RADIO

Ben Shapiro: Society is rejecting objective truth as a ‘white, patriarchal norm’

Can a society that rejects science, reason and rationality survive?

Ben Shapiro joined Glenn on today’s show to talk about postmodernism and the dangers of a world where everything is subjective.

When people decided to make their own values, they didn’t realize that science and reason would be thrown out as objective truths as well. In today’s progressive age, even science is seen as a “white heterosexual, patriarchal” view of the universe.

But in the real world, subjectivity doesn’t make for good science or a solid business plan. Shapiro pointed out that a company like Google, which fired engineer James Damore over a memo on men and women in the workplace, may purport to believe in these progressive ideas … but if Google actually lived by them, “it would be out of business in 5 minutes.”

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Joined by Ben Shapiro, who is the editor-in-chief of -- of The Daily Wire. Also, the most-listened to conservative podcast in the world.

Welcome, Ben Shapiro.

BEN: Hey. Good to see you.

GLENN: How are you? So what books would you like to ban today?

BEN: Wow. I mean, after that list, I don't know what's left.

GLENN: Yeah, I know.

BEN: I mean, I got to go with the children's books since I'm separating those in the middle of the night.

GLENN: You go to these college campuses all the time. And you speak. When I went to college -- I spent more time in the parking lot than in the actual classroom. But you were taught how to think. How to find answers.

I mean, I was -- the professor that I learned so much from, I had no idea where he stood on any issue. Because he would argue so hard on one side. And then flip it around and argue on the other side. And you believed both of them.

BEN: Uh-huh.

GLENN: Nobody is doing that anymore. In fact, that's frowned upon.

BEN: Yeah, that's usually reserved for law school. Really. Like, when you go to law school, that's what they say. They're going to teach you how to think like a lawyer. But when you're in undergrad, they don't bother with that anymore. They're teaching you how to think, but it's how they want you to think. So they're teaching you what to think, more than how to think.

GLENN: So what are you seeing when you go to college campuses?

BEN: I think there's a lot of pent-up energy. I think there's a lot of pent-up anger. Because I think people there are largely bored. I think there's a reason that if you show up on a Wednesday night to hear me talk, in the middle of the week, you know, in the middle of the brutal cold and a thousand people show up -- and I don't think it's because I'm that great a speaker. I mean, I'm fine. But I think it has more to do with the fact that there is some hole that's being left intellectually on these campuses.

And anyone who even attempts to fill that hole on campuses is being treated with a certain amount and reverence, simply because the colleges have left the field wide open. You don't even have to be that good at this stuff, in order to be seen as somebody who has something valuable to say, I think.

GLENN: You're pretty good at this stuff.

BEN: You're allowed to say it. I'm not.

GLENN: Yeah. You're pretty good at this stuff. You and Jordan Peterson are probably the best thinkers, I think on the right, right now.

BEN: Well, thanks. That's high compliment because Jordan is fantastic.

GLENN: Yeah. Jordan is amazing.

And he's having the same kind of success that you are, where he's -- and he's a guy who wasn't looking for it.

BEN: Right. Right. That's one of the things -- it's really fascinating. There's a whole group of people who have really come to prominence in the last three or four years. They're really disparate politically. You're talking about people like Jordan Peterson or Sam Harris or Brett Weinstein. Or me. And all these people disagree with each other on a huge variety of matters. But there's two things they seem to have in common: One is that they actually purport to care about data. And they won't just dismiss data, if it disagrees with their position. And the other is that they seem to be willing to say no to things.

And there's something that I have started terming the Bartleby effect. Which is, there's this short story by Herman Melville called the Bartleby, the Scrivener.

GLENN: I'm not sure if that's on the list -- the approved list from GQ.

BEN: Yeah, I'm not sure either. But the short story is about this guy who is -- he's a scribe at a Wall Street law firm. And one day his bosses come in and they ask him to do something. He says, I prefer not to. And they don't know what to do with him because he's not actively saying no, but he's not saying yes. He just says, I prefer not to.

They leave him alone. Eventually, after saying, I'd prefer not to, to everything, he ends up dying basically alone and in prison.

But the purpose of the story is to say that society cannot tolerate people who refuse to kind of go along to get along. Well, that's true. But if you look at all the people who have risen to prominence, people like Jordan, Jordan rose to prominence not based on his latest book -- which is actually a pretty late development.

He rose to prominence because in Canada, there's Bill C-16, which essentially mandated that you use transgender pronouns.

And Jordan, a couple of years ago, said, I'm not doing that. That doesn't accord with the realities of psychological development. So I'm just not going to do that.

And people lost their minds. And suddenly, he was this major figure in Canada just for saying no. Sam Harris has become a major figure because he was on Bill Maher's show, and he said, Islam might be more dangerous religion as a general matter than Christianity.

Because the facts bear out that there are more violent Muslims worldwide than violent Christians. And he was run out on the rail by the left. Suddenly, he had this new following, that people were saying, listen, this guy's willing to undergo a certain amount of pressure, in order to say what he wants to say.

For Brett Weinstein, it was the same thing. So saying no, I think gives a lot of college students a feeling. Like, if you're willing to say no and take a risk to say no, then you must have some sort of rooted, eternal values to which you are subject. And this means that you have some sort of gloss on life that is more than what my professors are saying is possible out there.

STU: But it's not just saying no. It's saying no because of logic and reason.

GLENN: Right.

STU: You know, that's why everybody is famous now, of saying no.

No. I'm not male or female.

GLENN: Right.

STU: That's not the same. And it's -- and we are -- have disconnected from all logic, all reason, all science.

BEN: Yes.

GLENN: And just -- and because everybody is just saying, no, well, I don't have to take that. I have different facts.

BEN: It's a really fascinating development to watch, as all these people on the left, who proclaim that they were so pro-science are throwing people out of the ranks.

Like, I don't know if you saw this conversation between Sam Harris and Ezra Klein. Sam Harris is on the left. I mean, Sam is a real Democrat. And Ezra Klein went on his show and called Sam Harris a racist because Sam Harris looked at actual data about IQ differentiation among groups.

He actually read Charles Murray's book and had Charles Murray on his program. And said, listen, Charles Murray is not attributing all of this to biology, but there's some pretty clear evidence that there's at least a biological component to IQ. And Ezra Klein went on Sam Harris' show, and without any data at all, called him a racist. That's because there's this newfangled philosophy that says that all reality is subjective. All reality is what you feel about the reality.

And so science is not subjective. Science is what science is. And that means scientists are surprised when they find themselves out on their ear for the first time.

GLENN: Well, I don't think people really took postmodernism really seriously.

BEN: Yep.

GLENN: And that's what -- we are living in the post-modern world. And if you don't know what postmodernism is -- modern -- the modern lifestyle is the age of reason. Enlightenment. The idea that we take science and facts and we look at all of it. That was modern thinking. We've now thrown that away. We're postmodernism. And instead of now being ruled by a church, we're ruled by some other religious doctrine. I just don't know what it is.

BEN: Yes.

GLENN: But it is a religious -- it's dogma.

BEN: So I'm writing a book about this right now. And I think what's happened here is the culmination of essentially a 300-year process, where what originally happened was, there was -- postmodernism is the rejection of values on behalf the subjective.

So where it makes a certain amount of sense, where people logically resonate to postmodernism is they say postmodernism applies when it comes to morality. That your morality is not objective. Right? We all have our own morality. That life is a series of power political struggles. And what you say as morality, you're only saying that, because it benefits you to say that that's morality. And so a lot of people buy into that.

Well, that though was an outgrowth of the rejection of postmodern -- postmodern value rejection was an outgrowth of the rejection of religion. The idea was, if there's no objective religion out there, then what defines values in here?

And so people said, okay. Fine. Well, we can deal with the postmodern values struggle. Because we'll make our own values. We'll make our own value systems. But they forgot that science is a value. Reason is a value. Rationality is a value.

And so a lot of the folks who were very reasonable and very interested in reason, enlightenment thinkers, were some of the biggest people promoting postmodern values. And then they were surprised when -- when the Frankenstein monster turned on its master. All of a sudden, all these people who are promoting postmodern values said, well, science is a value too. So why exactly should we take science seriously?

If you're saying that reason and rationality is the highest values, but you're only saying that because you're a reasonable, rational, intelligent person. You're only saying that because of your high IQ. You're only saying that because you benefit from the scientific consensus.

Like, there are papers that are now being written on the postmodern left saying things like, science is a creation of the white male, heterosexual patriarchy.

I mean, there was this fascinating thing. I talked to Jordan about this other day. This Google memo that came out, from -- that was revealed in the James Damore lawsuit against Google, where they put out a paper saying, white values versus non-white values.

And among white values were things like rationality. Things like winning and losing. Things like scientific progress. These things were actually listed as white views of the universe, as opposed to objective views of the universe. What I said about it on my show is that, if Google lived by the values that it purports to hate, it would be out of business in five minutes, obviously, right? Google bases its own business on all of these values that it purports to think are white, heterosexual, patriarchal norms. But that's the value system that has built the West. And we're rejecting that now.

Because we thought that we could separate religion from science. And that that break could be clean. And instead, it turns out, that by rejecting religion, by rejecting the idea that there's an objective truth about morality in the world, we're also going to reject the idea of objective truths generally.

And you see some people struggling to put that back together. I'm struggling to put that back together. I think Jordan is struggling to put that back together. I think there are people like Steven Pinker or like Sam -- Sam Harris, who are trying to keep the religion out of it. And trying to restore the Enlightenment vision of science. But I'm not sure how can you do that.

GLENN: It doesn't work.

BEN: I'm not sure how you can remove the base of the science.

There's this weird idea -- you were saying this earlier. You know, there's this weird idea that history began today.

Well, a lot of Enlightenment advocates think that history began in 1750. That's when history began. There's no history to science. That science started in 1750. That good thought began in 1750. There's a rooted philosophy of the West that goes all the way back to Sinai and that carries forward through the sermon on the mount, and then all the way forward, through Lot.

GLENN: There is no way you can understand the West without understanding the Bible.

You don't have to believe --

BEN: This is right.

GLENN: -- in the angels and the magic tricks and the fire and all of that. You don't have to. But you do have to read it and go, what is this trying to teach, and how did this form what we have?

BEN: Exactly.

GLENN: And everybody is trying to throw that out.

Without that, you've completely taken all the cornerstones out. You've taken the cornerstone and all of the foundation of the house out. You've got nothing left.

BEN: This is right. I think the history of this 19th and 20th centuries are enough to prove this.

I mean, mass chaos and the bloody slaughter of an enormous portion of the globe, on the basis of rationality, should be enough to show you that rationality unmoored to some sort of higher value system is pretty dangerous stuff.

GLENN: Back with Ben Shapiro in a minute.

GLENN: Welcome back to the program. Joining us, Ben Shapiro.

STU: Glenn, I hope Ben is -- he understands what's happening in DC. With a very -- very interested guy in the DC city council. If you remember, his name is, let's see, Trayon White, and he initially talked about the big conspiracy that a lot of people are not discussing about how Jews are controlling the weather.

GLENN: Damn you. Notice Ben lives out here in Los Angeles. And it's beautiful all the time.

STU: It is.

GLENN: Coincidence, I don't think so.

STU: Do we have the initial clip of him driving in his car, watching like three snowflakes falling and blaming it on the Jews --

VOICE: It's just snowing out of nowhere this morning, man.

Y'all better pay attention to this climate control, man. This climate manipulation. And DC keep talking about we're a resilient city. And that's a model based off the Rothschild controlling the climate, to create natural disasters. They can pay for it on the cities. Be careful.

BEN: Wow.

GLENN: So the Rothschild. How deeply connected to the Rothschild, are you?

BEN: We really don't talk about this, except in our Friday night meetings. We really try to keep this under wraps. But I will say, the last time I traveled to Atlanta, I brought a tornado with me. Then that big snowstorm in DC was the next day because I traveled to DC.

GLENN: Holy cow. There it is. He has admitted it. Now, there's an update to this story, I don't know if, you know, Ben.

STU: Yeah, it's pretty exciting. I guess he was doing a tour to -- a little penance for his previous comments. And he went to the Holocaust museum. And, you know, this is going to turn out well obviously.

BEN: Oh, good. This is a sitcom here.

GLENN: He did not find the weather machine.

(laughter)

GLENN: He did not find it there.

STU: He did examine a picture of a girl walking through a crowd, surrounded by German soldiers. And the girl was wearing a sign. The sign said, I am a German girl and allowed myself to be defiled by a Jew.

White, this councilman, then asked the tour guide, are they protecting her?

Meaning, are the Germans, Nazi soldiers protecting this girl? No, the guide said. They're marching her through.

Marching through is protecting, White responded.

Of course, the guide pointed out they thought that maybe they were humiliating her.

Now, White then decided halfway through the tour to just bolt. He just leaves the tour and goes outside and waits outside on the street. Once he leaves, a member of his staff suggests that a picture of the Warsaw ghetto resembles a, quote, gated community. The rabbi doing the tour points out, yeah, I wouldn't call it a gated community, more like a prison.

So it's not going well for this particular gentleman.

GLENN: I want to get Ben's view as one of the most hated Jews in America, perhaps the world. I would like to get his view on this gated community and what I think was probably a condominium complex of Auschwitz. When we -- when we come back.

GLENN: So back with Ben Shapiro, who has been following Kanye West and Shania Twain for some strange reason.

BEN: They're both in the news.

GLENN: Yeah, I know.

BEN: Kanye came out with a bunch of kind of bizarrely conservative tweets. He tweeted his support for Candice Owens, the other day, who is a compatriot of Charlie Kirk over at Turning Point USA and a black woman who is a supporter of Trump. Then he tweeted also something about how self-victimization is a disease. And all these conservatives are like, oh, my God. Kanye is on our side, man. Kanye is here.

GLENN: I don't know if I want Kanye on our side.

BEN: So this is my take.

GLENN: Can we remember who Kanye is.

BEN: It's so amazing that we on the right have this scorn for the people on the left. Because we're like, look at how they worship celebrity. Look at how they worship celebrity. First of all, Donald Trump is the president of the United States now. Also Kanye West is -- the only reason you care about what Kanye West thinks and he's just not muttering to himself on a corner somewhere, is because he's a big celebrity.

And this bizarre notion that somebody whom the cameras have focused in on has been conferred with a greater-than-average wisdom is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

As someone who grew up in Hollywood and knows a lot of people the cameras have focused in on, let me just say the folks in the music industry, the folks in Hollywood, they don't know anything. There are a few writers who are somewhat smart. You're talking about these musicians. You're talking about the actors.

GLENN: Oh, come on. Ben, I don't believe that at all.

Of course, they're dolts. A lot of them are just dolts. A lot -- I think there are a lot of people in powerful or public positions, that are as dumb as the city councilmen in Washington, DC.

BEN: Oh, yeah. No question.

GLENN: Have no idea. Never read a book. Don't know history. Have no idea what they're talking about.

BEN: Keith Ellison was almost the head of the DNC. And I'm not sure he's wildly smarter than Trayon White. They both give money, apparently, to the same nation of Islam event. So it's one of the greatest disappointments of life, is Adam Corolla, is that when you're a kid, you look around. You look at the adults. You see they all have houses. And they have cars. And they have nice stuff, and they can do what they want at night. And it looks great. And you figure, they must be so smart. I mean, they've got all these nice things. They've got houses and cars.

And then you grow up and you realize, all the same people who are stupid when you're a kid, they're still stupid when you're adults.

And so that means they all have houses and cars too. And that's not the same thing -- there's a guy who Josh Groban did one of the great routines ever. If you haven't seen it, go to YouTube and look it up. It's so funny. It's him singing the tweets of Kanye west.

And it's him singing things like, fur pillows are hard to sleep on. And it's -- how he wants a giant fish tank. He's looking for a giant dancing fish tank. The same guy who is tweeting about how he needs a giant dancing fish tank is the same guy tweeting deep thoughts about self-realization.

And we're like, yeah, man. Because we're so hungry for any sort of legitimacy on the right. We are so hungry for anyone who is famous, to say we're not the worst people in the world and we're not crazy.

And, particularly, if that person happens to be a minority like Kanye, that we are just willing to glom on to anything. It's an amazing thing.

GLENN: So how do we fare? How do we get through this?

BEN: Do we?

GLENN: Do we, really?

BEN: I don't know. Again, I think we've lost so much of the idea that what validates us is the community that we live in or the God to whom we are subject. And instead, what validates us is a famous person saying something that makes us feel good about ourselves. And that's not a very good thing.

GLENN: So I have to tell you, I am -- I drove to the studios today. We're in Los Angeles. I drove to the studios today. And I turned on the radio. And I heard about a doctor talking about how she's doing regression therapy. But not just for this time line. But all of your alternative time lines.

BEN: Whoa.

GLENN: Yeah. So I don't know if she uses the flux capacitor to do that, I don't know how that works.

But I heard that, and at the top of my lungs, alone in the car today, how does anyone live here? How do you live here?

It's this weird thing that there is this little group of --

BEN: Yes. It's pretty alive intellectually. Right? Peter Thiel just moved down here, from San José. Jordan Peterson is out here a lot. Dave Rubin is out here. Dennis Prager is out here. The Claremont Institute is out here. There's a lot out here actually. And I think one of the reasons is, because when you're constantly balancing off the crazy of the other side, it is intellectually stimulating. I mean, you actually had to hear about that crazy regression thing, and now you can use it on the air. I mean, if you're back home now, you would be maybe talking about normal stuff on the radio.

GLENN: No, I wouldn't be talking about normal stuff, but I wouldn't be talking about Texas.

BEN: Right. Exactly. That's what I mean. If you're tuning into the radio on your way into the station, it wouldn't be talking about regression therapy.

GLENN: No.

BEN: The thing is that all of the crazy that's happening in LA, all the crazy that's happening in San Francisco, there are roots to that too. So we on the right tend to think of that as being just the latest craze, the latest fad. But there are some pretty pagan roots to all this. And I think what's really going on right now, is a battle between Judeo-Christian monotheism a reversion to a certain level of paganism. Because that's just witchcraft, right? I mean, regression therapy for alternative time lines, that's just witchcraft kind of stuff.

I'm not saying we should burden you or anything. But I am saying that --

GLENN: It is.

BEN: -- you guaranteeing me that you'll make my life better by talking about a life that I have never lived, is a form of you trying to guarantee a level of control in the universe to human beings. That human beings simply do not have over the universe. And that we can't exercise over the universe.

GLENN: I wrote a book. A novel, I don't know, eight years ago or so, called the Eye of Moloch. And it's Biblical in its nature.

Because if you look at -- if you look at how people were worshiping and -- and who Moloch is, he -- he wants you to have, you know, orgies. Crazy sex. Do whatever you want.

BEN: Yep.

GLENN: Destroy everything. And then sacrifice the baby of -- of that union. I mean, we're worshiping Moloch. We just don't know it.

BEN: I think that's right. It's under the guise of pantheism, which sounds a whole lot nicer. And it's also being concealed by the fact that we're still living -- your car runs out of gas, and you're running on the fumes. We're still living on the fumes of the Judeo-Christian value system.

So all the same people in Hollywood, who are promoting these sorts of values, same people who will use that regression technique, most of them are married. Most of them have kids. Most of them still have not been divorced. Right? The fact is, we see the high-profile divorces in Hollywood. But the truth is, most of the people who live in Hollywood are fairly normal human beings, or at least they live fairly normal lifestyles.

This is Charles Murray's point in Coming Apart, right? He says that upper-class white folks who live on the coast and are the, quote, unquote, thought leaders about single motherhood. They don't live those lifestyles. They're not single mothers. They're not living impoverished lifestyles. They're basically doing what everybody else does, with maybe the exception of going to church.

So they're living off the fumes of this Judeo-Christian history. But they're promoting this new lifestyle to a bunch of people, who are being suckered by it. Because they think, oh, this is what the successful people do.

What the successful people do is they're all members of sex cults. And out here in LA, that's really not what's going on. The face they put forward to the world is everyone is depraved because we're all experimenting and this is our thing.

But you the truth is that I find it a high point of amusement that all of the people who are so open about their promiscuity -- you know, the starlets who are so open about their promiscuity when they're 17, 18 years old. By the time they're 30, they're settling down, they're married. They have kids. Right?

They're living the same lifestyle as somebody living out in Oklahoma and Texas. They just won't tell you that. Right? The stuff that the media want to focus on, the stuff they want you to focus on is the sexy stuff. The stuff when they're 19. They're dancing naked with members of the same sex.

That's the -- by the time when they're 30 -- look at Miley Cyrus' new videos. And they basically look like Shania Twain videos. Right? All of a sudden, she's doing videos on the beach with her boyfriend. Looks like they're going to settle down. Looks like they're going to have kids. Because it turns out that the human drive for solidity and the human drive for some sort of value system is stronger even than the human drive for depravity or at least it is when you realize you're going to die at some point and depravity is going to catch up with you.

GLENN: Yeah, talk to me about Shania Twain. Your opinion on Shania Twain, a Canadian. Asked who she would have voted for. So she couldn't vote. What a ridiculous question to even ask her. She shouldn't have answered the question.

But the way she answered the question was, based on the values of the people who voted for him, which is her audience --

BEN: Right.

GLENN: -- I would say I would have probably voted for Donald Trump.

BEN: Right.

And now she's apologized in a long Twitter storm apology about, you know, I'm not a racist. I'm not a sexist. I don't believe in a lot of the same things that President Trump does. I was just trying to answer the question. But really I shouldn't have spoken out. Really?

First of all, this may be the most Canadian thing ever. Like, speaking out about an election that you couldn't take part, and then apologizing for a vote you could never cast. That's pretty Canadian.

GLENN: Michael Buble, I'm in New York -- and I walk into a hotel lobby. Michael is there. He sees me. He calls across the lobby. It's like 1 o'clock in the morning. He's like, Glenn! I turn around. I walk up. And he's like, I want you to know. I was just in a fist fight over you.

I said, what?

He said, I was at a hockey game someplace in Canada. And somebody said, I can't believe you're friends with Glenn Beck, and you go on the air with Glenn Beck.

And he's like, dude, he's a nice guy.

His politics?

We're Canadian. Why do you care about his politics?

And he said, he actually -- the guy threw a blow. They were throwing punches.

BEN: First of all, I want to see Michael Buble in a fight. I'll bet --

GLENN: I'll bet he's good.

BEN: Shockingly good. That's the only time he loosens the tie completely. Takes off the skinny tie, unbuttons that top button, just goes to work.

Yeah, I think that it is incredible. The level of intellectual bullying to which people are being subjected at this point. Where, you even say you voted for Trump or you say, hey, I support some of the things that Trump is doing.

The fact that so many people -- this goes to my generalized theory of the media. Everybody is seeing -- we live -- so to go back to scientific models, we live in a pre-Copernican era, as far as the media is concerned. They think that the world revolves around Donald Trump. Right? Donald Trump is the center of the universe, and everything revolves around Donald Trump.

This is a lie. The world revolves around the media. Right? The media has decided Donald Trump is the sun in this universe. But the sun and the universe are the media.

That's why Donald Trump is president right now. Is because the media cares so much about Donald Trump. So the fact that people are even asking Shania Twain about Donald Trump is because the media cares so much about Trump.

It's not Trump who is asking Shania Twain about Trump. It's the media asking Shania Twain about Trump, because Trump is the only thing that matters in the universe.

Because to the media, he is the only thing that matters in the universe.

GLENN: How long do you think the media has? Bill O'Reilly has said to me, the media is on its last legs.

BEN: You know, I think that they still have so much power, especially through the reinstitution of gatekeeping in the social media. That, I'm more skeptical than that.

I remember after 2004, after Bush won reelection, the line from the right was, well, the old media is dead. Right? We just defeated the old media. If the old media had its way, John Kerry would have been reelected.

That was 14 years ago. And they're still going, and they're still having a pretty major impact.

GLENN: So how do -- with the new gate keeping -- do you know who Edwin Black is?

BEN: Yeah, yeah.

GLENN: Okay. Had Edwin Black on last week. Fascinating. Need to talk to him about his theory of analytical ghettos.

STU: Algorithmic ghettos.

GLENN: Sorry. Algorithmic ghettos. And he said, we're all being -- we're all being put in a ghetto. And it's just an algorithm that's doing it this time. But the walls are being built.

How do businesses like The Daily Wire, TheBlaze, your voice, my voice, how do we stay on the other side of the wall?

BEN: So I think it's really a matter of, there will have to be new neutral platforms that are built. And I think people will find them.

So the fact that my podcast is so popular, is not because iTunes favors my podcast. Right? It's because people can go to a variety of different podcasting sources and seek it out, which is what they've done. Right? It was really more organic than anything else.

So I think people -- people still want to hear different perspectives. If they try to reinstall the gates, I think they'll find there are a lot of people that will want to tear those walls down again.

And it's going to take a while. It's going to take a while for that to happen. Because, again, it took Facebook ten years to build the sort of dominance. Fifteen years to build this sort of dominance. But I think they are fighting a losing battle. But it's going to take a little more time than I think people think it's going to take.

GLENN: Yeah. Ben Shapiro from The Daily Wire, and the Ben Shapiro Show. You can watch him online at The Daily Wire. You can also get his podcast at iTunes, wherever else you go to find your podcast. Ben, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Ben will be joining us, I believe today. You coming on the show today? For TV. We're going to spend an hour. Talk a little bit about Los Angeles and what's happening here. And the -- the different -- the thinking that you don't hear about in Los Angeles.

Nobody is paying attention to it. But there is something happening here. We'll talk a little bit more about that tonight on TheBlaze at 5 o'clock.

RADIO

Salena Zito reveals WHY Trump said “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

“I have a new purpose,” then-candidate Donald Trump told reporter Salena Zito after surviving the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Salena joins Glenn Beck to reveal what Trump told her about God, his purpose in life, and why he really said, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, as she details in her new book, “Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland”.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Salena, congratulations on your book. It is so good.

Just started reading it. Or listening to it, last night.

And I wish you would have -- I wish you would have read it. But, you know, the lady you have reading it is really good.

I just enjoy the way you tell stories.

The writing of this is the best explanation on who Trump supporters are. That I think I've ever read, from anybody.

It's really good.

And the description of your experience there at the edge of the stage with Donald Trump is pretty remarkable as well. Welcome to the program.

SALENA: Thank you, Glenn. Thank you so much for having me.

You know, I was thinking about this, as I was ready to come on. You and I have been along for this ride forever. For what?

Since 2006? 2005?

Like 20 years, right?

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

SALENA: And I've been chronicling the American people for probably ten more years, before that. And it's really remarkable to me, as watching how this coalition has grown. Right?

And watching how people have the -- have become more aspirational.

And that's -- and that is what the conservative populist coalition is, right?

It is the aspirations of many, but the celebration of the individual.

And chronicling them, yeah. Has been -- has been, a great honor.

GLENN: You know, I was thinking about this yesterday, when -- when Elon Musk said he was starting another party.

And somebody asked me, well, isn't he doing what the Tea Party tried to do?

No. The Tea Party was not going to start a new party.

It was to -- you know, it was to coerce and convince the Republican Party to do the right thing. And it worked in many ways. It didn't accomplish what we hoped.

But it did accomplish a lot of things.

Donald Trump is a result of the Tea Party.

I truly believe that. And a lot of the people that were -- right?

Were with Donald Trump, are the people that were with the Tea Party.


SALENA: That's absolutely right.

So that was the inception.

So American politics has always had movements, that have been just outside of a party. Or within a party.

That galvanize and broaden the coalition. Right? They don't take away. Or walk away, and become another party.

If anything, if there is a third party out there, it's almost a Republican Party.

Because it has changed in so many viable and meaningful ways. And the Tea Party didn't go away. It strengthened and broadened the Republican Party. Because these weren't just Republicans that became part of this party.

It was independents. It was Democrats.

And just unhappy with the establishment Republicans. And unhappy with Democrats.

And that -- that movement is what we -- what I see today.

What I see every day. What I saw that day, in butler, when I showed I happen at that rally.

As I do, so many rallies, you know, throughout my career. And that one was riveting and changed everything.

GLENN: You made a great case in the opening chapter. You talk about how things were going for Donald Trump.

And how this moment really did change everything for Donald Trump.

Changed the trajectory, changed the mood.

I mean, Elon Musk was not on the Trump train, until this.

SALENA: Yeah.

GLENN: Moment. What do I -- what changed? How -- how did that work?

And -- and I contend, that we would have much more profound change, had the media actually done their job and reported this the way it really was. Pragmatism

SALENA: You know, and people will find this in the book. I'm laying on the ground with an agent on top of me.

I'm 4 feet away from the president.

And there's -- there's notices coming up on my phone. Saying, he was hit by broken glass.

And to this take, that remains part of this sibling culture, in American politics.

Because reporters were -- were so anxious to -- to right what they believed happened.

As opposed to what happened.

And it's been a continual frustration of mine, as a reporter, who is on the ground, all the time.

And I'll tell you, what changed in that moment.

And I say a nuance, and I believe nuance is dead in American journalism.

But it was a nuance and it was a powerful conversation, that I had with President Trump, the next day. He called me the next morning.

But it's a powerful conversation I had with him, just two weeks ago.

When he made this decision to say, fight, fight, fight.

People have put in their heads, why they think he said it. But he told me why he said that. And he said, Salena, in that moment, I was not Donald Trump the man. I was a former president. I was quite possibly going to be president again.

And I had an obligation to the country, and to the office that I have served in, to project strength. To project resolve.

To project that we will not be defeated.

And it's sort of like a symbolic eagle, that is always -- you know, that symbol that we look at, when we think about our country.

He said, that's why I said that. I didn't want the people behind me panicking. I didn't want the people watching, panicking.

I had to show strength. And it's that nuance -- that I think people really picked up on.

And galvanized people.

GLENN: So he told me, when he was laying down on the stage.

And you can hear him. Let me get up. Let me get up.

I've got to get up.

He told me, as I was laying on the stage. I asked him, what were you thinking? What was going through your head? Now, Salena, I don't know about you.

But with me. It would be like, how do I get off the stage? My first was survival.

He said, what was going on through his mind was, you're not pathetic. This is pathetic.

You're not afraid. Get up.

Get up.

And so is that what informed his fight, fight, fight, of that by the time that he's standing up, he's thinking, I'm a symbol? Or do you think he was thinking, I'm a symbol, this looks pathetic. It makes you look weak.

Stand up. How do you think that actually happened?

SALENA: He thinks, and we just talked about this weeks ago. He -- you know, and this is something that he's really thought about.

Right? You know, he's gone over and over and over. And also, purpose and God. Right? These are things that have lingered with him.

You know, he -- he thought, yes.

He did think, it was pathetic that he was on the ground. But he wasn't thinking about, I'm Donald Trump. It's pathetic.

He's thinking, my country is symbolically on the ground. I need to get up, and I need to show that my country is strong.

That our country is resolute.

And I need people to see that.

We can't go on looking like pathetic.

Right?

And I think that then goes to that image of Biden.

GLENN: You have been with so many presidents.

How many presidents do you think that you've personally been with, would have thought that and reacted that way?

SALENA: Probably only Reagan. Reagan would have. Reagan probably would have thought that.

And if you remember how he was out like standing outside.

You know, waving out the window. Right?

After he was shot.

GLENN: At the hospital, right.

SALENA: Had he not been knocked out, unconscious, you know, he probably would have done the same thing.

Because he was someone who deeply believed in American exceptionalism.

And American exceptionalism does not go lay on the ground.

GLENN: And the symbol.

Right. The symbol of the presidency.

SALENA: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that affects him today.

GLENN: So let me go back to God.

Because you talked to him the next day. And your book Butler.

He calls you up.

I love the fact that your parents would be ashamed of you. On what you said to him.

The language you used. That you just have to read the book.

It's just a great part.

But he calls you the next morning. And wants to know if you're okay.

And you -- you then start talking to him, about God.

And I was -- I was thinking about this, as I was listening to it. You know, Lincoln said, I wasn't -- I wasn't a Christian.

Even though, he was.

I wasn't a Christian, when I was elected. I wasn't a Christian when my son died.

I became a Christian at Gettysburg.

Is -- is -- I mean, I believe Donald Trump always believes in God, et cetera, et cetera.

Do you think there was a real profound change at Butler with him?


SALENA: Absolutely. You know, he called me seven times that day. Seven times, the take after seven.

GLENN: Crazy.

SALENA: Talked about. And I think he was looking for someone that he knew, that was there. And to try to sort it out.

Right? And I let him do most of the talking. I didn't pressure him.

At all. I believed that he was having -- you know, he was struggling. And he needed to just talk. And I believed my purpose was to listen.

Right? I know other reporters would have handled it differently. And that's okay. That's not the kind of reporter that I am.

And I myself was having my own like, why didn't I die?

Right?

Because it went right over my head.

And -- and so I -- he had the conversation about God.

He's funny. I thought it was the biggest mosquito in the world that hit me.

But he had talked profoundly about purpose. You know, and God.

And how God was in that moment.

It --

GLENN: I love the way you -- in the book, I love the way you said that as he's kind of working it out in his own he head.

He was like, you know, I -- I -- I always knew that there was some sort of, you know -- that God was present.

He said, but now that this has happened.

I look back at all of the trials.

All of the tribulations. Literally, the trials.

All of the things that have happened. And he's like, I realized God was there the whole time.

SALENA: Yes. He does. And it's fascinating to have been that witness to history, to have those conversations with him. Because I'm telling you. And y'all know, I can talk. I didn't say much of anything.

I just -- I just listened. I felt that was my purpose, in that moment.

To give him that space, to work it out.

I'm someone that is, you know, believes in God.

I'm Catholic. I followed my faith.

And -- and so, I thought, well, this is why God put me here. Right?

And to -- to have that -- to hear him talk about purpose, to hear him say, Salena. Why did I put a chart down?

I'm like, sir. I don't know. I thought you were Ross Perot for a second.

He never has a chart. And he laughed. And then he said, why did I put that chart down?

By that term, I never turned my head away from people at the rally. That's true.

That relationship is very transactional. It's very -- they feed off of each other.

It's a very emotive moment when you attend a rally. Because he has a way of talking at a rally. That you believe that you are seeing.

And he said, and I never turn my head away.

I never turn my head away.

Why did I turn my head away?

I don't remember consciously thinking about turning my head away. And then he says to me, that was God, wasn't it?

Yes, sir. It was. It was God.

And he said, that's -- that's why I have a new purpose.

And so, Glenn. I think it's important, when you look at the breadth of what has happened, since he was sworn in.

You see that purpose, every day.

He doesn't let up.

He continues going.

And it brings back to the beginning of the book.

Where you find out, that there was another president that was shot at in Butler.

And that was George Washington. And how different the country would have been, had he died in that moment.

And now think about how different the country would be, had President Trump died in that moment. There would be --

GLENN: We're talking to -- we're talking to Salena Zito. About her new book called Butler. The assassination attempt on President Trump. And it is riveting.

And, you know, it is so good. I wish the press would read it. Because it really explains who we are, who Trump supporters are. Who are, you know, red staters. It is so good at that. She's the best at that.

RADIO

Is Pam Bondi hiding something? The truth behind the Epstein tape blunder

Glenn Beck makes the case that Attorney General Pam Bondi should resign over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation - not because of any potential cover-up, but solely because of how incompetent her rollout of the investigation has been.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Okay. I want Pam Bondi fired. I want Pam Bondi fired.

STU: This escalated quickly.

GLENN: And here's why. Here's why. Do you release a tape that is supposed to be the evidence, do you release the tape, and then let the public find out for themselves, that there's an edit in the tape?

STU: That's an excusable mistake. I mean, I don't know that she did it, I guess.

GLENN: You know what, it could have been just a digital jump in the tape.

It's a minute lost. Okay?

So let's just say -- let's just give them every benefit of the doubt, and say, it was just a digital jump in the tape.

Okay?

STU: Uh-huh.

GLENN: Do you not put an intern on it, just to say, watch the clock!

And make sure there's no jumps or edit in the tape.

Because we know.

STU: Everyone is going to watch.

GLENN: 300 million people will be watching it. And somebody will take the time to watch the clock.

So watch the clock.

Is every minute accounted for? You didn't do that? You didn't do that.

STU: I think you can pretty easily say, that if you wanted to, right?

And your goal was -- you wanted to edit out -- it would be very easy to edit in a minute of footage.

GLENN: Correct.

STU: And that no one knows. Just make the clock continuous.

GLENN: Correct.

STU: It would be clear.

If you were trying to cover that, it would be --

GLENN: This is incompetence.

STU: However, highlighting your point to incompetence. At the very least, if you have a jump, you say at the beginning. There's an error at this point.

This is -- we know this is there.

You know, the fact that you release it as proof without acknowledging that minute is -- I just don't understand how you can make a mistake like that.

When your goal here is supposedly to put everyone's mind at ease.

I don't know. I don't know.

But there's more to it, than that.

GLENN: Hang on just a second.

Let me go back to before we leave. Just this one.

Remember when I said yesterday, your wife finds receipts for you buying presents at Tiffany's that she never got.

That, you know, you were in a hotel that she never came to.

You were -- you were not coming home for dinner. You had long weekends and everything else. It doesn't mean you were cheating.

STU: And a traveling jewelry investor.

GLENN: Right. But she -- she should demand the evidence, because it -- you don't want that hanging there. On your relationship.

It will just fester.

Now, you give her the evidence. But then she finds out that, oh. Well, it's the wrong receipt.

It was a -- it was a receipt, you know, that you explained away. But what you -- what you used as proof, was not the same receipt.

You were like, no.

See, honey. This is when we went to the hotel, together.

And she looks at it. And she's like, oh, okay.

And then she has it for a while. And she looks at it.

Like, wait a minute. The date is different on this one. This is not the same receipt.

That's a problem! That's a problem.

And it doesn't mean that he was cheating on you.

It just means. What the hell is going on?

Are you this stupid?

STU: And it would certainly make you have legitimate questions about --

GLENN: It just makes you question things for. Now, if it wasn't for the jump in the tape. And I'm not even going to call it an edit. Because I don't think it was an edit. I think it was jump in the tape. As if the jump in the tape wasn't incompetent enough for you, listen to this one. Jason is here with us.

Hi, Jason.

JASON: Hi, Glenn. What a morning, wow.

GLENN: What a morning it is, wow.

So, Jason, what else have you found?


JASON: Okay. So the more and more we looked at this tape.

I started looking.

It was weird. Because it looked like a janitor's closet.

Door 26.

And you were like, shut up, this is not a janitor's closet. I don't know what this is.

But I was like, I can tell you, there's a woman that looks like a janitor that comes out and supposedly the person that that they're saying is his cell. Which they're not, by the way. This was people on social media was saying, this is his cell.

Was coming out with a trash can.
So I looked around to see, if there was any confirmation of what this cell was.

I found an OIG report from the Justice Department two years ago, that shows the camera angle, and the one camera that was actually working.

So you can see the diagram, and I think we actually have it if you're watching this right now. There's a diagram that shows where this camera is.
It shows where Epstein's cell is. And the big thing that stands out, Glenn, is this camera does not even have eyes on Epstein's cell at all. Like, not at all.

STU: Incredible.
JASON: There's four different wings here. There is a service wing. And that's what we're looking at, with the Door 46.

That's a service entrance, or staff entrance. Now, you can't see on the lower level of Epstein's cell at all.

So this is what it makes it look even crazier for that one minute that's missing.

And I will say -- that okay. Let me just say it this way.

I've spent years and years and years, looking at surveillance and security camera footage as you know, in my previous job.

I've never seen an over one-minute jump right at a time that would be very, very I don't know, just convenient.

I've never seen that before. In all my years looking at these things.

STU: There's no reason. Why would you say that minute would be convenient? You're just saying, that one minute being gone could be convenient.

JASON: It's convenient in this entire time frame.

Based on this camera angel.

It's convenient, that 60 seconds would be great for someone walking across that lower level.

60 seconds would be perfect if you wanted to conceal the fact that someone would have worked across that area. That's why --

GLENN: Here's why -- here's why I didn't buy into this, at first.

Okay. Sixty seconds, to open the door, kill him. And then leave.

Okay?

But look at the diagram. If you look at the diagram, where the camera is, there is a -- just a -- maybe a foot space, where the camera is not able to see. Where there is a door, from the staff area.

Okay?

STU: Are you looking at -- because I think -- it's hard to tell from this.

Are you looking -- is this diagram the top floor or the bottom floor.

Jason, do you have any idea?

JASON: So I think Epstein is on.

STU: The upper floors. Right.

GLENN: Okay. So I'm looking at where the staff area is, okay. See the yellow triangle and the red box, where it's his cell.

STU: Yes.

GLENN: Okay. So there is one way out of the staff area. And it's right below the camera.


STU: Like underneath the floor, essentially, of where the camera is.

GLENN: Yeah. On the floor. If the camera is up on a ceiling. Is that what you -- what -- you're saying.

STU: Yeah. The camera is -- the camera is from on the second floor, shooting down.

And the evidence that they're basically proclaiming here. And this is true.

You know, what Jason is saying, is true.

That you can't see the door of the Epstein cell. What you can see is a common area, that in theory, you would need to cross to get to the cell.

STU: What you're saying, Glenn. The camera does not actually show 100 percent of the potential paths to get there. Right?

JASON: It doesn't.

STU: If you cross right in front of the banister here on the bottom floor.

GLENN: There's no way you will see.

Okay. So wait a minute. I just want to make sure. We are talking about the same thing. If you look at the videotape, it's the white room, down stairs.

Right? And so it's where the garbage can is, down there.

STU: Below that.

GLENN: So Epstein's room would be below the garbage can.

STU: No. Epstein's room, if you look out -- the area that you can see.

And I apologize for radio listeners here that aren't seeing the visual. But I want to make sure we get this right.

There's an open area, where the banister is, and it shows the common area behind it. Right?

If you go on the right side of the common area from our view.

Outside of the view, to the right. Is where the entrance to the cell is.

The stairs up to the cell.

GLENN: So all you have to do. You don't have to cross the floor.

Why do you have to cross the floor? You can go through the door. You can go through the door, and see. And just stay against the wall.

STU: Yeah. I guess, maybe.

And Jason, maybe you know this.

Maybe it's explained somewhere else in the report.

Is it possible that they're saying, all the other entrances, to get to that area, have cameras. So they didn't see anybody walking into those areas.

GLENN: Why wouldn't you show the other --

STU: Right.

GLENN: You know, this is not proof that anybody did anything.

STU: No!

GLENN: This is proof, they're -- Pam Bondi needs to be fired.

Who is rolling this out?

The Little Rascals.

Panky, look, I've got some videotape. What are you doing? This is ridiculous!

This is such absolute incompetence! Incompetence.


STU: It's incredible. The fact that they would release that because I think everybody had the same -- even Jason, as a super-duper skeptic on this, even you had the assumption that what they were saying was, the green doors were the cells, or at least the cell area.

GLENN: Right, that's what I thought.

STU: That's what everyone thought, when they saw it. Now, to be clear, the report, as you pointed out, Jason. Previously had stated in June, this diagram that shows they're talking about the common area.

So that's not like -- but like, they, A, should have been very clear about that. What they're talking about is the common area.

They shouldn't put that in the announcement.

GLENN: Stu, we're going upstairs today.

Okay? To my house. And, you know, I have that balcony, upstairs by the fireplace.

Where you haven't -- like at midnight last night.

Because it's like a day's journey from anywhere.

GLENN: Right. But we're going to go upstairs. And you put a camera, okay? Down into the great room.

STU: Right. You want to recreate it in your house.

GLENN: I do. And I want to show you, I can get to places in the room, as long -- because there's a whole floor.

The balcony shows part, but it doesn't show the door.

I can -- wait until -- I got to prove, that we're going to do this live on YouTube, or something on -- maybe on X today, as soon as we get off the air.

Because I -- this is ridiculous.

STU: It's unbelievable. Again, it doesn't prove that this -- you know, he was killed.

However, it is -- the fact that they're releasing a video that has this many holes to it, to a passing -- again, the person you're trying to make feel better about all of this is someone very interested in the detail of it. Right?

It's not someone who has a passing interest. You're not releasing this to some person who kind of knows who Jeffrey Epstein is. This is intentionally designed to try to push down some weird argument as a conspiracy theory.

GLENN: You're also -- also -- and, you know what, I'm not arguing anything.

I'm arguing this is incompetence.


STU: Yes.

GLENN: I'm not arguing that he killed himself.

Or he didn't kill -- I don't know!

I don't know. I don't know.

But this isn't helping.

You know, not only are you saying, that these people have some interest in it.

Well, you know, these people are interested in the details.

No!

You're releasing it to a bumbling of people, who many of them have the details. But many of them are hostile to what you're saying.

So you better have a buttoned up case.

STU: Right.

GLENN: You better not have anything that they find out later, wait. Wait a minute.

What?

STU: Right. And it could be -- you know, you could make the couple of arguments that you probably could make here.

One, they don't actually care about this. And they're annoyed they have to deal with it.

So they threw it out there.

Terrible incompetence. If that's the truth. That's inexcusable.

The other thing they might argue. And this could be part of it.

There were reports at least, that this got leaked. That this came out essentially earlier than they wanted it to.

So the rollout was not as planned, as they thought it was going to be.

Axios reported this exclusively. Now, it's possible, they linked it to Axios.

It's not exactly a typical location of a Trump leak.

GLENN: Who? The Justice Department, or the FBI? That's what I want to know.

First of all, this administration has no leaks. We just bombed Iran without any leaks.

STU: Yeah. Different -- different wing of the government. Still, I get what you're saying.

GLENN: Yeah, right.

STU: A lot of this has been tight.

But there does seem to be.

You know, there's a lot of big personalities. There's always reported squabbling going on.

Who knows how this was released and who didn't.

That may be true. That part of the rollout was heard.

Right? Because it was released when they were ready. That might be true.

It still doesn't really explain. The video is a video.

They definitely posted it. They posted it like that. They posted it -- they had a memo that explained what the video was, and did not mention anything like that. That mentioned the --

GLENN: That's all you have to do.

Hey, there's a one minute jump. Here's why it's there.

STU: Again, even with that explanation, which would making me happier.

Right? That it's available.

It still wouldn't make a person who believes in this theory.

GLENN: Right. I can tell you -- I can tell you for a fact, nothing is going to satisfy everyone.

STU: Right.

GLENN: But you at least have to try to make the easy things go away.

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's Connections to Intel Agencies

Did Jeffrey Epstein and his criminal partner Ghislaine Maxwell "belong to the intel agencies?" Author and investigative researcher Whitney Webb joins Glenn Beck to share her findings about their shady connections and how it all may have tied in to their disturbing operation.

Watch Glenn Beck's FULL Interview with Whitney Webb HERE

RADIO

Will Medicaid cuts KILL Americans? Glenn reveals the FACTS!

Democrats claim that the Big, Beautiful Bill will take Medicaid and Medicare away from many Americans and even “kill” people. But is any of this true? Glenn Beck and Stu Burguiere review just the facts and explain who’s actually affected by the changes.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Can I address some of the hyperbole around the big, beautiful bill, just a little bit.

If there's anything in the big, beautiful bill to worry about, it's the increase in spending.

Because the spending ourself into oblivion is an actual threat.

To the country. But that's not what anybody is talking about. What everybody seems to be talking about is the tax cuts. Which were already there. Or the tax cuts like no tax for tips. Which you would think the party of the little people. You know, the Democrats. Would all be for. But they're not.

Because they're not party of the little people anymore. And those had to be offset.

Okay. Offset. By what?

Well, by cutting spending. But cutting what spending?

Not cutting spending. Let me just say this. If I said, you know, I made $250,000 a year. And this year, we were going to spend $300,000.
Okay?

And you would say, immediately, Glenn. You can't do that.

And I would say, I've been doing that for 30 years. Okay. You might say, the bank is not going to give a loan.

But then if I came to you and said, yeah. I'm spending $300,000 a year. And my wife and I make 250 or 200,000 a year. But, you know, next year, I was going to spend $500,000.

Did you get a raise? No. I didn't get a raise. I still make 250,000 dollars a year between my wife and I.

But I'm going to spend 500 and not 300. And then somebody came in, like an accountant with some muscle.

And they said, Glenn, you cannot spend $500,000 a year!

Would it make sense if I went back to spending 300, not 200, which I had.

But 300, which I had been spending every year, would it make sense to you to -- for me to say, my children are now going to starve? My children are now going to starve.

Look at the austerity program that I am on.


My gosh, they just -- no. They didn't cut anything. They must cut thinking.

They cut the increase inning spending.

That's what they cut.

And, Stu, could you please explain Medicare.

I mean, all of the people. I know they warned us.

I didn't believe the death squads would actually go out.

And, you know, they want these people off Medicare so badly.

Or Medicaid.

They just sent out death squads. Trump is not waiting for them to die, because he's not waiting for them to get their prescriptions now he just wants them slaughtered in the street.

STU: Yeah, that's the efficiency of the Trump administration. He wants these people dead so badly, he's just killing them in the streets. Actually, no, none of that is happening.

And the Medicaid cuts as you point out, are largely cuts to future increases that have not occurred.

The biggest chunk of this is the work requirements. You've heard this, Glenn.

And, you know, I went through this. And I was like, this can't possibly be what they mean.

I said, wait a minute. When they say work requirement cuts, what does that mean?

So I dove into it a little bit. Basically, what they're saying, you, if you're an able-bodied adult, so that does not include old people, does not include people who are sick and can't work. And it also does not include people who have small children, even if they are able-bodied.

And when I say small, I mean 12 and under. So if you have a 12-year-old. You're completely exempt from this.

But able-bodied adults.

GLENN: Okay. On people in wheelchairs.

STU: No. Gosh, again, I know this is tough. Yeah, this is where it gets difficult.

GLENN: Wait. I'm having a hard time following this. What now?.
 
STU: So you're an able-bodied adult, that does not have small children.

GLENN: No small children.

STU: You would be required to get Medicaid, to work 20 hours a week.

Now, you might --

GLENN: Twenty hours a week.

STU: Or 80 hours a month.

GLENN: Or 80 hours a month.

That's almost half a full-time job.

STU: Now, you might say to yourself. And this is actually true.

Some people can't get jobs. Right?

I'm sure, there are people trying to get part-time jobs. And maybe can't get them.

Those people will just lose their Medicaid. Well, as you may understand.

Of course not.

Because what you have to do then is go through a process, that you're basically telling them, you're attempting to get a job. Or you're volunteering somewhere, to meet that requirement.

So basically, you have to fill out -- yeah. It's like unemployment.

You have to at least fill out some paperwork here.

GLENN: It's the exact opposite.

Let me see if I have this right.

It's the exact opposite of unemployment which we've had forever.

Which if you're looking for a job, but can't get it. You can still have unemployment.

But it's the exact opposite. Right?

Especially if you're nursing sextuplets.

STU: Again, you're not very close to the truth.

You're a little bit off on this one.

GLENN: No. Huh!

STU: By the way, Glenn, you might say to yourself, wait. How is that a Medicaid cut?

Because they're not cutting anyone's eligibility here. Unless they don't want to meet the requirement.

Of course, there's always been requirements to all of these programs.

So meeting the requirements have always been part of getting on to Medicaid.

This requirement, if you decide basically not to do it. And not participate. And not fill out the paperwork.

Then, yes. You will lose your Medicaid coverage.

What they're saying, hold on. All right.

GLENN: No. I just want to make sure I have it right.

STU: Yes.

GLENN: If you are blind, you're deaf.

STU: No. Again, no.

GLENN: You have no friends, and you can't get out of the house, and you've been on Medicaid, somehow or another, you signed up for that. But now, you don't even know, because you can't hear the news. You certainly can't fill out a form. Because you have no eyes.

STU: Hmm.

GLENN: They just come in and rip your Medicaid away?

STU: No. None of what you said is accurate.

Though, it is calm considering some of the accusations -- comparisons made bit left right now.

But, yeah.

So if you are an able-bodied adult that decides, you know what, I don't feel like filling out the paperwork, or I don't feel like going to job interviews, or I don't feel like volunteering, then yes. You could lose -- but that's what they're saying the cuts are.

They think 317 billion dollars worth of people will not bother doing those things. For whatever reason. Maybe because they had more money than they said. Maybe because they're lazy.

Maybe because -- I'm sure there's some case where some -- I don't know.

I can't think of the case.

GLENN: Blind person.

STU: Because the ailments are covered here.

But, yes. Maybe it's some particular skin color. Then they would reject you.

I don't know.

And it's not just that. There are other cuts. For example, some of the cuts are, they're eliminate duplicate Medicaid enrollment.

If you happen to have Medicaid.

GLENN: I can't double-dip.

STU: In two different states. They're going to try to stop you from having it in two states.

And instead, make you have it one state. Uh-huh.

GLENN: Hold on just one second.

I have two legs. I have two arms. I have two eyes. I have two nostrils. I have two ears.

I can't have two Medicaid coverages. It's insane!

STU: I know.

It's really, really brutal.

GLENN: I have two kidneys. I can only have one kidney now, you know, repaired?

STU: Now --

GLENN: Is that what you're saying?

STU: That's not what I'm saying. But, yes. I'm sure that's what's being reported out there by Dana Bash.

Another one, I will give you here, Glenn. They talked about immigrants.

You know, immigrants getting on their Medicaid cut. Now, this is tough. What this bill does, I want you to hold on to your hat here, Glenn.

GLENN: Okay.

STU: If you have green card holders and other certain immigrants, some will lose their coverage. Or actually, sorry, eligibility will -- retain for those people.

Certain other immigrants may lose their coverage. The current law says, all who are lawfully present.

That will kick in after a -- how many year waiting period?

Let me guess, it's a five-year waiting period.

So it will be the next president who has to deal with this, when future Congress will just put it right back in. And it's not a savings at all.

And then you have Medicaid death checks. They're going to require --

GLENN: They're checking on whether your debt? Look at this! It's crazy.

STU: It's brutal. It really is.

GLENN: You're going to kick all of the immigrants off in five years.

STU: No.

GLENN: And then you're checking to see if old people are dead!

When will you leave these people alone?

STU: I know. So, anyway, we can go through this stuff all day. But as you point out, most of this stuff is not at all, what the left is saying it is.

It's not the desperate Medicaid cuts that are going to ruin everybody's lives. A lot of them are just really common sense stuff, making sure you don't have them in two states. I don't know what the positive argument is for that. But they'll make it.

GLENN: Well, they don't have one. That's why they don't make it about that.