Ep 125 | The Journalist Who Schooled Brian Stelter on Woke Media | Batya Ungar-Sargon | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Did you know that at Chevron, you can fuel up on unbeatable mileage and savings?

With Chevron Rewards, you'll get 25 cents off per gallon on your next five visits.

All you have to do is download the Chevron app and join to start saving on fuel.

Then, you can keep fueling up on other things like adventure, memories, vacations, daycations, quality time, and so many other possibilities.

Head to your nearest Chevron station to fuel up and get rewarded today.

Terms apply.

See Chevron TexcoRewards.com for more details.

Centuries from now, in books about American history, the biggest plot twist of our era will be that the heroes were actually the villains.

That isn't exactly unique to our era.

History is full of cowards disguised as saviors.

The difference is, is that our cowards have absolute power, but pretend not to have the power.

That's what happens when anti-establishment becomes the establishment.

What happens when the activists who want to tear down institutions become the head people of those institutions that they swore they wanted to destroy?

Heroism is an outcome of courage.

A coward can never be a hero.

Courage is a rare quality.

That's why you are a hero when you are found to have it.

But today's guest has it.

As I think you will see.

She went on CNN and she called out the woke media to Brian Stelter's face.

Watch.

You refer to the woke media right up front.

So what is the who or what is the woke media?

I don't know.

You tell me, Brian, are we on woke media right now?

This is going to go down, I think, as one of the pivotal moments of journalism in 2021.

She is a Newsweek deputy opinion editor, and she has challenged the elitism of the left.

Remember, she was on the left.

Her book, Bad News, How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy, is on sale now, and it is a rebuke of liberal elites who have taken control of our country, but it's also a call for the media to pay attention to the real Americans, the working-class Americans who have been abandoned.

Over the past decade, we have witnessed what today's guest has termed the Great Awokening.

Please welcome today's guest, Batia Ungar Sargon.

If you are waiting for the federal government to fix the problems facing our nation, you better get comfy.

Here's the hard truth.

The Calvary is not coming.

The federal government is broken.

Congress and the President are marching towards socialism, and they will never willingly limit their own power.

There is a trigger in the Constitution.

It is up to us, we the people, to call a Convention of States and propose constitutional amendments that put the federal government back in its place.

Amendments can slap term limits on on Congress, curb spending with an iron-class fiscal restraint, to get government out of our daily lives.

The founders anticipated the federal government would get out of control, so they gave us Article 5 of the Constitution to allow us to turn back the tyranny without bloodshed and without opening up everything in the Constitution.

Mark Levin, Daniel Horowitz, Governor Ron DeSantis, millions other, I am also on board.

It is time for everyone to stop simply complaining and do something.

Join me and my friend Mark Meckler by signing the petition at conventionofstates.com/slash Beck.

Join the movement.

Go to conventionofstates.com/slash Beck and sign the petition.

Join the only constitutional solution that bypasses the administration and Congress to save our nation.

Sign the petition at conventionofstates.com/slash Beck and tell a friend.

Batia, hello, how are you?

Hi, how are you?

Very good.

You know, I've done radio for a very long time, and I think that's the biggest microphone I have ever seen.

I've ever seen.

But I digress.

Seeing you,

Seeing you the other day on CNN

was truly amazing because as I was watching you in the clip that I saw, I thought, you're the ombudsman.

That's the role of the ombudsman.

And I don't even think he understood half of what you were saying.

And we live in this really weird world right now

where we don't even speak the same language at times and I don't want you to

I'd like to invite you to also

tell me or tell us what the right is doing wrong as well because we're not innocent all the time either and so let's just have a conversation about the media in general but please don't

please feel free to come on to my playground as well because we all need to learn.

That's so kind of you, and so reflects how I see you, which is

as a man struggling to have the right fight.

So, I'm so honored to be welcomed into this space in this way and really humbled by it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I mean, that's the problem we have

is,

you know,

we're not humble enough to say

am I being a part of the problem and if so how can I change this you know when when they started going after Trump

I called I called Chuck Todd I called all of them and off you know off the record and I said please please you all have said Glenn Beck's crazy man please do not make the same mistakes that I made

by being so strident and thinking you have all of the answers because you will screw it up and you will become everything you say I am.

They wanted nothing to do with any of that information and it really made me very sad because I could see what was coming our way.

Yeah.

Do you think that now

you are taking that advice

in how you deal with the current administration.

I want to preface that by saying, I watched your show on January 6th,

and I found it not just compelling and moving, but I found it to be a kind of spiritual experience in that you came out while the the riot was still ongoing with no knowledge of how probably your audience was thinking about it.

And you told them in no uncertain terms, this was wrong.

Right.

This is not what it means to be a patriot.

This is not what it means to be a conservative.

And you showed real leadership there, you know.

Thank you.

And I really appreciated that.

But I'm wondering if you, are you a different kind of media personality than you were

during the Obama administration, let's say?

During the Obama administration,

I had two jobs.

One was personal and one was professional.

One, I worked for Rupert Murdoch, so I didn't pee on his couch, if you will.

And he hired me to get ratings.

That was good because

I thought by packing, nobody wants to hear an hour on Woodrow Wilson,

but I could talk about Woodrow Wilson and the roots of modern progressivism if I made it entertaining.

So

what I was a little shocked at that I have changed a bit is,

you know, you don't get the benefit of the doubt that, you know, Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert or anybody else gets when it's a joke.

And

I was also shocked because I really thought there would be somebody in journalism that would go, man, I hate that guy.

Because they were all watching me every day.

And I thought somebody would go, I hate that guy.

He's a clown, he's whatever.

But look at what he's lined out.

I mean, that can't be true.

Let's look into it.

And they never did.

Of course.

Yeah.

I think the,

I mean, the reason I wrote this book was because I just got sick of the

sneering at

the working class and the smearing of the working class of all races as racists, and the contempt that you see from my side, the left, when it comes to the working class and to conservatives and to people who believe.

So I'm very much in line with that.

I think that

that humility that you're describing, that's lacking, is so important.

And I really appreciate you bringing it up.

So

let's talk about

the lack of humility humility or the groupthink that is going on because it's confusing to me.

You know, it's like I watch Hollywood movies and it will be the exact opposite message.

You know, it'll be, you know, this is the bad guy, fascism, and they won't get it.

You know, you're like, yeah, that's what we're talking about.

I look at the media and I think to myself,

do they really think that they

are helping African Americans by saying you're powerless

without this government program?

Do they know they're no longer on the side of the working class?

Do they?

It's such a great question.

You know, one of the germs of this book began back when I was woke.

So I had, like you, I've sort of shifted.

I've kept an open mind.

I've sort of re-evaluated some of my opinions.

But so back when I was woke, back in 2018, Yale came out with this study, Glenn.

And the study found that there was a difference in how white liberals and white conservatives talk to black and Latino Americans.

Do you know this study?

Uh-huh, I do.

I do.

And they found that white liberals dumb down their vocabulary when they're talking to blacks and Latinos in a way that white conservatives do not.

And I remember learning about this study and reading it and immediately recognizing everybody that I knew, my entire, you know, the whole class of liberal journalists that I existed in, and thinking to myself,

something is wrong.

Like, and we call them the racists, but we,

we see this, the color of someone's skin and change our language.

Right.

And

I wish I could say to you it was instantaneous.

I was like, oh, wow, there's something wrong here.

It wasn't.

I remember thinking to myself, file this away for later because this is an indictment of everything you believe.

And I'm not quite ready to deal with it yet.

And it's

for you.

No, not good for you.

No, no, no.

Good for you that you released.

It took too long.

No, most people don't even recognize that.

I just did a monologue on.

On the, you know, the truth will set you free, but it's going to make you miserable at first because

you have to change if you recognize the truth and it's not in line with what you believe most people just go i'm not looking there but for somebody even if you delayed for somebody who go

wow wait a minute that's that's a chink in the armor here that i have to examine that shows real bravery real bravery

Thank you.

I really don't think it did.

It really took much longer than it should have.

But to your question, do they realize that they're harming harming the working class, that they're abandoning the working class of all races?

Do they realize that this woke worldview is anathema to how black Americans see themselves, Latino Americans see themselves?

It's even worse than that.

And the argument I make in the book is that it's not just that they have abandoned the working class, it's that they're actually lining their pockets with this.

And what I mean by that is you take something like immigration, you know, like it used to be a liberal point of view that mass immigration is bad because these people will take working class jobs, right?

That was the Democrats' position, right?

It's like it's a very simple idea, right?

If you have an open border, there's no way to set a wage floor, right?

Which, to lefties like me, that's you know, it's very important that we have a wage floor for American citizens, right?

Today, on the left, it's considered racist to believe that we should be enforcing the border, but it's you know, who does that, at whose expense does that come and who does that benefit?

I can't believe in 45 years of broadcast that I am now in the position of saying to you, let me talk to you about body armor.

Being prepared these days means more than keeping food on the table, gas in the car, 72-hour grab bag, water.

Believe it or not, living in today's world might

include having body armor as a way of keeping your family safe and secure.

during troubled times.

We saw the riots before,

and I don't think we're past those days unfortunately.

Now you may not know it but body armor is legal in all 50 states and it has never been as affordable and easy to purchase it is as it is now.

Unfortunately I've had body armor for a long time and it was wildly expensive.

Now our friends at AR500 Armor are, they have made buying body armor easy, approachable, and affordable.

And if you are unsure of what type of armor you're needing, which is most likely, or you just need some pointers based on your needs, they have you covered.

Don't wait.

Ensure your family is protected.

Go to ar500Armor.com/slash Beck.

Visit AR500Armor.com/slash Beck.

You're going to find specials, ready-to-go bundles.

They have built a whole bunch of stuff just for you with discounts up to 50% off.

AR500Armor.com/slash beck.

I'm involved in moving, you know, endangered people from one country to another.

And we've, you know, Syria and

Iraq and now in Afghanistan.

And one of the things that I have insisted on from my charity is we don't just dump people into a new place.

We help them learn the language.

We help them find a job.

You know, it does no one any good, especially those who are struggling.

It does no one any good to just say, live in the shadows, don't learn the language, don't learn the culture.

That's a death sentence.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

How do they miss that?

Well, so exactly.

So it's, you know, I don't want to say that they're cynical, like that they're literally sitting there going, oh, we're going to use this moral panic around race at a time when America has never been less racist, when there's never been more unity around the importance of fighting racism, right?

We're going to use this to get power and to get money.

I don't think they're doing that.

I think they are really convinced.

They are really sort of hypnotized by this worldview.

But at the same time, it does benefit them economically in very real ways.

So to take immigration, for example, I mean, who benefits from mass immigration?

Affluent liberals where the wife and the husband both have very demanding jobs, where they need a lot of domestic labor, right?

Those are the people who are benefiting from this, right?

People who want to go out to eat and don't want to pay $500 in New York City for a nice meal.

They are the people who are literally benefiting from this influx of immigrants, while it is poor Americans, working-class Americans, black Americans who have seen,

who are bearing the burden, who are paying the cost for this.

Now, this is something that it's, if you say this to a liberal, they cannot, there's no, it's not like they're sitting there that they know this, right, and they're doing it on purpose.

They really cannot comprehend it.

It's very hard to get people to do that.

So, then then

how do you open the door to that without being accusatory?

I think there are a lot of people on both sides that are misguided

and they have such shields up because of the way society is.

But if you can just break through, I really truly believe that most Democrats I'm not talking about people in Congress, most Democrats, most Republicans, most independents, they do want to do the right thing.

You know, you didn't have a problem with 15 days to flatten the curve.

Nobody wants to kill everybody and nobody wants to die.

You know?

So

how did it happen with you?

How did it start to open with you?

Okay, so you'll like this story.

I had Trump derangement syndrome in the beginning when he was elected.

I felt I took it personally.

I felt, how could you have done this to me?

Right.

I had

it too.

I kind of had it too.

Really?

Hell yeah.

I was against Trump.

Wait, so what, how did you change?

How did you, what changed your mind about?

So I was on the air saying, this is a nightmare.

This goes against everything that we stand for.

Yeah.

And

I said the day of the election after it was announced that he won, I said, he's, I said the same thing I said about Barack Obama.

He's all of our president now.

And if he does what I think he's going to do, I will tell you about it.

If he does the opposite of what I think he's going to do and he does good things, I will judge him just like I did Obama on his actions, not his words.

So let's see.

And it took about a year, but he started doing things that no president would have done, and they were good positive things.

And you could say whatever you want about his rhetoric, and I'd agree with you.

But when you look at the things he actually did, the unemployment number for minorities, for women, for Hispanics,

Israel, his relations on Israel, the peace in the Middle East, how can you deny those things?

I mean, I'll take it even further.

His economic policy...

was Bernie Sanders' platform in 2015.

Wow.

Right?

Think about it, right?

In 2015, Bernie Sanders was talking about the importance of restricting immigration and having a strong border because we had to protect working-class jobs.

Bernie Sanders was talking about tariffs, talking about a trade war with China.

Bernie Sanders was talking about getting rid of NAFTA, right?

And Trump did all of those things.

I mean, as a lefty, I thought all that was great.

And I kept waiting for some liberal to agree with me, somebody to be like, oh, yeah, this is the stuff that we wanted.

How awesome is this?

And look at the unemployment numbers, right?

It is so funny.

I will say, yeah.

Because that's what I was saying.

How does no one on the left, because he was doing some things, like I'm against trade barriers.

I actually was for the one on China, but I'm against trade barriers.

And I'm like, how is the

left is getting a lot of the stuff that they like and they still hate him?

I know.

It was really, it was really funny.

I will say, though, the right also, there was, because, you know, they didn't like this stuff, right?

Because they do believe in this, you know, free trade and trickle-down stuff that I'm not a fan of, there was an embod, I felt like there was a taboo on talking about Trump's economic policy on both sides because the liberals had vowed to oppose everything.

So when he did things they liked, like the First Step Act, nobody could even talk about it.

But the right couldn't talk about it either because they didn't like it either.

But he was on their team.

And so people, you tell people about his economic agenda.

Nobody's heard of it.

Nobody knows.

Nobody knows that the new NAFTA is the most pro-labor trade deal America has ever signed.

You know, seems like an important thing for people to know, you know.

Nobody knows it, right?

Nobody knows that he, he, he released 5,000 black men from prison.

It's like you tell people that it's like there's, it's been memory hold, you know, because he's the wrong person.

It's it's insane.

I, I watched his

prison reform policy, which I was all for.

That's fantastic.

I know.

Fantastic.

And he,

you know, the thing that was

bad, I thought, was

there were so few honest people on either side that would go, you know what?

I don't like this, this, and this, but that was amazing.

That was amazing.

So you were telling me how this turned.

You were

derangement syndrome.

Yeah, I had the derangement syndrome.

And then one day my rabbi said to me, we were just talking about something on Shabbos, like, you know, on the Sabbath.

And, you know, at some point, Trump's name came up and he went, well, I love the guy.

And I was like, come again.

And he was like, I think he's great.

And you have to understand, my rabbi is one of these people who, you know, in the winter, when he walks down the street, if he sees a homeless person, he'll start taking his clothing off and giving it to the homeless person.

Like, he's the best person I know on this planet.

And it's just the cognitive dissonance, you know, the most amazing person I know.

not only voted for Trump, but loves the guy and thinks he's doing a great job.

And it was like, immediately, that had an overnight effect on me where I suddenly was like well he's not a racist so it can't be that every person who voted for him is racist and and what I tell people from this experience Glenn is like how do you change somebody's mind like it's not going to be through information it's going to be through being like my rabbi being somebody who is so virtuous that when somebody meets you if they don't agree with you they're going to have to question themselves because your virtue, your goodness, your humility, your generosity is incompatible with being evil.

And that is how we stitch back together the fabric of American society.

That's it.

But this goes back to your

thesis

in your book.

And the problem

with the media today is,

you know,

I've met a lot of people, a lot of people.

who have said horrible, horrible things about me and then got to know me and has, they've turned out to be friends, and I'm the same way.

We have been, we allow the media to make everyone into a cartoon figure.

I am not, you know, in 2007,

I was on the list of the most admired men in the world.

I, believe it or not, I was in between Nelson Mandela and the Pope.

Okay,

and I, what I said to my, what I said,

I know, that's when I was at, uh, that's when I was at CNN.

And I said to my family, well, I'm not that guy.

That just shows you how screwed up America is.

But then I became really, really hated.

I'm not that guy either.

I'm not.

And we just, we pick

either sinner or saint, devil or angel.

And

that's not who people are.

It's the American story.

Winston Churchill is one of my favorite guys.

But if you read about Winston Churchill from the West, he's fantastic.

Go read about him from anything written by an Indian.

In India, he's a monster and deservedly so.

So which is he?

Is he good or bad?

Or is he both?

And we have to look at people's trajectory because they change.

I think that the part of why conservative media and people like like you are so hated by the left is

because of your influence with the people that they have abandoned.

Like the left, the liberal media, I write about this at length in my book,

the 20th century is the history of the liberal media abandoning the working class.

And it just, you know, it's a hockey stick.

It started small, you know, around the 70s.

It really started to escalate.

And the last 10 years with the Great Awokening and this whole woke revolution.

It really, that is just the last stage of journalists abandoning the working class.

They can't stand that someone like you, through respecting your audience and through speaking to them about the concerns of their life and not sneering at them and not talking down to them, that you have created a rapport with the people that they believe should be disenfranchised, essentially, Glenn.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it, you know, like there really has been this, the reaction to Trump was very much that these people don't deserve the right to their franchise.

They don't deserve the right to elect the people that we don't approve of.

And as the liberal media's influence has gotten smaller and smaller, because now it's only about catering to this top 10% liberal elites, right?

That's the market right now.

I think there's a lot of resentment about the relationship you have with your audience.

But it's so clear you cannot have a relationship, unless it's an abusive relationship.

You don't have a relationship with somebody who you despise.

Totally.

Totally.

And

they know they despise the middle of America.

They know it.

So how could they be jealous of a relationship when they don't want a relationship with that person?

You know?

Yeah.

It's a great question.

It's a great question.

I mean, I think if you look at the way religion and religious people are treated in the liberal media,

it's just so clear the contempt, you know, the way working class Americans are.

And it's at a time when, and you might disagree with me about this as, you know, somebody who's more free market oriented, but to me, it seems like we're living at a time where the economy is very, very good for people in knowledge industry jobs, people with elite educations.

You know, 20 years ago, if you were an intellectual, if you were a journalist, if you worked in a college, you weren't that much richer than a cop.

You didn't make that much more money.

Today, you really do.

The left, the liberal intelligentsia is now in the top 10%.

The economy is really working for knowledge-age jobs, and it's really not working for the working class.

It's really not working for the middle class.

You see these deaths of despair that to me are just this perfect sign of what happens when you take 5 million good factory jobs, jobs that Americans of all races built their communities around and you ship them to China.

What you see is just suicide.

You see the suicide of this way of life.

And both sides have abandoned the working class, in my view.

Both sides are catering to elites in a way that's really, really, really an abandonment of the people who need us the most.

And it's a threat to our democracy.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, I think that's true, especially when you look at

who was it I heard talking about

how

they're now catering to these giant corporations because it's a lot easier to talk to five giant corporations and get them on your side than it is to talk to, you know, 12,000 small entrepreneurs.

And, you know,

when you have to choose, I got to raise money.

I'm going to raise money over there instead of raising money over there.

And everything now is being catered to.

I mean,

it's so weird how we have changed positions.

I've always, always looked at things like, you know, Blade Runner and, you know, I work for the corporation.

And I'm like, oh, please give it a rest.

But now it is clear, especially as we're going into the

metaverse, it is clear that corporations are running things.

And you've got the media, the, you know, the protectors of the average person

being spokespeople for those giant corporations.

When did that happen?

It's just so, it's not, it's that, it's on corporations, right?

Where, you know, COVID was,

the COVID economy was the biggest transfer of wealth in American history from the lower and middle classes up to these, you know, a centralized economy, essentially.

You see it with big tech silencing conservatives, trying to drive them out of the public sphere, and liberal journalists cheering this on.

You see it with free speech, right?

It used to be the right was the side of like blasphemy, you go to jail for saying something for swearing, right?

And the left was the side of like, no, we have to have, you know, these liberal values.

And today it's totally the opposite.

You see conservatives on the side of free speech and liberals on the side of silencing.

Or look at science, right?

Like liberals used to be like the people saying, oh, everything is relative.

Facts are not real.

You know, science is a construct.

It's created by people, right?

And you used to have conservatives being like, no, no, like let's look at facts, facts exist, right?

Today, there's been a total shift where the liberals are on the side of this, you know, state-sponsored intrusion of quote-unquote the science into your life, even when it's not science, right?

Even when it's just, you know, experimental stuff.

And you have the right being like, wait a minute, wait a minute, you know, science, the scientific method is a process, right?

We have to wait and see what's going on.

There's been a total, total reversal.

And to me, it is all about class.

It is all about the fact that liberals have become extremely highly educated in a tiny number of very elite institutions.

And those people, the people who come out of those institutions have a lock on culture.

Like you were saying earlier, you know, you turn on any movie on Netflix, any TV show, and you know immediately which character is the evil Trump voter.

You could tell immediately everything is to convey that this is the bad guy.

You know, you know exactly like, and we all just accept this, you know, as like I was talking to a friend.

I was talking to a friend

the other day about this new show that I'm watching, and I saw one episode

and I was like, oh, that's funny.

And then I started to see where it was going.

I'm like, oh,

there's a lecture coming.

And it's a comedy.

It's a mindless comedy.

And I found out later, because I literally liked the premise of it.

I found out later it's a BBC show.

So I've now watched three seasons of the BBC show because there's no booby trap.

It's just leave me alone.

There's no booby trap in there

that's political.

And I think though, and the worst part about it is like

liberals don't know.

They literally don't know that conservatives care about things like mass incarceration, police reform, you know, like they don't know.

They are just in total denial.

But that again is the media.

I mean, you know,

when we are, you know,

when my audience raises $45 million

to take

at-risk women and children and

religious minorities, anyone who's marked for death, and we move them out of the region and the media says nothing?

How do you expect the average Democrat to think anything other than conservatives are monsters that don't care.

It's so horrible.

I mean, literally, Republicans have overseen the most extensive criminal justice reforms over the last decade, often

being blocked by liberals, by Democrats, someone like Chuck Schumer, who blocks criminal justice reform.

But you look at Georgia, you look at Idaho, these states that are just overseeing mass prisoner releases because that is in line with their Christian values, right?

And you can't hear about this anywhere.

You can't, you just, liberals are totally unaware of this.

And so let me ask you, how do I, yeah.

Do you do you consider

the average

Democrat to be on board with this?

Because I really think you go into the center of the country and this divide does not

It doesn't seem to exist as much.

Maybe it does.

But when I go, I go up to Idaho.

I have a place in Idaho, a ranch, and I'm around people who are generally conservative, but there are liberals there too.

But we still know the difference between good and bad, good and evil.

You know,

it's not these cartoon characters.

It's they know my heart and I know their heart.

And when it comes to something bad happening, we're both there on the front lines trying to help.

So is that the truth or not?

I could not agree with you more.

In fact, this book that I wrote was not the book that I initially wanted to write because I was doing a lot of reporting from the South during the Trump era and I was shocked by what I was finding.

I mean, none of this would shock you, but you know, you're taught a certain thing about conservatives and you think it's true because everybody you know believes it.

And then you go into the South and you see that it's completely different.

I'll just give you one example.

I met these amazing pastors, Pastor Derek Hawkin and Pastor Jay Stewart, the pastors of this church called the Refuge.

Now, the refuge used to be two churches.

This is in Greensboro, North Carolina, the home of the civil rights movement.

This used to be two churches, a historically black church and a white megachurch.

And they decided to merge because they wanted to bring the kingdom of heaven onto earth.

And this was in 2016, right after Trump was elected.

And what the black pastor, Pastor Derek Hawkins, told me was, he said to me, you know, because of course his entire congregation voted for Hillary Clinton.

And, you know, we can be sure that at least 85% of the white, if not more, of the white evangelical church had voted for Trump.

And what Pastor Derek said to me was, you know, I think if I allow an administration to come between me and a person of another race, that lacks maturity.

And like,

that was it.

But that is, that is such a, that is, to me, I was like, oh, that is so amazing.

But, you know, he's like, no, everybody I know thinks this, you know, the divisions that we think that, you know, that represent the entire nation, they are a totally elite phenomenon.

They exist in the political class and in the chattering class.

Why?

Because they make money off of it and they get power off of it.

They get power from dividing us as Americans.

And, you know, if your listeners will take one thing away from this, it's something that I'm sure they already know, just like you know, which is that so much more unites us than divides us.

And we cannot allow people to use our hearts as the place where they're making money by teaching us to hate our fellow Americans.

You know what the leading cause of death is in the United States?

Leading cause of death and around the world.

Abortion.

Since Roe v.

Wade, over 62 million babies have been aborted in the U.S.

alone.

Nearly one in four pregnancies end in an abortion.

That's not right.

The Ministry of Pre-Born is now partnering with Blaze Media to help rescue 10,000 babies in the rest of this year, okay, in 2021.

Be a part of it.

10,000 children.

Pre-born is the direct competition to Planned Parenthood.

They are also the largest provider of free ultrasounds in the U.S.

By letting a woman see and hear the baby's heartbeat and see the baby through an ultrasound, you bring the chances that she's going to choose life for her baby up a staggering 80%.

Pre-born partners with clinics, the highest abortion rate cities and regions.

They have the passion to save babies and to see these women come to Christ.

Over the past 15 years, they've counseled over 340,000 women considering an abortion, and more than 169,000 babies have been saved.

Over 51,000 women have surrendered their lives to God.

Will you please help rescue 10,000 babies this year?

To donate, dial pound250.

Say the keyword baby.

That's pound250, keyword baby, or go to preborn.com/slash Glenn.

So, how do we get there, though?

I mean, you know, there are

it is, you know, there's some great things that are going on in the country where people are being encouraged to reach out to people that they think they don't agree with.

But it's not mass.

I think the things, you know, I think one of the benefit,

I'm a praying man myself and

There was a time in like 2010 or 11 I was seeing all of this stuff coming all the seeds being planted and I'm like how

how how how do we fight this and I was overwhelmed with the feeling that these aren't your enemies They're his enemies, not mine, because the rights don't come from me.

They come from him.

And so don't worry about it.

And I felt there in their arrogance, they will fail.

And the arrogance that is happening right now, I think

is waking a lot of people up on the right, on the sorry, on the left, they're waking up.

Right?

Yeah, totally agree with you.

Yeah, yeah.

I think you're seeing a real shift.

Yeah.

And is it these is it these pivot points like Afghanistan that we that we all recognize that was dishonorable and we shouldn't act like that.

We shouldn't be that country.

And then they just keep spoon feeding this narrative that, oh, all wars end that way and this is right and there's only 150 people left that want to get out.

And you're like, what?

Is that what's happening?

Well, as a populist who very much approved of, you know, President Trump's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, I probably fall on a different side of this than you do.

And I think it's very

brave that.

No, no, no.

I want us out of Afghanistan, too.

I think we should have gotten out of there a long time ago.

Just not that way.

Yeah,

it was bungled.

But it's funny because somebody who used to be an ambassador to Obama, he gave a really interesting explanation for why it was so bungled.

What he said was that, you know, Biden brought in, he sort of brought the band back together.

You know, he staffed the State Department with all of the Obama people.

And all of those guys, they knew that Obama had said he would withdraw from Afghanistan, and they managed to make that not happen.

And they knew that Trump said he would withdraw, and you know, people managed to convince him not to, and they were very certain that they would be able to roll Biden over on this.

That's why, you know, Biden thought they were sort of following his lead, and they were certain that he was going to follow theirs.

And that, to me, was actually kind of, it was the best explanation so far that I've heard for why it was such a mess.

But I agree with you, it was a mess.

That's a good explanation.

But

I honestly do think that wokeness is the reason that a lot of of liberals are waking up.

You know, that just

the insulting nature of it,

the way that it fails to accurately capture the richness of opinion in the black community, the way that it's, you know, like you said,

the contempt that

this worldview shows for their fellow Americans who they know are no longer racist.

I think that people are just fed up with the attempt to re-racialize American society.

And we're ready ready for unity.

I mean, we're ready for unity.

But boy, I mean, I mean, look at Virginia.

Look at Virginia.

Yeah.

They were all, all the media was on television while the lieutenant governor, the first black woman, is accepting

and walking into the role.

They're all saying this was a racist thing.

It was all racist dog whistles.

And you're like, how can these people be racist when when they just elected her and a Hispanic at another high it's not that

it was so amazing the split screen of Lieutenant Governor Winsom Sears a Jamaican immigrant chant leading the crowd and chants USA USA on one side of the screen the other Joy Reed calling her a what you know this a victory for white supremacy right it was the two Americas and I mean honestly it's just that that image of Winsom Winston Sears.

It was really, I think, a lot of liberals.

That is what they want to believe America is.

And that is what they believe America is.

And that is what America is.

And the Joy Reed side is 6% of the people are in that group.

We talk about it like that's all the Democrats.

It's really not.

It's a tiny, tiny minority that's drunk on its own, you know, success in this economy that rewards these elite educations.

I don't know why.

And that punishes people who are working class.

Again, I don't know why.

And

I mean, I guess I wrote a whole book about why, so I shouldn't say that.

But

I have a few congressmen and senators that I talk to a lot, and

they're not necessarily the ones that people would think that I'm talking to.

And I have tried to convince them, guys, now is the time to do what happened in 1856.

And that is, stand up and go, go, you know,

I've figured out that neither side actually cares about these problems.

That you're not serious about solving anything.

We're playing a giant game here.

And

I'm not playing it.

And neither are my fellow Democrats and Republicans.

This guy is a Democrat.

This guy's a Republican.

That guy's a Democrat.

That person's an Independent.

And we're done playing this game.

That needs to happen

because

the good people in Washington are just boxed in.

They all want to quit because they're like, nothing's going to work.

I'm like, you've got to find somebody on the other side that you can grab onto that believes in common sense things.

We are so far away from

talking policies.

we're doing right now is a principle that is either being upheld or violated.

We are down to the Bill of Rights at this point.

How can we not join on that?

That's so interesting.

Say more about that.

You know, the banking thing where they wanted to, you know, the debate was $600 or $10,000.

Okay.

Right, right.

That's a non-starter, not because of any other reason, then it's a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

You can't do that.

The vaccine thing.

If you want that mandate, then it has to be done by individual states.

And you could do anything as a state.

Texas could say this, and somebody else could say that, because the states have the right to do it.

It constitutionally is against

the law for the federal government to do that.

You know, and they, and nobody seems to care.

It's like we don't even believe in free speech anymore.

You know,

when you're being silenced,

I'm a guy after 9-11, a conservative on talk radio, and Bill Maher is fired from ABC.

I defend him.

I thought what he was fired for was horrendous.

But he, what part of politically incorrect did you not understand, ABC?

You know?

How'd you miss that?

It's in the name of the show.

Yeah, it's really, it's so depressing.

You know,

I'll look at somebody like Senator Josh Hawley, for example, right?

He's got this new bill that probably you think is terrible, but I think is fantastic.

You know, 50% of every product is going to be made in the United States.

You know, I think it's probably not constitutional, but I love it anyway.

I love where he's going with that.

Let's protect American jobs, right?

So wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Yeah.

So I do have there, and I would say we don't just do it if it's unconstitutional, and I don't know about that.

However,

I believe that our corporations are so out of control and they are in bed with the government.

So there's collusion going on there, crony capitalism.

That is not a free market.

It's got to stop.

But I also believe that we've gone so far off the beaten path, we don't make our own medicine.

We don't make enough steel anymore.

And I'm not for government subsidies, but I am for

there are some things in the national interest.

If China falls or we go to war with China, we're screwed.

Right.

Because they make everything we would use in the world.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Totally.

I feel like I watch the media and I'm like, can you guys talk about something important?

Can you talk about anything that truly matters?

No, totally.

Well, I'm so glad to hear you say that.

I was so, what I was going to say is you would think that there would be Democrats lining up to join hands with him and say, I want to be the co-sponsor of this bill that's going to single-handedly bring back manufacturing to America.

you know, nobody, nobody will join with him because of stupid things like you know, whatever, because he's on the wrong side.

But there are populists on the right, you know, somebody like Marco Rubio, for example, right, who's out there talking about common good capitalism.

How can we create a capitalism that works for the bottom, that works for the working class?

And there's the first thing you have to do.

The first thing you have to do is get government out of business, get them out of picking and choosing winners.

You know what I mean?

I mean,

because

you know, this Facebook farce with them coming up and going, gee, I found I'm a whistleblower and gee, we should regulate.

Really?

You're a whistleblower?

Because that's exactly what Facebook wants.

They want the government regulation.

Dode, that's so true.

You'll see their ads and it's like Facebook calls for government regulation on Facebook.

and it's like it's like the first thing I thought that was really funny too she she showed up and said

oh Instagram is making young women feel bad about their bodies and like I hate to break it to them but you know we all feel that way

it's like I'm sorry like you think that we grew up feeling great about ourselves we didn't you know right right so it's totally a moral panic and it's a moral panic that exactly like you said gives more power to the government and to you know the the liberal control and centralized control over things like big tech.

I agree with you.

But I do think that the, I also agree with you that there's been just the decimation of small businesses in a way that's just horrific and the centralization of government.

But at the same time, I do think that the government, I do feel that the government, this is like my quasi-socialism coming out.

But I say I'm a socialist the way Donald Trump was.

He felt like it was the government's job to protect working class jobs to the extent that we can.

And, you know, it was the government that sort of shipped those jobs overseas.

And I think we should, you know, government should be bringing them back.

Well,

I will tell you,

if you read anything about the Great Reset, are you up on that?

Oh, God, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, what's, I don't know if you saw what happened this week, but the great, the, the great narrative or the new narrative just kicked off.

And if you just read

their opening statements, it is the most arrogant, elite.

We are going to change humanity.

Oh, God.

And

if we could just

tell the government all around the world, you know what?

People, if you're going to even suggest that,

you should be having open meetings everywhere because you're talking about controlling and changing humanity.

Well, I I don't know.

I'm a member of the human race.

Change us to what?

How are you going to affect my life?

Can you tell me the details?

Yeah, it's so foreign to religious people like us because we believe that we were created perfectly and in God's image.

And the problem is that, you know, our government has not always treated all people equally, but that is the standard we should be getting to is to having a government that reflects God's divine plan, you know, God creating us all as equal and as, you know, each one of us, every single one of us, no matter who we are, as being exquisitely created in the divine image and equality before the law being a reflection of that, right?

So yes, we're still struggling with that.

I believe we still need to pursue police reform, criminal justice reform.

But what we're trying to, I know, and you're with me, we're trying to, you know,

to match God's perfection.

Like humans don't actually, we are perfect already and we need to strive to fulfill that potential and to be perfect to each other.

But the idea that somehow we need a revolution to change the nature of humanity is just, it's so foreign to religious people, which is still the vast majority of Americans, but we're yet we're being dictated to by these elites.

So, I

um

have you heard the new uh album from Phineas, uh, Billie Eilish's brother?

It's G, it's really genius, really genius.

Wow, and he is

he's got to be way left, way left, because she's way left, okay?

okay?

But the family did something right with those two,

and they're brilliant.

And so I'm listening to it, and I'm confused because I'm like, I'm on the side of those lyrics, and I know he's lefty, so what am I missing?

And I wrote to my daughter, she's in her 30s, and I said, and she's been listening to it a lot too.

We both love it.

And

I said, what do you think?

What is he saying here?

And she said, dad, I think he's just recognizing his privilege.

And I said, not to be rude, but what the hell does that even mean?

And she said,

you know, that we have things, you know, that we didn't earn.

And I said, okay,

so let me just state it this way.

I'm a religious person.

I believe I didn't do anything to deserve my life.

I didn't do anything to deserve this planet.

The things that I did, I mean, at times,

I wasn't working against the universe, and so it kind of helped me, you know, make some

better choices.

But nothing I did.

And I am every day grateful to my God for giving me those things.

And if I am truly grateful, I understand

that I had a very little role.

I know where it came from, so I should serve that God.

And the best way to serve him is to help my other fellow human beings.

And I will confess my arrogance to my God, but not to a mob.

And it feels like

this wokeness is a religion, and you will kneel before it, and you must confess.

Well, I only confess to my God.

I only confess to my God.

What is the difference between recognizing your privilege when

I do do that every day, just not to the mob?

That's so interesting.

I push back when people say that wokeness is a religion because to me, when I think about my religion, it's so built on the concept of chuvah, which is, you know, return, you know, making amends, forgiveness.

And I know that grace is a big component of Christianity and even Islam, like this idea that we are, the point of religion is to have a standard that you're always falling short of, right?

And to always hold yourself to a higher standard than others, right?

To always feel grateful.

And I feel like the woke ideology is sort of the opposite of that.

Number one, you're never forgiven.

You're never given any grace.

You know, there's no way of.

So Christians would refer to that, though, as, and say this carefully because people think when you say it, they think something else, that that is an antichrist teaching.

It's not that they're the antichrist.

It's that that is against the teachings.

It's the opposite of Christ.

And it can still be a religion, you know?

Does that make sense?

But

I think I understand what you're saying is you view religion as a good thing that makes you more humble, et cetera, et cetera.

Exactly.

And I agree with that, but there is also something that uses the same.

I mean, you have to bow down.

There are high priests.

You have to accept the dogma exactly the same, or you're out.

You're a heretic.

I mean, how else?

I mean, it's a bad religion.

I would call that more political, like, because it's about the use of power against people.

And to me, religion is about, like, there's no spirit to it.

There's no spirituality to it.

Can you have a religion without spirituality?

We're getting so like meta here.

I love it.

No, I love it.

I love it.

I think that it's, yeah, the arrogance and the, the,

to me, the real problem is the

abdication of the belief that we are.

The belief that Dr.

King held, you know, that we were all created exquisitely in God's image.

And it, you know, America, America, you promised us that you were going to treat us that way and you never did and you never have.

And it's time to make good on that check.

You know, that's

my religion.

Right.

And that's, and I think that is,

you know, the Declaration of Independence is our mission statement, and we have never accomplished it.

But I can't think of a higher mission than all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and governments are instituted among men to protect those rights.

I can't think, I would stop being an American in a heartbeat the minute you give me a better mission or we accomplish that mission, but we haven't even come, we've had times when we come close and then we fall short.

And then we come close and we fall short.

But right now we're saying throw that mission out

and

I guess be people who are looking for revenge.

I mean, I think,

right.

I mean, it's a question of whether you think America is on this divine path to being a place that grants all humans equality, that we all admit is not yet there but is on the path towards that, or if America is a fallen place whose DNA was in white supremacy and racism and it is essentially irredeemable.

That's the real divide, but honestly, like it's a divide between 94% of Americans who think the first thing and the 6% of far-left progressives who think the 16-19 version of that.

I don't think the divide is between Republicans and Democrats.

It's between between a super highly educated, academic, radical fringe that happens to have infiltrated the mainstream liberal media from the New York Times to CNN to the Washington Post to NPR.

My God, NPR, I can't listen to it anymore, right?

That's sort of the narrative that I talk about in my book, Bad News.

But I think that it's not 50-50.

It's 94% of us believe the first thing that America is essentially on the path towards being fulfilling its promise because it is the greatest nation on earth to ever exist, and then the 6% of far-left progressives who have that other view that it is irredeemable and it is still a white supremacy.

By the way, only 6% of black Americans are in that 6%, right?

A new Pew study came out asking people all these questions, and it found that only 6% of black Americans have the views that

we consider woke, right?

So it's sort of this tiny elite, 6% of Americans allegedly speaking as if they're speaking on behalf of Black Americans, appropriating the real pain of Black Americans who have been shunted over and over, while Black Americans themselves remain overwhelmingly patriotic.

I am convinced that

alcoholics and minorities are going to be the ones to fix this country.

Because

alcoholics will be like, rah, I hit my bottom and I don't want to go any deeper than this and there is a way to fix it.

And minorities are the only ones that can actually

speak to the wokeness and go,

I'm sorry.

No,

I know America did some bad things,

but my neighbor didn't.

My neighbor didn't.

And we're making progress.

And can we get back to making progress?

Because this is stopping everyone from making progress.

Do you see that

coming?

Do you, because you're so optimistic?

Do you see changes like that coming?

Yeah, yeah, totally, totally, of course.

You're lying to me, are you?

No, I'm serious.

No, I am a very like naturally optimistic person.

It's just how God made me, but I do, I do.

I, I, I, you know, I, like you said, you started by, I was on CNN talking about this stuff.

Who would have thought, you know, that CNN would want someone to be on there being like, guys, you got too woke.

What's up with that?

You know, like, who CNN lost its working-class audience in the last 10 years?

You know, something it was doing in the last 10 years convinced people without a college degree this is not the channel for us anymore.

Liberal people without a college degree, right?

The media knows this.

They know that they are just they have lost that working class audience who now goes in, you know, all only, you know, had conservative media has a lock on that audience.

I'll give you another surprising statistic.

Okay,

in 2019, they asked black Americans where you get your news.

So 12% said the New York Times.

How many do you think Fox News got?

36%.

Fox News is getting three times the black readership as the New York Times.

But the New York Times is drunk on the idea that somehow they are the virtuous, anti-racist side and Fox News is only for racists and whatever, you know?

Or like Donald Trump, right, who increased his standing among minorities to where he was, I think he got the most minorities of any Republican,

in the last hundred years, right?

Glenn Young, Glenn Young, who got 40 to 50% of Latinos, ran alongside the first black woman who will be lieutenant governor in the state's history.

14% of black women, okay, which is, it's not a lot, but it's double what Trump got.

He flipped entire black districts, right?

This is a man who ran on, you know, the economy, who ran on schooling, and the media's response to that, white supremacy wins again, right?

I mean, it's just not, you're going to sit here and call 50% of Latinos white supremacists.

Okay, put me with them.

You know, I'm not going to be on the side smearing my fellow Americans because they're worried about inflation.

John F.

Kennedy said in 1961: an error

is not a mistake.

An error only becomes a mistake when you refuse to change it.

That's good.

And

the media just keeps doubling down.

Are they going to,

is there a reawakening or are they just going to burn themselves to the ground?

I think that there's a shift.

I think people are realizing it's gone a little bit too far.

In the media, though.

I think so.

Yeah, I think so.

I'm sensing

a little bit of a shift.

Yeah, I think that it's just.

I will tell you, I don't know if you saw this.

The New York Times just made a video.

I watched it last night.

It's like 16 minutes long where they said, we're looking at the red states and the blue states.

And if we say, did you see this?

I saw it.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

And they're like, if we believe these things, then the red states are doing it better than we are.

And I could not believe that came from the New York Times.

So what are some, what would you, what is your advice to people who want to shift to be a uniter and not a divider?

Like, what are some lessons you've learned or some things that you've changed in your approach to this job that we can learn from?

So, the biggest thing that I

learned was

certainty is not a good thing.

And the only thing I am certain of is that I am not certain of anything, is a new mantra of mine.

And the other is

stop trying to win, Stop trying to be proven right.

Okay.

Oh wow.

Just

just oh if if I approach somebody

and I think they're wrong because this is what happens to me all the time in an interview.

They think I wrong and they will not

change.

No matter what I say, they won't change.

I've been in front of audiences.

I did this in Los Angeles.

I was invited to speak in front of an audience that

hated me.

I knew it going at very liberal,

you know, Los Angeles audience.

And I knew they were going to hate me.

And I started

the speech out.

How many in this room think they hate me?

Be honest.

Probably 95% of the room raised their hand.

It was amazing.

I said, I appreciate that.

I appreciate that.

Give me 40 minutes.

Open your mind for 40 minutes.

Okay.

And I just talked to them.

And then I said at the end, how many people still think they hate me?

And it was about 10% of the audience.

And

it came from me just

me just saying,

look, first, we have to have time to listen to each other.

And we have to have time.

I connect with you on these things.

And these things are big.

These things are not so big.

And we can disagree over here, but these things are huge.

After the speech, I had a woman come backstage and she said,

my father was one of the seven from the Red Scare.

And she's like, I consider my family liberal.

But everyone else would say we're communists.

Okay.

She's like, I'm sure you would think we're Stalin.

She said, but listening to that, she said, being in the room, my first thought was, my dad is turning over in his grave that I'm sitting here listening to you.

She said, I will fight by your side.

She said, we agree on so much.

And none of it was about socialism.

None of it was about Marxism or free capitalist society.

It was about how can we help each other be better

as people?

Because when we better ourselves and we listen to each other and we stop being so arrogant, we can actually find solutions.

So, what were in the two buckets?

What was in the bucket of this is what matters, and what was in the bucket of this doesn't matter?

I've got, I've been on a big kick of the Bill of Rights.

Uh-huh.

You know, if

do you, will you, will you agree with me on nine out of the ten of the Bill of Rights, okay?

We can argue about one.

Give me even eight out of the ten.

But those are the things that were our unum, okay?

E pluribus unum.

We didn't all come here because it was a great land or we could all get rich or whatever.

We came here because we felt we could be free, even if it was not totally free, even if it, it, you know, it failed, but we believed that the average person had a shot.

And that came from a government.

Justice is blind.

Social justice is not.

Real justice is blind.

And it has to treat everyone the same.

Because as soon as that stops happening,

Now you've got all kinds of players and money and you know, who's a favorite, all of that stuff that isn't good for the left and isn't good for the right.

That's why I don't like big regulation is always bad because you think your side is going to be in and so it's good for you.

Well, at some point, the other side gets in.

It's bad.

Totally.

Yeah.

No, that makes perfect sense.

Yeah.

So is CNN going to invite you back?

Oh, wow.

I don't know.

Because you said to Brian Stelter, you said, it's brave of you to have me on.

And I thought, no, it's actually ignorant of him to have you on because I don't think he understood.

Having you on a second time is brave.

What is so?

I go where I'm invited, but I have to tell you, it's a real honor to be here with you.

I've obviously been watching you since you were at CNN.

And

It's just,

I didn't.

I always loved your show.

I loved you on Fox.

I felt like you, you brought this

sort of like,

you know, when you go to the chalkboard,

there's something about that that is very like

it's both like campy, but also like

it really invites the viewer in where they're at.

Yeah.

You know, like there's a, it's like this combination of sincerity and performance that is, I've always found it really compelling.

Wow.

Thank you.

You're like one of the only that was in the media that that got that.

That's wow.

Thank you.

No, I love it.

I think it's so great.

And I, you know,

it's just so, there's so many levels at which it works.

And I've always just are you are you

are you in transition with friends and and jobs and everything else because you because everybody I everybody I meet that's on one side or the other and they're like wait a minute

everything changes for them

I lost a lot of friends

on the left like you would think someone is your friend and then you would log into Twitter and there they were denouncing you to the to the world you know like

that that happened when I first Oh, God, yeah, it is, it is.

But as my rabbi said, you know, Hashem never pretend, you know, he never promised it would be easy to tell the truth.

Yeah, so I take a lot of comfort in that.

Um, but yeah, I think I'm very lucky to work at Newsweek.

They, they, they really have taken a sort of anti-cancel culture position.

We run, I run people from across the political spectrum, and you know, I just take the, you know, there's a, there's a saying in the Talmud, take the truth where you can find it, you know, kabela tai met me, Misha Obro.

And that's sort of, I think that's really important.

Yeah.

You do that too.

I see you doing that all the time.

Try.

We try.

It has been a real pleasure.

I hope we get a chance to meet sometime.

It is very rare in

media or really almost anything today.

to talk to somebody who is willing to say, I've changed.

And I think we're dead if we don't change.

Totally.

I mean, there's a difference between flip-flopping and changing and growing.

So thank you for that.

Thank you for that.

You really, you did it very publicly, and I really admired that about you.

I don't know if you've read your book, but I think that's pretty public.

I think you've done it too.

God bless you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Glenn.

You bet.

Just a reminder: I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

Get a $150 cash bonus just for opening a premium checking account and up to 3.50% APY on your balance at Montera Credit Union.

Open an account today at Montera.org slash checking150.

Montera Credit Union, federally insured by MCUA Equal Opportunity Lender.

Conditions and restrictions may apply.