RADIO

Elon Musk is NOT a Threat to "Democracy." He's a Threat to Bureaucracy

Elon Musk and DOGE are not threats to "democracy," like Democrats are complaining. They're threats to the bureaucracy that has taken over the government our Constitution established. Glenn explains how this all originated with Woodrow Wilson, who dreamed of "freeing" the government from the "chains" of the Constitution and replacing it with a government of "experts" and administrators. That's where the shadow government began and that's what Trump and DOGE are "destroying."

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Elon Musk said, that we're not living in a democracy, we're living in a bureaucracy.

When he said that, my response was, yes. Now, I don't know if you know who Elon. I don't know if you know who Woodrow Wilson is.

But, yes!

Living under a bureaucracy, that's the point. Let me give you the quote, the history of liberty is a history of resistance.

The history of liberty is a history of limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it. Who said that?

Sounds like a guy who understands and values freedom. Somebody who understands the delicate balance of power, between the individual and the state. Right?

But the guy who said that, was the 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.

Now, does that sound like somebody that we know, maybe on the left, that is now saying things like, we've got to save democracy? We've got to save democracy?

He's killing democracy, by cutting the bureaucracy.

Wilson was exactly the same kind of politician. Except, he was the grandfather of all of this.

He was the architect of a vision, where government would no longer be confined by the rules, the outdated rules. And the chains of the Constitution.

He was the guy who said the Declaration of Independence needed to be cast aside, because it's an outdated relic. He was the guy that wanted you not to be governed by the laws of nature. And nature's God. But by an elite ruling class of scientists, experts, bureaucrats.

That's -- that's what he wanted.

Isn't that what we have right now? We're not -- we don't elect the president. You elect the president and nothing changes. Why?

Not just because both parties are alike. But because the bureaucracy is set in stone!

It's a ruling class, of scientists, experts, and bureaucrats. Wilson believed that the government was no longer the machine of our Founding Fathers, that needed to be shackled and restrained.

He thought government should be a living organism, an evolving entity, free from the so-called outdated principles of 1776. This is where we get the Constitution is a living, breathing thing.

No, it's not. No, that's Woodrow Wilson.

He looked at the Constitution. The greatest safeguard of liberty ever written. And didn't see it as a beacon of freedom. He saw it as an obstacle that needed to be overcome. He -- let me paint you this picture.

Imagine, you're sitting in a grand lecture hall. It's early 1900s. Gaslights are flickering. And a young professor steps up to the podium.

He stands at the podium, everybody starts to be quiet. It's all -- you're in the crowd, everybody there is the future rulers of America.

And he starts in to thunderous applause, with something that, I don't know.

Me. It would -- the back of my neck, the hair on the back of my neck would stand up.

He said, quote, the makers of the Constitution constructed the federal government upon a theory of checks and balances. Which was meant to limit the government's power.

And therefore, its ability to govern.

This was a great mistake. The Constitution was founded on the Newtonian theory of the universe.

But we now understand, that the government is not a machine. But a living thing.

It must evolve. It must adapt. And it must be freed from its chains!

End quote.

Freed from its chains. When I read that line, I -- I thought to myself. I thought of setting the monster free in Young Frankenstein.

You're free! You're free! It didn't work out well.

Okay? When you take something that is like fire. Hello, California. And just release it. It is a very bad thing.

Washington said, government is like fire!

It will be the master of you, if you're not the master of it. Are we the master of our government, or is it the master over us?

What do you think happens, when you -- when you have a government, I free it from its chains?

Does it become a benevolent force?

Does it look out for your best interest. Does it even know who you are, let alone answer to you?

Wilson wasn't just a professor. He was a man on a mission.

To change, and this is his words.

To change a man or a boy, to be the most unlike his father, as possible.

Isn't that what our education system is doing?

Wilson believed that we needed to move away from the messy system of self-government.

And have it all placed into the capable hands of an intellectual elite, that he called administrative experts.

So you can see this throughout our whole government. Anthony Fauci.

The law was, that we are not supposed to do gain-of-function research!

We now know, through all kinds of records, that have been released, that Anthony Fauci disagreed with that. And he made the decision, that we were going to do gain-of-function research!

Because it's not up to him, to answer to the people!

He answers -- he's the expert!

He's the administrator. He knows better than the average person. Even if other scientists disagree with him, he is science!

These experts, that are unelected, and unaccountable, Wilson saw this. This is -- these are the people that need to run the country.

Not as representatives of the people. But as scientists, technocrats, bureaucrats, who know better than you do, on how to live your life.

For Wilson, and now you're seeing his finished product, that Trump and Elon Musk are beginning to dismantle. You are now seeing, that his vision was that the American people were not individuals that were given God-give up rights.

They were just parts of a collective. A mass to be organized. To be managed.

To be directed.

He viewed the old principles of liberty and self-determination. Those are relics of an ignorant past.

Things that have to be replaced. By science. And numbers. Cold, efficiency of science and government regulation.

Now, our founders would say, that's all well and good.

We understand that, let's just take you, at face value and say you're honest in that. But what you're forgetting is that men go bad with power and money!

All men can be corrupted.

So it's not that we are putting chains on the government, because government is bad! No. Government is made up of the people that are in it.

And if you don't limit it, if you -- if you allow them to gain more and more power, and more and more money. It will go corrupt.

And it will begin to oppress you.

The government -- the founders weren't anti government. They were anti-out of control large government. Where the people were servants of that government, not the other way around.

Wilson wrote, the Declaration of Independence. That the -- the foundation of our freedoms.

He said, it was outdated.

He called the principles for all practices and purposes in the Declaration, meaningless.

Meaningless is his word.

The words that inspired the American Revolution, the ideas that all men are created equal, that our rights come from God. Not from government. Were to Wilson, irrelevant. And meaningless in the modern world.

Why? Because you're too stupid to understand what's really going on. You're too stupid to be able to manage the affairs, of not only the nation. But the world!

Every time we try to manage a nation, or the world, we go wrong!

Every single time!

He didn't believe you really have a right to property. To speech. To life itself, unless the government allowed it. If that doesn't terrify you, let me tell you something darker than that. Not morality.

Not faith, not the Constitution. But science should be the guiding force of government.

Well, we saw that with COVID. Didn't we?

Follow the science!

What kind of science?

The experiments that Fauci has been doing on animals and everything else. It's -- it's -- it's -- it's Mengele stuff.

It's really evil stuff! Because it has no medical purpose to it at all. The science that Wilson was talking about. Was eugenics.

And that's the same kind of stuff, that just named it something else. But it's the same kind of medicine that we're talking about now.

The kind that kills those who are unfit. Look at what's happening in Canada!

It's the kind of politics that led to policies of forced sterilization.

And racial segregation.

Which he put into practice. He was the guy who reseparated -- resegregated the military.

He segregated the government.

He praised the film, birth of a nation. Which we don't need to be the Klan. He believed in an America where government, led by an enlightened few, would decide who was fit to participate in society, and who wasn't.

Does that sound like America to you at all?

Or does that sound like the birth of something entirely different?

When he left office, it grew!

It took root in Washington, because they figured out, companies could go to Washington and lobby and get their way.

This was the beginning of all of the lobbyists in Washington.

And it -- it just grew. Ever expanding bureaucracy. A shadow government of unelected officials, who now control almost every aspect of your life! From what kind of car you drive. To what you eat.

To what stove you can have in your house. How you can build your house.

His dream was that a government would no longer be by the people. But by the experts.

The people would be managed. Guided. And nudged in the right direction.

So when they're saying that they're destroying democracy, no. They're destroying the bureaucracy, which is the antithesis to our founding documents.

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The rise of Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old socialist who just won the Democratic primary for mayor, is not just a political earthquake shaking New York City — it’s a warning for the rest of America. Backed by Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the Democratic Socialists of America, Mamdani promises free everything, to tax the rich, and to dismantle capitalism. There’s nothing new about this tired strategy, but the media is propping him up as a new political genius. And with Democrat leaders lining up behind him, it’s clear: This radicalism isn’t fringe anymore. It’s the Democratic Party’s future. Mamdani’s rise is part of a larger movement that’s rewriting America’s values. Glenn Beck explains how New York is the prototype for the Left’s socialist makeover of America. Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Standford, gives a terrifying prediction on Mamdani’s mayoral race chances and warns the revolution is coming for mainstream Democrats. He also dives into MAGA’s frustration with the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files.

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RADIO

INSIDE Trump’s soul: How a bullet changed his heart forever

“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.