RADIOMarch 18, 2025

Unveiling the Truth: What the JFK Files Really Reveal

President Trump is releasing the JFK Files after decades of secrecy. But Glenn warns: it’s important that we don’t chase the “who.” The question that really matters is, WHAT were they protecting? Was the government hiding the illusion of competence? Do these documents reveal the Deep State of the 60s? Did Lee Harvey Oswald have help? Did elements of our government look the other way? Or were they trying to stop the domino effect? Glenn predicts that the Kennedy Files aren’t about Oswald. They’re about us. If we can stare down 1963, we can demand 2024’s truth too. The “what” they’ve protected has kept us blind. Trump is betting we can handle it.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: All right. I want to talk to you about the JFK files. Which were three hours -- two hours away from being released now.

If you're listening to us live.

Two hours away. And I'm interested to see what's in it.

Tulsi Gabbard is the one who is overseeing it. Representative Anna Paulina Luna. She has been relentlessly pushing for this since February. Trump has seen all the files.

He calls them, quote, very interesting, but he's leaving the judgment up to us.

Now, very interesting is different than when he said, he was talked into making sure, they don't go out. By others.

He didn't name the others.

But here we are, 62 years after Kennedy was killed here in Dallas.

And we're finally getting the vault cracked open?

I think it's important, and I could be wrong on this. I think it's important for us to not look and chase the Who. But there was somebody else in the grassy knoll.

There might have been. I don't know. I don't think that's what we were looking at though. I think we're looking at the "what." Not who they have been protecting, but what have they been protecting?
Why has it taken so long?

And not for names, but for the principles, the systems. The intangibles, that have been buried with these papers.

The steaks are pretty high here. You know, what happens if we get 80,000 pages and there's, meh. I mean, that's a possibility.

That's going to be really bad for the conspiracy theorists.

Because they're going to say, see. They didn't release it all. 80,000 pages, and they didn't release it all.

The question that has to be answered is, why did it take this long?

Let's go back.

Look at the steaks. November 22nd. 1963. Kennedy is shot.

And America changes at that moment.

I mean, our innocence goes away.

We have a president that is killed. And our innocence takes a bullet as well.

And the Warren commission pins it on Oswald.

But the doubts fester. Witnesses. Ballistics. Missing pieces.

The note from Evelyn Lincoln, the secretary of Kennedy.

Who said, I -- my husband, was in a restaurant, two days before President Kennedy was going to Dallas.

And overheard two people in the booth saying, well, he will be dead. He won't come back from Dallas.

Her husband listened to it, called the White House. And said, Evelyn, you've got to tell him not to go. She went in. And told President Kennedy, my husband just overheard a plot.

He said, if -- Evelyn, they're going to kill me in Dallas. They're going to kill me, going to my churchgoing on Sunday.

They will kill me one way or thorough. So I'm not changing my life.

Two days later, he was dead. Now, the witnesses, the ballistics, the missing pieces, tomorrow I am going out. I will do some live thing out, with just -- on, I don't know, X. We have the exact copy of the gun. I don't know if there is another one like it. Because it -- it took -- a friend of ours, Paul Vienes (phonetic). He is from the World War II museum, the Museum of the American soldier down in College Station. And it's this great museum.

And he is -- I mean, you put him on something, and he is like a dog with a bone. He's not going to stop. And it took him like two years to re-create this rifle. And to get exactly the rifle, it's very -- kind of a rare rifle in itself.

It's impossible to find the scope that he used.

And it was augmented in different ways. And so Paul has put this whole rifle together.

He brought it up. Gave it to our museum. And I will take the rifle out. We've had to go order, because it takes special shells as well.

So we will -- we will go out to the range tomorrow or the next day. And we will try to do the shots.

And I am bringing a couple of sharpshooters as well. I know I won't be able to do it. I might be able to hit the shot, but I don't know if I'll be able to hit the time. Maybe a couple of sharpshooters can do it. I don't know!

But it's not an easy shot. It's not an easy shot. But it could be done.

Here's the problem: In 1992, Congress passed a law saying, release everything by 2017, that isn't a national security risk.

Well, that deadline passed over and over and over again. And we got it in dribs and drabs. Now Trump is saying, release all of it.

80,000 pages, unfiltered.

On what's the -- what?

They have been guarded. I don't think it's a who. It's a what.

What have they been guarding?

It's got to be something kind of big, right? So what could it be?

Let's go through some of the options. Maybe what they've been covering or hiding, is the illusion of competence.

What if they've been protecting the myth that the government knows what its doing. We're totally competent.

No, you're really not. Don't ever show any of this stuff.

Because it will show how bad you really were. You had Oswald in your sites, so to speak.

And you did nothing. You just dropped the ball.

That could very well be it.

Just the hiding the illusion of competence.

I suspect we'll find that. 1963 was absolutely chaotic.

Cold War paranoia. CIA plots against Castro. FBI fumbling domestic threats.

Maybe the files just show Keystone Cops. Missed signals. Botched surveillance.

Agencies tripping over. Like the Keystone cops. Or Charlie chaplain follies. You know, okay. George.

Releasing that in the '60s, maybe even in the '90s, could have tanked public faith when we needed it. But we don't have any faith left, does anybody think our government is competent?

Really? Honestly?

Any? Bueller. Vietnam was heating up at the time.

The Soviets were watching.

If the files prove Kennedy died, just because of screwups, not masterminds. They're not hiding the villain.

They're hiding fragility. I think that's the most likely what, that we're going to find. That we are just the Keystone cops!

Okay. Option two. And feel free, Stu, to though an option here.

Option two. I am so sick and tired of carrying this whole show on my back. I carry you every day.

Option two. The architecture of power. This one is structural. What if those 80,000 pages map how decisions got made? How intelligence, military, and politics intertwined in ways that we're not supposed to see? Not a who shot him, but how did we operate? Think about this.

Kennedy was pushing back on the CIA. After the Bay of Pigs.

He was telling the pentagon follow-up, no.

On Cuba.

He was telling the pentagon. I'm going to get rid of all our nuclear programs.

I will negotiate with Russia. I will stop these never-ending wars.

Maybe it's the files revealing a machine that doesn't bend. And a network of influence, that outlasts any president.

Maybe it is go that reveals the Deep State that was happening back then. And they haven't held it back, because they're protecting a guilty party. But to shield the blueprint, you expose that, and you don't just rewrite 1963. You question every power play ever since.

The what, is the skeleton of authority, itself.

That's a pretty good option. Right?

Okay.

As I see it, option number three. The ghost of democracy!

What if they've been protecting the story that we tell ourselves about who we are. Kennedy's death wasn't just a tragedy, it was a mirror.

If those files say Oswald had help. Foreign or domestic. And I think this is the least likely.

If Oswald had help, foreign or domestic, or that elements of our own government looked the other way. That's possible.

It's not just history. It's an indictment. I don't know in 1963, if we could have handled that. Riots were coming. MLK. RFK would fall next. You know, maybe they locked it away, to preserve the what, of American exceptionalism. The belief that we're the good guys.

I shouldn't say that. Because I think we're the good guys. That our government and the&its many, many agencies are the good guy. So the delays about keeping that narrative alive, even if it's a lie! Fourth option.

And this one is pragmatic, but a little profound. What if the what, is the precedent of exposure?

The JFK files, and you can't stop there. We release the JFK files, we're going to say, now release Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump's brush with a bullet. Secret Service whistleblowers are already saying, the shooter wasn't a lone wolf. He was modeled. A product of a tactic that we've used abroad. And the product of a tactic that they say, we're not only using currently. But I say we were using at the time of JFK as well.

And I'm not saying that we did it. But that's what whistle-blowers in the service, is they're now saying, that that's what Butler, Pennsylvania, was all about. So if those 80,000 pages spill secrets, methods, failures, cover-ups.

It's a road map for the next demand.

Butler's files. The 9/11 loose ends.

Every classified corner.

They held it to not hide the Kennedy truth, but to protect the dam from breaking!

The what is the containment of accountability itself!

Keep everything secret.

And, you know, that's -- that's what our government does.

Thee keep, they're overclassifying everything.

Why?

Why?

Why is the left freaking out so much about DOGE?

Because there's a lot to hide there. And that's just in comparison to this kind of stuff.

That's just corruption, or waste, or incompetence.

One of the options. Maybe we're just not competent. We weren't in 1963. We know we're not now. Maybe that's what they're hiding.

Or was it -- was there more going on? Kennedy's era because of the Cold War, it was just nothing, but proxies and shadows.

And what we were doing then, became doctrine. It's why we were still at NATO. Why the hell are we still at NATO?

What is it that we're keeping at bay from NATO?

Why at least are we not demanding that the other countries start defending themselves a little bit more?

Because it's just -- it's the way it's done now.

I -- I have to tell you, the worst thing that will happen, is there's nothing in this. That the average person goes, I don't know what they were hiding.

Because if that happens, conspiracy theories go through the roof.

I mean, remember, this is from the guy who told you in what, 2005.

Or '6. You will see the time. If the government doesn't correct what they're doing right now. This was under George Bush. If they don't correct this kind of secrecy and everything right now. You will see a time where many Americans. 20 percent of Americans. It was at 6 or 7 percent at the time. Will say, we never went to the moon! We never went to the moon! Look at where we are! Look how many people are saying, we never went to the moon. We never went to the moon.

STU: And this is the thing, with like most conspiracy theories, there's no way to disprove them.

GLENN: No, I know. I know.

STU: If what comes out of this, eh, actually, we know most of the story. And it was a major failure.

But there's no -- no big conspiracy behind it. The people who have believed this, this whole time, will do exactly what you said. They'll say, well, they must be hiding all of the real stuff. Somewhere I know. I know.

There's no win.

STU: There's no live forever.

GLENN: That's why you should just release stuff going forward.

Just release it. You hold it back like this. You're not helping. You're just making things much, much worse.

Here's why it matters. Secrets have to be outed. Not for gospel. Not for revenge.

But when you bury the what, competence, power, identity, whatever.

You bury the ability to fix it. The Kennedy files, I'm guessing, not about him. They're not about Oswald.

They're about us. If we can stare down 1963, we can then demand 2024's truth as well. The what they've protected has kept us blind! Tomorrow, maybe we see!

And when we do, we don't just read it. We rebuild!

That's what's at stake today.

Shocking train video: Passengers wait while woman bleeds out

Surveillance footage of the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte, NC, reveals that the other passengers on the train took a long time to help her. Glenn, Stu, and Jason debate whether they were right or wrong to do so.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm -- I'm torn on how I feel about the people on the train.

Because my first instinct is, they did nothing! They did nothing! Then my -- well, sit down and, you know -- you know, you're going to be judged. So be careful on judging others.

What would I have done? What would I want my wife to do in that situation?

STU: Yeah. Are those two different questions, by the way.

GLENN: Yeah, they are.

STU: I think they go far apart from each other. What would I want myself to do. I mean, it's tough to put yourself in a situation. It's very easy to watch a video on the internet and talk about your heroism. Everybody can do that very easily on Twitter. And everybody is.

You know, when you're in a vehicle that doesn't have an exit with a guy who just murdered somebody in front of you, and has a dripping blood off of a knife that's standing 10 feet away from you, 15 feet away from you.

There's probably a different standard there, that we should all kind of consider. And maybe give a little grace to what I saw at least was a woman, sitting across the -- the -- the aisle.

I think there is a difference there. But when you talk about that question. Those two questions are definitive.

You know, I know what I would want myself to do. I would hope I would act in a way that didn't completely embarrass myself afterward.

But I also think, when I'm thinking of my wife. My advice to my wife would not be to jump into the middle of that situation at all costs. She might do that anyway. She actually is a heck of a lot stronger than I am.

But she might do it anyway.

GLENN: How pathetic, but how true.

STU: Yes. But that would not be my advice to her.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

STU: Now, maybe once the guy has certainly -- is out of the area. And you don't think the moment you step into that situation. He will turn around and kill you too. Then, of course, obviously. Anything you can do to step in.

Not that there was much anyone on the train could do.

I mean, I don't think there was an outcome change, no matter what anyone on that train did.

Unfortunately.

But would I want her to step in?

Of course. If she felt she was safe, yes.

Think about, you said, your wife. Think about your daughter. Your daughter is on that train, just watching someone else getting murdered like that. Would you advise your daughter to jump into a situation like that?

That girl sitting across the aisle was somebody's daughter. I don't know, man.

JASON: I would. You know, as a dad, would I advise.

Hmm. No.

As a human being, would I hope that my daughter or my wife or that I would get up and at least comfort that woman while she's dying on the floor of a train?

Yeah.

I would hope that my daughter, my son, that I would -- and, you know, I have more confidence in my son or daughter or my wife doing something courageous more than I would.

But, you know, I think I have a more realistic picture of myself than anybody else.

And I'm not sure that -- I'm not sure what I would do in that situation. I know what I would hope I would do. But I also know what I fear I would do. But I would have hoped that I would have gotten up and at least tried to help her. You know, help her up off the floor. At least be there with her, as she's seeing her life, you know, spill out in under a minute.

And that's it other thing we have to keep in mind. This all happened so rapidly.

A minute is -- will seem like a very long period of time in that situation. But it's a very short period of time in real life.

STU: Yeah. You watch the video, Glenn. You know, I don't need the video to -- to change my -- my position on this.

But at his seem like there was a -- someone who did get there, eventually, to help, right? I saw someone seemingly trying to put pressure on her neck.

GLENN: Yeah. And tried to give her CPR.

STU: You know, no hope at that point. How long of a time period would you say that was?

Do you know off the top of your head?

GLENN: I don't know. I don't know. I know that we watched the video that I saw. I haven't seen past 30 seconds after she --

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: -- is down. And, you know, for 30 seconds nothing is happening. You know, that is -- that is not a very long period of time.

STU: Right.

GLENN: In reality.

STU: And especially, I saw the pace he was walking. He certainly can't be -- you know, he may have left the actual train car by 30 seconds to a minute. But he wasn't that far away. Like he was still in visual.

He could still turn around and look and see what's going on at that point. So certainly still a threat is my point. He has not, like, left the area. This is not that type of situation.

You know, I -- look, as you point out, I think if I could be super duper sexist for a moment here, sort of my dividing line might just be men and women.

You know, I don't know if it's that a -- you're not supposed to say that, I suppose these days. But, like, there is a difference there. If I'm a man, you know, I would be -- I would want my son to jump in on that, I suppose. I don't know if he could do anything about it. But you would expect at least a grown man to be able to go in there and do something about it. A woman, you know, I don't know.

Maybe I'm -- I hope --

GLENN: Here's the thing I -- here's the thing that I -- that causes me to say, no. You should have jumped in.

And that is, you know, you've already killed one person on the train. So you've proven that you're a killer. And anybody who would have screamed and got up and was with her, she's dying. She's dying. Get him. Get him.

Then the whole train is responsible for stopping that guy. You know. And if you don't stop him, after he's killed one person, if you're not all as members of that train, if you're not stopping him, you know, the person at the side of that girl would be the least likely to be killed. It would be the ones that are standing you up and trying to stop him from getting back to your daughter or your wife or you.

JASON: There was a -- speaking of men and women and their roles in this. There was a video circling social media yesterday. In Sweden. There was a group of officials up on a stage. And one of the main. I think it was health official woman collapses on stage. Completely passes out.

All the men kind of look away. Or I don't know if they're looking away. Or pretending that they didn't know what was going on. There was another woman standing directly behind the woman passed out.

Immediately springs into action. Jumps on top. Grabs her pant leg. Grabs her shoulder. Spins her over and starts providing care.

What did she have that the other guys did not? Or women?

She was a sheepdog. There is a -- this is my issue. And I completely agree with Stu. I completely agree with you. There's some people that do not respond this way. My issue is the proportion of sheepdogs versus people that don't really know how to act. That is diminishing in western society. And American society.

We see it all the time in these critical actions. I mean, circumstances.

There are men and women, and it's actually a meme. That fantasize about hoards of people coming to attack their home and family. And they sit there and say, I've got it. You guys go. I'm staying behind, while I smoke my cigarette and wait for the hoards to come, because I will sacrifice myself. There are men and women that fantasize of block my highway. Go ahead. Block my highway. I'm going to do something about it. They fantasize about someone holding up -- not a liquor store. A convenience store or something. Because they will step in and do something. My issue now is that proportion of sheepdogs in society is disappearing. Just on statistical fact, there should be one within that train car, and there were none.

STU: Yeah. I mean --

JASON: They did not respond.

STU: We see what happens when they do, with Daniel Penny. Our society tries to vilify them and crush their existence. Now, there weren't that many people on that train. Right?

At least on that car. At least it's limited. I only saw three or four people there, there may have been more. I agree with you, though. Like, you see what happens when we actually do have a really recent example of someone doing exactly what Jason wants and what I would want a guy to do. Especially a marine to step up and stop this from happening. And the man was dragged by our legal system to a position where he nearly had to spend the rest of his life in prison.

I mean, I -- it's insanity. Thankfully, they came to their senses on that one.

GLENN: Well, the difference between that one and this one though is that the guy was threatening. This one, he killed somebody.

STU: Yeah. Right. Well, but -- I think -- but it's the opposite way. The debate with Penny, was should he have recognize that had this person might have just been crazy and not done anything?

Maybe. He hadn't actually acted yet. He was just saying things.

GLENN: Yeah. Well --

STU: He didn't wind up stabbing someone. This is a situation where these people have already seen what this man will do to you, even when you don't do anything to try to stop him. So if this woman, who is, again, looks to be an average American woman.

Across the aisle. Steps in and tries to do something. This guy could easily turn around and just make another pile of dead bodies next to the one that already exists.

And, you know, whether that is an optimal solution for our society, I don't know that that's helpful.

In that situation.

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

Max Lucado on Overcoming Grief in Dark Times | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 266

Disclaimer: This episode was filmed prior to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But Glenn believes Max's message is needed now more than ever.
The political world is divided, constantly at war with itself. In many ways, our own lives are not much different. Why do we constantly focus on the negative? Why are we in pain? Where is God amid our anxiety and fear? Why can’t we ever seem to change? Pastor Max Lucado has found the solution: Stop thinking like that! It may seem easier said than done, but Max joins Glenn Beck to unpack the three tools he describes in his new book, “Tame Your Thoughts,” that make it easy for us to reset the way we think back to God’s factory settings. In this much-needed conversation, Max and Glenn tackle everything from feeling doubt as a parent to facing unfair hardships to ... UFOs?! Plus, Max shares what he recently got tattooed on his arm.

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

Are Demonic Forces to Blame for Charlie Kirk, Minnesota & Charlotte Killings?

This week has seen some of the most heinous actions in recent memory. Glenn has been discussing the growth of evil in our society, and with the assassination of civil rights leader Charlie Kirk, the recent transgender shooter who took the lives of two children at a Catholic school, and the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, how can we make sense of all this evil? On today's Friday Exclusive, Glenn speaks with BlazeTV host of "Strange Encounters" Rick Burgess to discuss the demon-possessed transgender shooter and the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk. Rick breaks down the reality of demon possession and how individuals wind up possessed. Rick and Glenn also discuss the dangers of the grotesque things we see online and in movies, TV shows, and video games on a daily basis. Rick warns that when we allow our minds to be altered by substances like drugs or alcohol, it opens a door for the enemy to take control. A supernatural war is waging in our society, and it’s a Christian’s job to fight this war. Glenn and Rick remind Christians of what their first citizenship is.