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Glenn's Chief Researcher Shares Firsthand Stories From Harvey Devastation

August 30, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Tropical Storm Harvey peaked as a Category 4 hurricane and was the biggest hurricane to hit Texas in half a century. Days after the hurricane hit Houston, flood waters are still rising thanks to record rain that has flooded neighborhoods and pushed tens of thousands of people out of their homes. According to state officials, nearly 49,000 homes have been damaged by the flood, CNBC reported.

TheBlaze researcher Jason Buttrill returned Wednesday to talk about his experience volunteering in Houston on radio.

Teams of volunteers were organized into boat crews complete with gear for search-and-rescue operations. Jason’s group was working in Katy, Texas, one of the hardest hit areas. He talked about the tense environment and what it was like to be surrounded by emergency responders.

“What kept going through my head was like watching Independence Day or you know, an alien invasion movie because there were tons of people coming out, there [were] only rescue vehicles and like police and stuff like that going in,” he said of the surreal experience.

Glenn theorized that officials’ disagreement over an evacuation plan worked out for the best since people driving out of the area likely would have been stranded if they’d tried to evacuate.

“That may have turned out to be a great blessing because you would have had probably a million people trapped in their cars on these highways and nowhere to go,” he said.

GLENN: We just had some really critical information that we should pass on to you.

STU: We hate to disappoint the audience, but sometimes people are disappointed. This one comes in from Twitter @worldofStu.

I was disappointed Jeffy didn't go cover the storm. He went blow away in high winds, and he's very buoyant in case of flooding.

I could have used him. Where were you at, man? Come on.

PAT: Isn't that good? That's good.

GLENN: Jason went out, who is a head writer or researcher for the Glenn Beck Program. And we're glad to have you back safe and sound. You and Sean went out yesterday.

You -- you couldn't actually get close to anything because you were dumb enough to drive a car -- who even has a car in Texas that is headed towards Houston?

JASON: Yeah. So we rented a very high-mobility Hyundai that --

GLENN: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

JASON: So we didn't expect to actually have to actually maneuver when we got down there in this Hyundai. We were going to jump into the vehicles with the rescue group that we were with.

GLENN: Yes.

JASON: But they had full-on boat crews. They had tons of gear. All this stuff. So like at the last minute, they were like, "Guys, follow this convoy down to the actual boat put-in area, and you can just follow us down there." So were like, okay. You know, we'll try. We got -- so we started going down towards Katy, Texas, which was the hardest hit area at that time yesterday.

PAT: Wait. Katy was the hardest hit area?

GLENN: Yeah. You didn't hear this?

JASON: At that point, yeah. So they pulled up a map that morning. And they were like, these are all the areas. Some program they were using of all the people throwing --

PAT: Wow. That's where I lived.

JASON: Was it really? Oh, my gosh.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: It's a huge suburb -- it is the main suburb -- if you work in Houston, it's the main suburb. And it's fairly -- it's not like hoity-toity. But it's affluent.

PAT: Parts of it are very nice.

GLENN: Yeah, parts of it are very nice.

PAT: Uh-huh.

JASON: The feeling driving down there was kind of hard to describe. What kept going through my head was watching Independence Day or, you know, like an alien invasion movie.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

JASON: Because there were tons of people coming pout. There were only rescue vehicles and like police and stuff like that going in. All the radio stations, most of the radio stations were tuned to the emergency broadcast thing.

GLENN: System, yeah.

JASON: So you're seeing that.

PAT: Wow.

JASON: So as you're driving down, you can actually see -- we would get to a certain area, after we broke apart from the main group. And we were trying to work our way through the back roads. We would get to a certain area. And then all of a sudden, you would see, you know, all the way up to the houses, all the way to the front doors, you know, the water's creeping in. The waters were sweeping over it -- like, you could just see the tops of trucks that had just gotten stranded in some of these intersections. You could not move.

GLENN: So, Jason, as you were going down there, you know, the big controversy over the weekend was, the city and the state had an argument, evacuate, evacuate, evacuate.

The argument from the city was not, no, we shouldn't evacuate because it might cause more problems. It was, no, I don't know if we need to do it yet, if I'm not mistaken. Kind of the same thing that happened in New Orleans.

However, that may have turned out to be a great blessing. Because you would have had probably a million people trapped in their cars on these highways. And -- and nowhere to go. That's what happened, you know, in -- in all evacuations. And the last time it happened in Houston, people were stuck in traffic. They ran out of gas. And families were trapped in their cars.

Now, imagine, five, six, seven, eight, some places, 12 feet of water. Would that have been much worse, do you think?

JASON: Oh, my gosh, yes. I think -- to go off that point, I think they were doing it right. It seemed like it was efficient the way they were doing it. They had two stages, as we were listening to the emergency broadcast.

There was the -- there was the suggested evacuation, saying that, okay. In these areas, water level is rising. We suggest you evacuate. But it wasn't mandatory.

The places that were dire, those were under mandatory evacuation. So it was going in like stages. So you could -- there were certain areas that you had to get out in mandatory evacuation. They would leave. So those were the people we were seeing cruising down the freeway or getting out of there.

But it was managed. The other places that we suggest you evacuate, that was actually kind of surreal. And you can see how people actually -- you wonder -- you know, when you see these news broadcasts, how these people -- why did they stay in their homes? Like, how did it get to this point?

I could actually get that now. Because you go into some of these villages on the outskirts of Katy. And you've seen these neighborhoods, Pat. They're just like our neighborhoods, like the neighborhood I live in. There are people that are walking their dogs down the sidewalk. They're looking at the waters rise. You know, and there's kids, you know, building little toys and that's going into it. They didn't feel threatened at the time, while water is gradually, gradually rising.

But I can sympathize with them. Because I'm like, well, if it's not really -- if it's not coming up to my door, I'm probably not leaving either. Because I have all my stuff in here.

PAT: We went through many storms and several hurricanes and never flooded in Katy. So especially Katy residents would probably be like, well, that's not going to happen here.

GLENN: So I was just talking to a guy about -- because I can't take the tornadoes here anymore. I just can't. It freaks my children out. And so I want to build a storm shelter. And I want to build a storm shelter also for the library that I have. I don't want it sucked up into the sky.

And so I'm talking to this guy. And he said, "You know, don't build the -- where do you want to build it?" I said, "I don't know where we could go." And he said, "Well, I suggest you build it in your garage." And I said, "Well, wait. Why?"

And he said, "Because if you build it where you have to go outside -- think of this, usually it will be in the middle of the night. And you'll have to get everybody up. And you'll have to go outside, get dressed. It will be raining. Blah, blah, blah. And then nothing will happen, and then you'll get wet coming back in, and then you'll all go to bed. And what will happen, one or two storms down the road, you'll say to the kids, "You know what, let's just stay here in bed. And we'll all go if it gets bad." And then you're sucked up into the sky.

And the same thing happens here with these hurricanes is you've gone through them over and over again. Nothing happens. And you're not seeing -- it doesn't connect with you that that's going to happen to you or your neighborhood.

And then all of a sudden -- you were driving yesterday, and you would drive down the streets. And you were trying to get places. And by the time you went, "Okay. Well, that's blocked," you'd turn around, and you would realize, "I'm trapped. I can't get out now."

JASON: That was the most claustrophobic feeling, and that's what the rescuers are having to put up with this too. I had never heard of this, in some of these situations.

Because usually it's like, after the fact, the waters had risen. They pretty much leveled off, and then rescue workers go in. It's still rising, even up to this day. So as we were getting to certain points, water was rising behind us. So we were like, well, how the heck do we get out of here. At one point, we just stopped beside the road and scratched our heads and said, "We might be stuck out here for a night."

Like, this car is getting swept away. You know, one of the coolest on that -- that little conundrum of trying to get out, I saw one of the coolest things I saw out there.

So we got to a certain point, just before we had to evacuate and get out of there, to where we got to a point to where we were going to try to turn around. The water level was rising about halfway up under one of the homes.

And you saw a long line of cars. People were just pulling up into people driveways. It's like, why are all these cars pulled into people's driveways and yards?

Well, what it was, was that was kind of like the point of no return. All the neighborhood -- the people and the residents of these homes, they were driving up, basically metaphorically to the fire. Whatever they had, they had blow-up boats, they had floaties, they had canoes. And they were like, this way.

And they were going right up there, and they were throwing in their own, and they were going to help out their neighbors. I got chills seeing that. I wanted to stay there and watch. But, again, we would have gotten swept up with it too. But that's what they were willing to do for their neighbors. It was amazing.

GLENN: Right. And they were driving their car. And everybody was walking away, going, my car is lost. It's just like -- that's not going to -- I'm never going to see that again.

JASON: Yeah. Yeah.

GLENN: It's really remarkable. Jason, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

JEFFY: I mean, the company that rented Jason's car, he didn't care.

(laughter)

STU: That's a fair point.

JEFFY: Thanks, Glenn.

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.