Best of the Program | Guests: Russ McKamey, Bill O'Reilly & Megan Phelps-Roper | 11/1/19

Hey, welcome to Friday.

We have

the McCamey Manor.

Well, we don't actually have the Manor, we have Russ McCamey on.

He's the guy from the McCainy Manor.

If you've not heard about this, this is a place in Tennessee that Pat told me about yesterday.

And we started reading about it.

We're like, I gotta get this guy on.

It's a freak show.

It is.

There's over 80,000 people signing a petition to try to shut him down.

And

it's supposedly the best

haunted house in the world.

Scariest, most extreme.

Yeah, and no one's ever...

He offers $20,000 to anybody who can make it.

No one makes it.

We talk to him about it, and it's really bizarre.

Not as bizarre as our time with Bill O'Reilly today.

Or Megan Phelps Roper, who is a woman who was part of the Phelps family, you know, the Westboro

Baptist.

Baptist Church.

That and Sugar Bear, the pimp that, you know, killed his girlfriend.

No, he didn't kill her.

No, he just chopped her up and put her in the freezer.

Okay, all right.

You're right.

You're right.

You're right.

He's being tried for murder, but he testified just yesterday that he didn't kill her, he just chopped her up.

This is a Friday episode you don't want to miss.

You're listening to the best of the blend back program.

Remember the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland and his most famous line, we're all a little mad here.

Well, welcome to 2019 in America.

Congress is trying to impeach the president this week for,

well, I don't know.

You know, they had to drop their attempt last week to impeach Kavanaugh,

baselessly, so they could baselessly impeach the president this week.

They're basically squirrels, you know, or dogs that are like, squirrel, squirrel.

They keep seeing a nut, something shiny in the wind, and they've got to move.

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I can't boycott Hollywood.

I can't boycott Johnson Johnson.

What am I going to do?

Well, you can, you can replace your cell company and get the same great service at a fraction of a cost, and you will ensure that your money is going for that service to a veteran-led company.

And they're not taking that money and spending it at Planned Parenthood, giving it to La Raza, giving it to anti-free speech movements.

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McCamey Manor, not your standard haunted house.

It's an audience participation event in which you, as an individual, will live your own horror movie.

You have to be in great health.

You have to be drug-free.

You have to have a doctor's slip, I believe.

You go through

all kinds of things that you must complete, including a three- to four-hour release form.

And

of all things, you also cannot swear.

This is the craziest thing ever.

Russ McCainy is the owner.

He's been doing it for about 30 years, and there is actually a petition now to get him to stop doing it.

Nobody's hurt by it.

It's not any kind of sexual gratification kind of thing.

This guy used to be in the military

and

knows how to get to people.

And he is a fascinating individual.

Russ, how are you?

Do we have Russ on the?

I see him there.

We have him.

For some reason, we can't get him on the phone.

All right, can you call him back, please?

For some reason, our phones aren't working.

This is really going to piss me off.

There he is.

Russ, how are you?

I'm here.

Yeah, where are you guys at?

We're here.

We're just your worst nightmare.

No, actually,

i can't i i really cannot understand what's happening here because everything i've heard about you is that you are a really good normal nice guy

and yet you

bring everybody's worst nightmare to reality

yeah they get kind of hysterical about this whole thing And I don't know what the deal is.

I mean, it happens every year around this time of the year, you know, the the whole shut McCamey banner down.

But no, I don't get it either.

It's just that, well, I do get it.

So I make these crazy movies.

I make these wild YouTube films.

And they look scary because they're supposed to look scary.

I mean,

I'm a filmmaker, so I'm trying to make it look as scary as possible.

And people just get really upset, blow things way out of proportion, and now they're doing anything and everything to shut me down.

And I don't know if it's going to happen.

I mean, this is America.

This is, you know, do we have to do that?

Well,

look, Rusty, here's the thing.

I am so intrigued by you.

You're a fan of the show, are you not?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, okay.

So you're, I mean, a lot of people on the left would say that shows how sick you are, but I'm fascinated by you because you are a, you,

you are a,

you don't seem to be doing this just for hype or for kicks.

You've never hurt anybody, right?

No.

Okay.

No, it's not that.

No one gets hurt.

It's very safe.

It just seems frightening when you're going through it.

It's all just a big, a big show, big illusion.

But I definitely have a few people kind of fooled into thinking it's something other than it is, I expect.

Right, but you have been,

I've seen a video where you've buried a person except for their open mouth.

Well, yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, of course.

Of course, obviously.

You got to put a cage over somebody's face and then bury them alive.

Well, obviously.

I mean, who hasn't done that before?

Right, right, right.

So I'm wondering, let's just start here.

Why do people do this?

They're just major adrenaline junkies.

These are people who have lived and they've done all the bungee jumping and skydiving and then all the exciting things out there and nothing really affects them anymore.

So they come to me like, oh, I really want to feel this again.

I want to feel what it was like when I rolled my first roller coaster or saw my first scary movie.

Help me out, Ruff.

Help me out.

I'm like, okay, I can help you out.

That's bizarre.

So

it's definitely not some sort of,

you know, sexual thing.

There's none of that going on.

No, in fact,

there's three very

big rules in the matter.

There's nothing sexual, there's nothing inappropriate, and there's nothing religious.

So we keep it, there's nothing satanic or, I mean, there's nothing like that in there whatsoever.

Never has been.

It's very PG-13.

It's just like an Indiana Jones ride on steroids, kind of.

And like you mentioned, there's no cussing.

I mean, how scary can it be?

There's no cussing.

Well, there's no cussing.

You are, you find,

everybody starts with 20 grand.

And then I understand that if you cuss,

you're docked $500.

So

there might be cussing, but they're penalized for it.

That's right, that's right.

You learn real fast.

Well, I won't say that anymore.

And so, yeah.

So now each of these are

custom to each person, because aren't you just doing

really enhanced interrogations?

Basically, yes.

And it's customized for that one individual, our two folks that go through per week.

It's funny, you know, we talk to their parents or talk to their family and friends or the coworkers and they're more than willing to throw them under the bus.

They're more than willing to give us all the dirt about what really scares them.

And so we do a lot of investigative work to find out what's going to make a good show of that individual before anything starts.

So there's a lot to it.

It's not just showing up and going, okay, I'm here, Russ.

Torture me now.

You know, and I hate that word because no one's tortured anyways.

But, you know, that's what the audience seems to think.

And that's why that petition has gained so much speed, but it's just incredible.

It's like 80,000 plus

signatures now, maybe more than that.

It's over a haunted house, over somebody just doing a hobby.

It's not even a business.

It's just

a little hobby.

People pay you in dog food.

Right.

Dog food.

Yes.

One big bag of dog food helps towards rescue animals.

Yeah.

So that's payment right there.

It is.

It's crazy.

Okay.

All right.

Let me just add this.

Is there, I mean, if you go through enhanced interrogation,

I know Navy SEALs and I know people in the military who have gone through it for real.

And it does psychologically scar you.

Well, hopefully we're not scarring anybody.

It's not as intense as if you went to like Sears School, which is search and rescue and and survival school and that type of thing.

And our Buds training, you know, which is SEAL training.

It's not like that.

But I definitely do take aspects of what I learned in the military after 23 years.

And it's just a lot of common sense.

I mean, you know, I do hypnosis, which everybody knows I do that.

And I'm not hiding it from the audience.

When they first first come here one of the first things on the contract is saying you know that I'm going to try to hypnotize you now I may not hypnotize everybody but I'm gonna give it my old college try here because if I can do that then they're like putty in my hands at that point in the game.

And so there is mind control techniques,

but in a fun kind of way.

That's what's so crazy about this

is you I've seen videos where this woman is just she looks like and I know it's not but she looks like she has blood all over her face she looks like she's in hysterics and she's got something in her mouth that's keeping her mouth open and you're and you're like okay it's about to get intense and you're like what

are you okay with that are you okay you seem like santa

that is bringing somebody through hell

Maybe a little bit.

I'm always checking on people.

I'm always stopping the show to ask if they're mentally and physically okay to go on.

And that's what a lot of people don't see.

If you saw that little tidbit, and that's probably a mistake in editing.

But who knows?

I'm sure it's out there.

But I do I'm always trying to make sure that people know and that the that the person going through knows that they're safe.

And they have total control.

They can stop the show any time they want to.

This deal of not having a safe safe word, that ended several years ago.

Because there was a time, I have to admit, that we didn't offer a safe phrase, and they signed up to go as long as we wanted them to go.

So

they're entertaining.

Wow.

But now, yeah, there's absolutely a safe phrase.

So you would be fine, Glenn.

I think you might want to try this just as a

what's the longest anybody's gone since you've had the safe phrase, Russ?

How long is because you say the show can last up to 10 hours, right?

Right, right.

So the the way it works is that you have to start the clock.

You have to do an event, grab a key, open a door, do something to start the clock.

Once you start the clock, then your 10-hour meter is on, but nobody has even started the clock yet.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, but that's not to say that.

Wait,

wait, wow, wait,

you've buried people with their mouth open.

That's not on the clock.

You have to get to a certain point of being buried.

You have to have a certain depth, so to speak.

And once you get to a certain point, now the clock starts.

Now I must say there is one woman who's actually coming back here again in November.

She's been through it nine times.

And she's this solid, upstanding individual, you know, who works in Washington, D.C.

and a big high player.

And she just loves the stuff.

But we counted up how much time she spent inside the actual manor.

And she's been inside 45 hours of actually doing activities.

45 hours of doing different things.

So

is it Elizabeth Warren?

There's a lot to see in this.

Is Elizabeth Warren?

Nancy Pelosi.

Yeah.

Have you ever have you ever had like a Navy SEAL or Delta Force try this?

I have.

You have?

I have.

And they have not made it through, huh?

They have not.

They have not.

And I get a lot of military folks.

In fact, military folks are my favorite because they have their head on a swivel.

They know how to overcome and adapt.

They know how to, you know, they're not knuckleheads.

And this is definitely a non-knucklehead zone.

And, you know, we don't want the crazy ones.

We don't want the ones who are just trying to come here just for the money.

Because if you're coming here for the money, you're going to be really upset when you leave here because you're not going to walk away with anything because the manner is always going to win.

But in a fun way, you know, it really gets fun.

And that's why the testament to that is why people come back time and time again.

No, it doesn't sound fun.

No, it doesn't sound fun.

It just doesn't.

I'm telling you, you got to try it.

You got to try it.

No, I'm no, I'm not a candidate for this.

Let me hypnotize you.

Yeah.

All right.

Hang on just a second.

We'll continue with Russ McCamey from the McCamey Manor.

You can follow it and find it at McCameyManor.com.

It is Wild Netflix just just did the movie on it.

It's pretty intense.

So Russ McCamey from McCamey Manor, you're in Tennessee, a place called Summertown, which I believe the heat miser had to give it to his brother so it could s snow there one Christmas.

But you are

you are,

how does the town react to you?

Oh, they went crazy over me, and they still do.

In a good way or a bad way?

In a bad way.

At least the leadership.

You know, the leadership, when I first got here, they put out a community alert saying, get this guy out of town.

This is where he lives.

Go get him.

You don't want him here.

You go tell him you don't want him here.

Basically, I had a target on my back for quite a while.

And then the townfolk, they started kind of coming around in my way.

They started meeting me and thought, this guy's okay.

He's not like what we thought he was.

But the leadership's a whole different ballgame because they kind of put their neck out there saying, we're going to get him out of town no matter what.

And that hasn't happened.

So they're still looking for ways to get me out of town.

Is that what happened to you in San Diego or did you just move?

No, no, no, that's a rumor.

That's a rumor that's a rumor that probably I started because I like to start a lot of stories.

I love a guy who says, I probably started.

Can't confirm nor deny.

Yeah.

Okay, so now let me give you some things.

The petition claims that you hire employees with violent histories and you make people ingest pills that cause hallucinations.

Right.

Well, first off, there are no employees because it's just little old roughs so you come to the manor there is nobody here except me against the contestant that's it my noggin against against their noggin and and their job is just not to let me get in their head so well that's not true um in san diego we had some actors but as far as what their backgrounds were i have no idea never heard about violent histories or whatever so that's a nice little story um

the the pill situation again here's here's where people have to put on their logic caps and I know it's hard to do sometimes for certain folks all those ones who signed that silly petition but if I was really really doing things that were illegal and giving medication to people and torturing people and doing this and that that would be illegal I don't care where you're at that's not allowed so there must be something more to the situation and that's where the hypnosis comes into play because if I hypnotize you like I was saying earlier I can can make you believe whatever I want.

And that's the magic of the manor.

Without giving too much away, just kind of add two and two together and realize that if that, if all this stuff is going on that's in the petition, I wouldn't be here right now.

I'd be locked away in the Birdcage Theater someplace.

I'd be gone.

The petition says you're literally running, literally, I'm quoting, a kidnapping and torture house.

Some people have had to seek professional psychiatric help and medical care for extensive injuries.

Jeez.

I know.

Sounds amazing.

It's good PR, but that's about all it is.

But they can write.

It just goes to show you they can write whatever they want.

And what they're doing is they're just taking their own thoughts based upon movies that are five, six, seven years old that I made back in San Diego.

They're not basing anything upon the reality.

of what it really is.

And in fact, every show, before every show, I call the police.

i let them know what i'm doing i i volunteer for them to come down and watch the show anytime they want to law enforcement the district attorney anybody can come here unannounced anytime they want to with cameras in hand film everything they want but no one ever does so no one's ever taken me up on my offer to actually see what i do instead they do things like the petition all right so uh if you wouldn't mind hanging on just a couple more minutes i want to i want to talk to you about

how you design these things,

you know, some of the weirder things that you've had to do to freak people out and get them to not win the 20 grand.

Also, the four-hour waiver process, what that's all about, when we come back.

So we have Russ McCamey on.

He is the owner of McCamey Manor, McCameyManor.com.

You might have seen an episode on Netflix of Dark Tourist

that is really quite frightening.

And you'll see, you know, you'll see military guys go through, and they won't make it an hour with Russ.

And they're tough guys.

It is, it's truly a frightening haunted house, if you will.

He's on with us now.

You know,

waterboarding is considered torture, right?

Right, right, right.

Factual, real waterboarding is torture, correct.

You do a form form of waterboarding, though, don't you?

Sort of.

Well, I mean, there is a lot of water at the haunt.

It is a water ride, for sure.

Water ride.

So it's like going to the water park, that's all.

And because water is

a great way to

motivate people.

Now,

we've done waterboarding here at the studio.

Pat and I waterboarded stew.

We used sure.

Yeah, we used insure, but it was too chocolatey.

He couldn't handle it.

He couldn't handle it.

He thought he could handle it with the chocolate opposed to water, but it was just too chocolatey for him.

We have a guy on staff who is trained in enhanced interrogation techniques.

And he said, A,

that

when I told him you were on this morning, he said, oh, I'd never go because you're never going to win.

You can't.

There's no way to win.

Everyone breaks.

True?

Right.

Yeah.

True, absolutely.

He says he knows because

he will neither confirm nor deny,

but

I know some.

You remember the hairy back guy from

Al-Qaeda that we got years and years ago?

Yeah.

He was at least around the area when they were talking to that guy.

And I'd like to send him with a bag of dog food just because I'm a good employer

and put him through your course to see how long he lasts.

Sure, we can do that.

Absolutely.

All right.

Now,

let me ask you this, Russ.

You had really tough guys.

What's the shortest amount of time somebody has lasted

in the manor who was a tough guy or thought he was a tough guy.

Oh, that's easy.

I'd say half the people quit during the contract, so they don't even get inside the manor.

So these rough and tumble guys, once they read what's coming down the pike for them, they're like, no, I don't think so.

I'm done.

Okay, so

is that part of it?

Is the release form?

Is that part of the psychological workup?

Absolutely.

And that's also where I do all the hypnosis, too, because

I'm not so good that I can hypnotize somebody in five seconds like some people can.

I need several hours with them.

I need to really get inside their noggin.

I need to do all the repetitive words.

I need to do all the things, all the tricks that it takes to hypnotize somebody.

I need that time.

So I'm not so good that I can just click my fingers and you're hypnotized.

So time is important.

Time is on my side.

And

that's why when you first get there in the morning, you're there at

10 a.m.

and you're there until sunset.

And then when the sun goes down, the fun begins.

So

this is also wearing people down.

So by the time they hit the manor, you've already worn them out.

Absolutely, because we do a lot of physical activities during the daytime.

I call it kind of a mini boot camp.

And

this way it's important.

I need to know what type of physical activities they can do and what they can't do.

So I'll have them hold their breath underwater, you know, in a nice way, not in a violent way, but I'll just say, well, how long can you hold your breath?

Because these are things I need to know because there is breath holding inside, you know, whether it be dirt or whether it be water you're going to deal with.

I need to know these things.

So during the daytime portions, that's when I'm finding out what their limitations are.

And then I'll work around that because the last thing we want to do is have anyone get hurt.

So I really need to know where they stand physically before they roll inside the real show.

What is the most common fear and

what is the fear that you thought, wow,

I'm going to have to work on that one for a minute.

The most common fear is definitely water.

Water is a great equalizer for sure.

And because there's so much of it being used, it's always on you.

You're either cold or, but, you know, if it's hot outside, you're glad the water's on you.

But you're either getting cold or you're just wet and comfortable.

It's not always in your face,

but you're always wet.

And it just drains you.

It drains your body after hours and hours of having a big, heavy onesie on.

Because everybody has to wear these crazy onesies, like a bunny rabbit or a cow or something.

You got to be something.

silly when you're inside the haunt.

It just looks so goofy on film.

But there's also a reason why you do it because it weighs you down.

You get those big old suits all full of water and it's hard to move.

It's just another means of tiring you out.

Absolutely.

And what is the what have you have you met with anybody that you thought this one's going to be hard to crack or this person's fear is unusual?

I did.

A few weeks ago, we had a war veteran who lost both his legs, a double amputee.

And I thought, how in the world am I going to put this guy through the show?

But he's a really motivated young man who's a rock climber, one of those really athletic guys.

You know, he weighs 170 pounds, solid as a rock, but he's got no legs.

And I thought, should I even do this?

And I thought, you know what?

He's so motivated and it's so inspirational that I was like, I couldn't say no to him.

And this guy just kicked it.

This guy was great.

He did everything we needed him to do.

I didn't need to dumb down the show whatsoever.

Eventually, I think the water and just fatigue is what got to him.

But he held in there just as long as the big, rough, tough guys with all their extremities.

It was incredible.

I mean, really inspirational.

I've never seen anything like it.

Men break slower than women?

No, no.

Women are much stronger.

Oh, no.

because it's psycho.

It's mainly psychological, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah, the women

have a much higher tolerance to my little shenanigans than the guys do.

Why is that?

Why is that?

You know,

I just think women are tougher overall, right?

We all have women in our lives, and they're just tough.

Come on, we have to admit, guys, women are tougher than we are.

We know that.

So,

if we're being honest with ourselves, they go through some really amazing ordeals in their life and things that a lot of guys would say, no, I don't think so.

And I think that there's a lot.

I think there's something to girls.

I've had girls.

I've had boys

raising them.

Girls are mean.

Girls are mean to each other when they're in

their teen years.

They go through some really nasty things in school years.

Yeah, I agree.

And they're very competitive.

I mean, they're much more competitive than the guys are.

The guys are like, hey, this is fun.

But the women are like, no, this is serious, Russ.

Bring it on.

Bring it on, Russ.

We're doing this right now.

And

do you use animals?

I do.

Lots of spiders and snakes and scorpions and rats and

rats.

A lot of bugs.

Yeah, rats.

But they're field mice.

But

field mice are worse because they're smaller, they're quicker, and they love to get inside your clothes.

Oh, so as you're, you know, and then they stay in there.

And so now

you're walking around the rest of the day with field mice in your little outfit.

Yeah, yeah, that's right, Tape.

Oh, my God.

Could you make it through, do you think?

Could you make it through your own show?

Yeah,

because I know how it works.

Yeah.

But if I didn't know how it I didn't know how it worked, then no.

No.

So no one's going to make it through.

Just be really clear with that.

And that's why when people come here, they need to come here for the right reason because

they want to push themselves and they're coming here just because it's entertainment.

And it really is fun.

And it tested.

No, it doesn't sound fun.

It doesn't.

You know what it sounds fun for?

Honestly, if you watch Mission Impossible and you see, and, you know, I don't know, I don't imagine that there are very many people, if any, people like this, where,

you know,

he's rock climbing without any rope or anything,

and he gets his thrills doing that because his life is so crazy.

If those people really exist, I could see those people saying, Oh, I want to go through this.

They're out there.

I mean, they fly in from all around the world to take on this little challenge.

It's amazing.

It's not a local thing, but the locals don't go.

The locals have sparked up like, no way, I'm not doing that.

But all these folks that fly in from around the world, you know, across the pond, and it's amazing.

They spend all this money to get here.

They spend their vacation time to get here.

So

I kind of hard-pressed.

I have to give them a good show because this means a lot to them.

Do they sell the dog food at the airport?

Because that's what I would do.

I would set up a little dog food stand there at the airport.

Get your dog food here.

Russ,

has there ever been a person you thought was going to make it

that you thought, okay, maybe they can go the distance.

Never?

No.

Wow.

Never.

How many people do you turn away?

Oh, my gosh.

I turn away.

It's thousands and thousands because the waiting list is,

I can't even comprehend what it is anymore.

In fact, it's so big right now, we have to go to a lot, a lotto to win a ticket here,

especially since all this craziness.

You know, that's one thing that these petition people don't get.

All they did was just gain more attention to the manor

and made it more popular I just hope that nothing crazy does go on because you know it is life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and this is just a hobby it's like saying you know Glenn you like flying remote control airplanes well you're no longer allowed to do that Glenn because we don't like what you're doing and it's the same thing nobody's getting hurt it's not what the petition says whatsoever so it is frustrating because I have people coming out of the woodwork.

You know, this weekend I have an inspector coming out now.

They have to inspect for fire safety now, and there's no fire safety codes, but they're just doing whatever they can do to kind of harass at this point in point in time.

So it is kind of frustrating.

You only charge dog food for doing this.

This is something that, you know, you're doing it part-time.

Are you really, actually, a wedding singer as your full-time job?

Well, kind of as a part-time gig, yeah.

Like if you, there's a movie on Netflix called Haunters, the Art of the Scared.

That's a really good movie.

That's a feature documentary, and it

stars me.

And there's also the Dark Tourist one, but Haunters is a feature film, and it's got me doing the wedding stuff out there.

Yeah,

if you go to DJparty.org, you'll see me in all my glory out there entertaining folks and stuff.

So how scary can it be?

I'm a wedding singer.

Come on now.

It's bizarre.

It's just bizarre.

Russ, it's really good talking to you, and best of luck.

The best of the Glenbeck program.

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

Mr.

Bill O'Reilly from BillO'Reilly.com and the author of the new book,

a new book called

The United States of America, according to Trump.

Welcome, Bill O'Reilly.

I want to start with this.

You've done an updated message of the day, which is 10 ways the impeachment process is hurting every single American.

Let's start there.

All right, it's the United States or Trump Act.

I know it's a complicated thing.

It is.

I didn't read it.

I haven't seen it.

You read it and confer with Pat, and Pat will tell you.

You see, if I was,

I want your listeners to know before we get into the heavy-duty stuff, if I were advertising on Beck, the United States of Trump, paying him money,

he would be, he would know the title, and he could tell you the title backward.

Nope.

Okay?

He'd be sitting in the...

You're the one that still wrote the book.

Wait, you're the one that still wrote the book?

I wrote the United States of Trump.

But I mean,

in this scenario where I'm doing advertising, you're paying me to do it, and you are the author of the book.

Yes, and I am telling you that

you have to number one that you would not boot

of the book

if you were being paid.

You are wrong, Mr.

O'Reilly.

But

let's get to the ten things on how the impeachment is actually hurting the average American.

Yes.

There's nothing good about this, number one.

And if you see other people celebrating impeachment um you need to just pull them aside and say do you understand

that we all are in this together in this country that um we have to have a functioning federal government trying to solve vexing problems that we must have a robust economy to support 330 million people most of whom want to improve themselves do you understand that destroying the office of the presidency not just the president, but the office of it, is counterproductive to freedom.

Do you understand any of that?

And you'll get silence because this isn't the way impeachment is being presented.

This is awful.

You know, I said earlier this week, Bill, that this impeachment,

all of the so-called evidence that they're presenting on TV is not evidence.

And this is really reminiscent of the glove in O.J.

Simpson's case.

African Americans wanted O.J.

Simpson to be innocent.

So it would be a win for them because of history of, you know, blacks getting crushed by the system.

They wanted this guy to beat the system.

And so the glove

didn't have really anything to do with the evidence.

They had bloodstains and drops in his car.

They had DNA evidence, everything else.

But the glove gave them permission to say, yep, he's innocent.

And the thing.

Certainly, a jury thought that.

Right.

But the same thing is happening here with this.

This phone call is giving permission to people who want Donald Trump to be out.

It's giving them an easy way of, even though it's not based on any fact, of, yep, we win.

He's out.

Sure.

And that's what it's all about: the destruction of Donald Trump.

And whether it's Russian collusion or impeachment or whatever they'll come up with next, abuse of power, it is a game now.

It's a game.

All right.

So someone's going to have an actual board game like Monopoly.

And then you roll a dice and then you'll stop on a square and the square will say, Trump did this.

Okay?

It's ridiculous.

Now, I'm not in the business of defending Donald Trump, even though I wrote a book on him, a fair book.

It's not a pro-Trump book.

But I'm in the business.

By the way, if you're looking for a great book to read, Bill wrote that book called The Country According to the President.

Yes.

Okay.

The Little Red Book by Mao Zay.

There you go.

All right.

All right, go.

So

I'm in the business of trying

to improve America.

And I've always been in that business.

And that's why I'm successful.

So whether it's the books or commentary or radio, whatever it may be, And I'm seeing this as number one,

a division in the country now based on hatred of one individual.

Now, there is a system attached to the individual.

I understand that.

But when you get a guy like Adam Schiff, by the way, I am counting my trick-or-treats.

I went as Adam Schiff last night, and it was not easy getting a shirt three sizes too big.

Not easy.

You're right.

I get it.

Yeah, good reason.

I scared every urchin.

Urchins were screaming blood.

That is crazy.

So did you see the news that we know, we think we know who the whistleblower is now?

I reported last night.

We know.

Yeah.

It's a 33-year-old Yale guy who's a hate Trump guy who worked in the deep state and still is in Langley, Virginia,

who was associated with Biden and with other people and has two best friends working for Adam Schiff.

And so it's a total con.

It's a total con.

We haven't heard anything about him for three weeks.

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting.

You know what's interesting, Bill, is

he is connected with Chalupa, who's a main figure on our chalkboard.

And

we did the chalkboard about a month ago.

I think it was five days later is when they said, yeah, don't worry about that.

We've got another whistleblower.

And as we find out now,

this guy.

Whistleblowers, right?

Yeah, this guy is connected directly to the storyline of our chalkboard.

He is evidence that it's true.

If this were a criminal case, it would have been thrown out.

Yeah, easily.

It would have been thrown out.

Everything's gone because the original complaint is a fraud.

So it's gone.

What does it say to you that yesterday not a single Republican voted for this?

Big time for a win for Trump.

And the reason is that there are senators like Romney and Murkowski who hate Trump, Trump, hate him, and would vote to remove.

Now they can't.

Because if they do, they'll be blackballed by their own party.

Nothing would make me happier.

Yeah, okay.

I mean, look, politics is politics.

But I was surprised.

I thought there would be a couple of Republican congressmen

to vote for the inquiry.

Remember, this was a vote to continue the inquiry, to continue compiling evidence of a possible possible misdemeanor and high crime.

Not one person,

not one witness has said that it is a crime.

Not one.

So that has emboldened Donald Trump.

So let me give you some insight info because you know, I know him pretty well.

I'm very good sources.

So there was a big meeting after the vote in the White House.

And well, I shouldn't say big because there aren't a lot of advisors in there anymore.

Trust Mulvaney.

Mulvaney is going to be gone in, you know, a matter of very short time.

Mulvaney's out.

So there's a meeting about five or six people you trust.

And they basically sat around and they said, look,

now let's let this go forward because we have Nunez.

And this is a big key that every American should know.

Nunez is stronger than Schiff.

So Nunez is the minority guy on the House in 12 committee.

All right.

Devin Nunez from California.

California.

He's stronger than Schiff.

So it's him and Schiff that will direct the questioning, Nunez and Schiff.

And then in the summaries and the leaking to the press, it's Nunez and Schiff.

Nunez will be on Fox News every second of every day.

All right.

And so they believe that Nunez is going to kick Schiff's butt.

all over the place.

And this is going to directly lead to the reelection of Donald Trump.

So they're happy.

This is the first time that the president's been relieved.

I mean, last time we talked last week, I said I was worried about him personally

because it was taking its emotional toll on him.

Now he's almost buoyant in the sense that he believes this whole thing has turned after yesterday's vote.

I would agree.

I think this week was a turning point in this,

and I think it's going to get worse and worse for the Democrats.

With one exception, what do you think is going to happen with John Bolton?

Very interesting.

Yeah,

they keep holding him out like, oh,

he's going to be the death knell for O'Reilly.

I don't know the ambassador that well.

I never used him on the O'Reilly factor, not once.

And the reason I didn't use him, very smart guy.

Very smart.

Was because

I knew what he was going to say.

I knew it.

I mean,

there was never a surprise, never a nuance.

Yeah, but

he was not a guy who was parroting a lot of other people.

He had a hard-right view of foreign policy.

Correct.

All right.

And

I didn't use any hard-left people either.

I never did.

So here's the dilemma for John Bolton.

Bolton, you can't assume that he has any regard for Donald Trump.

We can't assume that.

I I mean, he doesn't like him because it didn't end well in the White House for Lincoln.

But if he goes in and crushes Trump, and he could,

he could, he's dangerous,

in the sense that he knows a lot of things,

he will alienate himself from his entire ideological structure.

He will be a pariah in this country.

I think he's on that road already.

But he knows that.

There's not going to be anywhere for him to speak, speaking engagements, no book audience for him, no comeback on Fox News, none of that.

So he cuts himself off.

Now, the Trump administration has anticipated the worst.

They don't know, nobody knows what Bolton's going to say.

So the counter to Bolton is Pompeo.

And you saw that this week as well, where Pompeo came out and said, look, I was on the call, and we didn't deviate out from what our policy for the Trump administration is.

So they'll put Pompeo up against Bolton.

And Pompeo's strong.

Remember, ex-CIA chief.

All right?

He's strong.

So

does this boil down, Bill, really to

an extreme disagreement in the policy of the State Department and the State Department just saying, we don't work for Donald Trump, even though they do.

We don't work for Donald Trump, and Donald Trump's not going to get involved.

And the State Department engaging in some really nasty stuff over in the Ukraine.

Well, the State Department now is very simpatical with President Trump.

I mean, because Pompeo is a Secretary of State.

They're buds.

Yeah, no.

Yeah, I mean those long-term players, for instance, that don't have any access other than

leaking whatever.

There are two people that Donald Trump deals with every day: Vice President Pence and Pompeo.

Those are the only two.

And they're both very loyal to him.

And as long as they stay there, as long as he has them, he can use them to go out and negate a bullet.

Now, as for your question about the State Department and the Justice Department and everybody else, they all hate Trump.

They've hated him from day one.

All right.

And that's why you saw the whistleblower.

Yes.

This guy was working to undermine Trump from the very beginning.

Well, he's the guy who said that

Putin and Trump,

you know, Putin told Donald Trump to fire Comey.

He's the guy who started all of that.

This guy is an activist.

He's an activist.

Very bad.

Very bad.

But

Schiff is in trouble because he went to Schiff, because his two best friends work for Schiff.

I mean, it's really bad.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn.

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Thanks.

When you say,

at least 15 years ago,

hey, can you name a really horrible, divisive group?

You could probably say, yeah, Westboro Baptist Church.

Oh, yeah.

But now we are all kind of...

We're kind of turning into that.

We see that everywhere now.

We see people screaming these things at each other.

America has become an online version in many cases of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Not necessarily screaming the same things, but being just as vile and mean and

awful.

Well, Megan Phelps,

she's a writer and an activist and a former member of the Phelps family.

member of the Westboro Baptist Church.

And she joins us now.

She has a new book called Unfollow.

Welcome, Megan.

How are you?

I am wonderful.

What about you?

I'm good.

Good to have you on the program again.

First of all, can I ask you,

you kept the name Phelps, your Megan Phelps Roper.

And Phelps is one of those words, you know, like we say, your name is Mudd around here.

That's because the guy who is helping John Wilkes Booth, his name was Mudd.

The doctor was mudd.

Phelps is kind of one of those names.

Why'd you keep it?

I kept it because I wanted to reform it.

You know, my name,

Megan Phelps Roper, for a very long time, it meant, as my family would say, God hates bags.

And I didn't want it to mean that anymore.

I wanted to change.

I wanted to take it back.

And, you know,

my husband recently, we've been talking about, you know, we want to start a nonprofit at some point.

And he had the idea of calling it the Westboro Foundation.

Because I want people when they hear Westboro to not think of people who celebrate tragedies and deaths, but people who are there when tragedies happen to help people who are suffering.

I mean in some ways it's what Chip and Joanna did for Waco, Texas, but it was I mean that wasn't that wasn't personally them.

And you have a

I mean you you were you were there on the front lines.

Tell the audience I know who you were but tell the audience who you were and how you changed.

So Westboro Baptist Church was started by my grandfather, and it's almost entirely my extended family.

So my mother was the de facto spokesperson for a very long time, and I was right there.

I grew up right at her elbow.

I'm the third of 11 children.

I'm her oldest daughter.

So, you know, she called me her right hand, and I was right there in the middle of it.

I was a hardcore believer, a zealous believer in everything that Westboro taught, and I defended them in the media.

I was the one who took our message to social media initially

and helped with all of the logistical work, orchestrating the protests.

So

I was not, as I put it, I said I was all in.

That's how I felt.

And then the...

Before you change, before you talk about how you changed,

was there ever any discussion like, hey guys, I don't think this is working.

This approach is not working.

Was there ever any discussion like that?

No, because for Westboro, you know, they do not use conversion numbers as a metric of their success.

They don't believe that, you know, changing hearts and minds is in their power because they believe in predestination.

So only God can change someone's heart.

And so we basically saw our, you know, we measured our success as the amount of publicity that we were getting because all we were trying to do was publish this message that we thought was the word of God.

So and so from that perspective, we were very successful.

We We were all, I mean, you know, pop culture phenomenons, you know, True Blood, that, you know, really popular series on HBO, the opening credits included, you know, God Hates Fangs, you know,

which is part of our, you know, just a play on our God Hates Gays message.

But so it's, you know, for them, they just, that's, they weren't trying to change people's minds, and that's why

to change the idea of changing tactics didn't even occur to them.

And when people would insist that they should, that it was biblical for them to change tactics, for us to change tactics,

we basically just dismissed them out of hand.

So,

Megan,

when you

are away from this now and your eyes have been opened, and

you know what you are part of and your family is a part of, and you know,

what's true and what's not.

How difficult is it for you to look look at our society today and to see what people are doing online, on air, everything,

and

not just cry out, you fools, what are you doing?

Well, I can't say you fools because I I was exactly where so many people are now.

I know how seductive that that way of seeing things is.

You know, the the appeal of absolute certainty.

You know, the it my grandfather used to say that it was there was something wonderfully liberating in the idea, in the notion, the knowledge that you are 100% right.

And he believed that.

He believed that we were 100% right with no possibility of error because we, again, we had the Word of God.

And so when I see this, you know, this spirit, kind of the same spirit taking over, you know, the Westboroization of politics and American culture generally,

I know why people are drawn to it, and I understand the group dynamics that lead people to it, but I also know how incredibly destructive it is to see the world that way and how ineffective it is to try to change hearts and minds to

have come to collective to compromise, how difficult that is to do when you have completely demonized anyone who doesn't agree with you on everything, anyone who steps outside of the party line

on any notion.

It's not good.

It's interesting because I wrote in one of my books, I think it was my last one, where I said the only thing I am now certain of is that I am not certain of anything.

It is our certainty that is dividing us.

And

it feels different

than what you went through because

you see and you claim what's happening over here is evil.

And

I know the difference between good and evil.

And this is just this movement is evil.

But that's what you guys thought.

Yeah, and that's the thing.

If you are only looking at things from your perspective, you know,

you are looking at

current events in light of your own experiences.

And if you cut yourself off from trying to understand why other people have come to different conclusions, if you just attribute it to, you know, this person is evil, they are ill-intentioned,

you are immediately cutting yourself off from really understanding that person and what has led them to those conclusions.

Right.

And it doesn't mean that you are going to change your point of view or

that you're not necessarily on the right track, but you don't understand that you are limiting

yourself by not listening to how other people got there or viewed it because they are going to teach you something.

And if you close yourself off to that, you end up alone, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And

there is this instinct that I think is very human.

When we encounter people that we believe are doing and believing destructive things, the instinct that we have is to isolate ourselves from them.

We don't want to endorse them.

We don't want to have any part with what they're involved in.

And again, I think that's a very human response.

You know, you're trying to shame them into changing.

The problem is that when the divide is as great as it is now in so many different spheres, you know, I was talking to an anthropologist last year, and she explained the feeling of shame as the feeling that we get when we know that we have violated the norms of our community.

And so, you know, for me, Westboro was my community, and I didn't have any community outside of that.

I felt completely alienated from the rest of the world.

It was this very us-them mentality.

And so when other people, outsiders, attempted to shame me, I felt pride.

I was happy that they thought I was wrong because I thought they were evil.

So clearly, it just reinforces your sense of righteousness.

What's the difference between this and moral relativity?

I think

I don't believe that you have to

have no opinions about things.

I don't think that you have to say, well, I can't.

When you said certainty is the root of this, for me, I totally agree.

This toxic sense of certainty in your own righteousness.

It's not that you don't have opinions or that you don't have strong values and strong beliefs.

It's that you hold them a bit more loosely because you understand that there is information and experiences outside of your own, which are necessarily limited, that can and should change the way you see things.

We have to be willing to listen because, not because we are trying to say that, okay, white supremacy is okay or

whatever the specific issue is.

It's that

what is in this that I can learn from?

And how can we build a bridge from where they are to where I am?

So show us how

we need to change our behavior.

You know, your book is called Unfollow,

and you're not necessarily saying disengage from social media

because, at least I don't think, because

that's what changed you, was somebody using social media in the right way.

So, what's the right way to approach this?

Or another way?

Yeah, so

I gave a TED talk a couple of years ago about this.

This was, I think, the last time I was on.

It was basically detailing the strategies that

people used with me.

So, the first was to don't assume bad intent because, again, you need to understand what is is actually motivating this person.

I think very few people are actually deliberately trying to do things that they know are evil or wrong.

They have somehow become convinced that this is the right way.

And so you need to understand where they're coming from if you're going to actually reach them.

The second is to ask questions, partly, again, to help you understand where they are, where they're coming from, but also partly as a signal to them that they're being heard.

And so

there's this reciprocal thing that happens where you know, somebody, you ask them questions and they go through their whole position.

They explain it all to you.

And then they get to the end and there's this natural, you know, sense of reciprocation often where they want to know what you think.

Where are you coming from?

And how is it?

It's not asking questions.

It's asking honest questions.

It's asking questions of, I want to know, not questions that will get them to change their mind.

Because I'm going to have a, I know the answer to this one.

Right, yes.

Okay.

And then the third is to stay calm, which is, you know, as you see in conversations on social media, on television, all over the place, it's really difficult, it seems like, right now, to be able to stay calm in these discussions because

these are conversations about deeply held values and disagreements that

we cannot fathom how somebody has come to a different place.

And so if we can be very intentional and deliberate about keeping you know, keeping the hostility level as low as possible, trying to acknowledge that the other person is coming from a place of of genuine disagreement and to be able to tolerate that.

Like this is embodying the value of tolerance, I think it's really important.

So that's the third step.

And then the fourth is to make your argument.

And again, this is one of those things that sounds very obvious, but when we have these deeply held values, there is this

sense that anybody that is a decent person would have already come to the same conclusions that I have.

And so we end up not actually articulating the defenses and the arguments for our position.

So we actually need to do that.

And then, you know, I think I mentioned this last time too, the fifth point that I would say

that was not in my TED Talk because I ran out of time, but it would be to be patient because people don't change these kinds of deeply held values overnight, like in a moment.

Even though I can look back in my own experience to how my mind changed over time, I can point to several moments where I absolutely became aware that there was a contradiction in what I believed.

And what it caused me to do was kind of to shut down momentarily, right?

And that's what happens to human beings as we, you know, this cognitive dissonance, like to finally come to the place where we understand, wow, maybe there is something wrong with my position.

Maybe I need to reconsider this.

And if you push that, you know, if you try to use that as a gotcha moment,

people react very negatively to that.

It tends to push us exactly.

It pushes you deeper into your position.

Megan, I think you're a remarkable, remarkable woman.

And your message is so powerful and right on the money and right for this time.

I urge everybody in the audience to read this and share this with people.

What she lays out is: look, what we're doing isn't working.

We have to change tactics.

And I think she has a remarkable message.

The name of the book is Unfollow, Megan Phelps Roper.

Unfollow.

It's available wherever you buy books currently.

Thank you so much, Megan.

God bless.

Thank you, thank you.

You bet.

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