Best of the Program | Guests: Salena Zito & Erick Stakelbeck | 4/8/19

Hey, welcome to Monday's podcast.

Really great one for you.

Today, as we get ready for a really good show on Thursday on television, we're going to expose Joe Biden.

And probably expose Joe Biden is probably the wrong thing to say about him.

It actually has nothing to do with him being hands-on or touchy-feely.

It has to do with things that other people have gone to jail for, including the things they were looking

that they expected to find with Donald Trump.

In fact, we tell you on today's show

that the Ukraine is saying, why don't you want any of this information?

We gave it about the Republicans.

Why don't you want it about the Democrats?

Now, that's a different approach than bidenbracket.com is taking, which is absolutely talking about how handsy he is and trying to find the creepiest photo of Joe Biden.

You don't have to register anything.

Just go there and vote.

Bidenbracket.com.

Help us choose the winner.

Also, we talk a little bit about AOC because AOC

became

a different person

this weekend.

And she became Hillary Clinton, and it is so insulting.

Also, Selena Zito on

what is at the heart of the average Democrat, not the Democratic Party, not the ones who are in control and the leadership, but what are the people in the center of the country who vote Democrat?

What are they attracted to?

Also, we talk about the Supreme Court and the new bromance between Kavanaugh

and our Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, which is not pretty, and Eric Steckelbeck on Israel and the election that happens tomorrow, all that and more.

And make sure you sign up for that Biden expose.

It comes on Thursday night.

Go to Blazetv.com/slash Glenn.

Use the promo code Glenn.

Sign up for Blaze TV, you get all of it.

And the Biden thing that comes on Thursday.

Here's today's podcast.

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

Our spotlight this hour is

home title lock.

There was

an alert given out recently by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

He just released a grand jury report noting that law enforcement has received 2,000 complaints of deed fraud, and almost every case involved a faulty notarization.

Notary, I don't even know.

I mean, how do we come up with the notary thing?

I don't even know what that means.

But you can prevent this crime from happening, somebody stealing your house, just by signing up with home-titlelock.com.

This is something actually is a growing crime.

FBI says the fastest growing crime in America, and

it's a bad one.

If this one happens to you and you don't know it,

you're going to be paying for it for a very long time.

Only people that can stand guard against this is home titlelock.com.

Find out if it's already happened to you and guard against it.

Home TitleLock.com.

AOC.

I don't know if you saw AOC this weekend,

but AOC all of a sudden had a new accent.

Really?

Oh, you didn't see it?

Oh, this is exciting.

Oh, this is good stuff, Stu.

You're going to love this.

She's become Hillary Clinton.

So we have that coming up in just a second.

Also, let's talk.

Let's start here on the border.

Things on the border are getting worse and worse and worse.

And the media is in full-fledged denial.

Did you see the story today about how, and we'll get to it later, how the New York Times,

CNN, NPR, they are all refusing to say anything about socialism in any of their stories in regards to Venezuela.

They won't use the word socialism.

Specifically the New York Times?

Because I know the Washington Post did a really good story we highlighted here that went in depth and talked about socialism.

It's pretty amazing what they will do to

not talk about the real story.

Now, how many of them are talking about the humanitarian crisis that is on the border?

We said one was coming.

The president said one was coming.

It was easy to see.

It's so easy to just take people at their word, see what's going on, see who's involved, and be able to predict the future.

When people say they're going to disrupt you, when people say they're going to kill you, when people say they're, you got my stuff, I'm coming for it, you should pay attention to that person, especially if they have the means or people are helping them with the means.

They will do it.

So now we have this humanitarian crisis and

what's her name, Kirsten Nielsen, was let go over the weekend by the president.

It's kind of sad, I feel kind of bad for her.

I mean, in some ways.

She was going for a meeting and had no no idea she was going to be let go.

Yeah, she was going into present a plan as to how to re, you know, to return to normalcy at least and re, you know, go back to the old numbers because these are all new numbers.

I mean, looking back at the last few years even, you see that, you know, the typical average month for border apprehensions is 30 or 40,000.

It has crept up above that a couple of times.

For example, if you look at 2014, we talked a lot lot about this.

This is when you went to the border glen.

Remember that big crisis?

60,000, I think.

Even the media admitted that was a huge crisis, and that was 60,000 per month for a couple of months.

Well, last month was 70,000.

And so that was a very high, you know, anything above anything we've seen for five or six years.

This next month, which the official numbers get released this week, is going to be over 100,000.

So we're talking about potentially double the worst months of the past decade and will be a record for the money.

And this is what we know of.

This is what we know.

Yeah, this is just apprehensions.

Yeah, this is what we know of.

We're well into a million people a year.

Well into, maybe we may be

a million and a half to 1.8 million people a year coming into our country.

Yeah, they basically treat apprehensions as a proxy for how many people are actually crossing.

So the more people they catch, they assume more people are getting in that aren't getting caught.

And that certainly certainly makes logical sense.

But as that number goes up, you know, you're getting to huge, huge, I mean, because you got to believe, we all know that it's not exactly difficult to get across the border right now.

That's the problem.

So the fact that they're catching 100,000 people means you're right.

Maybe it is, you know, two and 300,000 every month that are getting in without being caught, not to mention the people who are coming here other ways as far as overstaying visas and coming through different ports of entry.

So it is a, I mean, it is a, if it's, this is not a crisis,

these things don't exist.

And the system itself is being completely overrun.

The Republicans and Trump tried to put together a proposal to say, hey, let's expand all this, give us more detention centers so we don't have to stick people under bridges, give us more judges so we can actually process these things.

And they, you know, the left rejected it.

So now this crisis that could have at least had a plan to be solved has no

real solution in the future that anyone can see because the Democrats essentially shoot down every single idea to try to solve it.

It is crazy what's going on.

Now they're saying that

Nielsen is going to be hounded at her next job, that they're going to, that the left is, she was so bad for the border.

Really?

Really?

She was that bad for the border.

I mean, I think she was bad on the border because we have this situation, but I don't really blame anybody.

I don't blame the president.

I don't blame the administration on this.

I blame Congress.

I blame the Republicans and the Democrats on this.

Yeah, I mean, Nielsen, she's in a tough spot here because she was very loyal to the president, tried to execute everything that he did.

All reporting points that direction.

The issue,

she's trying to do as much as she could via the rules.

And, you know, the rules are restrictive.

So, you know, Trump wants to get somebody who's more aggressive on that.

Whether anyone could have stopped this, I don't know.

No, I feel bad for her.

But, you know,

here's what we've moved into a new age.

She's now going to be threatened at her next job.

The left is already targeting.

Anybody who hires her

is going to pay for it.

How horrible is that?

Here's somebody who goes and serves our country,

plays by the rules, does everything right.

And you want to destroy them.

I mean, it is, we are turning into Nazi Germany.

We are clearly turning into Nazi Germany.

I mean,

we are

determining factors, as you know.

I know, but it didn't, it wasn't Nazi Germany overnight.

No, little baby steps.

It's little baby steps.

And we keep taking these baby steps.

We're devaluing life.

We're saying infanticide.

The Congress has changed, has turned down a bill to vote against infanticide 25 times.

25 times

since they took over Congress.

25 times they've turned it down.

Just the 25, though.

You know, sometimes you're just not sure.

Do we want to kill the babies?

Do we not?

You now have the government and mainly the Democrats going after Google and everyone else and saying, hey, work with us, work with us.

You now have,

what's his name, Zuckerberg, saying,

I want more government interference.

I want more government regulation.

You're starting to see

that system of information merged now with the United States government.

That's another step.

You have the targeting of innocent people.

She didn't do anything wrong.

What has she done wrong?

If you go against it, they'll destroy you.

That's another step.

We just keep marching.

I mean, soon we're going to be showing up in black uniforms with black boots, and everybody's going to be like, oh, those are really nice.

Did Hugo Boss make those?

I mean, we are just marching toward it.

And you could also make the point that socialism was a nice part of the.

No, no, no.

No, Hitler wasn't a socialist.

Oh, he wasn't.

No.

I know Vox said that last week, which I was fascinated to understand because this is their thing.

It's like, you know, and you point out, okay, well,

you know, the Nazi, you know, the National Socialist Party indicates that potentially they had some thought.

However, that is, of course, a much larger conversation.

I mean, Hitler said a lot of things that he was not, and you could go into really investigate that.

So we decided, you know, maybe it's time to actually put this down in one place.

Is Hitler really a socialist?

Well, yes.

It started out as a two-page thing, and I think it ended at like about 20.

Yeah.

It's on theblaze.com, by the way, if you want to go check it out.

And we're going to go through it today a bit.

I can't take this argument.

How are you missing the national socialist?

The only difference between the communists and the national socialists are the communists were international socialists.

And the Nazis were national socialists.

And if you know anything at all about history, you know, well, and most people don't, you know that Benito Mussolini is the guy who said, you know, I'm fighting and in World War I, and nobody's fighting for the international workers.

They were fighting for their friends.

They were fighting for their country.

They were fighting for the workers of their country.

They weren't fighting for an international purpose.

When it comes down to it, you're fighting for you and your nation.

And we should do socialism.

We just shouldn't do it internationally.

That's how fascism was born.

Right.

I mean, you know, Goebbels said the difference between communism and the Hitler faith was, quote, very slight.

I mean, they did this.

They said, you know,

the Nazi flag is surrounded.

The Nazi symbol is surrounded by red because

Hitler said, we want to show the reds, the communists, that we have most things in common.

They were friendly.

They voted the same way

for years and years and years before.

Crazy.

I mean, it's blatantly obvious that it's true.

However, there's this sort of revisionist idea that to save socialism, they have to make a case that he's not.

And there was infighting.

I mean, this is very well documented that, you know, Goebbels was more of a socialist than Hitler was.

And he prioritized socialism over

nationalism.

I mean, and, you know, Hitler, I think it's fair to say.

Number one, a lot of his priorities went down the train because his number one thing was killing lots of Jews.

So he sacrificed a lot of the things that he believed in for that, including things like like environmentalism.

I mean, Hitler, the Nazi Party was one of the biggest, really the first environmentalist parties.

Now, when they were...

Big environmentalists.

Big animal lovers, animal rights.

To this day, modern environmentalists look back at what they did in Germany and say it was actually ecologically beneficial to Germany.

Now, once they started getting in wars, they started rolling tanks over lots of trees, and they let a lot of those environmentalist principles go.

Some of that happened with socialism, and they didn't follow the doctrine of the day all the way through the regime, but that was absolutely part of their

biggest argument is that he just took over.

He wasn't democratically elected.

Yeah, well, that's the way it always ends.

Sure.

That's the way it always ends.

At some point, I mean, look at Chavez.

Chavez laid the groundwork.

Socialism.

Then the next guy was elected.

Then

they started having trouble.

And so they were like, we got to take over.

And so they just either rig the elections or they suspend the elections.

That's what happens every single time.

This democratic bullcrap is just that.

It's enough to get the socialists elected.

And then when there's trouble, they suspend them or

fix them.

Yeah.

And eventually there becomes inter-party squabbles.

And that happened with the Nazis, where the people who are super pro-socialist, well,

if it was someone else with a power base other than Hitler, he killed them all.

Eventually, you get to that point.

That doesn't mean that Hitler didn't like socialism.

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hi, it's Glenn.

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Thanks.

Selena Zito joins us.

She's the co-author of The Great Revolt, a must-read for anybody who wants to understand politics and what's really going on in America today.

And she wrote an article in the New York Post how Pete, is it

booted edge?

Boot Edge Edge?

Booted Edge?

How do you say it?

Booted edge.

It's like saying edge twice.

Okay, booted edge.

Boot edge edge.

I can't say it.

He can't be president.

Okay.

So Pete.

So Mayor Pete,

you wrote how he could hurt Trump in the Rust Belt.

First of all, explain who this guy is for most people who may not know him.

So, Mayor Pete has been the mayor of South Bend, Indiana since 2011, youngest elected mayor at 29.

He has served our country.

He is a Harvard grad.

He

speaks eight languages.

Oh, my gosh.

And yeah, I know.

You feel really dumb when you say that.

I can't even pronounce his last name.

The guy speaks eight languages.

He's deeply faithful.

He's...

What does that mean?

Wait, wait, what does that mean, deeply faithful?

He takes his faith incredibly seriously.

He's a devout Episcopalian.

It's very much part of his life and

how his worldview is held.

Now remember, though, Episcopalians tend to be much, there's a portion of the Episcopalians that are incredibly liberal.

So I also think that's an important component to understand about his faith.

Yeah, that's a social justice religion many times.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And so

he's very accomplished.

And he made the decision that a lot of millennials make, and they come back, not a lot, but a sizable portion of millennials do.

And they come back to their hometown and try to be part of fixing the problem.

And so

is he liked in town?

In town, he's definitely liked.

But see, he's never had to run on any national issues.

He runs, as you should always run when you're running for local office, is fixing the roads and the bridges and making sure that the garbage is picked up.

And does he do a good job at that?

Does he do a good job of that?

Yeah, absolutely.

He's doing a good job of that.

Has there been corruption in his town, and has he cleaned it up?

He has been working on that.

Within his own administration,

no.

Okay, good.

All right.

So, yeah,

in terms of being a good city manager, he does a good job of that.

And in my interview, when I interviewed him, I also interviewed the guy who's at the opposite end who has to work with him on things, and they don't always agree

on issues.

His name is Jeff Ray.

He was a Republican mayor from a neighboring town who now runs the chamber.

So they have to work together a lot.

So I thought that was an interesting component to put in there because you have to understand how he works with opposing views.

Okay, so I saw, I read an article, and I have to apologize.

For the last hour,

I've been misrepresenting his position because I just heard the actual audio, and that's not what I was what it's not what I read

this morning.

He is, is he a socialist or a capitalist?

Well,

I think he tries to

walk both lines.

So if you, if in my interview with him, well, the thing, here's what he has going for him, Glenn.

He doesn't talk down to people.

He'll eat a Chick-fil-A.

Yes.

And he doesn't have a problem with that.

And he's able to talk about faith in an authentic way.

Full stop.

What he does not have going for him is he's pretty far left.

In our interview, he says that he supports a woman's right to have an abortion in his third trimester.

He believes that we need to look at raising taxes.

He's before a lot of these sort of freebies in terms of

like health care and childhood preschool education.

Not about college.

On energy,

he also likes to have it both ways on that.

He's not very defined on that.

And in all honesty, in my interview with him, we didn't get in there.

But we did get in there, and I think this is a really important component:

is that on energy, he's a solar and

a wind guy.

And I said to him, I said, look, we had 30% capacity last year.

We have all these shale jobs and we have the ability, the nuclear capabilities.

He was not having anything of that.

He wants to go full solar and

full wind and be able to develop a battery so that we are able to do that.

You would have a solar wind farm the size of California.

Where does he want to put that?

I didn't say.

Okay, right in South Bend, I'm sure.

Right, right in South Bend.

But

here's what's really important.

Here in western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio,

and other parts of the Midwest,

energy jobs are crushing it.

I mean, not only are, I mean, if you look at my story today in the Washington Examiner,

I interviewed

the head of the labor council board in the region, and he's the guy who got Connor Lamb elected in my district.

And he's the guy who got Pam Iovino elected in that special election last last week.

Why?

Because he ran moderate Democrats who are fully supportive of

these energy jobs.

We've got kids that walk out of certain high schools who provide these technical classes that are able to walk out and start making $70,000 a year.

In the Paris of Appalachia where I live in Pittsburgh, that's a lot of money.

And that also strengthens communities.

And his name is Darren Tenman.

And he tells me, look,

if they come here talking about the new Green Deal, my guys are not going to vote for them.

End of story.

End of story.

And I think that that is the challenge that we wrote about in the Great Revolt

in terms of a 2020 election.

So Democrats go full left.

They had a problem.

So here's the thing that

I see

about him that

I think is appealing if America still is at all the America that I have always thought she was.

Because I don't think that the Democratic voters are haters.

I don't think that Republican voters are haters.

And I think they're really sick and tired of being called names, of being taught to hate.

They just don't want anything to do do with it.

And when I see this guy who is gay,

A,

that's a huge, that's a huge plus.

If he becomes the nominee, that would be, you know, the first gay president, and, you know, it would be historic and blah, blah, blah.

It would carry its own numbers with it.

At the same time,

he's gay, but

he doesn't hate Chick-fil-A.

which I think is so refreshing.

He's still talking about faith.

It plays a role with him, and it seems genuine.

And I think that's where Americans are.

They may not agree with religion here and there, but they don't hate God and they don't hate church.

You know,

he's a guy that doesn't seem to hate America, seems to like America, and he seems genuine.

Where you've got Corey Booker and all the rest of them, even AOC is, you you know, with her speech this weekend, I think she's becoming a phony.

He seems genuine and he's not going to,

he's not a puncher.

And a lot of people would say that that's a bad thing going against Donald Trump.

But I don't think you're going to punch Donald Trump out.

You're going to have to, you have to go the opposite way.

And I think so far, this is the only guy that I've seen that might be able to do that.

Right.

You know, Americans love aspiration.

They love to be part of something bigger than themselves.

And that's the thing that Mayor Pete has going for him.

He's served his country in Afghanistan.

He showed he doesn't, like you said, he doesn't hate his country.

He respects people of faith.

He doesn't, he's not condescending.

He's like, you know, he lives in South Bend, Indiana, the same exact town that Hillary Clinton refused to go to for an event at Notre Dame University.

Because why?

I don't need to win over white Catholics.

I got this.

And he doesn't take

these voters for granted.

So he has all that in his favor.

Conversely, what he doesn't have in his favor are his policies.

And we'll see how he navigates that through a primary.

And if he's able to strike a balance on a lot of these things going left, he could be a formidable force against the president.

But his challenge is going through the primaries.

I think Selena's going to be interesting to see because he's never faced any pushback.

I mean, he kind of has come out of nowhere the last couple of weeks and so far has not seen the wrath of 20 other Democratic candidates who also want to win this nomination.

I mean, do they have places to go?

Because they can't beat him up on he's socialist.

They're all socialist too, or at least believe in many of the same policies.

Where are they going to attack him?

Well, I think they might attack him on being white it might actually come down to that a white male um that's a real sort of

problem with the with the woke crowd um if you saw the slate story about him last week you saw the first sort of nibbles at that um and so that's which they which they said gay isn't uh intersectional enough just being gay doesn't make him a guy that understands the plight right?

Yeah,

I don't know anybody that talks like that kind of thing.

I don't know.

I don't know him either.

I have interviewed

hundreds of Democrats just in the past few weeks.

And when I say the word intersectional, they're like, wait, what?

Okay, so, you know, so Selena, let me take a quick break.

Come back in a minute.

I want to ask you about that.

I want to ask you, what do you think is really going on?

What the heart of the Democratic Party is

when it comes to the people who are actually voting in the center of the country?

What are they thinking and what are they feeling?

We'll come to Selena Zito here in just a second.

She's the one that got it right on Donald Trump, and I mean really right on Trump way early because she talks to people.

She's not one of these reporters that just flies in.

She actually drives the country and talks to people.

Selena, as you're looking at the American people and you're looking at the Democrats, they are going further and further left.

They're talking about the end of the free market system, an end to capitalism.

They are going for

infanticide now, not just third term, but also infanticide.

It seems to me they are overplaying their hand.

every step of the way.

But I don't see the reaction from the Democrats who are in the country who, you know, for instance, you look over to England and the people who have been members of the Labor Party for a long time are like, look, we're becoming anti-Semitic and crazy, and I want nothing to do with any of this.

But I haven't seen people walk away from it yet.

What's happening?

So it's really, it's a really incredibly interesting dynamic, Glenn.

So take a look at AOC's election in 2018.

She won the primary vote,

which is essentially where the election is held because it's a Democratic district.

And

she won that election.

But look who she won.

If you look at the exits, she won white intellectuals.

She did not win minorities.

She did not win the working class.

So the Democratic Party has become

the party of white intellectuals that is carried by the press, many of whom live in those same zip codes or share those values.

But it's in great contrast with working class Democrats and suburban Democrats, suburban Democrats who

don't share those same values.

What's important to them?

jobs, job creation,

the health and welfare of their community, which means infrastructure,

and

just sort of a sense of peace and prosperity in the country.

Those are the important values among working class Democrats and suburban Democrats.

When it doesn't, it's not divided by color.

You have to remember that a lot of working class blacks and suburban blacks

in the Democrat within the Democratic Party are also incredibly pro-life.

So you do not see them being supportive of the third trimester abortion.

And you don't, and suburban Democrats who, do you think that they want Medica, which is essentially Medicaid for all, right?

Let's be really honest.

It's not Medicare for all.

It's Medicaid for all.

That impacts

their bottom line.

You know, that impacts, they don't want to give their health care up

for everyone to have the same health care and for everyone to and for them to um pay for everybody to have the same health care.

Is this just mass delusion on the on the part of the Democratic leadership?

They are appealing to what they perceive is the ascending

p

electorate's

point of view.

They believe that this is well

and young people.

the Democrats are.

Do you agree with them?

No.

Okay,

I didn't think so.

I mean, I just don't, I don't know any of, I don't know anybody that believes in these things.

And yet

I don't see

Democrats standing up and saying, what the hell is wrong with you people?

Well,

because look what happens when you stand up and say that.

You get destroyed.

You say that on social media.

You say it in a story.

You know, I interview people and they'll be like, you know, if I say my name,

this is my life's going to become hell.

You know, people are very, very reluctant to say this.

But I think when we look at the first results coming out of these primary contests, we're going to understand much better how people feel.

Remember this.

And this was in the book, The Great Revolt.

34% of people who voted for Donald Trump didn't count anybody.

Not their wife, not their kids, not their coworkers, anybody.

And I think you find the same sort of dynamic with Democrats, not that they're going to support Trump, but that

they're afraid to come out and say, I'm not 16-year-old voting.

I'm not for destroying the Electoral College.

I'm not the virgin.

I'm not supporting Glenn.

Appreciate it, Selena.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Eric Stecklebeck is with us now.

Eric is the director of Christians United for Israel, the Watchmen project, and the host of The Watchmen.

Eric, welcome to the program.

Good to talk to you.

Glenn, good to be with you.

So I want to talk to you about the

Washington Summit that is coming up in July, and I'm such a big supporter of

all of the work that Christians United for Israel does.

and you in particular.

But first, let me start with any thoughts on what the President just said about the Iranian

Republican Guard being an official terrorist organization.

Yeah, Glenn, this is a major announcement, first of all.

Second of all, it's long overdue.

Look, I think the best parallel with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, IRGC for short, Glenn, I compare them to the Nazi SS.

They answer, just like the SS, they answered directly to Hitler.

The Revolutionary Guards answered directly to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.

And just like the SS, the Revolutionary Guards have their own, I guess you would say, economic or financial stakes all throughout Iran.

They have made themselves into a big business where they control shares in the Iranian economy, Iran's oil sector, and the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

All of this, Glenn, was spearheaded and controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Not only that.

Oh, go ahead, Glenn.

No, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Not only that.

Yeah, in terms of the terrorism designation that we made today, that the State Department made today, look, the main thing, the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards, they are in in control of Iran's external operations throughout the world.

That means, Glenn, they are in control, complete control of Iran's terror apparatus, whether that's in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, or yes, right here in the Western Hemisphere, where we've seen Iran and Hezbollah strike over the past few decades.

So the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps are the power brokers in that regime and the terror masters in Iran.

Why did the President do this today?

You know, I think it's long overdue.

Number one, if it was the right thing to do, just as the Jerusalem Embassy, the Bolan declaration,

the right thing to do, look, a lot of people would say the elections tomorrow, obviously, the Israeli election, Benjamin Ethan Yahoo looking for re-election.

He's probably, I'm sure, in support of the IRGC being designated as a terrorist entity.

But no matter the timing, it's a good thing, Glenn, and it's long overdue.

Because if we're serious about confronting this Iranian regime and their terror tentacles throughout the world, the Revolutionary Guards is the place to start.

They are the head of the snake when it comes to Iran's terror apparatus.

And by the way, the State Department, Glenn, over the past few decades, has recognized Iran as the world's number one state sponsor of terror.

That's both Democrat and Republican administrations, but this is the first administration to actually act on it in this way.

We have such a turning of the tide

with Israel internally.

You have the president

moving the embassy, the Golan Heights, which is, if anybody's ever been there, you stand in the Golan Heights and you're like, there's no way that Israel could ever let this go.

They're dead if they let that go.

It's strategic land.

You have to have it, it's literal high ground.

Then Benjamin Netanyahu said the, quote, occupied territories are not occupied territories, and he said he's going to give control of

those

to the Jewish settlements.

What does that mean?

Well, I think number one, with the Golan, Glenn, you're absolutely right.

Strategic, strategic, strategic.

Look, that is the high ground.

Whoever controls that controls the high ground.

In past days before 1967, when Israel seized control of the Golan in a defensive war, by the way, against Syria and Egypt, Syria controlled the Golan.

That meant, Glenn, they could rain missiles down on the Galilee below.

It's a non-starter for Israel to give that up.

Common sense.

Number two, I think with the territories, he's talking about Judea and Samaria,

the West Bank.

Judea and Samaria, from an Israeli perspective, number one, is absolutely essential from a security sense.

Until there's a Palestinian authority under Mahmoud Abbas that shows that it's serious about peace, that's serious about recognizing Israel's right to exist, it seems like a no-brainer for Israel to hang on to that territory just from a security perspective.

perspective.

In the past, when Israel disengaged from Gaza, pulled out of southern Lebanon, unfortunately, Glenn, they were greeted with rockets and missiles.

There's also the important factor.

Look, Judea and Samaria is the biblical heartland of Israel.

The Jewish people were living there 3,500 years ago.

So that's also a strong factor in that decision by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

So, Eric,

we have the election tomorrow.

Is he going to win Netanyahu?

It's tight.

I'll tell you, Glenn, I was talking to some folks, contacts on the ground in Israel just over the weekend, and it's close for sure.

I'm not a prognosticator with it.

I would say that Prime Minister Netanyahu has the inside track.

What does it mean if he loses?

It's going to be very clear.

What does it mean if he loses?

Going to be interesting.

I mean, he obviously has had a great relationship with President Trump, number one.

Number two, he's been very friendly to evangelicals.

From a security perspective, it's unclear.

Benny Gantz, who's the main competitor, Glenn, look, the Blue and White Party in Israel, which is the main competitor going against Prime Minister Netanyahu, three of their top four men are former generals.

Benny Gantz, Mosi Alone, and Gabi Ashkenazi.

You would think they would have a pretty strong stance on security.

I've interviewed Benny Gantz.

He's an impressive guy when it comes to security issues.

He was the chief of staff for the Israel Defense Forces, just to give people a little bit more background on him.

So he's got definitely security credentials.

So unclear how things change from a security perspective.

Will he be less aggressive, more aggressive, taking on Iran, for instance?

What about Gaza?

Gaza continues to flare up.

It seems like every few weeks, Glenn, with Hamas, that's a persistent problem.

Then we have southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah, that Iranian proxy, has some 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at every inch of Israel.

So whoever the next prime minister is, has a tall order for sure.

But at the same time, Israel's making great strides internationally, Glenn, and new relationships in India, in Africa, in Latin America.

So

the security challenges remain, but some exciting things happening, positive things as well.

The Blue and White Party.

How are they?

Are they more socialists, less social?

Are they friendly to the West

as Benjamin Netanyahu and the Christians?

What do they stand for?

Do you know?

Yeah, I think middle of the road, Glenn.

Truly, I would say a moderate party from an Israeli perspective.

Definitely not on the socialist left end of the spectrum.

That would be the Labor Party in Israel, which is really struggling right now.

But I would say middle of the road when it comes to more social, culturally, you would think they'd be more hawkish from a security perspective, since, again, they do have three generals among their top three members there.

In terms of the West, absolutely, they'll be friendly.

I've interviewed Moshe Alone and Benny Gantz, who are two.

Benny Gantz is obviously the top guy.

Moshe Alone's kind of second or third in that blue and white party, both very friendly to America, to the West,

friendly to Christians, in my experience for sure.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has had a uniquely close relationship with the evangelical community in the United States.

But look, Gantz and Yalon, in my experience, have been friendly as well.

So

I think Netanyahu has the inside track.

I might be wrong, but it seems like he's got the inside track right now.

But at the end of the day, it is going to be very, very close.

This might be Prime Minister Netanyahu, look, he's been in power since February 2009.

This will probably be his closest election yet, I would say, because Gantz is a formidable opponent with that military background.

We're talking to Eric Stackelbeck from ericstackelbeck.com.

He is a good friend of the program.

He is a guy who has been watching this for decades now.

That's weird to say that, isn't it, Eric?

Yes.

We go way back.

I know.

And you're with Christians United for Israel's Watchmen project.

You're the host of The Watchmen, which is seen Friday nights at 10.30 Eastern on TBN.

Tell me about the

Kufai summit that's happening in July.

Yeah, Glenn, you've spoken at the summit before.

This is the big one for,

and we loved having you.

You know, it's the big one from a pro-Israel perspective.

Some 5,500, maybe 6,000

pro-Israel Christians and Jews will pack the Washington Convention Center in D.C.

in the heart of the nation's capital and advocate for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship.

We've had in the past two years Vice President Pence in 2017.

Last year, Ambassador Nikki Haley were the keynotes.

This year, Ambassador David Friedman, who's our first ambassador at the U.S.

Embassy in Jerusalem, he'll be speaking.

Dennis Prager will be there.

Of course, Kufai's founder and chairman.

The one and only Pastor John Hagee will be speaking and some very special guests for sure.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, or whoever the Prime Minister is, will deliver a satellite address to the summit.

We'll have some special guests from the Trump administration as well.

We can't announce them yet, but they're coming.

So it's going to be big.

And I think the key thing, Glenn, is not only will we get together and we'll voice our support for Israel and the strong U.S.-Israel relationship, but a key thing about it is we lobby on Capitol Hill.

You have thousands of pro-Israel Christians will fan out.

on the Tuesday of the summit.

By the way, the date's July 7th, 8th, and 9th, coming up in just three months.

But look, we will go to every member, all 50 states, and we will lobby them in support of a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and legislation, Glenn, that benefits

the U.S.

and Israel from a security perspective.

Look,

we've lobbied in the past on moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

Also, the Taylor Force Act, real quick, it passed into law last year.

Basically, that holds the Palestinian Authority accountable for supportive terrorism.

I don't know if listeners might not know, they might know that when someone is killed, when a Jew or an American, Taylor Forrest was an American, when they're killed by a Palestinian terrorist, that terrorist and his family receive a lifetime stipend from the Palestinian Authority.

We call it pay to slay.

And by the way, in years past, U.S.

taxpayer dollars were going to the Palestinian Authority and going into the pockets of these folks.

That's all finished now, but we lobbied for that.

So a lot of exciting things going on during the summit.

We encourage everyone to come go to KUFI, that's cufi.org, and you can learn more.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

I want to share with you one of the more disturbing stories I've read in USA Today in quite some time.

Conservatives takeover of the Supreme Court stalled

by John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Bromance is the headline.

The conservative takeover of the Supreme Court that was anticipated following Donald Trump's two selections has been stalled by a budding bromance between the senior and junior justices.

Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's newest member, Brett Kavanaugh, have voted in tandem on nearly every case that's come before them since Kavanaugh's joined the court in October.

They've been more likely to side with the court's liberal justices than other conservatives.

The two justices, both alumni of the same District of Columbia-based federal appeals court, have split publicly only once in 25 official decisions.

Their partnership is extended, though less reliably, to orders the courts have issued on abortion funding, immigration, the death penalty, in the six months of Kavanaugh's bitter Senate confirmation battle that ended in a 50-48 split.

Roberts and Kavanaugh have obvious reasons for their reluctance to join the court's three other conservatives in ideological harmony.

They do?

Yeah, yeah, listen to this.

The Chief Justice's voice concerned about the court being viewed as just another political branch of the government.

Oh, so the answer to that is to play politics and try to,

you know, show some sort of future, you know,

history can look back at us and say,

we did the right thing.

We went left when we could have gone right.

That sort of posturing, not at all part of the job description of a Supreme Court justice, is the right thing to do.

I got it.

Kavanaugh, a former top White House official under George W.

Bush, who was accused of a sexual assault in the 1980s during his confirmation, may be just laying low.

Justice Kavanaugh seems to share some of the Chief Justice's institutional concerns.

But I also think he cares about his own perception as an even-handed judge.

Ah, no, not another Roberts.

Oh, no, no.

Yep.

I'm very worried about Kavanaugh.

I am, too.

I mean, he wasn't on the list.

He was a lost cause.

Yeah, he wasn't on the list.

Can we make this point yet again?

The initial list that Donald Trump put out had 21 Supreme Court justice possibilities during the election.

When he was elected, and a big portion of him getting elected was because of this list.

It made a lot of conservatives.

We heard people call in droves saying, this is the reason I'm voting for Donald Trump.

This was all approved by the Federal Society.

They went through a real process with it.

He got elected and they picked Neil Gorsuch, one of the best justices on the list, I thought.

I thought it was a great pick.

And he's been great.

And then after that, with very little fanfare, they added five names to the list.

One of those names was Brett Kavanaugh.

And I have no evidence to think that she would be bad per se.

But another one of those was Amy Coney Barrett.

And the idea that we now have to pick off of this list, there's still 20 names on the original list that are not Supreme Court justices.

Why we can't pick one of them when we have new Supreme Court justices, I don't know, but that's another thing that makes me nervous about Barrett, despite she also doesn't have a very long track record.

She seems great, but Kavanaugh didn't seem great.

I mean,

we were not excited about Kavanaugh as a pick.

I was very defensive of him as being falsely accused or having his life run over by accusations when I was not a fan of him.

But he makes me very nervous, and the initial indications are not positive on

So listen to this.

Now remember, this is USA Today.

This is USA Today.

Similarities between the two men are striking.

Despite their decade apart in age, Robert 64 is an earnest and soft-spoken, but pointed in his questions to both sides during oral arguments.

Kavanaugh, 54, is more demonstrative, but he tempers that with an inquisitive, open-minded manner.

Whatever their reasons, the Chief Justice and the newest justice together have provided ballast for a court in transition.

Following Kavanaugh's replacement of retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, Roberts has become the court's swing vote, and Kavanaugh often appears to be his wingman.

Examples include the court's action last October giving those challenging a citizenship question in the 2020 census, additional information about the plan, its refusal in December to consider Republican-led states' efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, its ruling in February that Texas cannot execute a prisoner who claims to have an intellectual disability.

In all three of those actions, Associates Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito made known his opposition in two of them.

Roberts and Kavanaugh appear to have voted with the court's liberals, though the breakdown was not made public.

Their differences have been rare but noteworthy.

In addition to one public vote to a criminal procedure case, Roberts sided with the liberals in temporarily blocking a Louisiana abortion restriction while Kavanaugh would have let them go into effect.

And while they refused to hear New Jersey County's effort to include churches in a historic preservation program in a Washington State high school coach's plea to conduct prayers on a football field, Kavanaugh warned of the need to protect religious liberty.

Kavanaugh, perhaps, is seeking a low profile, has voted with the majority in almost every case so far, unless he is the author, which usually means just signing on to the opposition or the opinion, but often writes separately to explain his vote, a habit he picked up at the U.S.

Court of Appeals.

Kavanaugh has always had more of a moderate streak, even on the D.C.

circuit, says Josh Blackman, South Texas College Law Associate Professor who follows the Supreme Court.

Oh, great.

He feels the need to explain himself, that he's not that right wing.

Oh, because this is, you know, as a Supreme Court justice, you'd hope that the unfair treatment Kavanaugh received in his hearing would not change him at all.

But as a human being, we all know that going through an experience like that will probably change you one of two ways.

Number one, if you want to assign this to Clarence Thomas, the Clarence Thomas way, which is you get falsely accused of something, you get beat up in the press for a million years, and you become rock-ribbed.

You are never going, you are going to go and never

ever try to please the media, try to please the historians.

You are going to keep your, you are going to go with the Constitution 100% of the time, even if you're the only vote and it looks super mean.

That's the Clarence Thomas way, if you want to summarize it that way.

The other way is this sort of John Roberts way, where you are now, to show that you swear you're not super mega right wing like you were portrayed, you start siding with the left a little bit more often and you start going that way.

Early indications, I will say they're somewhat mixed.

As you pointed out, the case

on abortion in Louisiana was a good ruling by Kavanaugh.

But I wonder if what we wind up with here is someone who's constantly trying to please future historians, and that is a disastrous formula.

Good news.

Next term beginning in October may include major cases on abortion, immigration, gay rights, and gun control.

Also, the third debate in the court over Obamacare.

And for justices in their 50s and 60s with lifetime appointments, there will be many, many years, perhaps even decades in which to evolve or stand firm.

Yeah.

And this is another thing where you hear this from the media all the time.

Remember the fear when Kavanaugh was going through?

It had nothing to do with whether Kavanaugh was touching women in high school.

I mean, it had nothing to do with that.

It was about, hey, what is this guy going to do if it's a right-wing court?

They're going to overturn,

you know, Roe versus Wade and all of these other things and make it seem as if it's going to be the most conservative Supreme Court ever.

And we kept pointing out, have you watched John Roberts for 10 seconds?

There is no chance that John Roberts, given the opportunity, would come down on the right side of Roe versus Wade.

He sucks.

So what you do if you get Kavanaugh to be on the right side of something like that is you get to four votes.

Not five, four.

There is no way Roberts is going to take a stand against a big, you know, sort of cultural issue where he believes he will be on the wrong side of history on it later on.

I mean, the chances of that happening are so minuscule, and neither one of them have shown any bravery in this sort of area.

So the idea that this is really in doubt is such a far-you know, fetched sort of like fever dream of liberals to get people out to vote.

It's like they're just like, well, this is the handmaid's tale.

It's like, this is not the handmaid's tale.

John Roberts is essentially one of you on controversial issues.

He's been wrong on all of these things.

He continues to try to please the media and historians.

You know, the new book shows that he changed his vote on Obamacare because he knew how important insurance was to businesses.

The hell does that have to do with the Constitution?

Your job is to get in there and rule on what is constitutional and what is not.

We did not.

hire.

We don't pay those people to be politicians.

No.

To think things through, to noodle things through on what's best for society.

Their only job is to find out if it is constitutional or not, period.

That's their job.

It's like going into McDonald's, and

the guy

won't give you the burger,

but he will give you all kinds of advice on how to fix your car.

Look, dude, I'm not going to serve you until you fix your car this way.

And you know what?

That outfit just doesn't work on you.

Shut up.

McGriddle me.

Yeah, give me a McGriddle and a shake.

That's all I want from you.

That's what we need to start to say to the Supreme Court.

Yeah.

We want to know: is this constitutional or not?

They actually traded rulings on Obamacare.

Roberts wanted to side with the left wing, but didn't want to give up all this ground.

So he actually got two liberal justices to come over and rule against the Medicaid part of it.

So that's why it was a 7-2 ruling, and why two liberals oddly voted for the conservative approach to Medicaid expansion.

They actually traded their opinions.

Roberts said, I won't overturn it if you come over to me with Medicaid.

I mean, that is not the way this is supposed to work.

Rule on the Constitution, period.

Let the chips fall where they may.

And for some reason, we have lost, and we have now just gained another legislative branch.

Yep.

And that is not what we want.

Nope.

They're making laws all the time,

trading favors.

It's ridiculous.

It is an unelected legislative branch now.

And, you know, the worst thing?

And there's a lot of bad things that FDR did.

Worst thing FDR did, take the Supreme Court out of the basement.

Supreme Court was in the basement.

This is how little the Supreme Court meant to

the country for decades.

When they built the Capitol, they realized, oh, crap,

we didn't think about the Supreme Court.

Oh, well, you know that place down by the boiler?

Just open that up a little bit and them a room, give them a room in the basement.

It's like where Milton from office space was

his.

Yes, I mean, that's who they were.

And they gave them this big, huge building and made them so important.

And FDR did it for a reason.

And when the guys who were used to being in the basement, when I'm not buying into this, what did he do?

He said, I'm going to pack the Supreme Court.

I mean,

we've lost touch of what the Supreme Court is supposed to be, and it is certainly not supposed to be another legislative body.

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