GLENN: Interesting speech last night from the president. He gave a fiery campaign speech in Phoenix. He said he wasn't going to mention any names, and he didn't. Here's the issue: The left hates Donald Trump. Hates him. More than any other president, it seems in history, including George W. Bush, including strangely Woodrow Wilson. Democrats in office want to impeach him. The media has a hysterical hatred of him, so much so that they often compare him to Hitler and Kim Jong-un. And now he's railing against highly influential Republican senators, making bigger enemies of them as well.
The question is: Who will work with him on anything? Please, Mr. President, get off the campaign trail and start governing. That's what you need a media source to tell you: Stop with the bickering and start with the healing and the governing. If you don't have a media source that's telling you that, maybe perhaps it's time to find a new media source.
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GLENN: How is it that we are going down this road? How is it that we are in a civil war, a cold civil war now? I believe it's about to be a hot civil war. How is this happening to us? And on what? On what?
The last time we had a civil war, it was over slavery. It was over something really, really important. It wasn't about state's rights, no matter what the Confederates and the Confederate apologists say today. It wasn't over state's rights, and I can prove that to you very easily. And -- and do your own work.
Just -- just look it up yourself. Read the Confederate constitution. When you read it, if you really loved America, you wouldn't rewrite the Constitution. You would say, "We're going to reset towards the Constitution and include the Bill of Rights." None of that was included in the Confederate constitution.
In fact, you didn't have a state right. If you joined the confederacy, you had to agree to slavery. And you had to agree with the expansion of slavery. That's not about states' rights. That's about slavery. Pure and simple. There it is. Look it up. Read it. Now let's move on.
Our last Civil War was about slavery, about ending oppression. Now, what kind of oppression is this that these statues -- do they -- are we living in a country where it's like Night at the Museum? Do the statues come alive at night? Come over to your house, ride into your bedroom, and oppress you? Do they come off their pedestal and whisper bad things into your ears and tell you that you're never going to make it because you're black, you're white, you're whatever it is?
Or are they just statues? Are they just -- is it nothing more than a bunch of copper or brass or metal that's just formed into the shape of something that sits alone in the dark and pigeons crap all over it? Is that what is oppressing you?
What are we argue you?
And President Trump was out at a fundraiser, a fundraiser. He -- he's -- he was just elected.
Why is he doing a campaign fundraiser now?
I have a lot to talk to you about. And I really, really want to talk to you about the insanity of ESPN, where they have now taken off -- they took a guy off play-by-play because his name was Robert Lee. Not Robert E. Lee. In fact, not even named after Robert E. Lee. He's of Asian descent. It's like Lee's noodle house. Not Robert E. Lee.
But ESPN doesn't want him on the air because they're afraid that will add to the controversy. Oh, my gosh.
Would somebody please look up Dietrich Bonhoeffer, On Stupidity, so I can just read that again? Because that's where we are.
I have a lot to say to you today. And a lot of perspective, I think, that you're not going to get anyplace else. And I just want to ask you -- I just want to ask you a couple of questions first. And I'm...
I really am looking for your answer. I want to know. I want you to call us and tell me these answers. What is it you really believe in, anymore? Is there anything that you had a gun to your head that you could say, "I know this is true?"
What is it you believe in, anymore?
To the core of your being. Who are we? What is the American story? Who are we as a people? Why are we here? Do you even know anymore?
The things that you're doing, do they back up your belief? Are they strengthening your belief, in whatever it is you believe in?
Maybe I should go back and start here, give you an example. I know I believe in the Bill of Rights. I know it. I know with everything in me. You cannot convince me that the Bill of Rights is wrong.
Now, it used to be something we hold these truths to be self-evident, but they're not self-evident anymore. They're not self-evident to most people. Remember, we were a small group of people. Imagine how groundbreaking these self-evident truths were.
See, we've always thought -- I've always thought, you could wake anybody in the dead of night from a sleep and say, "Hey, should people be able to have access to your stuff?" No. Should you be able to say what you really, truly believe without fear of somebody coming and throwing you in jail for your point of view?
I thought we would all say, "Of course, you can say what you want."
I thought those things were self-evident, but they're really not. I could go to China right now, and I could read the Bill of Rights, and they would be so foreign, that I don't know if I could convince them that those things were true in a generation. It's what's happening in Afghanistan. We think we're going to give people freedom. They have to earn freedom. They have to want freedom. They have to understand freedom. They have to understand that with freedom comes profound responsibility.
But those things are not self-evident. You have to go searching for those truths. You have to be quiet enough to listen, to ponder. To seek.
You have to be well-fed enough, to be able to have the time to ponder and to seek. So what is it that you believe?
I believe in the Bill of Rights. And I believe that America is here to stop tyranny, even if it's in our own lives. It is a place -- it is a nation of -- of sanctuary. It is a place that you can go, whether it's on a raft or a ship or a plane, however you get here. It is a place to where you can say, "Sanctuary."
And then after you catch your breath, lift yourself up, not other people. Lift yourself up and be who you were born to be.
America is a place where tyrants do not win. They're routed and they're conquered by a good and decent, fair and just people.
It's a place where virtue triumphs over wickedness. And basic morality, basic decency is the rule, not the exception.
America is a place that is pitched toward the happy ending. I still believe those things. And maybe I'm stupid for believing them, but I still believe them.
I still believe that it is my responsibility, my God-given responsibility to stand up for you, no matter how much I disagree with you.
It is a moral imperative that I do it. It is a moral imperative that I forgive if I want to be forgiven myself. That I have to forgive. And I also have to find a way to believe the best in others, no matter how many times I've been kicked in the face. I still have to believe the best in others. I still have to believe that people can change and that people make mistakes, and that everybody's not evil, that they've just gone astray because of something in their life. They weren't born that way. They become that way.
So what is it that is happening in their life, where they go astray?
What is happening to our friends and our neighbors, who we have always loved and respected and trusted? We used to trust our neighbors. We don't anymore.
Unless you vote -- vote. Vote. Vote.
Unless you vote exactly the way I think you should vote, you're worthless, and that's at best. You're an enemy.
That has nothing to do with America. At least my version of America. And if that is no longer the version of America, then I'm outdated, and I am happy -- happy to walk away in the sunset, in my own belief.
But I will not be a part of going over the cliff anymore. It's why I ask you -- you can call in or -- or just do it yourself. But please, do this. Please. Make a list of the things that you believe in.
It's probably pretty short. And that should tell you something. Wasn't that list longer five years ago? Wasn't that list almost endless 15 years ago?
Are we turning into nothing more than cynics? Are we turning into everything we despise?
Do we have any hope? Once you extinguish hope of a better tomorrow, there is no tomorrow.
And once you know what you believe in, that which you gaze upon, you will become. Who are your leaders? Who are your heroes? Who are the ones you're watching? Who are the ones you're cheering for?
Are they encouraging you to be better, or worse? Are you being encouraged to cheer for something you would never ever, ever in your wildest dreams have thought of five years ago of cheering for? Antifa? You're cheering for Antifa?
You're excusing the neo-Nazis? That's not you. That's not us. So what's causing us to do this?
Look, I don't know how to do my job. And I don't -- I don't know. I'm not in this for ratings. And it's been a really hard thing because, A, I have a lot of stations and a lot of employees of those stations that depend on a successful show. I -- I owe them my loyalty. And it's a responsibility of mine to help all of these local stations be successful. And if I believe in something, I need to be successful to be able to have a voice that can be put out there and heard.
But I think what's being put out into the system, on all sides, is poison.
And so I guess I plead with you to -- to pause for a second. And let's try to have a conversation about empathy, forgiveness, and -- and what we really want in the future -- in the future. What do we really want? Because I don't think we're that far away, when we get to that question.
Jobs, security, a future for our children that's better than this one. Those are the basics.
