Best of the Program | Guest: Andrew Klavan | 10/18/24

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Hey, welcome to the best of podcast.

This is, you know, we take three hours of pretty iffy stuff and then cut it down to just the best cream of the crop.

And believe it or not, we get more than 10 minutes every day.

What you're going to hear today is a little bit about what happened at

the fancy, you know, swanky white tie dinner in New York.

Kamala Harris did not show up.

Donald Trump did.

The reviews are pretty amazing.

Well, no, it's typical.

New York Times on, he was mean, he was bad.

He wasn't funny at all.

Except for one exception on the left that said he was funny, which will blow your mind.

Also, what is the government actually leading to?

What is the left doing when they talk about fascism and everything else?

What are they setting up?

Why are we seeing these trends on things they're talking about?

What is coming if they win?

Also, Andrew Clavin joins us.

A show you don't want to miss.

You can get the entire show at, you know, at glendeck.com or wherever you get your podcast.

But this is the best of, and it begins in 60 seconds.

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You're listening to

the best of the Blendback program.

So,

Sinoir is dead, Stu.

Do you have your...

Oh, you're not wearing black?

Yeah, I was all at the cleaners.

I had all

black, dark clothes at the cleaners.

Gosh, darn it.

Mine, too.

My black clothes to mourn the loss of the Hamas leader lost in a boating accident along with my guns.

Darn it!

Darn it.

Well,

well, I want everybody to know that we are just super, super sad at the loss of Sinwar.

His bodyguard now, it appears his bodyguard worked for the United Nations.

Stunning.

Wait a minute.

Hold on just a second.

His passport, and we have verified this now with inside the Israeli intelligence, and we have the photograph of his passport, which states,

under his occupation, a UNRWA teacher.

So that's United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

He was a teacher.

Nope.

Nope, he was the bodyguard right there with a cash and Sinoir.

I don't know what they were doing.

Maybe he was teaching him, you know, how to,

I don't know, how to use UN funds to kill more people.

But they were together.

And

we've verified this now.

How many hoops do we have to go through to to show UN employment on official travel documents for residents in Gaza that are part of Hamas?

Is this kind of thing, you know, is it rubber stamped all the time?

You know,

what was the involvement of the UN in the October 7th attacks?

How much support has the UN given Hamas?

It's a terror organization, same level as ISIS.

The media's easy commentary on his death is not surprising, but I get the feeling that they're going to look very, very

stupid, or dare I say complicit after all of this is over.

And eventually, gang, the full truth comes out.

You know, rest assured, the full truth does come out eventually, you know, and

that's when there's Nuremberg trials.

So.

Good luck with that.

Glad I'm on the right side of this issue.

Let's see.

Jim Gaffigan was

the host.

I can't see Jim Gaffigan now and not think of Tim Walls.

It is a really funny impersonation.

I mean, they don't give him any funny lines because they don't want to make fun of Walls, but he just does the part so well.

It's so frenetic and bizarre, which is just what Tim Walls is.

Yeah.

So he makes fun of,

he was at the Al Smith Charity Dinner.

That's the white tie dinner that the presidents always go to and everybody in New York goes to you know that has lots and lots of money

and they they raise money for Catholic charities and

this is the first time since Mondale that both candidates have not been there

and Mondale of course you know lost I don't know if it's a God thing could be I don't know

but Kamala Harris decided not to show up and Jim Gaffigan bless his little heart, he took on both sides hard, which is exactly what a comedian should do.

Here he is making fun of the Democrats last night.

The Democrats have been telling us Trump, Trump's re-election, is a threat to democracy.

In fact, they were so concerned of this threat, they staged a coup.

ousted their Democratically elected incumbent and installed Kamala Harris.

In other words, all her dreams have come true.

Really?

It really makes you consider the power of prayer, right, Cardinal?

Sometimes prayers take three and a half years and a George Clooney op-ed.

He is funny.

He is very, very funny.

Now, Trump,

was pretty funny himself.

I mean, he's obviously, he didn't want to do this.

He said at the end, he just wanted to go up.

He said, I don't think anything's really funny right now.

The country is on fire.

Our liberties are at stake.

And he said, I just wanted to come up here and just talk about that.

He said, but all of my advisors said, no, don't do that.

Do comedy.

And he said, well, last time, four years ago, when I came here, he said, I did a roast.

And Stu, you and I know

what it's like to do a roast because you helped me write a roast that I did in New York with all of the superpower.

It was a dinner very much like this.

And it was a roast and nobody was roasting.

Everybody was telling like cute little stories and taking soft little jabs.

And I looked at the guy, I was sitting next to him on the dais and I looked at the guy we were roasting and I said, Might have made a huge mistake

because these guys are not roasting you and all my material tears you apart.

and he just laughed and he said that's why i wanted you here i knew you would have the guts to do it um but uh apparently four years ago uh i don't remember this but he he appeared mean

um at least that's what he said and um he said i didn't want to repeat that uh but uh

he he He did some funny things.

Here he is roasting Schumer.

Coming in coming in very, very strong a certain way.

I won't tell you what way that is, but Chuck Schumer is here looking very glum.

Doesn't it look glum?

It looks glum.

But look on the bright side, Chuck, considering how woke your party has become, if Kamala loses, you still have a chance to become the first woman president.

Did you watch this at all, Stu?

Only the highlights.

You know, it came out on X and stuff.

But yeah, it was really fun.

So

I was watching it too.

Didn't Chuck Schumer, he looked like Gollum.

Yeah,

he does look very strange at this point.

Yeah, he was sitting there and he looked, yeah, his posture and he was sitting and he just looked like I pray.

You really look like Gollum, but maybe that's just me.

Here's Trump talking about the white dudes for Harris.

There's a group called White Dudes for Harris.

Have you seen this?

White Dudes for Harris.

Anybody know?

Are some of you here?

White Dudes for Harris.

It doesn't sound like it.

But I'm not worried about them at all because their wives and their wives' lovers are all voting for me.

Every one of those people is voting for me.

On Tim Waltz, here's what the president said.

But unfortunately, Governor Waltz isn't here himself, but don't worry.

He'll say that he was.

He's going to say he was.

Did you also notice Michael Bloomberg was sitting right in the front

and the guy didn't react or crack a smile one time?

Honestly,

it was the weirdest thing.

Not a single smile, nothing, no reaction, good or bad.

I mean,

he was rolling his eyes and stuff.

Yeah.

What?

The spirit of the event is to go there and you laugh at yourself.

I mean, that's what the event is.

Right.

Bloomberg didn't.

It was interesting to watch because you're right.

Schumer, who at times would

squirm and roll his eyes, but that's an okay reaction at that type of event.

It is.

Gaffigan, I noticed as well, like actually laughed really hard at some of the jokes.

Others that were like more like the

female president one, he just kind of,

he didn't want to react to that one at all.

But like, generally speaking, I thought everyone was pretty much okay on their reactions, but Bloomberg was just nothing.

He was, it was weird.

It was just weird.

It was like, are you listening to a podcast or something right now?

What is happening with you?

He was like that famous footage of the interrogation of one of the murderer suspects who just sits there in the room by himself for hours and never has a facial expression.

You ever see that footage?

It's like that.

Oh, yeah, that's classic.

That's classic.

So weird.

He also

talked seriously about the assassination attempts.

Here he is, cut four.

Having

recently myself survived two assassination attempts, they survived.

I have a chart that went down to the right.

Fortunately, I looked at it's my all-time favorite piece of paper.

But it went down and I looked to the right and I said, you know, was that luck?

What was that luck or was that God that did that?

And I think it was God that did that.

I do.

I do.

But I have a very fresh, cardinal, I have a very fresh appreciation for how blessed we are by God's providence and his divine mercy.

I mean, that was something I was not supposed to be here tonight.

That I can tell you.

So, with God's help, I know there is

nothing that cannot be achieved.

We can achieve so much good with this country and get together and unify.

I thought that was a really great sentiment there there it is a night where you're supposed to laugh at each other and then come together at the end which I thought he tried to do except except maybe for de Blasio

he took on de Blasio and it wasn't funny at all he was serious and he's like this isn't a joke he sucked he was the worst he destroyed this city did you see that no still

oh my gosh it was it was he was talking about all the former mayors but the worst one and he's up here and it's not you michael bloomberg it's deblasio and he just tore him apart you could tell it was

you could tell that trump was a new yorker um and loves new york uh and really didn't appreciate deblasio uh at all but here's here's do you want to i want to end with miracles

because Donald Trump was talking about that.

And it was a night of miracles,

especially if you're watching CNN.

Here's Brian Stelter on CNN.

Brian Stelter, what did you make of this performance?

Oh, no, don't ask me first.

I thought he was funny.

I thought he actually got a few great jokes in.

I thought the best moment was we talked about the assassination attempts and made light of what he's experienced because I think he's experiencing real trauma, real PTSD as a result of the shootings, but he's still able to have a light moment in this room.

And he took advantage of the fact that Kamala Harris wasn't there.

What?

That's Brian Stelter.

I mean, what this guy won't do to have a job is amazing.

Because

that's not his opinion.

It's clearly not his opinion.

Or maybe his

die-hard hate for Trump and Trump can never do anything right.

Maybe that wasn't his opinion.

I don't know what his opinion is, but

that's a complete turnaround for Brian Stelter.

Well, I mean, I think it was objectively funny at times.

I mean, you know, okay.

But when has he been objective?

Well, I mean, it's easy to, again,

it's easy to be.

Objective on a moment like that, I feel like.

I mean, you know, Jim Gaffigan is really funny, but he does not like Donald Trump at all.

Like, he is not a fan.

He's a liberal.

He's not a fan.

But he was able to laugh, right, at some of those jokes because they were objectively funny.

That's supposed to be what that event is.

Like,

it's more of a throwback to the old times when you could actually admit things that are accurate, right?

Trump is objectively funny at times.

There's just no, it's just true.

It's just true.

And if you should be able to admit it, and I give credit to Stelter for admitting it, I don't know that anyone else on the panel would do such a thing.

He is really funny, and he has no problem making fun of himself.

Last night, he said, you know, they told me I should do some self-deprecating jokes, but I got nothing.

I got nothing.

But he does.

I mean, here he is making fun of himself on SNL.

Cut nine, please.

The guy's here to fix the leak on your solid gold faucet.

Send him in.

Donald Trump is

a janitor.

Hey, I'm the prince of this city.

When you're in my office, you treat me with respect.

Who did you decorating?

Saddam Hussein?

I'll have you know this is all very classy stuff, and that painting of the tiger and the woman has got me laid on numerous occasions.

I didn't know gay dudes liked tiger paintings.

Hey, you've crossed the line.

I've killed people for less.

Looks like you killed a squirrel to me and put it right on top of your head.

You're the one to talk.

Your hair looks exactly like mine.

Yeah, except my hair is supposed to look like this.

I'm a janitor.

That's from 2004, by the way.

Oh, he's funny.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck podcast.

All right, let me talk to you about the Berna Launcher.

Unless you've done some pretty, you know, have some pretty serious issues.

You don't own guns

because you're hoping to use one on somebody someday.

No, you do it because you hope to never use them, but they're there in case.

Well, that covers a wide range of emergency situations where violence is called for, but it doesn't cover all those situations.

Because sometimes, let's say you're in a car driving through the city and now your car is surrounded by Hamas protesters pounding on the glass.

What are you going to do?

You're going to shoot them?

No.

You're going to drive over them?

No.

But with my Burna Launcher, I could roll down my window just a little bit,

stick that out, and then pull the trigger.

And within 60 feet,

I can put people down on the ground with just a little tear gas.

I'm just defending myself.

I'm just moving on.

I didn't want to hurt anybody.

Of course not.

I'm sorry, but my wife has a Burna launcher.

I have one in our car.

She carries one.

And I'm sorry.

We're going to use it.

If I feel threatened, we're going to put you down on the ground.

Burna, B-Y-R-N-A.com/slash Glenn.

You don't need a license for it.

It's legal in all 50 states.

It's burna.com/slash glenn.

Get 10% off your purchase.

B-Y-R-N-A.com/slash glenn.

So the video I just played where you had

United Kingdom cops asking a guy who was standing outside of an abortion facility, standing there quiet, just praying, what are you doing here?

And he said, I'm praying.

Well, we need to know the nature of your prayer.

What?

Well, I'm praying for my son.

I hate to pry, but we're going to need more than that.

Well, I'm praying for my son who died.

Well, okay, I hate to say this, but we think you're in violation of, you know, their version of the FACE Act.

Now, the reason why I bring this up is because if you don't think that's coming here, that's already happening in England.

If you don't think that's coming here with a Kamala Harris administration, you're fooling yourself.

That's minority report.

Tell me what your prayers are.

By the way,

if you remember the plan from the World Economic Forum by 2030 they will be able to read your mind and read your dreams

so all they'd have to do is just I don't know

put a little hat on you or I don't know exactly how that's gonna work but we are into mind crimes now

And if you think the person who is, I'm sorry to say it this way, but I think it's the only way you can say it, the woman who is the most bloodthirsty on abortion I think I've ever seen in any powerful office

is not going to do minority report

when they're putting people who were, you know, grandmothers in prison.

I think you're fooling yourself.

We are on the verge of losing your right to speak and to pray.

They've already lost it because they don't have the First Amendment.

They've already lost it in the United Kingdom.

And the reason why it is hard for people to believe this is because they just,

they are,

A, being lied to by those who are paying attention in the media, and

B, being misled,

and not in a malicious way, but the media is so...

self-centered, so self-righteous, so self-important that they don't do any homework.

They just listen to the crowd.

And I want to give you an example of this.

This is the Ferguson effect on CNN.

Now, listen to this.

This is Ryan Gurduski.

He is a conservative who was talking about the Ferguson effect

on CNN on a panel.

Listen to this panel.

This yesterday, Ryan, about how in the context of riots, he was saying, let's just bring the military into it to deal with American citizens.

I mean, that happened yesterday.

Right, but there are the post-George Floyd riots resulted in an excess of over 15,000 black male deaths in this country.

How?

Yeah.

The surge of violent crime, it was like Ferguson, the Ferguson effect and the Floyd effect.

You got to explain to me how George Floyd's death was.

Is that any causation here?

Yes, it really is.

What happens is, after the Ferguson riot and after the Floyd riot, policemen in fear of their jobs many times and political coverage pull back from their jobs

resulting in an increased level of listening

there

you can look at the Washington Post we got to stop you there because you're literally making a connection out of your own conjecture you cannot it's a real thing look up look up the Fernandes effect look up incredible

incredible this is incredible in accusing him of just making this up out of pure imagination this is absolutely true

and well known it was a theory.

Yeah, it was a theory at first and then proven to be true.

Cops stopped doing their jobs because they were afraid that they were going to be next on the chopping block.

And that resulted in

the crime of black on black going up and people getting killed.

It's really not that hard to

put together if you just use some logic.

And none of them have heard of it.

Instead of saying

none of them heard of it.

That's what's incredible, Glenn.

This is an entire panel, and it's a typical CNN panel where it's bigger than any Thanksgiving table you've ever been at in your entire life.

There's like 47 people at this table.

None of them.

And one conservative.

One conservative.

And none of them have heard of this before.

You're going to have to, I mean, forget the fact that maybe you haven't seen the CDC studies on the Ferguson effect and the Floyd effect.

Okay.

Like, maybe you just missed out on a major national news story that is tied directly to what you're talking about, but like that does occasionally happen for people.

But the fact that this guy,

think about what the country looked like after George Floyd.

You can't come up with even a basic narrative as to how this would affect people negatively.

Cities were on fire all over the country.

What do you mean you can't come up with any idea how you could connect George Floyd's death to more deaths of African Americans?

How is it possible that a human brain cannot noodle this through in mere seconds?

Even if you've never heard of it before, which, by the way, is completely unacceptable if you're on a CNN panel about race.

It's bonkers and it just shows these people live in these bubbles.

They are looking at this one conservative on the panel with this sort of like condescending disdain.

Like you have just like they went on like some conspiracy site and he's come up with this crazy bonkers idea, which is well covered by

this freaking CDC and I should also mention the news network CNN, which wrote articles about the Ferguson effect.

Yes, it did.

And you know what?

If that would have been my show, I would have done a segment the next day saying, Ryan, we need to apologize to you because we didn't know.

They didn't do that.

No.

They just move on with their lives.

Just move on.

Just like Glenn, when in the ABC debate, they fact-checked Donald Trump about the rising crime rates and said, no, actually, the crime is falling.

It's falling.

And

that's the biggest event of the year for ABC News.

The biggest thing that came out of that debate was all of the fact-checking against him.

It was a big controversial topic.

And yet, when

the information comes out that actually the crime rate of violent crime rose in this country, according to the FBI, there's not a

way Donald Trump pushed back.

Yes.

Exactly what he said happened is what happened.

Yep.

And they do they have, I mean, that is almost

like almost, you could argue,

should inspire a special by ABC News, an entire half hour about crime in the country, how they got this wrong, why they got this wrong, and a reversal.

At the very least, a prominent position on the news broadcast hosted by David Muir, the guy who actually did the fact check.

He should lead a broadcast saying, Look, by the way, in my highest profile moment of my entire career, I got a major fact wrong, and I want to make sure you know about it.

Nothing.

They've done nothing.

They haven't even brought it up.

It's a disgrace beyond even what we normally expect from the mainstream media.

That's why they have no credibility.

But remember, they are deemed, along with the government, as the people that are the arbiters of truth.

That's another reason you cannot allow Kamala and her cronies to win.

Because they are claiming that they have the handle on truth and it is the government and the media's last word is the correct word.

Everything else is miss and disinformation.

It's not, gang.

It is absolutely not.

Now there are those people like I think the panelists on the CNN on CNN, they honestly just didn't know.

They're just not intellectually curious, I guess,

or have a bad memory or don't watch CNN.

I don't know what it is.

But I don't think they had ill intent on that.

They were just ignorant.

However, do you remember the study they did in the 1960s where they separated the class between brown eyes and blue eyes?

And they showed that when they separated and said this person has brown eyes and brown-eyed people are not as good as blue-eyed people.

By the end of the day, on the playground, everything, it had changed.

They started separating themselves into groups and looking down their nose at the others.

Well, this is happening in real time.

It's just not eyes.

Listen to this.

This is a TikTok video that shows a mother explaining what her daughter's teacher in California was doing.

Cut 10.

Do you guys think this is normal for them to bring politics into school?

And if they vote for,

I live in California, by the way, but if you vote for Kamala Harris, then you're going to get a pizza party.

But if you vote for Donald J.

Trump, apparently you are excluded.

What was that um about the pizza party that we don't get the pizza party because only the kids that only our class that voted um Kamal get to um eat the pizza party but some of the kids didn't vote for Kamal they voted for Trump so then what's gonna happen to them they're not gonna be included so I believe only one period period five

had a majority for Harris.

And I and I said, and to follow that that same spirit, because

the Democrats are more for feeding the hungry, free medical care,

more services, just pay higher taxes, that I'll be willing to buy pizza for the class.

So the other classes, because they did not vote for

Harris, they're not gonna get pizza?

Yeah.

Well, they can.

They just do what the conservatives do, which pay for yourself.

Oh, that's fine.

Can I take some pizza for those other classes?

For those other classes?

What do you mean?

The ones that voted for Trump.

It's hard to figure out.

You can?

I mean, that is crazy.

That is crazy.

That is indoctrination.

So they are deciding what is true.

They're going into a minority report, asking you what your prayers are about soon in America.

And they are indoctrinating our kids in all kinds of different things.

I don't know.

I know who my house is going to vote for.

I'm proud of my children.

They each came to me themselves and said, Dad, I'm going to vote for so-and-so.

I didn't even ask them.

I can't believe people are going to vote the other way.

I'm with you.

I'm with you.

I wouldn't have shunned them if they did vote the other way.

I would have had them explain why exactly.

But if they came up with a good reason or if they even had a bad reason, it's not my vote.

It's their vote.

But

how many people even know the truth to be able to vote?

How many people are thinking today, because of Kamala Harris, that Donald Trump said he was going to release the National Guard and the Army on people he disagrees with.

Because that's what they're currently saying.

He did not say that.

He said, if there is a riot because of the vote, it should be taken care of the National Guard.

Exactly what he said two days before, January 6th.

God help those people who have turned good into evil and evil into good.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck podcast.

Andrew Clavin, my man, how are you?

It's great to talk to you, Glenn.

Benson Long.

It's good to talk to you.

Before we get into the book, how are you feeling about the state of the nation?

Well, nervous like everybody, but pretty good, you know.

It looks to me like I think that Trump is further ahead than the polls show.

And I think, you know, there's always chances of fraud and all this stuff.

But I think another Trump term would not be the worst thing that could happen to us.

And I think the

Kamala term would be.

So I think that makes me pretty optimistic at the moment.

Doesn't mean anything.

That 15 bucks will get you a cup of coffee.

I know.

I know.

Stu and I said exactly the same thing.

We've been looking at each other and we've been like, okay, don't jinx it, but how do you feel?

And we both feel optimistic.

We know it could go the other way, but we feel like it's turning in the right direction.

I have no idea what the fraud and everything else is going to do, but

it's turning towards Trump, and I think he's doing a fantastic job myself

campaigning.

If Glenn Beck feels optimistic, it'll probably rain Chardonnay.

And as an alcoholic, I approve that message.

So, Andrew, tell me about your new book.

Well, you know, this is a book, this is a book in the Cameron Winter series.

It's kind of a crisis book.

It starts with Cameron Winter really

almost having a nervous breakdown, and he becomes obsessed with finding an old girlfriend whom he's never gotten over, and he feels that she's being chased down, hunted down by someone who wants to kill her, and he wants to get there first.

And it takes him into this world of extremist politics that we're all in,

the far right and the far left fighting each other in the streets.

And Winter's a guy who really has no politics.

He's worked for the government.

He knows how the sausage is made, and he's just kind of pulled back from any kind of form of belief.

Because

I wanted to give the audience a chance to kind of look at the place that we're in without lectures, without political size, and just show you.

I mean, to me, what a novel is about, what the arts are about, is showing you the world you're in, you know, showing you the culture you're in so that you have a better perspective on it.

And what I started with is how do I solve the problem about writing about America?

We have to write about our divided politics without lecturing people, without telling people what to think, you know, because it's just boring and it doesn't make for good stories.

So I hope this is a rip-roaring story, but it does take place in a world that you'll recognize and hopefully give you a new perspective on it.

So how did you do it?

How did you show both sides?

It takes

lecturing.

It takes a lot of strength

and a lifetime of practice.

But also, I invented this character, Cameron Winter.

He's a guy.

who he's not an atheist, but he doesn't believe and he has no politics.

So just to write him honestly is to just show you the world from the point of view of he's a good man, he's trying to become a better man, and he's got a past that haunts him and all this, and but he is trying to become something better than he is, but but he doesn't have a side.

He doesn't think that there's any system that's going to make everything all right.

And he's just trying to find a way forward to become something more than he's been in the past.

And I think that that kind of you know, I think all of us are there.

All people want to be better than they are and live into their best selves.

And we're doing it at this time where you're just constantly thinking that everything's unraveling, you know.

And so

how do you become the person you're supposed to be at a time when everything is just seems to be coming apart at the scenes?

And so that's the position Winter is in, and I think a lot of us are in.

It's amazing the times we live in, isn't it?

The opportunities, if you look at it the right way, the opportunity we have to be better people is unlike anything I think my father experienced in his lifetime.

You know,

he was coming of age during World War II, but didn't fight,

was too young.

And then, you know, then you go into the American Empire kind of phase where things were pretty good.

He was too old for the 1960s.

You know, he was out of, you know, years out of college by that time.

And so he just kind of was like, you know, I don't know,

you know, the Mary Tyler Moore show, you know.

And I wondered how much better of a man he could have been could have been, and I think he was a good man, but how much better of a man he could have been if he lived in times where all the men and women were pushed to the wall and had their backs up against the wall and had to decide what side they're on.

You know, that it's a great question because I I'm absolutely convinced that we are in a time of massive transition, that what is happening is not, you know, everybody thinks it's the end of days, it's the fall of Rome, it's whatever, you know, it's a terrible collapse, but the end of something is always the beginning of something else.

And I think we're at the verge of a real change in the culture, a real change in the way we look at things.

And I think the stuff that we've been doing for the last 60 years has failed.

It's played itself out.

And you think, like, well, what's it going to be?

And it's going to be like you.

It's going to be like each of us.

Make it what we turn it into.

By turning ourselves into something really good, then it will become something good.

If we go for the main chance, we become cynical and absent and turn away from what we know is the ultimate truth, then I think, you know, the country goes down.

But I don't think that's going to happen.

And that's why I wanted to write novels now about a guy in that situation, you know, about this kind of transitional moment.

when everything is on the shift.

And I just think, you know, you're right.

I think

these are the times that try men's souls, but they're also the time that form men's souls.

And I think that that's what we're dealing with.

And if we don't, you know, if we don't take that on, you know, if we just kind of start to whine and say, oh, this is hard and it's harder than it used to be, and it's not what it used to be, then, then that's what we'll get.

You know, that's

the result.

And isn't it bizarre?

Isn't it bizarre, Andrew, the way

we've all changed?

I mean, there are people, look at RFK.

Look at what he's doing.

He's campaigning with Donald Donald Trump.

Look at Elon Musk.

Okay, both of them from the right or from the left.

Me from the right, I'm starting to agree with some of the food stuff that RFK is saying.

And I'm like, you know what?

I think he's right on that.

And, you know, I think the, I think the right or the left has been right about these ongoing wars.

I'm with them.

And now they're on the other side.

It's so weird.

It is so weird.

It is so weird that the left has become the party of the elites and the right is finally talking to the working man as

all along.

You know, I just think, look, you know, you know what I think.

You know that I think that when you leave God out of the equation, you're just going to get everything wrong.

And I think that we've been living, you know, when you stand back for a minute and think about what the elites have been telling us.

for the last, I don't know, 20 years, you know, men can become women and racism can be solved with more racism.

And, you know, there's no such thing as good or bad.

It's just all kind of relative to where you are.

It's complete nonsense.

I mean, it's not like a little bit nonsense.

It's not like a flawed idea.

It's complete babbling foolishness.

And I think that you get to that place by making some kind of primary mistake.

And that's, I think, what the transition that's coming on.

And if you look around, Glenn, suddenly you've got people who, you know, you even have Richard Dawkins sort of saying, well, I kind of like Christmas.

You know, Chris, I would be sorry.

You have Ayan Hash, who grew up under this horribly oppressive Islamism, suddenly saying, you know what, I still believe in God.

I want to to become a Catholic.

You know, these are things that are actually happening and things that you and I have been talking about for a long time.

And it's actually taking place.

And I think that that is like a light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm going to go back to the book for a second because

you take on sex trafficking in this.

And

it looks a lot like what's in the news right now with Epstein and Diddy and everything else.

Were those stories that are in real news?

Is that what inspired you to take on this evil

in your book?

Yes.

I mean,

I worked in Hollywood for a long time, and I'm going to tell you that I believe that the stuff that is going out there, Harvey Weinstein didn't even scratch the surface.

And I think, look, you look at the Catholic churches have this problem.

Some of the Protestant churches have had this problem.

Government has had this problem.

And you start, and, you know,

Jeffrey Epstein is still a mysterious death.

I really do believe that.

And I really think that there is something about power that turns people into abusers.

And we are dealing with a failed elite in this country, a failed leadership class, that I think is abusing people on a very, very broad scale, or at least in a very deep scale.

Like, in other words, it goes deep into our culture.

I think that QAnon thing was absolute nonsense.

But it's absolute nonsense that has a layer of truth at the bottom of it.

You know, it's not nonsense built on nonsense.

It's nonsense built on some deep truth.

The way we abuse people for sexual pleasure and especially young people at the most at the highest levels of power is something that has deeply corrupted our society and I believe that it begins with the kinds of beliefs that we've been talking about.

And so yes, I wanted to deal with this and this is a theme in the books that there's something going on.

I mean Winter is a guy who killed people for his government.

And one of the themes of books in general is that a soldier never comes back to the country he went off to fight for.

And he's come back to a country that he loves, and he's found it corrupt and crumbling and divided.

And one of the ways that it is corrupt is that this sexual abuse of young people.

And he has started to realize that it goes very deep.

And now that throws his whole past into a new light, and it throws the questions of his future.

What is he going to do in the future?

How is he going to continue to be the guy he is, knowing what he knows about what's going on beneath the surface?

You know,

it's one thing to talk about, you know, the deep deep state and everything else.

And it's another to ponder

what could and is beginning to look like is most likely happening with the power structure of our country.

And I'm not just talking the Democrats.

I'm talking

the whole thing, people with power all over the world.

And to see that that is,

you know, almost, what was that Kubrick movie, Eyes Wide Shut, that kind of really creepy kind of

evil that that might actually be the reality

behind these big power structures.

It's a little terrifying.

It really is because there's so much blithering virtue

posturing up at the top.

And then underneath, when you start to look at it,

how is it possible that no one has ever been indicted for being one of Jeffrey Epstein's

followers?

How is it possible that these things never get exposed?

And again, I don't even think it has to be the kind of conspiracy that you see in the movies.

It can just be a conspiracy of interest.

I don't expose you if you don't expose me kind of thing.

And I just think

that these are stories, you know, when I was in Hollywood, what used to happen all the time is you'd start to read stories about some big

gang of people who were abusing people.

And it would kind of seep up to the top.

And there would be an article in Variety, the Showbiz trade paper, saying, you know, people are starting to sweat that this is going to come out.

And then suddenly it would just disappear.

This may have happened up three times when I was in Hollywood, separate times.

And you think like, where does it go?

You know, how does that suddenly disappear?

And it's got to be because people with a lot of power are turning it off.

And I think like,

I've been writing about this a lot, but I'd like it to be threaded through my novels, too, because I think it is a part of the culture that we don't see, but we all kind of know is there.

And I think it's a sickness.

I think it's a sickness that needs to be rooted out.

Andrew, it's always good to talk to you.

Just I love you, love your work

and everything you do.

I just think you are, you know, there's a handful of people.

I put people in different categories of trust.

And the highest level of trust is, would I leave my kids to that person in an emergency?

Just say, take my kids.

And you're in that.

Sorry.

They're now in their 20s, but you've got to take them now, Andrew.

You've got to take them.

But

you're in my highest level of trust.

I just love you so much.

Thank you.

Well, back at you, Glenn.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

No, no, no, no.