How Rush Limbaugh ‘Spawned’ Glenn Beck | Guest: Christopher Rufo | 2/18/21

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What you are about to hear is the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.

This

is

the Glenback Beck Program.

Today,

memories of Rush in 60 seconds.

The Glen Beck Program.

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Rush Limbaugh and I have had one thing in common.

One thing in common.

And that is

every show,

Rush didn't know what his first words were going to be.

You could ask him right before he went on the air, and he'd prepare for hours, five or six hours the night before, four hours before every program in the morning.

And by noon Eastern time, he had his, what he called, stacks of stuff arranged in front of him in columns.

He could see the subject matter on everything he had, and

he could look at it, he would grab it.

And early on, before Rush Limbaugh was Rush Limbaugh, people would come in and say, Okay, Rush, what are you going to talk about today?

What do you, you know, what's the most important thing you're going to talk about today?

What is it?

And he'd always respond, I don't know.

I can't tell you.

Until the on-air light went on and he said those first words into his golden microphone.

It was a spontaneous coming together of his thoughts.

And no one,

no one except talk radio people can understand that.

The greatest actors, the greatest performers, they don't write their own script.

And if they do, they write it in advance.

Unlike us, unlike Rush,

we speak for three hours every day unscripted.

Unlike most, his desk was his broadcast studio.

He didn't move from an office into a studio just before the program.

When he arrived every morning, it was about a mile down from his house.

He worked in his studio.

It was built to be soundproof, but also have the very best creature comforts for a person to work from seven, eight, ten hours with minimal movement.

My studio was next to his in Radio City.

My studio didn't have all the bells and whistles that his studio had.

One of them

was a secret cigar smoke vent

because you couldn't smoke in Radio City.

It was illegal in New York.

And nobody wanted to smell the recirculating cigar smoke.

So God only knows how he got it done on a historic building, but He had a cigar vent put into the window and the window put back together so it didn't disturb the historic building, and no one even knew it was there.

The morning before the mornings before his show were quiet,

he really was a man of few words.

In his studio for many years,

there wasn't even a broadcast engineer.

It was just him.

Later, when he lost his hearing, he needed a broadcast engineer to help hear the audio

his cochlear implants wouldn't pick up or discern.

I was there when they found out that Rush Limbaugh had

lost his hearing.

I remember that night, I think Stu was with me.

We were in Gabe Hobbs' office,

and we had just heard that Rush, it was still quiet, no one was going to talk about it for at least another two weeks, that Rush had lost his hearing.

And I remember listening to him at that time, and

he was talking like this an awful lot

from behind my golden microphone.

And he was forcing his voice down, and it sounded weird.

And I wondered what was going on with Rush.

That night I found out he thought he was losing his lower register.

He thought his voice was getting higher.

And so he was forcing his voice down just a bit.

He wasn't losing his lower register.

He was losing his hearing.

I remember

how the company

did everything they could

to help him through that.

I remember he came back on the air and he had two stenographers, an oscilloscope,

and they had wired his board right

where you would hear him do this.

That board was wired so it would send vibrations.

So when someone was speaking on the phone, he could feel their voice.

He He could see the voice pattern through the oscilloscope.

He could feel it through his hands.

And two stenographers were writing down everything the caller was saying.

In case one of them didn't get it right, he could compare the two.

So he could watch in real time what they were saying,

watch the voice pattern of the caller, and feel the voice with his hands while still processing what he was going to say.

tell me the person that can do that.

Tell me the person that can do that,

and you never knew.

He didn't know what his own voice sounded like anymore.

While he was talking on the air, he couldn't hear himself.

We hear ourselves on tape and we think that doesn't sound like me.

But it actually does.

It sounds exactly like you.

You're just not used to not hearing it from the inside.

You hear your voice different because it's coming from the inside.

So you're not hearing it without all the resonance inside of you.

Rush couldn't hear that anymore.

From behind my golden microphone.

He had that inflection

because he had to remember

what his muscles felt like

when he was using inflection.

I didn't know Rush Limbaugh.

I guess in some ways, I'm a little like Rush.

He didn't like to take telephone calls, and after the cochlear implants, he couldn't.

But he didn't like off-air conversation.

He would email, later text message, instant message.

But when you did meet him, he listened.

For a guy who's on the air all the time, you'd think

that he'd have a lot to say and that people around him would want to hear him talk

all right rush what do you really think what do you think really is going on

but ninety percent of the conversations with rush off air

was your voice

he was a profound listener

I think that's one of the reasons why he knew the country so well.

Rush Limbaugh is responsible for saving the AM band.

All around the country,

I grew up on AM radio.

RCA

had invented FM radio back in the late 40s.

The guy who actually invented it, I think his name was Armstrong,

he killed himself because of RCA.

He realized he had been used by RCA

and Sarnoff.

He had invented something much better than AM radio.

But RCA and Sarnoff said, there are too many AM radios to sell before we give up on this thing.

And they locked FM up into their vaults and they sold more and more AM radios until they couldn't sell anymore.

And that's when they introduced FM.

I grew up, I started on AM radio before FM was really anything.

It was still

here's another rock and roll hit.

In a goda divider, man.

By the time the nineteen nineties came, I was programming AM radios, AM radio stations, and

they were dying.

There was nothing.

And a guy who used to be the head of ABC, ABC radio,

decided towards the end of his career that he would take

some of his salary

in something brand new,

satellite time.

And ABC was like,

okay,

all right, dude, if that's what you want, you want X number of hours this year of satellite time.

Okay, what are you going to use it for?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Just keep storing them up for me.

And by the time he left AM radio, or I'm sorry, ABC radio,

Satellite was really starting to come into its own,

but it was still mainly television or radio news.

I remember when ABC news used to come in, not on satellite, it had to come in on a telephone line.

Satellite was just beginning to start to be used by radio, but not for syndicated talk.

It didn't exist.

There was the fairness doctrine, which made AM radio impossible, talk radio impossible, because everything I said had to be followed by a guy who was just as insane as Glenn Beck, except on the other side.

Nobody wanted to listen to a station like that.

The fairness doctrine was dropped.

Rush Limbaugh, who had been turned down by so many great people, Jack Swanson from KGO, right?

Wasn't that where Jack was?

KGO?

In San Francisco, Jack was a guy who was one of the first to reach out to me and say, You know, I think you have something, kid.

I think there's something to this talk radio thing.

Don't give up.

And I said, Wow, that's great.

Would you hire me?

And he said, Oh, no.

But remember, I'm the guy who didn't hire Rush Limbaugh.

Jackie got two now.

He went to work.

Rush went to work with this little radio station in Sacramento.

And nobody thought it would work.

Nobody thought it would work.

Rush did.

He knew from his childhood, he knew he was going to be successful.

I'm going to pick the story up there

in one minute.

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There is something about successful people and entrepreneurs that is truly, truly American.

These entrepreneurs that come from nothing and have no reason to believe that they can do anything better than their parents.

Rush was one of those guys.

I grew up in a bakery with my dad.

He lost his bakery.

And

in my 30s, I began to realize my dad was kind of a Willie Lohman character, always

striving, but never really making it.

There was no reason for him to believe

that his son could make it because he never really did.

But he did.

He believed in it.

He believed you can accomplish anything.

I don't know where Rush got that belief, but every successful entrepreneur has that understanding.

And then they're willing to apply themselves and not stand around and whine.

Rush hated school.

He hated his grade school experience.

He dropped out of college at 20.

His father was a World War II combat pilot,

and his father wasn't happy about these things.

His radio gigs failed over and over and over again.

He had to come home and live with his parents after a stint in Pittsburgh.

He grew depressed.

He was frustrated.

He said, I knew I was going to be successful.

I just didn't know how or where

what I would be doing.

He said, I knew I was going to be successful, but nothing was ever working out for me.

He said, I can remember taking a baseball bat out in the backyard and just

beating a tree over and over and over again.

Oh my gosh.

Oh my gosh.

He was abusing trees.

Shut up.

So, Ed McLaughlin

was the president of ABC News.

He was the guy who had all of this satellite time.

He saw the success of this guy who everybody said would be a failure.

And Ed was smart enough to see what was really going on with the Rush Limbaugh show in that small town of Sacramento.

And he said, geez, I have all this satellite time.

I don't know what else to do with it.

He called Rush Limbaugh up and said, Hey,

I was thinking about syndicating you in a time where syndication was

unheard of.

You couldn't syndicate without satellite, and satellite was so expensive.

It was, I think, at the time like $2,000 an hour.

And that's when $2,000 was real money.

He said, I have all this satellite time.

Let me try putting your show on.

That was 1988.

I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh for the first time in 1989.

And I remember the rushrooms.

I remember him talking about the first Gulf War in ways I had never heard before.

Saying things I had never heard.

Saying the things like, abortion is wrong.

I hadn't heard that.

I hadn't heard that articulated.

Something was very different about Rush Limbaugh.

And I don't know what it is exactly.

But as

an observer, as a historian, as a guy who loves this industry,

I've got a lot more to say

about the great great Rush Limbaugh.

Next.

This is the Glenback program.

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This is the Glen Beck program.

Today, I want to spend some time just talking about Rush Limbaugh.

I think he deserves a day

on the medium that he himself created.

I told you that he saved AM radio.

AM radio was over because of crystal clear stereo FM.

And

AM Radio didn't know what to do.

They were playing music and then they tried this horrible idea of AM stereo.

Oh good, so I could get the crappy sound in both channels.

No, I don't think so.

It went nowhere.

Nothing was going to save AM Radio.

Until Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh created an industry.

Rush Limbaugh

at the end of the fairness doctrine, which was only put in because of the Democrats with JFK.

They knew the Republicans were

making headway.

And JFK decided, we need a fairness doctrine, which was anything but the only place

after 1988 with Rush Limbaugh and after Reagan and the Fair It Kills the Fairness Doctrine,

Rush Limbaugh was the only place you could really go and hear a different point of view.

You could hear somebody sit down and really explain and articulate why America believes what it does,

why abortion was wrong,

why liberalism and Marxism was wrong?

Why federalism and the Republic was right

to hear about our founding fathers?

All of us.

All of us in radio.

And I mean all of us.

I mean those who are in music radio today.

During COVID,

it was talk radio that saved radio.

All of the sponsors, all of the things, all of the problems that these companies have gone through,

only talk radio was generating cash.

Everything else was down.

Only talk radio.

Talk radio during COVID saved the AM and FM band.

And in my opinion,

that's two in the column for Rush Limbaugh.

He saved the AM band,

and because of what he created and because of what he led, he also saved

the FM band.

Who else has done this?

What other one man, not a movement?

You know, you can look at people that are individuals like JFK.

Look what I'm not, sorry, not JFK, but Martin Luther King.

You can see what he did, but it wasn't just him.

That was labor unions, that was churches,

that was that there were big organizations behind him.

Who was behind Rush Limbaugh?

He had more opposition than any man.

He was called the most dangerous man in America by those in power and by those in the media for three decades.

They tried everything to get Rush Limbaugh off the air.

And I

would be,

it would be a mistake

for me

and I I hesitate to even say this because I know the heat he will get.

But the guy who started MTV is Bob Pittman.

Bob Pittman is a gene.

He's really truly a genius.

Bob Pittman and I don't agree on anything politically.

I mean nothing.

And I'm sure it was the same with Rush Limbaugh.

Nothing in common politically.

When Bob Pittman became the

head of Clear Channel, I was very nervous because he

is not a conservative.

What Bob Pittman is

is not just a good businessman, but a man who believes in freedom of speech.

He does not believe in a country

that shuts everyone down just because you don't agree with them.

It would be a mistake to say that Rush did all of this on his own.

He did a lot of it.

But what others had to do was stand up for his right,

and Clear Channel and Bob Pittman has.

They stood up for his right, and in extension, my right.

When all odds are against us, Rush also created something different as well.

The personal relationship with sponsors

and bringing small companies on because

nobody in the big companies are going to advertise.

They don't want to advertise.

They don't want to be associated with all this hate.

I can guarantee you that all those people that tweeted yesterday, the hate, have never listened to Rush Limbaugh.

Not once.

Never did they listen to him in context.

I've said many times before, and I think I originally got it from Rush Limbaugh: I can't program.

I can't write my show and do my show for people who don't listen.

That's insanity.

Why would I do that?

But it is the people who don't listen.

They are the ones who tear us apart because they don't take the time to actually even try to understand what we're saying.

Try to understand.

Oh, that was a comedic comment.

You can say anything on the left,

comedically, but if you try to say it on the right, especially on talk radio, you're the devil.

That's okay.

You can judge a man by his friends, but you can also judge a man by his enemies.

And Rush had some of the best enemies out there.

They did everything they could to destroy him.

They've spent millions of dollars to destroy him.

It didn't work.

And you know why it didn't work?

Because of you.

Because you wouldn't sit down.

You wouldn't be bullied into not listening.

You wouldn't be bullied into being shut up.

The talk radio stations,

when they were boycotted,

those listeners rallied.

When they were boycotted, the sponsors, the listeners, they went out and bought those products even more.

I got an email from a really good friend yesterday,

Greg Nowak.

He used to be the

president of Premier Talk Division.

He worked with Rush for years.

Then he went out and he did work for smaller businesses.

He wrote to me today, he said, Glenn,

I took the owners of Allen Brothers Stakes to meet Rush in Palm Beach one time.

Rush had agreed to endorse their company and their commercials were to start in a few weeks.

We entered the building, not wanting to be late, 3 p.m.

sharp.

We went up to the floor where Rush's studio was.

He had just finished his show, and he came out to the lobby meeting area to greet us.

As we sat down, Rush said this, quote,

It is a true honor for you to have placed your trust in me.

I love helping privately owned small businesses like yours grow.

Think of the people that you're going to hire

and the places they will go, the colleges their children will be able to attend.

That's why I do this program.

To attract the largest audience possible, to tell them stories about companies like yours.

I am a capitalist, and it gives me great pleasure to further the advancement of capitalism, knowing how many people down the line will benefit from your ad.

Then he opened up his legal pad.

He said, I did some research on your products.

I ordered several items.

I tasted them.

I have a few questions for you.

He then spent 30 minutes questioning the owners,

the owners' jaws dropping in amazement when they witnessed how interested Rush was in them as people, in their business.

Greg wrote to me last night, just before we left,

Rush turned and said, How many hits per second can your website handle?

They answered.

I don't remember the number, but Rush replied with a twinkle in his eye and a chuckle.

Well, I'll see what I can do about that.

We all shook hands and the meeting ended.

I got into the elevator with the owners.

One said with wide eyes and a huge smile, He's going to try to crash our website, isn't he?

I looked at them and said, No, he's not going to try.

He will.

He knows he will.

He's Rush Limbaugh.

He knows his audience.

He knows they're going to love your product.

His first commercial, they crashed the website.

Their business grew exponentially.

If you've ever had Snapple, you have Rush to thank.

It was a small little brand that nobody knew about.

He started drinking Snapple.

He started talking about it on the air.

He wasn't paid to talk about it, and Snapple became Snapple.

Rush was a kind man.

I think he was very shy, and no matter how many times he said, With talent on loan from God,

that was a joke.

Just a few brushes with Rush Limbaugh

told me he wasn't that man.

That was an act.

That was a show.

He was a gentleman always.

He was exceptional at what he did.

I'm going to tell you my personal experiences with Rush Limbaugh

and the Mount Rushmore

of radio

in a few minutes.

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We welcome back to the program Mr.

Stu Bergeer, who apparently is just too weeny to actually make it to a single broadcast if there's a little bit of ice or snow.

Yeah, and also my house is completely filled with water.

So I thought maybe.

You're the one hoarding all the water.

Yeah, yes.

It's all in my house, guys.

All your pipe bursts in your attic.

Yes.

Yeah.

Which is interesting with the whole gravity thing.

Like, it's in your attic.

It doesn't stay in your attic.

It comes down to

the below floors, which was, yeah, it was.

Well, it's nice to have you back.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

I was thinking as you were talking about this, I remember my last job before starting in radio was I was working at a furniture company, you know, scheduling deliveries.

And I had to go get a drug test for this job, which, by the way, I passed.

They're not all that reliable.

Anyway, but I remember sitting in the waiting room and I was into radio and I wanted to go into radio.

And I remember the cover, I can't remember if it was.

Newsweek or Time or it was one of those types of magazines, the big ones at the time.

And the cover was Rush Limbaugh, and it was a cartoon, and it was explaining how it was over.

Finally, we finally are done with the Rush Limbaugh era.

It was over.

This is like 1996.

I mean, they had declared him dead so many times in his career.

Every time.

And every time he fought back to the point where he lasted literally until his last day as the number one star in all of radio and influence well beyond that statement.

I mean, mean, it really is incredible, and he did it all basically without social media.

I mean, one of the things I was amazed about, and you mentioned this when you talked about him years ago for what was it, the top 100 most important people or something.

You did something with him.

He never tweets.

I mean, you know, he did a little bit of it towards the end, but barely, it really wasn't part of his profile.

And his death was not tweeted about, it was not leaked beforehand.

It was told at the very beginning of his radio show by his wife.

It doesn't happen.

It doesn't happen.

I mean, they just do not make them like him anymore.

They just don't exist.

Yeah, thank you.

That's sad, isn't it?

Yeah, it really is.

We lose him at a critical time.

But we're up for the challenge.

More in a minute.

All right,

let me tell you about Rough Greens.

I'd love to hear about it.

Would you?

Yeah.

Rough Greens is what I feed my dog, Uno.

It's what Pat feeds his dog, what Stu feeds his dog.

And when Stu's dog and Pat's dog get big enough, I'll feed their dogs to Uno.

But I'll sprinkle a little rough greens on top of them first because that way they get their probiotics and all of the protein that they might need.

That's hurtful.

Miles is not in love with a spot.

If he could hear it, he'd be upset.

Yeah, it'd be

Miles!

They're talking about you.

Rough greens will help your dog be healthier and happier.

I've seen it.

We've all seen it with our dogs.

Rough Greens, R-U-F-F Greens.com slash back.

Roughgreens.com slash back.

Or you can call 833-Glenn33.

It's RUFFGreens.com.

What you are about to hear is the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.

This

is

the Glenback Program.

Hello, America.

Rush Limbaugh

passed away yesterday.

It was announced on his show by his wife just minutes after I finished my broadcast.

As I was finishing up, I got an email.

Rush passed this morning.

His wife is going to make the announcement.

It is...

It was a very tough day for a lot of people.

It was a tough day for me, and

I will tell you that I

don't think I've ever done this.

Maybe except for Ronald Reagan.

But I don't think there's.

I think everything else can wait.

Everything else can wait.

Conservatives need to take the time today

and just recognize where we are and the freedoms we have.

And I think in no small part, because of Rush Limbaugh.

I'll explain that in 60 seconds.

The Glenn Beck program.

All right, let me tell you about American financing.

You tired of me shouting from the rooftops about how you need to be fiscally responsible?

There's so much chaos going on in the financial world right now.

And if you don't believe that,

have you seen the price of Bitcoin today?

Is it still 51, 52?

What is it at?

Yeah, 51.8.

51.8.

Okay.

All-time high.

All-time high.

Just a couple of weeks ago, it was 30.

Why is this happening?

Because of the spending that is coming your way and the way the Federal Reserve Bank and the central banks around the world are treating cash.

This is the next generation's gold.

Now, unlike gold, I don't know if it will still be around,

but

this is what this generation is looking at.

And they're saying, we're going to put it into something

that nobody can take because of blockchain.

Okay.

So what does this mean?

This means that everything's going to change.

You need to get your financial house in order right now.

Please call American Financing.

If you're paying three or 4% or more for your mortgage, if you're paying on high interest credit cards, get out of all of that.

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www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org.

I'm going to share a couple of stories

that I

don't think I've ever shared before.

And you'll understand at the end of this story why I'm starting here as I'm talking about Rush Limbaugh.

I remember sitting in

a Broadway play.

It was a Saturday afternoon.

My wife and I were going.

And

in the middle of the play

a security agent comes up and hands me his phone

and it was on a news story and it was that Gabby Giffords had been shot

and they of course were blaming it on right-wing extremists which it wasn't

It was a crazy man who was a supporter of the left, but more importantly, he had a problem with the way, I think the alphabet or

grammar.

Yeah, he had a weird grammar hangup.

It was very strange.

And he was crazy.

Yeah, it's crazy.

He was crazy.

But at the time, they were blaming it on right-wing extremists and the violence.

And I looked at my wife, it was a Saturday, I think, and I looked at my wife and I said,

This next week is going to be hell.

Monday, I got a call from

Fox.

I got a call from Roger Ale's office, who had been trying to get his thumb on me for a while.

He had tried all kinds of things that were really, really

despicable.

One of the things I learned at Fox was everyone said I could never leave Fox because, well, I just owe Roger too much.

After working there for a while, I realized some people actually meant that they owed him because they had saved him or saved them from something.

It was, and it wasn't Roger Ailes, it was the,

well, I'm not going to get into it, but, uh,

and I remember thinking, he is going to threaten to fire me because he called on Monday and said, I want to see Glenn in my office,

you know, 3 p.m.

Thursday.

That week

was a very long week.

And I tried to think how to outthink this, how to not get trapped, because if Roger fired me that week, he would basically be saying Glenn Beck was responsible for Gabby Giffords,

and I would have to bow the knee.

And I couldn't do that, but I couldn't get fired either.

What was I going to do?

I kept my office out.

I had an office at Fox, but I never used it.

I think I used it like twice.

And the only reason why I went up there one time was to show my kids that it overlooked the M ⁇ M store

in Times Square.

I kept my offices separate because I didn't want to be there.

I wanted to retain my own independence.

And we were about three blocks away, and I was walking.

And we had wargamed this every way you could imagine.

And I had been told by very wise people, get sick, don't go in.

You can't go in because

he will put you in a position to where you won't win.

You won't win.

All the way over, I'm saying a prayer.

And I'm like, Lord, I got nothing.

I got nothing.

I don't,

this is it.

I need some divine intervention, some help, something.

And I remember walking past his secretary's desk, and she looked at me.

She had a weird, unspoken communication with me.

I could tell what I was walking into.

And she just looked up at me, and he said, He's waiting for you.

And I thought to myself, I bet he is.

And I opened up the door.

And the minute I crossed the threshold,

I was filled with empathy for him.

It wasn't a scheme.

It wasn't a plan.

It was nothing.

I was suddenly overcome with empathy

for this

older man.

He was sitting behind his desk.

Usually he would get up and he'd come around his desk and he'd go, Young man, good to see you.

This time he sat behind his desk, didn't move, and he looked up.

And I saw him for who I felt he really was for the first time.

An absolute genius who had lost his way,

who now was

kind of questioning everything that he did because

he knew

he wasn't the best man he could be.

He was a really interesting guy.

And he said, we've got a lot to talk about.

And I said, Roger, before we do, and this was sincere.

I didn't know where it came from.

I know now where it came from.

I didn't know where this came from.

But I was so,

I was so deeply empathetic for him.

And I said, Roger, I have a feeling I know where this is going, but before we get into any of that, and

whatever happens, happens.

let me first just thank you for this

he said what

and I said

I believe that America wouldn't be America today

if you hadn't have started Fox News

Fox News didn't save America but you gave us extra time you gave us maybe 20 years maybe Maybe

after 9-11, imagine America without Fox News, without an opposing voice or a voice standing up.

Imagine what the country would be like.

I said, without you,

Ronald Reagan may not have won.

You advised him and gave him great advice that helped him win.

So,

thank you.

And I looked at him, and he had tears in his eyes.

And he could tell that I actually meant that, that that wasn't some ploy.

I actually meant that.

And he said,

you mean that, don't you?

And I said,

yeah.

And I'm thinking to myself, strangely, I do.

I've never even thought of it, but yes, I do.

He sat there behind his desk and he kind of

patted his desk for a minute.

He said, come on over, sit on the couch.

I got to talk to you about something.

And we sat there and we talked about nothing for an hour.

Nothing.

And then I said, well, if there isn't anything else, I got to get to the floor to do the show.

And he said, oh, yeah.

Gosh, I'm sorry I held you up for so long.

And I walked out.

Everybody was outside of the building.

All my whole staff was outside of the building waiting.

They're like, what happened?

What happened?

What happened?

And I'm like, ah, nothing happened.

As I walked out, I heard him say,

get that effing Palin on the phone.

And that was the day that Palin

had problems at Fox that we all are aware of.

So, why am I telling you this story in relation to Rush Limbaugh?

Give Give me 60 seconds and I'll explain.

Okay, you know, we all regret things in life, all of us.

You know, times we tried to do the right thing and we didn't make it, times that we,

you know, we didn't try to do the right thing and we accomplished whatever it was and we feel horrible.

There is one success, however, you may have had in your life that

you're like, crap.

And that's when you were successful at signing that contract for a timeshare.

Yeah.

There was probably somebody very, very good, a little slimy kind of, hey, I got it.

Would you like another Mai Tai?

They're on me.

No, seriously, have another drink.

Let me just tell you, you're going to be here all the time.

No, no, no,

no.

That's not the way it worked out.

Is it?

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10 seconds station ID.

So why do I tell you about this with Roger Ailes?

Megan Kelly and I had a great conversation recently about Roger and how complex he was, and how there was a side of him that I didn't know that was just really dirtbag central.

But there was another side that was amazing.

He was one of the

greatest

thinkers I've ever met.

And when I say thinker, I've met other people who are, you know, literal rocket scientists.

I mean somebody who understood America at its core instinctually, instinctively.

He just knew it.

He would have been the greatest broadcaster of all time.

He's the producer of the Rush Limbaugh television show, Roger Ailes was.

Before there was Fox News, that's one of the things he was doing.

He believed in an America that he lived.

That's not to say he believed in, you know, he told me one time, hey, I know, we look, we both believe in the Constitution, but, you know, sometimes you got to do what you got to do.

And I remember saying, no, not when it comes to the Constitution.

You do what it says, period.

But he understood America, and he understood the entrepreneur.

And he understood people who could come from nothing.

And I think that's why, I think that's what he saw in Rush Limbaugh, and I think that's what Rush Limbaugh may have seen in him, and what I saw in him.

Rush had this instinct of

what America was thinking and feeling and wasn't afraid to be out of step.

It just was him.

It's who he was.

I tried to think of somebody that I could put in his category because he's one man.

It's not like Roger Ailes in Fox News.

Roger Ailes, what he accomplished was a lot, but he took a lot of talent to do that.

This is one man and one man's talent, one show, three hours a day.

Look at how different we are because of Rush Limbaugh.

Think of what we know because of Rush Limbaugh.

Think of the number of jobs saved because of Rush Limbaugh.

Can you think of anyone who has impacted the culture as one man?

Martin Luther King had a team around him.

I'm not comparing the two.

I'm just trying to think who

I thought last night, maybe Johnny Carson, maybe, but Carson was just an entertainer.

Carson changed a lot of things,

but it wasn't

fundamental principles of life.

He impacted the culture, but it was,

there was no depth to it.

It was important,

but it wasn't essential.

Can you think of anyone that had this impact as one human being?

They say,

you don't know the impact one person can have.

He's a great example of that.

I don't think people,

because those who didn't listen to him were the ones who had the loudest opinions,

I don't think people knew who Rush really was.

As I said in the opening monologue last hour, that Rush was a quiet guy.

He listened.

He was a loyal guy.

Most of his staff has been with him for 20 years, 25 years, some of them 30 years.

He had a 32-year career.

To have staff members with you for 30 of those 32, that's pretty remarkable.

He's the only guy.

They say, oh, he sold out for money.

He said these things for money, did he?

You know what he didn't abandon?

Not only what his core beliefs were, but he never abandoned the relationship of AM and FM radio.

Satellite radio, podcasting,

all of that stuff was derivative.

In fact, we were just talking about it.

Name the person who could die, and it's broken, kept completely silent until his own show.

He was about

his show.

You know why people like Rush Limbaugh?

You know why people believe him?

Because beyond all of the bluster,

he was genuine.

He

has been incredibly charitable, but most people don't know about it.

Most people don't know that when you went to run lunch or dinner with Rush Limbaugh,

if it was exceptional service, or if he found out something about the s the server that

was

unique, special,

the tip would be remarkable.

Remarkable.

$50 million to Lymphoma, Leukemia Foundation.

He and his wife Catherine supported the Marine Corps, the Law Enforcement Association, the Tunnel to the Towers Foundation, and so many others.

Privately, he changed the lives of multiple people.

Privately, quietly.

If you had a problem,

Rush was there.

When people say, oh, I owe my career,

when I say, I owe my career to Rush Limbaugh,

I mean that.

Literally, I owe my career to Rush Limbaugh.

I'll explain

tell you about the Mount Rushmore

that can now be built.

The Mount Rushmore of radio

of real deep lasting impact.

Next.

This is the Glenback program.

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This is the Glenn Beck program.

One of my favorite responses to the question or to the charge that you're a racist or homophobe.

NBC, the Today Show, asked him,

Are you a racist?

Are you a homophobe?

Like, you're going to get, yeah, yeah, I am.

What a stupid question.

But his response was brilliant.

No, I'm not.

Are you?

Are you a racist?

No.

Are you a homophobe?

No.

Okay, good.

We're both clear now.

I mean, just not afraid of it.

Not afraid of it.

Tucker Carlson asked me last night on his show how he could remain so optimistic and not get bitter.

And it's because Rush and anyone who is in this industry that is smart,

you pay attention to the people who listen to you, not to the people who don't.

Rush knew who he was talking about.

He also knew who he was.

See,

when people on the left are questioned,

which is rare,

they don't have to think about

who they are or their view or if that viewpoint could be interpreted as being racist without them being racist.

What did they said?

How is it that I could be hated by so many people?

How many people think this about me?

People on the right, we're expected,

if you believe these things, you expect going in, you're going to get trashed.

Now, you may not know the extent.

That may be a little shocking.

But you question yourself.

If you're a thinking, decent human being, you question yourself.

Wow, they said that about me.

Is that true?

Is that who I am?

And you think about your positions because you're challenged all the time.

You're not challenged.

Nobody's seriously challenging Casio-Cortez and her Green New Deal.

Nobody's seriously challenging.

Anyone who's challenging that, they can just say, well, they're a racist.

They don't believe in climate change.

They're science deniers.

And they don't have to think about it anymore.

It's actually a benefit to be pushed like the right is pushed.

We have to know what we believe in.

When I said,

I owe my career to Rush Limbaugh, I literally mean I owe my career to Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh came into this

industry and he created something brand new.

There are no AM radios in cars in Europe anymore.

They're shutting down all the AM radio stations.

AM radio doesn't exist.

Why?

They don't have Rush Limbaugh.

They didn't have something like Rush Limbaugh to bring everybody back to the AM dial to make sure people were actually using that.

I honestly don't know what happens to radio now that Rush is out.

I don't know how long talk radio and people like us survive.

This is a huge, huge loss because you had to get rid of him before you could get rid of

clowns like me.

You had to get rid of him.

Now that he's gone,

I don't know what happens from here.

But I owe my career to Rush.

You know, I think people thought that this was a slam.

At least the media printed it as such.

He did an interview with the Today show,

and he was asked about me do you worry about the new guys coming up on the block he's like no

well what about Glenn Beck

quote look what I've spawned Glenn Beck is to me right on

Glenn Beck is the result of my success he's right 100% true 100% right.

There's not a lot of people that could say something that outrageous and be 100% accurate.

That is 100% accurate.

That's true.

And it's not only just political talk radio.

Does like sports radio exist today without Rush Limbaugh?

Without him saving the AM dial so that so many stations would be able to thrive that weren't just news talk.

I mean, the entire sports radio format basically owes its

life to Rush, too, in many ways.

Rush said on his last show of 2020,

just a few weeks ago,

that he largely sees himself as a political failure.

He said, my career has been enormously successful by any standard.

But there's a large part of me that feels like I've failed in such a major way.

In 30 years,

I've tried to convince people, tried to persuade people, tried to encourage people to critically think on their own, to realize the difference between a conservative and a liberal, the difference between Republicans and Democrats as it relates to conservative principles versus liberal principles.

I think anybody who honestly does their job feels that way.

Somebody who's doing it for the money, someone who's doing it for the fame, they don't feel that way.

I think almost all of us in talk radio feel that way.

What else could we have done?

How come this hasn't made the impact that we hope?

But what Rush was missing, and what sometimes I fail to see in others,

is that we're not a collective.

We believe in the individual.

We believe one individual can change the world.

And that's where our change comes from.

Somewhere out there,

there is somebody who has been deeply, profoundly changed by Rush Limbaugh.

Somebody who's been deeply and profoundly changed by Mark Levin,

Stephen Crowder,

Ben Shapiro.

All of those names I just gave you

owe one hundred percent

their career one hundred percent

to Rush Limbaugh.

Mount Rushmore of radio

could be carved today.

On it

would be Rush Limbaugh.

On it

would be Paul Harvey.

On the radio Mount Rushmore would be Don Imos.

And probably in the Washington position position would be Bob Hope.

Those four men.

And really, the only one that I would question would be Paul Harvey because

Paul Harvey really kind of stepped into the shoes of

what's his name?

Good night, Good Luck.

Edward R.

Murrow.

Edward R.

Murrow.

He did news and brought news in a different way, but in my generation, it would be Paul Harvey.

I thought today

and yesterday,

if you're old enough,

you may have reached the point to where you're like, oh, crap, I'm the elder at the table now.

I'm the one talking about all the problems I've been having with gas.

We as kids used to sit at the little kids' table, and then we got to the adult table.

And when you got to the adult table, you always heard all the old people going, Yeah, I got this pain, and my doctor was lancing this boil.

And you're like, Could we stop talking about all of this stuff?

And you realize at some point,

I'm not at the top of the food chain.

I'm the next to be eaten.

I'm now at the bottom of the food chain.

I'm the head of the table, and I don't really want to be the head of the table because I know what comes next.

And

I'm not

those people.

Yes, I'm still talking about gas and boils, but I'm not

those people.

Those people were wise and good and decent.

I have been the most fortunate man.

The guy who really invented morning morning radio was Don Imus.

The morning zoo was a knockoff in many ways of Don Imus.

He invented that.

He was my friend.

I wrote for Bob Hope.

Paul Harvey, I met.

And Rush Limbaugh is responsible for my career.

And more than just saving

the network or inventing,

he was personally

responsible for my career.

I'll talk about that next hour.

And I want to tell you about how an honest,

honest,

very powerful liberal who was the head

of the National Organization of Women in Los Angeles or in California, how Rush Limbaugh changed her.

I think all of the problems of the world today, and they are big,

they're going to be there tomorrow.

World is still going to be on fire, and there's probably going to be a few more fires as well.

Today, I think we should focus on the power of the individual, the power of one man, the power of one voice.

And hopefully, you will find yourself

somewhere in the stories that I'm trying to tell you today

about a great man,

Rush Limbaugh.

All right, you want to save money whenever and wherever you can, but I also like quality in the things that I pay for, so I'm not going to buy something that is not as good.

And also,

now,

for the first time in my life, I'm like, I'm not doing business with that company.

No.

All right, so let me give you something that you can change, and it plays a big part of in your life.

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And most importantly, am I giving my money to people who are working against my values?

Am I giving my money to, let's say, Verizon that's helping fund

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I don't want to give my money to them.

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You are listening to the Glenn Beck program.

Giving credit where credit is due, spending the day talking a little bit about Rush Limbaugh today.

I know next hour you're going to spend some time talking about the foundations of the show and how you know Rush Limbaugh was very intimately involved in that

going back a few years.

But

I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh after high school.

And I wanted to get into radio, but I really wanted to do kind of sports or know comedy stuff and

I remember sitting on the beach in you know Fort Lauderdale after high school you know no money like the only thing I could do is go to a free beach and I had like a walkman and listening to Rush Limbaugh and not really ever thinking about politics all that much and I just remember him

bringing up these arguments or callers bringing up these arguments that were like liberal points.

And you know, like when you watch like Law and Order, where like the prosecution makes their case and you totally think that that's true, and then the defense makes their case and they totally like they totally bring you back and forth.

And I remember him, you know, these points would be made by liberals and I didn't know anything about politics and they seemed like good points.

And he had an answer for every one of them.

Every single one of them he had the answer for.

And it always made much more sense than the initial point.

And he could, he would, he had that unique ability to be able to, within a couple of sentences, show how ridiculously absurd the leftist point was on any given topic.

This is why they worked so hard and spent so much time and money to make him into a monster.

Because they needed to put an electric fence around him.

You couldn't let anyone into his audience and listen.

That's why they never debated anything he actually said

because he was so effective.

So that's why I said earlier, Rush didn't do his show for the people who didn't listen.

You can't do that.

And that's the left.

Because early on, the left did listen to him.

And they realized, this is why they dubbed him the most dangerous man in America, because they knew if you listened to him, you'd have that experience.

You'd be like, oh my gosh, everything I thought I knew is wrong.

Wait a minute, that works.

And that works with this, this, and this.

And

that's the biggest

Rush Limbaugh was very successful in any possible way way you could count it.

But the left was also very successful in convincing half the country that he was an absolute monster.

Monster.

He wasn't.

He wasn't.

Because their only defense was to pull him out of context and make him toxic.

I'm going to give you an honest liberal

Diehard, head of the National Organization of Women for a while, and how Rush Limbaugh changed her coming up.

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You better make sure that I'm so mad at you about this.

I have to apologize, and I'm so mad at you about that.

I'll tell you why, maybe tomorrow.

What you are about to hear is the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.

This

is

the Glenbach program.

Today we're taking the day to say to the world's problems, I'll see you tomorrow.

I mean, they're all going to be here.

The world is going to be on fire, and there might be another part of the Amazon that's burnt down overnight.

We can wait a day.

I think it's important that we give Rush Limbaugh the credit that Rush Limbaugh deserved.

He was a childlike,

you know, Christ said, come to me as a child.

I think in some ways Rush Limbaugh was like that.

Every time the Pretenders theme played, he became playful and childlike.

When meeting listeners or standing in front of an audience receiving a standing ovation, when having simple friends over for dinner, always childlike, never childish.

It stemmed from he loved what he did.

He loved people.

And when that golden mic was turned on, so was he.

It was 12 p.m.

Eastern every day

where he would enter the gates of his own self-built Disney world for the very first time.

We honor this hour, Rush Limbaugh, in 60 seconds.

The Glenn Beck Program.

All right, I want to talk to you a little bit about Relief Factor.

I used to be in a ton of pain all the time.

I could barely function.

Just two years ago, I said to Stu, I said to my wife, because I had been trying to do it for almost eight years, I had turned the blaze over to

my business partners about 10 years ago and said, I can't do this anymore because I'm in so much pain.

Then two years ago, three years ago, I said to Stu, I don't know how much longer I can do it.

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from behind my cardboard microphone.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

With no hands tied behind my back and talent on loan from Milton Burrell, who's been dead for a long time.

Welcome to the program.

I will tell you, I got into this

business, this talk radio business,

in uh

the late 1990s but i only did shows fill-in shows

uh i was doing comedy morning shows

and

and i was sick of it and i got into talk radio because i felt i had something to say but i really got into it also because i wanted to make fun of it

All these intellectuals that just, you know, were high and mighty, and most of them, and that this time, all the local ones were like attorneys

that were all trying to get on.

And I'm an expert, I'm a local official on the school council, and they were boring as snot.

And I got into it because I wanted to make fun of all of it, and I saw things in a completely different way.

I think Rush Limbaugh did the same thing in a way.

He was making fun of the media

and he mocked all of that.

Most people don't know that

the roots of this show

really kind of stem back to Florida and Rush Limbaugh.

I knew the first time we ever did a talk radio show, Stu will verify that this is true because it was just like, he was so sick of me.

And this is like 19, what, 98, 97?

We did our first talk radio show, and it was just, it was for like an hour, two hours maybe.

And I took my headphones off after the first break, and I looked at him, and he was running the board and helping produce.

And I looked at him over the board, and I said, we're going to replace Dr.

Laura.

And he said,

what?

And I said, this show's going to replace Dr.

Laura.

And he said, how about we finish our first show?

And I told him, I said, mark my words.

Well,

the first time

I was on kind of a job interview.

I had done shows for WABC and I had filled in here and there,

but nobody would give me a job.

And

I changed my life.

I was really struggling in the 90s.

I changed my life.

I was an alcoholic.

I was going on five years sober.

I had found a an amazing woman that loved me and

also was just really good for me.

And then I met my wife, too.

No, I'm kidding.

And I married her, Tanya.

And

my life changed, but I couldn't get a job.

I get baptized, and

the day after my baptism, I just remember this because of the, I tried for two years to try to get somebody to,

you know, represent me.

I talked to everybody.

I couldn't get anybody to represent me.

And it was a Monday afternoon, and my phone rings at my apartment, and

guy on the other side of the phone said, hey, I understand you're looking for an agent.

And I said,

yeah.

I have been for two years.

And he said,

my name is George Hiltsick.

He was the biggest agent of radio at the time by far, by far.

He had done everything in his career.

He was an NBC executive.

He was part of the original Saturday Night Live legal team.

A legend.

George is a legend.

He's a legend.

He's a legend.

But anyway, he calls me up and he said,

well, I heard from

Jack Swanson, KGO, that maybe

I should pay attention to you.

And I said, okay, well, thanks.

And he said, well, Jack's the guy who passed on Rush Limbaugh, so let's not get too excited, joking.

And I said,

well, that's great.

What do we do?

And he said, well, I want to check you out.

I want to check you out.

And he said, I've heard many things about you, good and bad.

He calls me back on Wednesday, and he said, all right.

I'll take you on.

Now, I'm thinking to myself over the last couple of days, I'm thinking to myself, there's a chance this guy won't take 10% of my money.

And

I said that to George.

He said, I'll take you on.

I said, really?

Honestly, I've been thinking about this for a while.

You mean to tell me that you would pass up 10% of what I'm already making

because you wanted to check me out and see?

And he said, you're entering a new territory.

He said, you want to go into talk radio.

He said, you can't be a fraud in talk radio.

And I've heard stories about you in the past, but I understand that you're trying to change your life.

You've sovered up.

You're stable.

And you're a good man.

And I said, wow.

Well, thank you.

Yes, I am.

And he said, well, that's why I'm taking you on, because no one can fake who they are for three hours without a script every day.

The audience is too smart.

They will figure you out and you're done.

He said, and I've wasted my time.

So I take that job.

I take him as a client.

I get a job at WFLA in Florida.

And

I had to do

kind of a job tryout before.

And what they decided to do was to let me do my first network show.

I had never, I mean, I like, what did we have?

20 shows in our back pocket that we had done?

And

they said, we want you to do this

network show.

And Rush Limbaugh

has allowed us to put you into his studio in New York City.

And I'm like, wait, wait, what?

So I go into the Rush Limbaugh studios, and Stu and I, I'll never forget this giant oil painting.

There's a picture I think I tweeted today, a giant oil painting of Rush.

behind the microphone.

And there's the golden microphone.

and Stu and I look at each other like I can't believe this

and I did my first show because of his kindness of letting us use that studio

two years go by I'm working in Florida and we went from worst to first actually we went from worst to

worse

to first in a two-year period

and

there was this one week and I don't even know, I don't even know if I've asked you this, did you know who was on that phone line that week?

You don't even remember this.

So

one week just before

Premiere offers me a position,

the phone line at WFLA is tied up.

All week during my show, started at 3 o'clock, was over at 7.

One phone line was tied up.

And I didn't know why.

And nobody would tell me.

Well, I find out later that Rush Limbaugh was listening to my show every day that week.

Good thing they didn't tell me.

That would have freaked me out.

But he had been asked to listen to my show by Premiere.

Now I find this out later.

The head of Premiere, Craig Kitchen, goes down to Florida to meet with Rush.

And

Rush knows that the meeting is about me.

And

Craig said to me

later, after we started to really know each other, we were talking about this bogus with talent unloan from God

and how much of an act that was, how humble he really was in person, how quiet he was in person.

He wasn't that beat his chess guy.

That part was an act, but his listeners knew that.

They're in on the

joke.

In on the joke.

And he said, in fact,

you know we had to ask Rush for permission out of courtesy

to hire you.

And I said, what?

They said, yeah, he listened a few weeks ago, you know, when

you were, you know, on the air before

we offered you this gig.

He listened.

We asked him to listen.

And I remember the phone line, and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's who it was.

They had him listen for a week because they had so much deference for him.

Because I was going to be before him on the network.

They wanted to make sure that Rush was okay with the lead-in.

Apparently, he said yes.

But the point of the story is, is while he was sitting there at dinner, when Craig sat down, the first thing he said was, It's been a good run.

It's been a great run, Craig, hasn't it?

And Craig said,

Yeah, it has.

He's like, We've accomplished a lot.

And I'm

comfortable, so

don't worry about it.

You know, not everybody lasts,

you know, forever.

He actually thought that he was having dinner because they were going to say to him, it's over.

Are you kidding me?

Most people don't last 30 years in this business, but Rush Limbaugh didn't know he wasn't most people.

He still had the excitement and he still had the humility

to go, it could be over at any time.

That's hard for somebody who's worth $600 million.

That's hard for somebody who has 27 million listeners a week.

To put that into perspective, Colbert has about 3 million a night.

Rush had 27 million a week.

Do the math.

How humble he really was.

More in a second.

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10 seconds, station ID.

Golly.

Well, we have

spent most of the show, except for the last, what, 38 minutes now, talking about the late and truly great Rush Limbaugh.

And

what's frightening is, as I said earlier, you remember when you were at the ones at the head, or you were at the kids' table, and now you find yourself at the head of the table.

You know, if you're 50, 60 years old, and all the older people are

dying off, you're like, oh, crap, I'm the next for the dirt vault.

And

there was a lot of wisdom there at the table that now is lost.

And

I look at all of us who remain, who are now,

what, supposed to fill his shoes?

Nobody can fill those.

I look at us, and we're all bluffing.

All of us are bluffing.

No matter what anybody says, they have no idea what they're doing.

They have no idea what they're doing.

Maybe it's just me.

Maybe I'm the only one bluffing and they're all experts, but I don't think so.

And

I feel badly for the next generation,

if there is a next generation, because

you're having to learn from us.

Good luck.

Good luck with that.

So in the long run, kids, what I'm saying is he was very optimistic,

but I don't think he paid that much attention to what was following him.

So when it comes to good talk radio,

because now it's up to us.

And it's more than just talk radio, right?

I mean, you know, Rush was so central to the conservative movement.

I mean, he was basically the head of it, post-Reagan.

I mean, it was basically Rush Limbaugh as the head of the movement.

And, you know, he leaves a huge gap there.

You know, I mean, Rush Limbaugh is largely the reason I'm a conservative.

I mean, coming out of high school, I didn't

pay attention to politics at all.

Reagan was for me,

but Limbaugh cemented things.

Like you, I knew what I believed, but I really hadn't.

You know, the thing that was so frustrating with Rush was when you would talk to friends before Rush Limbaugh was the Antichrist, you'd talk to friends and you would say, you got to listen to this guy.

You got to listen to him.

You'd be debating something.

You'd be talking about it.

And you're like, I can't say it like he says it.

You just, you have to listen.

And that's the only frustrating thing is,

you know, we're not all Rush Limbaugh.

No, he was really, really good at this.

But, you know, he was,

that approach was possible back then, too.

You could win people over by having people listen to Rush Limbaugh.

That's why they destroyed him.

That's why they did it.

And of course, you know, partially because of things like social media where things get taken out of context.

It wasn't.

What?

Yeah, I know.

You know, most of the people you've heard over the past couple of days who are just dancing on Rush Limbaugh's grave in a grotesque ways that I don't remember ever doing to a liberal.

But, you know,

people reveal themselves in these moments, but they're dancing on his grave.

And most of them have literally never heard one show,

not even an hour of Rush Limbaugh they've taken in only media matters bullcrap sort of clips out of context you know whatever bad joke they think he made 10 years ago things have been repeated a thousand times and when you listen to him as a whole you realize that he was a broadcaster an entertainer a very smart person who is incredibly well read over a multitude of topics and a person who could break down things into into little chunks that people could understand.

But as you point out, it's not just that.

It's not just a couple clever tweets that you could pull off today.

It's, you know, 15 hours a week without a script.

I mean, it's

these Hollywood types, these even news anchors, anybody that you watch, you have no idea.

You have no idea how few people can do what Rush Limbaugh did.

Talking without a script, being able to do it for three hours,

that takes real intellectual heft.

And then there's people like me that just kind of every day I'm like, how the hell am I still on the radio?

I don't get it.

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Many members of the media are taking sick, twisted glee in the death of Rush Limbaugh, and they're also

trying to set the history against him, make sure that that's cemented in by playing all kinds of bad things that he has said, that he has said, either in jest or in mistakes that he later apologized for.

You know, it doesn't matter to people anymore.

If it's even true, it doesn't matter anymore.

And he may be the last example of somebody who's just

really bulletproof, really bulletproof.

And even he had some scary times.

I was we were supposed to be with him the day he lost his Monday night football gig.

And that was a really weird day.

And

yet, he had carved hisself a place where he could continue to do what he did because he listened to the listeners.

And that's what I did with the Blaze.

And we are grateful, truly grateful, that the only people we have to answer to are you.

And we ask you to join us

at blazetv.com/slash Glenn.

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But talk radio is going to come under attack because everything is, and they have to shut you up.

Last night I did a show, our Wednesday night special, on national suicide and what's actually killing our kids.

And I started the show with Christopher Rufol because we started with the

non-literal suicide, the national suicide,

that really comes from critical race theory.

Christopher Christopher is the contributing editor for the City Journal and the director of Center on Wealth and Poverty.

He is the guy who is really responsible for rooting this out and letting people know what critical race theory is and how deeply embedded in the system.

If you missed last night's show, we talked about this curriculum that is in public schools up in New York,

and they identify the eight white identities

that you have.

And it starts at white supremacist.

And then

I think one of them is a race trader.

And that's on the good side of the scale, by the way, if you're a race trader, if you're selling out the white race,

it's crazy.

I wanted to bring Christopher back.

This is the only thing that we have done today that is not related to Rush Limbaugh because I think this is so important.

Chris, welcome to the program.

It's great to be with you.

Thank you.

First of all, any thoughts on Rush Limbaugh?

Did you listen to him?

Yeah, you know,

I didn't.

You know, I grew up actually,

I don't know if you know this, Glenn, as a kind of liberal bohemian in California.

That was my upbringing and political orientation for most of my youth.

And then I started kind of questioning those assumptions.

It started to not match with reality.

I started veering more towards the center.

And I wrote one of my first pieces for City Journal where I was still kind of in the center, maybe center-right, and Rush read it on air.

I got a flood of emails and it was very strange because I had been growing up hearing all of these bad things about Rush Limbaugh.

And then I started listening.

I said, oh, interesting.

Rush Limbaugh's reading my story.

I started listening.

I said, man,

what people in California and the people that are stewing so much venom on Twitter hear is so different than what you actually hear from his words.

And I became a fan subsequently.

And, you know, it was very sad to hear the news.

Yeah.

I wanted to get Tammy Tammy Bruce.

Maybe we get Tammy Bruce.

See if we can get Tammy Bruce on the show tomorrow.

She tweeted something.

She was very, very, you know, she was the head of the National Organization of Women for a while.

And then she met Rush Limbaugh.

And it changed her life.

And she said the same thing.

Everything I believed and everything I had been told about him and his audience just wasn't true.

Let's talk about critical race theory because I am getting messages from people who want to know.

I have to go into a critical race theory kind of thing in my office, and they'll fire me if I say anything.

I saw Accenture, I think, let a 30-year partner go because he spoke up against this and said, we shouldn't be doing any of this.

Tell me about how critical race theory is going to be affecting people if it hasn't already in their places of business and what they should do.

Yeah, I mean,

if it isn't already in your workplace and your workplace is like a large corporation, a publicly owned firm, it's coming and it's going to come under the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which sound great, but sometimes are really aggressive

propaganda and indoctrination campaigns.

Can you say first what the difference between equality, which our Constitution talks about, and equity, which is critical race theory?

What is the difference?

Because they sound the same and people think, ah, equity, equality, it's the same.

It's not.

Yeah, equality is the idea that we're all created equal under God and that we, the government, should protect individual rights regardless of race, creed, color, religion, etc.

And essentially, it's the equal protection under the law.

Equity is the critical race theorists basically say, hey, equality hasn't worked.

We still have large racial disparities.

There's still kind of systemic racism in society.

So they've abandoned the idea of equality, treating people equally, and replaced it with equity, which is treating groups as units and then trying to equalize outcomes based on group identity.

So it's a very kind of quick way to think about it is equality is something like the equality of opportunity, and equity is the equality of results, which we've seen over and over in the 20th century lead to human and social disaster.

Okay, so I'm in my office.

Thank God this isn't happening happening at my company, but I'm in my office, and I get a note that says I have to attend this racial diversity and equity

class, and I want nothing of it.

And maybe there are people in my office, but no one will say anything.

What do I do?

And

what happens if nobody does stand up against it?

Well,

there's a couple things you can do.

One is if you feel confident enough and you feel like you have the conviction to do so, you can stand up.

You can speak out.

You can send a letter to the HR department letting them know that these theories don't actually lead to better outcomes in the business literature.

They put the firm at legal risk for lawsuits and that they conflict with your own deeply held beliefs.

Wait, wait, wait.

How do they open up the firm for lawsuits?

Well, you know, I'm working on this, but I think there's a strong case to be made, and there's

some kind of analogies in case law that if critical race theory, for example, traffics in racial stereotypes.

They say white people can be reduced to the essence of whiteness and it's analogous with oppression.

You know, that's a violation of the Civil Rights Act.

If they compel speech, especially in public institutions, that's also a violation of the law.

And then if it creates a toxic work environment, which in many cases it does, it's pitting people against each other.

It's creating a kind of race-based harassment, which is a protected category.

Again, these are all actual violations of the law.

And I think big companies are maybe the quickest to potentially

change tack because

their legal departments, if this starts becoming a cost center, if it starts becoming a legal risk, if they start fearing lawsuits, They're going to probably disband a lot of these programs pretty quickly.

So I think that's one excellent way forward that we could hopefully see unfold in the next few years.

You have giant companies.

You're read up on the Great Reset, Chris.

Yeah.

I mean, you see these what are called ESGs, these standards in these big companies, and that's the first red flag.

If your company has an ESG, environmental, social justice, and governmental standards, you're already in trouble.

Yeah, and I think people are going to have to make a big decision.

If your beliefs, your politics, your faith is important, and you work at a company that is actively kind of mobilizing against it, you have a tough ethical and moral choice to make.

Do you stay and fight, or do you find employment with a company that lets you express yourself more authentically?

And I've talked to a lot of people in the last six months where they say, you know, I have these obligations.

I have a family.

I have a career.

I have a reputation.

but this is just eating away at me this political indoctrination trying to shame people trying to create collective guilt based on race or faith or identity

and I tell them you know you really have two options you have you're gonna have to sit and take it or you're gonna have to have some courage and stand up for those convictions and in some cases people are actually starting to fight back and in you know, some cases, even fewer, unfortunately, they're actually having success at shutting down these programs.

You did a great story in the City Journal on anti-racism comes to the heartland.

And you talk about Springfield, Missouri, how

the teachers are being forced to locate themselves on the oppression matrix, which is what?

The oppression matrix is a kind of graph or grid that was designed by some social justice academics that basically said, these are the checklists that makes you an oppressor.

These are the checklists that makes you an oppressed person.

So white, male, heterosexual, English-speaking Christians were the kind of dominant oppressors.

And then, you know,

the other side.

And

it was a middle school in Springfield, Missouri, a place that is not a kind of progressive stronghold.

It's not LA or New York.

And they were forcing teachers to essentially locate themselves on this oppression matrix and telling white male teachers, you are an oppressor, telling female or people of color that we're teaching in the system, you are an oppress,

taking in none of the actual reality of the situation, no one's individual stories, and categorizing them in this way.

And teachers were absolutely outraged.

You know, they leaked me the documents and

hopefully the school district will think twice before doing it again.

It also, they handed out flyers or some

training materials.

And the handout originally listed MAGA as, quote, a form of covert white supremacy.

Now, they took that off because people found out about it.

And so they went back into the hiding and they scampered under the refrigerator like cockroaches do.

But

MAGA,

this should show you where we're headed when they say, hey, we got to find extremists.

The stuff that is being passed out to our teachers in schools is really revealing

who they think those dangerous extremists are, and they're the people in the red states.

Yeah,

absolutely.

That's right.

And I think we've seen an evolution of language.

For the last four years under the Trump administration, there was this drumbeat from the media constantly saying, making the association that white conservative Christians

are, by definition, white supremacists.

And there was an attempt to tie those two phrases together.

And then on January 6th, and I know you condemned it, I condemned it, the violence at the Capitol,

they were gleeful.

You could, those 72 years after, they said, this is our big opportunity.

We can now move from white supremacists to white supremacist domestic terrorists.

And it's really a kind of maybe spontaneously coordinated, but clearly a coordinated language campaign.

to basically create the connotation between conservative and Republican voters and white supremacists and domestic terrorists.

And these phrases are dangerous.

I mean,

it's a truly, you know, the worst thing that can be.

And they're trying to basically annex all conservative voters into that kind of linguistic umbrella, which then they could use to silence, to deplatform, to outlaw, and to marginalize

what I think is, you know, if not a majority, a strong plurality of the country.

Chris Ruffo, thank you so much.

We'll talk again.

Thank you for all of your hard work.

You can follow him on Twitter at realchrisrufo, r-u-f-o, or his website is christopherufo.com.

Thanks, Chris.

We'll talk again.

Thank you.

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This is the Glenn Beck program.

It is weird.

For the first time in, what, 19 or 20 years?

It's the first time I haven't thought, okay, what is Limbaugh leading with and how can I lead into that with him?

First time.

I know.

it's it's a it's an end of a an era is an understatement with this one this is really tough it it may be the beginning of a new era and a very frightening era

I know I know I know

couldn't come at a worse time than than it just did

I just looked up at the screen

on MSNBC, how to manage life after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.

Well, gee, that makes me want to run out and get it.

First of all, how to manage life after you get the vaccine?

I don't know.

Go back to doing your work and doing your life.

Whole point of it.

Gosh.

They should be encouraging people.

Hey, guess what?

Get the vaccine.

You get to go back to your life.

If you've already had COVID, you get to go back to your life.

No, no, no.

No, you all have to wear masks after you had the vaccine and you've had the virus.

It's silly and it's hurting people.