Best of the Program | Guests: Kelly Shackelford & Brad Polumbo | 2/28/19

Holy cow, what a great show.

Yeah, I mean, if this is the only podcast that you can listen to today,

well, you've got the right podcast.

Yeah, this would be the best one today.

This would be the best one.

This is a great, great podcast today.

We start with, you know, a little bit on Michael Jackson

because there's a new documentary.

This has taken us by complete surprise.

I know.

They're saying that he actually may have done some illegal things with children.

I can see that coming.

And to find out on the same day that we find out that the Democrats are coming for your guns.

What?

Wow, that's incredible.

Who would have thought that?

We explain HR 8 and HR 1112

to common sense gun control measures on today's broadcast.

What else do we have today?

Brad Palumbo on.

He is a

young, he's from Young Voices.

He's a gay conservative trying to find

his his way in the world.

And it's interesting

as he talks about, I never understand my gay friends who want, who say the powers of the government is so oppressive, yet they want them to come and take all of our guns.

Which is crazy.

You know what he said when he said that?

I was thinking, you know, when Venezuela had their gun rights taken away?

2012.

2012.

Of course, socialists want your guns.

Of course.

So much on today's podcast.

Let's get right to it.

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

Whatever charges get the highest amount of retweets, that means it's a crime.

We've kind of seen it with Bill Cosby, right?

Like we've seen it with,

there was another one recently that the same sort of thing was, oh, it's kind of happening with R.

Kelly, right?

Like, oh, these are trucks.

Those are good examples.

No, no.

Well, they committed crimes.

Yeah.

And we didn't, we were like, eh, shrug the shoulders.

Yeah.

But then when we got the retweets, then we turned on the justice system.

Maybe we wait to activate the justice system until the retweet number gets to a certain amount.

I see what you're saying.

I like that.

It's the first layer of justice.

Yes.

Right?

Like, if someone, if someone.

So, in other words, a police officer comes to your house and says, hey, there's a body laying there, and I just found this bloody person holding a knife over the body.

They take take a picture.

A selfie.

The police officer should be a selfie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Selfie with the body and the murderer, alleged.

And then just says, crime?

Right.

And then tweets it out.

And tweets it out.

If they get over like 100,000 retweets, maybe you put it on the percentage of population for local crimes.

And if it gets to a certain amount of retweets, then we're like, all right, we walk over to the old justice machine and we turn on the switch.

Well, okay, so I was going to say we shouldn't probably do it on the first round because sometimes people get it wrong, you know, like they did in Covington.

But then we all know that that guy, if he isn't guilty of that, he's guilty of something.

Well, look, you see his face.

He's got such a punchable face, as we learn from every blue check mark on Twitter.

But I think this is part of it, Glenn.

Part of it is you take people who it's not about whether they committed the crime or not.

R.

Kelly and Bill Cosby looks like they definitely did do really terrible things.

And the Covington kid didn't.

But there's plenty of retweets.

Put him in prison.

That's the sort of justice system we need if look if people are willing to take their time and invest it in retweeting a possible criminal action do that without reading or thinking exactly you know throw them in prison right and then if and then

at some point

netflix will release a documentary about their innocence and when that gets enough retweets they're freed i like it i like it it's all it's basically automated and our founders didn't see that no they didn't see twitter no how about this a certain amount of tweets just unlocks the door of the cell and they walk out like we don't even have to have we don't have to like it like it like it like it's that way we can get that way we can get the capitalists out of the prison system yes yeah well except for jack he'll he'll make be essentially making all decisions on our justice no but jack is a marxist with a monocle

now i want you to think about this okay there are there are marxists who actually believe it okay but most of the Marxists are the Marxists with the monocle, you know, the Monopoly guy monocle, right?

Who are like, yeah, I mean,

I am selling this Che shirt, so I am making money off of that.

I am using the capitalist system, but I'm a Marxist.

Well, I think one of the most important things about being a Marxist is to get all the capital.

from the capitalists so you can do the justice.

Exactly right.

It's a Marxist in a monocle.

There you go.

And Jack is a Marxist in a monocle.

There we go.

All right.

Here we go.

I mean, what?

It's the first break of the show.

We've already solved the legal system.

Right.

Where do you want to go next?

You didn't even notice the connection to AOC.

She's a Marxist in a monocle as well.

Oh, yes.

Right?

You put in.

Now you'd have to have a really big, weird, creepy-sized monocle to cover one of her eyes.

But she's a Marxist in a monocle as well.

You'd be using 30% of U.S.

glass output to get a monocle over that eye.

Corning is like, wait, wait, she needs a monocle?

Quick, buy up the rest of the stock.

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn, and if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.

Do you remember when Michael Jackson called in on the show?

This is years and years ago.

Oh, this was after Valentine's Day, was it?

It was on Valentine's Day, and he wanted to, you know, we did the, like we just did on Valentine's Day, where we bailed the guys out that, you know, missed it or couldn't get flowers or whatever.

A couple of the year program.

Yeah.

And Michael Jackson wanted to participate in it?

Yeah, this is the day after, I think it was.

It's 10 or 12 years ago.

But he heard it initially, and I think he wanted to get in on it the next day.

Yeah.

So here it is.

Oh, you're on the Glenback program.

Hi, Michael.

Hello.

hello hey hello Glenn it's Michael Michael how are you well I'm so sick of hearing about all of these freaks in the news yes I know you are there are so many freaks all over the media coverage it's horrifying I know are you in the hospital I'm very sick you're very sick what what happened I know you were taken right to the hospital I was taken right to the hospital I'm here I feel awful.

You're still at the hospital.

I had a chance to listen to your show yesterday.

You did?

It was wonderful.

Really?

Can I still get in on that couple of the year thing?

I love that.

No, we've pretty much closed the door on the couple of the year thing.

And we would really like an opportunity to be involved.

Well, this is where we would call, you know, your wife and, you know, apologize.

You didn't do anything for Valentine's Day?

Well, I hung out at the Chuck E.

Cheese.

It was wonderful.

Yes.

And then...

I went to a private party there.

It was terrific.

I love children.

I would never hurt a child.

I know.

I have the form here.

You'd have to fill out the form.

Oh, I filled out the form.

You filled it out?

You filled it out on the website?

I'm ready to go.

Okay, let's see.

Dear Mr.

Beck, I've never entered a contest like this before.

However, I felt I had to tell you about my beautiful Cancerous fan.

I really can't express in words how uniquely wonderful the unnamed accuser truly is.

Honestly, at first, I thought I was was attracted to

his age.

I don't think this is going to work, Michael.

Keep going.

But as time went on, it turned into so much more.

I guess I knew it was true love the first time we

took the training wheels off his bike.

Hello?

Yes.

And that trip to the secret room behind the giant teddy bear.

Wow.

That was what a perfect time that was.

I guess what sets him apart is the distinctive way he isn't old.

Unlike any other

boy in the world of amusement park-owning pedophile victims.

I'm sorry, unlike anybody.

What was that?

Any other boy in the world of amusement park owning pedophile victims.

Anyway, I could go on forever, but that would take away from my time with him.

And I have to get back to work at the Neverland Neverland Ranch, where I molest children from 9 to 5 Mondays to Friday, and sometimes into overnights from their sleep.

Everyone always tries to make love so complex, and that's why I think we should be your Valentine's Couple of the year.

Because for me, it's simple.

I just love

wine,

coloring books, and Corey Feldman.

Yeah.

We should have seen it.

We should have seen it.

All the signs were there.

Were hints when you're detective here, but you see a hearing.

Yeah.

But you don't want to make too much of those answers.

No.

No.

No, he had a bad childhood.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Kelly Shackelford, Esquire.

I don't know what that means.

Does that mean you're an attorney?

Does it just sound cool?

Is that what it means?

Because it just sounds cool.

Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, joins us.

The First Liberty, in case you don't know, is the largest legal firm in the nation that all they do is try to protect religious freedom in America, fighting the good fight.

You were in the Supreme Court yesterday, and

First Liberty

was defending something that was a statue that has been around forever, commemorating those who lost their lives in World War I.

And a bunch of atheists got together and said, this is in the shape of a cross, and the city is mowing the lawn around it.

That's not right.

And wanted it removed.

What happened yesterday, Kelly?

Well, it's kind of surreal, as you say, that we're even at the Supreme Court on this.

I mean, this is the Peace Cross in Maryland, right outside of D.C.

It was put up almost 100 years ago by mothers who lost their sons in World War I, along with the American Legion.

And

at this point, you know, before the Supreme Court makes its decision, we are at a point where the Court of Appeals said it's unconstitutional.

After 100 years, we're going to have to tear it down.

In fact, one of the judges on the appellate court said, why don't we just cut the arms off the cross?

Won't that take care of any offense?

And

so

I can't even believe we're in this battle, but I think it might be something that could turn something really bad into good.

We'll see.

There's an approach, Glenn, that has been used now for many decades by the Supreme Court that has created just chaos in this whole area of the law, the establishment clause.

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.

It's called the lemon test.

Lemon test.

That's right.

And the lemon test has no,

there's no parameters, right, on the lemon test.

We don't really know what that even means, do we?

No, they added to it, and part of the test now is that if a person in the community were to walk by a memorial and they were to see that it's religious and it made it feel like an outsider in the community, then that's a violation of the establishment clause.

What?

Yes.

And so it's kind of the, it's what's called the offended observer gets to bring a lawsuit.

And it's like Justice Gorsuch yesterday made clear, he said, we don't allow this in any area of the law.

Somebody to come forward and say they're offended and therefore they have a right to, you know, bring lawsuits under the Constitution because they're offended.

But that's where we are with this.

There are a group of people, a small group of people, that don't want this memorial.

And so they want to tear it down.

And so, again, bad news is what happened below.

Good news is we have a shot here and there was a lot of discussion about this yesterday.

And this was our goal to get rid of this bad lemon test that has created so much trouble in our country.

And really, it's created hostility to religion, which is not what the founders ever wanted.

Right.

So why do you think that this went so well yesterday?

Well, I think it's clear that there some people would say there might even be up to seven justices who agree that there's nothing wrong with this memorial again it the facts are so solid uh in this case i mean the reason the cross was you i mean they're trying to say well they use the cross because they're supporting one religion over another and they're they're doing all this stuff the cross was used if you could look at any history you go back at world war one

millions of young men died and they were they were putting them in graves overseas so quickly and they were just slapping a cross in front of everybody just to make sure they knew there was a person.

And the pictures that came back were row after row after row of crosses as far as you can see.

And there were poems written about this and everything else.

So that was the universal symbol they picked to honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

And so the idea of tearing down this memorial after 100 years would just be a disgrace and it would be unfathomable.

And I think the court realizes that.

So I think the only issue that is coming out of this is is going to be, are they going to change the test, this test that's been used to kind of create these attacks on religious symbols and monuments and things around the country?

And

there were a number of justices, including the chief justice,

who

made clear that this thing is a mess.

This test, Glenn, this tells you something.

They use it when they want to knock something down, but then they ignore the test completely when they have to uphold something that the founders clearly thought was okay.

So there was a case just a few years ago about, can you have prayer to open city council meetings?

Well, the founders had prayer to open their meetings.

They even paid a chaplain.

And so they couldn't say that that's unconstitutional under the establishment clause.

But if they had applied the lemon test, they'd have had to strike it down.

So they didn't apply the test.

So they talked about this yesterday and said, this is, I mean, we can do what we want as the Supreme Court, but we're forcing all the lower courts.

They have no idea what the law is, what things things to apply.

And I think they know they need to do something.

And I think there's a really good shot that they're going to get rid of what has created

a catastrophe in this area of the law.

Kelly, if I'm not mistaken, the way the court is ruling on things,

there is a change in the court.

And is it just the addition of Gorsuch

that is happening?

Because there seems to be, and when it comes to religion, that the Supreme Court is starting to

define those boundaries a little bit clearer and actually protect.

Haven't we had several cases this session where they are protecting religious liberty?

There's some huge signals coming out, Glenn.

This case is one of them.

I think we now have five justices for the first time, maybe since the 1920s,

who actually believe in following the written word of the Constitution.

Holy cow.

And that's going to result in things changing because they're going to say, it's not about what we want.

It's about what the framers said, what the Constitution said, what it means.

And I think when it comes to religious freedom, we have five that are really pretty solid on religious freedom.

I think Kavanaugh is a guy who, I mean, he donated,

Kavanaugh is a young attorney, donated his time on a case with me, you know, almost 20 years ago.

He's been committed to religious freedom his whole life.

He understands it.

And I think the same about Roberts, who's considered a swingboat a lot of times.

So I think we're going to start to see some clarity and some good decisions come out.

And we're talking about the establishment clause.

We have another case, the Coach Kennedy case, the coach who got fired for going to a knee after the football game to say a 20-minute silent prayer.

They issued a statement before conservative justices last month on that case that sent shockwaves throughout the country.

And that is, at the end of the decision that they had laid down, they actually said, you know,

we've noticed that you brought a free speech claim first, not a free exercise of religion claim.

And they said that might be because of this decision, which is called the Smith decision, that has created such damage to the free exercise of religion.

And they said, but we haven't been asked to overturn that yet.

So that's not a subtle hint that they're ready to go after some of these really bad cases that have really hurt hurt religious freedom for the last

four or five decades.

And so both on the establishment clause and the free exercise clause, both the religion clauses, we're really excited.

You know, it's amazing, Kelly.

The press is so focused on Donald Trump.

I mean, he is the ultimate red herring.

No comment on his hair.

He really is.

I mean, they are so focused on him that you could go in and say every baby gets an automatic weapon through the Supreme Court or through Congress, and I don't think that the press would even focus on it because they're so focused on him.

We feel like we're losing the battles almost every day because we see these huge leaps of power for the left that we're not seeing or hearing because nobody's reporting on these victories in the court and what's really happening in the court.

it's game-changing, isn't it?

It is.

I can't agree with you more.

This is, I mean, I've been doing religious freedom work my entire life and,

you know, been working hard.

And I feel like everything we've all been working for for the last 30 years is beginning to happen and not in small ways.

And I think

this is going to be a huge return of power to the people, getting the government out of sort of being the religious monuments, police.

And, you know,

part of the things we're talking about just from the case yesterday, you know, think of all the, you know, the menorahs that have been said, well, you can't put that menorah up in public around Hanukkah, or you can't do the nativity scene, or you can't, you know, can't have that Ten Commandments, or I mean, oh, my gosh, you've got a steeple on your city seal.

Well, you know, and so all that stuff is ridiculous if you're talking to the founders.

And I I think, I mean, this case could end all of that.

And it'll affect much more, but that's just real life things that people are used to seeing.

And so I think both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, there's great hope.

We'll have to wait and see what the decisions are.

But I think it's going to be a really, I mean, we're talking about decades changing sort of the hinge point of history.

Like we've had decades of some really bad law.

And I think we're about to move towards some decades of some really good law and religious freedom and the First Amendment.

I will tell you that David Barton told me that he said, Glenn, if the things come out the way they're feeling, he said, by the end of this session, he said, we may have more religious freedom than any time since the founding of the nation.

He said they've been screwing it up for so long.

He said, I think we're going back to the way things were originally intended.

Would you agree with that or is that too far?

No, I do.

I mean,

it's kind of silly.

You know, most nonprofit groups like our legal firm have a vision statement and they're kind of pie in the sky.

You know,

if

this happens, this would be Nirvana, right?

And ours is to return the country to the religious freedom that was the vision of our founders.

I never thought I would see it in my lifetime, but I think that's now what we're going to see because we actually have justices who want to follow what the Constitution and the founders were doing.

And that's just unique.

We haven't seen that in our lifetime.

And so I think we're going to start to see decisions go back to what that founding vision was and the religious freedom that this country was built on.

And I think that's only going to be a blessing for the country and the future of everything we do.

Wow.

Kelly, thank you so much.

And thank you for the hard work that you put in for so long.

Chief Counsel, First Liberty Institute, if you want to be involved, you want to donate.

I mean, they are doing amazing work right now.

Firstliberty.org, firstliberty.org.

Kelly, thank you so much.

God bless.

Thank you, Glenn.

You bet.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

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I'm going to bring on Brad Palumbo.

He is the assistant editor for Young Voices, online contributor for the National Review, and he's written an essay for Quillette.

If you haven't gone to Quillette.com, you need to.

There isn't a single time I've checked that website that I haven't found something really fascinating.

His essay is one of those, The Political Homeless Life of a Gay Conservative.

And he joins us now.

Hello, Brad.

How are you?

Hey, Glenn.

Thanks for having me me on.

You bet.

Thanks for being so honest in your Quillette story.

Can you take us through,

maybe start here?

The guy who broke up with you because

he was crying and said he just couldn't date a Republican anymore.

Yeah, so I worked on this piece for a long time, right, because I wanted to combine my personal experiences with people I interviewed with broader trends that I observed in the progressive world and in the LGBT media, and it eventually all found its way back to one place.

If you identify as conservative, but you also happen to be gay, life in neither side of the aisle is particularly comfortable for you.

So for me, that meant that I have experienced honestly widespread intolerance from other people in the LGBT community who should understand more than anyone that it's okay to be different, but largely they don't.

So that includes a boyfriend of multiple months who broke up with me in part because he was uncomfortable with my political views, which are by no means radical.

They're just not liberal.

And that's just another example of intolerance that I've experienced, honestly, too many times to count from left-wing gay people.

Now, Brad, I mean, as a guy who, you know, just was never good on the dating scene at all,

that sounds like something that somebody could have said to me and really they didn't know anything about my politics.

They were just like looking for something.

You know, it's not you, it's me kind of stuff.

Are you sure it wasn't, you know, I'm just throwing this one out here.

You're just not my speed.

I really don't think so.

We had some pretty intense conversations about that.

And it's been a recurring theme.

You know, when I first started putting myself out there on the dating scene in college, I would have people who would match with me on dating apps or on websites just to tell me to go and kill myself or off myself or that I was a disgrace to the community, right?

Because I was a little bit well-known around campus for my conservative viewpoints and those sorts of things.

So, because it's been a reoccurring trend, I can tell you that I'm pretty confident it was

not just another excuse.

So, tell me about, because I think there's a lot of people that feel like they don't have a home anywhere.

And, you know, when it comes to gay people, you would think that it's a clear match because

a conservative should be about the constitutional principles that we have, which basically say, leave me alone.

I'm different, and I thought we were supposed to celebrate that I'm different, and you're different, and we're supposed to get along.

That's what the Constitution says.

It protects people to be who they are, so they can be who they are.

And yet, somehow the Republicans and it comes from a lot of religious

conservatives have made gay people feel very, very unwelcome.

So

is that changed?

Is that different?

How do you deal with the difference between the two parties?

Well, so first off, Glenn, I totally agree with you.

I think that I'm not personally a huge social conservative, but I do identify as a constitutional conservative for the reasons that you just mentioned.

You know, what does the First Amendment do if it doesn't protect your right to think differently, to be different, to have freedom of conscience?

And so that's one of the reasons I find the left-wing movement that's moving in on all these freedoms so unappealing.

But what I'll say is that it's a combination of two things that creates this political homelessness.

In part, it is what you have identified, that there's some lingering intolerance among the conservative movement.

I will say among young Republicans, I've really had extremely welcoming and accepting experiences.

But you know, the reality remains that half of Republicans don't believe in gay marriage.

And I don't think that that makes them terrible people or evil or anything, but it does make me obviously not fully comfortable with the people who I would otherwise politically largely agree with.

And the same thing is true.

I'm sorry.

No, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Yeah, the same thing is true on the opposite side of the spectrum, right?

Because the progressive LGBT media ecosystem essentially acts like gay people who aren't liberals don't exist.

You know, you go to these websites, queertee.com, LGBT Advocate, and Out Magazine, and they have articles praising gun control and bashing Ivanka Trump, and they call this the gay agenda, right?

They're basically acting like all gay people think with their body parts, and we're not individuals.

So they're trying to erase the 20% or so of LGBT people who don't think like that.

And for me, that's a huge problem.

So

let me ask you this, Brad.

My stance on gay marriage has been the same since the 90s.

I don't care.

I mean, it's not my business constitutionally.

The government only got into the marriage business to make sure that

whites didn't marry blacks or blacks marry white, so we couldn't mix the races.

And later, it became about undesirables, making sure that we don't create any more undesirables.

The reason why government got into marriage in the first place,

they're all bad and they have no place in anybody's marriage.

But as long as if you want to get married, I don't care.

If I want to get married, you shouldn't care.

But we shouldn't be in people's lives.

The problem with conservatives, I think, is there are some that are just like, it's wrong, and God says it's wrong, and that's all there is to it.

But there's, I think, a bigger majority of conservatives that say, look, that's them.

Whatever you want to do, go ahead.

But they're afraid that the gay agenda just wants to shut down all religion, that it's not really about love.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does make sense.

I think the position that you're articulating is very intellectually honest.

And I think that the people who are still hold out against gay marriage, I hope that they can kind of come see the light, especially because I try to make the gay marriage argument from a case for family values, right?

Almost to appeal to conservatives.

But I think you hit on something that I do think is partly the own fault of the LGBT community, right?

When you have an LGBT advocate class that does target religion entirely, they're not just seeking freedom for to be who you are, to have kids, to get married.

They're seeking freedom to force other people, right?

Like, for example, Jack Phillips, the baker who didn't want to bake the gay cake.

The LGBT advocate class has really forced some conservatives to kind of dig in into their trenches because they're not just looking for freedom, they're looking to force their views onto other people.

And that's where I think both sides get it wrong.

Because a society that's truly tolerant, lets you have the right to be Christian, and we have the right to be gay, and we all just live our lives in peace.

And we all get along.

I mean, you know, we all get along.

One other thing, Brad, is how is it, and I say this really with socialists, but also,

you know, gay people as well.

A group of people, socialists, in Hollywood that had to, were blacklisted, were tried, some of them went to prison, had to live in the closet, either because of their sexuality or because of their political beliefs

is it just vengeance or why can they not see they're doing this they're becoming the monster that they fought against

i'm not sure honestly the causes of this kind of veil of intolerance that's sweeping the progressive movement and kind of the lgbt far left crowd i'm not sure exactly what the cause is i will say that we have a tendency across our society when there was historic kind of oppression or anything to try to swing back to the, not to the middle, but too far to the other side.

And I think that the LGBT advocacy class has not been an exception to that rule.

They've absolutely done that because we have to acknowledge the fact that for a long time, LGBT people have really faced some terrible conditions in American history.

And I think largely that's not true today, and that's great.

But that is probably why I think a lot of these people have swung far to the other extreme.

And that's understandable, but it's still fundamentally misguided.

Brad, it seems like the lesson learned a lot of times from these longer struggles with groups that have had tough times in America is to

find, you know, pick a group that they think is helping them, whether it's, you know,

whatever group in the government, Democrats, Republicans, that they think is helping them, and then kind of stick to that side for a long period of time afterwards.

But it seems to me the decision should be made

in a way of thinking about collectivism versus individualism.

And

if you're a minority group or a group that's had troubles with the government in the past, the last thing to me you would want is the government to have more power in a centralized place where whenever X, Y, or Z group decide, you know, the country decides that they're the enemy next time, they're again going to be vulnerable.

If we empower people who are individualists, who believe in small government and limited government to be able to do these things and run the country without making these decisions as to what groups they don't like.

Isn't that just better for everybody?

Yeah, I could not agree with you more there because

one thing that drives me crazy is the same LGBT progressive advocates who will tell you the government is viciously oppressive are the same ones who want to take everyone's guns away.

To the point that

it makes perfect sense to me, right?

If you really think that the government has a history of being oppressive to certain groups, and I do, then you should want that government to be as small as possible because clearly it's shown that it can't handle widespread power.

So I would love to see more LGBT people applying the lens of their historical experiences really to the question of today of how much can we really let the government start running people's lives.

Because individualism really is the ethos of my personal philosophy.

And honestly, it should be that for more gay people.

So how can people like us or just, you know, regular people who are just listening,

who are not members of the gay community, how can we help bridge a gap?

What can we do?

Well, so it starts with a couple things.

It can be hard at times to reach the other side when they feel trapped into this us versus them mentality, which is in part driven by kind of the identitarian dogma of intersectionality on the left.

But it's also, I think, driven by when you have high-profile conservatives who will say, or high-profile conservative media who will sometimes say or make comments or take positions about LGBT issues that are just either inflammatory and unfair or needlessly controversial.

For example, I mean, if you're going to have traditional views about gender, I can respect that position, but if you go out of your way to, whenever you're debating it with somebody, tell them that they're mentally deranged, right, with a transgender person, you're being needlessly antagonistic and you're turning other people off from, I think, just your entire political movement with that.

So I think you can have the views you're going to have, but it's about taking an approach where you can try to meet people in the middle and try to make arguments that will appeal to them and won't

activate their us versus them mentality.

I'll tell you, Brad, I don't know if you've ever read this.

My dad made me read it when I was in high school, and I just read it begrudgingly.

And I picked it up recently,

and it has all of the answers we need.

It really does, even though it was written in

the Great Depression.

It's how to win friends and influence people.

And basically, it just said what it says what you just said.

Just said,

why not listen to other people, see what they're feeling, see what they need, see how you can help, and just help them, help them,

and, you know, and be comfortable with that.

And then all of a sudden, you'll notice, wait a minute, my life has changed somehow or another because you're just being cool with everybody and really listening to them.

Brad, thank you so much for your article and thanks for being on the program.

Thanks for having me.

You bet.

Hope we can talk again.

Thank you so much.

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

I want to take you back in time to a story that you know,

but I'm going to put all the pieces together.

Let me take you back to September 25th, 2017.

A man checked into a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas.

He had made several trips, he had timed it out, he'd made sure nobody had noticed that he was taking 10 range bags full of guns and ammunition up into that room.

He did it over six days,

and on the sixth day,

he opened fired on

fire on people that were at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival.

He killed 85 people.

He wounded 851 others, the deadliest mass shooting committed by one person in U.S.

history.

Then,

he turned the gun on himself.

When police investigated his room, they found 23 rifles and one handgun.

They found 14.223 caliber AR-15 type rifles, eight.308 caliber AR-10,

one.308 caliber bolt action, one.38 caliber revolver.

And on the kitchen counter next to his hotel room,

there were four credit cards.

That's really what this story is about.

Not the guns, but the credit cards.

To understand what is coming now, you have to understand

Andrew Ross Sorkin and what he saw when he saw the credit cards.

Listen.

After Parkland,

the shooting in Parkland, and trying to look at the role that banks and credit cards play in these things, I really decided to take a deep dive into this.

The article is called Devastating Arsenals Bought with Plastic and Nari a Red Flag.

It is a New York Times investigation investigation that looks at mass shootings, every single major mass shooting in America since Virginia Tech in 2007.

And it really reveals how credit cards have become such a crucial part of the planning of these massacres in a way that I have to say I did not even appreciate myself.

The article is written by Andrew Ross Sorkin, works for the New York Times.

Now, something tells me he's never fired a gun in his life.

But when he wrote the article, How Banks Unwittingly Finance Mass Shootings in the New York Times,

it's time to pay attention.

He starts by pointing out that there have been 13 shootings that have killed 10 or more people in the last decade, and in at least eight of them, the killers financed their attacks using credit cards: Virginia Tech, Binghamton in 2009, Fort Hood, Aurora, San Bernardino, Orlando, Sutherland Springs, and Vegas.

And he pointed out that over the course of eight months before the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, the shooter opened six new credit card accounts.

Just 12 days before the shooting, he spent $26,532 on a Sigsauer MCX.223 caliber rifle and a Glock 17 9mm semi-automatic pistol and several large magazines.

He also bought thousands of rounds of ammunition, and then he went out and bought a $7,500 ring for his wife that he bought on a jewelry store card.

Should the bank have allowed him to do that?

Because before that month, he spent about $1,150 a month.

The difference was so dramatic that two days before the shooting,

the killer frantically searched Google for credit card unusual spending and credit card reports, all three bureaus.

He searched FBI and why banks stop your purchases.

So should Google have alerted anyone?

The killer in Aurora, Colorado, the movie theater,

spent $11,000 on guns and ammunition, all on a credit card.

The issue now has revealed a split between the banks and credit card companies.

On one side, there are companies that support monitoring as a form of public safety.

Following the shooting in Parkland, Florida, Citigroup adopted a new code of conduct for gun dealers and manufacturers that the bank does business with.

It requires retailers to impose age limit restrictions on gun sales.

That is against the Constitution.

There is no law.

But Citigroup has said, well, you know what?

This is what we want to do as a company.

And have they received any pushback?

from the general population.

Check your credit cards.

Do you have a Citi card?

Do you do business with Citibank?

Do you think the left would be doing business with Citibank if this was reversed?

If Citibank said, we're not going to do any transactions or any financial services with any doctors that will not support abortion?

Do you think the left would have Citibank's attention yet?

CEO Michael Corbat said the policy, quote, is intended to preserve the rights of responsible gun owners like myself while relying on best sales practices to keep firearms out of the wrong hands.

The new policy does not restrict Citigroup customers from using the company's cards from gun purchases.

Bank of America took similar approach.

They stopped giving loans to gun manufacturers.

Overwhelmingly, however, good news is banks and credit card companies have refused to take part in any kind of monitoring.

So you you have Bank of America and Citigroup.

Do you do business with either of those?

Remember, the left, if they were told, no, no, no, it's not the whole doctor thing.

No, it's just if

they say that a minor can have an abortion,

I mean,

after they're 18 or 21, that's fine.

But if they...

If those people are saying they can have an abortion without their parents' permission under 18, why, we're not going to do any financing for that organization.

Do you think the left would put up with that?

Now, even if the banks and the credit card companies agreed to start monitoring purchases, gun sales are tough to track because they many times appear on statements as, you know, sporting goods or retail shop purchases, you know, places like retailer, like Walmart, et cetera, et cetera.

Sometimes discount stores, it'll just be marked variety.

So

who knows what that is?

And then there are stores like Dick's Sporting Goods that imposed restrictions on their gun sales.

How'd that work out for them?

Now, Joseph Moreno, he's a former federal counterterrorism prosecutor, staff member of the FBI's 9-11 Review Commission.

He says this is easy to fix.

He said they have all the infrastructure in place.

They can deal with suspicious activity.

It would just be tweaking it a bit to consider firearm-related information.

And information is the key word.

Information.

Why does Google have anything in your house with a microphone?

For information.

You think you're getting information?

No.

They're getting much more information about you.

Facebook.

It's all about information.

We are living in surveillance capitalism times.

Information is the key word.

Now, there's lots of things that already happen.

For instance, a bank has to report anytime a single person makes a transaction over $10,000.

I'm going to put $10,000 cash into my account.

I'm going to take $10,000 out.

Whether the transaction is legal or not, they have to report it.

And banks must report the transactions over $5,000 if somebody just has a feeling that's suspicious.

There are also laws that restrict gun purchases.

Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, firearms dealers must report if someone buys two or more handguns in a span of five business days.

There's also a lot of official blowback from the idea that the banks could monitor our purchases, effectively compiling a list of all the gun owners.

Last year, John Kennedy, not that John Kennedy, a Republican senator from Louisiana, introduced the No Red and No Blue Banks Act.

The bill would prohibit the federal government from giving contracts to banks that would discriminate against lawful businesses based solely on social

policy considerations.

Even the ACLU has come out against monitoring by credit card companies, saying that those efforts, they are afraid, to prevent mass shootings could infringe on individual rights.

Do you think?

Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the

ACLU, the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, he says, quote,

the implication of expecting the government to detect and prevent every mass shooting is believing the government should play an enormously intrusive role in American life, end quote.

Which brings us back to Andrew Ross Sorkin's New York Times article.

Sorkin doesn't seem convinced by any of this stuff.

He would prefer if the government stepped in and forced credit card companies to start monitoring their customers, or at least the credit card companies that

made that choice of their own volition.

Listen to this and interview with him on PBS.

So right now,

legally, you decide you're going to send $10,000 anywhere.

That gets reported to the government.

Instantly.

Instantly.

Already does.

So we could instantly have reported this person just stockpiled $40,000 worth of weapons and grains.

Absolutely.

Now, he then starts to take it in a strange direction.

By the way, the credit card industry has on its own volition decided that there's certain things they don't want to finance.

So if you want to buy Bitcoin, you can't.

Marijuana, in many states, is legal, you can't.

MasterCard, interestingly, recently went to a website that had some hate speech on it and said, we're no longer going to allow you to use credit card transactions using MasterCard because of this hate speech.

So there are companies that are taking positions, if you will, on some of these things.

And the question is how that can work in relation to guns.

Now, so he's, I guess he's all for the hate speech.

By the way, that hate speech was not hate speech.

That hate speech came from a friend of mine and a friend of this program.

That hate speech was speaking out about the Muslim Brotherhood and not in hateful ways.

A guy who who used to brief Bill Clinton and George W.

Bush on what Islamists really want.

Now he's called a hater.

And so now they're not going to do any transactions for him.

That's hate speech.

Sorkin's article quotes a number of experts who more or less repeat a version of the same thing.

Card credit card companies should bear responsibility for mass shootings.

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