Best of the Program | Guests: Ben Sasse, Pat Gray & Andrew Heaton | 2/1/19

Hey, welcome to Friday.

We've got a couple of things going on.

We had Ben Sass on for a few minutes today.

He was absolutely incredible in this abortion debate.

And on Monday, he's going to be giving a speech to the Senate and introducing a bill and asking them all to vote against infanticide.

It'll be interesting to watch that on Monday.

And I will be here in Dallas for the broadcast.

And then that afternoon, I'm flying to Washington, D.C., to be part of the coverage for the Blaze TV, and I'll actually be attending the State of the Union.

By the way, you can watch that.

It will be free and commercial-free.

You'll be able to find it on YouTube and on Facebook on Tuesday nights starting at 7:30 Eastern Time.

Also, please subscribe to the Blaze and join us.

The next generation of

truth and

entertainment and enlightenment and all of that stuff.

Blazetv.com/slash Beck.

Use the promo code Beck.

Also, Andrew Heaton joins me.

Pat Gray joins me.

We

strangely end up talking about a cucumber truck that was smuggling in what I believe is a

weapon of mass destruction.

The truck does go off the road of the show truck goes off the road just a little bit today, but it's Friday, and I think you'll enjoy it all on today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Glenbeck program.

There's a great article today

at

Glenbeck.com written.

Well, I just,

I want you just to listen to it.

It was written by a friend of mine who you may know, and

I didn't know his story until he wrote to me and he said, Glenn, I'm sick to my stomach today.

There are moments of clarity in all of our lives, and hopefully you experience such a thing more than just once.

But on Wednesday afternoon, on my drive home in Raleigh, North Carolina, I was listening to a recap of the week's news on the radio.

What I heard was that a lawmaker in Virginia had brought forward a bill to expand abortion access and remove restrictions on the procedure currently in place in the state.

The reporter said You'd expect this sort of legislation in New York or California, but it seems out of character for the State of Virginia.

My fingers slowly tightened around the steering wheel.

Audio played of Kathy Tran, a delegate from Fairfax County, explaining the substance of the Repeal Act to her colleagues on the floor.

I don't know about this moment or this bill, and I don't know why it drew out such a strong reaction from me.

After all, the State of New York just passed a si very similar measure only a week ago, and I went on with my day.

But this afternoon, my vision blurred and my stomach tightened.

Something was wrong,

and I could feel the most subtle shock waves going up my arms to my neck, discomfort, and rapid breathing.

I got through the next stoplight and I pulled the car over.

I turned it off, and I just sat there for a few minutes, focusing on my breath.

I've never experienced this.

I think this was a moment of clarity, the realization of a lie.

If you're hearing this,

you need to know the backstory.

Governor Ralph Northam recently joined WTOP Radio in Washington, D.C.

and was asked about the abortion bill dubbed the Repeal Act, which had been causing a stir in the state for a better part of a week.

But one of his answers was, quote, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen.

The infant would be delivered.

The infant would be kept comfortable.

The infant would be

resuscitated if that's what the mother and family desired.

Then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother on what to do.

The bill sponsored by Delegate Kathy Tran of Fairfax County would allow women to get abortions up until the point of birth if their physical or mental health are considered at risk.

To put a fine point on it, Tran was questioned about her bill earlier this week and expressed that it offered no limits on when the abortion could be carried out, including when the mother is dilated and about to give birth.

It reduces the number of doctors required to approve termination from three to one, and it lowers the bar significantly for the severity of the health risk.

Now,

we are talking about the impairment of mental health in addition to the mother's physical health.

What does that even mean?

Well,

making things vague is the point.

Something I didn't see coming in the abortion debate, but I'm guessing pro-lifers probably saw it a million miles back.

Was that

where this was headed

the whole time?

The first time I had the slightest idea, the slightest thought that the case for abortion might expand to having virtually no boundaries was when the discourse on college campuses began to blend mental and physical harm into a single thing.

When is speech violence?

Was a New York Times article in 2017, and it was actually my first hint.

The piece described the science behind the stress and how challenges to the nervous system in the form of hurtful or abusive speech can cause long-lasting physical harm.

And I remember thinking to myself about that talking point in cases of physical harm to the mother.

But I moved on with my day.

On the question of abortion, I have failed the test each time that I can think of for a litany of reasons that all boil down to cowardice.

I believe in God.

I believe God tests us daily in our lives.

On the question of abortion, I have failed the test.

My wife and I are both proud parents of an eight-year-old girl.

She's the light of our lives and brilliant, and I will likely never forgive myself on how I reacted when my then college girlfriend, now wife, came to me and told me she was pregnant.

I was a twenty year old pro-life Republican fair weather Christian, and she was my liberal girlfriend who didn't see the world on my way on just about anything.

My thought process was then, well, obviously she'll handle it and this will go away.

So, with my head down, I asked her if that was her plan.

It was most definitely not.

The idea quite offended her, and she walked out.

I failed the biggest test of my young life.

I like to think I made it right by later stepping up and forming the family that I now have and cherish.

It took a lot of work on both of our parts, but after that, my view on abortion changed to match my previous failure.

I decided that I was pro-choice, because how could I champion the right to life when I turned away from it in the moment of my being tested?

This new view shielded me from another layer of shame, that of hypocrisy.

Gradually, other pressing issues led me away from being conservative to being libertarian, an identification I still hold on to and believe to be correct.

Abortion is still very much in debate in libertarian circles as it has been for quite some time, whereas it's settled for conservatives and progressives.

I found comfort in the hand-wringing and uncertainty of the libertarian viewpoint.

In order to detach myself from the outcome of America's abortion debate, I had to assume three things.

First, that they were sincere in the argument that the survival of the mother was of utmost concern to the pro-choice crowd.

Second, that the valid debate over when life begins wouldn't be allowed by courts to extend past the time of birth.

Third, that while late-term abortions are generally rare and unpopular, the legality of the practice was not going to extend beyond the most progressive corners of America.

The quick rise and fall of the Repeal Act in Virginia unravels all of these things.

I taught myself to to believe about the abortion debate, that it had boundaries, that it was about people trying to defend life in exceptional circumstances, both on the side of advocacy for the unborn and the women carrying them.

But it's simply not true.

And this week, I saw it.

The radicalized left in 2019, supported by a new wave of true believers who consider physical and mental harm to be entirely subjective concepts is not going to stop expanding the religion of choice.

Governor Northam made it clear in his admission that the fates of children could be decided on after the fact of their birth.

This wasn't a slip-up or miscommunication.

It was the mask coming off an ideology of death that had now been mainstreamed.

I just didn't have have the courage and clarity to confront it.

Sitting on the side of the road with the keys in my ignition, I wondered if this is what being convicted by God actually feels like.

I have prayed for countless years for the Spirit to move me in a way it moves some members of my family when all I've ever felt is silence in my faith.

Now, you might say I just had a panic attack.

I would say it was given to me, and I thank God for giving it to me.

Kathy Tran and Governor Northam revealed the sidelines are no longer the place where I belong.

My hope for moderation and wisdom from public officials has not stopped the worst ideas on abortion from being realized and spread.

Eventually, more state legislatures will be faced with similar bills that blur the lines of what divines harm.

David French wrote in the National Review that the onset of anxiety, depression, the fear of postpartum will soon be tried as reasons for young life to be terminated.

He's right.

I started my engine, and I decided, I am now joining the movement to defend the sanctity of life.

If you've ever been on the sidelines on this, I hope you'll now join me.

The best of the Glenbeck program.

Senator U.S.

Senator.

Just a U.S.

Senator.

That's the good thing.

No big deal.

No big problem.

Senator, are you there, sir?

I am.

Okay.

So I'm happy to sit here on wait for a while.

Okay, I am so sorry to make you wait.

No worries.

So I have to commend you for the way you have handled this.

Could we please play the quick quote from Ben Sasse that came out yesterday, please?

Let's be really clear about what we're talking about here.

We're talking about fourth trimester abortion, or what anyone in the normal world calls infanticide.

That's what we're talking about.

And the governor of Virginia has been defending this all day yesterday and again today, going out and trying to equivocate and qualify and then double down and again say he wants to defend this practice, which is infanticide.

Everyone in the Senate ought to be able to say unequivocally that killing that little baby is wrong.

This doesn't take any political courage.

And if you can't say that, if there's a member of this body that can't say that, there may be lots of work you can do in the world, but you shouldn't be here.

You should get the heck out of any calling in public life where you pretend to care about the most vulnerable among us.

I was reading last night about colonial America and abortions, and you sound like Lord Baltimore.

He said that very thing about somebody who was in

government who was involved in an abortion, and he said, get out.

You have no place in public service.

Thank you for that.

Can you tell me

what has happened to us?

What is going on with these abortion bills?

I honestly don't.

I don't know.

I can't understand what is going on in

Virginia, in New York.

I guess there are some other states in New England looking at this crap.

Two others.

This is how far, yeah, this is how far the radical pro-abortion lobby has driven this conversation.

15 years ago, 20 years ago, Bill Clinton's argument was, well, abortion's bad, but we can't make everything bad illegal.

And so we need abortion.

This is Bill Clinton talking.

We need safe and legal, but we want it to be rare.

Now they're talking about keeping a baby comfortable while doctors stand around and have a debate about infanticide.

It is truly bizarre what Governor Northam is out there defending.

So

I want to believe that this is some sort of game that the Democrats are playing to get their side worked up for

the next election.

They're going to turn it into the right is going to just try to take away all right for women uh and women's bodies or that they are just trying to move the Overton window and be so crazy that we're all like, okay, come on, first term, you know, you know, first trimester abortions.

I mean, I think we all agree on that, but I don't think so.

I think this is evil.

I think this has gone.

I think some of these people

who are at the top of the Democratic Party

really do believe what Peter Singer teaches, and that is, you have a right until this child really sees and recognizes that there is a tomorrow, you have a right to kill it.

Yeah, I don't, I'm one of eight people, I think, in the Senate who's never been a politician before, so I'm not going to pretend I'm any good political prognosticator.

I don't know where all these motives come from, but I know this.

I know that the pro-life movement is going to win eventually

because it's on the side of dignity, it's on the side of science, it's on the side of love.

And there's all sorts of legislative stuff we need to do.

I'm the lead sponsor in the Senate for the last three years of the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

We're going to try to move some

expedited floor consideration of that on Monday.

But the most important thing we can do in this movement is continue talking with our friends and our family and women who are going through unbelievably hard circumstances often and keep telling the truth in love because these are babies.

babies, and it's really not that complicated to celebrate human dignity and to talk about these babies.

And we've got Governor Northam out there just cowardly ducking again and again, you know, unwilling to say that it's wrong to leave a newborn baby to die cold and alone.

Senator, this is the first time I've seen politics go like this: where this is, this is not, it doesn't feel like this this is a

campaign kind of thing.

This feels like a turning point in American history.

And I'm a little shocked that more people aren't up in arms about this and aren't standing up, even from the Democratic side, because I don't think the Democratic voter, the voters in Nebraska that vote for Democrats, they don't believe this stuff, but they're being told, and you'll see it online, the social media spin is,

oh, that's not true.

It's not like that in the bills, and that's not what this means.

And it is in the bill.

It is.

What we're talking about here should be so far beyond Republican and Democratic politics.

We're talking about the fact that if you can't say it's wrong to leave a baby to die when that baby survived an abortion,

you have no place in public life.

This is not complicated.

And frankly, now that the Democratic Party's,

some of their leaders, not all of them, but some of their leaders have started to do this, I think every single Democrat in America should have to answer whether or not they're with those little baby girls or whether they're with Governor Cuomo and Governor North.

It frightens me knowing history that even the Germans, the people who voted for Hitler, when they found out infanticide was happening, they stood up against the T4 program.

Then it just was hidden.

But they forced Hitler to say, oh, you're right, we wouldn't do that.

We shouldn't do that.

I mean, those people, they were crazy, and they stood up against it.

And we seem to be kind of quiet about it.

Yeah, I don't think, though, that even Planned Parenthood's PR Army and a national media that's decidedly pro-abortion, I don't think that even that grouping is going to be able to duck the fact that what we're talking about here is infanticide.

I hope so.

When you hear Northam's comments on that radio show yesterday where he says, oh, no, you know, people should know that I'm sure that the baby will be kept warm and comfortable for

the debate about infanticide.

Oh my gosh.

Okay, Senator, I've got a break.

If you have to go, I understand.

If you can, hold on.

I'd like to continue a conversation with you.

But thank you, thank you, thank you for being a voice of reason and once again, standing up and saying the right things.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hi, it's Glenn.

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

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

You can subscribe on iTunes.

Thanks.

You know,

I've heard from people because they don't, you know, I don't listen to sports radio, but I've heard from people that they absolutely hate it when

sports radio starts talking about politics because they know nothing about it and they're idiots

so we have always made it our policy to stick to the things we know for instance science deep science mathematics things like that and of course on on the big game weekend We do talk a little bit about sports because while I don't have real knowledge of sports, we are surrounded by people people who really know it inside and out.

And Andrew Heaton is not one of those people, but welcome to the program.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Good to be here.

You do it.

Sure.

I think it's kind of like I assume that my friends who are parents enjoy hearing about my theories on parenting because I don't have any kids.

And it's a fresh perspective.

I will tell you this.

Sometimes it's the people who aren't involved at all that have the clearest look at it.

Thank you.

I agree.

And that's why I spent this morning coming up with awesome ways to improve American football for the big game.

I lay a couple of these on you?

Sure.

All right, so I think everyone can get behind this.

Okay.

No more referees, only very judicious cheerleaders.

I think that that is, first of all, that's giving props to the cheerleaders.

And second, win for everybody.

I like the cheerleaders.

So they're on a team.

You'd have impartial cheerleaders from Canada.

You'd have cheerleaders who understand the game, but aren't on either team playing.

So you've got like a third team of cheerleaders.

They're now the refs.

They would wear uniforms that are black and white.

But I think that they in Canada play a different kind of football.

That's possible.

I'm going to have to look into that.

I just assume everybody's playing with an X-Japanese bond from the.

So that's what I'm.

All right.

So this next one.

Okay.

I think sports, a lot of it is sublimated warfare.

It's that kind of like, we're going to go fight the other team ships, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And I think football in particular, because it's very, it's about kind of staging your troops.

It's sort of like Napoleonic warfare, right?

So from now on, each team gets a horse.

Everybody gets one cavalry unit.

I think that that would fundamentally alter the game.

So only one horse.

One horse.

You don't have a line of horses.

Anything more than that would be excessive and ridiculous.

One horse, that's the same choice.

Just one horse per team.

If I remember right, I think there was an old Disney movie, like, I don't know, the nutty professor or something like that.

Maybe it had been Son of Flubber, where they had a horse with a helmet

on.

I know I saw.

Maybe I made this up in my head.

And they've got airbuds.

So animals are pretty good at football.

That's what I've learned from Disney.

Now, they wouldn't be catching.

No, no, no.

I think it would be someone.

I mean, I'm not entirely sure what the strategy would be.

I mean, that would be more of a Tom Brady call.

But, you know, presumably, if you're like the

windback or whatever, and it's your job to get the ball from the other guy,

then like, you know, I'd rather have a horse.

And Tom Brady is the coach, right?

He's the quarterback.

He's the quarterback.

However, how would you know?

Because, you know,

there's no costuming that identifies him.

Like, if you're in the Navy, you're like, oh, that guy's a captain.

Look,

he's got those epaulets and things.

Now, it doesn't happen with football, which is why I think that the quarterback should have to wear a cape.

Okay.

All right.

Now, because the team members may not know who the quarterback is, because I know a lot of people in the stands won't know which one is.

Exactly.

I can't tell.

They all look the same to me.

It's not a racial thing.

That's a football thing.

Right, but

maybe it's just for the fans or is it for is the cape to identify, hey, which one of my friends is the quarterback or is the cape for the for the fans that aren't there at practice all the time?

That's a very good question.

You know, I think any team that's worth its salt's probably doing a lot of trust-building exercises.

So if that's the case, chances are you're going to recognize the quarterback.

If I were the coach, I'd be doing that sufficiently.

It's, I think, for the fans, so they can identify them because otherwise, how would you know where the quarterback is?

And they don't, you know, they don't tackle it.

It's always a big deal when when they tackle the quarterback.

Yeah.

And so maybe that's because the other team is confused, which one of you guys could be doing.

That's entirely possible.

Because at that point, you're just going off of hand signals.

Right, so it might make it a little faster.

Yeah, well, and that's another thing, too.

And Tom Brady probably wouldn't last as long because he would have been tackled a lot more.

And this is an actual, this is a real fundamental thing.

No more timeouts.

None of that.

If you watch rugby, rugby, they're like, we're going to do it from six to eight.

And it's just two hours of continuous play.

They get like one timeout each.

No more timeouts in football you don't get to do that anymore unless there's some sort of issue involving horse rights like i could see the spca getting involved or if somebody's trampled by a horse yeah but you know we don't take timeout during war uh so yeah but this isn't real world that's true it's not real world yeah okay fine if someone gets kicked in the head by a horse you get a horse break of like eight minutes to deal with it do you get a penalty if someone is

if the horse is just if you because you know you can't walk behind a horse right don't do that so you would never have the horse be the person that goes down with a football and throws the football between his back legs.

Yeah.

No, that's yeah, for safety reasons, you'd want to avoid that.

Plus, it would be on your team, right?

Right.

So you wouldn't have no incentive to do it.

Right, because the quarterback would get kicked in the head.

Yeah, I think the bigger issue is probably horse steroids.

You just want to make sure that horse is clean.

Sure.

You don't want to have any problems.

Otherwise, a regular horse, a thoroughbred, could look like a Clydesdale.

Right, exactly.

But yeah, you don't want an Appaloosa coming off like a Clydesdale.

Right.

You want it to be, okay.

So another thing, because again, I think this is sub-remitted warfare.

You could have a third team

just watch the game.

So like

this, hold on.

So this coming up big game, it's the Falcons and the Patriots, right?

But let's say you had the Texas Rangers.

Now, I'm aware that the Texas Rangers are a baseball team.

That's fine.

They can come to the game, sit in the stands, and then just charge the field and try and take the ball.

Got another idea.

They got to bring a horse, but if they can do it, they win the game.

Okay, hang on.

I got another idea.

Have you ever played Chinese checkers?

Yeah.

Okay.

Take a football field, okay, left and right, 100 yards.

Okay.

Now, put another football field and put it in the center.

Whoa.

So now you are playing two games

with one ball.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

And you've got them facing off.

Everybody's trying to get that ball, and you can run it in.

two different sorry four different directions oh i like this you can you could totally do that too if you had like really thick plexiglass that was transparent still fun for fans to watch because now you could see like well you got tom brady and the foot soldiers up top and you got the horse units down at the base level you could see what's going on maybe you'd have like a oh no i'm not talking about that i'm talking about it's the same no you take a football field uh-huh and then on the same plane you have another football field yeah yeah i'm just saying you should make the second one transparent so you can see through the first one

no you don't understand this is not that complex well see glenn i'm sorry i'm coming here with legitimate reform ideas and you're just

starting to question yourself.

You're getting into structural.

I was buying into the

cape and the costuming thing because I think

like the Browns, I think it's the Browns.

I'm not sure.

But one of them wears costumes that are, it's like this really bad brown.

It's like a poop brown and a lighter poop brown,

and it's not good.

And I think those costumes are holding them back.

Yeah, I agree.

I also think mascots should be armed.

I think mascots should have some kind of deadly weapon.

I want to clarify, I don't think we should relax any murder laws, still against the law to kill people, but you would know that the mascot has a loaded gun.

And every once in a while, the camera would come in and you'd just see the mascot staring at Tom Brady.

And you're like, I think that mascot's thinking about killing Tom Brady.

And that adds a really interesting

psychological dimension to the game.

And it might be better because we don't want to have, you know, the NFL doesn't want any more trouble.

Yeah.

They just want to stay away from guns, maybe like a giant mace.

Oh, that'd be cool.

Yeah, that'd be neat.

Yeah, I'd totally go for that.

And that kind of fits with a cavalry thing more.

And you could, I mean, instead of the shoulder pads, why not just put them in armor?

That, okay.

I would, if, if Stu called me and he's like, hey, I got tickets to the big game, you want to come?

I'd be like,

will I be able to see the commercials from the stadium?

That's exactly how I would.

If not, I don't know.

But if Stu were like, hey, I'm going over to the

football field.

There's a bunch of guys in armor that are just going to wail on each other with maces.

I'd be like, yeah, I'll go watch that.

I'll watch a melee combat.

Sure.

I've changed my mind because I've realized that what we've just created is the medieval times.

Yeah,

I don't like that.

You got a birthday coming up.

Can we go get it for your birthday?

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

This is an amazing story.

According to U.S.

Customs and Border Protection, yesterday, a cucumber truck.

I already hate this story, Glenn.

Bringing in cucumbers.

Yeah, we got enough.

Thank you.

Are you by any chance, do you hate Andrew?

Heaton is joining me today.

Do you hate salads as much as I do?

Yeah, pretty much.

And cucumbers just suck the flavor out of everything.

And I had to grow up dealing with them a lot because dad, it's easy to grow cucumbers.

So rather than growing delicious, like you grow tomatoes, pretty good tomatoes, but you'd grow these massive cucumbers.

And we'd leave them, we'd go to our neighbors' houses, we'd pass them out, and oh, thank you.

Then the following day we'd come back, we'd like more cucumbers.

And like, we don't need them.

And so we would spend the evening putting them on the door like an orphan and ringing the doorbell and running away.

So I associate cucumbers with unnecessary labor and lack of flavor.

Right, okay.

So you, I mean, you spend time in England.

Yeah.

Is a cucumber sandwich really just bread with cucumbers on it?

Yeah, I think that there's butter or something.

That's pretty good for a horrible English cuisine.

No, by English standards, though, that's pretty good.

Because Scottish cuisine is just basically carnival food with sheep in it.

Like, take a deep fat fry, like deep-fried Mars barn to deep-fried sheep.

English food is just boiled.

And so the cucumber sandwich, once you're over there, you're well, oh, that sounds pretty good, actually.

You're going to put a dead fish in a newspaper with some overcooked French fries.

I'll eat the cucumber sandwich.

Okay, all right.

Okay, I look at it.

Anyway, so this this cucumber truck is coming across the border, and

the canines go crazy, and they find what I would describe as a weapon of mass destruction.

They find 254 pounds

of fentanyl.

That's a lot of fentanyl.

Yeah, it's enough fentanyl.

If you have prescription from a doctor, fentanyl is an end-of-life hospice-only drug.

Okay.

It is only given out in the most significant and end-of-life scenarios.

Or in my case, they gave it to me because no drugs work on me.

Or your doctors didn't like you.

That's a very

possibility.

It was up in the northeast.

But

I had a fentanyl patch for three days, and I took it off in the middle of the night because I didn't even know what it was.

I'd never even heard of fentanyl.

But I knew whatever that was is going to kill me

and took it off and then read the box the next day.

This is how powerful fentanyl is.

Think of a fentanyl patch as like

you know, one of those big Bandaid butterfly

bandages that are kind of, you know, like an inch and a half.

I get into a lot of bar fights.

So I'm

looking at myself.

All right.

So think of it a fentanyl patch about like that, okay?

And it just has some fentanyl on the

pad.

That's what you put on.

And if you put it on without rubber gloves and you touch it with one hand and then touch it with another hand, you could get a double dose of it and it can kill you.

Okay.

Okay.

That's how powerful this is.

So, like, like on a scale of like Advil to fentanyl,

fentanyl is like at least three times as powerful as Advil.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's

follow the directions very carefully.

Okay, cool.

So 254 pounds.

To put this into perspective, 254 pounds of fentanyl is enough for 57 million Americans to overdose and die on.

Okay.

254.

254 pounds of fentanyl.

57 million Americans could be dead from that.

That is a weapon of mass destruction, is it not?

Yes.

I mean,

presumably they weren't trying to weaponize it, right?

Well, no, they were not trying to weaponize it.

Maybe they were going to Canada.

Maybe they were just passing through.

Yeah,

may I make this case?

Okay.

Are you familiar with the opium wars?

England and China.

Tell me what you know about the opium wars because I knew nothing about it.

So if you don't know anything about it, that's fine.

But tell me what you think you know about the opium war.

So,

the British Empire was helpfully going around the world, organizing people's things for them and building railroads and infrastructure.

Sure.

And they happened to make a stop-off in China.

And they and the, I think the Chinese basically were like, hey, quit selling us opium.

And the British were like, no, we're going to keep selling you opium.

So they went to war with them to force the Chinese to buy their opium.

Okay.

That's my vague recollection of when I was in England.

Kind of.

I think that's how they explained it to you.

Kind of.

That is like saying

the founding fathers all got together and said,

you know, we just want to be able to not have tea time anymore.

And so they founded Canada.

You're close.

Okay.

But not exactly the ballpark.

These are the ball terms.

So here's what the opium wars were.

There was a,

I think, a blockade

on

China, and there was a trade war going on between China and England.

I'm going to butcher this.

So I am also kind of, it ends up with the Declaration of Independence being

signed in Montreal.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

But I'm closer.

Maybe it was signed at Niagara Falls.

So

I got to say the Declaration of Independence would be so much more pretentious if it had been signed in Montreal.

It would be terrible.

There'd be lots of French in it.

Right.

It would be awful.

Yeah.

It would have been in two languages.

Yeah.

We would not have gotten very far.

Anyway,

you are not good for my ADD, man.

So what happened is there was a trade war.

England needed to break it up.

And so what they did is they went to India and said, sell us opium.

So

they sold the opium.

The Indians sold the opium to the British, who then took it to the border of China.

And the Chinese wanted, the Chinese people wanted the opium.

Why was England selling the opium to the Chinese?

Because

they knew they could get them addicted and it would weaken them.

So the Chinese were fighting back because the Chinese.

This makes me rethink the British Empire.

It doesn't seem like they're

just helpfully buying telegraph lines everywhere.

No, and so that's what the war was over.

They said, stop bringing this illegally across our border and selling it to our people.

Well, isn't that what Mexico is doing to us?

I mean, is the state of Mexico doing it or are there narco-traffickers?

The narco-traffickers.

Okay.

However, if you heard about the border, remember, what did they say when Donald Trump said, all this fentanyl, all these opioids are coming across the border?

What did they say?

Very orange.

We don't get much opioid.

We don't get much fentanyl.

We don't get that.

First of all, it doesn't come, most of it doesn't come across the border.

It comes into our ports from Mexico.

But the biggest importer is China.

So

China is now making opioids and fentanyl and doing what the English did to us.

We're not even the same country anymore.

We broke up with them, China.

You should send it to England.

That's fair.

I mean, that's how history works.

Wait, hold on, wait, wait.

Would history work.

With the fentanyl, though, though, did it come through, was this stopped at a checkpoint or were they trying like

because then that would not really deal with the wall, right?

Correct.

Okay.

Correct.

This did go over a checkpoint.

But what I find interesting is

if that's coming over a checkpoint, how much is coming over elsewhere?

Because you wouldn't think you'd be 254 pounds of fentanyl in a cucumber truck.

That's worth a lot of money.

I don't think I'm bringing it across the border.

I think I would try to get that across the border, not in a cucumber truck.

Yeah, that was

your move right there.

No one in America is going to welcome a cucumber truck coming up.

Right, we're going to put it in an empanada truck, I would have waved it through.

Thanks, guys.

Come on in.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Our

state of the union

coverage on Tuesday at 7.30 Eastern comes from New York and Dallas, and we have all kinds of great coverage, and it'll be different coverage, I'm thinking, because you strangely are helping in the coverage.

I am.

I think, as you know, I am now the junior assistant Washington correspondent.

So

it's weird that you guys specified.

I'm literally below anyone that works for the Blaze in D.C.

I am the lowest ranking member.

However, you did give me a microphone and a camera.

Right.

And I went out there and I give it the old college try.

And

there are a lot of things at the State of the Union address that I feel I'm able to see that you guys aren't.

Like, did you know in the last State of the Union address that Justin Dimash kept throwing Twinkies up into the gallery?

Well, that's the kind of stuff I'm looking for.

I did not know that.

It may or may not be true, but I'm pretty sure it's true.

Right.

And you actually, I've seen the photographic evidence,

strangely, that

the members, I don't know if they're members of Congress or they were just strangely there somehow, but

there were some people sitting in the seats

in Congress that would not stand for the president.

And that was.

This is something that I just can't comment.

I try and be fairly forgiving, Glenn, as you know, with politics.

But, you know, when the president stands up and says American sandwiches are some of the best things in the world, and everybody stands up, Democrats, Republicans, stand up, and you know who's not standing up?

Bears.

Congressional bears just hanging out, just giving these weak, limp wristed clapping like a golf clap.

I'm so unemployed.

You're going to bring that to our coverage.

That's the kind of stuff you can expect from me commenting on the State of the Union.

Not what you'll expect from the Washington, D.C.

Bureau, which will bring you

non-bear coverage.

No, they're all fixating on what the president says and what it means and all that kind of stuff.

I'm keeping

my eyes are on the ball.

So, very different coverage on theblaze TV.com/slash Beck.

Go there now.

You'll be able to see this.

It's, I believe, commercial-free, and it is going to be happening all night.

And you'll be able to watch it on YouTube, on our Facebook page, at Blaze TV.

And you'll also, as a subscriber, be able to get it as well.

I'm actually going this year.

I have avoided it like the plague.

I have been invited every year to go, and I never taken them up on it.

I wouldn't think that you would really like the idea of the State of the Union address, right?

I hate the State of the Union.

Because you're more of.

I get the impression you're more of a Jeffersonian than a Woodrow Wilson devotee.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I get that impression from you.

Yeah,

so I don't like it.

I don't like the pomp and circumstance.

I don't like the,

you know, Mr.

Speaker.

I hate that.

I hate that.

Do you know how to do it in the House of Lords with the Queen?

Have you ever looked into this?

Because that's what we're doing, by the way, is we're doing the address to the House of Lords.

We now have royalty.

Yeah, it's absolutely

the imperial presidency.

I like the British version because I think it's very healthy to have the head of state not have power.

I like separating reverence from power, so I think the British have figured that out pretty well, and I think we should make Betty White or Kelsey Grammar the monarch of America and just not leave them any power.

What the Queen does is they have ⁇ this is part of the whole thing.

The Queen has a royal hostage during her parliament address every year that just hangs out at Buckingham Palace.

That way, if Parliament captures the Queen, they can murder that member of Parliament.

She goes to the, well, that used to be how it was, right?

Actually, yeah, yeah, no, literally, because after the Glorious Revolution, there's this power dynamic shift where it used to be that the king could dismiss parliament and that kind of stuff.

And now Parliament's like, no, at the end of the day, we can and will kill you.

In fact, they keep the death warrant for Charles I

in the dressing room the queen hangs out in before she addresses parliament.

That's always there.

It's the original death warrant, just to remind whoever the queen is at the time that we have and will kill again if you really cross us.

Holy cow.

And she has the hostage.

She comes to Parliament.

There's this ceremony where she walks over to the House of Commons and prepares to enter it.

They have to slam the door in her face.

Like that's part of the pomp is you are not a member of the House of Commons.

You're a lord.

You cannot enter this.

You can't pass this threshold, which is why they do it in the House of Lords.

And then she reads a prepared speech or whatever, and then they all eat cucumber sandwiches.

That is insane.

But again, she didn't have any power, which is why I'm fine with that.

No, I'm not, because then what are you paying for?

I think that we have, as human beings, we have this weird fixation where we want to have social betters and then we crave their approval.

And I'm not sure we can get rid of that.

So I just want to funnel it into something that is not,

it doesn't have actual power.

If the queen could also set the tax rate, I would abhor that.

And I would be an English Republican.

But as it is,

I think it's cute to have ceremonial voice.

Right.

Okay, but she's been a good queen.

Yeah.

You know, I don't don't think that that's going to, when, when Charles comes in, I think everybody's going to look at

their checkbook and go, what the hell do we have this guy around for?

I don't think they'll, yeah, that could be.

You know, actually, if he becomes king, I think Australia might very well become a republic.

It's true.

If you talk to Australians about this, they're like,

we'll become a republic if Charles, I can't do it in Australia.

If Charles comes, we'll be a republic.

But if they skip Charles and go straight to William, they'll stay a monarchy.

All right.

Which is a weird thing to me.

Which is exactly what I think the queen is hoping.

The queen has only been hanging on because she's like, I've got this son.

I don't even think he's mine.

I swear I don't remember his birth.

So she wakes up, everybody goes, Is Charles alive?

Yes.

I must carry on with this time.

Right.

That's what she's doing.

You know,

she would have been dead 20 years ago if her son wasn't Charles.

Did you read about Prince Philip flipped a car two weeks ago?

That's the Queen's husband.

Prince Philip, 97 years old, and he flipped his Land Rover,

which, well done.

But also, why is he driving at all?

Shouldn't he have a chauffeur?

Like, get on this, England.

Get some crowdsourcing done.

Well, we took the keys away from my grandfather.

Yeah.

I mean, somebody should take the keys away from Philip.

I was talking to my dad of a year or two ago, and he was describing his grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, Grandma Bickel.

And he's like, oh, she was a tough old bird, Grandma Bickel.

I mean, she would, you know, she went blind in 92, quit driving in 94, picture of the town.

And I was like, wait, what?

What was the chronology of that?

Like, apparently, Grandma Bickel, like, just like she memorized all the turns to get to the grocery store and refused to quit driving after she went functionally blind.

And they would, I guess, like, the town people in Alva, Oklahoma, would just come out and be like, Ethel's driving.

And everyone would scatter and go back into their houses.

So I assume that's what they're doing with Philip.

Well, it could be.

Yeah.

Could be.

I don't think he's probably out on the roads.

Which, if I can plug it, Chad Prather, beloved funny man here at the Plays Now, he came on last week.

We did a full episode of my podcast that was a biopic of Prince Philip.

So it's just an hour of me talking to the opposite of Prince Philip, which is Chad Prather,

the opposite of British aristocracy about how it works.

It was a fun episode.

So I know somebody who has met Prince Philip before,

and

it was in a military setting.

And

Prince Philip came up, and it was, I don't even know what they have, you know,

I don't know, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts as their army.

Who knows?

Right.

And so, you know, the Boy Scouts were, they're probably more like Cub Scouts, and the Girl Girl Scouts were there.

And Prince Philip said,

what do you do?

And he said to the woman, and she said, well, I'm a physician.

And he honestly said, he drew back and said, good God, we do not have women doctors in this country now, do we?

And this was like, what, last April?

Yeah, it was like two years ago, five years ago.

This is what

people don't understand about Prince Philip, he was born in like 1937.

Yeah.

No, not earlier than that, because he's, because he was, you know, served in World War II.

So I'm sure he was born in like 1917 or something.

Coming up on it, actually, like 1921.

Imagine if you are already a British cartoon character version of a rich person, and then you marry the queen, and no one ever expects you to change for the rest of your life.

And so you're a cartoon character in 1945, and that's it.

He's a time capsule from 1945.

He really is, because nobody's going to tell him.

No, and that's why whenever he goes to country, he went to Barbados and just opened up with,

you're all descended from pirates, yes?

Like, that was his opening line, going to Barbados, was to insult the entire people.

Wouldn't it be great, though, to be like that?

That'd be great.

To be that untethered to do that.

To be just, I don't care.

Yeah.

What do I say?

You're aware that I'm sleeping with the queen, right?

And I can say whatever I want.

Yes,

I don't care.

I'm going to die probably in the next two years.

I think that's what we have in Donald Trump.

I think we have like a Prince Philip that doesn't care.

He doesn't care.

He's not royalty, but kind of, I mean, he sits in gold chairs a lot.

He's doing, yeah, he sits in gold chairs.

He's got the imperial presidency's already there for him.

And I don't think he cares.

I don't think he cares.

I don't think he cares at all.

So anyway, he's going to get up at the State of the Union and

it should be interesting to watch.

I'm going and we'll be covering it live from Washington, D.C.

Are you going to bring like a bingo card that you make in advance of things he might say and like play with other people in the game?

You know, we might want to pass him out.

We should.

We should.

I will say that would be a very surreal moment for anyone in the gallery of like, did Glenn Beck just pass you a bingo card?

Right.

And it says, like, America is great, the wall, things like that.

Right.

But what will be really surreal is if you're watching at home on Tuesday and you hear somebody from the gallery go, bingo,

that will Glenn, I will give you $50 if you yell Play Free Bird.

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