somewhere near a shooter or suspect. And then it's just a matter of charts and a few hours in getting to that person's relative. So I believe they will find the shooter.

And then we'll know the ideology. And then we'll have a place to put some of the anger. Like, an explanation or something that will help us understand what deranged person. And I don't mean that in a clinical sense. Did this yesterday.

I just feel like, I don't know where to go, until I figure out who did this and why.

GLENN: It was about midnight last night, when I talked to the president.

And he was very clear, that we will find whoever is responsible for this. And justice will be served.

He was extraordinarily confident in that. Which gave me an awful lot of hope.

I don't know if you saw his speech last night, that he gave from the oval.

But I thought -- very powerful. Hit exactly the right tone.

Hit exactly the right tone.

But I think the days of us fooling around and nibbling at the edges. I think those days are over.

MEGYN: I agree. And one of the things that Trump said last night that was so good was, he used the word "terrorism." That's exactly right. You know, that's -- that is how a lot of us are feeling.

And I know you've had the same experience I've had in the last 24 hours, Glenn, where virtually everybody I know in the media business has reached out. I think there are a lot of folks who are in Arlene, in particular, in conservative media, who are very rattled by this because he was one of ours.

And he was taken. You know, he -- obviously, we all have concerns about personal security now with the shooter at loose. You know, at large as well. But I just mean that -- like the betrayal and the need to rise up and protect ours. And the people we value and love.

You know, this is like -- I don't want to say a call to arms. Because I'm not encouraging violence. But, I mean, a unifying call for us to stand shoulder to shoulder and stand up.

GLENN: Yeah. It is absolutely a wake-up call. To anybody who thought, you know, "Oh, it's just going to pass us by," it's not. This is -- this is the call of our age. And how we respond, is going to determine the future of freedom in this country. But I have great confidence that we will respond just as we did after 9/11.

We responded with conviction. We responded with an intelligence sort of way. We overreacted in some ways, that I would like to avoid this time.

But we came together as a nation, and did what had to be done.

For the preservation of our nation.

Now, if we can have the moderation lesson learned this time. Perhaps we will be good. But I think the days of Antifa not feeling any ramifications for their work and others, those days are over! As of yesterday.

Megyn -- I just -- go ahead.

MEGYN: Go ahead, Glenn. I was just going to say. One of the things we did after 9/11 was when the stock market opened two days later. We -- we all bought stocks. We just -- it could have been a 5-dollar to being. But everyone did it to send a message that the financial center would stand. And I think we are going to see a reaction on college campuses when it comes to free speech by conservatives unlike we've ever seen before. In a similar vein.

GLENN: I agree. I'm proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with you, Megyn. And be in the trenches with you all the time. You are a light in a lot of darkness. And I appreciate our years of friendship. And everything that you've done for the country. Thank you!

MEGYN: Likewise, my friend. Thanks for having me.

RADIO

“Our country has changed forever”: Charlie Kirk's BlazeTV friends reflect on his death

BlazeTV hosts Liz Wheeler, Steve Deace, and Allie Beth Stuckey join Glenn Beck to reflect on the assassination of their friend, Charlie Kirk. They also discuss where the conservative movement goes from here and what they believe the impact of his death will be.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: I spoke to you yesterday. And we were both pretty raw at the time. How are you doing this morning?

LIZ: I -- I am in a fog of grief, Glenn. I think that a lot of us are -- it still feels very unbelievable what happened to our very dear friend, Charlie Kirk. I feel like I'm floating up outside of my body in a sense, watching all of this unfold.

It's quite something to see the reaction, from the American people over this assassination. I think you're correct when you say that our country has changed forever. I think this is one of the most significant -- not just political assassinations, but political events that we've experienced since the inception of our country.

And I think I've been praying about this, since you and I spoke for so long yesterday.

I've been thinking about this endlessly.

Obviously, on my knees, praying for sweet Erica and Charlie and Erica's two babies. But I think one of the things that's happened in the last 24 hours is people in our country, and I don't even want to say conservatives.

I don't want to say right-wingers because it's not just that, have realized that Charlie is so normal. He's not radical. He's not extreme.

He's not bombastic. He's not edgy. He's just a regular guy. And he's kind. And they killed him because of those beliefs and opinions, those principles and values, Glenn, that we share with him.

And you and I work in this industry, and you've written a lot of books about this political enemy that we face, and we talk about it a lot.

But for the majority of the American people, this is the first time, Glenn, that they're realizing, exactly who this political enemy that we face is.

And it's jarring, and it's gut-wrenching. Because they realize, that just as easily as they assassinated Charlie Kirk and are now dancing on his grave, they want to do that to us, too. (crying)

GLENN: Liz, I -- and I know you do. I have such faith in the Lord. And I know -- I don't know how our lives end.

I don't know how things work out. But I know everything that happens is used for his good. There is no way to thwart God's plan. You can make it -- you can make getting there harder. You can make getting there more painful.

But if we trust in him, great and glorious things are going to happen. Because of this.

LIZ: Charlie once said --

GLENN: Go ahead.

LIZ: Charlie once said, when someone asked him what he wanted to be known for the most -- and he wore a lot of hats, so he could have picked a lot of different accomplishments and identities. And he said he wanted to be known for his faith.

And that's -- it's so powerful. You and I are clinging to God right now. Everyone sitting here with us is clinging to God. I'm literally sitting here, gripping a rosary as we talk. Evil happens in our world, and we all ask that question, "Why? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good and innocent people?"

And, you know, as Father Mike Schmitz reminded us yesterday, "When evil happens, that is not God's perfect will. It is God's permissive will, which is very different."

God allowed Charlie's death to happen, but he did not want it to happen. God values human freedom and can bring about a greater good through these allowed events. But God does not allow evil. He uses it to achieve his higher purpose. When sometimes we don't know what that is, and I -- I'm human. I find it very difficult not to have an immediate answer to, "Okay. What is that higher good?"

But it could be testing faith or demonstrating compassion, teaching people how to uphold his perfect will of good.

And if God were to remove evil from the human existence, he would also be removing our free will to love him and to love others. And he knows that despite the evil that he allows to exist in the world, this greater good can be achieved for eternity, which is where Charlie is now.

And, Glenn, there are a lot of bad people online right now. You know, celebrating Charlie's death and saying how ironic it was, that Charlie was killed by a gun when he was a champion of gun rights. But you want to know what the real irony is? The real irony is that Charlie, at this moment in eternity, I guarantee you, Glenn, is praying for those who did this to him.

GLENN: You know, yesterday I said, "I think I might have done the hardest things I've done. I walked to the front gate, and I lowered my flag to half-mast for a dear friend."

And I think that is going to be easy compared to the forgiveness and the compassion and the restraint that is going to be required from all of us in the coming days. I think that's going to be very difficult. And I don't know how you do it, if you don't have God.

LIZ: I don't. I can't imagine moving forward without God. The Bible says, "He is my rock. He is my refuge."

And I can tell you, that that's the only thing that's helping me swim through this fog.

Charlie was such a good man, Glenn. Such a good man. You know, he once actually hired me -- this was a decade and a half ago. He hired me to work for Turning Point USA, but I wasn't going to -- my start date for starting that job wasn't going to be for, like, three months down the road because that's a new financial cycle. And in the interim after we had signed that contract, but before I had started, I got offered my first television job on OIN. And so I preemptively quit on Charlie.

And I remembered talking to him. And saying, "I know this is such a sucky move for me to preemptively quit on you after we had agreed. But, Charlie, what would you do?"

And he was so gracious, Glenn. He was so generous. He said, "You are -- you're going to kill it. You're going to -- you will use this platform to glorify God and save this country."

And he was always so encouraging. Yesterday, I was looking back at our text thread, because for as busy as this man was, he never neglected talking to his friends.

And during some of the most challenging moments in my public life, who was texting me encouragement, but Charlie Kirk? This -- it is hard to think about how to move forward, but one of the things -- and I know that it's hard to articulate clearly in this moment. But one of the things that I know with crystal clarity at this moment. Is we are not going to be silenced by an enemy who harms us.

We are not going to back down. We are not going to be quiet. We are going to honor Charlie's legacy. We are going to care for and love Charlie's families.

We are going to understand in a clearer sense exactly what we are up against. And it's going to -- with God on our side, it is going to lead us to victory, in a way that our country has not yet experienced. Because we do have this binary choice.

The left wants violence. The left wants Civil War.

The left wants to hurt us and kill us.

But what's going to happen instead, is these people in our country. People who are politically apathetic. Or lukewarm liberal. Or maybe right-wing, but not that active in politics, the same thing is going to happen as a result of Charlie's assassination. That happened after the Black Lives Matter riots.

Or after the COVID vaccine mandates. Where people realized that the other side does not want the best for us.

That the other side, during the Black Lives Matter riots, was willing to falsely accuse us of being racists when that wasn't true. Or during COVID, to tell us that we couldn't go to church and worship God. And we had to take their medical products because they said so, and they didn't care about the harm. Glenn, this is that, times one thousand!

People are now looking out across our country, realizing, that there are subversive forces. And not just a radical lunatic madman incident.

There are radical forces who want to kill us. And the awakening that is going to happen, the eye-opening, you are going to see churches filled with people turning to God. You are going to see politics, a swell of good people, who want to stand for normalcy, and common sense. Two million, 5 million, 10 million Charlie Kirks are going to be minted because of this!

And that's hard to picture in this moment, and there will be hard choices to make because we're angry right now and the left is taunting us, but I have so much faith. I have so much faith in what Charlie did and in the prayers that he is going to be bathing our country in now from eternity.

GLENN: I want to spend a few minutes with another friend of Charlie Kirk's and a good friend of our program and -- and mine. Steve Deace, who follows me on Blaze TV. Steve, I know it has been a hard 24 hours. How are you holding up?

STEVE: I'm pretty devastated. I think I have sobbed more, Glenn, in the last 18 hours than I probably did since the night of my own conversion.

GLENN: Hmm.

STEVE: I'm angry, as I know a lot of people are. And there will be a time, after we -- we need to mourn, first, Glenn. Because otherwise the anger will come out destructively. And it needs to come out, but constructively. And I think we have to mourn first. I think Charlie's legacy as a father, husband, friend, patriot merits that. And I think TP USA and his family need that.

In the not too distant future, we're going to have to get the message that was sent here. He was the best of us. We saw him behind the scenes or in public, genuinely kind, generous.

I -- I -- too many pastors and ministry leaders thought they were too good for Charlie and TP USA. Didn't want to get their hands dirty, and claimed they were being super friendly. And yet, he was the one that sought out the seekers. He went to the places that those nicer than God pastors didn't go to. And he took the bullet that, frankly, that's part of their calling. That they're supposed to take. And I hope in a good way, it shames some of them this morning. That they wake up and they realize, that they have slept on the job. And that's judge somebody like Charlie had to do their job for them.

And as Charlie, you know, named his own organization.

This is a turning point. We're never going back to the way things were before. What we do, next, will decide whether or not they are better. And as one of Charlie's biggest -- biggest supporters and donors texted me this morning, we can only pray that out of one, many will rise up.

GLENN: That's a guarantee. That is an absolute guarantee, that that is going to happen.
You know, when the tyrant is killed, his reign is over. When the martyr is killed, his reign has just begun. And make no mistake, for liberty, Charlie Kirk was a martyr. He was assassinated and martyred yesterday.

And -- and, you know, I -- I -- I -- I think -- I hope, that America -- I wish America could know him the way we knew him.

Because he was a -- he was such a generous man.

STEVE: Uh-huh.

GLENN: It didn't matter who you were, or what rank in life you were, if you needed help, he was there. And --

STEVE: Yep.

GLENN: No matter how busy he was, everything stopped.

And he would help you.

And I saw it in him over and over and over again. And I wish people could see that, because it -- you know, this cartoon character, where they're making him into this bomb thrower, he was anything, but.

I mean, he would have the greatest conversations with people. I mean, I could have done it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit through that nonsense. But he could!

And he could logically and peacefully have a great conversation, with people who despised him. And that was so important for the healing of our nation. And I really think that that's one of the reasons that he was killed, not just because he was effective at what he did, but because he was healing us. Something that is really vital to happen. He was healing all of those divides.

STEVE: I couldn't have said it better myself. And if you just look on social media and see so many people in our movement, who have such incredible -- people I don't know, people that don't know me, such incredible testimonies of everything you just said in their interactions with Charlie.

You know, we had a very divisive presidential primary. And to be honest, I didn't always handle it well. One of the first people I heard from when it was over was Charlie. And he texted me, and he said, "Don't give up. We need you."

He didn't have to do that, he won. And he's got the bigger platform. He's got the bigger show. He didn't have to do that. But that's the -- those are the kinds of things that leaders do.

And the void that is left here is massive. And at my lowest point I've ever had in my faith, the Lord said something to me, that will stay with me the rest of my life. And he said, "Steven" -- I'm sorry.

"Steven, I need apostles, not assassins."

And I want to share that with your audience because to win the fight that will come after this, that is what will be required. If you know me, this isn't about being a pansy. The apostles rebuke. But they don't seek revenge. The apostles confront. But they don't condemn. The apostles did something that Hannibal couldn't do.

No other civilization in the fertile crescent could do, they conquered the Roman empire. They set the stage for Western civilization. And they did not do it because they were passive, and they sit on the sidelines, and they were nicer than God. And they wear pleated khakis and Hawaiian shirts year around with sweater vests.

They did it because they got their hands dirty. They did it because they did the kinds of things we saw Charlie do: Build infrastructure.
Direct, lead, guide.

I mean, we would have to have a literal conclave, Glenn. And literally, everyone in our business and movement. And come up with divisions to do all the various things Charlie himself was leading and doing in that organization.

I told Charlie at dinner recently, "It's like, you were like, if Rush Limbaugh and the Heritage Foundation had a baby. This is what you and TP USA are."

And that's what it's going to take to fill that void. But I can't -- I'm sure with the size of your audience, my inbox -- my wife is going through it, as we speak, it is full of people. You were right. I have to get off the sidelines. I have to do something. My buddy Sloan over at TP USA texted me yesterday, he goes, "You know, I can't tell you how many pastors we're hearing from. They thought they were too pious for us. Too good for us.
And now the stakes have been raised. They're getting it."

And I'm just so sorry, that it took two little children and their -- and their mom's family away from them for two -- for more people to get the message. And I want to -- I want to specifically challenge my generation, Gen X, no more grunge. No more, we're too cool for school. No more, "Well, everything sucks. Nothing we can do." No more.

That was a 31-year-old man doing the work as a young father and husband, frankly it wasn't his time to do yet. He has other primary duties that he should have been given the benefit of devoting to as a husband father, but our generation has set on the sidelines for too long. We must lead. It is our children now that are grown, that are leaving the nest. We are the ones with the free time.

We are the ones with the discretionary income. It is our time now to leave, to stop bitching and complaining about boomers. And I say that to me more than anybody else.

And to stop looking around like we're still listening to Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots and Sound Garden, and nothing is going to get better. It is time now to lead. This is our moment.

And we are the ones that are in a place to do this with the positions of our families and with our productivity and prosperity. We have to step to the forefront now.

GLENN: Such great good will come out of this, Allie.

I know this is a tough day for you, and thank you for joining me.

ALLIE: Yeah. God is in the business of redemption. He's in the business of thwarting Satan's schemes. He's in the business of bringing beauty out of the ashes. He's in the business of bringing glory to himself, and bringing people to himself.

And if Charlie had had the choice, if someone had been able to come to him and say, okay. This is what your death will accomplish, it will accomplish more people hearing the gospel, it will accomplish more people waking up, I know if Charlie had had that choice, he would have said yes. He would have said, "Yes, Lord, send me." And not only would he have, but he did.

He went into the lion's den, and now he is with the lion of Judah. Now he is with Jesus. And everyone is going to know who he was and why he lived and the gospel that motivated him. And that is the only thing right now that is giving me any hope or any peace or any comfort.

GLENN: I know that all I could think of yesterday was how glorious the greeting must have been on the other side. You know, good -- "Well, done, good and faithful servant."

ALLIE: Yes, absolutely.

And before any of us heard the news, before his sweet wife Erica got the phone call, he was already hearing those words. And I am so happy for him.

I'm so happy that he is with the saints and the martyrs and the persecuted through which the Church of Christ has been advanced for millennia. I'm so happy for him. I'm so sad for us. I'm so sad for us, having gained an incredible person. But we -- we lost a huge presence.

GLENN: That's how I know when people have faith. They don't weep for the dead.

They weep for the lost to themselves and to the world and to the families that are hurting.

They -- they mourn that loss on themselves. But they -- they -- when they think of the person who has died, they know exactly where they are.

ALLIE: Yeah.

GLENN: And with Charlie, I -- I -- I -- I mean, I knew him when he was 17, and he was a good kid, but what a change happened to him.

He -- he was on fire for Christ, on fire for that.

ALLIE: Yes. Absolutely. He grew into over the past five to ten years, such a theologically deep and apologetically astute man of God, as he became a husband, as he became a father, as he became even more of a warrior for truth, and that is really what -- that's what inspired me.

And when I heard the news yesterday, I thought, my thought was, that's it. I'm done. I'm throwing in the towel.

That is it for me. I'm not -- I'm not willing to do this anymore.

And then later after he died, I went through some of the texts that he had sent me over the years. He was always sending everyone. All of these friends. These very encouraging texts.

And he sent me this article from a liberal outlet, that of course, had taken some jabs at me. That had made me anxious. And he said, "Well done. Keep slugging."

And I just know that if he were here, that's exactly what he would say, not just to me, but to all of us.

He would say, "No. You can't get out now. You got to keep going. You got to keep going." That's exactly how he would feel, and that's exactly what he would tell all of us.

GLENN: I've received so many emails from people who have said, "I don't know how to get back up again."

ALLIE: Yeah.

GLENN: And I don't know what to tell them other than, faith in God. Faith in God.

ALLIE: Uh-huh.

GLENN: I think if our side, if you will -- boy, I hate that in this context, but if -- if we didn't have God, we would be very much like the left right now.

We would be mired in anger and -- and screaming for vengeance and it would be a really ugly place today.

ALLIE: Yes.

GLENN: If -- if we didn't have God.

ALLIE: Yes. And if Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, like if he wasn't resurrected, then we don't have a hope of a resurrection. If he didn't defeat death, then we can't defeat death. If Jesus didn't live forever, then we can't live forever.

And that's exactly what Charlie always preached. What he always posted on X. What he always said, if you were to be able to text him right now. And say, "Look, Charlie. I've got this really tough thing to talk about today. And I don't know how to say it. I don't know what to say. What are your thoughts on it? What should I say?" I know exactly what he would say, the one word he would text back, and that would be, "Jesus. Just tell them that. Just tell them that Jesus is the only way to fulfillment." That is what he would say. People may not realize that. Every time he went on a college campus, he wasn't just talking about capitalism or Donald Trump, and all those things are important. He shared the gospel.

GLENN: No.

ALLIE: He knew that every single person that walked in front of him, was made in the image of God with a soul that was going to live forever, in one of two places. He desperately wanted the people who hated him to go to heaven. And I just pray that I can have that same boldness for the rest of my life.

RADIO

Courage, Faith, and Truth: Glenn Beck's Tribute

Glenn Beck pays tribute to his dear friend Charlie Kirk following his tragic passing. With raw emotion and deep conviction, Glenn reflects on Charlie’s courage, faith, and unwavering commitment to truth in a world that often rewards lies. Drawing parallels to America’s founders, soldiers, and first responders, Glenn reminds us that Charlie’s life and legacy demand an answer to the question: “If not me, then who?” This episode is both a remembrance of Charlie’s extraordinary life and a call to action for all of us to stand firm in faith, defend truth, and carry forward the torch of courage that he so boldly bore.

Watch Glenn Beck's Full 3-Hour Radio Show from September 11, 2025 HERE

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