Best of The Program | Guests: Tammy Bruce & Ken Paxton | 2/19/21

and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

Hey, we've got a great show for you today.

It's a great, great podcast that you just don't want to miss.

We had Tammy Bruce on today.

We had Bill O'Reilly in a random fire in rare form

today.

Also, the Attorney General of Texas.

He is going after Aircott, which is this advisory board to the Texas Energy

plant,

which there's something really, really wrong in Texas when we can't generate our own energy because it's cold outside.

We talk to him about that, freedom of speech, and so much more all on today's podcast.

Don't forget to get your AndrewCuomoisAwful.com mugs and t-shirts.

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Get on board.

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

So here we are in a situation in Texas we should not be in.

There is no reason why we're in this situation.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas

is the one that actually runs and oversees

all of the power grid and all of the companies that are making power.

And there's a problem there.

There's a real problem there.

Now, this is a

public-private partnership?

I mean, I know it's overseen by the government of Texas, but I think it's a private corporation.

This is one of those things that no one in Texas knew existed until this week.

And now everyone is an expert on it.

Like, everyone knows exactly what ERCOT was doing and how they screwed this up.

Yeah.

It's becoming the big talking point down here.

But

the name reliability is

what the R is.

And they're not doing it.

And I don't know if you've seen

the meetings,

the meeting that they had two weeks ago, and the minutes of the meeting is

absolutely unbelievable.

Let me give you this.

Top officials at ERCOT, the Texas Council Regulates the State Electricity Grid, spent their time talking about the impending winter storm during the entity's board meeting last week.

A recording of the board meeting from KSAT Channel 12

shows that the conversation went like this.

Quote, one thing I want to say before we really get into the presentation is it's actually going to be winter here pretty soon.

As many of you, those in Texas, know, we have a cold front coming this way.

We'll probably probably see our winter peak later this week or very early next week.

The operations have issued an operating condition notice just to make sure everybody's up to speed with their winterization and ready for several days of pretty frigid temperatures to come our way.

So, more on that in the next few days, but it does look like we're gonna have a little bit of winter weather here to contend with over the course of the rest of the week and into the next week.

End quote.

That was the entire discussion of winterization

for the Reliability Council here in Texas.

So they covered it.

Yeah, they covered it.

Yeah, they covered it.

And then they started talking about cowboy boots and everything else.

It's fascinating.

I mean,

you know, I mean, there was a little bit of an issue

with power going out.

And honestly, that's just one of the issues.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Electricity is one of the issues.

I will say, I didn't lose electricity at all.

My electricity was 100% reliable.

We didn't even have it blink the entire time.

Mine went out all the time.

Ours didn't, which I don't know why.

Maybe I've heard that like if you're near a hospital, if you happen to be in the same, they keep those up no matter what.

So that may have been the reason.

But like, I will say, I did get,

I woke up on a Monday morning.

to a very loud alarm going off in my home.

Okay.

And I was like, oh, the kids must have like opened up the door before we turned the alarm off in the morning or whatever.

Right.

Tried to turn the alarm off.

Didn't go off, which has never happened before.

Right.

So we started looking around.

I'm like, oh gosh, is there a fire?

Like, what is happening?

And my wife turns around the corner and has this interesting thing happen where

gallons of water are gushing from the ceiling.

Oh, you got a new water wolf, a new waterfall.

Yeah.

I was like, did you put in a new water effect?

Like, what exactly?

Right.

Yeah.

And it was kind of pouring through the alarm.

onto the floor.

And what happens, Glenn, when water comes from your ceiling onto the floor, it starts to build up.

So there's inches and inches and inches of water

inside your home.

Really?

While it's two degrees outside.

Right.

Which is really fun.

So we couldn't take a shower one day, but you didn't have a problem with that.

No, I didn't have a problem with that.

Yeah, yeah, I could have just hopped in anytime.

So we go, we run around trying to figure out what's going on.

I go up into the attic and I realize there's a burst pipe.

So there's a pipe in our house, which, by the way, was insulated and is still burst somehow and is is just spewing water all over the place.

There's no local shutoff, but I do remember because I'm a homeowner, Glenn.

Right.

And I know one, how to do one thing in the home during the winter.

Turn the water off in case of emergency.

It's the only thing I don't.

Everything else, if the house goes on fire, I just let it burn to the ground.

Right.

I have no ability to correct any other problem in this home except to turn the water off.

Luckily, there's snow and ice all over the ground.

And of course, the panel to do this is under the snow and the ice.

So that means digging through the snow and the ice to open up the little compartment

while water is just gushing into my house.

And of course, we were asleep.

So we have no idea how long it was gushing into the house before the alarm went off.

It was a while because there was a lot of water all over the place.

So I go out and I open up the, I finally get the thing open.

Of course, obviously the

valve is frozen.

Sure.

So I can't turn it.

Right.

But so I eventually, you know, after a few minutes and a lot of swearing, I'm able to actually get the thing turned.

So I run in as the hero, of course, that I am.

And I run into the house and I go upstairs and I look at the pipe and the water is still gushing out of the pipe.

Wow.

Now I thought that was interesting because I just turned it off.

Right.

But I thought to myself, you know, it's going to take a little bit because there's water in the street.

Got to get it out of the pipe.

It's got to get out of there.

So this is going to end any second.

So I sat there and I just kind of stared at the pipe for 30 seconds and then like a minute and then like a minute and a half and two.

And then I started yelling at the pipe because I think if you yell loud enough at the pipe, it's correct.

Did you use French?

Did you speak in any French words?

I came up with all new words

for this situation.

All new French words.

Did you, have you asked and said, pardon my French?

I was respectful at the beginning to the pipe.

I will say.

Hey, that broke down.

Right, okay.

Over time.

Quickly.

And very quickly.

Yeah, all right.

And it just kept kept gushing and gushing and gushing and gushing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I just, I kept it.

I said,

I kept screaming at it to turn off, which would not do.

It wasn't voice activation at all.

No voice activated pipe.

It's unbelievable.

Yeah.

Well, you're living in the stone age.

So my wife is calling

the city.

and calling various random companies she's googled right

like this is what you do in the situation right and so i would say maybe 40 minutes later we the the city gets out there and turns the water off so the water stops at this point i don't know six eight inches of water is throughout the house and there's like i'm trying to protect certain rooms like hoping that i can like save the room and then i i lose that line you know like we just keep falling back right you know like retreating it's like normandy oh my gosh and i'm like normandy like an idiot glenn you know just plastic bins just pushing water out the door like i i have no defense there's like it's coming down at like you know probably 50 gallons any time did you go

no I I will say we we called the company to come out they come out almost immediately which is amazing I mean I can't believe they came out this fast and they start cleaning the thing up and we were talking to the guy and he's like yeah he's like you'd be surprised how many people we get here and this is going on and the house is filling up with water and they're just sitting on the couch They're just like, they're just like, screw it and letting it happen.

I was like an idiot doing everything I could to get the water out of the house.

So eventually we get the thing all dried out.

And, you know, I mean, it's, but the house is a catastrophe.

I mean, like, it's going to be six months of disaster.

Yeah.

We're going to, I'm sure, be moving out to, because, I mean, the entire floors of the entire house are going to have to be repaired all the, you know, all the, or redone completely.

It's going to be lose the house type of.

So, you know, here's the thing that really pisses me off about this story.

Because I saw, I saw what happened on Monday because your, your wife was, you know, on Instagram immediately.

She wasn't with the buckets.

She was running.

She was just taking pictures.

She was just taking pictures and posting.

Yeah.

And saving her.

Legitimately, we're in the middle of this.

The water's still pouring through the roof.

And

I'm setting up plastic bins.

I'm bailing out water.

And I come around the corner and I see her wheeling in her Peloton.

Like, she's saving the stupid exercise bike.

That is so funny.

And I'm like,

what are you doing?

And then

all the dust settles.

And I go into the room and her Peloton is safe.

That one was, I don't know if it was safe.

I mean, it got water on it, so it probably isn't safe because it's got all sorts of electronics in it.

But then next to it are her weights.

Like

the rubber and metal things that you lift for exercise weights.

She pulled those out of the room to save the weights.

Of all things in the world, it's the most resilient thing in the household.

It's metal and rubber.

Yeah, the pixer's gone.

Yeah, everything else is screwed.

But she's got the metal weights.

She got the metal weights.

So, yeah.

So

I'm watching her.

I didn't see her pull the weights out, but she needed one hand

for the phone and probably needed two hands for the weights.

So I didn't see that part.

But I watched it and my first reaction, well, I should say, my first reaction was, oh my gosh, poor Stu.

Yeah, Lisa.

Then my next reaction was, wait a minute.

I have been doing construction in my house

and I've been renovating my house for about a year.

Spent all kinds of money.

All I had to do was wait for a storm to burst a pipe, and it all would have been taken care of by insurance.

I'm ripped off.

I feel really ripped off right now.

I feel like the dumbest guy in the world.

Because

my next, whatever, three, six months sound a lot like the thing you did by choice.

Yeah.

Which is that

all I I had to do was wait for a stupid burst pipe, right?

So you pissed me off.

You pissed me off.

Yes, thank you.

Well, you know what?

You pissed me off a little bit, too.

Oh, really?

Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah.

Because

as I said, I turned the water off, but the water didn't go off.

How would that happen?

Right.

It doesn't seem possible.

Did I just screw it up?

Like, very probably.

In the moment, was my explanation.

You should go with it.

Right.

No.

Because we learned later that what happened was

it was the sprinkler line,

which I guess is supposed to save our house from a fire and did a great job because no fire could have been lit at that moment, Glenn.

Right.

When the whole house was underwater, the fire wouldn't have burned it down, I don't think.

Um, but uh, it was a separate line, so when you turn off the water, the one thing I knew how to secure the house, it doesn't turn off the sprinkler line, of course not.

That would be crazy, right?

So, you didn't know that?

No, I didn't know that, but you know, you did know that

who?

You.

I know.

What are you talking about?

Because you told me after the incident that someone came to your house from your neighborhood.

Yeah.

And said, hey, by the way,

be careful with these sprinkler lines.

Make sure you drain the sprinklers before

the freeze because they can burst really easily.

And then Glenn had that information and locked it inside a little lockbox so that no one else would know.

Well, so now he has a dry house and no one else does.

Thank you, Glenn.

Well, you're welcome.

Did it slip your mind?

No, here's what I thought of.

I didn't even know I had a sprinkler in my house.

In Texas, apparently you have sprinklers in your, you know, like you have in offices.

You have sprinklers that pop out of the ceilings and it's like some law or insurance thing or I don't know what it is.

Oh, it's great.

It's great.

Whatever it is, it's fantastic.

It's wonderful.

I didn't even know, for two years I lived in the house.

I didn't even know we we had sprinklers.

Then a friend calls me, I think on Saturday or Sunday and says, Sunday would be the day before this happened to me, by the way.

I just wanted to point out what could have happened to me, too.

And so he said, do you have sprinklers?

And I said,

yeah.

And he said, are they off?

And I said, I don't know.

I have no idea.

How do you turn them off?

What is that?

So he showed me, he came over, and he and a friend came over and they

helped me drain the lines.

And I just thought,

I mean, that's great.

I don't know anybody with sprinklers in their house.

I mean, have you ever known anyone with sprinklers in their house?

No, I just, you know, and I don't, they're not everywhere.

I mean, but you think, because what I find interesting about it is like, you look at that and be like, that's a great feature.

What a great feature.

It's really not.

It's adding to the safety of the house.

It's got to protect the house.

No.

No.

It actually destroys the house.

It destroyed the house.

Yeah, we just built the vault over at Mercury One.

And, you know, it has to have fire suppression in it.

And it's all full of rare artifacts and documents.

They're like, well, let's go put some sprinklers in.

We're like, no,

no.

And it's the same thing.

I mean, it destroyed, sure, the outside of the building, maybe, if it's steel, fine.

But everything else is destroyed.

It's all destroyed with the water.

Yeah.

I mean, and I, Glenn.

So the company that we called that came out in an hour

is we have friends who, tons of friends who the same thing has happened to, not just with sprinkler lines, but all sorts of pipes bursting.

And the same company we called out that came out in an hour on Monday is now currently on a four-week wait.

Well, Sarah apparently had the same thing.

And after your incident, you didn't call Sarah and say, you know what happened to my house?

Am I right, Sarah?

Absolutely.

Did you get a call from him?

Nope.

Nope.

Sarah follows my wife on Instagram.

Right.

She knows.

That's the only way I communicate with people.

My wife's Instagram post.

But it's true because, like, and this, the friends that we talked to today had the same thing happen.

We're not home.

They were in Hawaii.

They were like pulling a Ted Cruz.

They like went on vacation to avoid all this.

Oh, those bastards.

I'm going back to Ted Cruz on that call.

Oh, we got to talk about that.

Bastard was not around while your pipes were leaking.

Right.

He could have come over with a plastic container.

Never came by.

Never came by.

Ted Cruz never showed up.

Cleared zero water out of my house.

I had to do it on my body.

What else is he doing as a senator?

I know.

What else?

Your job is...

You can't count a senator in for bailing your house out or coming in and making sure that your fireplace is lit or whatever.

What good is he?

Yeah.

And he was gone for a full night.

He brought his kids down to Cancun.

Then he flew back the next morning.

God only knows.

I hope to God, Stu, you say something because I'll bet you he was gone the night your water pipe burst.

I bet you're right.

And you know what?

As a U.S.

senator, when power is out, heat is out, he should be going door to door with sticks and mashing them together to start fires.

Thank you.

That's what he should be doing.

Oh, man.

Well, you know, all of this happened because of, well, an outdated system.

We weren't prepared for global warming or cooling or whatever we're supposed to be.

Even though scientists say that it's had nothing to do with climate change.

That is total bullcrap.

We'll tell you about it.

And the

Attorney General Ken Paxton from the state of Texas is going to be on, talking a little bit about ERCOT,

the shady little organization that didn't put weather stripping down on the doors of the nuke factories.

The best of the Glen Bank program.

Ken Paxton is our Texas Attorney General,

and this state is

in real, real trouble right now.

We have got food shortages.

We have all kinds of water damage,

and we are just getting back online with our power grid.

And the governor has issued a statement yesterday that

he would like Aircott, which is this weird

oversight company

that

is supposed to oversee and make sure that our

electricity grid is stable and reliable.

They completely dropped the ball.

There's an investigation starting there, and we have Ken Paxton on the phone to tell us about that and so much more.

Hi, Ken.

How are you?

Hi, good morning.

It's been a tough week.

Boy, you ain't kidding.

Can you first explain quickly, and we've got so much to go through, and I don't mean to rush, but I want to make sure that we get to as much as we can with you.

Can you explain what the hell ERCOT even is?

Okay, so ERCOT was put together back in World War II, and it was a bunch of Texas utilities that sort of coordinated so that they could use their excess capacity to send to industries along the Gulf Coast to help production for the war.

So that's how it got started.

And then after the war, they realized there were some benefits to working together.

So they developed this

network, which is

lots of energy companies sort of working together to create power, and then they use their excess capacity and go where it's needed.

Okay.

Obviously, that wasn't working.

And it is also

the only power, I don't even reliability system or whatever it is.

It's the only one in the country that has also

litigation protection from the government.

So you can't sue this company.

What is this?

Yeah.

Well, so this is

it's an entity that the legislature oversees and also the the Public Utility Commission in Texas, which is appointed by the governor.

So

I believe if there is if there is some type of liability protection, if it's at least at the state level, the legislature could fix that this session.

They could say, you know,

you're not immune from liability.

And is this a public-private partnership between the state of Texas and these energy companies?

So it's an independent

nonprofit organization that is running on its own, but it's overseen by a state agency called the Public Utility Commission, which has three commissioners appointed by the governor.

So

that commission is supposed to oversee the operations of this independent 501c4, is what it is.

Okay, so we are now, we're building all kinds of windmills in the state.

I don't know why we're doing that.

They're completely unreliable.

That's not, it wasn't a weather problem with the,

or it wasn't a wind problem with the windmills.

It was that they didn't

weather strip anything.

You know, Ercott didn't do anything to get these things to protect them against a storm like this.

I have some sympathy for the

against the argument of

we should be weatherized.

We should have all of these things.

No, this this happens about once every 10 years in Texas.

So we shouldn't have the salt trucks and the snow plows.

It's a waste of money.

But weatherizing our gas plants and our windmills seems pretty obvious.

You know, it does seem pretty obvious because I think there are other parts of Texas that are not in ERCOT, like around Beaumont, East Texas, and also in El Paso.

And I think they had almost no problems because guess what?

They had winterized their plants.

Is it true?

We know it can work, and we know that

other parts of the state that are not part of ERCOT did that.

Is it true that

ERCOT did their winterization on a Zoom meeting because of COVID?

They didn't actually do anything.

They just did it on Zoom?

You know what?

I don't know the answer to that.

That's part of, I think, what we're going to find out.

We've started in my office.

We get to have the opportunity to look at 501c3s and 501c4s.

We've started our investigation to try to understand exactly what happened and why they weren't prepared.

So these guys are making a boatload of money, a boatload of money.

The board member, president and CEO, makes almost a million dollars a year on this.

Five of the board members don't even live in the state.

One of them lives in Germany, of all places.

And I just,

I am for the free market, but this company, whatever it is, doesn't seem like the free market.

It's not responsible to anyone, it seems.

I don't like

having any corporation in bed with a government, of any government.

What are you going to do?

What are the plans here?

I think the first thing is to figure out exactly what happened, which is why

we started the investigation a day or two ago to figure out exactly what

what are they doing how are they doing it i think this has been not so transparent to to to us and to the citizens of texas we're going to at least create some transparency and find out how they operate and then make suggestions to the legislature as to what needs to be changed and move forward from there but until we know exactly how they did this and why we have these problems it's hard to say what the remedy is until we know what the what the problem what the real problem is

so ken we are i mean, if Texas goes down, we lose the entire country.

I know you know that in 2008, 9, 10, the recovery was mainly on the back of Texas.

I think we created 60% of all jobs in the country.

We can't go down.

If we get into this green energy garbage,

we're toast.

Texas is Texas partly because, A, you're still free here, but you have cheap energy.

Is the governor going to stand against this push for the Green New Deal?

Because that's all anyone is talking about.

How are we not prepared for the new world because we're not all green?

Well, certainly Texas,

we're all about the most reliable source of energy, and we produce a lot of it in our own state.

So we've looked at all sources of energy, but the reality is we all know that right now these renewable sources of energy are not reliable and they're not cost efficient until they are

um i'm very confident that the legislature and the governor will not put their their full efforts into relying on on unreliable sources of energy what happened to our nuclear power plant why why did why did the gas and the coal and the nuclear what happened there

you know i think it's the same problem it doesn't sound like they winterized any of it that's what's so shocking to me It doesn't seem like it would be that expensive given that other places do it around the country, including other places in Texas.

So I think that's going to be one of the first questions that we're going to, when we do our investigation, we're going to ask, why did you not winterize when El Paso and East Texas and other parts of the country do that as a matter of course?

It doesn't make any sense it doesn't make a lot of sense unless you can tell us there's some reason

we don't understand at this point.

Is there anything that the state can do?

I mean, I'm so concerned about, you know, the price of plywood has gone from $15 a sheet, regular plywood, to almost $40 a sheet.

And that was before this happened.

This is going to cost a fortune.

And also the labor to do it.

I mean, there's...

all kinds of regulations on who can touch what.

I mean, Stu has had plumbers out to his house, but because he had a fire suppression system, they can't do anything.

They can't touch it.

And it'll it'll be months before they get to that stuff.

Is there any kind of regulation that can be safely cut to help people out?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think that's something that takes the legislature and that the governor with his emergency orders could actually implement right now is to have a review of all regulations affecting construction.

and maintenance of power plants and other electricity generation sources to make it less expensive and easier to upgrade these things so we don't have to experience this again.

So yeah, I think there are definitely things that the state can look at doing to make it less expensive and more

make sure it gets done more quickly.

Ken, I want to ask you,

really, this is kind of a personal question,

especially with the loss of Rush Limbaugh this week.

You know, Biden said, and I'm quoting, that his administration is going to focus on demented and dangerous white supremacists.

But through critical race theory,

anyone who stands up for America and our traditional values is called a white supremacist.

There is

something approaching that appears to be extraordinarily dangerous.

I moved to Texas and I moved my company down here, a media company, which is now the largest subscription right-leaning media company in the world.

And it's based here in Texas.

And I am terrified that, and so is 90% of the talent, that our voices are going to be squashed.

Will Texas stand against this craziness and stand for the First and Second Amendment?

Absolutely.

And I have the same fear as you do, both from the government, from the federal government, but also from technology companies.

Yes.

So we're in the middle of fighting the Biden administration already on immigration.

I expect that there will be more issues coming up, including some related to free speech.

And part of the issue with these technology companies is that they are controlling platforms that are monopolistic, and those monopolistic platforms are the gateway to speech in our country.

And so we've got serious issues with those companies as well.

That's why we've got lawsuits right now against Google and potentially more lawsuits down the road.

But as you can imagine, when you take on those forces,

there's a lot of force that comes back, and Texas hopefully isn't the only state standing up to to fight

these massive entities that may be trying to limit our speech.

Are you working with other

states to

stand?

I mean, I really think that it is our attorney generals and our states, our governors, attorney generals, and legislatures in the states that are going to have to stand up and say, this is a...

These are our lines, and the lines are the Bill of Rights.

And I'm sorry, we are going to be a sanctuary state for the Bill of Rights.

We will not go over the cliff with the rest of the country.

Yes, and I think there are AGs that are going to stand up and fight.

I'm concerned that we don't have the numbers that we've had in the past, but I'm certainly working behind the scenes to bolster that number and encourage other AGs to help us because I don't want it to be just Texas.

We need help.

The forces

against freedom are great.

And I think that we need help.

And

how can the people help you?

What should we do?

I think they need to encourage their own attorney generals to get involved in the fight,

to be involved in looking at what the Biden administration is doing, to be involved in these lawsuits against technology companies, and a lot of them are.

So right now, that's where the fight is for free speech.

Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of the great state of Texas.

Good luck on your Aircott investigation, and we look forward to having you back.

Thank you.

Thanks, Con.

Have a great day.

Bye-bye.

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

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I am a big fan of Tammy Bruce.

She is a conservative, but that's not where she came from.

She made a change in her life and her thinking because she was the president of the LA chapter of the National Organization of Women.

And when Clinton was going through what he was going through with Monica Lewinsky, she thought that the organization should be consistent.

And of course, it wasn't.

That was her, I think, her first real awakening.

And she is

now somebody who is an independent conservative, quite outspoken.

Yesterday or day before, she wrote a series of tweets, a tweet storm on her meeting with Rush Limbaugh back in the 90s when she was still a liberal, I believe.

Tammy Bruce joins us now.

Hi, Tammy.

Hi there.

It is great to be on with you, Glenn.

Thanks for having me.

You bet.

So, Tammy,

let's go through first the Rush Limbaugh story that you told on Twitter.

I think it's fantastic.

Can you tell the story?

Yeah, you know, I thought it was important

because it's even though we knew he was ill, we expected to some degree, of course, this eventually happening.

But it's still, it's hard when it does happen, even though you expect it.

And it was important, I thought, for me to convey, and a lot of people have great stories, have known him for decades.

But ultimately, it comes down to having meeting him that led to my ability to excise myself from the left.

But it's also a very simple story.

It wasn't anything very complicated.

And I think it's very important to this day

why and how that worked.

I was the weekend liberal host at KFI, a station you know well,

and I think many Americans do.

And of course, that was his syndicated station.

And he visited on occasion to do his show there, you know, as you do as a syndicated host, checking out the stations that carry you.

And I went in there thinking, oh, you know, I'm going to go in during the week and

I'm going to confront this monster with all, you know, he's not going to be able to escape.

And so I march on in there.

And instead of seeing a horrible person and being what I had told he was, I met a generous, gregarious, open-minded, funny, supportive man.

And

it was not obviously what I expected.

And I realized in that moment, it's like, wow,

I had been lied to about him.

And

if I was lied to about him, what else have I been lied to about?

And

it wasn't just like, you know, niceties when you meet someone.

I think he said when I first met him as being the president of LA Now there, he said, oh, and so, you know, you're on the station and it's surviving.

And he laughed.

And

I think there were a couple of feminazi jokes.

But in a manner where it was not, I mean, it was a joke.

But the interest in me was clear.

And he also gave me pointers about my work.

He talked about the nature of talk radio.

That was my first media job was at KFI starting in 1993.

And

even though we disagreed on many things at that point, his interest was in how I would do my success, arguing about the issues.

And it was a generosity of spirit that does not exist on the left.

And it was a revelation, as was Glenn,

just talking with conservatives every day, callers

on radio.

And that, you know, my associates at the time did not want me to go on talk radio.

It was going to be the worst thing in the world, Glenn.

It was going to be horrible.

And, you know, you can't go on KFI.

That's where Dr.

Laura is.

And they've got Worcester Limbaugh.

He's a monster.

And I thought, wow, you know, but what a great way to at least talk about the

God forbid, right?

Yeah.

And how this is, but they were just adamant against it.

Now I know why.

It's because of the potential of these kinds of conversations.

It was the fact that people were talking at all, that I would actually, for the first time, be speaking with conservatives who were regular people.

It was the danger of the impact of debate and conversation and meeting people unlike yourself, because if that happens, of course, then the left can't control what you think of them.

And that sort of, it was a combination of things within a short period of time where I realized, and it took me

some time more, a few years more even,

because this had been

most of my life and point of view, was the realization.

And again, Rush, meeting him as such an icon and realizing the significance of him

and his personal nature versus what I had been told.

allowed me to first start to question what I was being told, then to be able to be safe, say, well, wait a minute, I don't agree with that, or this is not correct.

And then ultimately leading to the point of resigning, of deciding to not identify as a liberal,

to decide that it was okay, it would be safe, and it was more important to be honest than

trying to placate members of a tribe.

And you mentioned, I appreciate your introduction, my very first book was, I wanted to be able to not have my time on the left wasted.

I wanted to do what Rush Limbaugh does.

I wanted to, you know, at least inform people.

And that was my first book, The New Thought Police, which was what I saw, which was this development of

an effort to silence.

a major section of the American public using threats and intimidation.

So, Tammy,

you know,

I can see threats coming.

And, you know, I called the caliphate.

I called the 9-11 thing in 1999 and said, blood, body, and buildings in the streets.

And it'll have Osama bin Laden's name on it.

Because I take people at their word.

When they say they're going to do something horrific,

you have to take them seriously.

And it usually works out to, you know,

a legitimate warning system.

when do we start taking the left dead seriously about

you know reprogramming deprogramming

you know

basically brainwashing us you know into their line of thinking or some sort of you know McCarthy committee on truth

you know it it's almost because Americans we we are romantic we expect

people to do good things.

We have an opinion about our fellow Americans, which is an accurate opinion, that we are good people.

We want to be left alone.

We are still a very young country.

And it is

against our nature to expect or believe why any other American would want to smash the system that we live in that brings so much wonderful, incredible things to people, not just here, but around the world.

The saving of humanity, of civilization,

certainly Western civilization, and we're seeing, you know, if Eastern civilization can withstand what the Chinese Communist Party is doing.

But what Americans unfortunately are going to have to realize is that the infection of Marxism and socialism

knows no boundaries like COVID.

It doesn't stop at a border.

And that's what this is.

It's not about an American sensibility.

The mind is a fragile thing.

And we've now, we lost the education system the moment, even a little bit before, but certainly when Jimmy Carter created the Education Department.

The federalizing of our public education system, that was the signal

that that was where they knew they needed to be to

convince, brainwash, transform.

generations of Americans.

And we've looked away because we, who would do that, right?

We couldn't believe it could be done.

But it's happening.

And again, it's not a natural

projection, by the way, for any country.

But it is a human framework that we've allowed to take hold.

And the good news is, Glenn, is that it's weak, is that it does not have a foundation.

No matter what your culture, what language you speak, where you're from, it doesn't survive when confronted.

That's why ultimately they end up turning to violence.

In our country, the good news is we can protect ourselves.

We are not in a position where it's as easy to do that as it was certainly in the Soviet Union, in China, and around the world where socialism and all of that has taken place.

So I think it's about seeing these things really happen, that

they're serious.

people like us reminding people

that you must believe them and that this can be solved.

It's just a matter of confronting it.