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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

THIS could COLLAPSE every major civilization at the SAME TIME

The United States, Europe, and China are all preparing for a coming global reset. Throughout history, civilizations have risen and fallen according to the same cycle of prosperity and debt. But never before has EVERY major civilization been on the verge of collapse at the same time. Glenn Beck breaks it all down.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Because for the very first time in world history. There's something new that has happened. The entire globe is riding the same wheel at the same time.

Okay? We're all in this debt cycle. And this has never happened before.

The cycle always begins the same way. The first step in this at the time cycle is discipline.

Discipline equals prosperity. Okay.

It goes right into prosperity. And every great empire starts with discipline. Rome did, you know, rebuilding after all the wars, strict budgets. Every great empire starts with discipline. Rome did. You know, rebuilding after all the wars. The strict budgets. Silver coinage. Land reforms. It helped restore, you know, the battered middle class. The Dutch Republic did the same thing: They invented modern finance, turning the swamp into the world's largest trade hub. Then the British empire did it after the glorious revolution. It brought fiscal stability and a gold-back pound, that the world trusted for over 200 years.

When that fell, America did it. After World War II, our debts were manageable, our currency was solid, backed by gold, productivity was unmatched, and we prospered. That is stage one. Discipline into prosperity. And prosperity if not darted, always leads to the second stage. Complacency into excess, okay? So excess creates this fatal illusion. The moment, you know, where we all look at each other, and go, this is great. It's going to be like this forever. It was always like this. It will always be like that.

Rome began borrowing heavily to pay for endless bread and circuses. France, funded the palaces and the pensions and the perpetual wars, through loans it could never repay.

Britain, in the late 19th century, took its global empire for granted, and levered -- levered itself into World War I.

Then came World War II. And then America beginning in the 1970s, untethered from -- untethered the dollar from gold. And discovered that debt could replace discipline.

So the second stage of the debt cycle is the age of entitlement, expansion. Imperial overreach.

Cheap credit.

And political bribery disguised as compassion.

Any of that sound like we've been there?

Done that?

The Dutch called it win handle. The trade in the wind.

Paper promises that replace real production.

We call it stimulus.

Easy money. Deficit spending.

Different words. Same exact sin.

That lees you to stage three. Financialization.

That goes to fragility. This is the most seductive stage. Rome debased its money until it was worth less than 2 percent of the original silver. The Byzantines watered down their unshakable dollar, if you will, and confidence collapsed. France printed their money, backed by land, until they were worth less and used as wallpaper.

Weimar, Germany, did the same thing. They destroyed a thousand years of savings in 18 months. Japan, 1990. Papered over its real estate collapse, with 30 years of zero interest rates.

And America, after 2008, discovered this intoxicating illusion, started by George W. Bush. I can violate the free market system, to save the free market system. That's quantitative easing. Money conjured up, without cost. Without any restraint. Without any consequence.

In stage three, nations convinced themselves, they're immune to any kind of gravity. Okay?

This time, it's different! We can manage this debt. Well, modern tools, you just don't understand. You know, the rules no longer apply.

You don't understand. Really?

Don't understand. The older rules always apply.

Because math is math.

And stage three always ends exactly the same way. Wherever it's tried!

The markets no longer trust the promises they're being fed, which leads us into stage four, the breaking point. Every empire eventually reaches a moment where its debts cannot be serviced. They can't be inflated away quietly. They can't be rolled over without consequence.

Rome reached it when they froze prices and shattered the last productive parts of its competent multiply France reached it in 1788, when it can no longer borrow. And that whole thing came to a head. Britain reached it in 1931 when it abandoned the gold standard.

Weimar reached it when inflation ate the soul of the nation. And extremism took over. Yap reached it, when its bond market effectively became nationalize. Propped up by its own central bank. Right now, America, Europe, China, Japan. And every other major power, listen to this carefully, have all hit stage four at the same time.

Never before in human history has this happened.

The bond markets are shaking. The currencies are all volatile. Politicians are praying that no one notices the numbers.

You know, that they no longer add up.

Stage four is not coming. We are now living inside the opening act. This is so important.

Yesterday, there was a story that said, that this is going to be the biggest Christmas season ever. And I'm wondering to myself, I see the prices. I go to McDonald's.

I go to the grocery store.

Any of us Walmart this weekend. I see the prices. And I'm looking at the prices.

And every time I'm looking at the prices, I'm like, how's the average person afford any of this?

And yet, we're spending. Spending. Spending.

And I don't understand it. And I fear we're doing what the government is doing. We're just spending because we can -- we think we can get out of it.

Then comes stage five. It's called the reset. Hmm.

Every debt system ends in one of three ways.

They inflate the money, so they can pay off the debt. And that's just an absolute wipeout. Weimar republic did it. France did it. Rome did it.

Just a wipeout. Then there's a hard default and political upheaval. Russia did that in 1917.

Argentina did it over and over again.

War leading to a new monetary order. That's another one.

And the neo -- the -- the Napoleonic wars. The British gold standard. World War II. Bretton Woods.

All of that. But there's always a reset. Always a new order that's born from the ashes of the old.

And here's what makes this moment unprecedented. Rome collapsed by itself. France collapsed alone. Weimar collapsed by itself.

Britain declined while America rose.

It was always one country coming down, and another one coming up.

This time, all countries. All countries, on both size, the free world and the not so free world, there's no one rising.

China is drowning in its local government debt. It's never going to say this, but it's a paper tiger.

Europe is fractured. And coming apart at the seams. Japan, demographic time bomb.

America is politically frozen and insolvent fiscally.

So for the very first time in world history. Every major civilization has reached its peak of the debt cycle.

This time, all at the same moment.

No one is coming up!

So what does that mean?

Well, for the very first time in human history, it means, when it arrives, it will not be regional. It will be global. It will not be slow. It will be systemic. It will be everywhere. Now, the hope, the history books don't tell, and nobody in the media will tell you this, is when every one of those resets, every collapse, every crisis, it created the conditions for renewal.

Rome, its fall opened the door for a new Christian civilization. France, the revolution there, birthed the modern nation state. Britain's decline cleared space for America's rise. The devastation of World War II led to the great expansion of prosperity, the greatest the world has ever seen. So the next chapter is not written. What happens to us is not written.

And it -- whether we rise or fall, from what's coming depends not on Washington. Not on Wall Street. But on us. In our homes, in our families. In our churches. And our communities.

The debt cycle is not prophecy. It is a warning.

You cannot borrow your way out of moral, fiscal, or spiritual bankruptcy.

Now, I don't feel like I chose this path. This -- with Bretton Woods and then 1972 coming off the gold standard. And what they did in 2008, to bail out all the banks. I didn't have anything to say. Did you have anything to say about that?

I didn't. I didn't. I wouldn't have chosen those things. But the world is putting something together.

And I want to show you what our choices are. Because right now, people say, you know, I don't like what Donald Trump is doing. Or, I don't like the World Economic Forum.

Or, I don't like what China. Okay. Great. But I want you to know, it's going to be one of these systems. Because it's being built.

It always happens. When one is coming down, some new system, usually a country.

But not a country this time. A new system begins to rise.

And it happens before the fall.

RADIO

Mark Kelly reveals his TRUE COLORS while raging over Hegseth’s Franklin meme

Sen. Mark Kelly recently raged over War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to post a meme portraying the children’s character Franklin the turtle blowing up Venezuelan drug boats. But Glenn Beck points out the insane hypocrisy of Sen. Kelly’s outrage…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: First of all, the New York Times. The New York Times has refuted the WaPo reporting on the Hegseth story. Now, if you remember the Hegseth story from the Washington Post is -- was playing backup to people like Mark Kelly, who, you know, were part of that video where like, oh, you know. War crimes. And you will be tried for war crimes. And if you see a war crime. And an illegal border. You should disobey that.

Yeah. They're taught that. And everybody should know that. Again, the Pentagon teaches that to the sorrels. This has never been done by members of Congress. And they were going for something. I don't know what they were going for. But WaPo, of course, you know, sends the message to the rest of the world. That, well, it was our Secretary Hegseth. Who ordered the killing of some people that survived this launch on a boat. They survived. And then Pete called them up and said, kill them!

And that's what Mark Kelly was saying this last weekend. Okay. Washington Post. Now, the New York Times, not exactly a Trumpy kind of paper. Comes out and says, no. We actually have five sources on this.

That's not true. That's not what happened. White House responded yesterday, and they said, yeah. It was the commander that made that call. It was all within the law. Yada, yada.

So it wasn't Hegseth.

Oh. Then you have Mark Kelly coming on and saying, more things. This one is about the Franklin meme. You know, Franklin. The turtle. The kids book about the turtle.

Apparently, Hegseth retweeted or tweeted a picture of, you know, like Franklin magazine. And he's, you know, up on an American chopper. And he's firing down on, you know, drug runners and a boat.

And this causes Mark Kelly to say this.
MARK: -- global mission. And instead, he runs around, on a stage, like he's a 12-year-old playing Army. And it is ridiculous, it is embarrassing, and I -- I can't imagine what our allies think of looking at that guy, in this job, one of the most important jobs in our country. In my view, after the president of the United States, it is the next most important job. He is in the national command authority for nuclear weapons. And last night, he's putting out on the internet turtles with rocket-propelled grenades, killing -- I mean, have you seen this?


GLENN: Oh, it's outrageous. Let me ask you: Where were you on the leadership of the Pentagon when they pulled out of Afghanistan?

Were you saying, what are our allies thinking about that?

How about when, what's-his-face, decided to go get. What was it?

Surgery. Was out on surgery.

Didn't alert anyone that was -- what was his name, Lloyd Austin, right?

And he's out on surgery. And he didn't tell anybody.

Then he goes on vacation. Something happens.

Where are you?

He said, I'll come back, when I come back. Wait. Hold it. You want to talk about being in line with the nuclear weapons. Where was that one?

More importantly, Mr. Kelly, let me ask you: What do you think our allies thought about the health of our nation, when several democratic senators got together, and the for the first time in American history, pulled a Venezuela. And questioned the military and said, we will hold you responsible for any crimes against humanity. By the way, we're not telling you what those are. We'll judge, when we get back into power. And don't listen to the commander-in-chief. Let me ask you: If people -- if people in the Duma would have made that exact same video, and said, question the authority of Putin. And if he's telling you to go into Ukraine. That's going to be a war crime. And we're going to prosecute you.

And -- and don't listen to them. And don't listen to his secretary of war either. What do you think -- how would we analyze that?

Would we think that Putin was strong?

Would we think that their society is strong?

Would we think that they're a nation that can defend itself? Will defend itself?

Is willing to go to war?

Does that -- would we look at that and go, that's a strong nation, don't screw with them. Or if we had designs on that nation, would we say, you know what, up the pressure. Up the pressure.

Because this thing is about to fly apart. So, Mr. Kelly, let me ask you that.

Did you think about what our allies might have been saying, when you made the video and released it to the world?

Bueller.

Anybody? Anybody?

That -- that's the outrage here. The outrage is not that they said it. You can go to the Pentagon and say that. You can go and bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in. And you can call them on the carpet and say, look, I've got to tell you something. We can investigate this, if we have control. But you bring that into a private room, and you say that to all your like-minded senators in a private room.

You don't make a video and release it to the world.

I'll never forget, George Bush called me into the Oval Office. And he was a little upset.

And I had said, you know, you want to impeach the guy, you can impeach him on this. Look what he's doing in the Middle East. Look what he's doing. I don't even remember what it was. That's the stuff that at least if it's true, is impeachable.
That day, I get a call. And Mr. Beck, the president would like to see you in the oval tomorrow.

I go in. And I knew this would be the longest hour of my life. And I sit down in the -- honest to God, it was in the -- the Zelinsky chair. Okay?

And I got -- I got from George Bush what Zelinsky got from Trump.

And he starts out, a lot of people think they know what it's like to be the President. You have no F-ing idea what it's like. And I was like, oh, my gosh. This is going to be very, very long and agonizing.

And we get about a half our into all of this stuff. And he's telling me what's actually going on, on the ground.

And he knows it all. And he's not hesitating. He's not like, and let me search for a word here.

None of that!

And I screw my courage to the sticking place, and say, excuse me. Mr. President, this is the President that America needs to see.

This is the guy. Why don't you say these things to the American public?

And he goes off on another tirade, and he tells me about how he's made deals with the Pentagon. He's made deals with the military. He's made deals -- he's also had all of the eyes. Listen to this. All of the eyes with all of the leaders of the world, including all of their intelligence officials.

And they watch everything that every major official says in the United States, especially the president. And whatever the President says, they analyze. He said, I shift my eyes at the wrong time, they think, well, that means he's not saying this. What he's actually saying is this.

He's like, I'm juggling so many things in my head, that I can't say or can't do, because of X, Y, or Z. And he said, that's the job of the president.

Now, whether you agree with that or not, it doesn't matter.

The reason why I tell you that story is, Mark Kelly, did you seen consider what Five Eyes might be saying about that video? What China, how they might be analyzing that video?

How Russia is analyzing that video. How that affects our national stability in this country.

Screw you're trying to, in my opinion, start a Colour Revolution!

Screw that. Let's just talk about, how's this make us stronger with national defense.

You call people into a private room and say that. Like has always been done in the United States of America.

What you did has never been done in the United States.

Not at the time of the Civil War even. Never has this been done!

Why?

Because people respected the republic. They respected the military.

They respected the fact that their voice would be heard by foreigners. And foreign nations. Many of them, adversaries.

And so they showed just a modicum of -- of restraint. That you, sir, couldn't find.

So please, don't preach to me about how embarrassing it is that he's putting a cartoon out. Yeah. I would rather have my secretary of war not put cartoons out. But unfortunately, that's the way of the world now, isn't it?

I mean, you know, you can only get attention by people doing stupid memes. You didn't need a meme. You didn't need a video.

You needed all of you, to get together, and say, we would like the Joint Chiefs to meet us at the Capitol.

Because they also answer to us. And we have a few things to say to them.

And then you say to them privately. And you make it very, very clear.

That's what you should have done.

I mean, unless you're trying to collapse the United States, make our enemies stronger. And foment a Colour Revolution. Which I'm not sure -- what?

Colour Revolution. I'm not even sure what that means.

RADIO

Country Music star John Rich reveals shocking truth about child predator epidemic

Country music singer John Rich joins Glenn Beck to expose the staggering reality of America’s child predator epidemic, a crisis far larger and darker than most parents realize. With 36 million online targeting reports in a single year and less than 1% of trafficked children ever returning home, Rich argues that parents can no longer be passive; predators, platforms, and cultural forces have infiltrated homes through screens, games, and social media. From demonic networks preying on kids to entertainment giants openly bragging about shaping young minds, this conversation delivers a wake-up call: if American parents don’t go on offense now, the wolves will keep winning.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: It's called the Righteous Hunter, and John Rich is with us now. Hey, John, how are you, man?

JOHN: I'm great, brother. It's been a long time since I had the pleasure of talking to you. So thanks for having me on.

GLENN: I know. You bet. So, first of all, what a great song. Powerful, powerful video. Really powerful. Why did you do this?

JOHN: So I'm a dad. I'm sure there are a lot of moms and dads, listening to you today. I know there are.

And when I started realizing the extent of child predators in the networks they have, in America, I was so overwhelmed by it. I couldn't believe the numbers. The Department of Homeland Security told me that in a 12-month period, they received 36 million reports of -- of kids being targeted online by child sex predators. I said, 36 million?

They said, yes. It's over three million a month. It is so huge and so massive, that regular parents, even Christian parents, patriotic parents, you know, the ones that pay attention, even we can become victims of these people. They are that tricky, that illusive, that demonic.

So that led to me writing the song. I'm sick and tired of us sitting around, hoping they don't get our kids next. You know, it tells us in the Bible, to go on the offense when you're a parent. You're supposed to not just defend, but go on defense.

You know there's a wolf in the front yard, you go out there and handle the wolf.

And that's how I look at these predators.
So The Righteous Hunter, that song was born from that thought.

GLENN: You know, you say, it can even hit us.

I've only told this story once before. But my son, when he was probably hmm. Fourteen.

He was playing on a PlayStation.

And it's, you 1 o'clock in the morning.

And the phone rings.

And we were lucky enough at that time, to have land lines. And the -- and we had multiple lines.

And it rang once. And then it hung up. And my wife was like, what was that?

And I said, I don't know. And then it bothered her so much.

She stayed awake. And she watched the lines. She saw line two light up.

She's like, somebody is on the phone.

And we went up.

We found out that my son was on the phone with a gamer. And we called the FBI. And my son was freaking out. He's like, Dad, he's just a normal kid. Blah, blah. Called the FBI.

They do an investigation. He was an adult. He was working at let's just say a major amusement park in the Los Angeles, Orange County area.

JOHN: Hmm.

GLENN: And was as the FBI agent told us, this is the way it happens, you don't see it. It's in the middle of the night. They had just caught somebody who had just -- in our general area, just caught somebody whose daughter was taken. And taken across state lines. And they said, you know, they just said, hey. We'll send you an airline ticket. Just come and visit us.

And, you know, it didn't turn out well. And they caught that person as well. But that doesn't happen all the time. You usually don't catch it. We were really blessed.

JOHN: Yeah. The stats are that less than 1 percent of kids who -- who wind up being trafficked are ever returned to their parents. This video that you're talking about, that I shot. I had to take some time to think about it.

I wrote this song almost a year ago. And it is such a disturbing subject. But I knew it was written for a reason. It was written to make parents wake up. It was written to make predators hopefully shake in fear from the wrath of God and the American parent. Because I don't think they have any fear. I know they don't have any fear of God. But they need to fear us.

So I took a lot of time shooting it. In this video, Glenn. There's a reenactment of adults, purchasing children in somebody's house.

GLENN: Yeah.

JOHN: Which is accurate because we had -- we had actual supervision in the room, from people who would do this for a living.

They would sting these people. They set them up.

They arrest them. We had them in the room to make sure everything they did was accurate. I urge people to watch it. As hard as it is for people to watch it, you need to look at it.

GLENN: Was the girl who was returned, was that just off the top of your head?

Was that just a hope or a true story?

In the video.

JOHN: There are kids who get returned. But it's less than 1 percent. Less than 1 percent, Glenn. I mean, that is --

GLENN: I can't imagine.

JOHN: That's unacceptable. When there's tens of millions of moms and dads who would go to the ends of the earth to get them. But less than 1 percent get them back. It is one of the most horrific blights, sins existing in the world today. I would say the most.

I mean, Jesus himself. Probably the most aggressive thing the son of God ever said.

STU: Oh, yeah.

JOHN: Is that you would be better off dead, than to hurt one of these kids. A millstone around your neck, as we know this phrase.

GLENN: Yeah. Did Sean Combs and what he was going through, play a role into bringing you this message?

JOHN: Sean Combs. You talking about Diddy?

GLENN: Yeah.

JOHN: Yeah. Well, I saw a video of him, about a year ago, on stage at some award show. And he looked right into the camera, and he said, I own your kids. I determine what they listen to. What they wear. What they think is cool.

I'll take your souls. He looks at the camera, with this demonic look in his eye. And proclaims this to American parents. And, you know, music is his weapon. Sean Combs and the industry, a lot of them, they use their music as a weapon to steal our sons and daughters, as the song says. To take them from us. To wreck their lives. To veer them off the path that God has intended for them to live.

They use their music to do it. And I was so enraged when I saw that demoniac say that with such arrogance. And we know the devil is the most arrogant creature ever created.

I said, oh, let Sean Comb's music, it's his weapon. Well, music is my weapon as well.

So I will write something. Let Sean combs. And the rest of the Sean combs of the world know, how the American parent feels about it. And what we're willing to do to protect our kids.

Because I don't think you guys are really aware of that.

And so that's -- that's where the song came from. I went to Sean Ryan.

A lot of people know Sean Ryan from his podcast. I asked him. He played the dad from the video. This is not a guy that will do music videos. I thought he would say, I appreciate it. But no.

But he said yes!

So Shawn Ryan is playing the dad, and it's his daughter being reenacted that's been taken.

GLENN: Well, it's very -- very powerful.

Let me ask you. What is the -- you know, I was thinking about what TikTok is here in America. And what TikTok is in China.

And TikTok in China is all positive.

It's all positive.

It's all kids doing amazing things. Et cetera, et cetera.

Because they know it's good for society. Here, they perverted it. Went the other direction.

What is it about our society that is attracted to stuff like this?

Why do we consume this garbage?

JASON: I think we have been programmed for decades, you know this. Programmed little by little by little.

Things that were shocking in the '80s, now would be rated PG. Things that were shocking even ten years ago, now you can click on it, and watch it on TikTok.

Degree by degree, they have come further and further into the -- the households of Americans. And conditioned those kids and parents, to just consider it normal.

And that's the trick. That's the deception.

That's why you have 36 million reports in one year in DHS alone. Of kids being targeted online.

Listen, this road is not just to yell into the void.

It's not just, hey. All these predators. We see you.

Yeah. That's part of it.

But bigger. The bigger point of parents watching video.

And the whole thing, by the way, is posted at John Rich on X. That's just at the top of my page, if you want to watch it.

The bigger point is that American parents start looking into their kids' devices. They go online. And figure out how to safeguard against this stuff. Don't let them in your house. Listen you wouldn't let a predator come through your front door, or play glass window in the middle of the night.

He would be met with gunfire. He would die! Inside your home, if he tried to take one of your kids. But we sit here. As we're following up on our emails or whatever we're doing. And our kids are off in the bedroom, they could be getting taken by Roblox.

GLENN: Big time.

JOHN: I mean, all these innocuous games that seem like nothing. These predators are coming in and posing as a kid and doing what you said in that story earlier, and they're very successful at it. We've got to stop that. Parents have to go on the offense. And it starts inside of your own home.

GLENN: Well, the one thing that you could do is cancel Meta. Make sure you don't have Meta. I don't know if you know this.

But Meta, if you were an account that engaged in trafficking of humans for sex, Meta doesn't believe in three strikes and you're out. They believe in 17 strikes and you're out.

Seventeen chances!

I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know what parent that would agree with that.

JOHN: Well, no parent agrees with that.

GLENN: No.

JOHN: But listen, we're up against an Army.

Battalions. Legions of demons in this world.

They are there. They possess people. Just like you and I are possessed by the Holy Spirit.

Because we gave our lives to Jesus Christ.

We're possessed by him. We're possessed by the Holy Spirit.

They're possessed by the spirit of their father. And it's an actual straight-up war.

If you think about it. What probably puts the most tears down the cheeks of Jesus Christ.

When you --

GLENN: Children.

JOHN: When you hurt the kids. Yes. Absolutely.

That's their motive. If they can derail the kids. They think they can win. But we can't let that happen.

RADIO

Tennessee Special Election is a MASSIVE Wake-Up Call for Republicans Ahead of 2026 Midterms

A Tennessee district that voted for Trump by 22 points is suddenly a 2-point race, and the warning signs for Republicans couldn’t be clearer. With a strong GOP candidate, a weak progressive Democrat, and a deep-red electorate, this race should be a blowout. Instead, low turnout and December timing have turned a safe seat into a dangerous toss-up. What happens here could preview 2026 and whether the GOP is ready, or already slipping.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Well, it's an interesting day in Tennessee.

There is an election going on today in Tennessee.

And it's kind of an important one. Because this is a -- this is a district that, you know, went to Trump by 22 points.

And the Democrats are not spending as much money as the Republicans are, which kind of tells you go. We better not lose this one.

Stu. Welcome.

STU: Yeah. It's an interesting one, Glenn. Seventh congressional district in Tennessee. And it is a race, as you point out, that should be very, very friendly to Republicans.

This should not be what they have to worry about. As you noted, a 22-point margin for Donald Trump, in 2024. And this race is going on because of a representative who stepped down and took a job with the private sector.

And so right off the bat, you know, the important part of right now, is the fact that the Republicans have a very small majority in the House. They came in with a small majority. So losing any representatives is a big deal. They've had to deal with a few months of this going on and on. They have to defend this seat.

The two in the race, Matt Van Epps is the Republican.

He is -- you know, you never know in one of these cases. When you have a bright red district, sometimes you get a candidate that is not very good.

Sometimes you get a candidate, you know, where you kind of get a crazy person who wins the primary. Does not seem to be the case here at all.

Matt Van Epps is a West Point graduated, a decorated helicopter pilot. He is seemingly a fiscal conservative, does not seem to be some crazy person with lots of wild tweets or anything like that. He seems to be a --

GLENN: Hasn't been on an island, Epstein or otherwise.

STU: I don't think so. Has avoided all pedophile islands, which is great. Really want -- even peninsulas. He doesn't even go anywhere that has the word pedophile on it. He's stayed away from it, which is fantastic.

GLENN: Yeah, that's great. That's great.

STU: That would be the type of risk that you might have, in a situation like this.

Where you have a fringy type candidate.

He does not seem to be that.

Also, when you look at the Republican side of the aisle, sometimes you get a candidate who is like super Trumpy. And maybe the old school conservatives aren't on board with it. Or you get an anti-Trump Republican that runs, and Trump won't stores endorsed.

It doesn't seem that either of those have happened. This is a guy that the club for growth seems to like.

And Trump has endorsed and rallied for.

So you have --

GLENN: Okay.

STU: They didn't blow this. Like, they didn't go in this with like, okay.

We're super confident. Seems to have handled this relatively competently. The other thing. And you kind of noted a little bit of this. Which is interesting. Is they saw this coming.

They were worried about this from the beginning. And decided to actually spend money on this race. Which sometimes, again, can be a problem.

Sometimes, they're like, we have this 22 points, we don't need to do anything.

Democrat comes in. Spends tons of money, and the Republican loses somehow. That didn't happen here. Republicans have spent I think over $3 million. The Democrats spend about two.

Again, they have both been spending.

This is an important race. The Republicans actually spent some cash in this race.

GLENN: Because if the Democrat wins, it's a one point majority?

STU: One, two. There's a bunch of seats in flux. It's very close, to put it that way. You can't lose seats right now. To the extent, the House majority, it's not completely out of the question, they could lose this before 2026.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

STU: With a couple of weird moments happening with -- again, most of these congressmen are over 96 years old, so you never what's going to happen. Retirements. A lot of these people in purple districts are looking at 2026 and are saying, I'm not going to win. So maybe I just bail now, and take a private sector job.

I don't think they will lose the majority because of that. But it is an outlier possibility in this case.

So you look at this race, and the other part about this is, do the Democrats poll a candidate who is great?

Every once in a while, you get a candidate, you know, a military member on the Democratic side who is a smooth talker and can talk to the average person.

Even though, they're a Democrat. And they don't sound like a lunatic.

GLENN: Tulsi Gabbard, that the Democrats would actually like.

STU: Right. Someone they didn't eject out of the party immediately, when they started making sense.

GLENN: Right. There's fewer and fewer of them. But they might still exist somewhere.

I'm not entirely unsure that unicorns don't exist. So it might have.

STU: Did they pull a unicorn. The answer to that does seem to be a flat no.

What they pulled was Aftyn Behn, which this is a candidate running who is seemingly more on, like, the kind of AOC side of the Democratic Party. Not someone who is going to relate to the average person.

Now, she's had a couple of moments, that have made some news as this race has gone on. And she -- this is -- let me give you cut three, first.

This is 2020, a podcast clip of one of her podcast clips of her, that has been resurfaced during this campaign, talking about the area she actually would be representing.

VOICE: Because I hate this city. I hate the bachlorettes. I hate the pedal taverns. I hate country music. I hate all of the things that make Nashville.

STU: So, again, suboptimal, Glenn. You would prefer --

GLENN: That's really kind of a hard thing. It's kind of like saying, I want to represent the part -- or the district, you know, of Orlando, where Walt Disney World is, but I hate Disney.

STU: I hate Disney. I hate talking mice. I don't like dogs without pants on. It's like, generally speaking --

GLENN: Right. I can understand. I don't like Vegas, but Vegas likes Vegas. You know, the states like Vegas. It's really an important thing. I mean, if you happen to have a store or, you know, country music and the stores and the -- you know, the honky-tonks and all that stuff, that's what makes Nashville a destination.

STU: Right. That's the thing.

GLENN: If you want to get rid of that, you're going to not do good things for the economy, just saying.

STU: I mean, Glenn, you and I both know people who live and work in Nashville. They're -- it's not an uncommon sentiment for people to be frustrated about the bachelorette parties and the pedal taverns and the things that go on downtown. It's wild. It's Nash-Vegas, right? It is wild. And it can be that way.

GLENN: Yes. Yes. Yes.

STU: And if you're a resident, there is some of that, that is somewhat common to the area. Though, saying that you hate the city when you're trying to represent the city. Is not necessarily optimal. I would say suboptimal. And I would say it's the economy. Right? It is -- if you hate that, if you're fighting against it, you're fighting against thousands and thousands of jobs, you're fighting against millions of dollars that are coming in.

That's not a great look. Even if you believe it, it's of type of thing that a consultant would correctly advise you to not say when you're running for office.

GLENN: In today's world, that might be the exact right thing to say, the things that consultants say, "Don't ever say that."

STU: Yeah, I think in this case, I would shy away from the city.

GLENN: I would too. I would too.

STU: You know, the other part of this is, we saw much, much worse out of Zohran Mamdani, and he won.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

STU: But he won a Democrat plus-20 city. This is a Republican plus 20 type of district. So probably not the approach you want to take. There is another one that is going on. You know, again, she's trying -- she's very much a progressive. But, of course, trying to message herself, as someone who can work across party lines. That's what you need to do as a Democrat to win in a Republican plus 20 district. That just means Republicans will win by 20 points, typically, on a typical cycle. Here is a 2023 political forum with that debate, talking about her ability to work across the aisle.

VOICE: You cannot work with these people. Working across the aisle has rarely been effective in the last ten years. Okay.

So what we need to do, one, we need to continue organizing external pressures in the Republican super majority, which is exactly what happened in April, when students and teachers came together and forced their frustration, and force Governor Lee to call a special session.

STU: So, again --

GLENN: Okay.

STU: -- suboptimal, probably if you're trying to present yourself that way, which is what she's tried to do.

She's tried to present herself -- her messaging and ads is like affordability. And can you believe these Republicans won't release the Epstein files?

It's like, your party had control of everything for four years, and didn't do this.

You are aware of that, right?

GLENN: And you noticed, as soon as they were released, how the Democrats just went completely silent.

STU: Right.

GLENN: Like Epstein files, no. There's nothing there. What are you talking about? So stupid.

STU: In polls, though, people want the Epstein files out. And that kind of goes across party lines. All of this basically set up to say, the Republicans didn't seem to blow this, with any of their decisions.

The Democrats didn't pick some generational talent to come into this race. And this is a race where you would say, normal times, maybe the Republicans win by 20 points.

The polling has not shown that. And nobody expects the Republicans to win this race by 20 points. That's kind of the bad news. A lot of the polling leading -- and it's -- it's a special election. To give you a quick outlier on that. Quick explaining on that. These races are weird. It's December. It's not an Election Day.

No one knows what the turnout is going to look like. It's a very strange, off-year, special election, anything can happen in these. And there's not a lot of polling to tell us what will happen.

GLENN: Yeah. And the really bad thing about this is, you know, you live in a place like this.

It will happen. And you're just so busy with everything else. You just don't even realize, oh, that was yesterday.

I was going to vote! You know what I mean?

STU: We talked about this. We talked about this yesterday in the meeting before the show. And we said, oh, that Tennessee election is going on. Oh, jeez. That's the one with the crazy lady.

It's out of our mind. We just came off of Thanksgiving weekend. I have no idea what the turnout will be on this.

And that is a real concern --

GLENN: Right. And the ones that win are the ones that can turn their base out. And if you have a democratic socialist. If you have somebody who can take these guys and hold them back, you're going to get your people out.

They will be motivated. Because they'll know, it won't take a lot of us to throw this election.

Just hoping that the tell me can -- or, the Republicans in -- in Nashville understand what they're up against today.

STU: It's a great point. If you're a democratic socialist, and you live in this district, there's no way you're not showing up.

You're going to be there. The question are the Republicans, the typical people who will win this race, going to be there?

GLENN: My guess is no. My guess is no.

Yeah. Twenty-two points, you're like, that will be fine.

STU: Every -- every indicator that we have, and I will say, there's not a lot of those indicators. Because it's lightly polled. And it's a weird time.

Every indicator that we have shows that some of those people that would typically come out and vote for Donald Trump in a presidential election, or a senator in Tennessee, are not going to show up for this election, like every indicator we have.

The polling leading up in a couple -- the couple months leading up to this showed typically Van Epps, the Republican, with a high single digits lead. So not a 22-point lead, which you would expect. More like eight or nine. That's still a victory. And it won't change the balance of the House and everything else.

GLENN: If they show up.

STU: If they show up.

Here's the bigger worry. And this is where you get really scared.

The last poll, the only one that we have that is very recent in the last few days, came out from Emerson. And Emerson is a pretty good pollster.

Did well on Trump.

They had this race as a two-point race.

Two!

GLENN: Jeez.

STU: The Republicans still winning.

But a two-point race. If you happen to be in this district, if you know somebody who is in this district, if you have someone who you know who is like, I think I will vote Republican. But we will win anyway. I wouldn't worry about it. Might be worth a phone call today.

Because if that poll is right, and I don't know that it is.

But if it's that close, this is a massively dangerous thing. To be clear, to say this in advance. So I can't take it back later. Would be completely catastrophic if they lost this race.

It's a special election. So there's asterisks around it.

The idea of what this points to in 2026.