Best of the Program | Guests: Senator John Kennedy & Justin Haskins | 12/3/19

Hey, before we get to the podcast today,

I don't want you to forget: if you're anywhere in the Salt Lake City area, we have a few seats that have just opened up to the Christmas show, which happens this Saturday, December 7th, one night, only one show only.

And

it's going to be fun.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

So get your tickets now.

You can do it at Glenbeck.com.

The Glenbeck Christmas Show, it's this Saturday, December 7th, only in Salt Lake City.

We'll see you there.

Okay, on today's podcast, Senator John Kennedy.

Yeah, we dug him up and we put a phone right there.

A different

John Kennedy, yeah.

Really?

Different Kennedy, different John.

All right.

Prince Andrew, is he going to be on the show?

No.

Wow.

And Dershowitz, will he float?

We answer that question all on today's podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

The 123-page document written by GOP members on three House committees formalized the president's own cycle of distraction and denial that

he used out to ride out the Russian scandal.

He's using the same tactic to save his job now that he's faced with impeachment over his political pressure on Ukraine.

This just reads like a news story.

It does.

It is so news.

It's almost overwhelmed by

CNN news.

Trump is now waiting to hear the formal case against him because he doesn't have to.

He's no longer waiting.

Ultimately, it'll make little difference since his defense was so long ago unmoored from fact and is based on selling a disinformational narrative to his followers that sows confusion and devalues truth for everything else.

This has got to be an opinion piece.

This is not a news story.

Who wrote this?

You have an author?

No, I just have it.

It's just marked CNN.

Washington CNN.

No, it's dateline, Washington, CNN.

I'm just looking again.

No,

I don't even, there's no byline on it.

It's just CNN.

Hmm.

I mean, because that does definitely strike me as a political analysis piece, which I would say is a piece,

a piece of something.

But is not, that

cannot be a news story.

You want it.

How much are you going to put down on it?

I will put down.

I'm totally got it.

One cent is about the maximum I would bet on this.

The report released by

the President's House Republican allies on Monday was, in effect, a pre-buttle of a report on the Democratic impeachment investigation set to be released by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff.

The message of the document, less of a defense of Trump on its merits, but rather an endorsement of his counterfactual denials.

It was simple.

Nothing Trump did when it came to Ukraine was wrong, the report said.

His scheme run by his scheme, run by personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to coerce Ukraine to investigate a political foe, Joe Biden, was just fine, according to the partisan document.

Contrary to what top officials testified, there was no quid pro quo, House Republicans claim, and the whole Ukrainian drama amounts to a coup by his deep state enemies, despite an avalanche of evidence otherwise.

Wow.

It's really frustrating the way they're doing this right now.

They are, let me give you another one here.

This is from the New York Post.

So

House Republicans on Monday released a report ripping Democrats' impeachment proceedings, arguing that the evidence collected in the probe so far does not support the accusations leveled against President Trump or the rise or rise to the level of removal from office.

The evidence presented.

Now, this one reads like a news story.

The evidence presented does not prove any of these Democratic allegations, and none of the Democratic witnesses testified to have any evidence of bribery, extortion, or any high crime or misdemeanor.

End quote.

The Republicans asserted this in the 123-page report, a copy of which was obtained by the Post.

Dueling versions of the case against the president following two weeks of the House committee, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

They are

the mainstream press is working overtime right now to do a couple of things.

Listen to this story from Salon.

A Ukrainian prosecutor who aided Trump attorney Ruli Giuliani's search for damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden was among hundreds of prosecutors fired in a sweeping anti-corruption purge.

One of Giuliani's earliest contacts in Ukraine was given a dismissal notice last week.

Okay, so prosecutor who aided Giuliani's hunt for damaging details on Biden is fired in an anti-corruption purge.

What does that headline tell you?

What is it supposed to tell you?

Anti-corruption purge.

That

these people were removed for

justifiable good reasons because they're just we take an action against the bad guys.

Is that accurate?

No.

He and more than 500 prosecutors from the last regime were fired because they failed to take some exam that they felt was biased against them.

And so they failed to take this exam on what happened in the last administration.

They didn't take it, so 500 of them, more than 500 of them were fired.

Interesting.

Yeah.

This man has denied meeting with Giuliani, but his former associates say he prepared a seven-page dossier, which was passed along to Giuliani.

The former prosecutor later appeared in a report by the Hills John Solomon, to whom Giuliani fed dubious claims to fuel the debunked narrative that Biden had prosecutor terminated while he was investigating a Ukrainian firm that employed his son.

How is that debunked?

How is that debunked?

We have the court documents that were filed by that prosecutor three weeks before he was fired by Joe Biden.

He went to court and filed

a court document for an investigation to be able to have the powers to do the investigation on Burisma and Joe Biden's son.

Yeah.

So where has this been debunked?

Well, and what they fall back on usually here is there were multiple investigations going on against Burisma,

one of which had ended before the Biden situation occurred.

So they say, well,

the investigation was over, as you point out.

They had filed papers for a new investigation.

There were other investigations going on on Burisma at the same time.

We should also report that this stated

thing that Joe Biden was doing in Ukraine, totally separate from Burisma, no big deal, had nothing to do with them.

All he was doing was investigating corruption in the oil and gas industry with his focused attention on Burisma's number one competitor.

Now, sir, it wasn't even about Burisma.

It was only about their number one competitor in the same industry.

That's all.

Obviously, there are more questions.

And to just say it's debunked is easy, right?

Because you know what?

Sometimes this does happen, right?

Sometimes Republicans do throw around theories that are BS, and sometimes they do.

So what they try to do with things like this is say, well, look, you guys know they're all conspiracy theorists.

We've been telling you that everything they've been been doing is debunked, and this is just another example.

Don't look into it.

We're telling you right now, it's another example.

A little different than the do-your-own-homework approach that we take with these investigations.

Check it, look at it, read the documents.

Please do.

Here they are.

We have the documents.

We have them.

So when you say they're debunked, you'll notice they're not quoting any document.

They're not quoting anyone and showing a document that disproves our documents.

Our documents, in this case, are from the court system in Ukraine.

I mean,

so please debunk that.

I'll correct that.

Just show me what makes that report and those documents invalid.

Show that to me.

They can't.

They can't.

Nor will they.

Listen to this.

Giuliani told Blaze host Glenn Beck last month that he used Solomon to push the claims in the U.S.

senior State Department official George Kent.

That he also testified last month that Solomon's reporting, if not entirely, is made up in full cloth.

It was filled with non-truths and non-sequiturs.

So he's saying

that Solomon, that Rudy Giuliani told me that he used Solomon to push these things.

No, I don't think that's what he said.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Stu.

I think he said that, yes, he gave this information to John Solomon.

Right.

They're just inserting the context where he pushed false claims, but that's not correct.

Of course, what Giuliani or Solomon was informed.

That's like you'll, you'll, you'll notice that up on my giant chalkboard, uh, there is, um,

oh, what is his name?

The, um,

oh, the, the press guy, uh, Michael Isakoff.

I've never said anything about Michael Isakoff except that Chalupa was working with Michael Issakoff on giving him a story, which he ran, and that story was used for the FISA request.

Okay.

I'm not saying that Michael Isakoff

was part of this conspiracy.

I'm not saying that Michael Issakoff is completely discredited.

I'm not saying any of that.

I'm only stating the fact that I know that Chalupa was working the press.

And she was specifically in her own words, in her own documents and emails to the DNC working on Michael Issakoff for a blockbuster story.

And that blockbuster story,

well, that blockbuster story happened to lead right down to the black ledger, which got Paul Manafort fired.

Is that Michael Issakoff's fault?

Was he part of it?

I've never made that charge.

No.

I mean, if you're a journalist, it was a real story.

It should have been reported.

Correct.

And, you know, we shouldn't dismiss the idea that people were convicted in the release of this black ledger that led to the resignation and eventual imprisonment of a guy running one of the two campaigns going running for president at the time.

You know, that Manafort thing is not a little detail.

I mean, imagine what a big

2016 was so freaking crazy and so many details happened and so many wild swings happened in that election.

But there are most elections in U.S.

history.

The biggest story of the entire campaign would be the guy running the campaign gets fired because of corruption that's leaked out of a country overseas

still at some level is questioned, even by the mainstream media, whether it's fraudulent or not, was not entered into the actual

courts as evidence.

The prosecution never used the black ledger because they felt that

it had too many flaws in it.

It seemed like it was a good possibility that it wasn't real.

It does seem like a lot of the information in it was real.

However, but it was a manufactured collection of evidence presented in a specific way for a specific result.

Correct.

And which, by the way, got the result.

I mean, someone in Ukraine released a document that got the head of a campaign fired in the United States.

But it wasn't.

Everyone tells us it's debunked.

Right.

There were convictions in Ukraine over this.

There was a tape from Ukraine about this.

And that guy that was convicted, there there were two of them.

One of them was the head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, which was set up by Obama, Clinton, the State Department, and George Soros.

That's what that organization is.

And the head of that organization was convicted of interfering in a U.S.

election.

I knew you couldn't get through a whole segment without anti-Semitism.

I knew it.

I knew it.

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn, and you're listening to the Glen Beck program.

If you like what you're hearing on this show, make sure you check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

It's available wherever you download your favorite podcasts.

Let me go to Ethan in Virginia before we get to Pat.

Hello, Ethan.

How's it going?

Good.

How are you?

I'm doing good.

Hey, I wanted to ask you,

in our state of Virginia, the Democrats are like in full control, and they're getting ready to change all kinds of gun laws for us.

So the counties, our surrounding counties are changing into Second Amendment sanctuary counties.

So my question is,

how much protection to the gun owners

will that Second Amendment sanctuary, how much protection will that give us?

Well, I would,

I happen to think that sanctuary cities for the Second Amendment are all cities.

The Second Amendment is the Constitution.

It is a constitutionally protected right.

So when, you know, with sanctuary cities with illegals, that's like, yeah, we're not going to enforce the law because we disagree with it.

This is, we are going to enforce the law.

It will all come down to your sheriffs.

If you have a really good sheriff,

the sheriff does does not answer to the governor, does he?

I'm trying to remember, Pat.

In the Constitution, I think sheriffs are the only ones that

don't have a hierarchy.

They answer to the people.

I'm not sure I know the sheriff hierarchy.

I'm not as up on the hierarchy of sheriffdom as I should be.

I'm pretty sure

it's definitely made.

It's never been

that I know of, never been tested.

But the idea is that the sheriff is not an appointment from anybody and doesn't answer to anybody but the people.

And that's why the counties are doing it because the county sheriff,

if you have a good one, is saying, that's my constitutional right.

I respond to the people, not to the governor or anybody else.

But you will have a fight between the sheriff and the governor.

That's why you need to be, all Americans should pay very close attention to who they have as

their sheriff and make sure you really know that person and that person understands the Constitution and will stand.

Thanks so much, Ethan.

Hope that helps answer your question.

You should also be very much aware of the presidential candidate most likely to do something about this gun situation, and that's Michael Bloomberg, of course.

He wants to take the guns off the streets, which is great.

Well, which is great to take the guns off of the streets.

If they were just laying there in the streets,

I know.

I was like, you know, can somebody pick these up?

Well, my issue is it's a tire hazard.

I'm constantly dropping tires because of all the gun streets.

And then they go off just by themselves.

Especially those bayonets, right?

Because they're always on the end of the guns.

And then just in case the same thing happens at home, he's going to come and get them out of your house too.

Right.

Just to make everything really nice, obviously.

There's no reason to have something that was developed specifically to kill.

This is one of the, i mean remember this is the guy who what over the weekend said no president z is not a dictator he he answers to his constituency yeah no he changed the law so he doesn't answer to anybody yeah communists don't have constituents really they don't they really don't his thing was oh you think the people around him if he starts going bad you don't think that they'll and he couldn't bring himself to yeah kill him right oh so you're saying a coup is the constituency.

I don't know if you've noticed, a lot of dictators survive a long time before a coup really bites them.

Yes.

You know,

the ill family.

Yeah, yeah, the ill family.

Or the Kim family.

Yeah, exactly.

You're right.

Yeah, it's the Kim family.

Reversed, yeah, reversed.

But he's got some other great policies.

He tried to explain one of them last year.

And

I think the poor are really going to respond to this when he's talking about taxing the poor and how great that will be.

Love it.

Here's Michael Brown.

Say, well, taxes are regressive, but in this case, yes, they are.

That's the good thing about them because the problem is in people that don't have a lot of money.

And so higher taxes should have a bigger impact on their behavior and how they deal with themselves.

So I listen to people saying, oh, we don't want to tax the poor.

Well, we want the poor to live longer so that they can get an education and enjoy life.

and that's

why you do want to do exactly what a lot of people say you don't want to do.

The question is: do you want to pander to those people or do you want to get them to live longer?

And there's just no question.

If you raise taxes on full-sugary drinks, for example,

they will drink less.

And there's just no question that full-sugar drinks are one of the major contributors to obesity, and obesity is one of the major contributors to

heart disease and cancer and a variety of other things.

Yeah, yeah, shut up.

May I just point out

some people that have money also have big bellies?

Really?

Can you name it?

Do you have any specifics?

I can't think of anyone.

Somebody who may be in the media spotlight for a while, maybe earned a lot of money over the years.

I can't think of a single one.

Seems to grow up.

But it's not

like this obesity project.

Wait a minute.

What?

That's audible.

I'm sorry.

I'm not a specific.

It's not like it's just the poor that are drinking soda.

Right.

Correct.

I think his point is, though, that's going to fix the poor.

Because

Glenn Beck is going to buy whatever soda he wants no matter how much the taxation is.

But for someone who has a lower level of income, they may avoid it because of the taxation.

I think that's such a great argument.

The less money they have,

the less damage they can do.

Yes, to themselves.

They're able to buy food with the money.

Right.

So they won't hurt themselves with the food they eat or intake or drink.

This is Pat Progressive Theory 101, right?

Bloomberg knows better than them.

They don't know what to buy for themselves.

He has to make them buy the thing he wants them to buy.

He and Elizabeth Warren are the same people.

They're interchangeable.

They're the same people.

This is a guy who, what, 10 years ago was supposedly a Republican 15 years ago, and then he was an independent, and now he's just a communist.

I mean,

no, he's not, I don't think he is a communist.

I think he was replaced by a communist, but I don't think he is a communist.

He is clearly a capitalist, but he is a progressive capitalist.

Yes.

He is the icon of the progressive wing of

the Republican Party.

He's the ultimate.

Now that John McCain is gone, he's the ultimate.

He believes in all of the big government stuff.

He just happens to fancy himself a Republican until it becomes unpopular.

Is there anybody who is against Trump getting rid of the credentials for Bloomberg reporters?

Like, because we've been critical of Trump.

Sometimes I think Trump gets too hypersensitive of what the media writes about him and he's banning reporters.

But this one is clearly right.

They have come out and made a statement that they will not investigate any Democrats and they will only investigate Trump.

Like, how on earth can a news organization, Bloomberg, get away with that and maintain any level of credibility?

I understand that he's the guy that owns the company and there's weird things there, and it makes sense even.

What would they say?

You're not going to investigate Bloomberg or the Democrats, but you have to apply that also to Trump.

What would they say if Murdoch were American and would run for president of the United States?

Right.

What would they say?

They would say, you cannot have Fox.

It would be ridiculous.

They'd be out of their minds over that.

Out of their minds.

This isn't Fox and

Murdoch.

This is Bloomberg and Bloomberg News.

I mean, and they're already making that case.

I know when I was called up into the office

of Rupert Murdoch, the first talent, I am told by Roger Ailes, to ever been called up to Rupert Murdoch's office before.

And he was nervous, and I was like, cool, I'm going to meet the guy.

Hi, what's happening down under?

And I sat there with him, and the first question he asked me was, Are you running for president?

And I knew what that was about.

Yeah, are you running for president?

It was right after 828, and I said, No, what are you going to do with all this power?

What power?

You just called the largest group of people together as a private citizen.

Roger and I spoke about it this morning.

We cannot think of anybody who is a private citizen who has called that many people and had that many people come without an entity behind him.

So who do you represent?

What do you?

And I'm like, I don't want any of that.

I just thought we should all get together on the mall.

And they really didn't understand that.

But the first question was important.

Are you running for president?

Because you can't, Mike Huckabee, if he was running for president, he loses his show.

You can't do that.

How is it that

anybody like Mike Huckabee is different

than Michael Bloomberg?

How can the guy who owns it and they say, oh, by the way, we're only going to investigate this.

And how is it those journalists don't rebel?

Go, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

You're telling me, I'm not, like, there's a big story about

Elizabeth Warren, and we can't report on it.

Basically, you're saying, oh, all we can do is aggregate other people's reporting.

We can't do any investigations.

If you're a journalist, you got into journalism to do investigations.

And now you're like, well, these people are off limits.

Remember the whole

do not prosecute list we talked about in Ukraine that was so controversial?

Like, that's essentially what they've done.

They've created a do not investigate list.

How can it have any credibility?

And a lot of this stuff just comes from the news organizations.

Fox News fires those people not because,

you know, fires them,

makes them leave their shows because they're running for president.

Not because necessarily they have to on cable, because

they have standards.

They're saying to themselves,

we can't allow.

What are they going to say when Trump leaves office in 2028?

Just to screw it, people.

I mean, Bloomberg went for three terms.

Why not?

There you go.

And he changed it.

He changed the Constitution of New York City today.

That's right.

So

when Donald Trump leaves in 2024 and he starts the Trump television news network, which is almost certainly going to happen.

It's going to happen.

It's going to happen.

What are they going to say?

What are they going to say?

Are they going to allow Trump's reporters into

the White House?

Of course not.

No, no.

Of course they're not.

They're not going to ban all of them.

No, they're not.

Especially if Trump was running for president.

You've got Bloomberg running for president, and Trump says, I'm not letting him in.

I'm not letting his people in here.

No.

I think President West would allow them in.

You know, President Kanye West.

He'd probably allow them in.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, that's 2024.

You know, that's happening in 2024.

So it'll be a whole new world when we have President West

in office.

Guys, I actually thought Adam West.

That's when he said West.

That's

how old am I?

I know.

I was singing Wild, Wild West.

I was like, what, what is that?

Was it Jim Gordon?

Or what was that guy's name?

I don't even think you should have an election.

Just give the presidency to Kanye West.

It's obviously going to some Kardashian.

So let's just pick one.

At least Kanye seems kind of Republican.

I mean,

a Kardashian has to be the next president of the United States.

And look, he's black.

He has a relative that is transgender.

Yeah.

I mean, he's got it all.

He has everything.

He's going to do very well in the intersectionality Olympics.

Yeah, he'll be great.

He'll be great.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn.

And if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.

Hi, it's Glenn.

If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do us a favor and rate us on iTunes?

If you're not a subscriber, become one today and listen on your own time.

You can subscribe on iTunes.

Thanks.

We have from the great state of Louisiana,

not as great as Texas, but still pretty great.

We have Senator John Kennedy joining us now.

Hello, Senator.

How are you, sir?

Glenn, I am well.

And let me tell you, Texas, you mentioned Texas.

Texas is right next door to Louisiana.

Yeah.

We love Texas.

Texas is five and a half times bigger than we are, but Louisiana is 10 and a half times more interesting.

Well, let's not start anything here.

Let's just, because we want to part friends.

Senator,

you are being lambasted in the press now as a conspiracy theorist.

And let me start with this question.

Can these two statements be true?

Russia tried to cause chaos by trying to hack into our election systems, spread disinformation online by taking extreme positions on both sides, and hacked the DNC computer.

That's statement number one.

Can it also be true that the Ukrainians were convinced that Hillary Clinton would be better for their country?

They were involved in gathering evidence against Donald Trump and his surrogates to assist a Hillary Clinton win

in collusion with the DNC, members of the State Department, our embassies, and the Anti-Corruption Bureau in Ukraine.

Are those two statements true?

Yes.

And

you stated the propositions very eloquently.

I was asked, Glenn, on a show, several, in fact, was it Russia or Ukraine who tried tried to influence the u.s election and i said both and they said what's your basis for saying ukraine and i referred them to articles op-ed pieces and long investigatory articles in politico

in the financial times in the hill

in the washington examiner on cbs news in the economist bloomberg news and new york times for example the headline in Politico, January 2017, quote: Ukraine efforts to sabotage Trump backfire.

The Financial Times, August of 2016.

The headline was, quote, Ukraine's leaders campaign against Trump, close quote.

Third, this is an op-ed piece written in the Hill by the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States.

This is the headline to his op-ed piece, the Ukrainian ambassador, not the Hill.

Quote,

Trump's comments send wrong message to the world.

And I could go on.

Now, did Ukraine

try to influence our election in as sophisticated a manner as Russia?

No, Russia is the master.

Russia is a third world country, but it has great spies, great cyber skills, and nuclear weapons.

But the two are not mutually exclusive.

And I mean, just from the reporting, I don't believe these are all reputable

members of the media.

Their lawyers aren't going to let them print lies.

And I don't think it's fake news.

So, Senator,

may I direct you to Glenbeck.com, where we have laid this all out, and I'm not using other people's reporting.

I have the direct evidence in their own words from State Department documents, from DNC documents.

We have payments, we have videotape of them admitting to this,

we have the court documents out of Ukraine, we have the official documents, and it is so

outrageous that the press is saying that these are conspiracy theories, et cetera, et cetera.

Reporters can spin, reporters can do whatever they want.

Documents do not lie, and the documents outline all of it.

And it's all in their own words.

When you look at Cheromella, who is

possibly the whistleblower, his fingers are all over all of that.

This is why Donald Trump blew a hole in a wall, and he was a hand grenade.

And he and Rudy Giuliani went off and they blew a hole in the wall that exposed all of this stuff that was going behind the scenes in Ukraine.

And our former administration, Clinton, and the State Department and members of our intelligence community were all involved.

And we have the documents.

The question is: will the Senate actually take this on, or are we just going to, you know, defend against Trump and not expose the exact corruption that I think is poison to the Republic?

Fair question, Glenn.

Answer is, I don't know.

I'm labor.

I'm not management in the Senate.

I'm not a committee chairman.

I will tell you that, as you alluded to, I've gotten a lot of pushback from my Democratic friends about my statement that both Russia and Ukraine tried to influence the election.

I think they're worried somehow

that admitting that Ukraine tried to influence the election would somehow hurt their impeachment proceedings against the president.

I don't understand that.

I mean, I think most fair-minded people recognize that the Ukrainian government in the past, not the people, but the government,

under President Poroshenko and President Yanukovych,

the governments are and were organically and historically corrupt.

And I think that's been been

well documented.

It has been, and we exploited, when I say we the democratic party and the former administration exploited uh that corruption and it is it is vital that that is exposed if it is not the state department is going to know from here on till the end of time they run the show and they can do whatever they want.

It also will institutionalize the kinds of things that the Democratic Party was doing in Ukraine to try to thwart our election.

Look, if Donald Trump would have been found as coordinating or in collusion with the Russians, I would have been for impeachment on him.

But he wasn't.

They didn't find that evidence.

But that evidence is available in documents, in court documents.

Two people

were

tried and convicted in Ukrainian court.

Two people for interfering in our election to try to help Hillary Clinton win.

If we don't get a handle on this, our elections and

the whole system is in question.

I don't care who goes to jail.

I want a fair election system.

Well, you are correct.

There was a federal district court in Kiev in December of 2018,

which ruled that senior Ukrainian officials did meddle, did try to influence the presidential election in the United States.

And here's the headline from the article in the Bloomberg News reporting it, quote,

Ukrainian officials meddled in 2016 election by leaking secret Manafort ledger, court says, end quote.

Yes.

Now,

I didn't make this up, and in fact, Bloomberg News is only reporting what a Ukrainian court did.

Now, my Democratic friends say

Dr.

Hill, who testified in President Trump's impeachment proceedings in the House, says this is all Russian propaganda.

And my response to that is, well, first,

I don't think Politico and the Financial Times and the Hill magazine and the Washington Examiner and Bloomberg News are agents for Vladimir Putin, who's a thug.

I don't believe that.

And secondly, Dr.

Hill is certainly entitled to her opinion.

I'm just saying I don't believe these articles by reputable members of the media,

by reputable reporters.

I don't think they're fake news.

And,

you know, their lawyers aren't going to let them print lies.

I know that much.

Senator,

I know you have to run.

We have to let you go.

But

I wish you all the best, and I pray literally every night for spines to be found in Congress and in the Senate because what you are talking about

is

institutionalized and metastasized, and it must be cut out.

It is a cancer to our system.

And I'm hoping that

this is, when it gets to the Senate, we actually have a trial about the truth, and we call these people to

answer for the lies that we have seen now in this impeachment hearing.

Glenn, a very wise person, told me yesterday in a phone call.

He called to say, keep telling the truth.

He said,

Leaders, he said, people don't follow leaders.

They follow courage.

And that meant a lot to me.

And I think it's true.

Senator, keep speaking the truth.

Thank you so much.

God bless.

Thank you, Glenn.

Thanks for having me.

You bet.

Bye-bye.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Like listening to this podcast?

If you're not a subscriber, become one now on iTunes.

And while you're there, do us a favor and rate the show.

We have the one, the only, Justin Haskins on with us.

Hello, Justin.

Hi, Glenn.

How are you doing?

I'm, you know, I'm doing pretty good.

I'm doing pretty good.

You're the editorial director of the Heartland Institute, which I absolutely love.

You guys have done

so much to fight

many things, but

lately, you're really focusing on the fight against socialism.

You just did a new Rasmussen

study on likely voters.

Can you take us through this?

Yeah, absolutely.

So it was a poll conducted in middle of November, November 13th and 14th, 1,000 likely voters, and we asked them a variety of questions about

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, some questions about socialism, and then some questions about free speech.

And I think that the most important, interesting question was about free speech, free speech rights.

It was, should federal or state governments ban speech that a majority of Americans believes to be offensive, including speech considered to be racist or sexist?

That's the exact wording that we gave to the respondents.

And the results were a quarter of likely voters said yes.

We should ban speech.

Governments should ban that speech.

And among varying groups based on age, 37% of younger people said yes to that question.

That was the highest of any demographic based on age.

And 42% of government employees, which this might be the most interesting part of the survey, said yes to that question.

So 42% of

government employees that we surveyed said that we should ban speech that a majority of people think is offensive.

That makes total sense to me.

It makes sense to you?

It makes absolute sense to me, especially when you think of this as a national survey, right?

We're not polling people who are in Washington, D.C.

So we're polling government workers across the country.

Well, who are most government workers in most parts of the country?

Well, they're teachers.

And I think that that's why you're seeing this very far-left view of free speech.

But it's incredibly disturbing when you realize that most of these people are probably your local government workers.

You're probably mostly public school teachers.

So let me go through some of this because I think it's odd.

Which is better, a free market economic system or socialism?

69%, which is

good for today, I guess, 69% said a free market economic system.

12% said socialism.

And 18% said not sure.

Okay.

That's right.

Would you vote for a presidential candidate who identifies him or herself as a socialist?

26%

said yes.

There's only 12% that would identify as a socialist.

26% said yes.

50% said no.

24% said not sure.

Not where I'd like it, but not horrible, if you will.

Do you have favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable impressions of Bernie Sanders?

18% very favorable, 29% somewhat favorable, 17 somewhat unfavorable, 31 very unfavorable, and 5 not sure.

What do any of these numbers taken together begin to tell you?

Anything?

Yeah, I think that the most important thing in the numbers that you just mentioned is that really a large percentage of Americans, even people who identified as Democrats, in our cross tabs, we found that it's basically one in three Democrats said that they would not vote for a socialist candidate.

I don't know if Donald Trump is listening, but this might be helpful information in 2020 because if you can classify people as a socialist,

if you can show Americans that what Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and other people are proposing out there is socialist, is socialist policies, then I think most Americans are going to reject it.

One of the really interesting things that we found in the data is that 20%,

about 20% of both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warner, Elizabeth Warner's own supporters said that they would not vote for a socialist candidate.

We're talking about

the people who had the highest favorability view of Bernie Sanders said that they would not vote for a socialist candidate for president.

Well, that's really interesting.

Do they not realize that Bernie Sanders is a socialist?

I mean, do they not know that that's who they're supporting?

I mean, I think that that tells you that a lot of people are very confused about what they're hearing from people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Do you support legislation that would ban private ownership of assault rifles?

49%

said yes.

43% said no.

And only 8% are not sure.

Yeah, very, very disturbing,

I think.

I think that

not just the assault rifle question, but also the question that we asked about the Second Amendment.

Do you support repealing the Second Amendment, which currently guarantees America's right to bear arms?

24% said yes, 10% said not sure, 66% said no.

That's right.

And a third of 18 to 39-year-olds,

a third, 33% said that they would support banning the Second Amendment.

So it's 24% overall of all likely voters, but 33% of younger people.

So over time, this is going to get...

is only going to become a bigger problem.

And about a third, by the way, of Democrats said that they support repealing the Second Amendment.

So I think we have a lot of work to do, Glenn, teaching people about the importance of the Second Amendment and what it really means.

Well, it's frightening is this.

This is showing the deterioration of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment and the Second Amendment.

You lose those, you lose everything else.

Yeah, without question.

And I think it goes all the way back to what we talked about earlier in the conversation when we were saying that there's such a high support for socialism amongst government workers.

And most of those government workers are teachers.

What are they teaching our kids?

Yeah, they're teaching our kids that the Second Amendment is awful and that it should be repealed.

They're teaching our kids that hate speech, that things that are considered to be offensive speech should not be allowed in a free society.

They are teaching our kids to reject the Constitution, to reject the Bill of Rights, to reject individual liberty.

And that's why I think you're seeing younger people support these socialist policies at a much higher rate than you're seeing older people.

So I just want to give, I just want to just restate these.

46% of those who identified as working for the government, you say it's mainly teachers, support legislation that would ban private ownership of assault rifles.

Only 43% of independents and 32% of Republicans say they support legislation that would ban private ownership of assault-style rifles.

32% of Republicans would?

Well, you got to remember that

I think that that's pretty accurate.

These are likely voters.

I think that that's a reflection of what's been going on with the media and the fact that media has been banging this drum for a very long time and that most people still don't really understand what assault rifles are.

Support amongst Republicans for repealing the Second Amendment was pretty low.

So I think that's a positive.

But I think that people don't understand what socialism is.

I don't think they understand what assault rifles are.

I don't think that they understand

what rights are.

Right.

I think fundamentally they do not understand the importance of freedom.

I think that's what this shows predominantly.

And that's where we need to focus our attention.

And I think it's worse with younger people than with older people.

It's worse with Democrats than with Republicans.

It's even worse with Bernie Sanders supporters and Elizabeth Warren supporters.

But it's not good all across the board.

We have to start with foundational core principles and work our way up from there.

How do you do that, Justin?

I mean, I know this is what you do for a living at the Heartland Institute.

This is what you do for a living.

How do you do that?

How do we turn this around when

it is institutionalized in our educational system from birth to graduation?

Right.

So the two things I think the two most important ways to to battle these problems, to fight against socialism, number one, you absolutely, every single parent, every single grandparent, aunt, uncle, friend, family member who's concerned about this issue needs to talk to younger people about these issues.

They need to teach kids while they're in the school system, before they get into the public school system, basic core concepts about individual rights and respecting other people's rights.

That's number one.

We have to take that seriously.

Number two,

we need to break the stranglehold that the government has on public education.

And we, and the only way to do that is with school choice.

There are universal school choice ideas that have been out there for a very long time, universal education savings accounts programs, et cetera.

We don't have them even in the most conservative states.

Why don't we have that in states like Texas and Alabama and places where Republicans have been in charge for a long time?

We don't have it there either.

It is shocking to me how bad Texas is.

You know, I lived here in the 80s, and Texas was a different place in the 80s compared to what it is now.

It is drifted far.

Texas, you know, has very powerful unions and teachers.

You know, the teachers

federation here is very, very strong.

They have taken over our schools, and nobody wants us to do anything about it, at least in the upper levels.

You're right.

And it's not just in Texas.

It's all across the country.

The most conservative states in the the country, the teachers' unions, are still the most powerful political organization at the state level in many cases, but especially at the local level.

I mean, at the local level, teachers dominate virtually every election.

They decide who is going to be put in control of school boards and local elections for city council and things like that.

It's mostly decided by teachers.

And teachers are being taught at far-left teachers' colleges across the country where they're being indoctrinated with the idea that they need to be indoctrinating other people about socialism.

And so it's this endless cycle, this drift in conservative states and in liberal states and in moderate states, this drift towards socialism because foundationally, the people who are teaching younger people are all on the left side of the political spectrum.

And the only way to get rid of that is to have school choice so that parents can take their kids out of those schools and put them in schools that embrace the values that they believe in.

But right now, unless you can afford a private school or unless you can afford to homeschool your child, you don't have that option.

And so, conservatives need to make it clear that if no Republican should be supported, no conservative candidate should be supported, no Democrat, no political candidate should be supported unless they embrace school choice.

Well, thank you for doing the survey and

breaking that survey here.

And hopefully, it will be picked up because I think

so many people have no idea how bad things are really, truly getting in America.

And something better wake them up pretty soon.

Justin, thank you so much.

Thanks, Glenn.

You bet.

Bye-bye.

The Blaze Radio Network

on demand.