Best of the Program | Guests: Blaze TV Personalities?| 1/9/19

Hello and thank you so much for tuning in to the podcast or downloading the podcast today.

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Now, today's podcast, we've got a ton to cover.

Yep, a lot of hosts from Blaze TV are on today talking about their different perspectives.

And that's the cool thing about Blaze TV.

Kind of all the voices from across the conservative spectrum.

And if you go to BlazeTV.com/slash Beck, use the promo code Blackbeck, you'll save some money on your subscription.

But we had a really interesting group of people today.

Eric Bowling,

Pat Gray, Andrew Clavin, Steve Dace, Matt Kibbe,

Stephen Kent, John Miller, Ben Ferguson.

And you're going to hear everybody.

And it is, it's fascinating to hear the highlights now from all of those voices across the spectrum.

Yeah, it was interesting to see that

across everybody we talked to.

Some people were more positive on the speech than others and the approach than others.

But everybody who was positive had one or two things they weren't comfortable with.

And everybody who was negative on the speech had a couple things they really liked.

You know, I mean, it was interesting to see the different voices.

And I think that's kind of, you know, what we try to do today is bring a bunch of different people together to kind of hear all of those thoughts.

There's much more in common than difference.

And you'll hear it on today's podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Glenbeck program.

This is the Glenbeck program.

So last night, the president gave a speech from the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.

The first time he has addressed the nation from that, he did a, I thought, a really good job, really solid speech.

Then Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, which looked like something that, I don't know, came from South Park, quite honestly.

They responded, but I want to get with Eric Bowling, who

has deep relationships at the White House and possibly can give us some insight on this and get his opinion on the speech and its effectiveness.

Welcome to the program, Eric Bowling.

Hey, Glenn, thanks for having me back.

You bet.

I'm sitting at the Trump Hotel bar last night, as I do every Tuesday and Wednesday for the show.

And

they lower the music.

And what's typically on the screens is one CNN, one Fox, one Fox Business, one ESPN.

They lower the volume on everything, and they play the speech full volume in the whole Trump lobby.

A lot of supporters here.

And, you know, it was a few minutes.

I think he was making his case for what could be his declaration of a national emergency to get some of the wall funding.

So look,

I think he's being told, he's being advised by Kellyanne and Shine and Sarah Sanders, and it is kind of a team advisory panel

about what to do with this.

I understand he didn't want to do the speech, and I understand he didn't really necessarily want to go to the Texas border.

He feels those are a little bit more,

I don't know, photo-oppish than

any substantive action.

But

he's entrenched.

He's dug in.

He's not going to give up without a fight.

So tell me, Eric,

the story that he had lunch with all of the anchors and he said, you know, this is a photo op and I really didn't want to do it.

It's not going to make a difference.

Is that story true then?

Well, I mean,

I would think it is.

I read it as you did.

And, you know, when you have a room full of journalists, an off-the-record

comments tend to become leaked.

And so I guess it would be true.

But,

you know, I tend to agree with him.

I don't think last night necessarily moved the needle.

I think Trump's base, people who've supported him from the beginning, want to see a wall built.

They want to see him threaten to shut or continue to shut down the government until they get funding for the wall.

And the people who didn't vote for him or don't like him, liberals or anti-Trumpers or whomever, didn't come to his side by watching that, nor did they become any more emboldened by watching Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer really look ridiculous.

That was weird.

That was just

going around

comparisons, you know, to what they look like.

It is, it is actually terrible.

Let me just throw one thing at you, Glenn.

Um, 2019 requests for foreign aid budget:

27.7 billion dollars.

That includes 3 billion for Israel, you know, a billion for Jordan.

You know, people like me, and maybe libertarians like you, would say, well, if we're willing to spend almost 30 billion dollars handing out money to foreign countries, is $5 billion,

whether you think it's effective or not, is $5 billion

really a big deal to protect our southern border, even if half or a third of the country believes it needs to happen?

No,

it's really not.

This is a ridiculous.

I think this is a ridiculous argument.

And it's coming at

a ridiculous time.

The time to fight this was

in the first year or two.

Now we're sitting here and everybody's digging in because we're approaching an election.

I don't think the Democrats are going to give on this.

Why do you have any idea why we didn't fight for the wall like this sooner?

Yeah, yeah, because you had Paul Ryan

as Speaker of the House, and Paul Ryan was never a pro-Trump, never saw things the same.

Look, this wall funding, this wall, this wall funding, this whole debate is all political.

I mean, you and I have both talked about how many times Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Obama, Clinton, Feinstein have all been on record on tape saying that they're for stronger borders and stronger immigration policy.

This is all about politics.

In fact, you know, Schumer is willing to do $25 billion if he got what he wanted in DACA.

So this is all BS politicking.

And Trump's not one of the, he's clearly one of the most hated politicians in D.C.

So they're going to hold out on their side until someone blinks.

My guess is that I'm going to just go out and limb and say, I don't think he's, I mean, I don't know that the best route is to declare a national emergency, but find the funding, find $3 billion somewhere.

I mean, we have a $4 trillion budget, $3 billion.

They blink and lose $3 billion

on some things.

Just find it

or find something where, you know, we saved $3 billion on the

renegotiated DAPT.

And guess what?

We found $3 billion and Mexico paid for it too.

Play one of those gimmicky games that politicians on both sides of the aisle have played for 247 years.

And then we move on and

TSA can come back to work and we can feel safe flying again and all the other stuff.

Eric, have you noticed the difference in the media?

I'm struck by when Republicans, quote-unquote, shut down the government several years ago over something like Planned Parenthood, the argument was, why don't Republicans just give in on a few hundred million or a billion dollars because we have to get this government open?

Now that it's one little thing that the Democrats could easily just give in on and get all the government funded,

The pitch from the press is the exact opposite, that it's the Republicans' fault because they won't give up on their one thing.

It's fascinating how they reverse these things.

Yeah, but don't forget, when you're on that side, you go, can you believe they won't just give up on this $5 billion?

So, look, I stink, and this is this, you know, and I'm glad I'm always, I'm a 100% honest person.

I think Trump is making a mistake, keeping the rest of the government closed.

I think what he should do is open the rest, let

Homeland Security fight this fight and just let the homeland.

Now, honestly, I know what he's doing.

He's using the other agencies, kind of holding him hostage a little bit because a bigger package is harder to fight with.

But I think to open the open the rest so we don't have 800,000 people who aren't getting paychecks.

Maybe we have 30,000 that aren't getting paychecks for now and fight the battle

at the border, literally where it should be fought.

And

he'll relinquish some leverage, but it would be more more true, I guess, to me, for me, for being a base supporter.

That's what the fight's really about.

Host of America

on Blaze TV every night, Eric Bowling, talking to him.

One last question.

Do you think the national emergency talk, where did that come from?

Because everyone was expecting him to declare a national emergency or to threaten the national emergency, and I was just going to do that.

Is that off the table?

Was that ever on the table?

No, no, no, I think it's still on the table.

In fact, you know, a good friend of mine, Jonathan Swan, who is a reporter for Axios, but also has excellent sources inside the White House.

I'll just let you know, I talk to the White House a lot, right?

I've called them and emailed them the last few days, and I haven't been, no one's returned my call.

I mean, I get emails back saying, hey, sorry, we were really swans.

We can't talk right now.

So they're keeping it very tight-lit.

But Swan, who's got very good access inside, good sources, says that the national emergency is not off the table.

My gut is, based on all the reporting that we've seen in the last 12 hours, that's where Trump wants to go with it.

His advisors are probably saying, hold off.

Let's try

9 o'clock news conference, 9 o'clock present address from the Ovo.

Let's try going to the border to gain some support.

My guess is Trump is still willing to pull that nuclear option if need be.

And again, he marches to the beat of his own drum.

They don't listen to anyone else, but he's probably trying, exhausting all other avenues first.

So it might happen.

And I, Glenn, I think it's a mistake to do that.

I think he'd be better off opening the rest of government state than fight the border, battle at the border with the DHS.

Couldn't agree with you more.

Eric, thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Eric Bowling.

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

Mr.

Andrew Clavin joins us on the Glenbeck program.

Andrew, how are you, sir?

I'm good.

How are you doing?

Good.

So

what's the view from the state of California where you have your new governor saying, hey, we're going to welcome everybody?

Well, that's right.

In California, we're going to welcome everybody.

In New York City, they're not going to pay for the health care of everybody, no matter what their immigration status is.

So it really, it's fair to ask, what is the overall belief that Trump is putting forward, and what's the overall belief that the Democrats are putting forward?

Trump made a speech last night that we were told was going to be all lies and fear-mongering.

And it was all lies and fear-mongering, but not from Trump.

Trump was very direct.

He was very factual.

He was very controlled.

And the Democrats...

are basically talking this mealy-mouthed, you know, moral language that doesn't have any real meaning when it comes to securing the border.

So I think it's just fair to ask, what's the end game?

And I think the end game with Donald Trump, it seems to me, for whatever his personal flaws are, he is putting forward a very rational case that a country has a right to control its border, that people who cross the border illegally are committing a crime and more crimes will follow.

That's a perfectly valid argument and that a wall would work, which is absolutely true.

What are the Democrats really saying?

They're saying, let's do things that won't exactly work.

Let's spend money on things that we've shown to be ineffective because they want these guys coming over into the country.

They think they're future Democrats.

They think that the idea of compassion is going to sell to minority voters who are already here.

And they're not really thinking about the good of the country.

I just thought it was embarrassing.

I thought the Democrats embarrassed themselves last night.

And everything is made worse.

I mean, this is the big point for me.

Everything is made worse by the fact that the corporate media is simply now a spokesperson, a unified spokesperson for the Democrats.

I agree.

It's very hard to have a rational conversation when this immense corporate megaphone is only selling propaganda for one side.

I have no problem with there being two parties in this country that disagree, but I have a serious problem when ABC and CBS and NBC and CNN and the New York Times and the Washington Post, under the guise of fact-checking, are essentially checking Trump's opinions versus the Democrats' opinions and saying the Democrats' opinions are right.

I think that that is so distorting to our conversation.

It makes normal people get angry and overreact, and it means that the Democrats can say anything they want and basically feel that they are wearing armor.

Nobody can touch them because the press will cover it up.

And I just think, you know, for all of Trump's flaws, all the hyperbole, all the kind of playing fast and loose with the facts,

he's not half as bad as the press is.

And he's 100% right about them to slap him around.

You know, I'm

an absolutist when it comes to the First Amendment.

I don't think the government should touch the press, but I think the press needs to reform itself.

I really do.

I think they are being very damaging to

the country's conversation.

I don't think they're going to have any credibility left in

a couple of years.

By the time we finish with the 2020 election, I just think it's over.

They're just not going to have any credibility except for those who are playing the media, or I'm sorry, the politics role.

If you're on the side of the Democrats and you are really actively engaged in that,

you'll gravitate towards the press still.

But I don't know anybody who's watching it anymore.

Do you, Andrew?

You know, I do know when I go to New York and I talk to the liberals, I talk to my family that was very liberal.

I always, whenever I read the New York Times now, I find myself thinking, who believes that?

And then I remember, I know people who believe it, you know, who pick up the New York Times and think this is the news, or as they used to say, this is the way it is.

And it really is shameful.

I mean, I was looking at their fact check of the President's speech, and it was everything they could do to pick out some little thing that wasn't exactly 100% what they would say it was, and then call them a liar.

I mean, the Washington Post was running headlines that said things like, well, he says there are hundreds of thousands of criminals coming over, but really they're being charged with all kinds of crimes, so it has to be put into context.

I thought, no, it doesn't.

He was just telling the truth.

You know, you can slam, it's so easy to slam Trump because of the way he speaks and the loose way he speaks with facts.

But when he's doing a good job and the press doesn't say, yeah, that speech was pretty much accurate and expressed his point of view, and here's the other point of view, they just make fools of themselves.

I think, Andrew, that

it's like if you talk to somebody who says McDonald's makes nothing good.

There's just nothing good.

And you say, hang on just a second.

Have you had their french fries?

Yes, and they're horrible.

I just dismiss them.

You can say, oh my gosh, this is horrible and this is horrible, but they make a great French fry.

Then you have credibility.

The press will never, ever give, in this case, Donald Trump, the McDonald's of presidents, the credit for french fries.

When he makes something right, when he does something good, they still decimate him.

And they're posing as the kind of voice of the conscience of America.

They're posing as the people who deliver the facts to America.

And, you know,

whenever I hear right-wingers go over the line and start to say angry stuff and start to overreact to the way they see the world, I just know it's because they are surrounded.

They're surrounded by this noise that the press throws up of Democrat talking points.

And why shouldn't it make people crazy?

Why shouldn't 64 million people people go out and just say, you know what, I'm sending a guy to Washington who's going to tell these people where to stick it?

So no.

Why shouldn't they feel like that?

Did you see anybody fact-check the fact that the president wants a border wall that is expensive and ineffective?

That's what they said.

Expensive and ineffective.

Well, if it's expensive at $5 billion, why did a year ago Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the Democrats offer $30 billion

in border security for the wall itself?

Did you hear anybody point that out?

Nobody pointed it out.

In fact, they tried in the New York Times, they tried to make it sound as if Trump were exaggerating when he said Chuck Schumer has supported a wall numerous times.

He has.

So is Nancy Pelosi.

So did Barack Obama.

So did Dianne Feinstein.

They have all been in favor of some kind of barrier.

Why?

Because when you put up a wall, it keeps people out.

It works every time.

It's so simple and so basic.

And it's just the fact that it's Trump's promise.

They really are just now so deranged by the presence of Trump.

He has driven them all so insane that they will, seriously, if he said that he liked air, they would stop breathing.

They've really gone that far.

Last question.

I spoke to Eric Bowling this morning, who

has a lot of connections in the White House.

He said

that

he believes it's true that the president thought this would be ineffective, was only doing this because Shine and everybody else told him to.

He said he believes he's going to use the national emergency, which Eric said, I was surprised by this, was wrong and he didn't want that to happen.

Do you buy into that?

And should the president use emergency powers?

Well, I don't think he should, but it's really amazing how much of the news about Trump is news about what the news people think that Trump is going to do.

A lot of the sources talking from the Oval Office are people who think they're smarter than the President, that they're the typical kind of underling who thinks that their boss, who works on his gut, is an idiot, where they went to a good school and they really know the truth, and they're leaking out stuff saying, ah, Trump is a fool, Trump is this and that.

Trump has a good gut.

He actually does have a good sense of what he can do politically and what what should be done politically.

He's pretty good at that, you know, despite the fact of the way he talks.

And I'm just really, really distrustful of source news out of the Oval Office right now.

I think it is very distorted, and the press is very gullible with it.

Andrew Clavin from DailyWire.com, you can watch him every day.

It's always good to talk to you, Andrew.

Love talking to you, Glenn.

Thank you.

You bet.

Bye-bye.

The best of the Glenn Bank program.

Hi, it's Glenn.

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Thanks.

Ben Ferguson now.

Ben Ferguson joins us on the Glen Beck program.

How are you doing, Ben?

Good morning, sir.

How are you?

I'm good.

So I'm anxious to hear what

a millennial thinks about the president's speech last night and how you believe this is being processed today.

Did it make any difference?

I think it can make a small difference.

I think what the president needs to do now is actually more important than last night.

Last night was a reminder to the country, a reconnect with the country about what this issue is about.

It's not just about an identity wall with Trump's name on it, which is Democrats have done a brilliant job of turning this issue into.

This is about his ego, it's about his obsession with the wall, it's about Donald Trump.

And what the president did lay out last night, I thought, was actually really smart.

He talked about how this is an issue for safety, especially of women.

Remember, conservatives need to challenge Democrats on this.

Democrats have, for my entire lifetime, said they are the party of women.

Women are being abused at the border.

One in three are sexually assaulted coming into this country.

Women are being abused, illegal immigrants and American citizens by illegal immigrants in this country.

And I think the president needs to take it to the Democrats and that and say, where are you?

You're the party that claims that you always are right on women's rights.

How are you not protecting these women?

I think the second thing the president mentioned last night, which he needs to now really go sell the American people, especially when he's at the border, is the issue of drugs.

You look at drugs in this country, and there are a lot lot of undecided, middle-of-the-road people that aren't hard Trump supporters or hard Democrat supporters that have been affected by family members who have died of overdoses of drugs, fentanyl, cocaine, heroin.

All of those are coming across our southern border.

And I think that's an issue where the president can win big time with younger people, millennials, and with people that maybe don't pay that much attention to politics and say, this is not, take me out of it.

Take my name off this wall.

This is not about a wall.

This is about drugs.

This is about overdoses.

This is the same issue that I talked about with prison reform and actually appeal to people on that issue.

And then the last one is, I think the president needs to talk about the hypocrisy and expand on it even more of how Democrats are now somehow obsessed with these 800,000 government workers who are not going to get paid right now.

Mass majority of them, if not all of them, are going to get paid for not working during this time when they're on furlough.

They're going to get their money back.

That doesn't happen in the real world, by the way.

But the hypocrisy of the Democrats on this economic issue.

Democrats don't care about the American worker.

If they did, they would have been fighting to secure the border so that Americans would not be underpaid and undercut by illegal immigrant work.

That those that are not fully employed, but part-time employed because they're undercut by illegal immigrant workers, they would have been protecting and defending them.

They would have been protecting and defending the American workers who have lost jobs because of illegal immigrant workers.

I mean, these are issues that have nothing to do with just the flat, simple issue of millions of people coming across the border illegally and how we need this wall.

And I think the president's now got to go out there.

He's got to sell it and break it down into these categories because when you do that,

it basically brings new attention to the issue or a reminder of what is coming across the border.

And then it's not just Trump and his quote wall.

And again, I give credit to the Democrats.

They've done a fabulous job of turning this into an ego-driven idea when, in reality, it's the idea that got the president to the White House, and it's an idea that Democrats themselves, Bill Clinton, Obama, Hillary Clinton, I mean, even you've seen the videos, you've heard the audio, Glenn, of Schumer, hardcore on illegal immigration reform.

The only thing that changed is that Donald Trump is now in favor of the wall, and the Democrats hate Donald Trump, and anything Donald Trump's in favor of, the Democrats will oppose.

Talking to Ben Ferguson from Blazetv.com, you can see his show on the Blaze TV.

Ben, what do you think the right approach is here when you're selling this to America?

Because there's a couple stats between

the overdoses being more than the Vietnam War deaths in a year.

I mean, that's a fascinating stat.

You brought up the one in three women who are being brought here are sexually assaulted on these journeys, illegally crossing the border.

What's the argument that connects with America so they don't see this as a partisan issue?

Yeah, I think the president needs to take this to the local level, and I think he needs to go to these states, each one of these border states.

And I think he needs to have town halls.

I remember Barack Obama doing them brilliantly, where you bring in people that have been affected by the issue that you're talking about.

He did this with health care reform and take himself out of it and bring the governors up and bring the congressmen and the mayors and the sheriffs up.

I would even argue, do the same type of town hall that CNN did after the shooting in the school shooting in Florida.

Have the local people that are affected the most and highlight them.

That's how you sell this.

Because I do believe that if the president wants to get this done, he's got to be very strategic about taking himself and his personality out of this.

Because the Democrats, again, they have played this brilliantly, that this wall is only about Donald Trump's ego.

It's nothing else.

And he needs to let other people's stories shine here and talk about this.

I mean, look, in 2018, you had over 17,000 adults arrested at the border who had prior criminal records, including over 6,000 gang members.

You have to highlight those people that were affected by MS-13.

You have to highlight the people that are affected that lost loved ones, just like that police officer in California the night after we celebrated Christmas.

I mean, and you talk about ICE, for example.

Cortez last night was on MSNBC saying that ICE agents are what's wrong with this country and they're actually human rights abusers.

Well, those human rights abusers, those ICE agents, in 17 and 18 alone, 100,000 arrests for assault, 30,000 arrests for sex crimes alone, and that's not the only things they talk about.

4,000 arrests for murder, and that's only the people that we caught.

So the president goes out there, sells this to the American people that way.

That's how you're going to connect.

I talked to Eric Bowling about an hour ago, and he said that he thought the president was going to use emergency powers.

He didn't believe in this approach and he was just doing this to get it done and to check the box and he was going to use the emergency powers.

Talk to me a little bit about emergency powers.

Is that a good idea, a bad idea?

And also

does the government shutdown continue for very much longer?

Yeah, well, two things.

I think one, that

last night not proposing the emergency powers was actually a smart move.

There's still work to be done on selling the American people that there is a crisis and an emergency at the border.

So I think the President laid the groundwork, the framework, the foundation for that possibility.

I also don't think that you do it yet because we're not far enough into a government shutdown where people are starting to say, get it open at all costs.

I think we're still very divided in this country on this.

I actually personally like the government shutdown.

I think the longer it goes on, the more it shows the American people how bloated the federal government actually is.

I mean, remember, we're not talking about a total government shutdown.

We're talking about a partial shutdown.

We can have this thing go through September, and the mass majority of the actual functions of the government that we do mostly need are going to be running.

So I think the president keeps it going.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and don't forget, rate us on iTunes.

Steve Dace, who follows us on Blaze TV and

Blaze Radio Network, joins us now from Blaze TV to give us his opinion on what he thought of the Donald Trump's speech last night and Nancy and Chuck and what the fallout or effect is going to be.

Steve, welcome.

Morning, Glenn.

How are you, man?

I'm good.

I'm good.

So what I thought happened last night was essentially the 2016 election in a nutshell.

I thought at the beginning of the speech, I kind of felt like sometimes you have those feelings like, I still can't believe the guy from The Apprentice is president, you know?

And look, look.

And I watched it on Fox, and it looked like Fox's camera angle was off.

So it looked like he was talking over my shoulder.

And he was hurry.

He was kind of running through the content.

And I'm like, oh, no, oh, no.

Again, he can't handle the trappings of the office.

But then there was a pivot point.

And the pivot point began when he started using personal testimonials of Americans harmed by illegal immigration.

And then he started dropping illegal alien,

which gets you shadow banned on social media for using the legal term nowadays.

And then, so it started.

ratcheting up.

And the crescendo pivot,

the piece des résistance, is when he went to the card of wealthy politicians have fences and walls, not because they hate the people outside, but they love the people inside.

And the last third of that speech was the argument of moral certainty and out of the details of how many people have been arrested and how much brick and straw and mortar to use.

And he got to the premise of his argument.

And then

the Democrats presented a face.

This is why they keep covering him so much.

It's why we had so much time during the general election, Glenn, when it looked like Hillary wasn't even running.

Yes.

Because they know on his own, he's not a likable character.

But given an unlikable foil, and he is a devastating political weapon, and all they needed was Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer last night looking like they swapped and shared eyeshadow before the game began, and it was over.

It was basically a replay of 2016, just swap out Hillary Clinton for Schumer and Pelosi.

Why, in

your wildest dreams, would you have selected Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to stand in a narrow hallway that looked like it was a hallway to a bathroom,

standing at a podium, the two of them, shoulder to shoulder.

It looked ridiculous.

They were awful at it.

Why would you pick those two?

Well, the problem the Democrats have, you know, and they have an establishment and a swamp and a base and activists, just like the Republicans do.

And they're in a generational transition.

You know, we played a clip yesterday on our Blaze show of Whoopi Goldberg going off on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

And I channeled Kevin Nealon's subliminal man from SNL back in the day to show our audience that she's not really talking about know your role and know your place.

She's upset that Ocasio-Cortez is earnestly and idealistically trying to front sell the country on becoming Sweden.

And what she's really telling her is we got to lie better than that.

We have to race bait better than that.

We can't sell this thing whole cloth as an upfront product because while most of the country is not conservative, it ain't communist yet either.

So we can't win that argument.

And so the Democrats are in this generational vortex where people like Ocasio-Cortez are not yet ready for leadership.

They're not yet ready for prime time.

And the country's not yet ready for them to sell us the jalapi.

And so they need to bring Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the dinosaurs out, to keep trying to sell the undercoating instead.

So they're in this no man's land.

And that's why I wrote recently that the 2020 election outcome, barring some bombshells from Moeller, we have yet to see, barring that, the 2020 election outcome is already spoken for.

Either the Democrats will nominate someone who is likable, a Joe Biden, a Beta O'Rourke, somebody like that, or they will nominate one of these Marxists that wants either they want to beat Trump or they want to convince America to become Sweden.

If they want to convince America to become Sweden, he's going to troll the Sam Hill out of them all the way to Election Day.

If they nominate somebody who's far more likable on television as a contrast to him, then I think you'll see a replay of what we just saw in the November House election.

I wonder, however, if the American people aren't, the millennials at least, aren't ready for someone to say,

you know what, this just doesn't work.

I mean, I talked about this on Fox.

I said the masks are going to come off and they're going to say, okay, yes, yes, I am a socialist.

Yes, I do believe in this because capitalism doesn't work.

And we're there now.

And they're saying those things.

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, they're not.

But those old horses don't run anymore.

They just don't run.

They don't connect.

I looked at Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer last night and I thought,

completely out of touch.

They don't even look real.

Nancy Pelosi doesn't.

She looks like, you know, Walt Disney was called up from the freezer to keep her going.

It's bizarre.

You're right that the millennials are.

But here's the difference.

This is where you look at the Senate election we just had, because those are statewide elections.

I was actually on MSNBC once where Ed Rendell tried to make the case Republicans had just won the Senate from the Democrats because of gerrymandering.

No, they're statewide elections.

Okay.

All right.

That's not how that word works.

That's not at all how that word works.

Yes.

So statewide elections, elections, what you just saw is in a very favorable environment.

Democrats didn't pick up any seats in the Senate, meaning in terms of a net gain.

All right.

They didn't pick up a net game.

And what that matters for a presidential election is that's what presidential elections are.

They're higher turnout Senate elections, 50 of them all over the country.

And so the demographics are in favor of the Democrats just being openly and honest about, hey, we're all Marxists now in 2028, 2032.

That's why I've said on our show all along, if we don't see moral and spiritual great awakenings like we saw in the 17th and 19th centuries, you'll see liberty die in America because we are heading towards that demographic apocalypse.

I agree.

But we aren't there quite yet.

And so we're not having the 2028 election yet.

We're having the 2020 election.

And there are still enough people that live in rural places or live in places like Iowa, where I live now, that

still kind of respond to

the old-time religion, for lack of a better phrase.

And so they're trying to figure out when can we give you guys the full Monty

and how much longer do we just have to show you a little slip of the leg?

And that's what's going on in the Democratic Party right now.

Do you think the average Democrat, they may not like Donald Trump, but the average Democrat is listening in the heartland and they see Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and they say,

wait a minute.

I mean, you guys don't believe any of this stuff.

I mean, like, for instance, last night I watched Donald Trump, and I was actually

really,

really pleased and happy with his speech.

Not necessarily his delivery.

I watched him with frustration, like I used to watch George Bush with frustration, going, oh, geez, man, please.

You know,

and so I had that frustration that he wasn't doing a good job delivering.

We never seem to have somebody who can deliver a speech since Reagan.

Do you think that the Democrats at least feel that when it comes to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, or do you believe that they were effective?

What I think is fascinating about the transition in the Democratic Party is

in the Republican Party, it's the Republican base versus the leadership.

It used to be called conservatives, moderates.

It then became Tea Partiers' establishment.

But really, it's about the base versus the party and leadership and donor class.

In the Democratic divide, they have that, but then there are also two different Democratic bases.

There is the Democratic base that the Joe Bidens of the world grew up in, that is far more liberal than we are, and has moved increasingly to the left in the last couple of decades.

But they still grew up in an America where they were neighbors to people like us, Glenn.

They went to church with people like us.

They played Little League with people like us.

And so we're not somebody that needs to be snuffed out.

And as Eric Erickson likes to say, if you won't join the new utopia, you will be made to care.

And then so there's that democratic base.

And

they're what's left of the blue-collar private union worker, the electrical worker guy, the teamster worker guy, but they're going away as the economy modernizes and evolves and they're being replaced by the other Democratic base.

And that's what in a place like Iowa, you'll find the first Democratic base that I mentioned in rural places like Indianola outside of where I live in Des Moines.

And you'll see candidates like Joe Biden and Beta O'Rourke go to places like that.

And then there's the other Democratic base at the University of Iowa and Grinnell College.

And that's where you're going to see the Elizabeth Warrens and Camilla Harris's and the Spartacuses go and everybody else that's running because that's the new wave.

Those are the people you're talking about.

They are ready for the hammer and the sickle.

They have read Das Capital and they are convinced that that is America's third wave.

So it depends on which Democratic base you're talking about.

You're in Iowa.

You're watching the election and you're seeing these people come to town.

Tell me about

what your initial gut is on the Democrats that have come through.

I'm going to give your audience a name they've they've never heard before.

Watch a guy named Jerry Crawford.

Jerry Crawford is the Democratic, longtime Democratic Party kingpin in Iowa.

I've known Jerry for years.

When I used to do local sports talk radio, he's a big sports enthusiast, a horse racing enthusiast.

We've run in the same circles.

Him and I have gotten along for years.

All right.

And he is of the old Joe Biden wing of the party.

Remember when Hillary said a few months ago, the reason that the struggle she had in Iowa is she still is a capitalist?

This is Jerry Crawford backed Hillary Clinton.

And it used to be, if you got Jerry Crawford in Iowa, you won the Iowa caucuses no matter what.

Well, Jerry Crawford has struggled in the last two Iowa caucuses.

Basically, Hillary and Bernie tied, and then Hillary lost to Obama here.

All right, and so what will be fascinating is if you see Jerry Crawford say, I got to give the old Democratic Party one more go, and that's why I'm going to back a beta or I'm going to back a Joe Biden, or if you see, if you see Jerry Crawford sit back and wait to see which of the new Marxists emerges and says, you know what, I'm going to get on the winning side.

He is the caricature, the archetype of what's happening in the Democratic Party.

And I would watch a guy like him much more than I would watch the candidates themselves.

Steve, if I were going to give you three draft picks and you had to select the Democrat that actually wins, if you had to pick three out of that field, who would you pick?

Best chance.

Joe Biden will absolutely beat Donald Trump.

And that would be my only pick.

And the reason why I think he'll absolutely beat him is because he's got high name ID and because

he has enough of the new Marxist cachet, having been Obama's VP and right-hand man for eight years, that while they won't,

the Ocasio-Cortez crowd won't rally to him, he has too much street tread for them to reject him and openly revolt against him like they did Hillary in the last primary second.

So to me, I think it's stop.

I think

if they nominate Joe Biden, I also think Joe Biden is much like Trump.

He is really good in

interpersonal settings and casual settings, but is a malaprompt with the stagecraft, like Trump is, which means I think he'll stand up to Trump's trolling and return fire and give him what for.

He won't wilt under the humiliation act that Trump likes to do with his opponents.

And so, if they nominate him, then I think you'll see the 2020 election look like the 2018 House election.

Everywhere Democrats can win, they will win.

Wow, Steve, thank you very much.

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

Our White House correspondent, and I cannot believe that I'm saying this, about John Miller.

John Miller, who started as an intern for me and then was my assistant for a while.

I just love him to death.

Really, really smart, honorable man.

Is now the White House correspondent.

After leaving me, he made something of himself

and now the White House correspondent for Blaze TV.

John, how are you?

Good.

How are you doing, Glenn?

Good.

So I talked to Eric Bowling today, and he said that

that meeting that the New York Times is talking about with all of the

anchors happened yesterday at the White House with Trump, where he said, Yeah, I really don't want to do this, and they're kind of making me do this, but I'll, you know, i'll do it but i don't think it's going to be so effective did did you hear about this meeting yesterday that it happened i did hear about it i was not at the meeting but i heard about it um and i i think that he underestibly effective and i think that you know of course they're going to have polling um where they kind of jimmy the questions to make it seem like uh it wasn't effective but i think last night what you saw was a pretty rational, reasonable case for a border wall.

Agreed.

And, you know, it was not a political political speech.

It was, in fact, I think one of his most presidential moments.

In fact, he was probably too stiff.

And it's like you can actually move your hand still, Mr.

President.

But the reaction is going to make it even more effective because

the reaction from Chuck and Nancy, I mean, that was a joke.

I mean, it was widely mocked across the internet.

Even left-wing outlets went to town with it because you had these two people looking like villains.

know, the lighting was terrible.

They looked like they're coming to you from their evil lair.

But the most jarring part was that they were telling the American people that things that are common sense to Americans aren't so.

And that's what made it surreal.

This was not a partisan issue.

So what we've been doing here is we've actually been talking to Customs and Border Protection this morning,

getting their perspective on it, because they're laughing at the idea that a border wall would be ineffective.

Well,

John, I can't believe, and this is, I don't know how you sit in the press room with all the members of the press.

I really don't.

I mean, that's why my time spent with them is minimal, because

in my judgment, they do not offer any adequate perspective on this stuff.

The guys you want to talk to are the people who actually know what's happening.

And in this scenario, it's customs and border protection.

And it's the people are actually there who actually know, and it's their job to find out how to solve this problem.

When they say, because Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer said, this is expensive and and ineffective and

just not worth it.

It just doesn't work.

Then where is the press asking Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, then why, what, 12, 18 months ago, did you offer $30 billion for the wall for DACA?

Yes, and I mean, and then in 2006, I mean, as Kellyanne said, if you want to call it the Secure Fences Act of 2019, then they can work that out.

But the idea that this is partisan, that this is radical and extreme and racist, is is mind-boggling.

And you know, when when they have these hysterical reactions to very normal things, it discredits their hysteria.

Because when everything is extremist and racist and fascist and hateful, then really nothing is.

So I mean, to get better perspective, just talk to the guys who know actually what's happening.

And

it's like saying wheels don't work anymore.

Now, of course, it's not a comprehensive solution, but I mean, walls, barriers are critical from a security standpoint.

and it's common sense.

I mean, it's been the truth throughout history.

I mean, it's the truth in San Diego, where apprehensions have gone down by, I think, 96% since 2005.

We know it's working in Israel, where suicide attacks, those declined by 90%.

It goes down by 90% every time it's tried.

Egypt, where they erected a massive steel barricade with Gaza, which helped stymie Hamas.

And then in Spain, they have one blocking illegal immigration from Morocco.

So walls are working all over the world.

The guys know this.

It's just now that Trump is expressing his support for a wall that all of a sudden it's ineffective.

It doesn't work.

It's unreasonable.

That hasn't been the case throughout history and throughout our country's history.

So, John, what do you

because the press isn't going to give up on this, and neither is the president, and neither are the Democrats.

So how do you see this playing out?

I think that that's the one thing that this speech probably ⁇ I don't know if the speech moved the ball forward.

I think it informed a lot of Americans of the realities of the border.

But I don't know if it actually

was a development in the story.

I think that what he's going to eventually, I don't see the Democrats budging.

And like you said, I don't see the president budging.

So it probably will come down to what everyone's talking about, which is the Emergencies Declaration

Act, which

the Congress gave the president,

which was a lot of things in that I disagree with.

But it is a presidential power now since 76.

So the president can use it, and and he shouldn't use it to shut down businesses, but he can use it to do what is the federal government's fundamental job, which is national security.

It's the one thing I think a lot of small government people can even get behind, is actually securing our country and our borders.

So I agree with you.

I want the wall.

I want border security.

But I am very concerned about the president declaring an emergency for national security because

and it won't even take Trump doing it to get the Democrats to do this, but it'll make it easier for them to say global warming, number one cause of

instability around the world.

It's going to cause famine and wars and everything else.

So we're going to have to do something.

And we're opening ourselves up to real trouble.

I mean, the hatch has already been opened on that, though, when Congress gave the president that power.

So either we roll it back or we let the president use the power that he has.

I think it's reasonable and the president is going to have to make the case before the courts.

But you look at the actual they're going to have a really hard time defending the fact that global warming is actually a crisis because the numbers just aren't there.

But I mean the numbers on the opioid crisis alone

I mean, I think it's hard to deny, and most of those drugs, as we know, are coming in from the border.

I think it's hard for anyone to deny that that is a real crisis level.

So the president already has the power.

I agree that it's going to open the doors, but they do have to make these cases and they have to win these cases before the courts before it actually gets affected.

John Miller, our White House correspondent, and also you can watch his show on Blazetv.com.

Thank you so much, John.

Appreciate it.

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

Matt Kibbe joins us on the Glen Beck program.

Hello, Matt.

Hey, Glenn, how's it going?

Good.

I've been anxious to hear your point of view because you are on the libertarian side of the spectrum, and we're trying to get everybody's opinion from

the MAGA guys to the libertarians, the conservatives, and the millennials, and try to get everybody's opinion.

I think, with an exception of John, we pretty much have a consensus that

the wall is important, security on our border is important,

but not the use of

an emergency act.

That's not the way to do it.

I'm interested to hear from you, even if you think that border security is important.

So border security is absolutely important.

And I think the president's argument with the Democrats in large part is semantics.

It's words.

Are we talking about a fence or a wall?

Are we talking about spending $2 billion or $5 billion?

And it's important to remember that, you know, Mitch McConnell could have gotten this done and they could have cut other spending and they could have gone through budget reconciliation.

But here we are at this point.

I mean, as a libertarian,

I would look at other things we could do to make sure that the money we do spend on border security is actually

targeting the bad guys.

And I'll say some things that will make some of your viewers uncomfortable.

But for one thing, we need to do something about the drug war.

If we're worried about illegal drugs and deadly drugs coming across the border, we should look at what happened in Portugal, where they decriminalized all the drugs, including the very dangerous drugs.

And the net result over the last 20 years has been a significant drop in drug deaths, a drop in young people using drugs.

And in the case of the border, in our country, it would get rid of the incentive for a lot of bad guys to do a lot of bad things and to bring really dangerous drugs into our country.

Why don't we talk about that more?

I mean, that is, when you say it dropped significantly, no, no, no, Matt.

It dropped dramatically.

That was a country that

was really in the situation that we're in now or approaching to where death and suicide was off the charts.

People were addicted to these drugs.

It was one of the worst places in the world.

And they tried to keep making the drug laws stronger and stronger and stronger.

And nothing was working.

And so they decided, let's get rid of the drug laws and let's spend that money on rehabilitation,

AA kind of programs.

Let's help people help themselves.

And it was dramatic.

It saved that country.

Yeah, they went from a hellhole to being the best in Europe in terms of eliminating drug deaths, eliminating crime associated with it, and disease, and all the problems that they had.

We should learn from that.

And we're sort of

schizophrenic on the subject.

You know, you have a decriminalization of marijuana and medical marijuana, and the president has said some thoughtful things about that.

But I think the heightened criminalization of opioid use is a problem because

addicts are going to go get what they can get

if they feel they need it.

Whether or not we think that's a good thing or a bad thing, incentives matter and people are going to figure out ways to do these things.

But I think

this is directly linked to border security.

And the president talked a lot about all

these dangerous drugs that are coming into our country.

Let's pull the rug out from under the bad guys

and

let

people and doctors and

freedom work itself through here.

I agree with you, and

I believe the opioid crisis and the heroin crisis

is much more than most people can deal with.

And I have been somebody who have said, you can't legalize all these drugs because we're not a society that's willing to deal with it.

I think if you look at what Portugal did,

I think we are running out of options because the drug war clearly doesn't work.

What happened in Portugal did work, and I think to save lives, we need something dramatic.

And I am,

I hate to say this because I haven't really thought it through, but I think I am at a place now in my life where I am for the legalization of drugs.

Because it's just not working.

This is not working.

Yeah.

And so you're letting your inner libertarian come out.

Yeah.

And that's okay.

We'll work through this together.

I know.

So

make the libertarian case, because I know a lot of libertarians who are not for border security.

Can you make that libertarian case?

So, you know, some libertarians use the phrase open borders, and I think I don't like the phrase because I think it means different things to different people, and I think we should be concise in our language.

I think that that the consensus libertarian view is that people that want to come to our country and work and follow the rules and control society should be welcome.

And our current immigration system doesn't do that.

Immigrants, legal and illegal, are political footballs.

Both political parties have agendas other than that principle that I just stated.

And another thing we could do

to deal with

how we actually get to real border security is to make sure that people that want to come here and work and contribute have a clear process.

And maybe it's guest worker reform.

Maybe it has nothing to do with citizenship, if that's a concern for people.

But as long as we make it impossible for those good people to cross the border, we make it easier for bad people to cross the border.

Yes.

I will tell you,

we have two people that I would like to hire

and bring into the fold,

and I think they would contribute a lot to our society.

And I can't even get them green cards.

I mean,

they've got a job.

They can't come in.

And it's ridiculous.

I mean,

if you can work and you want to work and you want to live by our laws, we should make that so easy to do.

And we should just be very, very clear on you got to come through the front door.

Have to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, you know, the front, the front door has, you have to know where the front door is, and you have to know what the rules of the game are.

And you have to know that if you're going to, if you're going to go through that process, I know this is going to take three months, six months, whatever it is.

That has to be honest and open.

And this is where it's kind of fascinating to watch Bernie Sanders attack the Koch brothers for

their position on immigration.

But I think the Koch have a pretty clear, what I would call a libertarian view.

If you want to come here and work and contribute,

this is part of what's made America a great place.

And I think politicians,

I think a lot of politicians are interested in owning and controlling people once they get here, you know, for their votes.

And that's part of the reason it's a political football.

But some of us need to just lay it out there.

You know, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi didn't talk anything about

making it safe and predictable and legal for good people to come here and contribute to our country.

Matt, I've got about 45 seconds.

How does this play with the swing vote, the independent vote?

Where do they fall eventually, do you think?

So, you know, the interesting thing is that, you know, Trump has dug his heels in on this, and, you know, the wall is every bit as much a rhetorical symbol as anything else.

But a lot of the people that are hurt by this government shutdown because Trump controls the executive branch are probably Democrats.

So I wonder how long the Democrats are going to hold out.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you so much, Matt.

Appreciate it.

By the way, you can find Matt's show and all of his views on Blazev.

Join us now at Blazetv.com/slash Beck, promo code Beck.

the best of the glenn beck program

we have one more guest that we want to put on he is a spokesperson for uh young voices and also host of beltway banthas uh podcast i i find him interesting funny and a really uh a credible guy stephen kent uh millennial voice of the conservative movement welcome to the program how are you uh good morning i'm doing well thanks for having me back.

So, Stephen, give me your thought on

the speech last night, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer's speech, how this is going to play out.

What do you think last night meant?

Well, I agree very much with your White House correspondent, John Miller, in that Trump just could not read from the prompter.

And it was really, it was really worse than ever.

No charisma.

And for him, I think that can be incredibly damaging.

I was expecting like a little bit more gusto and conviction and maybe jazz hands for his final pitch on his precious wall project.

I mean, this has been what his entire political career has been about.

And he didn't sell it.

And by the way, the Democrats looked terrifying as well.

It was like Emperor Palpatine and the Joker making a national address together.

And it was kind of scary.

And the substance was intellectually dishonest and cynical as well.

And I think there was plenty of that to go around between the president and his adversaries in Congress.

Like, nobody even attempted to move the meter for their side.

And I think that's pretty sad when you look back on some White House speeches from days past that really aimed to try to move people, not just terrify or belittle them.

Okay, so wait, hang on just a second.

Where do you think the president was trying to terrify or belittle?

I thought he spoke with the facts for the most part.

I thought he even said, look, this is a humanitarian thing.

We don't have the space for these people.

We just don't have the resources.

We need more resources.

And, you know, it's a wall.

If they want to do a fence, we'll do a fence, but we have to do this.

Yeah.

So he paid sort of homage to the humanitarian crisis on the border very briefly.

It was kind of a couple of sentences.

And then he really moved on to

like the law and order portion of this.

I mean, some really gruesome stuff.

And the crimes that have been committed by some illegal immigrants across the country are no doubt gruesome.

They're sad.

But to spend, I think, that time from the Oval Office sort of doing this,

just reciting of three, four, or five, like really just awful crimes that you'd have to send your child out of the room to hear from the president, that is not normal.

And we've not seen that kind of thing before.

And I also don't think it is appropriate to use that platform to talk about these instances as if they are a normal and sort of like epidemic part of American life.

You wouldn't accept that from President Obama on guns.

You wouldn't accept that from a George Bush on the sort of epidemic of terror.

You know, that's just not sort of our daily lives.

And I think that was a misrepresentation.

I do think we did hear that from Obama on with the guns thing here and there, maybe not in the Oval Office.

But do you think, Stephen, when it comes to the sort of delivery from President Trump, there's a report out today that basically he didn't even want to do this.

Like this is not something he was interested in doing.

He doesn't want to do the photo op on the border.

This is really not his passion.

The issue might be his passion, but like this delivery system is just makes him uncomfortable, it seems.

I'm really perplexed by that because I thought that was exactly what his thing was.

I saw that report and I heard John Miller talking about it again earlier.

And I'm just sort of shocked because this sort of seems like what he is made to do, to sort of get on TV and pound his fist and give a speech about something that he's passionate about.

And it really, you could see that he did not want to be there.

So I buy that 100%.

I don't think so.

Hang on.

I don't think so.

I just don't think he is capable of delivering a script.

I just don't think that's in him.

He's much better when he's just speaking off the cuff.

Right.

He's just, he's not an actor.

Yeah.

And I.

Were you in Home Alone 2?

Because I know he was.

Were you, Glenn?

Were you in Home Alone 2?

Sorry.

Sorry.

So go ahead, Stephen.

No, no, it's kind of shocking to see that he wouldn't actually put his all into a platform like that.

He's the president of the United States.

He's been working for this for years, and it's his first opportunity to use that platform to his ends.

And I think he really kind of fell on his face there.

So, Steven, on the border, what do you do?

Hang on, before you get into that, you know,

the diminishing of crime, this is from the United States Sentencing Commission.

So, this is a U.S.

source.

Non-U.S.

citizens accounted for 40.7%

of all offenders in fiscal year 2017.

So 40% of all federal offenses

are happening from non-U.S.

citizens, according to the government.

That's pretty significant.

Yeah, crime happens, and I think we have to do a better job of controlling who comes into this country, which I think is going to go to your next question about, you know, what do we do?

There's no doubt there.

But again, that is a misrepresentation of the amount of people who come into this country, both legally and illegally.

The majority of people who are in this country, technically illegally, are people who overstayed their legal right to be here, their visas, etc.

You know, we don't have sort of a mass epidemic of murderers climbing over a wall and running into Los Angeles.

That's not really what's going on here.

So, what do you do at the border, Sue?

Yeah, I'm really conflicted.

You know, I have conservative and libertarian tendencies, and they both fight for control every day.

But

here's my concession as a libertarian: I am very concerned that the populist movement in Europe is actively, if not already, overtaking U.S.

politics.

And our traditional, more open political parties are rapidly closing.

And

voters demanded something very radical with electing Donald Trump.

A vote for him was a vote for the wall.

And my fear is that ignoring this could have far worse consequences for the expanse of government than the project itself, which is just more of a cash hole and I think a bad symbol for the United States.

I mean, what if Trump or the Trumps of the world, like they get frustrated enough to expand the infrastructure for the war on terror and homeland security to even further grow surveillance systems and Big Brother to monitor people for immigration enforcement?

They already do this.

I mean, if you live on the border, you're practically under drone surveillance all of the time.

But imagine if they expanded more darkly.

So I just, I wonder if the wall would at least tame the vitriol that has been boiling up in our politics for the past decade, even if it compromises some of our values and imperils our national spending problems a little bit more.

But

good on Trump for not invoking emergency powers and kicking this back to Congress, because this is their failure and they need to deal with it.

Stephen, thank you very much for the perspective.

I appreciate it.

Spokesperson for Young Voices and the Blaze Radio Network

on Demand.