10/22/18 - Best of the Program/ Guests, Ben Sasse & Larry Sharpe

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Coming up on the podcast today, we had

we're only a couple weeks away from the election, Glenn.

And well, I don't, I'm busy working on the on the comedy for the tour.

Yeah, that's coming up

really soon, actually.

Yeah, go to breadback.com slash tour for tickets.

What a shock.

It's right before the election and just right after.

It's like we're going to have nothing nothing to talk about.

Nothing at all.

Nothing at all but comedy.

Lots and lots of comedy.

And we're going to have election night coverage on the Blades.

I'm here.

Yeah,

I'm intending on that.

I believe I'm the designated driver.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

It's election night coverage.

And

I haven't figured out exactly how you're going to have to, how I'm going to be administering the shots.

But it may be for

every house seat that is lost.

You know?

We're going to be dead, potentially.

I'm really going to be rooting for Republicans more than ever.

So anyway.

So we'll get into that.

That's coming up as well.

You should subscribe to the Blaze if you can at theblaze.com/slash TV.

And come see us on tour at glennbeck.com/slash tour.

Okay, today we start with election by the numbers.

Looking at the latest polls and the changes that are going on there, there's some really interesting things happening.

Some of them really good for Republicans.

We'll get into the details on that.

Ben Sass joins us as well.

He's kind of in some hot water for

taking on,

I guess, the right.

Although there's so much more in the book, I don't know why they focus.

I think the flashpoint is about Sean Hannity.

We didn't get into that.

We just got into what is it that you really think is going on.

He was fascinating.

Yep.

And Larry Sharp, he's running for governor of New York as a libertarian.

And imagine New York's economy unleashed under a libertarian.

I mean, that would be.

We don't understand why

the conservatives, why Republicans just don't

go.

Look, Cuomo's going to win.

Let's vote for Larry Sharp.

Let's just all go for a vote for Larry Sharp because we know Cuomo's going to win.

He's going to beat the Republican.

Let's send a message.

Yeah.

It would be powerful.

It would be.

We talked to him as well on today's podcast.

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

It's Monday, October 22nd.

Glenn Beck.

It's Monday, October 22nd.

You're listening to the Glen Beck program.

All right.

Hello, America.

Welcome to the program.

Election just a few weeks away.

And

I'm afraid that both sides could become complacent because both sides now are revved up unlike we've ever seen before.

It's all going to be about turnout.

Who actually, when the day comes, says, yeah, I'm going to go vote.

And how many are just revved up now

for, you know, valid reasons, but then say, eh,

I, you know, speaking out is enough and not going out to vote.

it's interesting because uh we've seen these turnout numbers uh generally they they've been applying lately to presidential elections.

Since 2000, we've seen a massive jump in the amount of people who are super passionate and paying attention at high levels to presidential campaigns.

That's certainly what happened with Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

And it's also

one of the things we've noticed is in the off years, that doesn't happen all that much.

Midterm elections do not seem to inspire, particularly among Democrats recently, the amount of passion that has been coming from the right.

You remember 2010, the Tea Party wave, the biggest wave election in a century, basically.

2014 was also a little mini, you know, sort of Tea Party-related wave where the candidates weren't maybe as much Tea Party, but they were still a pretty strong year for Republicans in 2014.

In 2006, you saw the opposite.

You saw Democrats in the last years of the Bush administration have a really strong midterm in 2006.

But, you know, generally speaking, people aren't as passionate.

The numbers, however, for this midterm election are off the charts.

And it's interesting.

Glenn was pointing out before

the show

that when Barack Obama was a sort of celebrity presidential candidate, and he would have these huge rallies in 2008.

And you remember the one in Denver?

I mean, he was the first person.

He was a god.

He was a rock.

It was like watching you two.

Remember the Roman.

Yeah, yeah.

It was literally like a rock star.

Yeah.

And then it just disappeared.

And if you remember, by midterms, you had these huge turnouts in the street, but no one was going to see the president in those stadiums and arenas.

They still would book the arena, but I remember distinctly covering them saying, turn the camera around.

And they were half-empty rooms.

Yeah.

The passion was gone.

Gone.

We are not seeing that with Trump.

I mean, these rallies seem to be as well attended as they were during the campaign.

If not more so.

Sometimes more so, right?

There's supposed to be a huge one here, I think, for Ted Cruz tonight.

They are artists.

They've already, they've camped out overnight.

The line to the stadium is blocks long.

Yeah.

And people have camped out overnight.

So there's no drop in the passion, seemingly, among Republicans.

And the same thing seems to be happening with Democrats, as much as it is a positive for

Republicans to keep those crowds, one of the reasons why people are passionate is because the other side's so passionate, and we're seeing, we're going to see go through some of that mob stuff that's going on right now with Republicans.

But the numbers are interesting on this.

If you look at the passion among Republicans and Democrats, you kind of can see what happened in the election.

Again, we talked about 2006, big win for Democrats.

Well, when we went into that election, 69% of Democrats said they had the highest levels of interest in the election.

69%.

Republicans, it was only 56%,

and Republicans got smoked.

2010, you had a 66% Republican percentage of people who were really interested in the election.

Only 49% of Democrats, Democrats got smoked.

You said the same thing 2014.

Remember, Democrats got smoked again there.

Republicans, 59%

said they were really interested.

Only 48% of of Democrats said that.

And

what's interesting is leading up to, I would say, Brett Kavanaugh,

you had the same type of thing playing out again,

this time in favor of the Democrats.

It started to look a lot like 2006.

So up until Kavanaugh, you had 63% of Democrats highest levels of interest in the election.

Republicans was only 53%.

So that is,

you know, a big, it's the type of gap that leads you to lose the Senate and lose the House, or at least makes it possible.

Since Kavanaugh, that has changed.

Democrats have gone up from 63 to 72%.

Holy cow.

72 is the highest number for any party in all of these elections.

However, Republicans have jumped a higher percentage point basis from 53 to 68.

So now we have basically a balance, a very close within the margin of error separation, and both of those numbers, 68, would be the second highest level of interest of all of these elections.

So the Democrats are at 72, Republicans are 68.

Both of those numbers are the highest of any of these elections going back to 2006, 2006 midterms.

And I mean, which is crazy.

It is a...

There's a level here that we don't know what's going to happen.

This is like, you know, this is territory that has not been seen before.

And, you know, while you can look at the polls and you can see the polls, as we've talked about over the past couple of weeks,

are relatively pointing towards a Republican

victory in the Senate where they maybe pick up a couple of seats and a Republican loss in the House where they would lose a couple of seats.

There is a, you know, if you want to look at the kind of the optimistic way of looking at the House right now, to show you how close this is, if Republicans were to sweep the races they are favored in, okay,

that it's not going to happen, it never happens, but just kind of generally for understanding, if they would be able to sweep all of the races they're favored in,

and they would be able to win all of the races that they trail by one point.

So all of these races are either victories or toss-ups, right?

I mean, they could go either way.

But if they were to sweep all of those, Republicans still hold the house at 220 to 215.

Now, the problem is the idea that they're going to sweep all those races is we know that's not going to happen.

It never happens.

The other thing is they will win some races where they're underdogs by more than one point.

They will win some places, you know, when they're down by five in the polls.

They'll wind up winning some of those races.

So the split is going to be important here.

But just that gets them only to 220 to 215, which is a, I think they lose, that's them losing 10 seats from where they are now,

but also a very narrow majority to the point where some conservative things could be derailed by just, you know, your generic moderate House member that you've never heard their name before when they decide they're going to vote against the president.

So it's an interesting way of looking at it, and it shows that this really could go either way.

I mean, when they say that there's about a 20% chance the Republicans lose the Senate and about a 20% chance the Republicans win the House, that's the way these models are all kind of looking at it.

20% is one in five, right?

So it is very possible that one of these things could happen.

But right now, it looks like those are going to wind up getting split.

And then, of course,

even though you're not going to be able to pass Democratic bills because they would either get vetoed or overturned in the House, you're still going to have investigative power, you're going to have subpoena power, you're going to have impatient power.

Oh, it's a nightmare.

It's a nightmare if they get the House.

It's a nightmare.

Okay, so

here's what I found interesting.

In watching the news and watching just the flow of it, have you noticed that

places like the Atlantic and The Times and The Post are now starting to publish stories about,

you know, it's an uphill battle to win some of these races in the house.

It's an uphill battle.

They have changed their tone from,

you know, an absolute positive, oh, we're on a blue wave, to now almost laying the foundation of,

yeah, we lost, but it was, you know, it was really kind of a long shot anyway.

Yeah, I mean, that's how badly I think the Kavanaugh thing has backfired on them.

I mean, it's made the Senate basically,

I mean, again, I just said it's one out of five chance, but I mean,

they had a better chance at this two months ago.

I mean, they had a legitimate path to victory.

When Cruz was only up by three points, all of these races that looked like leaning Republican were all toss-up, and some of them looked like they might be leaning Democrat.

They had a chance to win the Senate before the Kavanaugh thing.

Now, I mean, I think it's a real, real-time.

It's really going to come to the independents.

How are the independents feeling?

They're an interesting group because they are not as passionate as you would expect in this environment.

So independents in 2006 and 2010 were at 50%.

Now, independents are almost always going to be lower in high interest than partisans because partisans engage more, like typically.

That's not, of course, a blanket rule, but it's typical.

In 2014, it was down to 40%.

In 2018, up until Kavanaugh was 42%.

And then the jump now to 46%.

So still, that's not as high as some of the earlier elections among independents.

And that may just be because they're overwhelmed with it, and they don't like either side.

And

it makes them want to withdraw from politics.

Yeah, but I wonder, because I would consider myself an independent.

Yeah.

And there's no way you're going to keep me away from the polls.

And so I'm wondering, you know, with that 4% jump, was it a 4% jump or 2%?

A 4% jump,

I wonder how much of that are people like me who are going to vote for the Republican just because the left has gone insane.

Right.

And there's a lot of independents that I, I mean, I certainly would fall into this category as well.

I am not a registered member of any party, nor will I ever be in my entire life.

Likewise.

That being said,

you know, I vote Republican.

I mean, I, you know, I don't vote for Democrats.

Right?

So I vote for Republicans, independents, and libertarians, and libertarians.

I don't vote for Democrats.

But yeah, I mean, so that's never going to happen.

So the fact that I'm an independent, you can't look at that line as these are people who could go either way at any time between these two parties.

That's not what that is.

It's people who identify that way.

It's a group that's that's growing and has been growing for quite some time.

Yes.

People are bailing out of the parties,

but the parties themselves are becoming more rigid and more.

This one could come down to the independents.

This one could come down to

because

you can understand the Republicans going up.

You can understand if you're on the Democratic side, Kavanaugh driving all those people.

But what's driving the Independent?

Yeah.

I mean, I would think they're disgusted with what's going on, right?

If anything, they don't like the overall.

system.

There's one other interesting stat in here, Glenn, if we could.

As we're talking about the caravan of

immigrants coming, migrants, whatever,

which will be illegal immigrants if they get it all the way here.

By the way, who said that was coming?

Oh, yeah, this program.

Yeah,

definitely.

We talked a lot about that.

We talked a lot about this.

Interesting to see the numbers among Latino voters.

So in 2006, we're coming off of the attempt at comprehensive immigration reform that fails.

Republicans are very upset about that.

Democrats win that election relatively easily.

Latinos at 62%

high interest in the election.

That number in midterm elections has been dismal since.

In 2010, it was only 48%.

2014, it was 41%.

Very low.

In 2018, up until very recently,

it was at 47%.

That number has now jumped in October 2018 to 71%.

from 47 to 71 this year.

So this is,

whatever the reason, Wow.

It's much higher than 2006 for Latino voters.

Wow.

And again, that was a wave election for Democrats.

The only thing I can think of is the Guatemalan refugees.

What else has happened?

I mean, you did have also fairly recently the

unaccompanied minors situation where they were being quote-unquote held in cages.

Yeah, but that was in July or August.

Yeah, but still, relatively recently.

You know, the 2018 polls were taken January to September.

So some of those polls were before that, some after.

All the October ones, obviously after, then include the migrant caravan situation, and that might explain the jump.

But it's high everywhere.

I mean, the only place it's low

and it's not low relative to normal, which is our younger voters, 18 to 34.

They're at 51%, which is the lowest number on most of these

demographic groups that you can find.

However, it's also a lot higher than any other time in all of these elections.

The highest they had been before that was 39% in 2006.

This is our whole lives now.

This is going to be interesting.

It is.

It's like, you know, back in the 90s, the opening of Star Wars.

Yeah.

This is now what people care about, and they care about it in almost a cultural entertainment sort of way.

Yeah.

Which is, I think, fascinating and not necessarily healthy.

It's good that people care about these things, but you know, I don't think that people, a lot of people don't seem to care about them, about the issues as much as they do about just the passionate disagreement with whoever they're on Facebook with.

This is the best of the Glen Beck program.

I want to talk a little bit about this.

back and forth with Saudi Arabia because it is important that we get this right and we don't make this about American politics.

We should make this about American interests, but not American politics.

Right now, people are saying, I can't believe Donald Trump wouldn't.

Well, you know what?

George Bush, Bill Clinton, the second George Bush, all the way back, all the way back to FDR, we have been in bed with the Saudis.

I don't like this.

I think we're in bed with really bad people.

Is a rattlesnake a bad pet?

That was asked of me once, and I love this.

Is a rattlesnake, is it a bad pet?

The answer is, no, it's a perfectly fine pet.

As long as you always remember it as a rattlesnake or a snake and not a little puppy dog.

It's a rattlesnake.

It's not a bad pet.

Just don't pet it.

And don't try to fashion

a leash around its neck.

Take it for a walk.

It ain't going to do it.

So,

how do we handle Saudi Arabia?

Well, it should be the same way we handle Turkey, but we're not.

Because we're looking at Turkey and Saudi Arabia with American eyes.

Stop it.

These are both Islamic states.

Now they're warring with each other.

Why?

Because one is Muslim Brotherhood and one is a Wahhabist.

They don't like each other.

They want death for everybody in the other state.

They want the regime of

Saudi Arabia stopped, Turkey.

because they're Muslim Brotherhood.

And Saudi Arabia wants Turkey stopped because they're Wahhabiists.

We're being put in the middle of a fight between two Islamicists.

Both of them want the caliphate.

Both of them want Islamic rule.

Both of them want to rule with jihad and they also want to rule with Sharia law.

We don't.

We don't want either of those.

So now let's put this into perspective.

Saudi Arabia, horrible place.

Horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible place.

They execute kids.

As long as you've shown any kind of signs of puberty, you're tried as an adult.

They execute through beheading.

There was a woman who was raped, gang-raped by seven men.

Not sure if one of them was Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh yet.

But a Saudi woman was gang raped by seven men.

They each got, you know, between two and nine years in prison.

However,

she received six months in prison and 200 lashings with a whip

because she was in the car

without her husband.

And then she dared to take her story to the media.

This is the kind of people that we are dealing with.

The crown prince.

You and I are not going to like this guy.

You can say, oh, look at what he's doing.

He's making it easier for women to drive without their husbands.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

He's still a Wahhabist.

Let's look at what

both sides in this country have done.

We are currently fighting a proxy war with Saudi Arabia.

We are involved in their war in Yemen.

Did you even know that?

President Trump announced a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia last year.

It was President Obama that vetoed a bill that allowed families of 9-11 victims to sue the Saudi government.

So, both sides, everybody is in protecting these guys.

When the Crown Prince came here to America, he met with Donald Trump.

Oh, my gosh.

But he also met with Oprah Winfrey, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Dwayne the Rock Johnson for some unknown reason, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Condoleezza Rice, George W.

Bush, Henry Kissinger, Michael Bloomberg, Thomas Friedman from the New York Times,

Bill Gates, Madeline Albright, Rupert Murdoch, Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Alan Garber from Harvard, Bob Iger, and Jeff Bezos.

So

they're all meeting with him.

They're all meeting.

Let's not pretend we don't know who this guy is.

Now, the guy who went missing,

he's a reporter for the Washington Post.

Is he?

Is he?

Or does he have a point of view that Washington happens to like about

Saudi Arabia?

And that is the Muslim Brotherhood perspective.

So you remember the Muslim Brotherhood founded in the 1920s in Egypt.

The only reason for being was to reject the West and establish global Sharia law.

They exported this organization all over the Middle East.

Anti-Semitism towards Jews, their biggest and most effective tool at harnessing the Arab rage.

Muslim Brotherhood, they're the ones who invented modern-day jihadism.

They are the ones who inspired Osama bin Laden and the other founding members of al-Qaeda.

To any administration member from the Obama administration,

you cannot call them a largely secular organization.

When you read just their motto, Allah is our goal, the Prophet our model, the Quran, our Constitution, Jihad, our plan, and death for the sake of Allah the loftiest of our wishes.

They are not primarily a secular organization.

The Muslim Brotherhood calls jihad the industry of death, and they mean that in a good way.

In their own words, to a nation that protects the industry of death and which knows how to die nobly, God gives proud life in this world.

Okay, that doesn't sound secular.

It doesn't sound like somebody we should be in bed with.

But the Muslim Brotherhood ran up against a problem, and that was one of them, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, because it was backed by the West.

Any of these kingdoms in the Middle East that have been backed by the West, Jordan will be next.

Anybody who stands in their way,

they had to destroy.

But these were democracies.

So how are we going to do it?

Well, the Muslim Brotherhood decided to switch tactics and weaponize democracy.

Enter the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring praised by everyone.

We told you their goal is a caliphate.

Well, it never materialized, did it?

No.

No, not there.

It materialized from the chain of events with ISIS.

What, you were talking about the Muslim Brotherhood?

Right, and what happened to the Muslim Brotherhood?

Did they just choose not to do a caliphate?

Oh, no, no.

They were overthrown.

Oh,

the Muslim Brotherhood still wants their caliphate.

So now you have two of our allies, Turkey, Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudis, Wahhabists, who are both chasing the same exact dream, a Middle East and a world dominated by Sharia law.

Both of them using jihadism

as a means to their ends.

So Khashoggi or Khashoggi or whatever you're calling him today.

Now we look at him.

He is a guy.

who is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

I want to say this.

No one deserves this kind of death.

This is not to excuse the Saudis.

They're bad guys.

But so is Turkey.

And so is he.

Everybody here, oh, it's a Saudi progressive fighting for democracy.

No, no, no.

No.

He was fighting for the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the 1980s and 90s, he was one of the king's main allies.

He edited several Saudi newspapers, which he was basically Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984, sitting in the Saudi version of the Ministry of Truth, editing out all thought crime.

Make sure that there was never anything hostile said about Wahhabism or the king.

During this time, he cozied up to Osama bin Laden.

He scored several interviews while al-Qaeda was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Saudi intelligence employed him to be the middleman between bin Laden and the Saudi royal family.

Well, in 2003 he fell out of favor with the Saudi royals when he allowed to be published an article critical to the Wahhabiist movement.

Why did he do that?

Because he's a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and they were at odds with the Wahhabists.

Khashoggir Khashoggi

was cast aside, and that's when the Western media fell in love with him.

An active member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Not a smear or conspiracy theory.

In his own words, yes, I joined the Muslim Brotherhood organization, and I was not alone.

End quote.

His Muslim Brotherhood friends and clerics were all imprisoned in Saudi Arabia during the Arab Spring.

He got out.

He came to the U.S.

He established a political party while in exile called Democracy for the Arab World Now Party.

The liberals, the progressives, the press loved him because they heard the word democracy.

It's the Muslim Brotherhood plan to subvert

democracy by turning it against itself.

He once wanted to establish Sharia law in the region.

He was also a wicked anti-Semite who wrote, quote, outside the context of history and logic, the Jews will have to die by force.

Oh,

Israel's outside the context of history and logic?

So we're going to have to kill all of them.

This is not a smear campaign.

When you hear somebody say that, you make sure you ask them, where are you doing your homework?

Where are you getting that?

Why is that a smear campaign?

To say that he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood?

He clearly was, in his own words.

So, why is that a smear campaign?

Because I thought the Muslim Brotherhood was largely secular.

Ask people, how much do you know about the Caliphate?

How much do you know about the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood?

How much do you really know about what this man wrote?

This man wrote that he

it was a mistake to think that you could have any kind of state in the Middle East without some form of Islamicists.

Now, that's different, remember, than Islam.

An Islamicist believes you have to use Sharia law.

That's the constitu- Wow, it sounds like the Muslim Brotherhood.

That's our our constitution.

That is our law.

Sharia law.

So

let's just begin to tell each other the truth.

And here's the truth.

Turkey is not a friend of ours.

Turkey is in with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Turkey would like to have a caliphate run by them.

Saudi Arabia, not good people.

Saudi Arabia, huge exporter of Wahhabism, and has done it here in the United States, has spent money building mosques that are very dangerous here in the United States.

It's true.

They kill him?

Could be.

Probably.

Seems like it.

I don't trust the Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey, but I also don't trust those guys.

One of them killed him.

Probably Saudi Arabia.

Did he deserve it?

No.

Does he deserve to be called a freedom fighter?

Only by

either really uneducated progressives

or just

liars.

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.

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Thanks.

This is going to be a fascinating half hour.

I could spend many hours with him, and I think that's part of the problem.

You'll see him on television, and no one is taking the time to actually listen to everything he has to say.

And he has a lot to say about things that have been very concerning to me,

including deep fakes, which I hope to get into.

But I want to start with

his book and the thing that everybody is talking about,

them, why we hate each other and how to heal.

Ben Sasse.

Welcome to the program, Senator from Nebraska.

How are you, sir?

I'm doing well.

Nebraska's got a winning streak going again, so we're happy in the heartland.

Ben, I want to talk to you, and I want to ask you the questions basically that everyone asks me, because we are

on some things in the same pocket.

And

I just want to hear your response to this,

you know, some line of questioning that usually comes my way.

We have a situation to where people have felt they have tried to do the right thing.

They have tried to do the Tea Party, and they were accused of being racist, and they were accused of being violent, which they weren't.

Meanwhile, the press and politicians excuse people like Antifa, and it's getting worse and worse.

No, we're not anti-capitalist.

We're not anti-American.

And then Hillary Clinton says one of the reasons she lost was because she was for capitalism.

You have Cortez coming out and Bernie Sanders stating with the DSA that they are against capitalism.

You have Antifa taking over the streets.

You have Republicans being shot

on the ball field.

The press is still ignoring all of this, blaming everything on the right.

Then Kavanaugh, they're willing to take all the way to, yep, he's a gang rapist and destroy people.

When is enough enough?

Well, so first of all, the way we consume politics is a mess, and lots of our political discussion itself is a mess.

But I think it's really important to distinguish between two dimensions.

One dimension is a continuum from right to left.

And on those issues, I'm as conservative as they come.

On anybody's scorecard, I'm the second or third most conservative senator in the United States Senate.

But the second dimension is about the intensification of politics and how centrally should politics sit in your worldview.

And there, I'm a big skeptic, because I'm a traditional American, of the idea that politics can be near the center of your worldview and you end up very happy.

So I think there's a lot of data now that shows more and more Americans are actually tuning out politics altogether.

But the people who are involved in politics, some of the national media sort of purporting to cover it,

some of the polit, many of the politicians that sort of run for office and get to Washington, D.C.

and never plan to leave again because they really think politics and power and D.C.

are the center of the world, And some subset of the consumers of our political news.

It's about 8% on the left that are truly politically addicted.

And we have a growing share on the right, now up to about 6% on the right that are politically addicted.

These kinds of people are really taking political tribalism to a new and deeper place and more intense place where it's crowding out more and more of the things that actually give people's lives meaning and happiness.

And so I think it's very important to I'm as far right as they come on the right versus left continuum, but it's very important to remember that the purpose of politics is to maintain a framework for ordered liberty so that you can go live in the communities of love where you're actually raising your kids and building a better mousetrap or app or where you're worshiping because those are the communities that are going to make you happy.

Politics is a means to an end.

Politics isn't the end.

So completely agree with you.

However, our politicians are becoming more and more extreme, especially on the left.

They are, you know, they are anti-capitalist.

They're anti-constitution.

So, you know,

on one hand, I agree with you.

We can't be, you know, all about politics.

But at what point do you see good people say,

enough is enough, and I can't take this anymore?

Yeah, but then to what end?

What do we do next?

Because what we don't want to do next is what the weirdos did to Nancy Pelosi in California.

The weirdos did to Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chow in Kentucky on Saturday.

Because there is no second or third chess move from there that doesn't just end up at violence.

And this is not saying, by the way, that people don't have a First Amendment right to protest.

They clearly do.

But screaming someone down, taking Mitch and Elaine's food off their table and throwing it on the floor and saying, you don't belong in our country to Leader McConnell or to Secretary Chow, who serves in President Trump's cabinet, that kind of stuff doesn't actually have persuasion as any goal.

The only thing there is just sort of symbolic politics as rant, which heads to a pretty dark place, I think.

So I agree with you again, but where is the leadership?

I've written a book.

You've written a book.

It's different than actually going out and leading

and standing, you know, Martin Luther King marching through Antifa.

and taking the beating.

Yes, but I think we should also recognize that the Antifa phenomenon is really built for short-term media clips.

That is what they're doing.

I'm in the middle of a little downtown, a sort of restored downtown in Omaha right now, and there's no Antifa here.

And yet we got a whole bunch of people who might be obsessed with thinking about Antifa today when I think we need to be aware of the sort of media ecology in which we live.

So in the 1950s, 68% of Americans in a given week were watching I Love Lucy.

So that meant 68% of households, that meant basically 99% of households knew what Lucy and Desi had done that week.

It wasn't important content, but it was shared content.

There was an American we.

When you fought with somebody about some project at work, or if you disagreed with them about politics, you could still talk about things that we had in common.

What's happening now and why I wrote this book, Them, is because there is no we right now.

And the most watched cable news programming, Sean Annity is number one and Rachel Maddow is often number two.

There's still really only 1.1% and nine-tenths of 1% of the public.

And so our world is so fragmented and fractured that I think it's really important to not consume our media as if the people like Antifa who are doing this to hope for viral collapse.

I think part of what healthy Americans should do is ignore them.

So what is our

we?

I mean, I've spent the last two years and the things that

I continually come back to every single time is the Bill of Rights.

It's why people came here, because they were protected.

They knew that they had the right to dream and create and be left alone.

Yeah.

Is that our

we or unum?

So, yes,

unum, e pluribus unim, out of the many one, right?

We don't have a whole bunch of one right now.

We don't have a shared sense of what you've just said.

The First Amendment is the beating heart of the American experiment.

Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, right of protest, all of those things flow from a fundamental assumption about the dignity of 320 million Americans, which is we believe Imago Day.

We believe that our citizens are created in the image of God with eternal souls and with dignity.

that's way bigger than their policy preferences.

And so what's unique in our moment, I think the grand tension that we as a people are not really wrestling through that is so far upstream from politics, is this tension between rootedness and rootlessness.

Almost all of the happiness literature, if you will, out there is confirming stuff that wise people, people who've had grandparents, have known for millennia, which is that happiness is actually a relatively simple equation.

Do you have a nuclear family?

Do you have a couple of deep friendships?

Do you have a local worshiping community?

Do you have a theological framework to make sense of death and suffering?

And fourth, and statistically, the number one driver of happiness is do you have meaningful vocation?

Do you have shared work?

Do you have co-workers?

Do you think when you leave home on Monday morning, when you go to do something, not do you make a lot of money or do you have a lot of status, but is there some neighbor who benefits from what I do?

If those four things are true, or even if three of the four are true, you're pretty likely to be happy.

And those things are all tied to rootedness.

But we're living through a technological revolution that's tempting us to believe that we can be rootless, we can be placeless.

And so, a lot of what's happening is the undermining of local community and the undermining of thick relationships and the undermining of vocation or long work ends up in a world where a lot of people are using political tribalism to fill a void of the loneliness that's actually happening in their local community.

And I think we need to reflect more deeply on that challenge of our time.

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

Libertarian candidate for the governor of New York, Larry Sharp, joins us in studio.

You can find him at Larry Sharp.

That's with an E, LarrySharp.com.

Larry, welcome to the the program.

Thanks for having me again.

I appreciate it.

So you were on with us for a few minutes a couple of weeks ago over the phone, and

I was fascinated by you because

you think completely out of the box.

Yes.

You're not thinking like a politician, which is exactly what I think what we need.

100%.

You are not being heard because, for instance, tomorrow they're having a debate and you're not invited.

That's correct right they don't like me i don't know why i get it nobody likes you oh my god yeah right

so um so how does somebody like you get elected look it's it's establishment

with establishment right the the establishment the establishment media stays with the establishment candidates right so that's what winds up happening when it comes to debates they stop they do that so look you you mentioned the idea that i have ocasio-cortez right literally she's going to be my congressperson she's she's my district yes in queens Absolutely.

And I said this is a good thing.

And this is a good thing because it shows one thing.

It shows this is an anti-establishment world right now.

She didn't win because she was amazing and smart and knew everything.

She won because she said, I'm not the establishment.

And people ran to her.

That's one of the reasons why Trump won.

It's one of the reasons why even Obama won in 2008.

I mean, anti-establishment is a thing that people tend to like now.

The advantage I have is I'm anti-establishment.

You're saying, how am I going to win if I can't get the mainstream media?

By doing what I'm doing now, doing podcasts, doing Facebook.

Look, Trump, one of the reasons why Trump won was Twitter, right?

That wasn't the reason, but it was one of the reasons.

He used that tool and they didn't see him coming.

I use the same tools, right?

I use Twitter, I use Facebook, I use podcasts.

I use the same tools.

They don't like it, it makes them angry.

But it's what I'm using.

They didn't see them coming.

They didn't see Cortez coming either.

And they won't see me coming either.

However, with Cortez,

she was

embraced by the establishment on the left the democrats have become democratic socialists which is

just because you put the word democrat in democratic in front of it doesn't mean that it's a a really wonderful thing yeah but there's the thing you need to notice now here even though cortez won nixon didn't and nixon actually called herself a socialist what happened once they said oh this Cortez person's a different person.

Great, let's vote for her.

Then they heard what she had to say.

And you found a lot of New Yorkers went, you know what?

Maybe this isn't right.

And people who voted for Cortez shifted and voted for our current governor, His Majesty King Andrew Cuomo II.

So they voted for him again.

So they went back to establishment after her.

So I think there was a little bit of buyer's remorse there.

There was a, I'll get you establishment.

Ooh, wait a minute.

No, not that much.

And I think they came back.

I think there was some buyer's remorse there.

And I think you are seeing that sometimes, right?

The average youngster, and it's usually youngsters who like socialism, right?

Doesn't know what it means.

I'll give you an example.

You find in upstate New York, you find often the rebel flag.

And some people say, well, that's the Confederate flag.

And I say, no, it isn't.

It's a symbol of rebellion.

Right.

And that's often a symbol of rebellion, usually on the right.

It's a symbol of rebellion.

It isn't like the people in upstate New York are going, the South will rise again.

They're not saying that, right?

That's not what they're saying.

But they are saying this is a rebellion.

It's a flag of rebellion.

And Alexander Cortez is, she is a rebellion on the left.

Socialism is a rebellion on the left.

They don't know what it means.

They have no idea what it means.

They just know it's not the establishment.

The establishment's not working.

That's why Che is amazing.

Exactly.

He becomes amazing.

They have no idea what he did.

They have no idea who he is.

But he's the rebellion guy.

So he becomes a symbol of rebellion on the left.

Don't get me wrong.

Are there people on the left who are exactly who these people are?

Of course there are.

But that's often the leadership.

I'm talking the average everyday person who votes.

They just know what's happening now isn't working.

That's why people listen to me.

When I actually talk, I talk about ways of making people better.

I focus on something which will sound crazy.

I focus on happiness because our nation was built on life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

And no one talks about this.

I do all the time.

Everything I'm talking about is to try to make people more happy or to at least allow them to pursue happiness.

All right, so tell me about that.

Let's start there.

Sure.

I talk about, for example, there are many controversial things that I talk about.

Education.

I have a complete revamp of the education system and people just want to keep funding the same system um

making hemp and cannabis legal okay hang on wait before we sure let's stop let's start with education go with education absolutely i'm the one talking about getting rid of all standardized testing prior to high school i'm the one talking about doing that because standardized testing is an unfair way of grading teachers it's an unfair way of rewarding schools And it makes kids who are 10, 11, and 12 years old feel stupid because they can't test well.

And it's known in a case of success.

And what are we finding?

We're finding literally kids, we have a 30% rise in suicide across this entire nation to include children.

One of those reasons is family court, how broken that is.

But another reason is they're pressured to take tests and to feel stupid and to become successful at 10, 11, 12 years old.

Why?

Standardized testing is very good when you're in high school and showing where you should go, where your proclivities are, not a bad idea.

But 10 years old, why?

It's to keep control of what's happening in the schools.

I'm not okay with that.

Now, you have a bit of gray hair as I do.

So that means you were in school prior to 1980.

So was I.

Prior to 1980, there really wasn't a Department of Education.

I mean, it existed, but it was basically a repository for information.

That's all it really was.

It didn't really do anything.

Somehow, everyone in the United States somehow learned how to read, write, survive in the world without a Department of Education.

Somehow that worked.

Somehow local school districts did a good job.

Somehow that worked.

Now you add the internet, you add our technology, you think the odds are worse.

I'm going to give you a quick rundown of every single time centralized control has made things better.

Finished.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

So that's not really what I want.

I want to make sure that we have some localized control.

I'm the only guy saying, let teachers teach.

Then I don't add administrators.

Because here's the problem with getting ready to centralize testing.

You will lose about, we will lose in New York State.

We will lose about $4 billion in federal funding.

It's a lot of money, but isn't that much for us?

Our budget is $60 billion.

So losing $4 billion, not the end of the world.

However, we can still fix that.

Here's the issue here.

When we lose that $4 billion, we also lose something else.

We lose all those strings attached to that $4 billion.

And there's lots of strings, which means administrators go away.

Administrators who are writing grants, administrators who are checking boxes, all those things.

We have massive teacher burnout in New York State.

Massive.

Why?

Regulations, rules, checking boxes.

I'm the only one saying these things because I crossed the entire state.

My state has 62 counties.

I crossed all 62.

I'm calling it the full sharp, by the way.

But you know, but so now I want teachers to actually want to teach.

We actually have districts that have more administrators than teachers.

The average teacher, and that's shameful, by the way.

The average teacher makes about $80,000 a year in New York State.

And the average administrator makes over $150,000.

You dump a couple administrators, you've hired more teachers, you've given raises, you've bought computers, all these things.

But I'm still not done.

Why in the world would we have K through 12?

We need K through 10.

The last two years of high school for too many kids is gym, study hall, video games, and probably smoking weed.

That's all they're doing.

How do we know this?

Because the first year of college for most kids is 13th grade.

It's a reboot because they're not ready for it.

Correct.

So now it takes at least six years for the average kid to graduate college.

Well, that's terrible.

Now we've got a 24-year-old kid who's never had a job.

And we say, I wonder why he has no work ethic.

Well, he's never had a job.

He's been screwing around for eight years, literally.

Now, I have people who will tell me, literally, Larry, I will hire anybody with a work ethic.

I had one entrepreneur who told me, he said, Larry, my interview process is very simple.

I tell them to show up at 8 o'clock.

I open the door.

If they're there, they're hired.

That's how bad it is for people to show up at 8 o'clock in the morning.

It is.

So we need to break that system.

Now, I can't change parenting.

That I can't do.

But can I change the environment?

Of course.

At 16 now, instead, kids should have five choices.

They take a test, they get a high school diploma.

Number one, if college is right for for you, that's amazing.

Go to college.

The problem is we've been told a lie.

And the lie is the only way to have success in this country is to get a great high school diploma and then go to a great college and then sit behind a desk in front of a computer all day.

That's a way to success.

Not even close to the only way to success.

Lots of people are happy doing all types of things and we should embrace that.

So at 16, let's start making some decisions.

If I think college is right for me, I go to a two-year prep school.

Two-year prep school is that biology, chemistry, history, whatever.

Great, Off to college I go.

Two years and I make sure it's working right.

So by the time I get into college, I'm ready.

I can graduate in three or four years.

I can take advantage of internships, incubators.

Life is good.

I don't like that.

No worries.

I'm the super smart kid, the kid who, you know, loves Doctor Who.

I'm teasing my Doctor Who fans.

I'm a Doctor Who fans.

There we go.

So the geek kid.

I'm not sure about the new doctor, you know, being a female, but that's a different story.

No worries.

Okay, yes.

So

that kid who's really smart, that kid takes the SAT right away and goes off and gets a two-year degree.

Why should they they be bored in school?

They shouldn't be bored in school.

Next, you don't want any of those things?

No worries.

Go to a two-year trade school.

Go to a trade school, become a plumber, a carpenter, whatever you want to be, a mechanic, an HVAC guy.

In New York State, particularly, we need that desperately.

The average tradesman in New York State is over 50.

That's a problem.

I love my 50-year-olds.

I'm 50.

I love my 50-year-olds.

My problem is they should not be the average.

They should not be doing all the work.

They should be training the youngsters and you can't find enough in New York City to do it.

It's a problem.

So do that.

We don't like that.

Go get a job.

Why not go learn a work ethic now at 16?

I worked at 16.

I know lots of people in my generation worked at 16.

Yes.

Go work.

Learn what it means to have a boss.

Learn what it means when your boss says show up at 8.

That doesn't mean 9.30.

That actually means 7.45.

Learn that now at 16, 17, 18.

Get some experience.

But Larry sounds great.

How do you pay for it?

New York State Constitution tells me I have to pay for grades one through 12.

Great.

I'll pay for the last two years too.

I'll still pay for them.

Here's how I do it.

I'm a Marine.

When I got in Marine Corps, I had a GI bill.

They gave me X dollars and Y years to use it.

Same thing here.

You're 16.

You got $20,000, seven years to use it.

Good luck.

Here's what I promise you is going to happen.

A bunch of cool prep schools will pop up.

A bunch of great trade schools will pop up.

Guess how much they'll cost for two years?

Yeah, $20,000.

Of course they will.

How do I know they'll pop up?

Because it's guaranteed government money.

What do banks love most?

Guaranteed government money.

Yes, they do.

So they will absolutely give loans to make these schools pop up.

It'll be amazing.

But here's the best part.

When these schools pop up, now we're spending $10,000 per kid per year for these last two years.

New York state spends $22,000 per year per kid.

So we're saving $12,000 each.

$12,000 times the 400,000 11, 12th graders is more than $4 billion.

We've saved all of the federal funds.

We've removed tons of administrators.

We've given teachers a better chance to actually teach.

We've given teachers freedom to do what they feel is appropriate.

We've gotten rid of Common Core.

We've made teenagers who are unhappy happier.

And this goes to the next level, which is school safety.

If you look at all the school shootings we've had, while they are murders,

at their core, they're public suicides.

They're unhappy kids.

That's their core.

They're unhappy kids.

Now think about this.

11th, 12th grade.

You're an 11th, 12th grader.

You're in a class with everyone who wants to be there.

The bully kid isn't there.

The bully kids in something else.

The kid's a bully because he doesn't want to be there.

That's why he's a bully.

But now he goes someplace else.

You're a teacher, 11th, 12th grade.

Discipline problems almost go away.

Why?

All the kids want to be there.

They've taught.

What's killing our children isn't guns.

What's killing our children is lack of community, lack of purpose, and loneliness.

That's killing our kids.

Put them in these worlds.

All that goes away.

I can't go shoot my fellow friend.

The teacher's having me, you know, build a rocket with my class.

I can't go shoot anybody.

The farmer needs me to fix a tractor.

I've got things to do.

I have purpose.

I have meaning.

I don't do things like that anymore.

We are living in a world of massive change.

Yes.

Massive change.

And

when's the last time you heard any politician sound anything like this?

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of the same old politics.

And Larry Sharp is joining us now.

He is running for governor in New York, and I think his ideas need to be heard, and

he needs to be introduced to a larger audience.

What is your organization like?

What's your ground game like?

Yeah, we have we have probably the best libertarian ground game I've seen in a long time, if probably ever.

We have over seven or eight directors, campaign manager, about 35 to 50 people who are actively working every day on every aspect of the campaign to include things like scheduling, setting up events, fixing our calendar, making sure people show up.

Social media, we have a team on Twitter, a team on Instagram, a team on Facebook.

We have a team on everything, YouTube.

We do video production.

We do not have to do it.

You don't have, but you're lacking money.

You're up against people who have tens of millions of dollars.

Tens of millions of dollars.

Absolutely.

We've raised almost half a million.

But to be clear, if in these last couple of weeks, if we raise another $50,000, $100,000, this becomes winnable.

I know it sounds crazy, but it is.

And the reason is name recognition is my only issue.

The last poll we put out, I was at about one-third name recognition.

And with that, I polled at 13%.

So you can do the math on that one.

Three times to get to 100% equals 39%, right?

Three times 13, 39%.

This is a five-way race.

30% could win this thing.

So I'm nine points above victory, assuming I can get 100%.

There's the hard part, right?

It's a math equation.

Can I get to 100%?

And sadly, that's not my message.

I've got that down.

It's the media.

Can I get my name out to enough people to where I cross over that barrier, which gets me over the 30%?

I can't believe that there's, I mean, it's like libertarians don't want to win.

Yes.

Yes.

This really is.

Yes.

Well, again, you got to remember, as third party in general, the system is stacked against you.

And someone the other day was telling me, they said, you know, only someone who has like a Marine mentality could do this because every day I'm up against failure.

But the Marine Corps taught me, take the hill.

The captain shot.

Take the hill.

The machine gun's broken.

Take the hill.

The radios don't work.

Take the hill.

Stop giving me excuses.

Take the hill.

I get it.

And that's what I do.

I have to take the hill.

It doesn't matter.

I literally deal with failure every day, disappointment every day.

And when I say that, that's not an exaggeration.

That's every single day.

As I mentioned earlier, there's going to be a debate coming up here tomorrow at WCBS, and they're only going to include the Democrat and Republican.

Even though I'm on the ballot, even though 31,000 New Yorkers signed a petition to get me on that ballot, WCBS, I think a guy named Tim Schell, I think is his name.

He there has decided, nope, Larry Sharp doesn't deserve to be on there.

He's decided that the establishment is all that matters.

This is what I'm up against.

It's not going to stop me.

I'm still taking the hill, but it's yet another obstacle we have to get over.

So if you're a libertarian or you're hearing something that

you think should be heard, then you should probably

maybe tweet Storm.

What's his name again at CBS?

WCBS Radio, 880 Radio.

I think his name is Tim Scheldt.

So this is a radio debate.

Yes.

Well, it's going to be televised also now.

Okay.

It'll be both televised and radio.

It will be both.

Okay.

So yeah, again, and they're just deciding, no, we don't want, don't get me wrong, there are three other people.

It should be me.

It should also be the Green Party and also the Sam Party.

They should all be there.

But this is the norm.

And we put up against this.

We're up against this constantly.

And here's the worst part.

With all of this, we're still growing.

And they're still going down.

That's the sad part.

They don't realize they're on a sinking ship.

Or maybe they don't even care.

If people want to donate, how do they donate?

LarrySharp.com donate.

And to be clear, if some of you want to give $45,000, you can't.

The maximum is $44,000 by New York state law.

So if you, I know someone's going, I want to give Larry $45,000.

Sorry, you can't do it.

$44,000.

You only can give $44,000.

That's all you can give.

Wow, okay.

Yes.

LarrySharp.com, that's with an E at the end of sharp.

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