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

1h 13m
Wokeness has taken over the American Left — or at least the elite — and the corporate media is leading the charge. But the Left’s “Great Awokening” is actually fueling a great awakening of average liberals, this week’s guest included. Newsweek deputy opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon joins Glenn after taking CNN’s Brian Stelter to school about wokeness — on HIS OWN show. She reviews the biggest takeaways from her new book, “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy,” including how journalists have abandoned the working class, how she overcame Trump Derangement Syndrome, why the Left hates conservative media, and why there’s much more that unites us than divides us.

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Runtime: 1h 13m

Transcript

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Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 That's what happens when anti-establishment becomes the establishment.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 3 I don't know. You tell me, Brian, are we on woke media right now?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Remember, she was on the left.

Speaker 2 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 awakening please welcome today's guest Batia Ungar Sargon

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Speaker 2 Batia, hello, how are you?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But I digress.

Speaker 2 Seeing you the other day on on CNN

Speaker 2 was truly amazing because as I was watching you in the clip that I saw, I thought, you're the ombudsman.

Speaker 2 That's the role of the ombudsman. And I don't even think he understood half of what you were saying.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 I'd like to invite you to also

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 please feel free to come on to my playground as well because we all need to learn.

Speaker 3 That's so kind of you, and so reflects how I see you, which is as a man struggling to have the right fight.

Speaker 3 So I'm so honored to be welcomed into this space in this way and really humbled by it. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's the problem we have

Speaker 2 is,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 we're not humble enough to say, am I being a part of the problem? And if so,

Speaker 2 how can I change this? You know, when they started going after Trump,

Speaker 2 I called Chuck Todd. I called all of them

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Do you think that now

Speaker 3 you are taking that advice

Speaker 3 in how you deal with the current administration? I want to preface that by saying, I watched your show on January 6th,

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 the riot was still ongoing. with no knowledge of how probably your audience was thinking about it.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 and I really appreciated that but I'm wondering if you are you a different kind of media personality than you were

Speaker 3 you know during the Obama administration let's say

Speaker 2 during the Obama administration I 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,

Speaker 2 if you will.

Speaker 2 And he hired me to get ratings. That was good because

Speaker 2 I thought

Speaker 2 by packing, nobody wants to hear an hour on Woodrow Wilson,

Speaker 2 but I could talk about Woodrow Wilson and the roots of modern progressivism if I made it entertaining. So

Speaker 2 what I was a little shocked at that I have changed a bit is,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I thought somebody would go I hate that guy he's a clown he's whatever

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 3 yeah

Speaker 3 I think the um

Speaker 3 I mean the reason I wrote this book was because I just got sick of the the sneering at

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 So I'm very much in line with that. I think that

Speaker 3 that humility that you're describing that's lacking is so important. And I really appreciate you bringing it up.
So

Speaker 2 let's talk about the

Speaker 2 lack of humility or the groupthink that is going on because it's confusing to me. Um, you know, it's like I watch Hollywood movies and it will be the exact opposite message.

Speaker 2 Uh, you know, it'll be, you know, this is the bad guy, fascism, and they won't get it. You know, be like, yeah, that's what we're talking about.

Speaker 2 I look at the media and I think to myself,

Speaker 2 do they really think that they are

Speaker 2 helping African Americans by saying you're powerless

Speaker 2 without this government program?

Speaker 2 Do they know they're no longer on the side of the working class? Do they?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I've kept an open mind. I've sort of reevaluated some of my opinions.
But so back back when I was woke back in 2018, Yale came out with this study, Glenn.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 2 Uh-huh, I do.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 something is wrong like and we call them the racists but we

Speaker 3 we see this the color of someone's skin and change our language right

Speaker 3 and and I

Speaker 3 wish I could say to you it was instantaneous. I was like, oh, wow, there's something wrong here.
It wasn't.

Speaker 3 I remember thinking to myself file this away for later because this is an indictment of everything you believe

Speaker 3 and i'm not quite ready to deal with it yet and it's good for you know you

Speaker 2 no not good for no no no good for you that you at least took too long no most people don't even recognize that i just did a monologue on um

Speaker 2 on

Speaker 2 the you know the truth will set you free but it's going to make you miserable at first because

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 wow, wait a minute,

Speaker 2 that's a chink in the armor here that I have to examine, that shows real bravery. Real bravery.

Speaker 3 Thank you. I really don't think it did.
It really took much longer than it should have.

Speaker 3 But to your question, do they realize that they're harming the working class, that they're abandoning the working class of all races?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 Which, to lefties like me, that's you know, it's very important that we have a wage floor for American citizens, right?

Speaker 3 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?

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Speaker 2 I'm involved in moving, you know, endangered people from one country to another. And we've, you know, Syria and

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 That's a death sentence.

Speaker 3 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 How do they miss that?

Speaker 3 Well, so exactly. So it's, you know, I don't want to say that they're cynical, like that they're...

Speaker 3 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 thing and the importance of fighting racism right we're gonna 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?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 They really cannot comprehend it. It's very hard to get people to do that.
So, then

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 and they have such shields up because of the way society is.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You know?

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 how did it happen with you? How did it start to open with you?

Speaker 3 Okay, so

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 2 it too.

Speaker 2 I kind of had it too. Really? Hell yeah.
I was against Trump.

Speaker 3 Wait, so what, how did you change? How did you, what changed your mind about Trump?

Speaker 2 So I was on the air saying, this is a nightmare. This goes against everything that we stand for.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I said the day of the election after it was announced that he won,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And it took about a year, but he started doing things that no president would have done, and they were good positive things.

Speaker 2 And you could say whatever you want about his rhetoric, and I'd agree with you.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 3 I mean, I'll take it even further. His economic policy was Bernie Sanders' platform in 2015.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 Right?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I mean, as a lefty, I thought, oh, 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.

Speaker 2 How awesome is this?

Speaker 3 And look at the unemployment numbers, right?

Speaker 2 It's so funny.

Speaker 3 I will say, yeah.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, how is the

Speaker 2 left is getting a lot of the stuff that they like and they still hate him?

Speaker 3 I know.

Speaker 3 It was really funny. I will say, though, the right also, there was, because, you know, they didn't like this stuff, right?

Speaker 3 Because they do believe in this, you know free trade and trickle-down stuff that i 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 they were he was on their team and right so it was people you tell people about his economic agenda nobody's heard of it nobody knows you know nobody knows that the new nafta is the most pro-labor trade deal america has ever signed you know seems like an an important thing for people to know.

Speaker 3 Nobody knows it, right?

Speaker 3 Nobody knows that he released 5,000 black men from prison. It's like you tell people that it's like it's been memory hold, you know, because he's the wrong person.

Speaker 2 It's insane. I watched his

Speaker 2 prison reform policy, which I was all for.

Speaker 2 That's fantastic. I know.
Fantastic. And he,

Speaker 2 you know, the thing that was bad, I thought, was

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You were

Speaker 2 derangement syndrome.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And he was like, I think he's great.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 So it can't be that every person who voted for him is racist. And what I tell people from this experience, Glenn, is like, How do you change somebody's mind?

Speaker 3 Like, it's not going to be through information.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And that is how we stitch back together the fabric of American society.

Speaker 3 That's it.

Speaker 2 But this goes back to your

Speaker 2 thesis

Speaker 2 in your book. And the problem

Speaker 2 with the media today is,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 I've met a lot of people, a lot of people

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 We have been, we allow the media to make everyone into a cartoon figure. I am not,

Speaker 2 you know, in 2007,

Speaker 2 I was on the list of the most admired men in the world. Believe it or not, I was in between Nelson Mandela and the Pope.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 And I, what I said to my, what I said to my pressure. I know, that's when I was at, that's when I was at CNN.
And I said to my family, well, I'm not that guy.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 either sinner or saint, devil or angel. And

Speaker 2 that's not who people are.

Speaker 2 It's the American story.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 from anything written by an Indian.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 I think that the part of why conservative media and people like you are so hated by the left is

Speaker 3 because of your influence with the people that they have abandoned like the the left the the liberal media i write about this at length in my book had that the 20th century is 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 in the last 10 years with the great awokening and this whole whole woke revolution it really that's just that is just just the last stage of journalists abandoning the working class.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I'm not gonna 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.

Speaker 3 They don't deserve the right to elect the people that we don't approve of.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I think there's a lot of resentment about the relationship you have with your audience.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 Totally.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 You know?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 it's just so clear the contempt, you know, the way working class Americans are.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 You know, 20 years ago, if you were an intellectual, if you were a journalist, if you were worked in a college, you weren't that much richer than a cop. You didn't make that much more money.

Speaker 3 Today, you really do.

Speaker 3 The left, the liberal intelligentsia is now in the top 10%.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 You see these deaths of despair that to me are just this perfect sign of what happens when you take five million good factory jobs, jobs that Americans of all races built their communities around, and you ship them to China.

Speaker 3 What you see is just suicide. You see the suicide of of this way of life.
And both sides have abandoned the working class, in my view.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 Well, I think that's true, especially when you look at

Speaker 2 who was it I heard talking about

Speaker 2 how

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And, you know, when you, 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,

Speaker 2 I mean, it's, it's,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But now it is clear, especially as we're going into the

Speaker 2 metaverse, it is clear that corporations are running things.

Speaker 2 And you've got the media, the, you know, the protectors of the average person

Speaker 2 being spokespeople for those giant corporations.

Speaker 2 When did that happen?

Speaker 3 It's just so, it's not, it's that, it's on corporations, right?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 It used to be the right was the side of like blasphemy, you go to jail for

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Facts are not real.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It is all about the fact that liberals have become extremely highly educated in a tiny number of very elite institutions.

Speaker 3 And those people, the people who come out of those institutions, have a lock on culture.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 2 i was talking to a friend um uh the other day about this new show that i'm watching and i saw one episode uh and i was like oh that's funny and then i started to see where it was going i'm like oh there's gonna i'm there's a lecture coming and it's a comedy it's a mindless comedy and i found out later because i really like 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.

Speaker 2 It's just leave me alone. There's no booby trap in there

Speaker 2 that's political.

Speaker 3 It's and I think though, and the worst part about it is like

Speaker 3 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're just in total denial.

Speaker 2 But that again is the media. I mean, you know,

Speaker 2 when we are,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 when my audience raises $45 million

Speaker 2 to take

Speaker 2 at-risk women and children and

Speaker 2 religious minorities, anyone who's marked for death, and we move them out of the region and the media says nothing?

Speaker 2 How do you expect the average Democrat to think anything other than conservatives are monsters that don't care.

Speaker 3 It's so horrible. I mean, literally, Republicans have overseen the most extensive criminal justice reforms over the last decade, often

Speaker 3 being blocked by liberals, by Democrats, someone like Chuck Schumer, who blocks criminal justice reform.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 And you can't hear about this anywhere. You can't, you just, liberals are totally unaware of this.
And so let me say you asked, how do I, yeah.

Speaker 2 Do you, do you consider

Speaker 2 the average

Speaker 2 Democrat to be on board with this? Because I really think you go into the center of the country and that this divide does not,

Speaker 2 it doesn't seem to exist as much. Maybe it does.
But when I go, I go up to Idaho.

Speaker 2 I have a place in Idaho, a ranch, and I'm around people who are generally conservative, but there are liberals there too. But

Speaker 2 we still know the difference between good and bad, good and evil. You know,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So is that

Speaker 2 truth or not?

Speaker 3 I could not agree with you more.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And then you go into the south and you see that it's completely different. I'll just give you one example.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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 mega church.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 that was it. And but that is, that is such a, that is, to me, I was like, oh, that is so amazing.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 You know what the leading cause of death is in the United States? Leading cause of death and around the world?

Speaker 2 Abortion.

Speaker 2 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.
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Speaker 2 So how do we get there though? I mean, you know, there are

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But it's not mass.

Speaker 2 I think the things, you know, I think one of the benefit

Speaker 2 I'm a praying man myself, and

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And so don't worry about it. And I felt that in their arrogance, they will fail.

Speaker 2 And the arrogance that is happening right now, I think

Speaker 2 is waking a lot of people up

Speaker 2 on the right.

Speaker 2 Sorry, on the left, they're waking up.

Speaker 2 Right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, totally agree with you. Yeah, yeah.
I think you're seeing a real shift.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And then they just keep spoon feeding this narrative that, oh, all wars end that way, and this is right. And there's only, you know, 150 people left that want to get out.
And you're like, what?

Speaker 2 Is that what's happening?

Speaker 3 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. I don't know.

Speaker 2 It was very

Speaker 3 brave that.

Speaker 2 No, no, no.

Speaker 2 I want us out out of Afghanistan, too. I think we should have gotten out of there a long time ago.

Speaker 2 Just not that way.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And all of those guys, they knew that Obama had said he would withdraw from Afghanistan, and they managed to make that not happen.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And that's why Biden thought they were sort of following his lead, and they were certain that he was going to follow theirs.

Speaker 3 And that, to me, was actually kind of 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.

Speaker 2 That's a good explanation.

Speaker 3 I honestly do think that wokeness is the reason that a lot of liberals are waking up. You know, that just the

Speaker 3 insulting nature of it,

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 the contempt that

Speaker 3 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 for unity.

Speaker 3 I mean, we're ready for unity.

Speaker 2 But boy,

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 and walking into the role. They're all saying this was a racist thing.
It was all racist dog whistles.

Speaker 2 And you're like, how can these people be racist when they just elected her and a Hispanic at another high? It's not that.

Speaker 3 It was so amazing, the split screen of Lieutenant Governor Winsom Sears, a Jamaican immigrant,

Speaker 3 leading the crowd and chants, USA, USA, on one side of the screen, the other, Joy Reed calling her, you know, this a victory for white supremacy, right? It was the two Americas.

Speaker 3 And I mean, honestly, it's just that that image of Winsom Sears, it was really, I

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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 success in this economy that rewards these elite educations. I don't know why.

Speaker 3 And that punishes people who are working class. Again, I don't know why.
And

Speaker 3 I mean, I guess I wrote a whole book about why, so I shouldn't say that. But

Speaker 2 I have a few congressmen and senators that I talk to a lot, and

Speaker 2 they're not necessarily the ones that people would think that I'm talking to.

Speaker 2 And I have tried to convince them, guys, now is the time to do what happened in 1856.

Speaker 2 And that is, stand up and go, you know,

Speaker 2 I've figured out that neither side actually cares about these problems. That you're not serious about solving anything.

Speaker 2 We're playing a giant game here.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And we're done playing this game.

Speaker 2 That needs to happen

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 the good people in Washington are just boxed in.

Speaker 2 They all want to quit because they're like that nothing's going to work. I'm like, you've got to find somebody on the other side that you can grab on to that believes in common sense things.

Speaker 2 We are so far away from

Speaker 2 talking policies. Everything 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?

Speaker 3 That's so interesting. Say more about that.

Speaker 2 You know, the banking thing where they wanted to, you know, the debate was $600 or $10,000.

Speaker 2 Right, right. That's a non-starter, not because of any other reason than it's a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
You can't do that.

Speaker 2 The vaccine thing.

Speaker 2 If you want that mandate, then it has to be done by individual states.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 the law for the federal government to do that. You know, and they and nobody seems to

Speaker 2 care. It's like we don't even believe in free speech anymore.
You know,

Speaker 2 when you're being silenced,

Speaker 2 I'm a guy after 9-11, a conservative on talk radio, and Bill Maher is fired from ABC.

Speaker 2 I defend him. I thought what he was fired for was horrendous.

Speaker 2 But he, what part of politically incorrect did you not understand, ABC?

Speaker 2 You know?

Speaker 2 How'd you miss that? It's in the name of the show.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's really, it's so depressing. You know, you know, I'll look at somebody like Senator Josh Hawley, for example, right?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 However,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 there are some things in the national interest. If China falls or we go to war with China, We're screwed.
Right.

Speaker 3 Because they make everything we would use in the world.

Speaker 2 Right. Right.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 Totally. I feel like I watch the media and I'm like, can you guys talk about something important?

Speaker 2 Can you talk about anything that truly matters?

Speaker 3 No, totally. Well, I'm so glad to hear you say that.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 nobody, nobody nobody will join with him because of stupid things like, you know, whatever, because he's on the wrong side.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 How can we create a capitalism that works for the bottom, that works for the working class? And there's just

Speaker 2 joining that. 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?

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 because,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 They want the government regulation.

Speaker 3 Dod, 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.

Speaker 3 She showed up and said,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm sorry, like, you think that we grew up feeling great about ourselves? We didn't, you know? Right.

Speaker 3 So it's totally a moral panic.

Speaker 3 And it's a moral panic that, exactly, like you said, gives more power to the government and to, you know, the liberal control and centralized control over things like big tech. I agree with you.

Speaker 3 But I do think that

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And I think we should, you know, government should be bringing them back.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I will tell you,

Speaker 2 if you read anything about the Great Reset, are you up on that?

Speaker 3 Oh, God, yeah.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 their opening statements, it is the most arrogant, elite.

Speaker 2 We are going to change humanity.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 if we could just

Speaker 2 tell the government all around the world, you know what? People, if you're going to even suggest that,

Speaker 2 you should be having open meetings everywhere. Because you're talking about controlling and changing humanity.
Well, I don't know. I'm a member of the human race.
Change us to what?

Speaker 2 How are you going to affect my life? Can you tell me the details?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's so foreign to religious people like us because we believe that we were created perfectly and in God's image.

Speaker 3 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 you know 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

Speaker 3 but we're trying to I know and you're with me we're trying to you know

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 So, I

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 he's got to be way left, way left, because she's way left, okay? Uh-huh. But the family did something right with those two.
Um, and uh, they're brilliant.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 I said, what do you think,

Speaker 2 what is he saying here?

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 And she said,

Speaker 2 you know, that we have things, you know, that we didn't earn. And I said, okay,

Speaker 2 so let me just state it this way.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 The things that I did. I mean, at times,

Speaker 2 I wasn't working against the universe. And so it kind of helped me, you know, make some, you know,

Speaker 2 better choices.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 that I had a very little role. I know where 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.

Speaker 2 And I will confess my arrogance to my God, but not to a mob.

Speaker 2 And it feels like this wokeness is a religion, and you will kneel before it, and you must confess.

Speaker 2 Well, I only confess to my God. I only confess to my God.
What is the difference between recognizing your privilege

Speaker 2 when I do do that every day, just not to the mob?

Speaker 3 That's so interesting.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 making amends, forgiveness.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 You're never given any grace. You know, there's no way of...

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Does that make sense? But

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I agree with that, but there is also something that uses the same.

Speaker 2 I mean, you have to bow down. There are high priests.

Speaker 2 You have to accept the dogma exactly the same or you're out. You're a heretic.
I mean, how else?

Speaker 2 I mean, it's a bad religion.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Can you have a religion without spirituality? We're getting so like meta here.

Speaker 2 I love it.

Speaker 3 No, I love it. I love it.

Speaker 3 I think that it's, yeah, the arrogance and the

Speaker 3 to me, the real problem is the

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And, 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

Speaker 3 that's my religion. Right.

Speaker 2 And that's, and I think that is, you know, the Declaration of Independence is our mission statement and we have never accomplished it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And then we come close and we fall short.

Speaker 2 But right now we're saying throw that mission out

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I guess be people who are looking for revenge.

Speaker 3 I mean, I think,

Speaker 3 right.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I don't think the divide is between Republicans and Democrats.

Speaker 3 It's 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 A new Pew study came out asking people all of these questions and it found that only 6% of black Americans have the views that

Speaker 3 we consider woke, right?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 I am convinced that

Speaker 2 alcoholics and minorities are going to be the ones to fix this country. Because

Speaker 2 alcoholics will be like, rah,

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 speak to the wokeness and go that that i'm sorry no

Speaker 2 i i know america did some bad things

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 Do you see that

Speaker 2 coming?

Speaker 2 Because you're so optimistic. Do you see changes like that coming?

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, totally, totally, of course.

Speaker 2 You're lying to me, are you?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I, I, I, you know, I, like you said, you started by, I was on CNN talking about this stuff.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 You know, like, who CNN lost its working class audience in the last 10 years?

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I'll give you another surprising statistic. Okay,

Speaker 3 in 2019, they asked black Americans where do you get your news?

Speaker 3 So, 12% said the New York Times.

Speaker 3 How many do you think Fox News got? 36%.

Speaker 3 Fox News is getting three times the black readership as the New York Times.

Speaker 3 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 racist and whatever, you know? Or like Donald Trump, right?

Speaker 3 Who increased his standing among minorities to where he was, I think he got the most minorities of any Republican

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 14% of black women, okay, which is, it's not a lot, but it's double what Trump got.

Speaker 3 He flipped entire black districts, right? This is a man who ran on the economy, who ran on schooling, and the media's response to that, white supremacy wins again, right?

Speaker 3 I mean, it's just not, you're going to sit here and call 50% of Latinos white supremacists. Okay, put me with them.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm not going to be on the side smearing my fellow Americans because they're worried about inflation.

Speaker 2 John F. Kennedy said in 1961, an error

Speaker 2 is not a mistake. An error only becomes a mistake when you refuse to change it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the media just keeps doubling down. Are they going to,

Speaker 2 is there a reawakening or are they just going to burn themselves to the ground?

Speaker 3 I think that there is a shift.

Speaker 3 I think people are realizing it's gone a little bit too far. In the media?

Speaker 3 I think so. Yeah, I think so.
I'm sensing

Speaker 3 a little bit of a shift. Yeah, I think that it's just.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 3 I saw it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's crazy. And they're like, if we believe these things, then the red states are doing it better than we are.

Speaker 2 And I could not believe that came from the New York Times.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 Like, what are some lessons you've learned or some things that you've changed in your approach to this job that you know we can learn from?

Speaker 2 So, the biggest thing that I

Speaker 2 learned was

Speaker 2 certainty is not a good thing.

Speaker 2 And the only thing I am certain of is that I am not certain of anything, is a new mantra of mine.

Speaker 2 And the other is

Speaker 2 stop trying to win.

Speaker 2 Stop trying to be proven right.

Speaker 2 Okay. Oh, wow.
Just,

Speaker 2 just, oh, if I approach somebody

Speaker 2 and I think they're wrong, because this is what happens to me all the time in an interview,

Speaker 2 they think I'm wrong and they will

Speaker 2 not change. No matter what I say, they won't change.
I've been in front of audiences. I did this in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 I was invited to speak in front of an audience that

Speaker 2 hated me.

Speaker 2 I knew it going at very liberal,

Speaker 2 you know, Los Angeles audience, and I knew they were going to hate me. And I started

Speaker 2 the speech out.

Speaker 2 How many in this room think they hate me? Be honest.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And then I said at the end, how many people still think they hate me? And it was about 10% of the audience.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it came from

Speaker 2 me just saying,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And these things are big.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 as people? Because when we better ourselves and we listen to each other, we stop being so arrogant, we can actually find solutions.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 2 Um, I've got been on a big kick of the Bill of Rights.

Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 You know, if

Speaker 2 do you, will you, will you agree with me on nine out of the ten of the Bill of Rights, okay?

Speaker 2 We can argue about one. Give me even eight out of the ten.

Speaker 2 But those are the things that were our unum, okay? E pluribus unum.

Speaker 2 We didn't all come here because it was a great land or we could all get rich or whatever.

Speaker 2 We came here because we felt we could be free, even if it was not totally free, even if it, you know, it failed, but we believed that the average person had a shot.

Speaker 2 And that came from a government. Justice is blind.

Speaker 2 Social justice is not.

Speaker 2 Real justice is blind. And it has to treat everyone the same.
Because as soon as that stops happening,

Speaker 2 Now you've got all kinds of players and money and, you know, who's a favorite, all of that stuff that isn't 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

Speaker 2 totally yeah no that makes perfect sense yeah so is CNN going to invite you back

Speaker 3 oh wow I don't know

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Having you on a second time is brave.

Speaker 2 What is

Speaker 3 I go where I'm invited, but I have to tell you, it's a real honor to be here with you. I've, you know, I've obviously been watching you for since you were at CNN.
I didn't hate you.

Speaker 3 I didn't. I always loved your show.
I loved you on Fox. I felt like you, you brought this

Speaker 3 sort of like,

Speaker 3 you know, when you go to the chalkboard,

Speaker 3 there's something about that that is very like,

Speaker 3 it's both like campy, but also like,

Speaker 3 it really invites the viewer in where they're at.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, like there's a, it's like this combination of sincerity and performance that is, I've always found it really compelling.

Speaker 2 Wow. Thank you.
You're like one of the only that was in the media that that got that. That's wow.

Speaker 3 Thank you. No, I love it.
I think it's so great. And I, you know,

Speaker 3 it's just so, there's so many levels at which it works. And I've always just are you are you

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 everything changes for them

Speaker 3 i lost a lot of friends um

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 that that happened when i first oh god yeah it is. It is.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 So I take a lot of comfort in that.

Speaker 3 But yeah, I think I'm very lucky to work at Newsweek.

Speaker 3 They really have taken a sort of anti-cancel culture position.

Speaker 3 I run people from across the political spectrum. And, you know, I just take the, you know,

Speaker 3 there's a saying in the Talmud, take the truth where you can find it. You know, Kabel eta met me misha obro.
And that's sort of, I I think that's really important.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You do that too. I see you doing that all the time.

Speaker 2 Try.

Speaker 2 We try.

Speaker 2 It has been a real pleasure. I hope we get a chance to meet sometime.

Speaker 2 It is very rare in

Speaker 2 media or really almost anything today

Speaker 2 to talk to somebody who is willing to say, I've changed. And I think we're dead if we don't change.

Speaker 3 Totally.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's a difference between flip-flopping and changing and growing.

Speaker 2 So, thank you for that.

Speaker 3 Thank you for that. You, you, really, you did it very publicly, and I really admired that about you.

Speaker 2 I don't know if you've read your book, but I think that's pretty public. I think you've done it too.

Speaker 2 God bless you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much, Glenn.

Speaker 2 You bet.

Speaker 2 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.