Ep 6 | Eric Bolling | The Glenn Beck Podcast

I think everybody's had that day where it's just like everything bad that could possibly happen does.

But you're about to hear

about a day I think is every person's nightmare, the worst day in anyone's life I've ever heard of.

In the end,

if we're lucky, we come to realize as people that it's how we deal with what has happened to us, the way we face tragedy, and that, in the end, defines us.

Moments in time that we could spend a lifetime wishing we could undo or redo.

But at the end of the day, the only thing we can really control is our response and whether we allow it to destroy us or to build us.

Today, I'm going to talk to Eric Bowling, who experienced the worst day I've ever heard.

This is the first time he is coming out and speaking about this in public for the media.

We talk about the loss of his job, and on the way home, he found out about the death of his son.

He takes us through

important warnings and asks important questions, whether you agree with or not, the dangers of opioids, the pain of losing a child, and how his marriage has grown through all of this.

We also talk about his personal relationship with Donald Trump, as well as Trump's unconventional but effective approach to business, his presidency, and his policies.

Today's podcast: Eric Bowling.

Eric, I think

you are a guy who

could claim the title of

I had the worst day anyone on the planet has ever had.

You lose your job, and on the same day, you lose your only child.

Can you talk to me?

I don't care really about the job.

Can you talk to me about losing your son?

I'll add one more to that.

I lost my faith that day, too, Glenn.

I had gone to church five days a week during the week and every Sunday.

September

8th of 2017 was the last day I went to church.

Early in the day, I had spent a long time going back and forth with Fox, with lawyers, trying to figure out where I was going to go forward, what was going to happen.

And we came upon an idea that we were going to separate.

I was separating from Fox.

They said amicably separating.

Bowling and Fox are amicably separating.

And I looked at it on that day as a new beginning.

I can go start and go find another job somewhere and life's going to be great.

And you were going to sue.

I didn't know what I was going to do, Glenn.

I will tell you that

whatever was written about me was false, patently false.

It was a lie.

It never happened.

And no one has ever, ever.

come forward.

It was all anonymous sourcing.

Make a long story short, my lawyer said it's probably time to to just cut ties with Fox and move on and go find another job.

This could go on forever.

And frankly,

my family was going to be dragged through the mud for a long time.

So I decided that that was the thing to do.

We cut ties around 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

It was a Friday before a long weekend, before Labor Day.

I took my wife out to dinner that night.

And we were going to celebrate.

The owner of the restaurant came over and said, hey, you know, congratulations, this is a new start.

We had a nice drink.

On the way home, we got the call.

We were driving home, and

my phone rang.

There's a young man on the other side of the phone saying, Mr.

Bowling, call

your son.

Call Eric right away.

I said, What's wrong?

He said, Just call Eric right away.

I called over there, and a girl answered, and her name was Kayla.

He had been seeing her on and off.

She was crying.

And for some reason, I just went right to,

is he alive?

She said no

that was

a rough day.

The next day, went to Colorado

and the president called me.

He says, Anything we can do for you?

I said, no,

thank you.

But at that day, I realized that he cared.

And so for the next few months, I made it my mission to create awareness around opioids.

Eric

bought a Xanax on campus

And it was laced with fentanyl and it killed him.

So,

yeah, so that was that day.

And so now we are a year and two days after that, and

it's been a rough go.

We can stop at any time if you don't want to talk about anything.

But I think it's just an important story to

tell.

When you said

is he alive

why were there indications or was it just a dad feeling it was a feeling who gets a call at 10 30 at night and is told to call your son right away without explaining why and i just had the hunch and sure enough the hunch turned out to be true so um

it turns out he was uh he bought a xanax on campus that was laced with fentanyl it wasn't a prescriptive xanax he didn't know and he he passed and was an accidental overdose

um so the question you asked me, was I going to sue Fox, at that moment, I had no fight in me to do anything.

So,

we spent, my wife and I just got very close, and we spent the better part of the next year just talking to other parents, talking any opportunity we could to get the word out that it's an epidemic.

Excuse me.

Parents need to know that their children are at risk.

And it's a

massive epidemic in the country.

Young kids need to know that one pill can kill you.

They're not sure what you're ever taking.

And parents need to know that your child isn't too smart, too popular, too athletic to be exposed to potentially dying from an overdose.

I have very high tolerance to drugs.

And I went in for surgery maybe 10, 15 years ago.

And

I have woken up on the operating table twice, scare the hell out of the anesthesiologist.

But they couldn't keep me down.

And I didn't realize until two days later that they were pumping me full of all kinds of stuff.

One of them was fentanyl.

And I went home with a patch.

I had never even heard of fentanyl.

And I woke up one night and I kept waking myself up and I would stop breathing.

And

I'd wake up.

And I distinctly remember: if you don't, because each time I'd wake up, I'd hear, take that patch off.

I didn't even know what it was.

Take that patch off.

The last time I woke up, I heard, if you don't take that patch off, you will not wake again.

So I got up out of bed and I just ripped it off.

That next morning, I asked my wife, I said, What is that?

We started reading the box.

It's for end-of-life use only.

It is the most addictive, most

potent.

I mean, they're only supposed to give it to people who they know are going to die because you're going to get hooked on it because it's so potent and it's so dangerous.

Cancer patients

who are in their last stage, you're right.

Three or four grains of salt,

that's how much fentanyl can kill a 200-pound man.

It's set on the box.

I just ripped it off.

My wife came in and she was wearing plastic rubber gloves.

It says on the box,

just for the patch.

If you touch the patch and

it's not prescribed for you,

you could die.

It's so wicked.

Law enforcement

officers have overdosed just by on a bust, just taking the package of fentanyl and

just coming in contact.

It's wildly, wildly potent painkiller and opioid.

So,

I mean,

I was young and stupid.

I'm a recovering alcoholic.

I smoked pot every day from the time I was, I don't know, 14, 15 years old until I was 32.

I remember doing cocaine and everything else, and I was lucky enough

to

not die from it.

My mom died from a drug overdose.

Or my mom, I'm sorry, almost died from a drug overdose.

My mother was addicted to painkillers.

Was your son, did he have a problem with drugs?

Or was this a first time or is this just a part that you know?

He was a great student at the University of Colorado.

He was a sophomore.

He was only back at school a couple of weeks.

He

drank in high school.

He partied.

He smoked pot.

I could smell it once in a while.

There was no indication of any sort of use like this, and the coroner

deemed it an accidental overdose.

How about the people with him?

I don't talk to them.

I just haven't had the

desire.

Was this a girlfriend that he was close to, or is it just a...

I don't know.

I mean, there was a girl with him,

but I don't know.

It's like that's too painful.

I had a...

I don't even know what you'd call it, a Twitter war with one of the parents from Parkland.

And it was over the Judge Kavanaugh thing.

It was the guy who went to Judge Kavanaugh and put his hand out.

And

I asked him a question.

As someone who has lost a child,

you were there when they took Judge Kavanaugh's children away.

They were terrified.

It was unruly.

Did you have no sympathy

for a father in that situation?

We're not living in a country where you can have a conversation with anyone.

If you were a parent at Parkland High School, you can say and do almost anything, it seems, and

you're not held responsible.

Do you get that same same

treatment from people?

I get an amazing outpouring of

support and love,

frankly, from both sides of the political aisle, for the most part.

I'll get an occasional Twitter person who says something so horrendous I couldn't even repeat it here.

it happens.

But for the most part, both sides,

even in the media, there were a couple of people at CNN, Don Lemon, Dan Jones, at MSNBC, Joe Scarborough.

They called me and checked up on me regularly and Adrian.

And

that was surprising.

That was actually

It made me feel good that no matter what our political ideology is, and by God, they're miles apart, that they could put that aside and

stay in touch and stay close, frankly, better than

most of the people I worked with.

What did you learn

as a parent through this?

I've spent some time speaking to groups and big groups.

And I tell it's the one piece of advice, and I kind of alluded to it a little while ago, that as a parent, you

tend to think that your kid is just amazing and they could never be touched by this.

And there's the line I use over and over:

your son or daughter is not too smart, too athletic, too

popular, too white, too black, too Hispanic, too Muslim, too Christian

to be touched by this and they likely will cross paths with an opportunity to try an opioid and

you just never know if it's going to kill them.

So it's the not my kid syndrome is deadly.

But what did you learn?

As I'm a dad,

I can't imagine what it feels like to

lose your child.

It's just not right.

It's just not the way life is supposed to work.

Parents are supposed to go first.

But I

spend time thinking because I lost my mom so early.

I spend probably too much time thinking, am I creating a memory with them if they would, you know, if I would die?

What did you learn as a dad?

You don't have to go here, but if you could do it all over again, what advice?

That wasn't it.

That wasn't it.

If I had ignored something or had not spent time with them,

that was none of those were the case.

We were very close.

We texted every day.

I was at University of Colorado a couple of weeks before for Father's Day.

It wasn't that.

I don't think I've learned anything.

I'm not trying to

make nothing of this.

I just, I've spent literally a year trying to,

you know, just to get a grip of my life again.

I don't think my wife or I did anything wrong.

I think we just, we were stung by.

No, no, I don't.

And I didn't mean just in that.

I'm saying there's no advice I can give a parent

other than

have the conversation with your children.

He took a Xanax that was laced with fentanyl.

I mean,

how do you avoid that other than trying to implore your children, which I try to do?

Like I said, to the parents, not my kids' syndrome is deadly.

To the kids, one pill can kill.

Because literally, that's what happened.

Most marriages don't make it through something like this.

Stats are.

What is it that you two have that are that's allowing you to make it?

We were together 20 years

prior to that.

So

we're probably like two sticks, Glenn, kind of leaning against each other, where if either one of them were to go,

the other was going to fall.

So we're two good people.

I can't imagine

what kind of pain I would have if Adrian left, or what kind of pain I would put on her if I left.

So,

you know,

we're still dealing with it.

We're still getting through it.

Do you think you'll ever not?

No, but I hope

I hope it gets a little easier.

Let's talk about the epidemic itself.

Whose fault is this, Eric?

Wow, whose fault?

It's probably the

pharmaceutical companies, I would say,

to develop a drug so strong, so potent.

What's the reason for that?

I've had a lot of things.

May I just say, as a guy with a very high tolerance to pain, as a guy who just said goodbye to a very good friend last night of cancer who was also on fentanyl,

thank God for fentanyl.

I think it is the most evil

drug you can give to somebody because

I was on it for four days.

I was addicted.

I went through withdrawals.

I was on it for four days.

It is so powerful.

But if you're out and there is nothing else for a physician to give,

I thank God that we don't have to live in pain but it's gone beyond physicians Glenn I've had um

I've had a lower back surgery I've had a neck surgery uh I've removed four discs

I never took any of that stuff there's a way to not have to do I think it's um I think fentanyl is evil.

It's evil.

They continue to make stronger and stronger and stronger opioids, and they over-prescribe the opioids.

It's just a fact.

So Purdue Pharmaceutical, who makes OxyCotton,

decided last year that they were going to do something great and cut their sales force in half.

And my question to them publicly was, well, why do you have a sales force

to begin with?

Why don't you just fill what the doctors are ordering, fill their needs, instead of selling more opioids to doctors?

If you're going to sell more opioids, they're going to go ahead and and turn around and prescribe them.

That's just the way the system's going to work.

So I think we really need to regulate the way pharmaceuticals are pushing these drugs to doctors.

Are they being incentivized to prescribe opioids?

I mean, if they are, that's a really bad idea, a really bad situation.

So I think the pharmaceuticals are

at

to blame.

I would say the doctors are to blame.

There's no reason you should send a patient home with a 30, 60, or 90-day supply of opioids.

That's, you know, could be two, three hundred pills.

Those are going to be sitting in a medicine cabinet, and young kids are going to be walking around those medicine cabinets looking to see what's in there.

If you yourself don't get addicted.

Right.

So I think we've become a society looking for the quick, easy relief

for everything, including pain.

And

I'll give you an an example.

These dealers

are buying street drugs.

Some dealers are trying to get some of the street drugs that are deadly because then they'll be known as the dealer with the strongest stuff.

That's what's going on in the street.

There are hot batches where

the night Eric Chase passed, there was a

a military guy.

I think he was with the Navy.

He was like an admiral.

He was a high-level military person who had a 19-year-old son also pass at University or at Denver University, which is about 20 miles from the University of Colorado.

Likely the same batch, bad batch of Xanax laced with fentanyl, and it killed his son, too.

We just really need to crack down and understand how deadly the

academic is.

But that's not the pharmaceutical company.

No, but it's right.

So there's the street stuff that's coming in from China.

I think 90% of Laurel's fentanyl is produced in China, and that's coming over illegally.

Some of it's coming over legally, but a lot of of it's illegally.

And

it's both sides.

Both

are causing the epidemic.

144 people per day die from overdose, drug overdoses per day.

Somewhere around

85 to 90% of those have something to do with fentanyl or opioids.

That's like flying a 737 into the side of a mountain every single day, every day of every week.

We would stop that at some point, wouldn't we?

We'd We'd figure out what was going wrong, why we're 737s flying into mountains every day.

We'd stop it.

Why aren't we stopping this?

So, how do we stop it?

Because are you a believer in the war on drugs?

We can't win the war on drugs.

So, how do you stop it?

I think, so I sit down, I sat down with Donald Trump in March.

So, it was a couple months after I passed, and I was trying to help them out with their opioid awareness push.

I did a

video, not unlike this right here.

You've got to get the message out.

They're doing great things on the enforcement side.

They're stopping stuff that's coming over.

They're trying to find, they're actually sending people into China to find the labs where the stuff's being produced, and they're trying to shut those labs down with the Chinese government.

But we also need the awareness side, too.

We need to really, if they're going to spend some money, I know this isn't very libertarian, but if you're going to spend some money on things,

why not spend some money on educating families on how dangerous this stuff is?

Aaron Powell, so

there is, and I don't know the stats, you probably do.

How many people are buying it illicitly?

And how many people are

regular people that got hooked through a doctor because they needed it at the time, and now they can't stop?

And how many, what is the percentage?

Just let me ask you that.

You keep going back to they got hooked because they needed it and they can't stop.

Isn't it the doctor's responsibility to make sure that they're not prescribed enough to get hooked?

I don't think that there is a number of opioids that you could take a day that you wouldn't get hooked.

You know, when a doctor sends you home with 300 tablets, what's going to happen?

Well, if you have restraint, they're going to sit on your cabinet and you take them.

But

if you take them, let's say you have back surgery.

I have a niece who had back surgery after back surgery after back surgery and the cage came apart in her from a botch surgery.

I mean, she was just in excruciating pain.

Well, they gave her fentanyl.

Okay, Doc, we'll thank you for that.

What's the plan to get off of fentanyl?

And it's almost, I think it's almost impossible to get off of that stuff.

She needed it at the time,

but then a lot of people,

it's so hard to get off of it that you're just like, I

well, there's an option of not having access to it too that gets you off of it.

I mean, I think we need to really just firm up our how we

how available

these pills are.

Tell me about your relationship with Donald Trump.

Amazing.

Close friend.

He calls me often.

He's called me a couple days in a row sometimes when there's something that's really on his mind.

And we talk.

And I give him my honest opinion.

I tell him I'm not

a psychophant that tells tells him he's right all the time.

I remember when the infrastructure plan came out,

it had been leaked by CNN, and I had a meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office that afternoon, and I downloaded it, I read it, I walked in with it, I said, hey, Mr.

President, I got the infrastructure plan.

He's like, yeah, it's great, right?

I said, well,

it's okay.

He said, what do you mean?

And when you say that to Trump, it's not the greatest thing in the world, he wants to know why.

And in the original plan, there were two provisions that I thought were missing.

And I said, well, number one, I'd love to see 90% of the raw materials used in this trillion-dollar plan being produced in the United States or coming from the United States.

And he said, it's not in there.

I said, no, let's get it in there.

Number two, I said,

why don't you

let everyone know that Donald Trump in this infrastructure plan is building a wing of a hospital or building a new school.

But why don't you allow the people in those communities first crack at the construction

bids on those jobs?

He said, well,

what if they don't can't compete financially?

I said, well, then they don't get it, but you at least open the door for a local construction company to do the job for their own neighborhood.

I said, you know how much goodwill you will have from the people in that neighborhood, even Democrats in that neighborhood?

Of course.

And I'm not suggesting that the American people should overpay, because if they can't compete, then you go to the bigger construction company, the federally approved construction company.

Give them a level that they need to beat, and let the local guy do it.

He said, that's pretty good.

He said something like, we have

a certain percentage of the plan devoted to rural America.

I said, well, I'm not sure.

That's a little bit too defined for me.

I'm just saying if you're in St.

Louis and you're building a hospital link, offer the construction companies in St.

Louis that job first.

And if they can't compete, then you can give it to the big whomever, GE or whoever.

Anyway, to get back to my relationship with him,

I can say that to him.

I'm not sure a lot of people around him would say that to him, but I do.

And I think he appreciates that.

So

we'll have a lot of conversations.

And I see him, you know, my show is in D.C.

now.

So I have the opportunity to be at the White House for Trump or Bill Schein's a great friend of mine or any of the senior advisors.

So I'm probably there once a week at the White House.

So let let me go back to this.

Because you're a financial guy,

right?

I mean, you.

My background, yeah.

Yeah, you were first a baseball player.

Short period.

Yeah, short period.

And then you hurt yourself.

And then, but you have your degree in economics.

Yeah, business and finance, both.

And you and I both have been crazy about the spending in Washington for a very long time when Obama was spending money like crazy.

When they did TARP,

when Bush first did TARP, that wasn't Obama, when Bush did that,

nuts.

Bush did an auto-bay a lot too that I don't forget.

No, I don't forget that, yeah.

And then Obama came in and he did the stimulus.

What did they call it?

Recovery Reinvestment Act,

Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

A-R-RA.

And it was the first time that I had ever seen a number in spending at $700 billion, almost a trillion dollars.

And we went nuts, and I'm pretty sure you were there.

The first time I saw the spending proposal from Donald Trump, it was over a trillion dollars.

So

how do you square that

with

what you've believed

about spending?

So

you and and I have a financial background.

There's no.

Oh, you do.

I don't.

Well, you understand finances.

First of all, I just want to note something that when you were gracious enough to let me host your Glenn Beck show at Fox, I just remembered that when you brought up the $700 billion

American Reinvestment Act was the day I brought 700 pennies in and threw them on your table on air.

And I said, each one of these pennies is a billion dollars.

And the pile was like this.

And it kind of you understood how much money that was.

The difference between Obama spending $700 billion and Trump spending it, when Obama's growth rate was probably close to zero, if not negative, when he spent that,

and when Trump's growth GDP number is pushing 3.5%

quarterly, annualized, but quarterly,

this money is going to come back.

This money

would never have come back.

You were just spending

into

a dying,

a terrible economy.

We would have made our way out of that the same way we would have with or without that spending, because none of that spending really went to infrastructure.

Most of that spending

went to friends of Obama.

So

when you say that money is going to come back to us, how is that money going to come back to us?

With growth.

When you spend into growth, you are going to get paid back.

When you go deficit spend into growth, that pays back in the form of higher taxes.

the economic pool gets bigger the taxes go up even if the rate is lower so when joe biden saw or who never forget it because i played it a million times people say to me joe you mean i got to spend money to make money yeah that's what he was defending well that's what obama did that that was the defense of the american reinvestment act so why is this one working and

because the economy is stronger you're you're spending money into an economy that's growing and you're continuing to grow and that money is going to come back in the form of higher tax higher tax revenue.

Barack Obama said

that

last few weeks took credit for this administration, which I guess is consistent because he blamed Trump or Bush for like, you know, I think 40 years

for all the problems he had.

Is there any truth at all that this is the Obama?

I honestly think that the reason why yes, the economy was improving in the last couple years of the Obama presidency, but if you take the

total of the eight years, he was at 1.5 percent growth annualized.

And said that that would be

the new norm.

Right, right.

And Trump has proven that that's not the new norm.

Hopefully the new norm is north of 3 percent, double the growth of Obama.

Remember,

when the economy grows, wages go up, so do tax revenues go up, and that helps pay off some of

the growth in the spending, not all of it.

I think the real reason why the economy is growing, the stock market's high, unemployment is low.

I can't remember a time where unemployment was lower than GDP.

It's almost unheard of.

And if it's sustained, it's phenomenal.

But I think that has to do with lower taxes and the rollback of regulation.

Basically, everything Trump said he was going to do, he's doing it.

He lowered taxes.

The day he was elected, he started rolling back regulation.

And that, for a business, that's phenomenal.

Yeah, his the rollback of regulations under this president have been amazing.

Amazing, but also it means so much.

People don't realize when a company is debating to come to the United States or debating whether to expand, if their economic prediction for the next one to five years is solid, they're way more likely to hire more people and to spend more money on capital and improvements to their company than they were if they thought the market was declining.

So Calvin Coolidge, I think the most underrated president of all time,

I think he's top five.

He came in under, he was vice president under

Harding

and then president after Harding.

And

what they did was they cut taxes.

Remember, Eight years before, there was no income tax, and then they said it'll never be over 7%,

and it's only the wealthiest 1%.

When they got into office, I think it was 80%.

They cut that back down.

I don't remember what it was, but it was, I don't think it was single digits, but it was very low.

And they cut at the same time, and maybe first, they cut spending in half.

Two years later, they cut it in half again.

That's what caused the Roaring 20s.

That's what caused this unleash because

they were sending the signal.

Government's not in control.

The government's not going to take your money.

The government's not going to regulate you to death.

All that progressive stuff is over.

Why is there not a conservative

voice around Trump that is really saying

cut

spending?

You know, I don't know.

And you're right.

You know, somewhat

we and maybe even I am being hypocritical because when when Obama's increasing spending,

we were basically saying it's a ticking time bomb.

And now Trump is spending probably at the same rate that Obama was.

Faster.

But we have a bigger economy, too, Glenn.

I mean,

if you relate it to the size

of the pool, I'm not sure there's more water going into it.

I'll give you that.

But maybe it is.

We should be.

In the same token, the liberals who say

now saying what a ticking time bomb they're going to be.

Oh, I can't take it.

I can't take it.

Because you're being consistent I'm probably not being consistent I just I just have so much hope that that and belief that lowering his his lowering of the taxes and lowering the the regulatory burdens of companies in America which were onerous I mean there are sometimes you'd have to fill out 700 pages just to grow a tomato you know I mean and he's bringing all that down making it easier to do business in America

I'm kind of hoping and by probably being hypocritical that that added growth is going to at least turn the spending this the you know the deficit deficit spending into maybe

non-deficit spending.

What do you think

is the one thing that he hasn't done that

he's itching to do?

Is there anything big that I mean, he's done

remark Israel alone.

Build the wall.

I mean, let's be honest.

He's had the House, the Senate, and the White House, and he's had

every opportunity to get all he's all he has to do is sign that document when they say we got whatever 20 billion dollars to start building your wall and he gets it done and he'd stop you know he'd fulfill yet another campaign promise that's what he really want i don't think that's going to be earth-shattering to the economy i think the infrastructure plan could be um beneficial do you think i don't think the wall is but he wants it do you do you think do you think we would be at a place where people would be screaming build a wall because it's made to look like that's racist do you think we would be screaming build a wall if

we

had a country that consistently enforced the laws that we had, that didn't necessarily go after the immigrant, they're here, so the illegal alien comes.

Well, they stay here because we give them jobs.

If the government was going after these companies that were hiring them and just made their eyes bleed with fines

and we were arresting people at the border.

We were doing what we're supposed to do anyway.

Do you think we would have this cry for a wall?

Or is it maybe not?

Maybe not.

But because I look at this as I don't trust you.

I don't trust that you're going to do anything in Congress.

You don't really care about this.

You'll maybe change the law and enforce the law, but what's the next guy going to do?

I think the wall is all about the American people saying, I've had enough.

I've had enough.

It's symbolic.

It's absolutely symbolic.

Right.

I want something permanently there because I don't trust you guys will do anything ever.

And I'm sure that the wall is the way to stop illegal immigration.

Maybe you're right.

Maybe the e-verify system with massive penalties is the way to do it.

I have an alternate theory that I get pretty beat up

for saying, and I've been saying the better part of six years now on Fox and then now on America on CRTV.

I have an immigration plan that's amazing.

I challenge you to tell me what's wrong with this plan.

We've pick a number, 12, 15, how many illegal immigrants in the country right now?

I think probably about 20.

20 million, even better.

20 million illegals here right now.

We let in about 950,000 per year legally, legal immigration into the United States.

My plan would be build your wall, build your border security along the wall.

For the 20 million that are here, first of all, I'd increase legal immigration to 2 million, million, not one.

For the people who are already here, don't send them home.

Every state has five, six, 15 DMVs, right?

Motor vehicle locations.

Call those embassies.

Call those free zones where if you're illegal, undocumented, you can go in there.

You're not going to get deported.

You're going to get signed up.

We're going to know who you are and where you are.

And if you're a criminal, you're going home.

They'll never show up.

But everyone else who the vast majority of those people here aren't criminals can go there, get in line on this $2 million per year instead of $1 million per year, or whatever, $3 million per year instead of $1 million,

and start paying taxes.

Get out of the shadows and start paying taxes and work your way into citizenship.

Now, there's no fear of being deported or separated from families.

It's kind of both sides kind of have to be okay with that.

Nothing, both, like not all for Republicans, not all for Democrats, kind of a humane way to...

And we don't have

20% of the restaurant workers in America being deported or the

agricultural workers in America being deported because they're illegal.

I don't think you I don't have a problem with that.

However, I think the conservatives traditionally don't like this plan at all.

Right.

And

I've always had the stance that, look, I'm not giving you anything until you give us a wall.

I wasn't for a wall 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

I just wanted you to enforce the laws.

But because I don't believe that will ever happen, I need to see something permanently there that shows, okay,

we're not going to be just taking in 2 million people that we don't even know who they are.

We don't know who half a million people are that are just coming into our country.

Then after you have shown me that's serious, it's done.

It's not like, oh, we're going to do it.

It's done.

When that's done, then I'm willing to talk to you about any logical plan for the people who are already here.

I'm willing to make that, but you got to be a solid citizen.

You're a criminal, you're going home.

You are at the end of this line.

So the legal immigration requests come in, but that's how you work your way, these 20 million people into the system.

Hey, they're going to pay taxes.

On the Republic, on the Democratic side,

I don't think that they actually want to solve this problem.

It's easier to call Republicans racist.

Yes.

I mean, I saw a story.

The Republicans are now talking that they're going to make the president's tax plan permanent if they're re-elected.

And I thought to myself, no, you know what?

Why didn't you do that in the first place?

Because you want that there.

When people say, we need to have

higher wages, we need to make sure that the minimum wage is raised, A, that makes no sense economically.

And B,

if you actually did that, you could solve this once and for all by saying, we're going to do it for cost of living.

And it will automatically adjust up or down on cost of living.

But that makes the Republicans or Democrats or whoever, I don't need you now.

Because cost of living.

They're not interested in actually fixing problems.

Do you think they are?

Oh, no, no.

And I I don't think they're interested in doing much.

I think anytime there's an opportunity to be on television, we have a hearing.

There's a topic that's so important that we have to have a Senate hearing.

And,

you know, senators can get up there and do their seven or eight minutes and go home and call their constituents and say, see, I stood up for you.

D.C.'s broken.

D.C.'s, it's a swamp.

I live there now three days a week.

It's amazing what you see there.

There's elected officials who their

almost primary and only concern is how they're going to get reelected, not what's the good for the country.

You said, I read something you said on your program, that you

believe Trump Republicanism is the future of of the Republican Party.

What does that mean?

It better be.

What does it mean?

It means if it's not,

then the Republicans probably won't see another president for a very, very long time.

I don't think the Republicans are.

I don't think the Republicans are long for this world.

But what

this means is what is Trump Republicanism?

Trump Republicanism is

think of the guy who comes in and immediately shakes the world up in D.C.

I mean,

he's getting rid of people, the John McCain's, Jeff Flakes,

Lindsey Grahams,

because they're not really,

they don't ascribe

to the Trump view of what the country should be, which is America first, everyone else second, but not America alone.

Just we're first.

Break trade agreements.

A free trade agreement is anything but free trade.

It's contrived trade.

It's non-establishment.

I'm not going to say conservatism because I'm not sure how conservative he is.

I just think he's not liberal.

And I think

he's pro-business.

I think he is who he is.

He's pro-business.

Yeah, I think he just, I don't think he fits in any box.

He's not a conservative.

And that's why I would separate Trump Republican from Republican or GOP.

Problem is, this small establishment group is shrinking and shrinking because we, because

he's, you know, pull the sheet over off their head.

And what they really are are swamp creatures who just want to stay in D.C.

Anybody who's ever seen any movie has always seen somebody who's going to go out and take point.

They're going to do something dangerous.

And the last thing they say, they turn to everybody else and they say, okay, I'm going to run out in the middle,

provide cover.

So everybody can, everybody's shooting.

The Republicans have the greatest cover I've ever seen.

This guy has run out and everyone's gun is focused on him.

No one is paying attention at all to what is happening in Congress.

They're irrelevant.

They could pass, you know, it's, we're a country that believes that you can only wear pants on Tuesday, and they could actually get it through the House and the Senate because they control both, and nobody in the media would notice because Trump would be providing cover.

He would be on, he's providing the greatest cover, and they've done nothing with it.

Nothing.

Kofifi.

He tweets Kofifi, C-O-V-F-E-F-E, and the media goes crazy for a week on what's going on here.

You remember right after he did that, the left and the media and mainstream media is primarily almost 100% left, but they were concerned about the mental health of the president.

They were worried that he was losing it.

What does Kofify mean?

Brilliantly,

he didn't even explain what that was.

He just

let that live.

In the meantime, he brings a bicameral, bipartisan group to the White House, to the Oval Office, to have a discussion about immigration.

You remember this?

He had Senate and Congress, Republicans and Democrats.

It was the most brilliant hour.

of politics on television I've ever seen.

He brought to the American people what's really going on in the immigration debate.

15, 20 members of Congress and Senate in there.

That was phenomenal.

And he moderated that with precision.

He wasn't losing his mind.

Everyone thinks he's going crazy.

The left will tell you

we have a president who's losing his facilities.

He's brilliant at what he's doing.

He's providing the shiny object over here and signing off regulation, reducing regulations over there, taxes coming down over here.

He's going to get his wall, too.

He's going to fulfill that one, too.

But he's not.

He has nobody.

Why should we elect another Republican at all?

Ever.

Ever.

We shouldn't.

Unless they're in the same

remote realm as Trumpism.

It's working.

Glenn, I'm not sick of winning it.

I'm not sick of winning either.

I want to talk to you, though, about the - do you see any downside to Donald Trump?

I talk to him and it's no, take your person out.

No, but

take you personally out.

We can go to the bottom of the bar.

So, okay, so I'll take myself out and I'd say raising, raising tariffs and fees on imports is a dangerous concept, but as long as you're doing what you say you're doing, we're only doing it until they lower theirs and we'll lower ours at the same time.

I think you can eliminate that as risk.

The question is, how bad does it get before.

Do you think he knows that?

I do.

I think he's just

wanted tariffs.

He believes in tariffs.

Monetarily, I'm not sure he knows.

I think he knows how to win a fight.

For example, China.

His biggest trade fight right now is with China.

Bar none, right?

Stakes are getting higher and higher and higher.

But he knows China's economy is weakening.

China's economy is becoming dangerous to them.

Yes.

They have to relent before he does.

We're ripping.

They're struggling.

He knows weakness.

He knows everyone's Achilles.

I'll tell you a story.

It was before the first debate.

Remember the Megan Kelly debate where he got into it with Megan?

It was really crazy, but that was in August of 2016.

16.

I had him on my show before that, and we're talking, and he says something, and and he said, You know, blah, blah, blah, this energy, this, that, well, low-energy Jeb.

And I was like, What?

He goes, You know, low-energy Jeb.

And I had no idea, he had never said it before, he'd never nicknamed anyone.

I couldn't figure out what was going on.

And I, I literally, on air, I go, What are you talking about?

He goes, You know, low energy Jeb.

Okay, we finished the interview, and I'm like, What was that?

And sure enough,

low energy Jeb,

sorry, Lion Ted,

Hillary, what was Hillary's crooked Hillary?

These names were these people's Achilles.

And he would go right at them and smack their Achilles with a machete.

Yeah.

And so he knows that.

So for China, raising tariffs on Chinese imports to the U.S.

right now is smacking their Achilles with the machete.

They are going to have to relent.

He sees that.

He sees people's weaknesses.

I think

he's either

if he's doing this with trade, he's brilliant.

If he actually

knows where the breaking point is and is watching the numbers, I mean, he's playing a dangerous game, but God bless him.

And if he's renegotiating all these things and he's playing this, I mean, the one thing I like about Donald Trump, and I've liked this forever, you know, when they were struggling for 10 years to build the World Trade Center, I was like, I don't care if the top 10 floors just say Trump, let the man do it because he gets it done.

Don't ask any questions how he gets it done, but he gets it done.

The best Trump story I've ever heard was when he wanted to build Trump Tower in New York.

A lot of people don't know this.

They sell the airspace, the

empty space above buildings.

You know this story?

I don't.

So this is Trump Tower

on Fifth Avenue.

Well, he didn't own the airspace.

He bought the building, but he didn't own anything over like five floors or something like that,

maximum ten

tiffany owned the airspace okay

and you can imagine donald trump comes in to tiffany and well we're tiffany's and tiffany says uh no we don't want any big uh buildings in our area and he said that's great what he hadn't told anyone except his architect was, I have two plans.

I have Trump Tower, which is this new glass building and very, you know, tasteful and nice.

But I also have another set of plans.

And he had gone to his architect and said, I want you to build, I want you to draw out the ugliest 10-story building you can possibly imagine.

And he went to Tiffany with that twitchy eye he has, that damn guy may be crazy, and he ruled it out, said, that's fine.

You don't sell me the airspace.

I own the building and this is what I'm going to build.

By the time he got back to his office, they had called to say, okay, we'll sell you the airspace because they thought he was crazy enough to do it.

Whether or not he would have done it, I don't know.

But if he's playing that game with trade and he can win,

brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant.

He plays that game with everything, Glenn.

He's playing the same

game with

I shouldn't say game, same strategy with national security.

I have people calling me.

I did interviews for the BBC, Norwegian television, Canadian television.

Today I'm doing Chinese television after this.

They want to know what's going on with Trump.

They can't figure him out.

He's got the rest of the world on their heels.

They're worried, is he going to do it or isn't he?

Well, guess what?

That's pretty darn good.

For the first time.

For the last 20 years,

they're not going to do anything.

I want our allies to be pretty sure.

I want him to put his arm around our allies and say don't worry i got this um and and you know they keep them a little off you know off the edge but i want to make sure our allies who are our allies please explain this to me i i think our uh our allies

um

are the brexit people in uh england um but england has always been there for us i think our ally is canada um

you know i think our ally

Germany to some extent.

These are people

we're now breaking multilateral deals with to deal

bilaterally with,

which is better for the country.

No, no, no.

I want you to know clear.

I have no problem with that.

But what you're doing is you're separating the finance from the security.

And my point is, Trump is putting these all together.

I'll get a better financial deal if I'm working out a security deal with them.

I had no problem with him going to Germany and having breakfast and saying,

so what's up with this?

I mean, it was so crazy, but it worked.

And I had no problem.

We should not be footing the bill for these places.

You know, we'll pay our share.

Montenegro,

we're going to protect Montenegro and NATO.

Well, does that make any sense in the world at all?

But Congress says it's a good idea.

Why?

Who's got a deal?

Who went to Montenegro on a Codel and got a free month there?

Which senator got that?

Break them all.

Break all.

Get rid of NATO.

We want us to protect you, Germany.

We will.

What's the deal?

What's it in for us?

I'm trying to think of

what the best use of our time is here.

Let me go here.

He talks an awful lot about,

you know,

maybe should uh maybe we should you know look into these Facebook things and maybe you know

I don't think I've ever heard him say make them a utility but he has danced around the ideas of freedom of speech of checking people's license etc etc those are all bad ideas you know I am you and I are the first ones to go when it comes to Facebook Google YouTube I mean we are on the front line.

We practically have the blindfold and the cigarette in our mouth.

So I say this, you know, as somebody who's on the front line,

but I don't want to violate freedom of speech.

Does he understand?

When he says the press is the enemy, does he understand?

Oh, okay.

This is very interesting.

Okay.

The press is the enemy is, again, a strategy, right?

I mean,

the

only

people with as low of an approval rating as Congress are the media, right?

So somewhere a 9% approval rating.

It's brilliant.

Make the media the enemy.

Why not?

Look at them.

Look at the liars.

Look at them all.

Fake news.

It's a great strategy.

That makes that gets people, your base, united behind you.

What's your message?

If you're going for that, you're right.

What would

he be going for?

I mean, what else would you think about that?

Well, no, I think that's what he's doing.

But

will you at least acknowledge that

we have to make sure

at the same time, you could say fake news, these guys are lying all the time, yada, yada, yada.

But a free press, they got a right to do it.

They got a right to do it.

That's not, you know, people aren't even reading the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

Somebody has to stand up for the Bill of Rights.

Is there any concern that he says things that people will go, yeah, that's right.

Let's lock those people up or whatever it is.

I don't know, and I've never had this conversation with him, but

I'm speculating

that if you can go ahead and say some of the things he said about the press and

I don't know, putting guardrails on the press, everyone from libertarians, especially the liberal press, is going to go crazy, right?

How can you dare do that?

That's a danger to the Republican.

But he gets everyone's attention.

You want to talk about the shiny object?

But if we were.

We were.

Let me take you back in the time tunnel.

When we were at Fox, Obama would say anything about Fox, and we'd be like, they're coming after us.

He's coming after us.

Yeah, but we didn't do anything about it.

We didn't?

Oh.

Well, I spoke out about it.

Yeah, and they speak out too.

My point is that that's not, this doesn't seem like a big danger to me.

If Donald Trump says they're awful,

they should go away.

This media group is awful, they should go away.

Because you think that's just.

It's just not going to happen.

It's protected.

It's constitutionally protected.

Free speech.

I think

he knows how to push buttons.

He knows how to rattle cages.

Yeah.

He does.

You know,

the phrase, he's living rent-free in every single editorial department of every single media entity in the country.

He is the

most brilliant PR guy ever.

If you are P.T.

Barnum and you think any press is good press, he has them, he is controlling the press, and they're gladly giving it to him.

They can't help themselves.

I know.

It's like your mom would say, well,

that bully's picking on you, just ignore him.

They can't just ignore Trump.

They just can't.

And if they did, he'd probably stop doing it.

It's like, you know,

the kid who's constantly teasing the girl because he's attracted to her, they love it.

By the way, it's good business for them, too.

The media pie has

blossomed under Donald Trump.

Everyone's doing better.

Ratings are up across the board, left and right.

What's next for you?

You're at CR-TV?

CR-TV.

I'm there for a while.

No, no, no, I'm not saying that you're going to leave there.

I mean, but

what is driving you besides opioids?

So I've been doing a lot of that speaking.

I have a NASCAR collaboration.

A team with NASCAR is putting opioid messaging on their car, and they're going around

an oval every Sunday with opioid messaging on it.

I love that because they're great people doing the CR-TV thing.

And eventually I'll get back on cable news when it's time.

Cable news is over.

I think there's a exodus from cable news to digital platforms and podcasts.

Absolutely.

One last question.

Tell me the moment

that you thought,

this is freaking crazy, man.

I'm just Eric.

The president is on the phone.

The president.

Tell me,

tell me the...

I'll give you the exact moment.

My wife and I had just, we were coming home from a Thai dinner.

It's about 10.30 at night.

It is after he was elected, before he he was sworn in, random Tuesday or Wednesday night.

It's about 10 o'clock at night.

I'm driving.

She's driving.

And the phone rings and it's a block.

There's, it's like a weird, like a star and a number two or something.

And I answer it, and it's him, Donald.

He's like, Eric, it's Donald Trump.

I'm like, oh my God.

I go, Mr.

President, I'm putting you on speaker.

So I put it on speaker.

My wife's driving.

She's like, really?

We're just driving?

He's like, just want to let you know, you're a good guy.

You've been there from the very beginning.

The guy is so loyal.

And then since then,

I've had regular conversations with him.

He knows, like, he,

I would never do something to undermine him.

I certainly would like to give him more and more advice.

But, you know, he's got a lot of people doing that too.

Last question because of undermining.

Any doubt?

in your mind.

I'm glad that there is adults in the room.

I know some of the adults of the room that disagree with some of his policies and they are there to advise him and to say, Mr.

President, how about this?

There is a difference.

I'm not sure there are that many of those, by the way.

There may be

less than a handful of those.

But there are people who have experience and are advising him and people I would trust and the American people would trust.

They think they're good, solid people.

And that's fine.

Where I draw the line is when somebody is there and they don't agree, they're taking stuff off of his desk, they're in a cabal.

That's terrible.

That's terrible.

How is the president dealing with that internally?

Because if it were me,

I don't know who I would trust.

I mean, I would, my level of trust, my circle of trust would be very small.

That's dangerous.

This op-ed, I think, was dangerous.

Dangerous to everyone, dangerous to his well-being, dangerous to the Republic, dangerous on many levels.

But fortunately, there's a gentleman you and I both know probably pretty well who came along recently, who I've been thrilled he's there, Bill Schein.

I'm thrilled he's the guy that goes directly to the president, not through General Kelly, right to the man's office when he wants to.

I think Shine is the guy to kind of clean all of that up.

He'll focus the message.

really find out where some of the bad stuff that's been going on.

He worked with a guy in many ways, very similar.

Very similar.

Very similar.

Roger Ailes, you could, I mean, the guy was brilliant.

You know, I've given a ton of interviews on Bill Shine because my friendship with him.

I've always said he's the guy that's able to somehow tell you no when you're sure it's going to be yes, but it has to be no, and you don't feel really bad about it.

And I think that's what Donald Trump needs.

He needs the conscience, the voice that's not angrily yelling at him, that just kind of nudges him in the the right way.

I think Sean's the right guy for that job.

I think Sean should be chief of staff.

Next.

Well, I hear Kelly's on his way out.

Well, we know a good guy.

Oh, you've heard that for a while, right?

I think I've heard that since the first day he was in.

But he might be.

Yeah.

Eric, thank you.

Thank you, Glenn.

Always good to see you, my friend.

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