Best of the Program | Guests: Sage Steele & Amie Parnes | 4/8/25

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It's a total, it's almost like the Great Reset, except in a good way. Also, Sage Steele joins me and Amy Parnes to talk about the behind the scenes and who, if anyone, will pay the price for the cover-up on Joe Biden's mental health.
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Now let's get to work. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Alright, right so we survived yesterday thank goodness yesterday was kind of scary there for a while uh because when i first got in they were screaming on television 37 minutes before the stock market and they're like okay all right and then it turns out to be like nothing I mean we lost 1%

but really

from in the morning, this is going to be the worst day in the history of all mankind. You remember January 6th? Going to be worse than that.
Okay, all right, calm down. So, you know, Europe, it went down 6%.
Markets worldwide went down. We went down 1%.
And that's because President Trump, who announced a zero for zero tariff scheme. I love that word.
Used all over in mainstream media today. Trump's tariff scheme.
Ooh, that sounds honest, doesn't it? Would slap 20% duty on things like from the european union well european union came out yesterday uh led by their trade commissioner who i'm not even going to attempt uh to even pronounce the name because it has like little down arrows over four of the letters in the name so i don't even know what that means anyway uh they countered with their own uh zero for zero proposal yesterday and trump said now not good enough they're like a zero for zero now why he said you gotta buy oil from us now in a sane world they would immediately go okay can we get a good deal on that if we're buying all of our from you, can we get a good deal on that? Yes. We'll give you a great deal.
Buy your oil from us. And everybody in NATO would go, hey, that'll keep us off the teat of Russia and China.
What do you say we buy oil and gas from the United States? So it's a good thing because just like all of the NATO conversations that they've been having with the EU, if the United States has a national interest at stake, you want to go in and march across Europe? Wait a minute. They are a major factor to our economy because they are buying our oil.
I don't think you're going to do that. Are they this blind to not understand what is happening now we're no longer gonna fight the wars just to fight wars no unless it's in our national interest now it is in our national interest to have a strong west but not for free gang no so i told you last week that he named the tariffs Liberation Day, and I think that is because after World War II, we had Liberation Day.
We had the day where everybody is free from the Nazis and everything else. and the United States did something that no country has ever ever ever even considered doing

first of all we became the broker to bring all of the art and everything else back that had been stolen. We didn't take those spoils for ourselves.
We returned them to the original orders and we're still doing it. It's incredible.
Nobody has ever done that. Then we had the Marshall Plan.
That was $13 billion, but in today's money, that's $135 billion. Between 1948 and 1952, why? What was it? We were rebuilding so they could have factories to open up for their people.
Now, an evil country would just say, no, you're going to buy everything from us. You will be our slaves now.
We rebuilt Europe so they could have jobs and factories. We helped them rebuild Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz.
Hello? Okay, we didn't have any obligation to do it, but we saw it as morally right, so we did it.

So we allowed the high tariffs on American goods while keeping ours low because it was good for them.

And we also shouldered the burden of their defense through NATO. We spent billions of dollars annually.

The U.S. defense spending accounts for 68% of NATO's total budget.

Roughly $560 dollars last year alone meanwhile Europe was prospering now why aren't they now because they had sugar daddy that would be there for the old when you have a sugar daddy you tend to get lazy why are the American people so lazy? Because we have the United States government being everybody's sugar daddy. Oh, they'll just give it to me.
Oh, it doesn't matter if I make a mistake with trillions of dollars. They'll just bail me out.
That doesn't work. Okay? It didn't work for them.
It's not working for us. So we go down this road after Liberation Day the first time, and we get to the 1970s.
And now we're getting fat and sassy. And we're like, you know what? We control the whole world.
We can just make stuff up. And so we decide to get off the gold standard because half of the politicians want to have big war, and the other half wants to have, you big uh big welfare state well you can't do both and like any good parent our government said you can have both you know what you could have both yeah and so we got off the gold standard but we played a trick on everybody okay when we got off the gold standard, everybody around the world went, wait a minute, wait a minute.

We hold your dollars because they're good,

as good as gold.

We can turn a dollar in to your federal reserve or your treasury and we can demand

we get a dollar's worth of gold.

Now you're saying you're not going to have

that standard anymore.

So I can't take a dollar and buy a dollar's worth of gold.

No, but you can trust us.

Oh, run from those people.

So we said, we've made a special deal

that's going to be super good for everybody. We're going to have U.S.
dollars become a petrodollar. You'll only be able to buy Saudi Arabia's oil and oil from OPEC by using a U.S.
dollar. So it's as good as gold.
It's just black gold. Oh, okay.
And then when that didn't do enough, we also said to them, by the way, we're going to also just come in and we're going to buy all, you know, you bought Maytag washing machines and everything else. We're going to move Maytag to your countries so you can build it and we'll become your buyers now.
We'll become the buyer of the world. Okay, you really, that's not a good idea just to become the consumer of the world.
Eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. No, you also have to do some other things.
And we do export a lot of things. But we're not able to sustain ourselves.
Every country should be able to sustain itself. So we created the demand for German machinery from Japanese TVs and everything else.
The petrodollar made it happen. And then what happened? Our manufacturing jobs start dropping from 33% of the U.S.
employment in 1950. Now manufacturing jobs only 8%.
And I'm not saying that manufacturing is the place you ought to be, but it's important to understand what else was happening at the same time because of manufacturing. Our system was reshaped, and this is, again, why Donald Trump is saying this is Liberation Day.
Our country was reshaped. Our society was shaped in subtler ways.
After World War I and World War II, we started having the assembly line and everything else

and we retooled our education now why why did we go from one of the world's best educators with the best educated in the world in the history of the world to a bunch of just morons Have you met the American people lately?

We're just morons.

Why? Because the giant corporations did not need thinkers. They wanted just obedient workers.
This is why, and I want you to hold on to this because it explains everything about our education system. And you heard it a million times when you went to school.
Boys and girls, take out your pencils and your paper and write this down because this will be on the test. What does that tell you? That tells you the teacher is teaching to the test and is teaching you what to think, not how to think.
Okay? Why? Because if you're in the assembly line, I don't need you to think. Just do it.
Well, but why am I putting this and this together? Wouldn't it be better? No, just do it. Okay? You're not a thinker.
Those people went to college. They have a degree.
That's why you couldn't get into business unless you had a college degree, because you had to learn how to think if you were going to work in the office upstairs above the factory. All right? So this was all planned for this economy the way it was working.
Now we spend more money per pupil, $14,825 per pupil in 2022, yet we're 36th in math, 13th in reading, and we've created the most expensive and least effective educational system the world has ever seen. Is that working for us? Is the way we fight our wars working for us? Because we then also became the world's policemen.
After World War II, we said, you know what, we'll take care of this. Since the Cold War's end, we have been fighting the same way that we were fighting back in 1948 and 52 against the Soviet Union everything was geared for that big kind of war that's over now it's over the U.S.
military spent six trillion dollars on military operations in the Middle East alone and what do we have to show for it stra alliances, a new airport that China now has that we gave to them in Afghanistan, and a ballooning national debt of $34 trillion. So now this puts us into like the 1990s, and we're seeing that this is going to start to come apart.
And this is in the 80s. Ronald Reagan started talking about saying there's a debt and we're going to have to pay this someday.
And it's Social Security and everything else. These things don't work.
The math doesn't work out. And he said soon after the turn of the century, you will see it will all start to fall apart and we will be out of good options.
We should fix it now. And everybody said that, but that's when they came up with it we got a lockbox we got a little lockbox we're putting all the money from social security a little lockbox they don't have a lockbox okay that was a lie again but it was just to say we got a lockbox so you can have it all no no so now we have 34 trillion dollars in debt and instead of addressing the root causes, what did our elites do? This is the key to all of it.
You want to understand what Donald Trump is trying to do. This is the key to all of it.
Sometime, I think, during the Clinton administration, the elites understood that, wait a minute, this thing is not sustainable. The way it's running, it's not sustainable.
And a lot of them didn't believe in the United States. They didn't believe in the freedom of the Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights, etc., etc.
And so they thought, you know, there's a lot of stuff bad about America. So is it that bad that it's going to pass away? but we don't want a revolution we don't want blood in the streets so let's just manage the decline okay and we can even help it along enter the modern climate change agenda which is not about saving the planet it is about helping the decline of the west

killing our energy supply all this esg social government standards dei uh even blm all of this stuff is rooted in various social concerns but they're co-opted into a broader narrative decouple america from its history its entrepreneurial spirit its faith everything that empowers the individual and fosters self-reliance we've got to undermine it so this is the managed decline and that is in stark contrast to what made america america because what what made us was we had a country of stable laws.

We were unified, not in our differences.

We were unified in the few principles that we had in common, our Bill of Rights.

So we had stable laws rooted in the long, longest running constitution in the world, provided a predictable framework for business, a stable government, all of this stuff, educated populace, hardworking, ethical people that were God-fearing, and abundant cheap energy. Okay.
How much of that is true anymore? You want to make America great, you've got to fix those things. So what is Donald Trump really doing? Why would he say, no, Europe, I got you, I see you're zero, zero, but you're going to buy our oil as well.
His strategy is a radical departure from the post-war order. It's high stakes, do not get me wrong, but it's to force the world to renegotiate on America's terms to shape the next chapter of the world.
When he rejected the zero for zero offer from Europe, he wasn't just playing hardball.

He's signaling a new era by our energy.

We're your friends in the West.

Let's help each other.

This isn't a charity.

This is a partnership. And when it's good for both sides,

then that's a great partnership.

Most favored nation status should mean mutual benefit not one-sided sacrifice so his uh approach is really what they tried to do i guess with the american free trade agreement in 94 but that had so many flaws in it and everything else but's, can we just bring people together that are friends and let's help each other, all of us win? Now, I want you to know, agree or disagree, it's really a bold plan, a very bold plan, and a little frightening at times. It's like a roller coaster ride.
but I kind of sit in the back seat and I'm like, it's going to be interesting to see how this all works out. You know, that's the way you have to, it's the way if you're going to survive, you have to watch society be engaged at your level with your friends, your family, but you need to say going to be interesting to see how they work this out.
I, I have no idea how this goes, but this is a new dawn now. And that's what you have to understand.
That's what he's shooting for, a new dawn, the great reset, except it's a reset in reverse. Instead of managing decline, Trump is aiming to save the patient.
He believes, and I believe, you believe, I think, that our best days are not behind us. They're ahead.
And when you want to win big, you have to risk big. You know, Europe wasn't built with a lot of strings attached.
We did attach some strings. They're not rushing to our aid now, nor should we expect them to.
We don't need any foreign strings. We need to stand on our own.
Elon Musk said, I hope the United States and Europe can establish a very close partnership, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America. That's worth fighting for.
It is. And if you see the world, I think the way the president sees it, the way I see it right now, this is a huge gamble to revitalize our country, to face the future, and have a promise for our kids.
That, to me, is a gamble worth taking.

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You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program.

Did you see, Stu, that Gina Carano has just won a lawsuit against Disney? Yeah. That doesn't normally happen, does it? No, it really, no.
Disney has some big lawyers. No.
And there's a reason for that. Walt Disney learned his lesson at about 19, I think 29 or 30 something.
He had Oswald the Rabbit and he leaves them. He leaves Universal and he's like,'t worry and universal is like all right well go ahead and he's like we're not afraid i goes i got oswald the rabbit and they're like no actually we have oswald the rabbit and he had already quit he had already put the gears into motion and he had nothing oh he didn't realize he didn't own that he no he had idea.
So he gets on a train and his brother is freaking out in the West Coast. He's like, wait a minute, what? And he's like, yeah, well, don't worry, I got something else.
He had nothing. He gets on the train and he starts doodling.
And on a napkin, he draws a Mickey Mouse. This is why you love him so much.
These stories. Oh, yeah.
I love him. Yeah, he risked everything and he had actually nothing.
But then made it up afterwards, and it all worked out. It all worked out.
Anyway, what are you saying? Anyway, so he was bound and determined, I will never be behind the eight ball ever again. So he created the nastiest attorney firm in the history of the world.

I don't think there's any corporation that is more nasty than, you know,

than the Disney Corporation.

Here we have two stories now.

We have Gina Carano, and the last time I saw somebody win was Sage Steele.

Yeah, that's right.

That's two women that have beaten Disney.

I think that's remarkable.

I wanted to call our good friend Sage Steele, get her on.

See you next time. women that have beaten disney i think that's remarkable uh i wanted to call uh our good friend sage steel get her on sage how are you hello glenn i'm great thank you and i'm so happy for gina it's not over yet but this is a major battle right you won right she she actually now disney has to turn over information about how everybody is uh you know paid on on The Mandalorian and any other Star Wars shows.
And they didn't want to do that. But would you agree with me, Sage, that just that's a remarkable win? Absolutely.
It's a huge win. And also, I mean, Disney's delay tactics have just been ongoing.
and they lost that, too, a couple of months ago when they were trying to get the lawsuit thrown out altogether. And Judge said, let's go, quit procrastinating.
And so this is massive, because when you look at how they paid other stars on these projects, Pedro Pascal, Rosario Dawson, other people, basically, this is about Disney trying to hide what they've been paying those people this whole time, while allowing them to go off on social media and Pedro Pascal, you know, comparing Donald Trump to Hitler, one of those, and that's fine to do on your social media, but Gina Carano gets fired. So now that they have to reveal these financial records, this goes to show what Gina would have made had they not wrongly terminated her.
And this is a major, major victory. What is it like when you realize, oh, good Lord, they're sending the mouse with the briefcase my way.
What is that like when you realize you're in a lawsuit against Disney? Well, first of all, filing the lawsuit against Disney is not fun. Did everybody in the room when you said that, would everybody go, what did you just say you were going to do? Yeah, you idiot.
I mean, David versus Goliath for sure. I mean, I had Disney.
I had Disney. I had Gina on my show last summer, and I hadn't met her.
I, of course, had followed her story. And when we met, we just hugged.
And it was an emotional episode because we both understood in a very unique way that I hope many others don't have to understand the fear that comes with it. But at some point you get pushed around enough and you say, no, this is wrong.
And if I stay silent, then it's on me. And then I know personally, I couldn't have looked myself in the mirror and Gina felt the same way.
And she has worked so hard and done so professionally, you know, to the nth degree for all those years. Gina, the one thing I didn't have, and my attorney is the best in the business.

Brian Friedman, who represented Megyn Kelly, who represents Tucker Carlson, who's representing Justin Baldoni against crazy Blake Lively right now.

My attorney is the best, and he is a dear friend of mine now, too.

Gina has Elon Musk on her side.

Financially, she's in a little different situation than me because Elon Musk is putting the bill for her because he's standing up for what's right and the First Amendment. So you look at Gina, what do you think you have? What was it that you bonded with on that episode that you did? Initially, I think it was the obvious, OK, wow, two people who stood up to disney two women like yeah what happened like who are we what happened to our lives and it was just

that obvious bond because it was such a big deal and people going whoa um but more so

it was the betrayal that we felt coming from what we once thought was the best company on earth

Thank you. But more so, it was the betrayal that we felt coming from what we once thought was the best company on earth and such an honor to work with them and for them.

And then when you realize that you are just cast aside because you didn't believe what they wanted us to believe, which goes against everything they preach, diversity of thought and acceptance and inclusion and all of those things. You realize that they were full of it.
And people that you looked up to, people that you worked alongside for years and years and years, and what they said about you publicly and privately, certainly never to your face. There is just a real sense of loss for relationships because Gina is as tough as they get.
I have realized that I'm tougher than I thought and never wanted to be, but Gina is as tough as they get. And she was hurt.
I think that's kind of, and this is not like, oh, woe is me. We never, Gina doesn't want sympathy.
This is about what's right. and calling these companies out.
And that's kind of and this is not like oh woe is me we we never Gina doesn't want sympathy this is about what's right and calling these companies out and that's the other thing we bonded on is calling these companies out the biggest companies in the world because if we don't and expose it because we have the ability based on platforms that we've you know it's it's a blessings I've had these platforms right if we don't don't use them to expose and therefore hopefully maybe, fingers crossed, prevent other companies from doing the same BS to women, men, anywhere, it doesn't matter. Black, white, green, blue, LGBTQ, I don't care.
Just treat us equally and not punishing us if we don't agree with what you say. Because, by the way, you're going to say this today and that tomorrow, who can keep up? Right.
Diversity of thought, first amendment. And so we bonded over so much.
And I just, I admire her and her courage to continue this because she completely threw her career away as well, as people said I did, but look, she's standing up for what's right. And Glenn, I told you when we were together last month doing your show in Texas, the harder right versus the easier wrong.
Gina is doing the harder right. And that takes courage.
I'm so honored to know her. You know, and I tell you, it doesn't, I think you grow from this.
You're seeing new success. She's seeing new success.
And you have become bigger than what you were in many ways because you're now a human success story. You now have experienced strife and trouble and come out the other side and realizing, I didn't hurt so much.
I mean, it hurt, but it didn't hurt like I thought it was going to hurt. I i thought i was gonna burn myself up uh and uh i didn't and so you become this the this additional success story that i think you know you look at you look at the what's the woman who's now playing snow white whatever her name is yeah um so you know they're not firing her which a must drive you nuts.
They're not firing her. And she tubed the crown jewel.
I mean, next to Mickey Mouse, it is Snow White. And that's the movie that built that company.
And for her to go in and destroy the story of Snow White, all of that money, because you guys weren't bleeding money on you and your point of view or her point of view. Absolutely not.
Right? Absolutely not. I mean, you figure no matter who's in office, about half the country agrees with you, right? Yeah.
Which means either half disagrees. It's usually right down the middle.
And they could have gotten out of that that mess with rachel i think over a year ago when she first started to mouth off and maybe too much had been invested if nothing else why don't you at least have a chat okay fine don't fire her like you did us or and i didn't get fired i mean i i we settled my lawsuit and i chose to leave um gina was fired though rachel was allowed to say much worse than i think gina ever said and i don't know who could disagree with that. And you could show the direct damages.
You could show the damages. Look at the numbers.
Exactly. And they chose to stick with her.
And now look, so you repushed so for sure. But the double standard is the reason what must be what must be called out.
And they could have at least pulled Rachel aside and said, we need you to camp down a little bit. This isn't good for business.
Maybe they didn't. She didn't listen.
If so, okay, that's a whole other story. But to your point about like what you gain when you do stand up, you realize it's just a lot bigger than you.
And when people come up to Gina and come up to me, and I've had fathers come up to me because they've been afraid to stand up for their daughters in sports and why are boys competing against their daughter because they're afraid to go to the school board meeting and get fired.

The fear is real.

Like, we know that. So I am so grateful that I chose to stand up.

And I know Gina is because the people that you are affecting just by doing that, standing up in her case for freedom of true freedom of speech.

It is everything that's so much bigger than any career I could have dreamt of having. And same with her.
Disney is getting their comeuppance and they need to, and they think it's so obvious. They do this to themselves.
And that is why so many people were more than okay to see what's happening with the Snow White debacle. Shame on them.
I may switch subject here for a second, Stu. I'm doing something with the Diesel Brothers here in a couple of months.
And I'm taking one of my 1934 race car out. And we're just going to open it up on a track and two other cars and you were you were leaving my studio and you were going to the airport and you were like i'll get an uber and i'm like no no i'll take you to the airport i'm going that way so i take you to the airport and you are the biggest car hound i have i mean i'd be broke if i were married to you because you'd let me buy all the cars.
My wife is like, stop it. Stop.

I'd be broke if I were married to you because we would you'd let me buy all the cars my wife is like stop it stop I'd be like what are we buying this weekend I know listen the one the one thing I regret the biggest regret I have in life right now is that I didn't ask you for a selfie that day when Glenn Beck drove me to the airport and what kind of car car was that? It was a Continental GTC. Thank you.
And it was forest green, and it was stunning, and the top was down, and my wild hair was bigger than ever. And I'm like, no one's going to believe this, but I didn't want to be tacky and ask you for a selfie.
I want to make sure you're going to come out when we do the Diesel Brothers thing. Stu is going to be there.
I'm going to be there. I'd love to have you and you drive one of the cars.
Okay, is everybody listening? Glenn said you drive one of the cars. Wait a minute.
How are you doing on accidents? Do you have many accidents? Give me that stick shift. Let's go.
No, no accidents what i do have a little bit of a lead foot but i mean what what a waste yeah i know you don't take those cars and open them up do you like do you like uh electric engines not even an engine driven it like twice i i don't know listen i i appreciate how you barely tap it and then it's like whiplash and your phone. Like, I appreciate that, but I, I guess I'm old school.
Give me that clutch. I know.
Let me do it. That's the real strength and power.
You know, come on. Sage, great talk to you.
We'll talk, we'll talk again. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you, Glenn. Thank you.
Take care. Sage Steele, host of the Sage Steele show.
You can get that wherever you get your podcast and at sagesteel.com. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Amy's with us, Amy Parnes, Hill Senior Political Correspondent, author of Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. Amy, how are you? Hi, Glenn.
Good. Thanks for having me.
You bet. So, you know, can we play just that little collage of all the people that said this wasn't happening? Do we have that? Can we play that real quick? Joe Biden has vision.
He has knowledge. He has a strategic thinker.
This is a very sharp president. In terms of his public presentation, if he makes a slip of the tongue here or there, what's the deal? You're asking me my personal opinion.
He is sharp. He is on top of things.
When we have meetings with him, with his staff, he's constantly pushing us, trying to get more information. I can tell you, this was the day before that interview.
I can tell you he was sharper than anyone i've spoken to about a very company this was happening all the time amy everyone was saying how sharp he is that is that was according your book just absolutely not true and everybody in the white house knew that how go ahead yeah i No, it's something that we really dug into in reporting out this book.

And we had questions about what interactions certain people had with the president. We detail how Eric Swalwell, a congressman from California, for example, attended a congressional picnic with the president a year before the debate debacle, a disaster.
And he had to almost remind then President Biden who he was. And this was someone who he competed against in the 2020 presidential election.
He should know who he is. And there's detail after detail about that in this book.
You know, in your book, you talk about how there were bets being paid how they were looking you know shopping for judges on who was going to swear her in they thought he was going to die before the election um i mean did you did you get the sense from anyone while you're researching this book that anyone thought maybe this isn't really good for the Constitution? I mean, that's why right now you're seeing a lot of errors thrown in the direction, excuse me, of the former president and his aides. People are really, really upset about, they think it's a cover-up, they think that, you know, they should have been more candid, even within their own party, about the president's cognitive abilities.
And, you know, Glenn, I covered the president for a long time. And I

tried to get after the story. And the White House was constantly I know my colleagues were as well.

It's not like any of us were asleep at the switch, but the White House would batter us when we asked

questions about his mental acuity and his age it was a constant constant battle but was there was there anybody that knew that should have spoken out i mean in the press or anything i mean it's one thing to it's one thing to speculate it's one thing to i hear rumors but and if you're you're shut off from it but you know in the white house it seems like there were quite a few people that knew this is a disaster yeah a who's running the country at that point who was the president this close set of advisors kept him really close and that's why i think you didn't see him as much. Right now, President Trump is out there talking to reporters every day.
I think the press corps wanted to see Biden do some similar things and take a similar media approach, and he did not. You know, and we detail in the book, you know, there's a fundraiser where someone, you know, says that he looks like he's going to die at the fundraiser.
There are other moments where, you know, we take you inside Phil Murphy's house, and we detail how he's speaking to just a couple dozen fundraisers at a small house, and he needs fluorescent tape on the floor to guide him from place to place. He needs a teleprompter.
You know, these aren't common things for a small house. At a house? Yes.
And, you know, makeup. This was another revelation in our book.
Whenever he traveled overseas, he was met with a makeup artist. That was his first order of business.
Sometimes he missed meetings because the makeup artist was there to touch him up. They were clearly concerned about the optics around his age and around his mental acuity.
You write at one point that the makeup artist, he goes in, he sits down for the makeup, and then he calls it a day. And that was it.
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, these are aides that were talking to us about this.
Obviously, they knew about it. And they said at times he looked really frazzled.
He would get out of the limousine and, you know, would look around and wouldn't know where he was. And so, yeah, it's very startling even to the people who were telling us these stories but you know it's one thing to be um it's one thing to go yeah that was really weird and i because it's another to realize that is the man that has to make the decision um you know for the country god forbid we're attacked or whatever.
And he's not there. There was was there anyone inside fighting and saying, we have got to alert the American people.
We have to invoke the 25th Amendment is 25th, isn't it? yeah we've got to invoke the 25th amendment this isn't right the people have in

have put their power in this man.

He is no longer capable of making these decisions.

I think a lot of people would have had respect for that.

Instead, I walk away going,

was there no one that cared about the Constitution

and cared about what could have happened

with this guy in charge?

No, and I think that's why you're seeing so much

Thank you. and cared about what could have happened with this guy in charge? No, and I think that's why you're seeing so much fire aimed at his close set of advisors right now, because they could have been more candid.
And, you know, Democrats in general, I think, were confused as to his cognitive abilities. I think the reason he wanted to do this debate and his advisors wanted to do this debate earlier,

the disastrous one in June last year,

is because they knew that he was losing in the polls, obviously. They wanted to change the trajectory of this race,

and they thought that that was a moment that could help him.

Instead, it brought out, you know,

it showed it on display everything for the American public. So I honestly thought for the longest time that they did that knowing somebody was like, no, let's put him on the stage and let's do it now before, you know, things get completely out of hand and he's going to be running for re-election.
I really thought they put him on stage that early, because I'd never seen that happen before in American politics, put him on stage that early, so he would be exposed and everybody would be like, okay, we can't run him. No, and what's fascinating, Glenn, is that we take you inside.
I mean, we opened the book inside Nancy Pelosi's living room, and she's watching the debate alone. She had warned President Biden

at the time. She said, oh, you don't want to debate Trump.
And she mentioned it under the guise of, oh, why would you belittle yourself and appear on stage with him? But she knows. And Jim Clyburn, who's also watching the debate alone in his living room, and we take you inside there, he's having a drink and watching it.
They're all alone. They're not at some debate watch party together because they almost know what is about to happen.
They're watching the train wreck unfold bit by bit and alone. So what do we do to ensure this? Let me ask you, before I ask you that again, try again, who was running the country? that's a very good question.
I think, you know, obviously his close set of advisors had a great big role in that. You see Ron Klain these days sort of trying to distance himself.
He was the former chief of staff trying to distance himself from the optics of what was was happening um but it's not but it's really not optics it is the truth somebody was making decisions because the president could you know i've i was always fascinated in history by woodrow wilson edith wilson ran the white house for a while but it was his own party that came in because it was the same

thing people like rumors and they're like i don't think he's really there uh and he wasn't seen for a long time and so the leadership of the party came finally forced the first lady uh and said because she was saying he's going to run for a third term and they said no no or we'll expose all of this right now. He's not running

for another term.

You know, but

it seems to be the same thing i'm wondering how many presidents have we had that you know nobody seems to really care that the elected official isn't actually doing what that official is supposed to do they're just some unelected people just making the decisions. Yeah, and the fact of the matter is, Glenn, I mean, you see the former president has all but disappeared from public view since leaving office, and I think that also speaks volumes about his state of mind.
Was Kamala that in the note, which, I mean, if God forbid something would have happened, who would have grabbed the football? Who would have been the one? It would have been Kamala Harris. And that's sort of why, I mean, you teased this earlier, but her communications director would carry around this spreadsheet of Republican judges because he felt almost like she had to be validated in that moment, and only a Republican judge could really swear her in and have that validation from Republicans.
He thought that there was no way that such a divisive country, you know, and people would support her. And so we detail how he came into that role with the spreadsheet.
He traveled with it. The DNC had plans in case something happened to the president.
And we exposed all of this for the first time in this book. Can you find any? Because I'm a self-taught historian, but I'm pretty good at it.
I've never seen anything like this in American history. Have you? It's pretty remarkable.
It's really unprecedented. And it was really interesting to report out.
You know, I think people have questions about the media and how we went about reporting this. And it's almost like the president needed to leave office for people to actually admit what was happening and tell us stories.
That's what's interesting. I think, you know, when you cover a president, they're always worried that the White House is going to come down hard on them.
And so they're less prone to want to tell you things. And then when they leave office, this is when the floodgates open up.
Is anybody going to be held accountable for this? I mean, I think right now the party, that's why you're seeing the Democratic Party scrambling. I think, first of all, they need to come out and admit what had happened here and almost look themselves in the mirror and talk about Joe Biden.
The other day, Jake Tapper asked Tim Walls about it, and Tim Walls kind of just dances around the question. I think they need to be very frank about what was happening and what they were witnessing, and they don't want to do that right now.
You know, it's interesting to me. I just told this story on the air because people are kicking around Donald Trump wants to run for a third term.
No, no against the constitution and that that that was put there for a very uh clear reason and it wasn't put in there by the Republicans it was put in by the Democrats FDR's own party when they saw what had happened to the presidency it just gained far too much power and it's not good for anybody when that happens. and you know here you have as soon as fdr died that's when all the democrats were like okay okay we got to make sure that doesn't happen again but they were for him when he was alive right it seems to be kind of the same thing here that everybody was like okay it's cool uh but is anybody gonna step up now and say this cannot happen ever again?

I think that's what has to happen, Glenn.

Someone has to take responsibility for it, and no one is.

And I'm curious to see how the Democrats reckon with this.

Amy, thank you very much.

I'm glad somebody finally told the story and got the story. If if we don't fix this it's just going to happen again and it'll happen with the other party i mean it just it will i mean you give people in in power an inch they are going to take a mile and uh this cannot happen this just cannot happen again amy thank you so much thank you glenn you bet Amy Parnes, fight inside the wildest battle for the White House.
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