Best of The Program | Guest: Ezra Levant | 4/12/21

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, No, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

All right, welcome to the podcast, The Return of Glenn Beck, today.

We'll keep this short and sweet here, as Glenn, among other, you know, kind of catches us all up on some of the big news developments, including a bunch of companies that are getting together and kind of trying to figure out how they should be dealing with these terrible voting laws across the country.

We get into a real controversy in Canada as well as churches are now being fenced off and officers are coming in to raid churches and attacking conservative journalists.

We'll get into that as well with Ezra Levant.

But probably the thing you might want to hear most today is Glenn addressing why he was out last week and the tragedy his family had to go through.

A really tough time, and he gets into that in hour two today.

That's something you definitely do not want to miss.

Here's the podcast:

you're listening to the best of the Glenbeck program.

I'll give you a story here, and I invite you to stay with us, especially if you're a liberal.

If you're a Marxist, you're going to be fine with this.

But if you're a liberal

or a traditional Democrat like my grandfather used to be, I'm not sure that those people exist anymore.

I have real hope that they do.

But if you're one of those people that

actually believe America is a good place.

That we have our problems and we should admit to our problems, but we're a good place.

And that the people sometimes get it wrong, but the people should be in control of their own destiny.

I want you to listen.

For those who have listened for a while, I want you to understand

we have just

everything that they have ever said about, oh, it's a conspiracy theory on the great reset.

You can throw that in the garbage now because by their own fruits, by their own actions, you will know them.

Something happened this weekend that is absolutely unprecedented.

I have done this job for 40, I don't even know how many years, almost 50 years.

And I've never seen anything like this.

Leaders of over 100 major corporations got together and spoke via Zoom on Saturday about how they could combat election integrity laws similar to the one that was proposed in Georgia.

Multiple reports, Wall Street Journal and others, directly quote people that were on the phone call.

They talked about potential ways to show how they opposed the legislation, including by halting donations to politicians, fine, who support the bills and even delaying investments in states, that's blackmail, that pass restrictive measures.

Now, this is according to people who were on the call.

Now, I want you to understand, what they are calling restrictive measures are actually just

going back to the way it was before COVID-19.

Remember, we had this unprecedented election and we had to change these laws.

In fact, they couldn't even go through the legislative branch.

They just had to be done many times by executive order.

And the states changed their laws to make it easier for people to vote because of COVID.

Everything that they had done was unprecedented one time only.

So now these laws that are saying, okay, we're not doing that anymore,

Now it's being called restrictive.

All the states are doing is

bringing it back to where it was pre-COVID.

They are just protecting what George Soros's cronies made vulnerable.

That's it.

Now, who is there?

Delta Airlines.

We don't have a full list.

Delta Airlines, Citigroup, hmm,

Viacom, CBS,

UPS.

The owner, by the way, UPS is deep in this.

If you're using UPS, use the federal government's postal service over UPS and

for God's sakes, Federal Express.

They may be involved as well, but I know UPS is actually

deeply involved in the great reset.

The owner of the Atlanta Falcons was there.

He also co-founded Home Depot, the chairwoman of Starbucks, LinkedIn, Levi Strauss,

a Boston consulting group, the CEO of AMC Entertainment,

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld.

He is a Yale School of Management professor who helped organize the meeting.

He said to the Washington Post that corporate leaders on the call felt very strongly that these voting restrictions are based on a flawed premise and are dangerous.

What is the flawed premise that this was a new way to vote in America for COVID?

The discussion scheduled to last an hour went 10 minutes longer.

It was led at times by Kenneth Chenault, the former chief executive of American Express.

Notice we have financial industry well represented here.

Also, Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck.

Stu, did Merck make a

out with

a

vaccine?

Does Merck have one?

That's approved here in the United States.

I don't know if they've honestly I don't know.

I'm not sure.

They told the executives on the call that it was important to keep fighting what they viewed as discriminatory laws on voting.

Chenault and Frazier coordinated a letter signed last month by 72 black business executives that made the same point.

The letter that first drew attention to the voting bills in executive suites all across the country.

The call's goal, listen to this, was to unify companies that had been issuing their own statements and signing on to drafted statements from different organizations after the action in Georgia.

This is according to Sonnenfeld.

Can I ask, is anyone on the right meeting with corporations?

Is anybody on the right actually holding Zoom call meetings and saying, hey, look, we've got to start working together?

They have infiltrated our boardroom, which was a goal of the Tides Foundation back in the 1980s.

They have

infiltrated our boardrooms, and now these corporations think they rule over us.

They think it's their responsibility, not the elected officials, but their responsibility.

By the way, some of them, because they're so with the people, some of them made the phone call from Augusta, Georgia, where they were attending the Masters golf tournament.

which was so woke of them, I think, to be able to go to Georgia where they are protesting, but they wanted to see the masters.

Right.

Okay.

One Georgia-based executive talked about how the final version of Georgia's legislation, which Brian Kemp has said actually expands voting access, a claim that the left challenges, they say was much worse than expected.

And it should serve as a warning to other chief executives as more states consider adopting their own voting bills.

Now, why is this?

Should this be a warning to other chief chief executive officers?

Why is that a warning to CEOs?

Wouldn't it be a warning to the American people?

Are we just too dumb?

And so we aren't going to support some of these things.

And so the corporations, they're going to act as a, what, a secondary government?

One that I, I don't know, I didn't elect the CEO of Merck.

Did you, Stu?

I don't remember the ballot where I voted for the CEO of American Express.

Yeah, no,

I'm not a shareholder, so I do.

No, I'm not going to.

I'm not a shareholder, and

they have one voice.

Isn't this amazing that the people that are organizing this and are fine with it are the ones that say that corporations have no voice?

It's the Republicans, it's the libertarians that say corporations can do what they want to do.

But the ones that are saying corporations are evil, they keep people in poverty, they're the ones that are stepping to the plate and backing all of this.

Why?

Two reasons.

One, the great reset.

Two,

they know they'll be eaten by those people.

If the great reset doesn't work, if the great reset isn't the answer, then maybe Marxism is, they would think.

And if that happens, they're done.

Corporations, Citibank, Coca-Cola, Delta, Microsoft all have criticized Georgia's new

election integrity bill.

Major League Baseball, good, moved its all-star game from Atlanta to Denver, like Denver is any better.

And this all came from the pressure from the White House.

Remember, the White House is saying corporations should do this, not the people.

We've gone from BLM, which is another story I can't wait to talk to you about.

We've gone from BLM, a supposed grassroots organization.

We've gone from the left saying that the

Tea Party wasn't legitimate because it was astroturf.

It was funded by big money.

We've gone from that to now corporations openly meeting and coordinating efforts to change laws.

This is fascism, guys.

Fascism is when government and corporations work work hand in hand.

That is fascism.

While no final steps were agreed on, the meeting represented an aggressive dialing up of corporate America's stand against controversial voting measures nationwide.

I have to tell you, they're not controversial.

It's just going to the way they were before COVID.

It's a sign that their opposition to the laws didn't end with the fight against the Georgia legislation.

Many of the corporate leaders who joined the call seem to view the voting restrictions as attacks on democracy.

Saturday's call between company executives, this is a quote, shows they are not intimidated by the flack and they're not going to kowtow.

That's according to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld.

He's the Yale management professor, one of the call's organizers.

They are not afraid of the flack.

So in other words, they don't care what the people who buy their products do or say.

Mike Ward, co-founder of Civics Alliance, a nonpartisan group of businesses focused on voter engagement, said he felt there was a broad consensus at the end of the call that company leaders plan to continue working against any voting bills they think are restrictive to lean into this, not lean away from this it's going to get worse and this is the official start

the public uh

outing

of what you're going to live under with the great reset

it's corporations that are going to make the rules and it will their their their lie about stakeholder capitalism is this

the the capitalists the ones that are going to be running the companies, the CEOs of these giant companies, not the capitalists like me or you, the small business person, but the people at Merck, the people at Citigroup,

the people at Coca-Cola, they'll set the rules and they'll crush anybody underneath them.

And they'll work with the government, or I should say, with the left.

and those in power

from the left,

they will work with them.

And your voice, well, you have a share in this too.

You're a stakeholder, so your stake, your voice is at the table as well.

Not on this private phone call.

No, no, no.

Not in any of these groups that are planning all of this stuff.

No, no, no, no.

You voted for somebody in Washington.

Well, I don't know the last time I felt comfortable with my representation in Washington.

It's been a long time.

This law, by the way, in Georgia, expands early voting opportunities for most counties and expands voter ID requirements to

absentee ballots.

And that's what they're saying they can't have because apparently minorities are just too poor.

They're just, it's too tough for them to get any kind of ID.

It's so horrible.

Uh-huh.

Can we talk about vaccine passports for a second?

Isn't that discriminatory?

How is it that somehow or another, minorities can not only get the passport, but will be able to get the vaccine and then the passport?

Because they'll need to have that before they go anywhere, right?

Why is it voting is the only thing that you don't need a license or identification to do.

Why?

I rent a car.

I need identification.

I open up a checking account at Citigroup.

They require

identification.

They're now pushing for vaccine identification and vaccine passports.

The lie does not hold up if anyone has critical thinking whatsoever.

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program

last Monday I was sitting in this chair

and Sarah had just said in my earphones

two minutes

I had been home I'm broadcasting from my home

my back is just really bad and car rides are not so real not real good for it

but thank goodness I was home.

Last Monday, two-minute warning comes.

Stu said to me, You ready for the show?

I hadn't even had time to really discuss it with him.

And I said, Yeah, I got it all mapped up.

Just follow me.

And that's when my wife came to the door of the studio here at our house

and said,

I and she had the phone up,

and

then she collapsed on the floor in tears.

And I ran out of the studio and grabbed her and held her up and said,

what's wrong, honey?

And she was holding the phone.

She tried to tell me again, and she collapsed again, and she handed me the phone, and it was my mother, my mother-in-law.

And I couldn't get very much out of her either.

I just knew that Tanya's brother had passed.

To say this was a shock is

an understatement.

Vince, I always looked at him kind of as an older brother, even though he was younger than me.

I looked at him as an older brother because he helped me learn the ropes of being in an Italian family.

You know, I'm from German descent, and that's screwed up six ways to Sunday.

But

being in in an Italian family, there's some ground rules.

There's some things you really need to know, you know, like your first Easter or Christmas.

Slow down, Jack.

Slow down.

There's a lot more food coming.

And family.

This family,

I married into, I think, the greatest family I've ever met, the Kelowna family.

And I didn't realize, I mean, I know what a change it's made on my life, but I didn't realize

how great this family even was until this last week.

My wife is,

she's got a servant spirit, and she just

serves, she shows her love by taking care of people and doing things,

and never,

never says, oh, it's too much.

I have to tell her all the time, honey, don't take this on.

Last night, she was, she's still up in Connecticut, and she called me last night about the dog food, and she was like, the dog food, and you got to get more dog food.

And I'm like, honey, honey, I got it.

Relax.

Even though I probably don't actually have it, but

My brother-in-law had four children.

He had wrestled with Crohn's disease for a long time.

My sister has Crohn's, and it can be awful.

It can be awful.

But you'd never really know it.

He was always the kind of guy that was always like,

How you doing?

Good.

How you doing?

Good.

How you doing?

Eh?

When he he said, eh, that meant horrible.

I should be in a hospital.

But he was always the guy who lit up the room.

He was always the guy helping others.

He would never stop

because he was always helping others.

I didn't realize how much of a servant spirit he had until the wake on Friday.

I don't know how long that line was, but it was a constant moving line, constant moving line for four hours.

I think the line was

not in cars, in people, a quarter of a mile?

And it just didn't stop.

And it was people that would come up and say, I didn't even know Vince, but I met him because I was in need of help.

And he just rolled up his sleeves and he just like took over and was like, okay, we got it.

It was people in the community that he lived in.

He was on the school board.

He was a little league coach.

He was a soccer coach.

He helped build the church.

He took care of the lawn of the church.

He was constantly doing things, raising money for charity, working over here, helping organize this.

But he was never the guy in the spotlight.

He was just the guy doing it.

And we had no idea how much he had done because he never talked about it.

We also didn't know

how much

mental anguish he was in because he never talked about it.

And last

Monday morning after spending Easter

with the family, everybody thought it was fine.

He got up at three o'clock in the morning.

He was staying with my mom and dad, my

Tanya's mom and dad.

And

he got up at three o'clock in the morning.

He went into the office.

He put everything together that the family might need.

He took all of the things that his children and his wife would need

and left a note on a person who he's worked with for 30-some years

on their desk because they always come in first.

Don't go upstairs, just call 911.

And

he killed himself.

This is now the third family member of mine that has gone through this.

And I keep seeing it play out over and over and over again in exactly the same way.

We had an immediate family member in my family that

the police were called to my house this,

I don't even know how long ago it was now, a few months ago,

an attempt at suicide.

The world is sick.

We are sick

when I

talked to Tanya on Monday

all she could get out of her mom at the time when they were both hysterically crying was what she thought she heard was

and Vince kicked dad on the way out

and I'm like oh my gosh, what was that all about?

How did that happen?

And all day I'm thinking, what is my dad going through right now?

What is he thinking about,

you know,

his relationship with Vince and everything?

Because that just came out of the blue.

I found out that he kissed him on the way out, which was a much better way to go.

But I looked at that, and even that was an act of service

to let your dad know

how much you loved him on the way out.

I know this sounds weird if you don't know much about suicide or if you've never gone through it yourself, and really the only way to understand it is to be close to it yourself.

No matter how close you get to it, if you've never experienced it, you don't understand it.

Because it doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't make sense because it's insane.

But you get trapped in this place to where

you actually start to believe that the world would be a better place without you, that your family would be a better place without you, that they would have it easier if you were just gone.

None of that is true.

As a survivor of three now in my family, it hasn't been even close to true any time.

Suicide has such a long tail to it that even when you think you're past it and you've recovered, that tail comes swinging around

and can

smash you at a time when you think the dragon is gone.

I know what these four kids are going to go through because

I went through it.

I'm speaking of my other brother's son's wedding,

giving the father's toast

this summer because his father is not there.

Let me say this first.

If you are thinking about suicide, if you think there's no reason to live, if you think there's no way out, if you think the world would be better without you, it's a lie.

And I know because I've been there.

I've thought those thoughts myself.

And I was lucky enough to have a friend take me to the hospital.

I went against my will.

I actually said,

this is not going to change anything because I know what the problem is.

The problem is me.

And while I had good reason to think that at the beginning, those were reasonable thoughts of I've got to change my life, but it spirals down into

everything.

And if you

do it, it's only going to make things much worse.

And there is relief

and there is love again, and there is light, and there is joy.

You were born to experience joy.

Please

call for help.

Please, if you are on the receiving end, do not dismiss this.

Don't tell somebody, oh, well, it's going to get better.

Keep your chin up.

Cheer up.

There's nothing more offensive than that when you're in this situation.

Because they've tried.

If they give any indication at all, the good ones won't.

They might leave a few breadcrumbs, but in our case, it was a guy who you would have never thought because he's always fine or meh.

And he's always helping other people, but he couldn't get help himself.

He didn't know how to accept help himself.

It's a two-way street.

You have to ask for help, and then somebody has to be there to help you.

And if you don't know what to do, just take them to the hospital.

The hospital will know what to do.

But if you're in the situation to where somebody did something,

there's nothing you could have done.

Nothing you could have done or said.

It's not your fault.

Now, what did I learn from all of this?

So my father asked me to speak at the funeral.

And,

oh my gosh, I've

I pull, in the course of my career, I've spoken about, it's estimated at, what did they say it was, 160 or 170 million words.

And some of those have been hard, but I don't think there's been anything harder than this because I didn't know how to describe him.

He was,

you know, a brother, a friend, a

a father, a husband, a son.

And then when I went to the wake and I saw and I listened to people, I realized that the word that

was needed

was not even servant,

it was loved.

And I've pondered that over the weekend.

You know, there are two great commandments:

love God

and love your neighbor.

I mean, I'm grossly abbreviating those, but

love God and love your neighbor.

And I realized

that this is the biggest thing we're missing right now.

So many of us, the fear up in Connecticut was palpable.

Now, I know I live in Connecticut, and I could tell those, you know, who had bought into the hysteria over COVID because I'd say, oh, I'm from Texas, and they would back away from me.

But the fear is palpable.

Fear doesn't come from any place good, and the fear is not needed.

It is not needed.

So how do you combat that?

And what do we do to save ourselves and our country and our children?

The best of the Glen Beck program.

I think Canada has lost its mind.

It has extended its COVID-19 lockdowns.

It has thrown a pastor in church, now is thrown

a put put a fence around a church, closed it down.

Not a crazy radical church, not any of that stuff.

Closed it down and then started arresting journalists who were covering the story.

What is happening in Canada?

Well, let's go to Ezra Levant.

He is the founder of Rebel News.

That's kind of like a blaze up in Canada.

And he hosts the Ezra Levant show.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you, Glenn.

I love Americans.

One of the things I love about Americans is they care about freedom around the world.

I know that you care about the freedom of people in Xinjiang, China, the Uyghur Muslims.

I know you care about Christians in Iraq and other places in the Muslim world.

But

I sort of feel shy to say it.

I think we might need some help up here in Canada.

I know that sounds odd, but I sure would like it if you could help shine a light of scrutiny on what's going on up north here because

the troubles about religious freedom and press freedom, they're not just in faraway places now.

They're just across the border.

And I can tell you two crazy cases.

The first is what you mentioned, the Grace Life Church.

It's a very nice church outside Edmonton, Alberta.

I visited it myself, loving,

peaceful, the friendliest folks.

I tell you, if I wasn't Jewish, I'd go every week.

Great people.

And the pastor

was sentenced to 35 days in a maximum jail, maximum security jail, because he wouldn't close his church.

By the way, when he was in jail, the church kept open anyways.

Another pastor presided.

And they didn't do anything.

They didn't do anything to that pastor.

They didn't do anything to the church.

No, and there was no need to.

And by the way, there was never a single case in the church, let alone an outbreak.

And everything was fine until one day they moved in at dawn.

There was no one in the church.

The police seized the church, occupied the church, and turned it into,

well, the only way I can describe it is a paramilitary garrison, like a fort.

They have a perimeter fence, and then within it, they have another fence.

They put up a big black tarp around it so you can't see what they're doing.

They have police coming and going in shifts.

These are heavily armed police.

They also have lesser armed police.

They brought their latrines in, and I think it's very disrespectful.

They put them right outside the front door of the church, the bathrooms.

So they're literally doing to the church what they're also figuratively doing.

I wonder if they would defile a mosque in the same way.

But they have turned this church into a garrison.

Why?

Because if they were to leave, the church members would just go back in.

So they are a permanent occupation and militarization of Grace Life Church.

I know you're thinking that can't be true.

Well, there's plenty of video of it.

So this weekend, obviously, Sunday,

two interesting things happen.

First of all, the church members met,

but they did not meet at their church.

They met at a second

secret location, an underground church, like they do in China.

China.

So the yeah, the actual congregants of Gracelike Church and their pastor did not go to their building.

They went somewhere else.

They believe that the church is with them.

It's not a piece of bricks and metal and mortar.

Correct.

And so they're having an underground church, China-style.

But at the same time,

almost a thousand people not with the church went to the church in solidarity.

Now, there were different approaches.

Some of them were more angry, some were more peaceful, some prayed for the police, some shouted at the police, and there was a moment when some of the protesters knocked down the exterior fence.

And by the way, some people affiliated with the church said, no, no, don't do that.

We could have taken the church physically anytime if we wanted to.

We're not protesting a piece of metal.

We're here for the right to pray.

So there was an interesting divergence in views.

Should they physically retake the church or not?

In the end, the fence went back up quickly, but not before

a huge brigade of heavily armed SWAT-style police from the mounties, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police came.

Gas masks, riot gear, basically stormtroopers.

They were at a staging facility nearby.

What are they going to do?

Were they going to shoot people?

It was so insane.

So you have an underground church in hiding, a pastor conducting secret services out of

the surveillance of police.

You have a church being turned into an armed garrison

like a military base.

You have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, close to a thousand people protesting this.

When some of them pressed against the fence and knocked it down, they dispatched stormtroopers

heavily armed.

That is Canada.

And I happen to be from that province of Alberta.

Its motto is strong and free.

That's false advertising today, Glenn.

First of all, when did the Mounties lose their cool, you know, horse and red jacket?

I mean,

well, that's the thing.

Mounties are so beloved because they have such a great reputation going back more than a century.

You know, there was that old show,

oh boy, I just

it was a show about a mountain in the states, the fish out of water kind of show.

I just forgot it.

I mean, Mounties, it was a Mounties are beloved.

They're friendly.

It's like the British Bobby.

Everyone loves the Mountie.

But that's not the Mounties today.

The Mounties today, they only wear their red jackets and ride their horses for fancy ceremonies.

Today they were doing the dirty work of shutting down a church.

I can't imagine that any young man grew up and said, I want to grow up and go to the police academy and get a shield and a badge and a gun

so I can what

catch bank robbers, catch murderers, or expropriate and occupy a church and throw pastors in prison.

That same prison, Glenn, they emptied out 400 violent offenders because they were worried they would catch COVID in the prison.

I'm not making that up.

400 violent men were released from prison.

but they put the pastor in that same prison for 35 days.

That's Canada.

And I don't want to seem

alarmist, but I sure would love it if Americans with a big footprint like Senator Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, people who talk about freedom in China or Cuba or Iran, boy, I'd love it if they would put out a statement about this.

And can I tell you one more story from Montreal this weekend that I was personally at?

If it's about the media, I want you to hold on to that.

Sure, I'll hold on to that.

It's crazy.

One of our people

arrested yesterday.

Hang on just a second.

I want to talk about that here in a second.

I want to ask you one question on the media, and then I'll take a quick break.

The mainstream, you know, the CBC,

are they even covering what's happening at this church?

They don't cover it often, and when they do, they cover it with aggressive criticism.

They paint the church as criminals.

Radicals.

Yeah, radicals.

They smear it as unhealthy super spreaders, even though I say again, not one case, let alone an outbreak.

This pastor, obviously, could have got out of jail in one minute, let alone 35 days.

It was as if they gave him his own keys.

All he had to do was lie and say, I won't go back to the church.

Imagine a man who would endure 35 days of maximum security prison when he had his own keys.

He endured that because he would not say a lie.

The lie being, I won't go back to the church and I won't preach.

He wouldn't say that.

And that is the most gentle man, the most peaceful man, the most non-violent man, the most self-abnegating man you'll ever find.

And yet they demonize him.

They call him a wacko, an extremist.

They mock the church itself.

Because it's not just that he's a dissident.

It's that he obviously believes in a higher power than politicians.

And

he, if you are a lockdownist, if that's your superstition, I'm not even going to call it a religion.

If you believe in lockdownism, if you wear a mask the same way a Muslim woman might wear a hijab or a Jewish man might wear a yarmulkah, if the mask is your religious symbol, your symbol of submission to your philosophy of lockdownism and oh, now one mask or two masks, or the high priests wear three masks, and do you have it?

Like, if you believe in that whole mindset,

fine.

But there are some people who believe in something higher than Anthony Fauci.

And that's what that's why people rage against churches and other institutions, religious institutions that won't close.

Because they say, aha, you don't believe what I believe.

And your resistance is

an insult to my belief system.

I think there's something to that, Glenn.

I think it's a

nature abhors a vacuum.

And

this superstition has filled the void.

You know, Ezra, you're the type of mind that would enjoy.

You should read the book Hitler's Monsters.

It's a very scholarly book, but it talks about that, that

Nietzsche was right.

And once you killed God, what did the German people fill that vacuum with?

And it goes in depth on

a lot of the stuff that I think we're doing right now.

And I'm talking religiously.

You start to go into myths.

You go into magic.

I mean, it is

nuts.

And we're starting to repeat this and condemning the church and real believers and making them look like idiots, imbeciles, and radicals.