CNN contributor Scott Jennings joins Glenn Beck to reveal what’s really happening inside America’s political institutions. Jennings explains why Trump still commands an unbreakable base, how AI and China may define the next Cold War, and why Democrats are pushing the country deeper into ideological chaos.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Scott Jennings. Welcome to the program!
How are you?

SCOTT: Sir, I'm great. It's an honor to be with you. I've been a long time fan and an admirer of yours. To be with you today, it's very special for me.

So thanks for the invitation.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

Well, you are more than welcome.

I have to tell you, I was just about to say, I don't know what your life is like. But I know exactly what your life is like.

Because I worked there. And it was a lonely, lonely place, but you are doing an amazing job. Really, an amazing job!

SCOTT: Well, thank you for saying that. And I have to say, you know, I credit CNN for creating this 10 o'clock debating show, where I most often appear.

And giving conservatives a chance to fight it out. And I think PB is kind of boring, when it's just six people sitting around, congratulating themselves on increasing levels of smugness. I think a little debate and a little common sense injected into some of the conversations and a little reframing of some of these debates is exactly what they need. And I think there's a hunger for that kind of content out there.

I'm glad they're doing it, and it's a privilege to see right now.
GLENN: So are there days, you walk away going, I just can't do it? I mean, there has to be.

SCOTT: Well, I usually have to meet people who say crazy things. I was on not too long ago with a guy, who was a real-life ear truther. He did not believe that Donald Trump had been shot in Butler, Pennsylvania. And he said to me live on the air, "Well, I wasn't there, how am I supposed to know?"

And I thought, "This is who I'm dealing with." And I debate people who if not but for me, contractually obligated to do so, wouldn't know or interact with a single other Republican. I'm the only one they know!

GLENN: I know.

SCOTT: I think if you're interested in popping ideological bubbles like I am and like I know you are, it's a good thing to do. It does make me shake my head. I do think there's value. I mean, I believe in our ideas.

And I think if our ideas get out to more people, more people will gravitate to our cause.

GLENN: I agree. All right.

So let's talk a little bit about the book, Revolution of Common Sense.

You say that your dad was the first one that said, "Donald Trump is going to win."

And this is early on! You laughed it off.

Said that he's not going to win. Is that true?

SCOTT: I did. That's absolutely true. My father was the biggest Clinton Democrat I knew. I come from a family of Democrats. He was a factory worker and a garbage man. And even though, I was a Republican political operative. My father was a Democrat for a long time. In 2015, my dad was telling me, "It's going to be Trump." I, like everybody else, who had been trained in the old ways, was like, you know, come on, Dad. And he turned out to be right. But he was sort of the leading indicator for me about what was going to happen in Middle America.

All these working-class Americans, who live in hollowed out communities. That feel like the political elites that have left them behind.

That was my dad. And he was speaking to my dad. As you know, he was speaking to millions of people. And he defeated the Republican establishment. Then he defeated the democratic establishment.

And it was because of people like my dad who recognized in him, we're trying to hire somebody to smash these guys who had forgotten about us and be crushed us.

And my Dad knew it. It's not the only time in my life, where my Dad was right, and I was wrong. I can tell you that.

GLENN: Yeah. You spent a lot of time with Donald Trump when you were writing this book. Did you know him beforehand?

SCOTT: I did not. I met him, really for the first time in February when I pitched him on the book, and got to observe him in action in the Oval Office.

I flew with him. You know, it's funny. He kind of dominated, you know, every conversation I've had in my professional life for the last 10 years.

But I didn't really know him. But I did spend some time with him in the White House.

I flew to Michigan with him on his 100th day in office. He gave a speech in Michigan, that day. And he said something true to his inaugural address.

He said, whether you're on the left or whether you're on the right. Whether you're in the middle. It's just common sense.

And I think the rebranding of the party as the common sense party has allowed so many more people in.

I think it's one of the most genius, political marketing moves in American history.

GLENN: Yeah. It's amazing. Because he's not -- he's want saying -- he's not necessarily making a case for being conservative or anything else.

It's just, he is fighting for the things that we all used to think, well, yeah. That makes sense.

No. That's a dude. He can't shower with my daughter.

You know, it's that kind of stuff, that should be really uniting.

Why is he -- why do they hate him so much?


SCOTT: Because I think they believe, the left believes, that they had control of all the institutions. Universities. Media. They were either taking control of corporate America.

When you look around at all the institutional strength in our country, the left has been on a long project to co-opt, infiltrate, and paint these things over.

And Donald Trump, and, of course, while doing that. They make you believe things.

You have to accept that you can wake up and change your gender one day. You have to accept, you know, the DEI nonsense.

You have to accept our radical ideology. Or we'll ostracize you from this institution. Or we'll crush you.

Trump shows up, and says, I just won't put up with it. And there were millions of Americans who were dying for someone to try to restore sanity to these I think these conversations, that you rightly say, just used to be common sense.

He said what everyone else was thinking.

But everybody had been made basically too afraid to say. Because of punishment.

Cultural punishment.

Trump was their champion. And he still is today. And that's why he has a base that's never going to leave him.

Because he knows, they know, that he's never going to ever back down to this mob, that is going to try to turn everything upside down, and tell you right is wrong. Left is right, and red is blue. And up is down.

That's what they want. And he will not allow it. And whoever we nominate, next, will not allow it either. Because they will come right back.

GLENN: What do you think his strongest ability is, and the one that maybe is something you're seeing coming on the horizon.

Like, he's got to be paying attention to this. Got to fix this!

SCOTT: Well, I think this artificial intelligence conversation, he has a really strong handle on.

I think he knows, we cannot allow the Chinese to control this conversation.

I think he knows what we have to do on the energy front, to win this conversation.

I think his vision on that.

When we think about legacy. This may be the most consequently policy making he see.

I also think that --

GLENN: I told him, I thought he would be remembered as the AI president.

And he said, nah. I'm not going to be that's not my thing.

GLENN: I asked him a couple -- maybe a month ago. You know, to a consider the AI race to be your space race?

Is this that big?

Is it your Cold War?

And he said, it's all that wrapped up and more!

GLENN: Wow. Good for him.


SCOTT: He's increasingly understanding that the decisions he makes today. The course we set today.

Will determine. So in ten years, 15 years, when we control this. It's the free world, that's on top of the AI situation. And not the communist Chinese, it will be because of Donald Trump. And so I think he's setting all that in motion today. I also think what he's doing in the Middle East, and standing up to the barbarians. I mean, it's amazing to me, the propaganda campaign that went on after October the 7th. And how the west. Western governments and western media sided with the barbarians. If you go there and listen to what happened. And it's been total propaganda. But Trump had total moral clarity on this. He's standing up to the people who would leave this world in darkness, ideologies that are the enemy of human liberty, and he knows it. And he's been totally clear on this.

And so I think too, occasionally someone has to stand up and say, no. Enough is enough.

And he did that. And he it did strategically at the right time. I think it will pay dividends for years to come.

GLENN: Spending the time with him, what did you feel was something that maybe surprised you and something that you think, gosh, if America just understood this one thing, it might change things.

SCOTT: Well, the caricature of him, would lead you to believe that he's not a good listener, or that he's not someone that absorbs a lot of information that informs his opinion. I came away with totally opposite review.

I watched him, listened to people having debates. He asked questions. He kind of lobs in his views.

But he really does absorb I think these debates among his excellent cabinet. And the excellent staff that he has. And then he makes the decision.

What's great about this president. Versus the last one. He's decisive. Once he listens and takes in everything, he makes a decision, and that's what they do. Biden was famously indecisive, which leads to weakness. Which of course leads to the disaster of that administration. But Trump doesn't suffer from that.

That's myth number one. Myth number two.

This man is genuinely funny. He is warm. He is hospitable. You know, talking about my Dad. When we were together once, he had his hat on. His famous red hat. And he said, you want my hat?

And I said, no. But I know someone who does. It was the first man to ever tell me you were going to be president. And he said, "Sounds like a smart guy."

GLENN: Wow. Wow. That's cool.

SCOTT: He took the hat right off his head. So he's actually a warm, nice, funny person. And of course, the caricature of him painted by the media is that he wouldn't believe it. Hey, I lived through this, when I worked for President Bush. They caricatured him. And as adults as well.

Totally not true. They caricatured Dick Cheney. The caricatured Mitt Romney. They take our Republicans, and they turn them into something they're not.

And, of course, that's -- that's the power of the left, when they control cultural institutions.

So I think they've done it to Trump to some degree. Of course, his personality tends to cut through the clutter sometimes.

GLENN: You would be surprised. Next time you see him, it could be a year from now. And he's going to ask you how your Dad was. You watch.

SCOTT: I know. I watched him interact with people in that way. It is an innate political talent. And the good ones have it.

And he has it. He does care about people. I watched him do it. And he's loyal to people too.

GLENN: He does.

What do you think the -- the -- the thing that is happening now, that should be paid attention to, that maybe the media is missing.

What's thing that is most overblown and most underplayed?

SCOTT: Oh, gosh, well, I think the thing we ought to be paying attention to on the left is the energy and radicalism on the left.

You know, the elections the other day.

I said on CNN the other night. I thought this was the beginning of the ending of Chuck Schumer.

It's really the beginning of the end of any semblance of any shred of the possibility of returning to sanity in the democratic party. I mean, look at how they treat John Fetterman for simply occasionally saying something that is basic common sense. Or having a back bone. The energy in the socialist -- radical socialist movement on the left is real! Happened in New York. It happened in Seattle. They elected a mayor out there. Who lives in her parents' basement. That got elected on the power of the socialist agenda. AOC is the leader of this faction. Bernie Sanders is the intellectual godfather of it. And these people will change America. They think the American experiment was rotten at its core. They think it ought to be ripped out root and branch and replaced with something that neither you nor I would recognize as American. They fundamentally hate the system that we have lived with for 250 years in this country.

And I don't think we can understate how much energy they have on the left right now. How much momentum they're feeling.

And so I know we talk about it. And, you know, we've talked about the rise of socialism before. The urgency right now, as we head away from the Trump era. And we get into an open presidential election in '28. We cannot allow our country to be taken over.

So that's -- that's number one. Number two, it's being overblown.

I think the Democrats trying to pin the affordability tail on Donald Trump is the most laughable thing I've ever heard.

They took prices to the moon. Gas was $5. Grocery prices. Health care, craziness. They took prices to the moon. And they want to pin this on Donald Trump. And pin this on Republicans.

Give me a break. And so the media buying into this is totally overblown. But we have to fight back hard, or we will have a rough ride in '26.