Best of The Program | Guests: John Ondrasik, Dale Brisby, & Trey Trainor l 9/16/21

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Got a great podcast for you.

It's Thursday.

We cover everything from cowboys to Congress to the generals to what's really going on on the ground in Afghanistan.

All on today's podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

I want to have have

an adult conversation here,

which means

I want you to think of things in a different way.

I've been looking into this

Twitter and the Hunter Biden laptop and how Twitter

was found okay with what they did with the laptop and banning everybody from talking about the laptop.

They say it was a business decision.

And it was cleared by the FEC, the Federal Elections Commission.

And

my first knee-jerk was, of course, they get away with it.

But as I look into it and I listen to people

who

were actually there and helped make the decision, I think the SEC may have done the right thing

because we are a system of rules and I do not want mission drift from any government agency, especially the FEC.

I want to talk to and introduce you to Trey Traynor.

He is a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission.

He was appointed by President Donald Trump.

He, if I'm not mistaken, he voted to say, you know, Twitter did no wrong, but I want you to listen to why,

because this

these are the moments of courage.

If you agree with what I believe he did,

these are the moments of courage that we must have and we must be careful not to condemn people because they didn't take a shortcut.

No shortcuts.

They will only get us into more trouble.

Trey is with us now, James E.

Trey Trainer, the third

from the FEC.

Trey, thank you for the courage for not only doing what you did, but also coming on the program today.

I know you're getting heat from all sides.

Thank you.

Thank you, Glenn.

And yes, I am.

And so I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about the decision that we made.

Okay, so we've got about eight minutes to go through this.

Here's the thing.

The Twitter and Jack blocked a New York Post story about the Hunter Biden laptop.

They said they were acting for business reasons.

My knee-jerk reaction is they weren't acting for business reasons.

They were censoring this to make sure that they weren't affecting the election in a negative way because they thought they got Donald Trump elected by covering all the stuff Donald Trump said.

How did you view it and why did you guys come up with...

Yeah, Twitter did no wrong here.

Well, Glenn, I'll always start with the fact that the Federal Election Commission is an agency that is explicitly designed by our government to limit our First Amendment rights.

And as such,

it really is the wrong vehicle to go after social media companies because there's really a greater harm to our First Amendment free speech rights if we were to expand the jurisdiction of the Commission.

And our court system has said that the sole purpose of the Federal Election Commission is to regulate constitutionally protected speech.

So we have a very limited jurisdiction and we need to be very protective of what we claim to be violations of campaign finance law.

And so go ahead.

If you would have, as I understand this,

and I haven't heard your opinion on this, but if I understand this, if you guys would have gone after Twitter, because

You're looking at Twitter and you're not determining whether or not they're a publisher or an editor,

you don't have that authority.

You're looking at them, or you can look at them and say, this was an editorial decision.

Whether that's right or wrong, that's for another agency.

But if we, for an editorial decision, if we get them, then you can come after me on talk radio.

You can come after anybody who is doing things like this that claim to be an editor.

Is that correct?

That is exactly correct.

You know, it is,

if we were to say that the decision to throttle the Hunter Biden story was a violation of campaign finance, then we would have a flood of complaints where we would have to find the same thing, whether it be you,

you know,

God rest his soul, it would have been every time Rush went on the radio

explaining anything, it would have been all

everybody on the right would have gotten a complaint filed against them immediately if we would have found that Twitter had violated campaign finance rule.

And I can understand why people think that it's a campaign finance violation because people of Goodwill, believing in the virtue of their cause, are going to reach for whatever tool they seem to see available.

And they think of the Federal Election Commission

as that entity that's the easiest to go after.

But

when you look at it, the Federal Election Campaign Act was last amended in 2002.

And so it really predates anything that we have to do in our modern world.

I mean, at that time, AOL was the biggest thing on the internet, and we were still using modems and desktops.

So

they're trying to apply a statute

that

deals with

technologies that

are no longer existent and apply them to technologies where

today people get

all of their news you know, in a handheld device.

You know, I mean, 15% of adult Americans get their news from Twitter according to the book

in 2021.

So we're talking about 39 million Americans getting their news from that entity.

And if you're going to allow a federal agency to start to regulate what an entity of news that goes to 39 million Americans can and can't say, then we're on a very slippery slope to the government regulating what any new site can say.

Right.

I mean, I know our Blaze Glenbeck world footprint is about 50 million Americans a month.

That's a lot of people.

And we would be

in this regulation.

We would be massive, massive targets.

So let me ask you this, and you can comment on this or not, but

as I see this,

you could be saying, or others could be saying, saying, look, I think this is an in-kind contribution

to the extent that they knew what they were doing.

They knew they were swinging the election.

But

that because they're an editor, even though they claim they're not, because they have editorial license and content,

I can't call it

an in-kind contribution because it's technically technically not,

but that's kind of the way it feels to me.

Would that be fair to say that?

It would be fair.

I mean, look, they decided to moderate the content that their users were allowed to see.

But do you believe it was for actual business reasons?

I'm not asking you on the legal side.

I'm asking as a person, does it...

Does the business, what was their business reason for doing this?

Well, they have, you know, they have specific algorithms that are proprietary to Twitter.

They had concerns that material on the laptop itself had been hacked.

They have, they actually have written business policies that they produced to the Commission that show that they will not reproduce hacked materials.

And they had concerns about criminal investigations that were ongoing.

And so

they have specific business purposes that they produced to the Commission that

they're not going to allow law enforcement material to be applied.

So they had

complex business reasons that pre-existed the story related to Hunter Biden as part of their policy.

And so it was legitimate business activity on their part that reflected a commercial consideration that they have.

And once you step into that realm,

the commission no longer has jurisdiction over it and you know the fact of the matter is is even if that commercial activity would have had an explicit partisan bias because it was in fact commercial activity it was something that cannot be regulated by the federal government we don't want to be in the business of regulating how businesses are run and what editorial decisions they make uh when they're moderating those all right so so wait so let me ask you um one question here that is a change in me.

I've always been free market.

I still am.

I am a free market constitutionalist.

I don't think we have a free market anymore, and we haven't looked at the Constitution.

I mean, God knows what the National Archives are going to say about it next.

With that being said,

I'm to the point now where I think conservatives need to wake up.

And this may be different than your official role as the federal election commission officer.

We have got to stop saying, well, it's private business.

They can do what they want.

These businesses are colluding with each other and with the United States

government and a

political party.

So it's not just a private thing anymore.

This is a public-private partnership.

And there's a difference between a free enterprise and a corporation that is not getting all kinds of favors and everything else

and one that is.

So when you say we can't get into this realm, do you mean as conservatives and as

all aspects of the government or just the role of the SEC?

Well, I think first and foremost, I'm talking about the role of the Federal Election Commission, but I think if you get back to first principles in talking about what we as conservatives need to do in order to get back to our constitutional roots, we have to look towards what did the founders mean when they said that there is freedom of the press.

And they did not mean that we have to protect the modern journalistic class from some sort of

regulation.

What they meant by that rather was that we need to protect the printing press

and its modern analogies, the apparatus for being able to speak to the public.

And we have to protect the right of anyone to be able to disseminate their opinions, whatever those opinions may be,

left, right, or center.

And that includes we have to protect the rights of Twitter to be able to disseminate

their

ideas,

whether

even if they're partisan

and even if they

at the end have an effect on what people believe from the news.

I mean,

this is the real problem with

the fake news is that we still have to protect that right to put out fake news.

Our founders were very, very clear on that.

Trey, I appreciate it.

I'm sorry, I wish we had more time.

I'd like to talk to you more, but I appreciate you coming on today.

I know it was not an easy choice, but thank you.

And please hold fast to the Constitution.

Whether our side wins or loses because of that, just do the right thing.

Continue to do it.

Trey, thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Glenn.

You bet.

Commissioner of the Federal Election Commission.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

This is a song that is forever at least burned into my memory

as

the song for the heroes of 9-11.

Superman by John Andrasic.

John is an amazing guy.

He's a singer-songwriter

for Five for Fighting.

I think he's been on the show before,

our show, but I don't know his politics.

I know that he stands up for the military.

I know that he is trying

to do good with his power and his career.

And I have, I'm not only a fan, I also am a

I also am a fan of

a nice guy.

He's trying to be a good guy.

He's getting some heat because he's coming on this program.

He tweeted, I'm going to be on the Glenn Beck radio program talking about blood on my hands and the current situation on the ground in Afghanistan.

And he got a lot of heat from some of his fans.

If he had any shred of dignity, he wouldn't go on these shows and continue to lie about the election and vaccines.

I don't know what those lies are, but

somebody else, I'm surprised to see he's one of the people hurting us.

I'm so sad to see his choice to join with Liars and Demagogues.

That's a good name of her show instead of, you know, Glenn and Stu, Liars and Demagogues, maybe.

We welcome now to the program John Andrasik.

Hi, John.

How are you?

Hey, Glenn.

Demagogue is a good name for a rock band.

The demagogues.

You are in the news this week because you wrote a song, and I don't know when

rock and roll became, you know, obey the man and

don't question authority.

But you wrote a song, and I want to play a little bit of it: Blood on My Hands.

And it was, you're not allowed to promote it on Facebook.

Here it is.

What's happening?

This, I think, is something that everybody is feeling right now.

I don't understand what's happening, and I just want to ask some questions.

And

you are asking some pretty profound questions, and some questions that every American should be asking.

Tell me, Willie, Millie, when did you decide this will defend?

Your sacred motto now means never mind.

Why can't Blinken, why can't you look us in the eye?

I mean, those are important things to question.

Tell me where the song came from and the reaction to it.

Well, you know, Glenn, I think like everybody, when the first images started coming out of Afghanistan, you know, the people falling off planes and mothers throwing their babies over walls and, you know,

people getting crushed at checkpoints, it kind of in a way reminded me of 9-11.

Just the horrific images and that kind of stunned what is happening.

But it really

didn't start forming as a song till the day our 13 soldiers were killed and the 100 Afghans were killed by the suicide bomber.

Like musicians and

probably you, you probably have a punching bag or something you do or go for a walk or a run when you get mad.

I sit at the piano and just bang.

And I went up there and still had no intention of writing a song.

And

but then a few days later when I was driving my family to Mammoth for a nice weekend, I got a call from a friend and I pulled over and she said to me, hey, I need some help.

Can you give me a certain contact to some folks I know?

And I said, sure, what's going on?

And she said, well, I'm organizing EVACs of ASITs and SIVs from Afghanistan.

And I'm like, and again, I'm...

you know, I'm a naive singer.

I'm like, what's an AMSIT, ASIT?

She's like, American citizen.

And I'm like, wait a minute, you're telling me that that private citizens are

risking their lives to go rescue our people that our government left behind.

And this is a tough, toughie, this woman.

And she started crying.

And I'm like, what is happening?

So a couple verses were written that day.

And then

finally, when President Biden came out and gave his extraordinary success speech,

obviously, like all of us, I was kind of stunned.

And I was hopeful because I've always, as you know, I've been a big supporter of the military, and I was hopeful that General Milley and General Austin will come out and put some perspective on that.

Because I've always felt, look, politicians are who they are, but our generals are the adults in the room, and if things get really sketchy,

they'll

at least make the right decisions or be honest with us.

But when they started parroting the,

oh, extraordinary success, look at this amazing EVAC, everything went according to plan, I got scared.

I'm like, this is dangerous, because I realized at that moment this is not a humanitarian mission, this is not a military mission, this is a political exercise.

So the last few verses about Millie and Austin and Blinken basically wrote themselves.

And

then, you know, I waited till 9-11 was over, because certainly you don't want to put a song like this out over that weekend.

And I put it out the next day.

I think a lot of people agree with the message.

Unfortunately, we're such a tribal country that there's many folks who are not interested in

letting me hear it.

And I'm not accusing Facebook of that because I think this was more of an algorithm thing.

But the problem is, you know, that we've seen so many examples of censorship from big tech that when something like this happens, it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt.

But it's getting out there.

People are resonating.

I'm getting hundreds of emails from all walks of life, all political stripes, certainly veterans, military families.

So I think it's important message because as you said, it's a moral issue.

It's not a political issue.

And deep down, we all know what happened was a calamity.

I'll tell you, John, I've never, I mean, I've been embarrassed by my country historically.

You know, there were times

that I've seen some of our presidents say things, do things, and I'm like, oh, geez, that's going to leave a mark.

And there were times even under Donald Trump that I thought, I'm embarrassed.

Stop.

Stop tweeting.

Stop saying these things.

You know what I mean?

That's different than his policies, which I generally supported.

But this was the first time that I felt my country

in the time, you know what I mean?

I know we've done it in the past, but in real time, this is the first time I have been shocked, horrified, scared

at the lack of honor.

And I think people, no matter what walk of life, I think we all felt this is dishonorable, really dishonorable.

You wrote a line, I can't hear her scream if she's not, if she's not on TV.

I can't hear him scream if he's not, he's not, he's not on TV.

What do you mean by that?

I can't agree with you more.

And just to echo what you said, if Donald Trump were president and we were in this situation, I would write the same song.

And the names would change.

It would be the same song because it is a moral issue.

And believe me, I'm no huge Trump fan and I've been embarrassed by him before.

But this is, I think, a generational catastrophe because our word, the American word matters.

No man left behind matters.

And why would anybody trust us again?

I am ashamed.

Glenn, I just got off the phone with my friend who I mentioned inspired the song.

I talked to her every day, though she goes radio silent you know for a couple days and then I start to worry but literally when you guys called I hung up with her

she was telling me about a music school that was burned down by the Taliban and the children are in hiding and they're trying to get them out but they're having struggling with the State Department because there's this thing called a lily pad transfer.

I'm learning all this stuff.

I have no idea that they have to get permission from a country to take them.

That's happening right now, okay?

What do we see on television?

You know, certain usual suspects still focus on Afghanistan, but the media has moved on.

And to me, that's a shame.

I feel ashamed because you're right.

If it's not on TV, it doesn't matter in America.

And those kids are trapped.

There's people getting tortured.

And it's on us.

It didn't have to happen.

And it's not about the decision to withdraw or not.

We could have done it in a much orderly way.

We could have kept bogrom.

We could have kept a small force, kept air power.

It would have been very, I won't say easy, but it didn't have to be this way, and it doesn't have to be this way now.

But that's happening as we speak, and we're supposed to be a compassionate country.

I hear that from you know, some of the folks on the other side that frankly don't have any interest of playing this song.

And I'm wondering, is this America 2.0?

And I really don't like it very much.

And I'm with you.

I'm ashamed, and I don't know what to do.

Sometimes songwriters have no words, it's rare, but I have no words.

John,

do you have any thoughts on

what the hell has happened to the

arts community, the songwriters, the musicians?

Rock and roll

is a rebellion.

It is about questioning authority.

I mean, when you're going after

Eric Clapton, for a song about COVID-19 and the lockdown, when you're going after Clapton,

What has rock and roll and music become?

Isn't it ironic that rock and roll,

speaking to the man,

now the music industry and all the publications is the man?

It's surreal.

They used to appreciate rebels.

Now they have pseudo-rebels.

And they're all, I think, I think it's two things.

I think there are people who agree with our sentiments.

And I think pretty much everyone does, but they're scared.

It will affect their career.

They may get canceled.

They may get their concerts canceled.

And if the machine comes after them, they're scared.

And I think the other side of it is what permeates the whole country, is the tribal group think.

We've gotten to a point where we're so tribal that no matter what the issue is, we don't think it look at look at it through a moral lens, we look at a political lens.

Does this hurt our side or not?

And if it hurts our side, we're going to buy and pair parrot and I'll say this to your audience.

What's happening with the left on the extraordinary success is similar to what happens on the right with Donald Trump won in a landslide.

All these people are walking around.

Donald Trump won in a landslide.

Donald Trump did not win in a landslide.

Donald Trump lost the election.

Similar with this Afghanistan parroting of an extraordinary success, what an evac.

And it was disgusting to see some of the Democrats in the Congress questioning Blinken, basically just towing that party line when they know deep down this is catastrophic for America.

That's a sickness.

That's a malignancy this country has.

And if we don't address that, then I fear for our grandchildren.

Because if it's an Orwellian narrative, it's an Orwellian world, and we're moving down that path.

John, I appreciate

what you're doing.

If you wouldn't mind holding, I'd like to talk to you off-air about your friend in Afghanistan.

I don't know if you're aware of what we're doing.

I can't make any promises, but I can at least see if

we can help it all.

It is, if our country isn't going to do it, it is our personal responsibility

that we

do the right thing, even if our country doesn't.

John, thank you.

Hold on for just a second.

If you want to hear

the song, you can find it pretty much anywhere.

Blood on My Hands.

It is a song that is not sticking it to the man, is asking the man, what the hell is going on?

I think we deserve some answers.

You're listening to the best of the Glendeck program.

I'm going to play a clip of a Netflix show, How to Be a Cowboy.

Listen.

The cowboy life is about tradition.

We are self-reliant and answer to no one.

Yes, mom.

Couldn't you tell your mom I said hi?

Welcome to Radiator Ranch.

There's a lot to learn from our way of life, so you may as well learn it from the best.

The one and only, Dale Brisbane.

Are you crying?

It's a circle of life.

I appreciate Mother Nature.

If you don't, then you ain't no cowboy.

Oh, yeah.

One, two,

three.

If you're not a cowboy, go step in here.

How to be a cowboy is on Netflix,

and there's a method to my madness on why I'm asking the greatest bull rider of all time, as well as, and he'll tell you himself, the most humble.

No evidence of him being on a bull ever, but legend has it that he has been 90 in Maine, Spain, Spokane, Fort Wayne, Alabama.

And

by legend, we mean his YouTube channel.

Welcome to the program, Dale Brisby.

How are you, sir?

Oh, it's good to be here.

Thanks for rolling out the red carpet, sir.

You bet.

So

I had a thought the other day.

Somebody had said about one of the guys, one of the congressmen that went over to save people in afghanistan the uh the headline was he's acting like a cowboy and i thought yeah if you mean live by a set of code that you know includes honor and integrity yeah and we give cowboys the the the elites give cowboys a bad name but the cowboy life is who i think every man should

should try to emulate.

I agree 100%.

It's funny that you say that because I was looking up articles about the Netflix show and I looked and definition of a cowboy popped up.

One definition was someone who tends to livestock, usually horseback.

The second definition was typically aggressive or something like that.

And I thought,

well, we might be aggressive in that we ride a bull, but I mean, we're, as you might see in the show, like, we're pretty caring towards animal and our fellow human beings.

Yeah, I don't, I've never heard that.

I think you have to live out west and to actually have met cowboys to understand that they're some of the least aggressive guys.

I mean, I suppose you could walk into a bar and find some wannabe cowboy that is aggressive.

But generally speaking, cowboy, if you live out west, and to me, means a guy who, a cowboy contract, looks you in the eye, shakes your hand, and that's all you need.

You don't need writing.

You don't need an attorney.

It's going to be done.

There's honor.

Absolutely.

Man, you gave me chill bumps the way you described it just because, you know, I think maybe people have the old Western show in mind where they envision a guy in a bar like what you're talking about, and he's real aggressive, and he's drinking from a bottle that has three X's on it, you know, and he gets in a duel.

But I've never been in any duels.

And my old man was kind of a description of what you just said, a mix between John Wayne and Woodrow F.

Call from Lonesome Dove.

And when you shook his hand, it meant something.

Yeah.

So

I'm a rancher.

And when I say I'm a rancher,

I have a farm and a ranch, and I go there from time to time.

And I'll cut, like, you know, the hayfield until I get bored.

And then I'll get off and I'll say, all right, go ahead.

So I'm not really a rancher or a farmer.

But it is the life that I tried to get away from with my family as a kid.

I just wanted to live in New York City.

And it is the life I would give everything to be able to return to full time.

There is something about living on a farm and

reconnecting with animals and

the land that makes us American.

And

you don't have to teach an awful lot of stuff because you're taught just by living it.

Absolutely.

You know, the idea of the show actually came from, you know, me being a cowboy on social media, I get a lot of people that are thinking the exact same thing that you are.

And they'll reach out to me about wanting to learn about this lifestyle.

And that's where the show idea came from.

But essentially, they are seeing exactly what you're seeing.

Now, some people get here and they realize, okay,

I can work way less than this and make more money

doing something else.

Well, wait a minute.

Hold on just a second.

You can raise cattle and make money?

You'll have to tell me how that's done.

Not much.

Okay.

Most people with big ranches you see are doing it because it's a tax write-off.

And you'll notice, like, oh, you guys do this because you love it.

You know,

but

I haven't figured out the tax

write-off thing either.

So I've got to get on that as well.

The changes to

farming, the changes to the ranching industry over the last few years, What does it mean to America if we lose it?

Well,

I mean,

I mean, shoot, we lose what's in the grocery store, unfortunately.

You know, so I think that that's a start.

You know, it's just, I feel like people just need to be less headline readers and look more at the facts of what this does

for

the country.

I mean, we're literally feeding America.

And I think that that needs to be respected, not just used as a slang term for someone that might be too aggressive.

So I wanted to talk to you because I think,

I mean, we're raising, and we've been doing this for about 30, maybe 40 years.

We're raising weak men, just absolutely weak men.

And that destroys nations.

And

we need to find strong men.

And I'm in the midst of writing some stuff about cowboy rules.

And I wanted wanted to know to you, from you,

what are the things that

to you scream cowboy that men need to do?

Man, that's a lot.

That's a big question.

One thing that is interesting to me, there's a country singer, his name's Cody Johnson, and he told me he visited with the guy who wrote Chris Ledue's biography.

Chris Ledue is a cowboy, rodeo cowboy, very famous.

He passed away of cancer, unfortunately.

But the guy who wrote his biography said to Cody, the one thing I wish that I'd have put in this book that I didn't was Chris's definition of a cowboy.

And it was this.

He said, it's someone who lets their yes be yes and their no be no.

And you know, you can get into the technical definition of the fact that, you know, you need to ride a horse every day to make your living, but essentially, it's that code you're talking about.

Yeah.

And for me, it's God first, family second, and,

the rest all.

Love God, love people.

Right.

You know, as it says in Mark.

And

that's the start of being a cowboy, in my opinion.

So I want to ask you an if question.

If,

emphasis on the if, if Dale Brisby was a fictional character,

how would he fare on the TV show Yellowstone?

I mean, would he be taking people to the train station or would you be delivered to the train station if you're a fan of that show?

I don't know if you are.

I'm a fan of most things that Taylor Sheridan does, but no, it's,

you know, Dale Brisby's going to be that unique character that you can't figure out if he's the good guy or an outlaw.

You know, he's

usually when Dale Brisbane.

That's one of the things I kind of like about because we are so far away from.

right and wrong and a cowboy culture.

And I don't mean a lawlessness, but there are times when you're just like, that shouldn't be that way.

We should be able to take care of that.

You know what I mean?

And so it's confusing to see now things.

You're like, well, that's the way it should be, but it's not that way.

So I don't know if that's an outlaw or a good guy.

Does that make sense to you?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Well, there's, you know, there's that old saying, there's no honor among thieves.

Well, when even the thieves are complaining about the way things are, that

makes you question what's going on.

Well, it's good to talk to you.

Thank you so much.

Would love to

love to meet you.

I'd love to actually come out to the ranch and see you guys at some point.

Well, it's been great to interact with you and hear all that you're doing, you know, with the Nazarene Fund and et cetera.

I'm waiting to hear back from them on some stuff.

So I'm excited to help just with the cause that you've got going on.

Oh, I do.

I wasn't aware of that, but thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

Big thumbs up on those organizations that you're back in.

Thank you.

Well, you have huge fans here at the Mercury Studio.

The host of How to Be a Cowboy, Dale Brisby.

It's on Netflix.

It is a fun show that you should watch.

How to be a Cowboy.

Takes everything people think about Texans and

takes it up about 10,000%.

Exactly.

Pretty much.

How to be a cowboy on Netflix.

Thanks so much, Dale.

Appreciate it.

God bless you.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mr.

Beck.

Have a good day.