Best of the Program | Guest: Evan Todd | 4/22/19

Hey, welcome to the Monday podcast.

A lot going on, especially we start with Sri Lanka, where Easter worshipers were killed.

Did you know that, Stu?

I did not.

Did you worship Easter?

I did.

I worship the eggs and the bunny.

And the bunny.

That's what the media was calling Christians yesterday.

We have a lot to say about that.

Also, it's Monday, so time for Stu's Game of Thrones recap.

Don't worry, not a single spoiler alert because he's only seen two episodes and he's not looking anything up.

So it's Stu's recap for those who have absolutely no idea who any of the characters are.

Also, Ukraine just

hired a, well, they voted in at 71 or 73%.

a comedian to be their new leader and president.

It's amazing because no one knows any of his policies.

He's not given them.

And his

interviews, he doesn't give unless he matches two different reporters and they have to jump a hurdle to be able to interview him.

We'll tell you about that hurdle and it is phenomenal.

And I think it's kind of scary because it's where we are ourselves.

Also, Evan Todd, a Columbine survivor, talks about what it was like on that day, 20th anniversary.

It was on Saturday.

Talked about what happened.

He was the first kid shot.

He was one that had a gun to the temple of his head, and he talked them out of it.

And what is his view on guns in school today?

That's all on today's podcast.

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

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The helicopters overhead.

Just on the other side of the fence of the National Zoo of Sri Lanka.

A hotel full of tourists from all over the world just wanting to celebrate Easter.

Just before 9 a.m.

yesterday, an explosion shook the air.

The church was packed with brightly dressed people on Easter Sunday.

It wasn't just one church.

It was church after church after church.

Yesterday,

a day of peace,

a day where

if just the Christians would listen to the message of Christ,

to love our enemies,

to forgive, to not have hatred, the world would truly change.

A day of peace, a day of hope,

a day of the resurrection of the man,

despite our darkest moments.

The day marking his resurrection.

It became a day of blood blood and ash and screaming and loss.

Nine bombings yesterday.

207 people dead.

450 wounded.

And they were all chosen specifically for their religious belief.

Literally targeted at their church.

Some people did something, all right.

We've heard that phrase recently.

We know it was a day where some people did something.

Sri Lanka has been plagued by violence throughout its history, but it's been nearly a decade since the end of its civil war, and yesterday had nothing to do with Sri Lankan politics, and everything to do with religious persecution.

Christians specifically targeted.

There's no doubt, Christians, worshipers of Christ, believers in Christianity, Christians, not Easter worshipers.

Easter worshipers seemed to be the descriptor of the day yesterday.

How's that for a coordinated response?

They weren't Easter worshipers.

We don't worship Easter.

We worship a risen Lord.

The Christus.

Christ.

That's what makes us Christians, not Easter worshipers.

Christians face a new persecution, a growing persecution.

In fact, it's the worst persecution since the days right after Christ.

On Easter,

Jesus performed a miracle by rising from the dead.

But perhaps we're so close to being lost into nothingness

that perhaps it will

be another miracle if Christians even begin to stand up,

let alone rise.

It's time for Christians to recognize what's happening to their faith.

Is faith in America dead?

Can it rise again?

Does even anyone really even know

what it means to be a Christian?

Is empathy dead in America?

Will Christians begin to stand up in defense of their own faith?

I'm not sure.

But we have to.

And we have to do it pretty darn soon.

You know,

I'm amazed at how

we are viewing this Sri Lankan

event yesterday.

This bombing, this intentional Islamicist targeting of

churches.

I guarantee you that there will be more ink spent on Glenn Beck being a conspiracy theorist by saying,

you know, I don't think this is, but if it's found out that it's Islamists that have set

Notre Dame on fire, you probably won't know about it because nobody will want to engage in that and what would happen if Islamists actually burned down Notre Dame.

They spent all last week saying what a conspiracy theory that was.

No, that wasn't a conspiracy theory.

ISIS has said Notre Dame is its number one target.

ISIS has targeted that building twice.

Now, they didn't do this.

They didn't burn it down.

But they even came out last week and still said they will not rebuild it.

They're going to take that building out.

So it's not a conspiracy theory.

It is a collection of facts.

And then you look at what's happening and you say, is this it or is this not it?

As it turns out, as I said that day, this is not an Islamic terror operation.

Now,

we spent all that time last week on Notre Dame.

And the only reason why they spent that time is because that building is iconic.

It's the building.

It's not what the building represents.

It's the building.

It's basically a tourist attraction to them.

Correct.

Correct.

And a piece of history.

It is, there is something more to that building.

It is, you know, as Dennis Prager said in an article this week, it was an omen for Christianity in the West.

Are you dead?

Are you, I mean, it's burning itself down to the ground.

Are you dead, Christians?

Well, in Sri Lanka,

it's not burning itself down to the ground.

People actually have to risk their lives for what they believe in, and they did this weekend.

And what was the, what was CNN's big angle?

CNN's big angle was,

did you notice that Donald Trump said that there were, what was it, a hundred and thirty-eight million dead?

It was clearly a typo that was corrected immediately.

What are you doing?

Everything must be about Donald Trump.

Every story.

It's incredible.

I mean, how about this?

You know, we spent weeks and weeks and weeks talking about the terrible shooting in New Zealand.

And the targeting of Muslims.

Targeting of Muslims, because, I mean, look at the hatred that's going on towards Muslims.

And, of course, that was true in that case, and it deserved a lot of attention.

It was a terrible incident.

But this one is

and very isolated in comparison to what's happening to Christians around the world.

I mean, it really is widespread around the world with Christians now, and that's not something that gets covered.

This is an incident that is, you know, orders of magnitude larger.

I mean, it's a much bigger

death toll here.

We're talking about 500 people injured, almost 300 dead in these nine bombings so far.

And that will, of course, increase, I'm sure, as we go forward.

And let me ask you this, Stu.

How ridiculous would it be for Christians today to say, we've got to take away people's bomb-making ability?

Stunningly,

that's already been done.

But it's ridiculous to think that.

Okay, so

Sri Lanka, hard to get a gun in Sri Lanka, I imagine.

Oh, yeah.

But you should see the process of it.

And again, you know, they took away all the guns in, or they're taking away all the guns in New Zealand now.

They've already passed all these laws to do so.

You know,

the New Zealand situation is nowhere close to Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka, they got all the stuff that you could possibly want to ban guns, plus much, much, much more than has ever been presented here.

And what happens?

Well, now

six times as many people are dead, right?

And they were able to do this.

This is not even a largely funded, it's a relatively unknown Islamic extremist group that is allegedly responsible for this.

And yet they were able to kill 300 people in a country where not only can you not make bombs legally, but you can't possess firearms.

I mean, I was looking at the report of this.

It's actually incredible what you have to do.

So not only there's no Second Amendment right to firearms, which of course is only in really two or three countries in the world, actually have something similar to the Second Amendment, and they're all worse than ours as far as rights.

But they don't do that, and they don't give you a license to buy firearms unless you can prove it's absolutely necessary to possess one.

So, what's that process like?

Again, like there's not a ton of information.

It's known to be very restrictive, but this is at least from, there's a Quora article about this of someone who lived there and worked in the department.

You know,

I don't know.

I wouldn't base my legal rights on this particular article, but it is a fascinating one.

So you go and you have to send an application to request a license to possess a firearm.

Then you submit that, and then you have to give them all sorts of information.

Once you submit it, they will attach their recommendation or disapproval letter, and that will be sent along to the Ministry of Defense.

Again, this is just to get a gun.

The Ministry of Defense will consider your application and will almost certainly reject it unless you make absolutely strong arguments on why you should be able to bear a firearm.

If the Ministry of Defense decides to issue a license to bear firearms,

they will decide which kind of firearm suits your case.

Now, I mean, what's the situation?

You have a legitimate security threat.

Maybe you're some big celebrity and you're protecting a compound or something.

They will sell to you, they will sell to you.

a model of firearm that they decide to sell you.

You cannot buy firearms anywhere in Sri Lanka.

How's that for restrictive?

Once you get your arms on a firearm, you are not allowed to shoot it unless absolutely necessary.

You have to report every single bullet shot by you.

Oh my gosh.

They also permit you to possess only a given number of bullets.

How do you get proficient in it?

You can only re-obtain bullets.

Re-obtain is the word they use.

From a licensed ammunition seller who is bound by law only to issue

ammunition in in an amount similar to the amount of cartridges or shells returned to them.

So you need to bring all your empty casings and shells and bring them in and then say, here, I've got 45 and then you can buy 45.

That's the process there.

So they got a fever dream of like Bernie Sanders times Kamala Harris times Corey Booker as far as gun laws go.

And then add in a dash of the Green Party and the Socialist Workers' Party, like the most restrictive you could ever imagine.

And what happens?

Six times as many people are dead in these attacks than the ones they were all saying were guns' fault last time.

And again, because it's Christians instead of Muslims that are the victim here, and they were victims in both cases.

But the attention will not be paid upon the victims here because it just

was Easter worshipers.

Yeah.

I kept seeing that too.

They were Easter worshipers.

Now, look, here's the, here's it.

They're worshiping Easter?

They're worshiping the bunny.

What are they doing exactly?

Sure, sure.

Isn't that amazing?

Easter worshipers,

not Christians.

And the reason why, we showed you this last week.

In Europe itself, there were, and

I'm going to just ballpark these numbers, but it's pretty close.

There were 1,800

hate crimes that were filed in the EU last year.

1,800 hate crimes.

Out of the 1,800, about 100 of them were against Islamists, okay, or Muslims.

Two or three hundred were against Jews.

The rest were Christians.

The rest were Christians.

It was like 1,364.

Acts of hate against Christians.

Christians are under attack all over the world,

and no one is talking about it, including our own churches.

With what's happening in China alone

is horrific.

And I'm sorry to say, but it looks like the Pope is not helping the Christian churches, the Catholic churches in China.

He is on the wrong side of what's happening with the Catholic churches and the Catholic parishioners in China.

But Christians are being targeted in China.

They're being targeted in Burma.

They're being targeted in Africa, in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia, all over the world.

And no one is standing up for them.

No one's standing up for our own faith.

We are all sitting here.

We, if you went to church yesterday,

did you at all, at all,

have a feeling or a fleeting thought?

This is

this is this is dying.

This is all going away.

Where is the church, the dynamic church that we had when I was growing up?

Now, if you're lucky, you live in a place like we do where the churches are dynamic,

but this is an oasis here.

I mean, it is not like this in the rest of the country.

If you are up north, tell me your church is as healthy as it was, even five years ago.

Tell me our faith.

You know,

I was sitting in church waiting for the service yesterday, and

I was reading my scriptures, and

I was overwhelmed by Luke 6.

Tell me we're living this,

but love your enemies and do good and lend, hoping for nothing again.

So in other words, are we just doing this?

Loving our enemies and doing good to our enemies, lending them stuff, lending a helping hand and hoping for nothing in return?

Are we even doing that part?

For he is kind to the unthankful and the evil.

So, in other words, we're supposed to do it because he is kind

to the unthankful and the evil.

Be therefore merciful.

Judge not, condemn not,

forgive.

Are we even doing this?

How many of us were missing someone at the table for Easter because of politics?

The best of the Glenbeck program.

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Such a bad version of this.

It's dramatic.

It's like on a recorder.

You can feel the power of the series, I think, through this.

Can you?

Now, you are not necessarily a fan, but you're not an anti- fan either.

You're not against it.

No, I mean, I've heard really good things about it.

And sometimes when you hear the hot series and you you don't watch it, you know, you wind up catching up later and really get into it.

I mean, that's happened to me.

It happened to me with Breaking Bad.

Like, I didn't watch Breaking Bad at the beginning, wound up really loving that shit.

So, I, I, maybe that's going to be the same thing here.

Though, in Breaking Bad, I didn't try to jump in in the last season and understand it with no context, right?

And you are specifically asking for no help.

I want no help here.

I'm not doing any internet research, I'm not going back and re-watching things intentionally because I don't, I want it to be a pure experience.

is killing me all right so thank you so what is this the the club mix all right so uh uh Stu is here with your Game of Thrones update uh the second episode in the season final season of Game of Thrones I think there's some pretty big things that happened uh this week really yeah first of all biggest one I think uh there are seven kingdoms

yes which there are seven kingdoms that's huge I didn't no idea what the number no I did not okay all right Somebody was pushed out of a tower.

Okay, that happened

in a flashback scene.

Okay, yes.

So I don't know what the context of that was or who the two people were, but someone was pushed out of a tower and fell dramatically.

Right.

Did not look good.

All right.

Then the open happens.

The open animation is very, very long.

It's incredible how long it is.

You know, it is amazing how

animation, you know, like Seinfeld, a 30-minute show, it ran like a minute.

You're like, you got 22.

Now you've got 21.

Shut up with the, and we, we sat through it.

And the Cosby show one was like, it was like each character for like 40 seconds dancing in a different sweater.

I know.

It was crazy.

It's crazy when you go back and watch them.

And now you see something like Game of Thrones, which is a little lengthy.

Yeah.

And it's just a bunch of models, like really cheesy-looking models of, I guess.

Well, that's new this season.

That's new.

Okay.

I think.

I don't know.

I only saw the last part because I always hit skip intro.

Right.

Because kind of that kind of has you like swooping through these landscapes of really cheesy models and it reminded me of the old tales of the crypt uh open except there's no puppet skeleton that pops up at the end okay although i don't spoiler alert it could happen okay i don't know all right okay um okay so the other thing i wanted to address this is this one's annoying me for real is that the Game of Thrones font that everyone keeps saying, oh, the Game of Thrones font.

It's just a normal font with three lines vertically through the O's.

That's the only difference.

I don't think this is the kind of update people are looking for.

Okay, so, all right.

Again, I will say, if you know these characters, there may be spoiler alerts in here because I'm describing things that I don't know which ones are important and which ones to skip.

So, if you've

haven't watched the episode and you're a big fan, you can read the update online afterwards.

I heard your episode, I heard your recap last week.

I didn't even understand it.

Okay.

All right, the blondie queen,

she wants the guy in Beard's sister to send troops,

which she is not doing.

So, that's a problem.

problem.

And the bearded guy apparently is Angry Elf's brother.

And

this is a big revelation for you last night.

That bearded guy might be the brother of the elf.

Yeah, that's a big development.

And also the sister of the woman who's not sending troops, who I don't know who that is yet, but someone out there.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Now,

they used to all be at war, right?

And now they're not, but they still don't really like each other all that much.

Then there's the matronly woman who kind of stands up and she vouches for a beard guy.

And she says she was sexually assaulted and that the beard guy defended her, which makes all of his previous murder attempts okay.

Is that the redhead?

Red-headed, matronly?

No, I think she was blondish, and she kind of stood up to defend.

I must have missed that part of you.

Got that wrong, but anyway, go ahead.

So then there's this Backstreet Boy in the wheelchair character, which I found very interesting.

He looks like a boy band member.

He's in a wheelchair all the time.

Got it.

And he seems to just kind of stare pensively at people a lot.

That seems to be his role.

And then there's the Frumpy girl.

And now, the Frumpy girl, she was in the last episode and she likes swords a lot.

And she hung out with

the goatee guy.

And I got to say, the goatee guy, I know is one of the main characters, but I lost him.

I can't tell which one it was.

So my last description of goatee guy, I don't remember now who that was.

Like, I couldn't recreate who the same.

I couldn't.

I couldn't.

You can't tell the difference because they're all.

They all look the same.

They're identical people.

Well, they're all everyone in the entire series is identical.

Well, there's not.

There's not a lot of razors or water.

There's not a lot of showering going on.

And everybody's wearing.

It's dark and cold and dirty.

And everybody's wearing black.

It's like being in Manhattan.

Everybody's just wearing black.

They all kind of look the same.

And they're miserable.

I guess.

Yes.

Okay.

So then the frumpy girl, she can throw knives very accurately.

And she wants some sort of weapon made for her.

Then they go to this bright red tree.

And at the bright red tree

is

the backstreet boy in the wheelchair.

And he's out there, and it just seems completely implausible that he could wheel himself on this wheelchair through all the snow and terrain to get to this location.

It's not like there's a sidewalk with curbs anywhere.

Exactly.

It would be very difficult.

And I hope that that.

That's more handy-capable

access to any part in thank you.

I really am hoping that in future episodes they have like a flashback to how he got there.

How did he traverse the rocks and the snow?

Hysterical.

I just want to see that.

Him stuck with his wheels in the mud and the snow.

Can somebody help me out here?

It would be incredibly challenging.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

So a lot of upper body strength is what you're saying.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, that's something.

See, this is where we're we're getting a review.

You're not going to get anyplace else.

Nobody is talking about the, what do you call him?

The wheelchair.

The backstreet boy in the wheelchair.

Backstreet, his upper body strength.

Right.

No one's covered that.

Okay, so they're at this tree.

And the bearded guy, who I learn apparently was the person who actually pushed the Backstreet Boy, who was not in a wheelchair, out of the window.

Yes.

And I think that may have caused the wheelchair situation.

Again, not a spoiler unless you're on season one.

It's been that long.

It's been that long.

All right, so Angry Elf and his brother,

the beard guy,

they seem to think that their sister was trash, but they sort of love her anyway.

They had a conversation about that.

Then there's this guy who looks kind of like Ricky Gervais and Lenny from Laverne and Shirley.

He visits the queen blondie lady.

Do you know who I'm talking about?

I think Laverne and Shirley.

Remember Lenny?

And then you know Ricky Gervais.

If they, look, we have all sorts of alternative lifestyles that are.

Is he thinner than Ricky Gervais?

Maybe?

I don't know.

Okay.

I don't know.

I think I know who you're talking about.

I can't place that person.

But they visit Queen Blondie and they used to not like each other, but now they do, which is the relationship dynamic of every person on the show.

You're not helping me out with that.

Every conversation is the same conversation, which is, hey, I know you used to try to kill me all the time, but we're friends now.

Like, that's that interaction happens all the time.

All right.

It was a much more complex life back then.

It was.

We have social media that we now have to navigate, but they were just trying to kill each other.

And you never knew, like, are you my friend now, or is this a plot to kill me?

Oh, my gosh.

Can you imagine the tweets going back and forth between Queen Blondie and Beard Guy if that was around back then?

That would have been incredible um okay so uh i will say this and i noticed this was kind of a big revelation for me during this particular episode that the blonde queen her eyebrows are remarkably dark for her hair color again i

think that was noticeable right right

is that a thing that people talk about that a lot

no they don't she was out in the sun a lot okay she's more of a she she's she's one that is is up in winter fell saying now i mean i can't take this.

It's always gray.

It's always dark.

It's always cold.

This is not me.

Right.

She's more of a sun worshiper.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

I can see that.

Yeah.

Now, here's another one.

And this is: if you're, if you've only joined, you know, now, this may be a spoiler alert, but the blonde queen lady, she's in love with John, which I think might be Jon Snow.

Not a spoiler.

That's not a spoiler.

Okay.

Is it John Snow?

It is Jon Snow.

That's the goatee guy.

Yes.

Maybe.

It was definitely a guy with a beard, but again, that does not narrow it down at all.

This was the guy that you were trying to place last week.

Right, yes.

And you said, I don't know who he is.

They were doing the dragon thing.

They were flying on dragons and stuff.

Yes.

Yes, that's him.

Okay.

You got it?

That's Jon Snow.

That's Jon Snow.

That's a big character, I feel like, in this thing.

I want people to know that they should watch for him to do stuff because I think he's going to be one of these active characters in this show.

he's the one of the central characters okay

uh there's some conflict between blondie and a redhead about a throne in the north okay watch for that right in developings episodes okay got it the redhead is hugging someone and i don't know who it is because everyone looks the same but they were she was hugging someone okay um a little kid wants to join the war and eat soup The soup did not look good.

Right.

Not a big plot point.

Then there's a big moment where the someone is here alarm sounds.

Yes.

They have like a simply safe system.

Like when someone approaches

and like you, right?

Okay.

And then the red-haired burly guy comes in, and he was a big character throughout this episode.

He has a there's a beard guy there, another beard guy, and an eye patch guy there.

And they were all together.

Whoever is coming.

Now,

this is something that people might not understand if they're coming into season eight, episode two, and didn't see season eight, episode one.

But something or someone is coming.

Winter is coming.

It's just the winter?

Well, that was the first line of the series:

winter is coming.

And now winter is finally here.

It's been, I mean, the entire, I will say, this has been tough for Jay making an analogy because, like, it has been cold the entire time.

Yes, no, it's, it's an analogy.

And the name of the place is also Winterfell, which I learned last episode.

Right, good, good, good.

But somebody, I feel like an army or a monster or an attacker of some sort is coming.

Yes, okay,

and so you, you're trying so hard.

I am,

and they're coming before the sun comes up, so it's like tomorrow, like within the next few hours, okay?

So, the army is unbeatable except for one weak point.

May I ask you a question?

How do you know that they're coming?

If I just told you winter is coming, which is an analogy, when they said they're coming before sunup,

that could be another analogy.

It could be another analogy.

How do you know what the analogy is and what the actual time is?

Well, again, all this is contextual.

So I feel like

they were drinking.

They were saying we're not going to live to the next day.

They were not a confident force, I will say.

I would say that was accurate.

This was like a

1-8 matchup in the NBA playoffs.

They just did not seem confident.

They did, however, have the possibility of knocking out this army because of one weak point, like the Death Star.

They have a Death Star possibility, it seems like.

If they could just bomb or put like

that, like you used to when you were gopher hunting back on the Tatooine, right?

It was like that.

If they could do that, they can wipe all of them out at the same time, which is, again, like every army in every series seems to do this.

It's like, don't put one weak point.

That's all you have to do is not do the one weak point thing, and you win all the time.

Well, but you don't necessarily know that one weak point until it's too late.

But somehow your enemy does.

They almost have to be able to do it.

You never

see it.

Let's see.

Someone killed a white walker.

I don't know what a white walker is, but they were very proud of that.

The brother of the angry elf was sleeping with his sister.

So the brother of the angry elf was sleeping with his sister, which I think means it's also angry elf's sister.

Yeah, good for you.

Yes.

This is,

I mean, this is not something you should be watching.

I'm just disappointed in you.

Right.

You're right on that.

There was some, there was a bunch of sexual stuff that went on.

The frumpy girl got naked and she looked a lot less frumpy when she got out of her clothing.

I noticed that.

Then

there was the scary opposing army.

Okay, that they finally, I guess this is the group that's coming.

Yes.

And they are there and they're in the visual connection to the actual castle.

Winterfell.

Which is a big deal.

Yeah.

And I think, tell me if I'm wrong, and spoiler alert, there's a big revelation.

Beard guy, I think, is someone named Sir Jamie of Lannister.

Sir Jamie Lannister is Beard Guy.

Not a revelation.

So not a spoiler again.

But it was a big.

It was a big reveal.

It was a big reveal to you.

He said his name and everything.

Yes, and there it is.

The update.

I mean, the show is a little better than that, but

a thorough, thorough look at last night's episode.

Courtesy HBO.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

You want to talk about how America has,

you know,

we don't share things anymore.

Part of that is because of the breakdown of media, and in a good way.

I mean, we're in the golden era of television right now.

Have you heard or seen a show called

Killing Eve?

I have not.

It is really,

really good.

Really good.

Yeah.

And they're even heard, again, like, that's what's amazing about this is there's these, every once in a while, I stumble upon a series that almost was specifically designed for me.

Yeah.

You know, and it's like, how did I not know about this?

It did five seasons and it ended in 2012.

It's on TV and you're like, no idea.

I Love Lucy.

When I Love Lucy was out,

it had a 92 share, which meant that about 70% of the American population was watching I Love Lucy.

And you had to watch it live.

So imagine.

I remember this, you know, in the days of MASH and even Seinfeld and friends, where you would talk the next day

and up until really Ti-Vo,

you would say, no, no, no, don't, don't tell me, don't tell me, don't tell me.

Oh, yeah.

Because I remember going on the air the next day and you'd have that newsport.

Like you'd try to talk about it without talking about the shows.

And this is, again, like, you know, 19, late 90s, early 2000s.

Yeah, but in the early 90s, you just talked about it.

You just talked about it.

In the 80s, you just talked about it.

Right, because it was the only way you were ever going to see it.

I mean, unless you saw the rerun six months later, maybe.

Yeah, you're just everybody, everybody watched it live.

So now nobody, I mean, here, Game of Thrones

had a

17.4,

is that a share or is that the rating?

17.4 million Americans watched it.

That's what it is, an actual number.

17.4 million Americans watched it, which is what?

5%?

5% of the population.

5% of of the population.

Roughly.

70% of the population was watching I Love Lucy.

70.

And the Game of Thrones is everywhere.

Everywhere.

Everywhere.

Everywhere.

And yet, how many people have never seen a single episode?

Couldn't tell you anything about it.

Me.

I mean,

until the last couple weeks.

Yeah.

It's crazy how

fragmented we really are.

And how

we are united on the thing that we're most divided about, politics.

We are more united on politics, but we disagree with each other, than I think anything else now.

Isn't that sad?

I want to give you a scenario.

Imagine for a second the United States economy had collapsed and a coup has occurred, and then China invades California and they annex the entire western seaboard.

Now, imagine, you know, in the absence of a George Washington resurrection, we elect

Conan O'Brien.

So we've got Conan O'Brien as president of the United States, and we've knowingly elected him to get us out of this mess.

And during the chaos,

O'Brien, you know, breaks out, you know, triumph the insult, comic dog, and goes

viral on insulting the post-coup government.

And then he's like, you know what?

I'm going to run for president myself because any clown can do it.

And then we elect him president of the United States.

That is exactly what happened in Ukraine this weekend.

In Ukraine,

Voldemort,

it can't be Voldemort.

If it is, they should worry because he might turn himself into a giant snake.

Zelensky, he declared victory last night.

He stood on a stage in his his campaign headquarters just after the polls closed.

The theme song that was playing behind him was not like, you know,

he didn't have to sue anybody for, you know,

born in the USA, Bruce Prinstein says Trump can't use it.

You don't have to worry about any of that because it was his theme song for his comic late-night show, for his comedy show.

It would be like

Johnny Carson, bad up, bad, bad,

as your victory song.

Okay.

His opponent, the previous Ukrainian president, had already conceded defeat before the results even started coming in.

It was a blowout.

Blowout.

He trounced everybody.

73% of the vote.

That's the amount of people that were watching I Love Lucy.

And we just said how crazy that is.

73%

of the vote went to a late-night comedian.

He is now the president of Ukraine.

And he played the president on TV, right?

Yes.

And

people just were like, ah, I mean, he seems to be funny in that scenario.

Maybe he'll be funny in real life as the president, too.

So the Russians are literally at the gates.

They are at the throats of Ukraine.

They've already annexed Crimea.

The Russian-backed separatists have seized nearly all of eastern Ukraine.

The media rarely even talks about about it, but there's been an ongoing war in Ukraine ever since 2014.

13,000 Ukrainians have died.

The economy has collapsed.

It is in absolute shambles.

And they have a comedian.

Now, common sense would seem to dictate, you know, maybe somebody who knows what they're doing would be really good.

But Ukraine has chosen a late-night comedian.

How did this happen?

Well,

I will tell you,

this isn't some crazy Eastern

phenomena here.

We elected a game show television host.

I mean, Donald Trump was more than that, but they say that's one of the reasons why he won is because everyone knew him and they saw him as successful in their their living rooms.

Now Ukraine has taken this and they've put a comedian in.

Do you remember when the world had a problem with Ronald Reagan being an actor?

Now why is this happening?

Because

everyone, everyone, not just in America, but in the entire Western world, they are sick of the lies, they're tired of the broken promises, the general feeling of being ignored,

talked down to,

pandered to.

People in this country, Donald Trump was elected because people were tired of being ignored and lied over and over again, lied to about immigration, the economy, jobs.

I mean, when you

contend again

that the wall

is not about Mexico,

build the wall is about Washington, D.C.

People are so sick of Washington, D.C.

and their broken promises that they don't trust anybody to go in and actually fix the broken border system.

And so they're like, you know what?

Build a damn wall because the next guy, once you build it, it'll be up.

And that's exactly why they won't build a wall because you can't reverse the wall and that's what americans want

stop it stop playing games with my life and my livelihood stop it you guys don't really even care look what's happening in france the front the french elected an empty suit and now their streets look like a war zone every saturday and sunday Why?

Because people are sick of it.

Look at Brexit.

Look at Germany.

The old way is busted.

Change on a scale we have never seen before is coming.

Winter is coming.

Every time you hear somebody say, oh, that guy could never become president.

Really?

A late-night comedian just became president of Ukraine.

Every time you mock somebody like Alexandria Occasional Cortex,

remember the comedian from the Ukraine.

It's a new era.

The old ways of doing things are gone.

It's what truly scares people

like Mitch McConnell,

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer.

They know this doesn't work.

And quite honestly,

it should

terrify all of us just a little bit.

What's crazier?

You remember when Iceland collapsed?

Do you remember how they put together their new constitution?

They had people tweet us your ideas.

Tweet us your ideas?

That's the way you're writing a new constitution tweet us your ideas

we had 54 men come together some of the greatest brains of of the millennia

they worked on that constitution for a very long time

they didn't have people just tweet their ideas mostly whatsapp or how did that work don't know

here is

something crazier than tweet us your ideas.

Here's a guy who's good at mocking the system, and the Russians are at our gates.

And we know 70 years ago, they slaughtered most of our parents and grandparents.

They just slaughtered the whole country.

They're at the gates again.

Hey, we think the guy who can help us is a guy who's at least honest.

I mean, he's a comedian, but at least he's honest.

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

20 years ago, this Saturday, a guy named Evan Todd was a student at Columbine High School.

He was the first shot in the library.

He

had been and

incurred shotgun wounds in the face, in the neck, and in the back.

He was able to remain clear enough to convince them not to finish him off.

He's on the phone with us today.

Evan, welcome.

Good morning, Glenn.

Good to talk to you.

Great to talk to you.

First of all, how was this weekend for you?

This weekend was a weird adventure, but

it was really encouraging because I saw a lot of old classmates.

We went to the school and gathered.

And it was encouraging to see how far people have come in the past and road to recovery.

Yeah.

So tell me about that day first

about those guys coming in.

I prefer not to use their names and give them any more glory, but those guys coming in and

shooting you, and you're the first.

What happened?

Yeah, the shooting started outside, and it was confusing at first, but as the shots got closer, we knew what was going on.

Most everyone had made their way under a desk or hiding behind bookshelves.

And

I was behind a pillar trying to decide whether I was going to hide or run and I kept looking around the pillar and that's when one of the

the murderers saw me and he lowered his shotgun and fired and that's when I was hit on the lower left side of my back and then he fired a couple more shots went over my head and that's when I got the shrapnel blown back into my face

And

you talked to them?

You spoke to them?

Yeah, after they had come into the the library and basically everything that had happened in the library happened, they came back around to where I was at.

And one of them kneeled down and put a gun to my head and he asked, why shouldn't we kill you?

And I told him, look, I've been good to you and everyone in this school and you know it.

And something happened in that moment.

His facial expression changed.

He lowered his gun.

He started to stand up.

And he turned to the other one and said, you can kill him if you want.

They debated back and forth and talked for a minute and then decided to let me go and they left the library at that time.

I mean, there's so much to take apart and unpack there,

but it was your character that saved your life.

You had been kind to them.

You know,

I knew them.

I recognized their face.

I was a football player, and they worked on the Rebel News Network, which is our little news team inside the school.

So I had a feeling that they knew who I was just from the reports.

But

something about that moment struck the cord and they ended up letting me go.

So

I believe that they did know who I was, and I had never done anything to them.

And that was true as well.

So how badly injured were you?

You know, I was definitely one of the lucky ones.

I went to the local ER close to the school.

I was out by the end of the day, and I was backpacking three months later and playing football the following fall.

So I was definitely very fortunate and blessed.

But you didn't stay in the library.

You had your chance to live and either stay there and remain safe,

but you didn't.

You actually went and saved the lives of others.

Yeah, when they left the library, there was an exit to the the outside where

a bunch of students ran out.

And

when we got outside, there were even more students that were hiding behind police cars and

little outbuildings, sheds, and people who were bleeding out.

And I had been trained in first aid through the Boy Scouts.

And, you know, some of the simple things of getting people into the sun and keeping them warm, plugging wounds, the most basic first aid

definitely helped

keep

students alive.

And you know, everyone that made it to a doctor ER survived that day.

And that's just a testament to our medical system.

You know, if we got them to help, they lived.

How did you know to put them in the sun and do those things?

It was definitely from the first day training.

You know, keep someone warm, keep them conscious.

We were talking to them.

Where did you get the training?

Through the Boy Scouts.

Yeah, the first day merit badge

was where I first got it.

You were actually awarded the National

Honor Medal, were you not?

Honor Medal.

I was, yeah.

Yeah,

and I was not the only one.

There were four other scouts at Columbine that day that received awards

for helping other students in first aid.

And one of the students who actually kept Dave Sanders

alive and

well for several hours after he incurred his injuries

in the science one room.

And he received an award as well.

So, Evan, I obviously a lot older than you are, and I remember that day, and I remember thinking,

what the hell is happening to our country?

I had never seen anything like this.

Those look like the good old days

now, with everything that

we see in the news I just read with a Huffington Post Satan is having a

moment and it was a story about how Satanists aren't so bad and I'm like I

everything is flipped upside down as you as you look at the world today

what's happening to us and is there anything that you pull from Columbine that gives you extra insight

Yeah, you know,

I think some of the

stuff that led up to Columbine was just the

permissive sense that we had that, you know, things are okay.

They're going through a phase.

You know, who cares if they're, you know, these two, they worshiped Hitler and death and destruction, and that was okay.

Did you know that before?

Did you know that before they came in with guns?

No, I mean, they were, you know,

the way that they dressed and some of the patches and things, you knew that they had different views on different things.

But,

you know, I didn't know anything really about them before everything happened.

Everything I've learned about them has been from their writings and

videos and things that they made before.

Yeah.

Talking to Evan Todd in After Columbine is the show done by Pureflix TV.

You can see it at aftercolumbine.tv for free.

You're survivor, Evan.

And I have to say, when I was seeing that the 20th anniversary was coming up of Columbine and I saw that it fell on a Saturday, I just said, thank God.

Like,

God only knows what would have happened if that was during a school day somewhere in this country.

And I'm wondering, are you surprised by the sort of dark interest that still seems to

find so many people, so many lost souls that are looking for some meaning in replicating replicating this event?

Yeah, you know, there's a lot to that.

I mean, I think there are a lot of people who are searching for meaning and they're finding it obviously the wrong places and it's misplaced.

And I think that is a failure that we have in society and is not filling that void.

But I think it's also the fact that people are looking for infamy and they're looking for a way to, and I think it's because we haven't found ways to actually stop these from happening.

It gives people encouragement that they may be the next

big name.

And I think if we can solve that problem, these will start to diminish and go away.

Because there is no difference between fame and infamy anymore.

Fame is just fame.

It doesn't matter

what you did to become famous.

That's true.

And it's sad.

Evan, you mentioned making sure these things don't happen again.

Certainly, there's a big portion of this country that would bring up the idea that we have not done enough to stop guns and the way

people can get their hands on them.

What are your feelings about those arguments?

I mean, is that something you think about?

Yeah, it definitely is.

I mean, back when Columbine happened, I had the same access to guns back to more than the two that tried to murder me and my classmates.

So access is in the heart.

And then on the side of protecting our schools, it's something that has come a long way.

There are some fabulous school districts out there who are physically protecting, defending their schools with firearms, and that's something I stand behind.

It's, you know, when this happens, we need somebody on campus that can physically stop it from going on and saving lives.

And so I work with teachers, even here in Colorado, to get them trained and so that they can carry concealed on school campus.

There's a three-part series, again, made by Pureflix, and you can find it at aftercolumbine.tv.

Part one of the series focuses on faith, part two focuses on forgiveness, and part three focuses on hope.

If we as a nation just did those three things, focus on faith, forgiveness, and hope, we'd be a different country and we'd be much, much happier.

Evan, thank you so much.

God bless.

Thank you.

God bless you.

You bet.

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