Best of the Program | Guests: AG Andrew Bailey & Dave Isay | 7/3/24

Well, it's the last podcast before I go on vacation for the next week or so.

And we have jam-packed it with everything that you need to know.

Some really good, uplifting things for the Fourth of July weekend, some things that we urge you to participate in.

And of course, all the news of

Joe Biden, all on today's podcast.

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You're listening to

the best of of the Glenbeck program.

Welcome to the Glenbeck Program.

You know, I talked to you a little bit about the story in the New York Times yesterday.

The First Amendment is out of control.

Tomorrow is Independence Day, and we should all review what freedom of speech is really meant for and what it is.

Now, it was written by a guy named Wu.

He's a law professor at Columbia, and he writes about tech and everything else.

And he says, First Amendment was a tool that helped the underdog.

But sometimes in this sometime in this century, the judiciary lost the plot.

Judges have transmuted a constitutional provision meant to protect the unpopular opinion into an all-purpose tool of legislative nullification that now mostly protects corporate interests.

So he's making the case that we've turned it upside down.

And I have to tell you, he makes a

persuasive case here, but he is wrong in the end.

And let me just skip

to this.

He's talking about regulation of the Internet.

Such regulation is not always perfect, to be sure, but it represents a legitimate tool which democratic governments can stand up to private power.

The next phase in this struggle will presumably concern the regulation of artificial intelligence.

I fear the First Amendment will be extended to protect machine speech at considerable human cost.

I 100% agree with that.

It's something I've been warning about for about three decades.

In our era, the power of private actors has grown to rival that of nation-states, true again.

Most powerful are the big tech platforms, true again, which in their cocoon-like encompassing of humanity has grown to control commerce and speech in ways that would make totalitarian states jealous.

Correct again.

In a democracy, In a republic, the people ought to have the right to react and control such private power as as long as it does not trample on the rights of the individual.

Again,

correct.

But thanks to the Supreme Court, the First Amendment has become a barrier to the government's ability to do that.

Free speech rights have been hijacked to suppress the sovereignty of humans in favor of the power and companies and machines.

Okay, so wait, but no, there's a difference between individuals and the government and regulations and suggestions.

You want to regulate, okay, regulate.

And let's have that not go through the administrative state.

Let's have that go through Congress.

Let's have that debate, a serious debate about it.

We can do that.

And I think the

right of the individual is what will win in that if we don't have some closed-door, you know, Google writing the bill, but actual debate the way Congress is supposed to work,

then I think free speech will win because it's a strong argument for the people.

But what the Supreme Court was talking about was, well, now, wait a minute, I think the government,

you know, maybe we send it down to the lower court and have them re-examine this because

should the government be able to just say, hey, you really need to, you need to silence these people?

No, the government should never have that power.

Ever, ever, ever.

Freedom of speech is the cornerstone.

It is why it is the First Amendment.

Freedom of speech, freedom of press, the way that the people can stand up against the government.

They can stand up against the government.

They can question our government.

They can demand answers from our government.

They have a press that should be completely separate from the government to stand guard against the government.

Remember, this whole document was made to stop a government from becoming tyrannical.

So if you're afraid of, you know, Trump or Biden becoming a tyrant, your answer, the only answer should be return to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The freedom of speech thing is so important.

Again, it was the first, but what it means you can speak your mind without fear of censorship or persecution.

Now, that doesn't make you popular,

but it does mean that the government and those powerful institutions can do nothing against you to stop you.

Would you like it if a church all of a sudden was in charge and said,

you can't say these things?

I mean, how many people on the left believe in burning the flag?

You have a right to do that.

Okay, so why did the kid, oh gosh, where was it in Oregon?

The kid that, you know, burned rubber on the pride flag that was painted on the road, he was just charged with a felony.

A felony.

What is that other than a religion

or...

or a government saying, this is what we stand for, and you will not tarnish it.

Excuse me?

I don't want that happening through a church.

I don't want that happening through the government.

I don't, I would like people to self-regulate, but things like peeling out on the pride flag, that happens sometimes, not because of homophobia.

Sometimes it is homophobia.

Other times it is just, you know what?

I'm a rebel.

You are telling me and jamming this down my throat.

No.

And it's their only way for freedom of speech.

That's the case that is made for burning the flag.

Why is it different on the pride flag?

See, we have a,

if we didn't have freedom of speech, we wouldn't understand

anything.

Because the things that were said at some point or another that have made progress and pushed us into new areas have always seemed crazy or dangerous.

But they move us forward.

Well, I'm not talking about speech that moves us forward and makes progress.

I mean the speech that's dangerous.

Oh, really?

Because that's what every authoritarian and autocratic and theocratic dictator has always said.

The problem is, who's in charge of judging what's dangerous and not?

The church?

The government?

Academia?

Some other group or organization that would have the power to silence people?

Remember, the only speech that needs protecting is the speech that either the majority doesn't like or power doesn't like.

You know, the world was flat for a very long time.

And for centuries, that was the accepted view.

And challenging it was seen as heresy.

And then thinkers like Pythagoras and later during the age of exploration, Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus dared to propose and demonstrate otherwise.

It was their courage to speak out and to explore beyond the known boundaries that led to an understanding of what the earth really was.

Now, the power didn't want it.

The church didn't want that.

Church would prosecute anybody and persecute anybody.

You know how they got

King Ferdinand to do it?

Gold.

I'm telling you, there's lots of gold.

And you know what happens if he's wrong?

He falls off the edge of the earth.

Big deal.

The idea that the sun revolves around the earth, or is it the earth revolves around the sun,

that faced significant resistance?

Copernicus and Galileo, pioneers, revolutionary idea, went against the power of the time.

In 1633, the Catholic Church, which was the power, tried Galileo during the Inquisition and

forced him to recant under threat of torture.

Okay, who's deciding what free speech is good, what's progress, what's not?

It's easy to see them in reverse.

You know what Socrates was killed for?

He was killed by the government.

He went through a fair trial.

You know what he's killed for?

Because he was corrupting the youth of

Athens, because he encouraged questioning the established norms and beliefs.

Anybody who ever says, don't, you can't question that, don't question that,

you should run from.

Socrates was corrupting the youth because he said, question

everything.

Giordano Bruno, I think it was his name.

He's the guy who said there's infinite suns and infinite worlds.

He was burned at the stake in the Inquisition of 1600.

Martin Luther, as well as Martin Luther King.

How about Thomas Edison and Nikolai Tesla?

The war of currents.

This was all about power, literally and figuratively, power and money.

Here's Thomas Edison, who is using the system to stifle innovation.

Edison wants direct current.

Because he was losing that battle because it didn't make sense and it wasn't working

he had to discredit Tesla and through he did it through smear campaigns and propaganda

he had public demonstrations where he got this sick doctor to go and electrocute animals using Tesla's alternating current He would take down horses, dogs, whatever you had.

He'd go to a state fair or a local fair and he'd execute the animals and saying, that's what Tesla wants to put in your house.

Thank God we weren't afraid of the scare tactics because that's what we all have in our house today, or at least we will for a while until they come up with something even better that you're not allowed to question.

If you can't challenge prevailing wisdom, If you can't propose a new idea, if you can't say, wait a minute, this doesn't doesn't make any sense,

everything stops.

Progress depends on the free exchange of ideas.

And if you get rid of your opposition,

life falls apart.

Even the Bible says opposition in all things.

You have to have

the metal

and the flint.

It's when they rub together, when they strike against each other, that's when a spark is made, and that's when things change.

This is what we're arguing about right now.

It should show you the health of America.

I mean,

when you have a cold the doctor might talk to you about, you know, okay, I want you to take this and this and this, and just get some bed rest.

But when you have a cold and you have cancer, the doctor's not talking about the cold, okay?

He's talking about cancer.

Our cancer is so deep, we're down to the fundamentals.

We're down to, okay, you can't lose freedom of speech.

You can't lose your

protection against your own civil rights.

We're down to the big ones.

That's how sick this body is.

Meanwhile, they want you to yell and scream about Biden or Trump or whatever.

It's the fundamental rights that are first expressed in our Declaration of Independence, something that was signed

and agreed upon on July 2nd, finally announced to the American people on July 4th.

That we should be concentrating on.

I urge you this Independence Day tomorrow, and I know your family's going to roll your eyes, their eyes, and go, Dad, please.

At least mine do all the time.

Dad, please.

Read the Declaration of Independence

tomorrow.

Read it.

Understand it.

Work through it with your kids.

Work through it with yourself.

It's still alive today.

I'm so grateful for the opportunity to have an art exhibit coming up.

I'm grateful because I meet so many people

through that, so many listeners, but also this time, because we're having it at the studios in September 20 and 21st in Dallas, Texas,

I'm going to be surrounded by, gosh, I think 50 of some of the greatest artists in America, and they're all painting scenes from American history.

It's really a different thing.

We'll talk about it later.

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Now, back to the podcast.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

All right, so yesterday in New York, Donald Trump filed

to stop the madness

because of the new Supreme Court ruling and wanted a review.

This has now been delayed until September.

But again, I think they know it's not going anywhere.

They're just going to use it now in September to

you know lay out all the evidence again right before an election, which would be again election interference, in my opinion.

But

that's the way they do it today.

Andrew Bailey is with us.

He is the Missouri Attorney General.

He was on just a couple of weeks ago, and he said he was planning on suing New York in response to the unconstitutional law fare against Trump.

Breaking news here on the program with Attorney General Bailey on what the next steps are.

Attorney General Bailey, welcome.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, thank you for having me on.

And as always, your analysis is spot on.

There's a rogue prosecutor and a collusive judiciary in the state of New York who are absolutely looking to upend the national presidential election.

And they're using lawfare to do it.

This is poisonous to our Democratic Republic and our Democratic processes.

I can't let the state of New York sideline Missourians who want to hear from, engage with, and participate in a national presidential election for their chosen presidential candidate.

And think about this.

By statute, Missouri has electors that go to a convention who need access to a presidential candidate.

They have a job to do under the statutes of the state of Missouri, and they're being denied access to a presidential candidate because of the gag order and the lawfare illicit witch hunt prosecution against President Trump.

The founders contemplated there would be disputes amongst the states, and they codified a method to redress those grievances.

Article 3, Section 2 of the United States Constitution sends that case directly to the United States Supreme Court.

I'm proud to report here on your program that we are on file at the Supreme Court.

It's going to be Missouri versus New York to stop the lawfare.

So what happened?

Because aren't they like, aren't they like, I don't know, flying in rich people's airplanes now, illegally and unconstitutionally, of course.

How does this happen during the summer?

Well, you're absolutely right.

Their docket has ended.

Their term has ended.

But there's a special docket.

It's called the original action docket for cases where the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction based on the United States Constitution, based on the plain text of the Constitution.

So there's a special docket.

So the justices will be notified.

You know, there's a process that they go through where

the clerks have to print all of the doc the multitude of documents, distribute them to the different justices.

It has to be placed on the OAD docket or the original action docket.

And then there will presumably be a period where the court will order responsive briefing from the state of New York, and the case will proceed accordingly.

But, you know, I think that there's been a major shift in the conversation on this issue because of the immunity decision coming down and the extension of time on the Trump sentencing.

But I think you're also exactly right.

Look, pushing this sentencing to September is actually very dangerous because it means that the honors conditions of confinement, probation, house arrest, community service, whatever that looks like after the sentencing are going to happen even closer in time to the election.

And either way, the gag order will remain in place between now and then.

Again, that harms Missourians' rights to hear from a presidential candidate.

That's why this case is so important, why we had to get it on file and continue to push it forward to redress the grievances of the people of the state of Missouri.

So two questions.

First of all, when do you expect to hear from the Supreme Court?

When could they rule on this?

Well, my hope would be that they would demand a briefing from the state of New York as early as next week.

Presumably, briefing would then appear from New York in the middle of July, and we would have a chance to respond to that briefing.

And then, if I'm the court, I'm going to wait until September and see what happens at sentencing.

In other words, if the judge says we're lifting, if the trial court judge in New York says we're lifting the gag order and President Trump's on bench probation, this offense was not a big deal, and there are no conditions of probation.

Well, it's hard to explain that there's harm at that point.

Now, I don't think that's going to happen.

I think that you can look at the constitutional violations that are replete throughout this process and realize they want nothing more than to send President Trump to prison on the eve of an election.

That's why we've got to keep this case going and fight so hard to prevent them from interfering in the election.

And shame on the media.

Shame on the media for legitimizing this law,

for legitimizing this injection of this poison into our democratic process.

So,

Andrew, you have any other states joining you on this?

At the present time, Missouri went it alone because speed was of the essence.

We had to get this on file.

Now, I do anticipate that other states will have the opportunity to file amicus briefs in support.

But look, at the end of the day, this is about, I represent the state of Missouri, and I represent the people in the state of Missouri who want to participate in a national election or being denied the right to do so.

But I do think that it is incumbent upon every state attorney general to determine how the lawfare

and this attack on the national election is negatively impacting their their people and to find appropriate remedies.

The typical criminal appeal takes 18 to 24 months, and it really only redresses an individual criminal defendant's grievance.

That process is inadequate at this time to protect the people of the state of Missouri and anyone who wants to engage in the presidential election nationwide.

What did you think about the judge

pushing it out

into mid-September and then saying, apparently,

if it is even relevant at that time?

what does that mean?

I have no idea.

I'm concerned.

I mean, clearly, the judiciary, this judge is working in collusion with Alvin Bragg, who should have been disqualified from the case in the first instance.

The judge should have never presided over the case, and the prosecutor should never have been allowed to bring these charges.

But those systems clearly failed.

And that's my evidence that I think we have every reason to infer that they are hell-bent on sending President Trump to prison on the eve of an election.

So, again, this delay actually puts us closer in time to

when we would be going to the ballot box.

And there's a doctrine in the law, it's called the Purcell Doctrine that essentially the judiciary should not be making decisions on the eve of an election that could inject confusion into the election.

I mean, voters are already asking the question: Can Donald Trump appear on the ballot?

Will we be able to go vote for him?

Is he on the campaign trail?

What's going on?

This is all intended to dampen enthusiasm and drive down Republican votes.

That's a direct attack on our electoral process, and now it's going to go on at least into September.

Andrew, thank you so much.

Appreciate everything you're doing in Missouri and for Missouri and for the country.

Appreciate you standing by the Constitution.

Thank you.

Thank you, Glenn.

Happy morning, you and your listeners.

Hey, happy Independence Day.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

Stu,

what do you make of the?

I mean, again, this is we were talking about it.

This is alcoholic behavior.

What the Democrats are doing is alcoholic behavior.

They are grabbing onto the steering wheel and they're just saying, no, I'm going to do it my way, my way, my way.

And they are forcing everything

their way.

They have made stuff up, changed laws, changed jurisdictions, did everything they could to get Donald Trump.

And they waited until he announced.

They wouldn't have done it if he didn't announce that he was going going to run for president.

So they waited and they were thinking to themselves, most likely, oh, this is going to be perfect.

It'll be in the running up of the election

and it's just going to be so sweet and so great.

Well, it's not working.

And they just are keep hanging on.

The same thing with Joe Biden.

If they would have done the responsible thing, the right thing, a year ago, and said, you know,

there's a lot of smoke about his confusion.

Let's just make sure that that's not happening for the good of the country, for the love of Pete.

And they would have listened to the American people and they would have said, Joe, you've got to do, because we have all these questions, you have to do either the primary or you have to do X number of interviews with tougher people, not people who are in the bag, with some tougher people.

And we have to see you perform, and the American people need to see you perform.

If they would have done the right thing then, they wouldn't be in this situation.

But now the entire thing is in chaos, and it's because they refuse to admit that they don't control everything.

It's the progressive Achilles heel.

You have to be so arrogant that you think your way is the only way and it's the right way, and that you can control all of these different variables so it'll work out for you.

It never works out.

Yeah, yet again, centralized control fails, right?

It's this story of the past, you know, couple hundred years,

really, since communism came around.

We've seen this happen over and over and over and over and over again.

I,

you know, you look at this and their new excuse is almost the most disturbing one, which was this is from media and democratic elected officials.

And basically what they're saying to these reporters off the record is, we're angry at the AIDS around the president because they kept telling us he was fine.

And so we kept believing it and repeating it.

And now we look bad.

I don't believe that.

Well, I don't know.

I think there's an aspect to it, at least, that's true, which is they

I think they knew what was going on, but they kept taking these words and being like, well, let's, you know, this is the spin.

This is what we're supposed to be doing.

We're dutifully going to report it to everyone.

And now that it's fallen apart, they're sitting here blaming the AIDS, which again, it's on you.

If you're a journalist, you're the one that should have been asking these questions the whole time.

So I've been doing a lot of research on progressive doctors,

and especially those that influence those doctors in Germany and then those in Germany and what they said during the Nuremberg trials.

It's the same thing.

It's exactly the same thing.

Well, I didn't know.

It wasn't me.

I was told that this was fine and I was told that that wasn't happening.

They all knew.

They all knew.

All of the doctors knew.

They participated in it.

They couldn't be a doctor if you wouldn't participate in it.

So they chose that they wanted their lifestyle and

their position and they chose to deny what they knew to be true, that killing people is killing people.

It's not compassion.

It's killing people.

And in the end, they all tried to blame somebody else.

But they all knew.

There's no way you rode on that airplane with him.

There's no way you were walking the halls of the White House.

There's no way none of these people had a really well-placed source inside the White House that wasn't saying, geez, man,

this is getting insane.

This is getting insane.

There's no one,

no one.

that spoke to a member of the press.

The deal was they didn't want to hear it.

They didn't want to see it.

And now they're blaming it on others.

You're just as guilty as those who stood.

We could see it.

The American people said.

The Democratic voters said he's too old.

He's too old.

It wasn't ageism.

They were watching him decay

overnight, every night.

You didn't want to see it.

Yeah.

And they kept that in play until the very, very end until they couldn't do it anymore.

I mean, Glenn, one week apart was this call now for him to step down because he's obviously too old and the controversy over cheap fakes.

That was one

week before this started.

A week.

Yes.

A week ago, they were telling us these were all faked videos to make him look like he was incoherent.

And who could believe that?

Who believed that?

Only the diehards that had to have it to be true.

You cannot force your will on everybody else.

You cannot control reality.

You can't.

It eventually all comes crumbling down.

You're an alcoholic.

You're addicted to power.

You're addicted to lies.

I don't know what it is.

But you've got to surrender to the truth.

or you're going to burn the whole damn thing down.

And I got news for you.

I'm a recovering recovering alcoholic from an alcoholic family.

I've learned these lessons, and I'm not going to be around you when you're burning the whole place down.

You're not burning my place down.

You're not going to do it.

And that's what Americans need to say.

Only the alcoholic can stop the alcoholic behavior.

We can point it out, we can wish them well, but we are not going to allow them to burn down our house

because

they're living in another reality.

No,

no,

you can destroy yourself.

You won't destroy me.

The best of the Glenbeck program.

So, President Biden has agreed to do a sit-down with George Stephanopoulos on Friday,

and yet they are still pushing him to

step down so they can find another nominee.

They've created a huge mess in their own party because they refuse to

recognize the obvious that it's human to start to slip towards the end.

And I guess they can't wait until Friday, which says to me that he's in even more trouble than we've even seen.

Because if he wasn't, he could sit down with George Stephanopoulos and knock it out of the park and it would be over, I think.

But somebody, you know, very powerful people and a lot of Americans want him out of office now after the debate.

He has just, the White House has just made an announcement, which is

to be clear, it is a report from the New York Times that Biden told an ally that he is weighing whether to continue in the race.

This is the first indication from anywhere inside the Biden camp that this is going on.

Now, assuming the Times is telling the truth, which of course is something we definitely have to consider.

Yeah, and you have to, you know, if that would have come out two weeks ago, it would have been a different story.

Yep.

But now the New York Times is on the exact opposite foot, foot

and they are doing everything they can to get him out.

So I don't know if I believe that.

I don't know, because if this is actually an ally, then you would assume this is messaging approved essentially from the White House.

Correct.

Right.

Correct.

It does give essentially Biden and out here.

He's got an interview scheduled with Stephanopoulos, as you point out, on Friday, and two campaign stops, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Those must go well, is essentially the standard they've set for themselves here, which is just really legitimately incredible.

To the extent that now we have a, we went through a nomination process.

Joe Biden won that nomination process.

He has participated as the nominee during a presidential debate.

This has already occurred.

Right now, the favorite to be the Democratic nominee on betting markets is Kamala Harris.

She has a 50% chance.

I think that's the only thing they can do.

Joe Biden at 29%.

He has a 29% chance to be the nominee of the party whose primary he's already won.

I mean, the fact that we're going to get around this, I don't.

They're talking now about literally speed dating

election.

Speed dating a primary.

Oh, that's unbelievable.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

We'll give you a moment.

Go ahead.

Finish it up.

Yeah, no.

I was just going to say, like, Donald Trump strategically has been really, really good at essentially stepping back and letting all this unfold, right?

Like, he's been doing a little truth social stuff, but he has not gotten in the way.

He's let all this go.

I'm starting to wonder whether he should start to get in the way.

Like, I think maybe he should release the vice presidential pick today to distract people from this.

You want to keep Biden in this race.

I know.

I think he should just come out and say, the one thing that would really make me a dictator is Kabula Arris.

She would do it.

Anybody other than Joe Biden, I just want to be a dictator.

I think he should be like,

my vice presidential.

I'm considering considering Stormy Daniel.

I wouldn't have necessarily thought of the...

Whatever you can to derail this right now, or he's going to have to face someone who can.

I'm so torn on this.

Yeah, I'm so torn on this because politically, the right thing is to keep Joe Biden in for the Republicans,

but for the country,

this is a horrible situation.

He can't step down just from being the candidate.

I mean, he really should step down, and it would probably be the best thing for Kamala because then she would just be the incumbent president.

All right, Dave Isse is with us.

Dave is a good friend of mine.

He does StoryCorps.

He is the founder and president.

If you don't know Story Core, good for you.

You probably haven't listened to NPR.

They've been featured on NPR forever and ever and ever, and they're not an NPR thing.

It's just featured on NPR.

Dave is just

an amazing American.

Someday I think I might just have to do a podcast with just him

because of the things that he has seen and done.

He's preserved the voices of real people.

All of the StoryCorps stuff goes to the

National Library or the

Library of Congress.

And so it's there forever to record the voices and the feelings of people as we live it.

He's got an announcement to make on StoryCorps, takeonesmallstep.org.

Dave, welcome.

Glenn, what a day.

Can you believe the insanity that, and people are just going on there with their life?

Like, you know,

what's the problem?

No, I'm just worried about getting some hot dogs for tomorrow.

You know, it's rough days ahead.

It's a crazy, crazy time.

And I appreciate you having me on because, you know, it's, I think what, what, you know, we've been friends for a bunch of years now, and I'm incredibly and kind of unlikely friends, right?

Yeah, I know.

You did, uh, you did a, did you do a segment a couple weeks ago about Teddy Roosevelt's man in the arena?

Oh, yeah.

I think, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I've been thinking about that.

You know, it's,

I feel like together we've been kind of, you know, daring greatly.

Yes.

Well, we both, I don't even know your politics, and I don't need to, Dave, but we both agree on American principles and we both know our country is in trouble and we both have faith that the American people, if they can get past the politics, will see reason and see each other again and we save our country.

Yeah, I mean, that, look, we both have, exactly.

We love our country like beyond in ways that we can't even express with words.

And, you know, we've both been fortunate enough to have a front row seat on who we are as Americans.

And we know that,

you know, there's two ways this can go.

We can see each other again, or we can, you know, or, you know, we're going to leave a country that we don't want to leave for our kids and our grandkids.

And it will be one of the greatest tragedies.

in the history of the world.

And this is a moment, you know, even in the last 60 seconds.

We're in a moment, you know, and it's time, it's time to say enough, and it's time to, you know, it's time to stand up.

And as you said, yeah, so you were, you know, when this idea of one small step, which is people, Americans, everyday Americans from across the political divides, saying enough, talking to each other, getting to know each other as human beings, not talking about politics, and seeing that.

We have so much more in common than divides us that it's hard to hate up close.

This, you know, I came to you and this was kind of a twinkle in our eye.

And the Glenn Beck Show has been with us the whole time.

We launched, you know, we've tested this for years.

We launched locally a bunch of years ago.

We've had thousands of Get Glenn Beck listeners participate.

And this is the first call that I've had.

We're going to announce this on Monday to the rest of the country.

But it's, you know, given the stakes of what's coming up in the country, you know, we are taking this national

on Monday.

You know, Glenn Beck listeners have always been able to participate, but other than Glenn Beck listeners, it's only been people in a couple of cities around the the country, and now the whole country can participate.

And we're hoping that

thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will come together and see each other as human beings and realize how much we have at stake here in this country

if we can't love each other.

I want to bring in Michaela Hedrick.

She is the co-writer of my new book,

Chasing Embers.

And she is

20-something that is

just

she's a 20-something and a good one.

And she's actually

no, you know,

you get dicey, Michaela, and you know it.

You actually

participated in

the One Small Step program.

Yes.

Tell me your experience.

I participated twice.

The first time I was with a left-leaning mom from Brooklyn, who actually works for Story Corps.

And the second time, I was with an older gentleman who was afraid to talk to me because he's never voted in his life.

And, well, I work for Glenn Beck.

But what I found was did he know that in advance?

He did.

I put it in my bio so we knew up front what was going on.

But what I found is that we weren't afraid of disagreeing with each other.

We were afraid of being misunderstood.

We were afraid of being misjudged.

And so, as soon as we understood together that we were there to hear each other, then we could speak our minds without compromising, but also without fighting.

So,

but did you talk about politics?

We did.

We talked about my first discussion, we actually talked about abortion without ever losing our minds.

Oh my gosh.

Yes, I was so blown away that we went there.

But StoryCorps encourages you to go there in a way that you're not trying to change each other's opinions, but you're trying to see where are you coming from?

Why do you believe what you believe?

And at the end of it, I realized, okay, you're not a monster.

And she realized I'm not a monster.

And that was my deepest fear.

I was afraid I'd go in and I would be judged for being a hater or a monster.

But the way they facilitated it, we had to listen to each other.

And that does, you said, Dave, you can't hate up close.

You really can't.

Yeah, I tell you, Dave, I mean, the reason why I've been with you on this project from the beginning is I've had hardcore communists who have come into my office before shaking.

They were so full of rage and anger towards me.

And I've sat there and I just listened to them and I tried to understand where they were coming from.

And by the end,

we've always walked away.

We don't necessarily agree with each other, but we've always walked away going,

he's not so bad.

You're not so bad.

And I'm sorry that

I've made you feel this way.

Or he was, I'm sorry that I

misunderstood.

He started the conversation with me.

I've heard about you.

I hear people meet you and then they like you.

Oh, it's not going to happen to me.

And it was an amazing meeting.

But if you just stay cool, you find the humanity

within each other.

Well, Michaela said it better than I ever could.

And, you know, you joke about Michaela's

a young woman in her 20s.

You know, we have biases there also.

I mean, she's a great American.

Thank you, Dave.

Finally.

You get your due.

You've been waiting.

You know, but what you get to, this is the core of the problem in the country.

And this is what, you know, what Lincoln said, you know, we'll never be defeated from outside.

We can only be defeated from within.

The issue isn't that we argue with each other.

That's healthy.

What's happened in this country is we're living in a reality distortion field, and we can't see each other as human beings.

And when you can't see each other as human beings, that's what leads to the Holocaust.

That's what leads to Israel, Palestine.

We can't go there.

I mean,

we can either throw stones at each other or we can pick up stones and build a better country.

And we're at that inflection point, Glenn.

And your audience,

you know, I've always felt that media put to its highest use can be one of the greatest forces for good the world has ever seen.

That almost seems like a joke now, given what.

No, I don't think so.

But it's true.

You know,

we can create a better country together.

And this,

there's too much at stake.

We've got to see each other as human beings.

We've got to see each other as human beings again.

Or all of this, you know, what our parents, what our grandparents bled for and died for is going to be lost

so dave i know i've cut commercials for one small step that you air on on different formats

are you getting conservatives

yes i mean we are really we are trying we we are going to need your audience to help spread the word.

Yes, we are getting thousands of conservatives to do this.

But we need more.

We need millions.

We need millions of people to do this.

I think, Michaela, you said this on why we're afraid of

participating.

How did you explain it?

I explained it that conservative people have been rightly conditioned to believe that when somebody says a space is inclusive, they mean inclusive of everyone except for you.

But as a

you know, as a young 20-something, as we said, one of the redeemable ones, though,

I've heard stories.

I've heard stories of in America where I have a Trump sign and my neighbor has a Biden sign and we still go to backyard cookouts.

And if there's a big storm, we still take care of the elderly woman down the street.

And I'd love to see that America again.

And that's going to take also a special level of humility from us as conservatives that say, look, I know we haven't been welcomed in these spaces before, but we believe that we all are united as Americans still.

It's a special kind of bravery.

Yeah, and I think there's nothing.

And that's, you know, it's, but that's America.

That's, you know, it's the greatest generation.

We can be that again.

It is going to take bravery.

But, I mean, I can't, again, I don't even know I'm on the call because Mikaela is saying everything better than I can.

But this is

exactly what it's all about.

We have to be able to.

So, Dave,

you're announcing this next week.

How can people get involved?

So we want

think of this as a July 4th resolution, which is a new thing.

Go to takeonesmallstep.org.

sign up to be a part of this.

Get everybody you know to do this.

We're going to start, you know, we're rolling this out in anticipation of this election where whatever happens, whoever the nominees are, on the day after the election, half the country is going to think it was stolen.

So

it is not going to be a good moment.

So we need to strengthen those muscles that Michaela has, I didn't know she, when I heard, I heard that One of my staff members told me that she had done an interview with one of your staff members, and it just gave me such joy.

You know, it was like

the fruition of the work we've done together.

So

we want you, everybody to participate.

Do it.

If you've done it before, do it again.

Let's just, we have to see each other as human beings.

Mother Teresa said, you know, we've forgotten that we belong to one another.

And, you know, we have to remember that we do.

And I can't say it better than Michaela.

Okay.

Takeonesmallstep.org.

Takeonesmallstep.org.

Dave, thank you.

Michaela, as always, thank you.