GLENN: I'd love to have this conversation with you, Pat. I think that we have -- I think we've come to the end of the period of enlightenment.
PAT: Hmm.
GLENN: Everything that this country was based on was the honest search for truth. Empirical truth. You know what I mean?
PAT: Uh-huh.
GLENN: I'm not going to listen to a church tell me that they have all this power, that they can do these things because God gives them the power and so I must fall in line. I'm not going to listen to a king tell me he's got all this power because of God. I'm not going to listen to magicians. I want empirical fact.
Now, if you want to go on faith, that's fine. But keep your faith out of the control of the government. The government and -- and faith should not mix when it says -- when it comes down to control of people's lives.
PAT: Hmm.
GLENN: And we looked for the truth. And let the chips fall where they may. We don't look for that anymore. We're not looking. We're not interested.
PAT: No. We're looking for the win.
GLENN: Exactly right. I -- I am sick of winning.
If this is what winning feels like, I am sick of winning. And we've been playing it now for over 20 years. And I'm sick of it.
PAT: Yeah.
STU: And no one wants to have honest conversations. You know, this is a problem. I bring the -- let me give you these two audio clips. These are specifically selected for Pat Gray's enjoyment here.
GLENN: Okay.
STU: Because these two moments back-to-back in the same interview tells a heck of a story of where we've been over the last week.
Here's David Hogg, one of the students who has been on every show imaginable. Also was on the same show as you were on this week, on CNN with Brian Stelter, talking about Dana Loesch and the NRA.
DAVID: What Dana is trying to do, I believe she's the CEO of the NRA. She's trying to distract people. If you listen --
VOICE: She's the national spokesperson for the NRA.
DAVID: Exactly. She's a national spokeswoman. And as such, she's a national propagandist for the NRA.
If you listen to her speak, she's not really saying anything. She's sounding positive and confident. And that's what she wants the people in the NRA to believe. She wants people in Congress to pass laws that help out with mental health and things like that. And she says she can't do that.
Are you kidding me? You own these politicians.
You've passed legislation that enables these bump stocks. Which, by the way, aren't allowed at NRA shooting ranges because they're too dangerous. That's how bad they are. But continuing on with my point, she wants Congress to take action and says that they won't. Are you kidding me? She owns these congressmen. She can get them to do things --
PAT: She owns them?
DAVID: -- but she doesn't care about these children's lives.
STU: Yeah.
GLENN: Okay. So he didn't even know who she was at the beginning.
PAT: Right. But he does know that she owns Congress.
STU: And she doesn't care about children's lives, which is odd because she has children. But she doesn't care about children's lives.
PAT: That is interesting. That's interesting.
GLENN: And she owns people, even though she just started with the NRA. She was working with us. I didn't know she had all of those politicians in the pocket.
STU: Yeah. She should have passed stuff for us.
PAT: Wouldn't that have been nice? We could have been on more cable channels probably, damn it.
GLENN: Right.
STU: But again, here is a kid who is put out there as an expert by every media source. Here's a guy, he's got all the passion. He's the guy -- we have to take him seriously. We have to respect all of his views.
We can't say one word of criticism of what he says because that means you just don't care about children, you don't care about the victims of this.
Later on, he's asked not about the NRA, but about the mass disaster that has been Broward County sheriff -- Scot -- what's his name? Israel. I can only think of Sheriff Israel.
And so he's asked about that. Here's what he says.
VOICE: Are you concerned that you might actually lose support if you get too personal, too incendiary?
VOICE: Well, she's already done that by attacking Sheriff Scot Israel, who obviously there were some major mistakes made here and ones that we have to look into.
PAT: Yeah.
VOICE: And I don't want to say anything until after the investigation is done because I don't know what happened. I'm just a student that had to witness this horrifying incident. But honestly, how can you say that you support law enforcement, if you're just constantly attacking them over this?
GLENN: Oh, my gosh.
VOICE: -- these are the people that are trying to protect our lives. Did they make a mistake? Absolutely. Is that something that we have to fix? Absolutely. But there is a much bigger problem in Washington.
STU: So he's -- so when it's about the NRA, he knows everything about them. He knows that Dana is the CEO and owns all of these politicians, despite her just starting this position pretty recently. But when it comes to the police, wait for the investigation, he's just a student.
PAT: He's just a student. I don't know. What do I know?
STU: He's just a student. You can't ask him those questions. He's just a kid.
PAT: That was kind of my point from the very beginning.
GLENN: Here's what I -- here's what I can't -- I can't get my arms around.
So what did I say to Brian? I said to Brian, you know, to have these emotional crowds was not a good thing. You want to have them on, great. Let them talk.
And his response was, so you think we should have -- you think Jake should have just said shut up?
No, that's not what I said.
PAT: No. That's not what you said at all.
GLENN: I didn't say that. That's really disrespectful.
PAT: You were talking about the kids, in fact. You were talking about the audience.
GLENN: Yeah, the crowd. The crowd.
STU: I don't know what Jake is supposed to do once the crowd is in the room.
GLENN: No, it's too late.
STU: The problematic decision is the crowd being there.
GLENN: That's CNN's decision up front.
STU: Right. Not the representation of these families. You could have been in there, in a room like Trump did. He did a listening session with people who were victims of the shooting.
PAT: And there wasn't screaming over the top of each other either.
STU: Right. Because it was calm -- it was calm discourse.
You put in 5,000 people, all of which are there to just yell at Dana, her position at the NRA, it's a recipe for disaster, and they should have recognized that.
GLENN: Okay. So he doesn't -- he won't listen to that. And wants -- you know, if you -- did you say we shouldn't have had the arena. Then that's akin to saying, we have to tell these kids to shut up.
We have to take these kids -- they have a right to be listened to.
PAT: Uh-huh.
GLENN: They don't have a right to be listened to unchecked. You had Brian Stelter.
STU: Stelter.
GLENN: I can never say his name. Because I always think of Brian Setzer.
STU: Oh, the orchestra?
GLENN: Yeah. So you have Brian sitting there. And who is sitting on the other side of this kid? Dan freaking Rather. And you hear this kid make this argument that Dana is, you know, the NRA. Which is a little ridiculous. More than a little ridiculous.
And then you have him stick up for this sheriff, who nobody in their right mind is sticking up for the sheriff. No one in their right mind is sticking up for the sheriff.
And there's no discussion at all on -- there's no pushback on him.
PAT: Uh-huh.
GLENN: On saying, how does this make sense? I thought you wanted this to stop.
And what makes you think that passing a ban on some guns is going to make any of this stop? There's no evidence of that.
And here's some things that we could take care of right now. Because there could be another shooting, in your county, if this is happening with the sheriff's department. There's no pushback at all.
PAT: Yeah, no.
STU: Well, and I think the reason why the advocacy groups and a lot of the media really like these kids that are -- you know, were victims of this, or at least at the school where this occurred, was because of that. You can't push back. You can't push back on the arguments. So the arguments get smooth sailing. They get this nice clear empty highway to just drive down and say every liberal blog statement that's ever been put out there, without anybody saying anything. Because obviously, you can't push back. The kid obviously doesn't know these points.
PAT: Right.
STU: He's just -- he's obviously reading blogs and --
PAT: He's being exploited. He's being exploited by the left.
STU: Obviously.
GLENN: He's being a 16-year-old that is being given a national platform. That's what's happening.
STU: It's definitely not a word of criticism to him personally.
GLENN: No. But you have to be able to push back on the points, or there's no point in having him on.
PAT: May I remind you though, only you can prevent forest fires.
STU: Wow. Thank you, Pat.
