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

I have a theory about Trump's nuclear testing…

President Trump recently ordered the Pentagon to resume nuclear testing after Vladimir Putin announced a new underwater nuclear device. Are we heading towards a potential nuclear war, or does Trump have another goal? Glenn Beck explains his theory: Trump just won this fight...

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Well, President Trump said yesterday, truly great meeting with President Xi.

This is a the problem. So much is hyperbole is -- truly. Like everybody said that meeting couldn't happen. It happened. And they said couldn't be done. It was done.

I got up this morning. People said I couldn't open the door, and I opened the door. Okay? It was the greatest door opening I've ever seen.
But from all accounts, this was a really, really good meeting.

Let me just say this: He's getting ready to meet with Putin. And with what Putin has done in the last couple of days, and now everybody is upset.

Oh, my gosh. Donald Trump said he's going to start testing nuclear weapons again!

Yeah. Yeah.

You know why?

Well, China is testing them.

And Russia is testing them.

We've had a moratorium on that. And here's what he's really doing. If I -- if I heard the news. And I was in the Donald Trump White House, I would be -- I would have walked in, after I heard the news, especially yesterday.

That Vladimir Putin has a new nuclear missile, that he can shoot 6,000 miles away.

Underwater. And it can navigate, and then blow up like a hydrogen bomb under the water, just off the coast of California, which would create a radioactive tsunami. This is what I would tell the president. Congratulations, Mr. President. You've won.

Now, why would I say that?

Because Vladimir Putin is not going to do that.

He's not going to do that. It would make him the pariah of the entire world. You're not going to set off a nuclear, radioactive tsunami to cover Los Angeles.

Because here's -- if I'm the president, and maybe this would make me a very bad president. But if I'm the president. And I hear that he has just launched a nuclear missile, towards Los Angeles, my decision is: Do I stop it?

Yes, I do everything I can to try to stop the missile from hitting. Do I respond before it hits?

All unconventional wisdom is, you've got to launch now, Mr. President. You have to launch now!

Hmm. Now, maybe this makes me a very bad president. I don't know.

I think it probably does. But I would say, no.

I'm not launching. Let it hit. And then I'm going to say to the rest of the world, immediately after it hits, this man just bird Los Angeles, killed all of these people, by launching a missile, a hydrogen bomb, underwater. God only knows what it's done to the environment.

But here's what it's done to people. And here's what it's done to Los Angeles. I give the world an hour before I respond.

I don't want a nuclear war. Because we all know what that means.

But rest of the world, you need to condemn him, and he needs to go on trial for crimes against humanity.

Nothing -- nothing warrants that kind of abuse of nuclear weapons.

That's what I would do as the president. Because I know the rest of the world, would not be kind to anyone who launched a nuclear weapon at the West Coast.

Wouldn't. If we launched a nuclear weapon, you know, even if we blew up Israel, with a nuclear weapon, the world would be like, look at what America has just!

They've killed all these Jews. Wait a minute. I'm so confused right now, what I'm for and what I'm against. But they would still condemn it.

Nobody can get away with that. He knows. Putin knows, the president is the most concerned about nuclear weapons. So what does he do?
He describes two nuclear weapons he has.

He's pulling out all -- there's nowhere to go from there. What are you going to do next? I'm going to blow up the moon?

He's just used everything in his bag of tricks. There's no place bigger that he can go. Other than actually launching those things. Mr. President, Congratulations, you've just won. So that's what I think is happening with -- with what Donald Trump has done this week. And the way Putin is now reacting. And he's about to turn his sites on Putin and Ukraine.

So let's start and see what happens.

RADIO

What the Fed’s interest rate CUT means for YOU

The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates for the second time in the 2025 fiscal year. Glenn sifts through all the economic jargon and translates it into plain English to explain what this could mean for the average American.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Let me talk to you a little bit about the fed rate and what it means. Most people don't spend their evenings reading the Federal Reserve statements. And I don't blame them. Because I don't do it either.

It's like background noise from an alien planet.

The Fed has cut the rate by 25 basis points. I don't even what a basis is or a basis -- what the hell does that even mean? Why should I care about that?

Okay. Let me explain what it is, and why you should care. Because the Federal Reserve -- the quiet, most powerful group in the world has decided to cut rates. And that changes the rules of your financial life. From your mortgage to your job security. From the cost of groceries. To, you know, the health of your savings account.

What they did yesterday is not going to help your savings account. What they did yesterday, will help your job. Okay?

A little bit. Now, think of the Federal Reserve as hmm. I don't know.

The most corrupt bank -- I'm sorry. I mean, the central bank.

Think of it more like the mob that -- think of it like a very credible bank that you don't know who even owns it. Okay?

It is not part of the federal government. It's not a federal agency. That's a really important part. They don't print the money. Not directly. Okay? That's up to the Treasury.

But they control the flow of money, and if the economy slows down, this is what they say they do. Okay?

If the economy slows down or starts to break, the Fed tries to fix it by lowering the Federal Funds Rate.

That's the interest rates that the banks charge each other to borrow money overnight. And when that rate drops, supposedly, borrowing becomes cheaper for you! But does it?

Yes. But it takes time to get to you. When borrowing becomes cheaper, you can start a new business.

You can get a house. You can borrow more money.

And when people borrow more, they spend more. Which in theory, keeps jobs going. People are creating jobs. Businesses start to open up.

Et cetera, et cetera. That's the lever the Fed just pulled again. Twenty-five basis points. That means .25 percent.

It doesn't sound a lot -- like a lot. Especially if your credit card is at 21 percent. Or your car loan is at 8 percent. Or your mortgage is just choking you to death. But it is a small ripple that will go outward. And it may just be the beginning.

So if you own a home, and you have an adjustable mortgage, you'll see a slightly lower rate. Maybe -- maybe you'll save a couple hundred dollars every month. And that's nothing -- you know, that's not nothing. If you have credit card debt -- and this is my favorite part. If you have credit card debt, don't hold your breath. You're not going to see anything. Why?

Oh, because when they're raising the rates. Oh, those banks, they raise it right away. Oh, it costs us so much money to be able to borrow money. And you're going to borrow it from us, so we have to raise that rate right away, because it will cost us money. Once they lower the rate, they're not in any hurry.

They're like, you know what, let's slow down just a little bit. We don't need to lower that interest rate on the credit card, right away.

Remember I said, think of them as a Mafia -- as a really good bank. Okay?

Now, if you're shopping for a car or a small business loan, this could be your window. Because lending is going to get a little bit looser. When the money is flowing a little bit more.

Because the Fed lowers the interest rate. Then the lending gets a little looser. You can buy a car.

If you're retired or you're saving. You know, you have money, you know, in a CD or a savings account, think of this as a move from the Mafia. Your savings account will drop just a little bit. Because your savings. You'll earn less, your CDs, and everything else.

You'll earn less when the interest rates fall. Okay?

So in short, what this means yesterday, is it will help people who are borrowing money. But it will hurt people that are not savers. Now, it's not dramatic. But that's -- you know, going -- interest rate going down hurts people saving money, but helps people borrowing. Interest rates go up, it helps people who save money and hurts the people borrowing money. Okay?

So why is the fed doing this? Well, the president has been saying, can you do this, for quite some time. Because this is what spurs an economy. This is what spurs jobs being created. Because people can borrow money, and they can expand their business.

The reason why they said they did this yesterday is because, quote, the downside risk to employment has risen. What does that mean?

People are losing their jobs. That's what that means. Okay? I don't know why they just can't speak English. You know what, we have to do this because people are losing their jobs. Maybe we need to lower this down, so people can hire some more people. That's what they should say. Inflation, they said, is still somewhat elevated.

Okay. Let me translate again. We don't have -- we don't know our butt from our elbow on what we're doing with inflation.

We're out of magic tricks.

And we still have it tamed inflation. But it's getting better.

Okay. So they're trying to ease the pain of people getting fired or no job creation.

Without setting all of our money on fire.

This is the real trick and the real balance. And when I say setting our money fire. The lower the interest rates. What that means is, they're -- your money will be worth less.

Okay?

But here's the -- here's the bigger move that's buried in the fine print.

They're also stopping the shrinkage of their balance sheet. Love that.

We're just going to stop the shrinkage of our balance sheet.

Okay. What kind magic Fed Viagra are you using here to stop that shrinkage?

What it means is they're done pulling money out of the system. They're going to start adding money back in. More liquidity. More dollars that they throw in, the -- the more fuel.

And it's a soft rolling start from fighting inflation to fighting a slowdown. That's what this is.

Now, here's how it's going to hit you in the real world. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, this might feel like some relief in the short-term. Okay? Maybe your payments start to ease up.

Maybe if you're looking for a car. Maybe you get a little bit more bang for the buck. But this is just a small move in that direction. Maybe credit gets a little more available.

Maybe you can afford a little bit more of a better house.

But here's the hidden cost in the long-term.

Every rate cut makes your dollar worth a little less.

By the way, may I just side note here, Your Honor. I don't know why we accept the Fed saying, "We have a target of 2 percent inflation, every year. Two percent is -- that's our target."

Why shouldn't they be -- why shouldn't they be targeting zero percent inflation? Why do we accept that?

You know what that means? That means 2 percent, two cents on every dollar goes away every year.

I don't know. After ten years, that adds up. Why do we accept that? Because they say it in a way, nobody understands!

And so nobody pays attention. So the prices at the store, they don't fall with things like that. They usually rise.

The assets of the rich, the stock, real estate, they start to inflate again. The working class, once more, will pay for the cure. With the value of their labor. And, but this is how the cycle works. Okay?

When things tighten, the powerful scream louder than the average person, and the Fed listens. They open the money spigot. The markets rally, and the average American gets another inflation hangover at some point. Hopefully, it won't happen, at least right away.

Hopefully, we will balance things out. Because Donald Trump, with what he did in Asia yesterday, there's a huge -- there's a lot of money coming in. And he has reshaped the Western world. This guy is not going to be appreciated for -- if J.D. Vance wins. And just assuming it's going to be J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio as the president.

But if they win, after his first term, and maybe into the second term, if he's given a chance for the second term, that's when you're going to really see everything that Donald Trump is doing right now. You're going to see the effects. And you're going to realize, holy cow. I thought that guy made a huge difference at the time.

Look at what he did. He is a long-time. Long-term player.

He's looking way over the horizon. And this week in Asia was a big, big deal. So let me get back to the Fed rate.

Here's what you need to do. You need to first understand the game. This is not a bailout for you. It's a pressure valve on the system. Okay?

If you have debt, this is a signal, that you can make pay it down fast enough, while the interest rates are starting to ease. Same with our government. Interest rates are going down, don't borrow more money, spend less money. And pay things off faster.

If you have savings, look for hard assets, things that will hold their value. Real estate. Blah, blah.

If you're in business, this might be the window to shore up your position.

Don't overextend yourself. Things are still tenuous. Because this is a pivot.

This is a -- a swingback to cheap money. Hopefully not 0 percent again. But the Fed believes that the storm isn't over. And they're right.

It's not. We're in a very precarious situation between employment and runaway inflation. Now, Javier Milei has tamed this thing. And luckily, Donald Trump and Javier Milei get along, and I hope we take a few more things from Argentina.

But the Fed, almost against their own will, is trying to steer us out of a slowdown. But if we're not careful, it will set us up for another round of inflation. But the pivot point is here from the Fed, and every time they pull that lever, remember, it's -- it's you and your dollar that ends up footing the bill. One paycheck, one grocery bill, one devalued dollar at a time.

But right now, it is important for it to happen, so we balance the losing of jobs, maybe some more job creation is coming our way.

We've lost a lot of jobs just in the last week. Because of AI. And I don't know -- did we talk about this yesterday? I'm not sure we did. This week, there's been two. It's been UPS and Amazon, that have cut, what? About 100,000 jobs between the two of them. That's a lot of jobs.

But notice, it's not the guy on the front line. It's not the guy at the dock. Right now, it seems to be the white-collar worker. So the guy who didn't go to college right now, right now, is more safe than the one who did go to college and is trying to pay off all of that stuff. They're being replaced by AI before the dock worker is.

So if you didn't go to college, now is the time to go, suckers!

Because you don't to have worry about all the things that the people that are still paying for that they can no longer use.

RADIO

Why this Deep State spy campaign is the WORST scandal of my lifetime

According to the records released now by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and the House Judiciary Committee, The Biden era DOJ and special counsel Jack Smith drove an investigation that sprayed subpoenas like a firehose. There were 197 subpoenas sent to 34 people, over 160 businesses, and vacuumed up communications tied to more than 400 Republican individuals and entities. Fox News, Turning Point USA, OAN, all engulfed in what has been called "Operation Arctic Frost." And all this was predicated on NEWS CLIPS?! Glenn explains why this Arctic Frost is MUCH worse than Watergate.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: While we're talking about winter, let's talk about Arctic Frost. That's the code name. And according to -- according to the records released now by senator chuck Grassley and the -- and the House Judiciary Committee. The Biden era DOJ and Special Counsel Jack Smith drove an investigation that sprayed subpoenas like a firehose. We now know, there were 197 subpoenas, spanning more than 1700 pages. Sent to 34 people. One hundred sixty-three businesses, and then vacuumed up communications, tied to more than 400 Republican individuals and entities.

Okay? That's reaching into everything. They reached into media companies. CBS, Fox, Fox Business, NewsMax, Sinclair, into financial institutions, into political organizations.

Even members, employees, and agents of the legislative branch. So now you have congressmen and senators being vacuumed up into this whole thing.

This is not a precision rifle shot. This is a net and a very big dragnet.

Okay? This is not the way justice in America works. You do not go after, you know, an entire party, 400 people? Now, what were they looking for? How did it start?

Well, let me say, the opening memo to justify Arctic Frost is to call -- does in legal terms, it would be called the predicate.

And it was stamped sensitive investigative matter, okay?

And it's cited. And I love this. Listen to this language. It's cited, evidence suggest a conspiracy around alternate electors.

I'll get to that here in just a second. But it -- it relied on -- leaned on news clips. News clips!

To vacuum all these people up, to get the -- to get the engine turning. News clips were used.

Suggesting, not proving. Suggesting, and it just rose up the ladder.

Ray, Garland, Monaco, even coordination with the White House counsel's office. It surfaces now in the record. This went all the way to the top.

This is not my language. This is what the documents now on the table imply.

Okay? Now, let me just pause for a minute, in the reading room of American memory. What is this all about?

Alternate electors. That's not a Martian invention. Okay?

That's not something completely foreign. We've seen it before. 1876, and 1960. They were messy. Contested. Deeply political moments that produced zero criminal prosecutions for their existence of rival slaves.

In fact, Al Gore, if he didn't set an alternate slate of electors, he was counseled, and I've talked to Dershowitz about this.

He said, they're counseled to have an alternate set of electors. Because once -- if you don't do that, and the tables turn and you're like, you know what, there was a problem -- if you haven't ceded those electors before a certain time, you have no case. You can't change anything. So it has to happen. And it has happened two times before, I think three, but definitely in 1876 and 1960.
In Hawaii, in 1916, Democrats signed certificates while a recount was still underway. The recount flipped. So it was ultimately certified. The democratic slate was certified. Ugly? Yes. But that's the way it worked.

It's not criminal. And history has said no. It's not criminal.

But it doesn't matter, when it's about Donald Trump. So let me go back to Arctic Frost thousand. As the subpoenas flew, the FBI reportedly snooped phone records of Republican members of Congress!

The scope widened to donor analytics. Broad financial data. Trump world advisers.

The lawyers. The media contacts. We said, during January 6, we said, internally, if you don't think they are going after a massive tree, because remember, this is -- this is what the Patriot Act allows you to do now.

You go after one person. If anybody is calling somebody else, well, that person now can be Hoovered up. And who has that person called?

So you can get pretty much everybody that you want, with one subpoena.

But that's not where they stop. They didn't stop with one subpoena. Okay?

When the state casts a dragnet over the opposition's political ecosystem with the authority to seize all their communications, compel testimony, and chill the donors, that's not tough politics.

Okay?

That is the government, with badges and grand juries, leaning its full weight into one side of the national scale.

Watergate. Please!

Watergate. Let me compare Watergate. You know what Watergate was?

Watergate was a gang of political operatives who broke into an office to get information. They weren't even. They weren't even losing the election. Nobody even knows why they would even do this. It is so stupid that they would even do this. But it was a local office. They broke in. They wanted to get some information that was there, you know, on the -- on the candidate and on the race.

And then they covered it up.

And they tried to keep the public from the truth.

It was wrong!

It was criminal.

And it forced a president to resign. And people went to prison over it. But Watergate was a private burglary, executed by a campaign, and covered up. By the White House.

Terrible!

Awful.

That's not the DOJ blanketing the opposing party's entire world, with federal subpoenas while citing news hits as the predicate.

Do you see the difference?

Watergate was an attempt to weaponize a campaign. Arctic Frost, if the emerging records hold, was the attempt to weaponize the entire state against a political party.

The difference there is the whole ball game. Under a constitutional republic.

You don't have a constitutional republic, if that's allowed to happen.

In America, the state is supposed to be the neutral referee. Not a sideline enforcer wearing one team's colors under the stripes.

And don't even start with me on, well, what about Donald Trump?

We'll play that game all day long. And you know where that gets us?

Nowhere. You want to make a charge against Donald Trump and what he's doing.

Good. Let's take that separately.

Let's do that. I'm willing to. Let's take that separately. Let's deal with this one, first. Okay? The moment the referee picks up the ball and starts running, the game is over!

It's not a fair game anymore. And if it can be done to them, today. It will be done to you, tomorrow.

That's not a slogan. That's a law of political gravity.

Yeah. But Trump did -- okay. Let's have that conversation.

But can we at least have it honestly?

Because if you think this is about, whataboutism. You believe so see the nose on the front of your face.

You're completely missing this.

You cannot make a weaponization of a government, a partisan inheritance that each side can claim when it holds power.

If any president, any prosecutor red, or blue, uses federal power to criminalize political opposition, rather than prosecute clear crimes.

It is an offense gets an equal protection under the law. So let's -- let's lay down a standard here, that I'm willing to apply to Donald Trump and to Joe Biden and any other president that comes our way. Because if we don't lay this clear standard down, we're done.

The predicate. Predication. It has to be real. Not rhetorical.

Evidence suggesting via TV interviews, is circular sourcing, at its best.

It's not something that you launch a sprawling investigation on into a presidential rival's universe. If you can't articulate the crime, specifically, you don't get to launch a dragnet on the people that are running against you!

The scope has to be narrow, and tied exactly to the alleged crime!

Not a sweep through media organizations, and donor records, and opposition infrastructure, under vague theories, that come from TV reports!

Journalism.

Political advocacy.

Fundraising.

All of those things are protected activities. Separation from the White House, also must be unmistakable. If the White House Counsel's office is coordinating device transfers into an investigation of its chief political rival, alarms should clang in every corridor of every main justice call hall.

Everywhere! The alarm -- the Claxton should be going off right now. Also, historic practice matters!

If prior episodes -- by the way, this was all thrown out by the Supreme Court. So you know. Okay? Nothing there.

If prior episodes, 1876, 1960, and I believe 2000. If they were treated as political, not criminal, especially where alternate electors were explicitly conditional, then you need compelling new legal theories and clean facts to criminalize it now.

You can't just say, yeah, well, history, never did anything about it before. And, actually, they said it was fine.

But now, now it's going to be a crime.

Wait. Can you be specific on what has changed? Well, we really just liked the people that are doing it this time. That doesn't count. That doesn't count.

Now, before anybody clips this monologue and screams, so Glenn Beck said, nobody -- the Trump administration did anything wrong. Well, I don't think so.

But that's not what I'm saying, because I'm not the judge. I'm not your juror. I'm the guy insisting that the rules are rules, and they should be applied to everyone on all sides.

Smith has his report. He says, he wants to tell his side. Great! Put him under oath. If he didn't do it, then he should be set free.

But it should be on a clear set of laws! What's happened in the Biden administration, they just kept changing laws. Well, yeah. I mean, the bank said there was no crime. But Donald Trump. And so all of a sudden, there was a crime.

Nobody has ever been prosecuted. Ever before that. Even the bank said, this is ridiculous.

There's no crime here.

It didn't matter.

That's not justice.

I want real justice. Smith says he has a side, let's hear it. Bring forward the memos. Publish the predicate. Let the country see where weather we had a criminal case or an election cycle dragnet. Because that's what it looks like. If the emerging picture looks like, if the Arctic Frost opened up on thin evidence, escalated on political pressure, and metastasized into a government-wide sweep of the sitting president's chief rival and his entire ecosystem, then this is not just like Watergate. This is much, much, much worse than Watergate. In kind.

Not just degree.

Watergate tried to steal the information. That's it. They potentially attempted to steal legitimacy to criminalize opposition by wielding the sword of the state.

That violates, you know, more than statutes. That violates our creed, that free men govern themselves by consent, and the process is sacred. And the law is the wall that even presidents and prosecutors can never climb over. If proven, the remedy is not a sternly, terse letter, or an op-ed, and a shrug.

The remedy is the full force of the law. Inspector general referrals. Special counsels where appropriate, prosecution where crimes are clear. Statutory reforms to bar this from ever happening again from -- from press clippings?

Being your predicate? Bright lines need to be drawn. Protections for the press, for donors, and legislators in political cases. Sunlight. All the sunlight on how this began, who approved it, and why no one in the administration said stop.

And to my friends saying, well, Trump is doing the same thing. I hear you. I don't agree with you, but I hear you. Why don't we codify the guardrails right now?

So when emotions are high and temptations are strong, the republic doesn't survive by trusting that our guys will be angels. It survives on the chains on power. Everyone's power.

You know, when I hold a founding sermon in your hand, when you read the ink of Washington scratched in the margin notes of James Madison. You discover that America's miracle wasn't that we selected saints. It's that we built a system where even the sinners are fenced in by law.

That's the process. When justice is blind, to banners and bumper stickers and political parties, that's when America is America. Arctic Frost. If the record stands, it took a blowtorch to that fence.

So the choice is really simple. Retreat into teams. Each side cheering for its prosecutors. And its dragnet. Or you can do the harder, nobler thing, just like our founders did. And insist that the same rules that bind all power, especially when it's aimed at people that we dislike, are enforced. That's how you keep a republic.

That's how you make sure that there's not a second Watergate. Because we learned the lesson the first time. But it we?

Because if we haven't. If we don't learn it this time, and by God, we are done!

The story of America is not a story of who got whom. It's a story of the people who refuse to let the government become a weapon. And if that spirit still lives in us, then this cold wind called Arctic Frost will pass. And the Constitution will withstand. Because you stood for equal justice. For due process. For truth. That doesn't bend to politics.

And that, that is how we relight the torch of America!

RADIO

Disease-Infested Monkeys LOOSE in Mississippi?!

A truck carrying 21 'aggressive' monkey's allegedly infected with contagious diseases such as COVID-19, herpes, and Hepatitis C crashed in Mississppi, causing the monkey's to be let loose. While most of the threat was taken care of, one monkey is reported to still be on the loose. This sounds eerily similar to the beginning of an outbreak movie...

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Big thing some good news. Let's start with some good news.

President Trump has just -- is touring Asia and making all kinds of deals.

Donald Trump is single-handedly reshaping the earth!

He really is. He is reshaping everything. Single-handedly.

STU: Big job.

GLENN: I know. He's done more than The Great Reset did with all of that money. All of the campaigns. Everything that they were doing.

Listen to this. What he's just done. Signed a framework agreement, August 28th, between Trump and the Japanese Prime Minister, mutual stockpiling of rare-earth elements, REEs. Okay?

To ensure supply security. That's Japan. Cooperation with international partners, US allies, to shield the supply chain from disruptions.

The goal is to reduce China's 90 percent control over the global rare earth minerals.

For tech, EVs, defense, and AI. Okay. They have a 90 percent stranglehold.

So that's what he did in Japan. Now, also bundle that with the 550 billion dollar strategic investment from Japan, in the US. Including a 490 billion-dollar launch phase. 200 billion for nuclear AI and energy projects, small modular reactors with Westinghouse and Mitsubishi, and supply chain boosts in critical minerals.

Trump tied that to the tariffs. Japan got an auto import tariff slashed from '27 to 15 percent in exchange for the investments. In two weeks in the last two weeks, listen to what he has done. He has made multiple pacts with allies. Australia, critical minerals framework, mining processing, and rare earth mineral recycling scrap. Then in Japan, I just told you, Malaysia, he just did a memo of understanding on critical mineral diversification. In Ukraine, a ten-year access to titanium and rare earth minerals.

In Thailand, an MOU on rare earth mineral supply. Add that to what else he has done. He is -- he is outflanking China. He is trying to break the back of China! He is friend shoring, is what he's actually doing.

He is -- he is putting all of this emphasis on rare earth minerals. He's cutting Asia away from China.

He's cutting Europe away from China. He's cutting South America away from China. He has moved all of the resources of rare earth minerals to us. Anything outside of China, is coming our way now!

That is massive! Massive! We were sitting ducks with rare earth minerals, six months ago, a year ago. Total sitting ducks! They had everything coming their way. We were not doing any kind of -- any kind of strategic thinking on this, at all!

And this isn't piecemeal. This is operation warp speed for rare earth minerals. He is -- the guy is so ahead of everyone else. He is reshaping global trade and permanently, hopefully, sidelining China.

So we are never having to put our hand out to China.

It's remarkable, what is happening. Just remarkable! Now, let me give you another story.

A truck halling 21 monkeys to a testing facility in Florida, overturned in Mississippi.
(laughter)

STU: How did -- how did we make this jump? Has he signed a memorandum of understanding with the monkeys?

GLENN: Nope. Nope. They're still negotiating. According to the Jasper county sheriff's office, the accident occurred on Interstate 59, near the 117 mile-marker just north of Heidelberg. Six recess monkeys from Tulane University escaped. Officials said, five of the six that escaped have now been destroyed.

We've been in contact with an animal disposal company to help handle the situation. The Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks and I guess now monkeys is still looking for one diseased monkey, still on the loose.

STU: A hundred percent, the beginning of an outbreak movie. That's exactly how it happens. The one gets away. Oh, we've got five of the six. What's the big deal?

GLENN: What was the one. What was the movie with -- oh. What's his name?

Tommy -- remember, he was the escaped convict. He was the doctor, and they were hauling him. He was the doctor from Ohio.

Based on a true story. And he -- they're hauling him. And he escapes. He has to try to prove himself innocent. Remember?

STU: Fugitive?

GLENN: Fugitive. Yeah. That's right.

STU: I was looking for a deep cut there.

GLENN: Fugitive. Sorry, I couldn't remember. It's a fugitive, and outbreak. That's what this is.

STU: That would be a good movie. I wouldn't want this in real life.

GLENN: I prefer a lot of this to not happen in real life.

STU: What are the diseases? We have help C going on?

We have COVID. I think there's three of them. Help C. COVID. And what was the other one? Herpes.

What happens if we combine all three into one monkey, and then release it into the wild?

What could possibly go wrong?

GLENN: Let me tell you something.

You know, we are in real trouble. I mean, I hate to bring this up too. Okay. Did you need diseased monkeys on the loose today from me?

No. No. Can I make it worse?

Absolutely, I can make this worse.

You know when we have the COVID thing. And we were all like, we shouldn't have these labs everywhere, you know.

STU: Oh. Like the labs.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: Gain-of-function research, and things like that.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We've built hundreds of new labs now. Hundreds of new labs. There are more than 35 hundred BSL3 and over 110BSL4. Bio safety level four laboratories. And all of them are now working on pathogens that could kill all of us.

So a 2025 journal of public health study reveals over90 percent of the countries that operate these labs have no oversight whatsoever!

STU: All of them are working on diseases that can kill us all?

GLENN: Uh-huh.

STU: There's not one that is doing yogurt flavors or something?

There's not one.

GLENN: No. There's not. There's not one. I wish there were!

You know, they keep saying, these are shields from -- no. These are match sticks. That's what these labs are. These are giant match sticks.

And we're sitting in a bunch of kindling -- they're -- they say they're developing vaccines. But what they're really doing is enhancing the viruses. Which, when I say enhancing, what that really means, they're weaponizing viruses. So don't worry. You know, it's just gain of function, which translated is, loss of sanity.

STU: I mean, because the research makes me very nervous. I mean, the fact that we have more labs that have higher safety standards. In theory, should be -- that was one of the problems with the COVID outbreak. Right?

They were doing research that should have been done at a BSL4. BSL1 and BSL2.

So, I mean, having more fours, that could be good, right?

GLENN: Eh. Did you see the BSL4 in China? In Wuhan?

STU: Well, I think that was the issue, it wasn't a BSL4.

GLENN: I think they called it a BSL4, and then it wasn't one.

STU: I don't think it was. Do we have a BSL4 for monkey research? I think really --

GLENN: I'm not really sure -- I know Georgia.

STU: Don't transfer it. Keep it in one place. You don't need to transfer them anywhere.

GLENN: In Atlanta, they're doing -- they're building another 150,000 square feet of a BSL4 in -- in Atlanta. So that's the place, oh, yeah, where all the zombies will be. Can I just tell you a quick little story? 1979. Soviet Union.

You know, they're trying to maintain this BSL4. They're not very good at it. Because, you know, they're not good at anything in 1979 in Russia.

STU: Except for nuclear power.

GLENN: Exactly right.

Okay. So there was a cloud released from this bio safety level lab four.

No flames. No alarms. Just a faint, invisible mist. It's kind of like hmm, my teenage son's farts. It's invisible, and it's deadly.

STU: Okay. Hmm.

GLENN: And it was carrying anthrax spores, okay? From the weapons lab.

Well, people began to die, clearly. We don't know how many. They think hundreds. Entire families suffocated because the bacteria devoured their lungs. And they were like, I have no lung!

GLENN: Okay. And the Kremlin was like, not happening. What do you say?

People were eating tainted meat. That's what's happening.

And it's eating their lungs.

STU: They Chernobyled it.

GLENN: Yeah. Okay.

So for a decade, nobody really knew what was going on, until the fall of the Soviet Union, and then people were going in. And they were like, oh! Here's what happened.

In one of these bio safety labs, a technician failed to replace an air filter properly.
And that was -- that -- just that allowed this microscopic storm of death to be released into the air.

I don't know! I mean, if your air filter not being installed properly can kill a bunch of people. And only tainted meat. McDonald's. I don't know. I don't -- I don't really think that we should -- we have them all over. 149 nations have them now.

149.

STU: There's definitely not 149 nations that should have stuff like that.

GLENN: You don't think so?

STU: No. I don't even think I can name 149 nations.

GLENN: Try this one. In India, the labs now are experimenting with the Crimean Congo viruses. Fatality rate of 75 percent.

In Russia, under its sanitary shield initiative, they are building 15 new BSL4 sites. In Brazil, Project Orion, a high-containment complex integrated with its particle accelerator.

Oh. And as I said, Atlanta, 160,000 square feet.

Apparently, we don't have enough room for all the monkeys that we're releasing in all the wild. And eventually, we'll find. And put them in there.
And torture them. Or do whatever it is we do. No international body tracks or regulates what's happening in any of these fortresses. What the hell is wrong with us?

STU: We should note an international body does not necessarily solve the problem.

I mean, as we've seen -- when they do monitor it, they usually import people to rape the citizens around the facilities.

GLENN: Exactly right. But you know what I'm really sick of it? There's no international body that does anything, except just let these people put really bad things into our body!

STU: Hmm.

GLENN: Can we -- can we stop with this?

STU: We're good with this on our own. Put all sorts of things in my body. That should not have been in there.

We're good at doing that.

As Americans, on our own. We don't need your help.

GLENN: I really -- just stop.

The arrogance. The arrogance of these -- hey, you know what, we need to fiddle with some more viruses. And let's make a digital God that we can't control!

What the hell is wrong with us?

STU: Especially when the digital God that we can't control can make new viruses.

GLENN: Exactly right! Exactly right.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: And maybe -- maybe -- maybe what we do, is we put it into a self-driving car. And it directs. And monkeys just start flying out of everyone ever seen butt.

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