Best of the Program | Guests: Tim Ballard, Arthur Brooks & Andrew Heaton | 4/17/19

Hey podcasters, another fantastic show.

We start with Tim Ballard, who talks about the border in a way that I think we have to talk about.

We have to talk about the human cost of what's happening on the border, and it is a bigger crisis than anyone thinks.

Tim went in and testified in front of Congress.

Unfortunately, it was the House of Representatives, and they shut him down and wouldn't let him.

They call him to testify and then not let him tell them the truth.

They say all of his facts are irrelevant.

You need to hear this.

Also, Arthur Brooks joins us.

He's from the American Enterprise Institute.

And we talk about the different things that are going on and the opportunities that we have now that socialism is really starting to rear its ugly head.

Comments on Notre Dame, Andrew Heaton is in trouble, Trump's veto.

parents burning porn and cat lovers just miserable people according to a study.

Just saying, not you.

No, not you.

No, are you going to be studying this on a future episode of Glen Beck TV, which you can subscribe to at backtv.com/slash Glenn using the promo code Glenn?

Oh, I'll expose cat lovers.

You bet.

Yeah, I'll jump up on their counter and see how much they like it.

Like Beto.

Oh my god, cats are like Beto.

Oh my god.

They jump up on counters all the time.

Yes.

Oh my god, it's the same thing.

Yes, same thing.

All on today's podcast.

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

I want to talk to you a little bit about Home Title Lock.

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So yesterday I received an op-ed from a friend.

He said, Glenn, would you read this?

We wanted to publish it, so it's up on the blaze now.

Our friend is Tim Ballard, who is

the CEO or chairman, or I don't remember what you are, the CEO of

the Nazarene Fund.

And also, are you the CEO of Operation Underground Railroad?

And of McDonald's.

And of McDonald's.

Yeah, which is end of cells.

Because you're very busy.

Very busy.

Very busy.

Yeah.

And a handsome man

joining us right away.

I want to go through the article.

The first two paragraphs are stunning for entirely different reasons.

But let me just read the first two paragraphs.

A couple of weeks ago, I was called to testify before a subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee.

As former Homeland Security Special Agent Undercover Operator, I worked child trafficking cases for over a decade along the southern border.

I was there to testify about the sex trafficking threat that awaits vulnerable migrant children being brought into the United States.

Shortly after I began my testimony, the chairwoman of the committee, politely but firmly, let me know that my testimony was irrelevant for this particular hearing, as this hearing was about the U.S.

government's policy of separating undocumented families on the borders and not about child trafficking.

As it is against hearing procedure for a witness to provide unsolicited comments to the members of the committee, I had had to sit there in silence, yet with full knowledge that the chairwoman was wrong.

Yep.

Tim, how frustrating is that?

It's killing me because

these trafficking events are happening in so many places, and we're trying to wake the nations of the world up to the fact that it is happening.

Children are being abused.

It's the fastest-growing criminal enterprise on the planet.

And yet, when it's right before us, and I'm there before the people who can change it, and I'm told, Shut up.

shut up.

We don't want to talk about that right now.

Tell me,

the numbers are staggering on what's happening at our border.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, the amount of people, just the people coming across, record-breaking, undocumented migrants coming across into the United States.

But the part that's not being reported, because in the 90s and the 2000s, it was adult males looking for work, crossing the border.

Not anymore.

These are children.

Children coming across by the thousands.

There's been over a 300% increase since 2017 alone in children being brought across the border who don't belong to the adult who has them.

So we said when

Congress was saying we can't hold children, I immediately got on the air and said, that is the worst thing that could happen.

That's the worst thing that could happen because grab a child and you're good.

The child is now the get out of jail free card for smugglers, for traffickers.

They're surrendering themselves and say, look, I have a child in my hand, a passport in my hand.

Let me in.

And the guys on the border, they're great.

They understand and they're like, help us.

They're screaming to Congress.

I sat in hearings with the CBP commissioner who's saying, help us.

You are forcing us to turn these children over to whoever comes to get them.

We only have 20 days.

The courts have backed it up.

And we have 20 days to vet people coming and saying, hello.

Like I said, I wrote me hot bet.

Hello, I'm Uncle George.

Little Isabel, six-year-old that you have in custody, is my niece.

They have to give the child to Uncle George.

They have no time to vet these kids.

You know, in contrast, you know, I adopted two children recently from Haiti.

It was over one year of them vetting me.

I've had three

top-secret clearances in my lifetime.

I'm the one who liberated those children in the first place.

And yet, I happily submitted myself and my wife and my family to an investigation to make sure we were well-suited to take care of children.

A year.

And Congress is giving our customs and border officials 20 days or less to vet whoever shows up for these children.

Oh, sure, they have to sign a document, right, that says, I will not hurt this child.

I will not traffic this child like you're checking out a library book.

And then it says a court date, you must bring this child back for either a deportation or asylum hearing on this date.

No, it doesn't.

66% of those kids never are brought back for court.

They're gone.

All right.

So there are two scenarios that are happening with the kids.

One is they are just used and passed back and forth on the border.

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

They're kind of a mule, if you will.

Is that the right word?

Right.

Well, I say they're recycled.

They're the get-out of jail free card, basically.

And that's the best case, and it's abhorrent.

Children are being used as long as you have these kids.

And by the way, where are these kids coming from?

They're being kidnapped in Central America.

The separation of families isn't happening necessarily at the border.

It's happening well before they get to the border.

And that's the thing we're not seeing as a nation.

And so these kids are basically the smugglers control all the routes.

First of all, you can't get in the country unless you go through a smuggler.

So they just have to get these children.

It's not too hard to kidnap children in Guatemala or Honduras or Central America.

And they take these kids and they pair them with their clients.

Their clients being the people who want to be smuggled in.

And say, take this child, pretend this child is your child, and guys, 20 days or less, you're out.

Because they have to let you out because the law of the United States, backed by recent court decisions, forces CBP officials to release you within 20 days if you have this child in your hand.

That's the best case for these children who are being used this way.

And of course, the worst case is the smugglers say, and we have the New York Times even

about a month ago had a story, several stories, about how smugglers take these clients and decide, geez, I can make a lot more money with them if I just sell them for sex.

Or they use them, they rape them and get their money out of them

for what they're owed for the smuggling fee.

And so it's very easy to imagine a criminal organization that are smuggling people and they say, let's sex traffic them.

We can make more money.

The US, we are the demand.

We are the top demand for child sex in the world.

That is crazy.

So now we've set things up and all using our laws, right?

So now if you can imagine this, all a trafficker needs to do, if you get into their mind, is say, look, I got to take this child.

As long as I can get this child across, and they'll, I mean, I saw a video, I don't know if you saw this video a few months ago, of

dropping the kids over the wall, over the fence, just dropping them, and then they know

Border Patrol will come get them and get them into safety.

Well, then they just call their friends up in the traffickers, their friends in New York, Phoenix, wherever.

Hey, go to the McCallan processing center, ask for Isabel Gomez.

She's six years old.

I just dropped her over the fence.

And so Uncle George shows up.

Hey, I'm Uncle George.

I got to pick up my niece.

They have to give the kid over.

It is absolutely insane.

And I couldn't get a word in edge-wise when I was called to testify on that very subject.

So now here's the interesting part:

1,700 children

in the last 12 months,

1,700 children have had the guts to say,

that's not my uncle.

That's not my dad.

1,700

documented cases in the last 12 months.

How many kids are not brave enough to say that?

How many kids have been told your family's in danger, your family's dead, whatever it is?

How many children

have the guts

and the wherewithal to see a guy, an American with a badge, and say, help me?

How many?

There have been 1,700 in the last 12 months, and that number is only growing.

Oh, absolutely.

And the amount of people coming across, hundreds of thousands.

Just this year, I think we're close to half a million.

So, you know, how many kids are here and in, and they're in our sex markets?

And we rescue them.

And you've met some of our survivors, Glenn,

who came in as undocumented migrant children and were raped.

raped, and this is not an exaggeration, over 20,000 times before we finally pulled them out of New York City or LA or wherever they're being held.

I mean, this is a massive sex market.

Again, the fastest-growing criminal enterprise on the planet is human trafficking, and the United States is the number one demand for child sex.

So it's happening in our cities right here, and the traffickers are laughing all the way because our laws are actually facilitating the trafficking event.

We've made it so much easier.

Yeah.

We've made it, we've made it

easy to come in.

Yes, but there are solutions.

solutions.

Okay, I'm going to take one minute, and these are the things you need to ask

your senator and congressman and the president to do, and they're really quite simple.

The best of the Glen Beck program.

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

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We are thrilled to have Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, at least for a little while longer.

He's leaving the organization that he started, and he's going to

become a professor at Harvard.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you, Glenn.

Great to see you.

Good to see you.

So we have to start with a very long time lie we've been living.

Oh, what is it?

Okay, Stu and I both have a very difficult time.

And we just, for our friendship's sake, we want this out.

Okay, let's get it out there.

Let's get this fixed.

We both have the worst time.

We call you Albert Brooks.

Yeah.

All the time.

And we hate it.

A nightmare of your life.

Yeah.

So two years ago, I was at sort of a camp thing for lots and lots of guys, and we were all hanging around.

And I looked towards my left around a campfire, and there was sitting Albert Brooks, you know, the film director, the comedian.

And, and, and, and I looked at him and I said, you're Albert Brooks.

And he said, what's your name?

I said, my name is Arthur Brooks.

And he said, no.

I said, yeah.

And you know what else?

People have been calling me Albert Brooks since I was a kid.

He's like 10 years older than I am.

He said, since I was a kid, because you're so famous.

And he looks at me, he doesn't crack a smile.

And he says, imagine how Adam Hitler felt.

So if we call you Albert, it's all good.

It's just,

you know,

I've been here my whole life.

It's all been calling you Adam Hitler.

Every time we talk to you, we look at each other like, Arthur, Arthur, I know, I know.

Arthur, Arthur.

Oh, it's terrible.

I don't even like

this fine, though.

Oh, I think he's just fine.

He's funny, but it's not like I'm a huge fan of his movies.

I don't know why.

It's something like that.

No.

Albert Einstein is his real name.

Shut up.

I'm kidding.

I'm not kidding you.

It's Albert Einstein.

Oh, you're kidding, or you're not kidding?

I'm not kidding.

I promise I'm not kidding.

And what happened is he changed it to Albert Brooks because you're not going to go into show business named Albert Einstein.

You should change your name to Albert Einstein.

I should change my name to Arthur Einstein.

People will still call me Albert.

All right.

So, Arthur, you have a new documentary out, and I have seen it, and it is really good.

Really good.

You are,

you know,

we were talking the other day about Buddha Judge, and

He is the

he's playing it the nice guy.

Right.

He may be a nice guy.

I don't know anything about him other than what you read about.

And he seems like a really nice, normal guy.

A guy who comes out and says, yeah, I'm gay.

And you know what?

I also eat Chick-fil-A and I like it.

And it's a guy who's coming out now and saying, you know,

I don't hate everybody that you're supposed to hate.

That's fighting fire with water.

And that usually works.

It generally does, particularly after a period of hate and polarization.

The reason that that actually can work right now is because 93% of Americans say they hate how divided we've become as a country.

And every single person listening to us right now loves somebody with whom they disagree politically.

But there's a class that's getting rich and powerful and famous, largely in politics and in media and on campuses, saying you got to hate people who do you disagree with, that they're deviant, they're stupid and they're evil.

And in our hearts, we know that's wrong.

You know, in this movie you talked about, in the pursuit, in this movie, you know, we sit down with people who call themselves democratic socialists.

They're awesome people.

They're great people.

They love their fellow men and women.

I have different policy ideas.

I think I have better ways to get at their objectives, but their objectives aren't wrong.

And most people know that.

And so Pete Butta Judge and a few other people are actually going to,

they're trying to rage against the contempt machine in this country by saying, you want something better.

The product is crummy.

I'm going to give it to you.

Will it win?

We'll see.

Will it even get past the people who are making an an awful lot of money on

the outrage industrial complex?

Yeah, we don't know.

Here's a clip of the pursuit.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but the answers that I've found have truly changed my life.

Arthur Brooks, sir.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

It's an honor to be here and with all of you.

Poverty is the thing I care about the most.

I think that the suspicion that people have about capitalism comes because they think people like me don't believe in morals and they don't believe in any regulation at all.

That's not true.

Here's the great irony of our times.

People in the wealthiest countries in the world are increasingly turning against the very system that's lifted us out of poverty.

If India had not adopted economic reforms, there would be 375 million poor people more in the country today.

Whatever we got to do to get the American dream, honestly, then that's what we're going to do, you know?

The American dream is always predicated on you work hard, you get the right grade, you go to the right schools, and a lot of time, it doesn't work that way.

The real poverty exists when a young man or a young woman grows up with no dream.

That's poverty, man.

You know, cold goes away.

What are we going to do?

They didn't think about that.

They didn't expect it.

They didn't expect it.

Two billion people have been pulled out of starvation level poverty.

What did that?

Everyone want happy life, do not want suffering.

You are showing genuine interest, not only money matter, but more wider perspective.

I really very much appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Your Holiness.

The point of the American experience is a moral consensus that our society should push opportunity to the people who need it the most.

Here's why Arthur Brooks is even more talented than Albert Brooks.

Albert's listening.

If you watch that, you are the only person that believes in the free market that I have seen, that understands heart and imagery.

You're not there with the Pope.

You're there with a Dalai Lama.

are

you're on stage with a French horn and it says in the trailer, a musician.

That is not a guy next to a tractor.

And you are able to break through

to the other side.

There's images of you with

briefing President Obama.

You are able to get in

to places that most conservatives or most constitutionalist and strict libertarian, real

liberals, classic liberals, can't go nor care to go.

And you have all of the imagery that you need to be able to break the divide.

Yeah, that's the idea.

And that's how a movie can really change people's conversations in a big way.

You know, one of the things I was trying to do in this film, and what I've been trying to do with my career, by the way, is to get to the places where traditional conservatives don't get to go and have the conversations they don't typically have.

Why?

Not just because I'm going to convince people on the other side, because I want people who are persuadable, who are watching the conversation, to say, huh, you know,

I saw a guy who's got free market views, who believes

in conservative ideas.

Why?

Because he wants to lift people up from the margins, and he was having a conversation with iconic figures from the other side, and no horns, no anger, no vitriol, no contempt, no hatred, no disrespect.

And that's really what people want.

And if we want to win the country for a better set of ideas so that we can have more solidarity and brotherhood and happiness and love in this country, we need to go where we're not invited.

We need to say the things that people have not heard before.

We need to share with everybody is the bottom line.

And that's what puts joy in our hearts too.

Glenn, you've been trying to do this too.

You want to talk to everybody.

I mean, when I look at

what the charity is doing, I mean, I saw the trailer for your charity yesterday at the Dallas Film Festival where the pursuit was, and it blew my mind.

I mean, there's no way that somebody's going to say, oh, it's Glenn Beck, the conservative guy.

They would say, this is an organization dedicated to ending slavery around the world, to lifting people up.

It has no ideology about it whatsoever.

And that's the point, isn't it?

We want the best for everybody.

Conservatives lose arguments because they go in with guns blazing saying, here's what I'm against.

And if you disagree disagree with me, you're stupid and evil.

And here's the problem.

I said this to Stu yesterday.

Who was it?

What was the candidate that said,

I think it was Betto, that Americans are against the

conservative and Republican agenda?

I don't even know what that is.

I really don't even know what that is.

It's not that they're not for it.

I don't think they know what it is.

You know, we're against an awful lot of stuff, but who's out there talking about, you know, I watched your documentary.

I've always thought of,

please forgive my ignorance.

I was a dummy up until I hit 30s.

I did know nothing.

Yeah, I was a musician.

I was worse than that.

No,

you at least could play a horn.

But I've always thought of India as a capitalist system.

And, you know, I'm watching your documentary and I'm like, oh my gosh, no, no, it wasn't, it was the furthest thing from a capitalist free market system.

It was a Soviet planned economy until the early 1990s.

Amazing.

That's incredible.

And since they've abandoned that.

Yeah, yeah.

We've seen massive changes.

It has one of the highest growth rates in the world.

You know, you go to India.

Growth rates in

the world.

Growth rates and economic growth rates in the world.

Thank you.

Incredible when you go there.

You find that 375 million Indians have been pulled out of abject starvation-level level poverty.

And they're among the 2 billion that have been pulled out of poverty because of the free enterprise system, because the American system of globalization and free trade, property rights, all this stuff that we take for granted, the culture of upward mobility.

And the culture of now

making something yourself, doing something, starting something small, and now with the tools of the internet, being able to sell it anywhere in the world.

I was struck in the documentary of

it almost felt like New York must have felt in 1900.

Yeah, that's the point.

And it's a point that I make in the film because if you look at the footage of

New York, you say the garment industry, for example,

the lorry's side of Manhattan in 1910, it looks just like slums in India do today.

And people are in industry.

The truth is that people live a lot better in slums in India than they did in New York in 1910 because they have health care and their kids go to school and they have a lot of possibilities, but it looks the same.

And what that brings home to me, and it's controversial to say, but I honestly believe that, is that those people living in slums in India, they're us separated by time.

And if we can't look at these people around the world and see

ourselves in them, what's wrong with us?

Look, you know, the Becks were scratching out potatoes in Ireland a few generations ago, and look at you.

They were ambitious riffraft.

That's America.

And that's what moves me, and that's what we need to spread and change the world with are these ideals.

Hans Rosling makes this point in factfulness, which is the first time I ever thought of it the way you just described it.

It's not us and them.

It's not first world and third world.

These are countries that are coming along at a lot of times accelerated paces than what more accelerated paces than what we did.

But they are just a little bit behind.

All these things are happening.

All these incredible improvements in the places that have implemented some basic form of a free market.

They're seeing those same things.

And

that's a glorious miracle.

Yeah, you must have capitalism.

And since capitalism has started to spread around the world, and capitalism gets a bad name because it sort of means everything and nothing, but what we're talking about is the free enterprise system, bounded with appropriate regulation and basic human morality,

has alleviated 80% of starvation-level poverty since I was a kid.

70% of Americans think that hunger's gotten worse.

It's gotten better.

80% better.

I mean, it's the greatest humanitarian achievement in the history of the human race.

And it's happened since Glenn Beck and Arthur Brooks were kids.

We got to spread that from the rooftops.

And the reason is not just to be not just to cry victory.

It's because we need the next two billion of our brothers and sisters.

They're out there and they need us.

And charity, it's good.

Maybe it'll get us to heaven, but you got to have a system that works while you sleep.

And we've found it and we can spread it and we've got to fight for it.

Not because it's good for business, not because it makes us rich, but because that's what will alleviate suffering, will help us to serve others, which we need, and which will allow everybody to earn the success, which is the expression of the radical equality of human dignity, which is what we really believe.

Arthur Brooks is with us.

Why are you going away from the American Enterprise?

Why are you going to

Harvard?

You know, I've been running AEI for 10 years.

When I came in, AEI was started in 1938.

It's a really old organization.

In the past 10 years, we've had phenomenal growth.

We've hired tons of people.

We've had a big impact.

And we've stayed in the world of ideas as opposed to getting dragged into politics.

I I did what I said I was going to do,

sort of operationally, and I promised them 10 years.

And I know when you stay much more than 10 years in a place like AEI as president of a think tank,

it's not the best things don't happen.

Part of it is because you start losing energy, and

also you get too identified with one person.

So I say, you know, I prayed about it for a long time.

You know, I prayed for discernment.

What am I supposed to do next?

And

I was an academic before.

I taught at Syracuse for a long time, and I resigned my position with no net.

And

I heard from about 10 universities, some other things too, you know, to

and a university is a really good thing because it provides an opportunity to do a tremendous amount of creative work.

And the really incredible thing from Harvard is that Harvard called and said, we want you to come teach here.

And I said, why?

And they said, because you think differently and we want to shake things up.

And I said,

for sure, it's great.

It's great.

Is there going to be resistance to my ideas?

I hope so, because that's the opportunity.

You know,

when you're in the mission field, when you're in the mission field, you don't want to go to where everybody's already converted.

Exactly right.

And they're not in the university.

And it's a great university.

This is the best of the Glen Beck program.

So Arthur, I think, is a very aspirational guy, and I love him.

And I love what he's done with the American Enterprise Institute.

I love, love, love, love his new movie.

I think he'll make a big impact.

I think he'll make a huge impact at Harvard as well.

I think he is,

well, let me put it this way.

I hope he's right that we're a million miles away from Stalin, but we are walking towards Stalin.

And some are running towards Stalin.

Yeah, I mean, we know Stalin's evil.

We know that that philosophy is evil.

And nobody is talking about rounding anybody up.

No, but we are talking about silencing people.

Again, if you don't want to get to a destination, it's best not to go down the road that leads to it.

Yes.

So if you're only taking a short drive down the road of socialism, it's scary because, I mean, the closer you get to those things, you're increasing government power, which allows the government to overwhelm all of the positives.

It is difficult.

And

it's a tough line.

That's why I asked him that question.

It's a tough line to draw because there are times where, you know, like the great that has come out of the free market, the people who oppose it and oftentimes oppose it, while I believe willingly lying about it.

I mean, it's hard.

It might be the right thing to do, but it's a hard thing to do to not just see that as people, you know,

it's an activity that is against human achievement, human

prosperity.

And

many times it's completely dishonest.

It's completely dishonest.

Let me give you an example.

It was very, very hard for me to hold my temper yesterday

after I saw what Newsweek and others did to my words on the program, The News and Why It Matters.

As Notre Dame was burning down,

as it was burning down, We were receiving tweets that said, Glenn, you predicted this.

Because in 2015, I had said, if you want to see places like Notre Dame, you got to go because you're going to go to Paris and maybe in the next 15 years and that thing will be burnt to the ground.

It'll be gone.

Well, I was talking about a threat from Islamic terrorism at the time in 2015.

Since then, 2016, there was a threat.

Four people were arrested trying to destroy

Notre Dame.

In that same year, ISIS came out and said that it was their number one target in Europe.

And then the next year,

they arrested four people that had a car bomb headed towards Notre Dame.

So

while this is happening on screen, we're getting emails from people.

People on my staff are coming in and going, Glenn, this is exactly what you talked about.

And I said off the air, no, no, no, we don't know.

You just said that on the air, by the way.

Right.

No, but I said it off the air first.

Then I get on the air.

Now, I want you to listen carefully.

and Stu, do me a favor, write down the key things that you hear me say,

because I'm going to show you how the media took it and what the media, Washington Post, everybody else, what they did

to this, I think, very logical, reasonable conversation.

Listen.

President McCrown has just come out and said, it looks like we may not be able to save it.

Just watch the video here, just a little bit of this.

That's the spire.

This is their 9-11.

Look at the spire fall.

That's the spire of Notre Dame.

Look at how hot that fire is.

Look at the flames, how high those flames are.

That is not close to going out at this point.

No,

we don't know what caused it yet.

We know that there was a mass

renovation that was going on,

but

that is a pretty remarkable.

I mean,

this is a world landmark

and

probably next to the Eiffel Tower, the most iconic building in all of France, and more important than the Eiffel Tower.

This is the site of the American Revolution, I mean, the French Revolution.

This is the site of Victor Hugo.

I mean, this is

so wildly important to France as an image.

Also, like really

serious archives are held there.

I mean, they're going to lose all sorts of

art and archives that they can, you're never going to be able to recreate.

I mean, just the just

the rose

stained glass window is irreplaceable.

If

this was arson,

this is going to be bad.

If this was arson of any foreign

kind of

any foreign entity,

anybody with a grudge,

I think if,

and this is a huge if, it might have just been started by a cigarette, we don't know.

But if this was started by Islamists, I don't think you'll find out about it.

Because I think it would set the entire country on fire.

They've had killings, they've had mass shootings, they've had people running people down in the streets.

The tension is very high.

You take away this be like us burning, what, our White House?

I mean,

what is iconic like this?

World Trade Centers?

Yeah, like the World Trade Center.

This is their World Trade Center moment.

And if this was done by terrorists,

I think that

they will keep it quiet because I just don't think

Macron and France wants that internal fight.

If this was done by somebody who is disgruntled with the government, et cetera, like the Yellow Vests, you know, they did say this weekend that the police can put bullets in their guns and they can shoot to kill the Yellow Vests.

They said that this weekend.

So maybe it's that.

I don't know.

But this is a really big deal.

The world has lost a major, major piece of history today.

Okay.

What did you take from that, Stu?

What did I say?

Can you sum that up?

Sure.

You said it was there 9-11.

I mean, I think obviously iconic buildings falling was what you were talking about.

It's funny because the way the spire fell, what it reminded me of in that moment was the Saddam Hussein statue falling.

And at no point did I think there was an invading force that was trying to liberate Notre Dame, right?

Like, that's just not what I thought.

So, I mean,

I thought with the smoke and the way it collapsed and

being in a huge iconic building.

Yeah, this is, you know, our

image of financial, impenetrable stability

was taken down because it's Wall Street, it's New York, it's these gigantic,

immovable towers.

Okay, it didn't have the importance.

Those were buildings.

It didn't have the importance of Notre Dame, but it had the, in some ways, Wall Street has the soul of the capitalist nation.

Yeah, and that's why they targeted it.

That's why they targeted it.

So, the same thing when I'm saying this, this, I keep saying it's the heart of France, you know, that's an iconic building, it's more important than the Eiffel Tower to the French.

That strikes to their soul of who they are.

You don't just wipe that off the map.

And so, what I was saying with 9-11, it's their 9-11.

They have been just sucker punched in the gut.

Now, remember, our 9-11, we didn't know who did it.

We didn't know who did 9-11.

We had no idea.

We had absolutely no idea who did this to us.

On 9-11, we were freaked out.

On 9-12, which was there yesterday, okay, what did they do?

They started raising money.

They started coming together.

France has never been more united.

That's their 9-12.

Now, if they find out that somebody did this, they will respond as we did.

But it looks like, and I said, you know, it's amazing.

Did you catch?

If it's arson, it's bad.

If it's arson from a foreign entity,

it's worse.

If it's arson from terror,

even worse.

We know it could be, they say now it could be a cigarette.

So if it's a cigarette,

but a huge if is if it's Islamic terrorist,

you won't hear about it.

Yeah, I mean, that's all the stuff that I wrote down, basically.

I mean, the fact that the first thing that you mentioned as a possible cause was a mass renovation, period.

That was the first thing you talked about, number one.

And that was about where we were on the reporting.

We didn't know what the case was at that point.

And in addition to that,

the one thing that was suggested as a possibility was the mass renovation.

Now, of course, if you had come out, let's just say you had come out and said, hey guys, you know what happened?

Was

I believe this was was Islamists?

They did this.

This is them.

You would have been wrong

in this particular case.

However, as you point out,

they have attacked this exact building multiple times in the past couple of years.

They said it was the number one target of ISIS in Europe.

So it would not have been insane to think that was true, though you didn't think of it as the number one possibility.

You said it was mass renovation was the number one possibility.

You said it could have been a cigarette.

You could have said it could have been the yellow vests, which is, you know, again,

none of that ever gets mentioned in any of the tweets about it.

No, of course not.

Because there's a line there.

There's a line about when you're doing a show like this and you're, you know, we're talking off the top of our heads for four hours a day.

There's all, there's two lines.

There's one, you can actually say something wrong.

You can legitimately say something that you screwed up and you're going to get a beating for it.

And you understand that.

It's happened with you.

You said things where you're like, I wish I said that another way.

And you take the beating and you're like, this is what I meant.

But, you know, you know, you're on the wrong side of it.

Or you can understand how people are going to be able to do it.

I don't take take a word of that back.

I think all of that was very clear.

The other standard, which is a standard applied on social media and by you know, left-wing organizations that are

whose sad lives are filled with listening to your programs over and over again to try to find something they can use against you, is different.

It's can did we say something that someone can act as if they believe was bad?

Can they act as if they believe what you meant was terrible?

Like, I know, you know, doing the show with you, you said

you talked about,

I think if it's Islamic extremists, you might not even find out about it because

why did I say that?

Right, exactly.

The reason you said it, and you explained it, of course, was that there's so much internal strife there right now that if something came out about that, it could cause a real inflammation of the whole society.

A lot of it against Muslims, by the way.

Right.

And did I attach a good thing or a bad thing to that?

Not finding out.

Did I say that was good that you wouldn't find out out or bad that you would find out?

That you wouldn't find out.

You were kind of saying it was good.

Yeah.

I was saying it will cause massive problems.

Right.

And I don't think anybody in France wants that.

And I don't want that.

That could be the catalyst that sets it on fire.

So before Newsweek and everybody, I was trending nationally yesterday.

Okay.

With lies, absolute lies.

Before that, I A, had

Jason on, our chief chief researcher, who I had put up and said, stay up all night.

I want you to find out everything you can.

Look for the conspiracy theory so we can debunk them right away.

Find out what you can.

So we talked about it on the air.

We started the show with that.

Then yesterday, I said, This may be a blessing because it takes that iconic thing away, which would absolutely start

a religious war.

It would absolutely start it if this was ISIS.

And it takes that off of the plate so that it can't be used.

I think, how, how, how, instead, what they say is when you say, well, you might not find out about it.

What they, again, I don't, they don't believe this, but what they're trying to make their, I was going to say, Arthur Brooks is in my head, so I'm not going to say dumb people who visit their websites, but the people who visit their websites, what they're trying to make them believe is that what you're saying is, if you hear its construction, they're lying, which is not at all what you were were saying no you did not say that at all you never said that publicly you never said that privately that is not what you were saying no you were saying something completely different which you just explained um but again the the goal of these organizations is not to find an example of you saying something wrong it's something that they it's something that they can plausibly act like they believe was wrong

because they can go on they can say they do this all the time you take a statement and you act as if well that is their entire viewpoint on this, and I can make them look dumb if I tweet this and act like I don't think they know anything else about the topic, right?

That's a terrible instinct that I think gets drawn out of social media and click farms and clickbait farms.

But I mean, it is these organizations are out there specifically to do this.

And, you know, as Arthur pointed out,

some of that is a blessing.

Like, you know, we could easily just be ignored for everything that we say.

The fact that these people are up all night obsessing over you and listening to every word that you say is, you know, generally speaking, at least they're, you know, people care, which is,

yes, here's making an impact.

Here's the thing.

I had an employee who's a good friend, and I love him, and he's worked here now for six months, and he is just great.

He came to me yesterday and said, hey, I have to talk to you about this.

I really strongly disagree because he read it in The Hill and Politico, and he believed them over the guy who he, I passed his desk twice yesterday.

Well, it wasn't over you.

He had not heard your side of it, but he, you know,

he just assumed they were reporting it.

So instead of coming to me and saying, Glenn, this doesn't sound like you.

Did you really say this?

Instead, he believed the media.

He works here.

That's the problem.

If you are in a place to where you'll believe the media, who we all are supposedly to distrust, if you believe them over people who you know,

there's a problem.

How does anyone stand a chance?

How does anyone stand a chance?

Don't buy in to the bull crap.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hi, it's Glenn.

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

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

You can subscribe on iTunes.

Thanks.

I was going to do Tuesday News, but Andrew Heaton just walked in, the host of the podcast, something's off with Andrew Heaton and something is very off with Andrew Heaton.

I don't know how much longer his show is going to last.

Maybe today might be the last episode.

Not sure.

Looking forward to having Arthur Brooks on them.

How are you doing?

Good.

How are you?

Good morning.

Oh, yeah.

I'm doing good.

You brought in.

I brought in donuts.

I had something of an awkward day yesterday.

Yeah.

You're very sweaty right now, too.

I'm very sweaty right now.

Well, that might just be the amount of...

Yeah, I'm just, I'm sweaty.

There's a lot of of layers.

I am wearing a lot of layers though.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's 65 degrees in here.

But anyway, go ahead.

Yeah, well, you know, yesterday we did the panel show, The News and Why It Matters.

And I had kind of jumped to some conclusions on

some of your positions, Glenn.

Yeah.

And

fortunately, brought it up before the show.

Before I jumped into my monologue.

Right.

Give me your monologue.

Give me the monologue you were going to do.

I won't do that.

Why not?

Well,

you know that I am not angry with you.

You know that this is all, you know, this is showbiz joking here.

But the donuts were a good move.

That was a very good move.

Thank you.

Well, so

to fill out what happened,

I had read a headline that said that you were implying that Islamists burned down Notre Dame and that the French government was suppressing that information and that that was their 9-11 and it was sort of a flashpoint between East and West.

And I was going to come in and be like, you know, this is irresponsible and it's conspiracy theorizing and it's demonizing Muslims.

And what did you imagine I would have said?

I don't know.

I wasn't really sure.

You know why?

Because doesn't that seem a little out of character for me?

It does.

It does.

It does.

It does.

It does.

I think, you know what, what I could have done is I could have gone, hey, Glenn, I read this interesting headline.

Where's your take on this?

I avoided a lot of

issues, yes.

A lot of that.

So why?

And I'm not talking about you because I think this happens all the time.

All the time.

If you read it, it is so.

So what was it that made you go, this doesn't make any sense?

That's not the Glenn I know.

I'm going to go on the air and tear him apart.

What was it?

Why did that happen?

I'm seriously looking for an answer because I think this happens to a lot of people.

You know, part of it is if I'd gone to like

rightwingwatch.com/slash Glenn slash whatever.

I would have dismissed it.

But the story I was looking at, it was a headline that I saw from The Hill.

I did read the paper or read the story.

And I just kind of thought The Hill liked that they would have, you know, done a little bit more.

They would have packed it properly.

They would have unpacked it properly.

Yeah.

Well, because I mean, and it wasn't just The Hill.

It was lots of different, because you have this first organization that comes out and lies about what you said.

And then dozens of other publications start reporting on the initial report without doing any homework.

I mean, like, you know, it's one thing, it's hard.

You get a source in a news story.

You got to track them down.

Maybe their house just burned down.

You got to find them.

You got to find out where they are.

You got to check all these different things.

Glenn does a national radio and television show every day.

So all the things that he says are always available, right?

It's relatively easy for a reporter reporting on a particular story to go do this.

And reporters know how to contact my people.

That's strange.

That's strange.

It's not like some, I don't know, do we have a Ouija board?

How can we possibly get a statement from Glenn's, Glenn or Glenn's people?

No one reaches out.

No one reaches out.

If you're going to, and I, you know, we've done enough shows with Andrew, and I know he would have not come on and trashed you over this.

Nobody wanted to hear what

your explanation was over it.

But I mean, if you're a publication going out there and trashing Glenn over this, you have an absolute responsibility to make sure you understand what he said correctly.

You've got to take it.

Or here's an idea.

Correct it.

Anybody seen a correction?

No, I've not seen it.

No.

Not seen a correction.

And that's the thing.

Like, you're right.

Like, right-wingwatch.deathofbeck.net is not going to ever correct it.

But there are publications out there that should at least.

They should protect whatever credibility they have to not just speak to a hard left-wing audience, right?

And this is why there is no credibility.

It's hard.

It's hard when we'll come on and sometimes there'll be something that the right is getting wrong, right?

And we'll come on the air and say, look, you know, we've looked at this and here's what we believe is right.

I think the conservative side of this is actually made a mistake here.

Here's source A, B, C on this.

And they'll just hear the names.

You know, it's the New York Times.

It's the Hill.

It's whatever it is.

And so they've, a lot of these places have burned their credibility with the right so consistently that they won't even listen when they actually have facts correct.

You know, it's just like, oh, well, that's the New York Times.

Of course, that's what they're saying.

Well, you know, look, the New York Times makes lots of mistakes, and in their op-ed section, they're completely insane.

But they also, I mean, a lot of the information that we bring to you about, you know, Islamic extremism over the years has been because of reporting from the New York Times.

Yeah.

I mean, they've done a lot of good things.

You have to judge story to story,

writer by writer.

And a way to summarize this, maybe do your own homework.

Facts.

Yes.

Do your own homework.

Why do you always plead with people on that?

Yes.

So, why the donuts today?

I just wanted to kind of bring them in and, you know, kick off a new Wednesday

with a little bit of sugar.

Right, right.

Now, it's interesting.

You didn't pick carrots for Glenn.

I noticed you picked baked goods and glazed sugar.

What was the decision-making process there?

Well, as you know, I'm secretly trying to murder Glenn.

Okay.

This will be a little bit more.

Okay.

Slowly do it.

All right.

Well, so we got that going for us.

How's the show going?

Good.

I'm really enjoying it.

Really?

It's good.

We've got Arthur Brooks on today, which I'm really excited about.

Or actually, I'm sorry, Arthur Brooks is going to be on tomorrow.

We've got Deanna Easley on today.

Who's Deanna Easley?

So

she's here in Dallas, and we're going to talk about welfare and have a chat on that.

Tomorrow, we're going to talk about Arthur Brooks' book and capitalism, which I'm excited about because

the main thing on the show that I do is a temperamental thing of good and intelligent people can disagree on matters of substance.

And I feel like Arthur Brooks has

sonified that in his book.

So I'm excited to have him on.

The show this week is brought to you by Meat Bullets.

Meat Bullets.

Yeah, yeah.

It's one of the better sponsors, I think.

Really?

It's high-velocity meat that you can use as a weapon.

And if you need to deliver meat.

You're hurting people with this meat?

I mean, I wouldn't advise you to do it, but if you were going to, you know,

if you shot it right into somebody's.

Don't do that.

Well, like, let's say that they're anemic or something like that, and they really need protein.

I mean, like, if you shot them in the thigh, I think, like, in the state of Texas, you're probably okay.

But I would be very careful about doing it in general.

So

is it delivering delivering

nutrition from a distance?

Is that the basic concept of meat bullets?

I don't understand what's going on.

It's not a weapon.

I'm not clear about this, guys.

It's not a weapon bullet.

It's not a weapon of war.

No, it's just high-velocity meat.

It is dangerous, but it's high-velocity meat.

All right, good.

All right.

Thank you very much.

That's

something's off with Andrew Heaton.

Why do we name it that?

I have no idea.

No idea.

Coming up on the podcast today, you can find him wherever podcasts are found.

Thanks, Andrew.

Get out.

Now, let me tell you about.

Can I get one of those donuts?

Yeah, here.

They look really freaking good.

They do.

Are those Krispy Kremes?

They're Krispy Kremes, but they're not.

No, they're not Krispy Kremes.

They look like it.

No, they're even better.

They're even better.

No, they're even better.

He went to the generic donut store.

Didn't make a generic.

They're a donut store.

That's all right.

They're donuts.

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