Best of the Program | 9/5/18

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Hello, it's Stu, and welcome to today's Best of podcast.

I'm going to join with Glenn Beck as well.

We are going to go over what's going on on the show, but before we get to that, I'd love to know how you feel about getting a daily sort of best of summary.

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We're interested in your thoughts.

Today we're going to the Kavanaugh hearings.

This is a big issue when it comes to

what's going on in the country, but also the incident where one of the Parkland fathers

went up and tried to shake his hand.

Just wanted to shake his hand.

Just wanted to shake his hand.

Wait until you hear the real story.

How did that happen?

How did that happen?

Interesting.

Yeah.

Bob Woodward, his book is coming out next week.

Is there anything new in it, though?

I mean, there's certainly new color and new accusations and infighting.

Is there anything new that we haven't learned?

And I want to know why people who support Trump are angry at this.

Assuming you take out all of the he said, she said stuff.

You know, all the name-calling and all that, because you'll never know if that's true.

So take that out.

Let's look at what the meat of what what he said in the book.

Is there anything new?

And isn't it a lot of the stuff that you wanted?

Because I know I talked to people who are like, yeah, I really,

you know, I'm hoping that X, Y, and Z is happening.

Well, here it is.

And on the media side, well, you can't have it both ways.

You can't say there is no deep state.

and then expose that people are taking things off of his desk and keeping him in the dark because they're they're thwarting a duly elected president.

First time I ever heard anyone say a duly elected president about this guy,

but here it is.

Which one do you want?

And we have some stuff on Bitcoin as well as a really interesting

story with a writer from the LA Times and all these big mainstream publications.

And she talks about how she gives you kind of what we're always asking for, right?

Someone who's on the left who will actually consider that maybe this fact isn't right that the left is touting, or you know, maybe this conservative point has some merit.

It's what we're always talking about wanting, and here's someone who actually went through this process and discovered some really interesting things that we get into on today's podcast.

I think you'll really enjoy.

You're listening to

the best of the Glen Beck program.

It's Wednesday, September 5th.

Glenn, back.

A goat rope.

Goat rope.

Also known as a confusing or disorganized situation.

If you're in the military or a veteran, it's either a goat rope or a cluster.

You know.

What a complete dumpster fire the Kavanaugh hearing was yesterday.

It was shameful and embarrassing.

This is the United States of America.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairperson Chuck Grassley got a few words into his opening statement before all the Democratic presidential hopefuls began ridiculously interrupting.

Listen just a little bit.

Good morning.

I welcome everyone to this confirmation hearing on the nomination of

Brett Kavanaugh

to serve as Associate Justice.

Mr.

Chairman, I'd like to be recognized for a question before we proceed.

Mr.

Chairman, I'd like to be recognized to ask a question before we proceed.

The committee received just last night, less than 15 hours ago,

42,000 pages of documents that we have not had an opportunity to review or read or analyze.

You're out of order.

I'll proceed.

We cannot possibly move forward, Mr.

Chairman.

We have to extend a very warm welcome.

I have not been given an opportunity to have a meeting with his wife.

You know what?

You don't even see this type of behavior in junior high school.

Here's senators like Carmella Harris, Corey Booker, Richard Blumenthal.

They were leading their own version of Occupy Wall Street, a mic check.

Mike check, mic check.

That's what was happening yesterday.

This is what's happening in our colleges and our universities.

You'll just go in and you'll just hijack it.

Then, as if on cue, a handful of shrieks could be heard as a platoon of protesters led by Linda Sarsour

began yelling and holding up signs in the back of the room.

Here's a little bit of what that sounded like.

Linda Sarsour.

This

is who the Democrats are idolizing?

Linda Sarsour?

It was a total sideshow representing the absolute worst in American politics.

Politico reported that Democratic senators held a conference call on Labor Day to decide what kind of charade they wanted to do.

The first plan was to stage a massive walkout, but they ditched that plan, thinking it would play into the GOP's favor.

They eventually agreed that the shout-down, a tactic that you'll find basically at every leftist protest or riot.

Now we have elected officials mimicking groups like Occupy Wall Street within the halls of the Senate.

What's next?

Why don't we all just imitate and mimic Antifa?

And really,

for what?

Kavanaugh looks liberal compared to Gorsuch.

We never saw those fireworks at his hearing.

And the documents that got dumped on him a few hours prior, seriously, now you're suddenly into reading what's put in front of you

is old and busted

it's old and busted

to say things like

oh I don't know we have to pass the bill so we can find out what's in it

what about the what about the 2232 pages omnibus did you read that before it was dropped on you just a few hours before you all voted on it

I'm all for reading anything before making a decision, but don't suddenly start caring now when that's never been your policy before.

And the documents that they're so outraged, why are they being withholden?

Well, they know good and well that those documents will never and can never be released.

The papers are controlled by the Bush White House and are communications to the president.

No president, no president.

Let me say it again.

No president has released those kinds of documents.

More information, you know, before making a big decision is always the preference.

But the Democrats have chosen to make these documents their rallying cry because they know there is no chance of anyone ever seeing them because no president has ever, ever released them.

This is a red herring.

It's a goat rope.

It's a cluster.

It's a clown car.

However you want to describe it, it's a charade, a temper tantrum to draw attention.

Democrats just used the Kavanaugh hearings to play like the toddler who decided to lay down in the store kicking and screaming because mom and tad just would not buy them a toy.

Welcome to kindergarten, the setup of Kavanaugh.

First of all, let's just be humans for a second.

Can we just be humans?

His children had to be removed from the hearing

of the most important thing that will probably they'll ever experience in their lifetime.

How many of us have had a dad that was being considered to be a

Supreme Court justice?

How many times in history does that happen?

What is the decorum of something like that in America?

Shouldn't there be some decorum?

It's a pretty serious job.

But there's a trade-off that you have to consider, you know, if you're a Corey Booker or, you know, a Kamala Harris, which is, yes, there's the terrified children, but then there's also the sound clip that you get to run and see in the primary, which says how opposed you really were

to Brett Kavanaugh.

And that is, I mean, that's forcing it.

But you know what?

It's

not even, it's not even the Kamala Harris and the Corey Booker and all of that.

It is, why was that not cleared?

Why was that hearing room not cleared?

When you have to remove children.

Well, ask Chuck Grassley,

who made it very clear the problem with it was he didn't run the committee right.

Grassley was actually a really funny clip because he's just like,

I've criticized other people for this before.

And I've just, you know,

if you're not running the committee, then the committee is running itself.

And we need to get this under control.

And he was saying that he didn't step up enough.

He didn't.

He didn't.

To his credit, he let everybody kind of do what they wanted to.

He wasn't trying to shut anyone down, which is not what you're going to hear from the media.

But he really didn't step in to stop the nonsense.

When you have to remove someone's children because they're too freaked out by it, that should tell you something, America.

It should tell you what we're

turning into.

Now, we can be mad about this, but I'm going to explain why you should not be mad about this.

Because it plays directly into their hands.

But we do need Grassley to clear the room and to make it very clear.

You can sit here and you can watch it, but you don't have a right to disrupt it.

And if you disrupt it, I clear the room.

And you can go watch it on TV.

You can go protest outside, but not in here.

We're doing business.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

There's no secret hearings.

It's all televised.

Go watch it.

We're trying to do business.

That needs to be done.

With the setup of the Parkland father, who shockingly could just be put on within five minutes of trying to shake Kavanaugh's hand, he was booked on CNN.

What a crazy coincidence.

How did he get that?

Wow, that's fast.

And it was just, there was no setup.

There was no setup.

He was just there.

He just wanted to shake hands.

Now let me ask you a question.

Left and right.

You're in a hearing for how many hours?

You are surrounded, surrounded by people who are attacking you.

Your children were so freaked out that they were taken out by security.

You've had people around you and in front of you attacking you for hours.

Literally.

You are

your ears have to be ringing after that.

You have to be like almost,

almost,

you know, some sort of traumatic brain injury from just getting kicked in the head for that long.

You stand up.

Security is on both sides of you.

They're just trying to get you out of the room.

Everything that you you have done is foreign to you.

You've never been in anything like this ever before in your life.

Security has been.

So you stand up.

You're still kind of dizzy from getting kicked in the head.

Everything that you have seen has been a setup.

Everyone who has advised you has said, don't say anything, don't do anything.

Just say what you have to say, button it up and move on.

You're getting up.

You're getting ready to leave.

You turn.

There's a guy.

there's commotion, all the noise in that room.

There's commotion, you're still a little dizzy.

A guy says, hi, I'm fine,

somebody.

And you're not really hearing him.

Now let me take this two ways.

First way, you're not really hearing him because of the noise in the room and everything that you're processing in your head.

and reaches out to shake your hand.

The question is, as you're processing, I've got to to go where?

Where is the security?

Where is my family?

I got to get out of here.

Let's just keep moving on.

A guy puts his hand out to shake.

All you're hearing is all of the advisors who say, look, you're going to be set up.

Just don't do anything.

Do you reach out and take the book from Chavez?

Because you're just,

you don't even know what it is.

Do you take the book from Chavez knowing that it's probably a setup?

That's one.

Even if he knew he was a Parkland dad, I don't think Parkland Dad is there to do anything but set me up.

Dad Parkland Dad has an agenda.

So what's the best move?

You have to make this decision right now, and you've never been in that situation before.

Which do you do?

Reach out and shake his hand?

Possibly after everybody has told you you're being set up, after hours of being just ripped apart, you see a guy who you assume is not there fairly, not there because he really wants your opinion.

Do you shake his hand or do you turn around with security and you leave?

That's if you heard him or could process it because of everything else.

Either way, I don't shake the guy's hand.

I've been in that situation so many times,

so many times, where it's chaos around.

I've got my family

had to be removed.

I can tell you, I've had this exact conversation, exact situation.

I've had my family have to be removed.

I stand up, I'm starting to move.

Security, I am, I am, you're like,

when you're in that situation, you are honestly

like a bull in a run.

You're a sheep in a run where they're just kind of moving you.

I've had them pick me up by my pant belt

and move me.

Now that didn't happen to him, but that's how confusing these things are.

You're just in this chute.

And you don't know.

You're processing other things that you're supposed to do.

Their job is to protect you and get you out of there.

You can't process both.

It's too much.

And so they're pushing you along.

And I've had this happen.

Somebody will reach out and I've had it happen good and bad.

I've had setup.

I've had just innocent person that just really wanted to say hi.

I've had both of them.

And I've done both of them.

I've reached out and shook hands.

Mistake I'll never make again.

You are a Supreme Court justice.

You have just been through something that no other Supreme Court justice has ever been through.

For the media

to set him up with a Parkland parent is despicable.

Whether they confirm him, whether or not he should be the guy, is beside the point.

To put his family through that, the Democrats should be ashamed of themselves.

Linda Sarsour should be recognized as the pariah she is.

You want to talk about a radical extremist?

It is Linda Sarsour, and she's in bed with the highest

of ranking officers in the DNC.

It is shameful.

You don't have to agree with Kavanaugh.

You don't have to vote for Kavanaugh.

But this is but

you know what?

This may be beneath Venezuela.

This is the best of the Glen Beck program.

If you're on the right or you have some common sense,

there is reason today to be outraged on a couple of things.

But let's stick with the Kavanaugh hearing.

And let's just zero in on the Parkland father.

The Parkland father tweeted a few days before, I am going to be at the Kavanaugh hearing, and I hope to do my part to make sure this man never gets a seat on the Supreme Court.

That's his stated goal.

With a hashtag of block Brett.

Right, okay.

His stated goal.

He's on CNN.

As soon as this happens and Kavanaugh turns his

back to him.

Now, I don't think Kavanaugh knew who he was, but let's say he did.

And let's say he knew that security had told him, look, there's going to be a Parkland dad.

He just tweeted this a couple of days ago.

He's going to be there.

If you see anybody from Parkland, just move on.

Don't say anything.

Okay, that's not out of reason that that could have happened.

Don't think it did, but it's not out of reason.

Would anybody blame him for that?

He's being set up by a guy who says, I hope to do my part.

I'm going to be at the hearing.

In a public forum.

Correct.

So that he would be held responsible by the people who follow him, right?

Like he wanted to do something to make a splash here.

Correct.

And he did.

And so the press put him on, and they made him this poor little victim.

No, no, in his own words, this is what he was trying to do.

So we could be outraged at him.

We could be outraged at the media, but we already know about him and we know about the media.

What do you do?

It's important,

really important, that you don't play into the outrage and you don't swing back.

And it's because that's what they need you to do.

And it is the only way that we make no progress.

I have a book out called Addicted to Outrage, and I really, I've not worked harder.

This is probably the best book that I've written since

Common Sense and probably the most important book that I have written since Common Sense.

And I want you to read this and I want you to share this with your friends because it is strategy, but more importantly, it is the understanding that you're not being given anywhere else of what's really going on.

What is the game we're playing?

And unless you understand that, you're playing the wrong game and you will lose.

And it was interesting reading it after going through the last few years with you

and watching your approach to how you've tried to handle these issues.

And sometimes, you know, I don't know.

there's a big part of me that likes the pushback.

There's a huge part of me.

There's a part of me that likes, you know, we talk about when liberals eat their own and mocking them, and all of that, I think, is okay at some level.

Yes.

But the outrage creates something different.

And you really outline this throughout the book.

And it's kind of the first time, at least to me, that I've ever seen you outline it that thoroughly, where it goes through and shows the reason for

handling these issues this way.

And the,

you know, there's so much surface stuff that goes on now.

Look at the way that people cover this.

Like, they don't even go to the point of looking at the tweet from the guy in the Kavanaugh hearing from a few days ago.

They don't even go that deep.

And the people behind the movement that are changing the society, that are making all of us sort of feel like, what the hell is going on?

Those people have thought it all out.

They have a plan.

They have an approach.

They've outlined it in deep philosophical writings that you're never going to get from cable news.

You're never going to get from Twitter.

If you, in this book, you go through a lot of that stuff, outline kind of what the basis is of it, of what they're trying to do.

And it's so easy to understand once you read that, it all clicks into line and you understand why you have to approach these issues in a different way.

Would you agree that

I've been talking about this for at least a year?

For two years, three years ago, I didn't know what.

My gut was just telling me, don't play into this.

Yeah.

But the last two years and especially the last last 18 months, I've really started to put things together.

And I started doing research on this book when I had a theory about 12 months ago.

And I've learned so much.

And correct me if I'm wrong.

Everybody who's on the staff, I think including you, that I've been talking about this for a while.

It wasn't until they finished this book that they went, oh my gosh, I get it.

It changes everything.

Yeah, it changes everything because because you can kind of see how important it is to go this way rather than

sort of the easy path.

I mean, you know.

Well, the easy path, they want you to take the easy path because it plays into their hands.

And that's what you kind of go through in the book.

Right.

And so for a long time, for a long time, I started to reach out to people and I was reaching out to the wrong people.

I was grasping at straws.

But I want you to just to listen to a conversation that I had last night on television.

If you don't think that this approach is working, you are wrong.

You're just not seeing it on mainstream media.

But it is happening.

And it's happening more and more.

All you have to do is look for it.

Last night I was doing something on fourth wave feminism.

By the way, watch the TV show every night at 5 o'clock.

You will see things and learn things that you are not seeing or learning anywhere else.

This is, honestly, this is like when we first started going down progressivism and the Tides Foundation and everything else.

There's no conspiracies in this, it's all open sources.

You can find it all, and it is phenomenal.

So, what's happening is by changing our approach and by understanding the language and not demonizing and not saying, oh, you're all from hell, you're all the devil,

you're getting the opportunity to see the people who are now starting to say on the left

Holy cow, my side is completely wrong Here's a woman who was a who is a filmmaker in San Francisco.

She considered herself a fourth wave feminist

a radical feminist

and she's in her 20s.

I want you to listen to just part of the interview from last night's television show.

People who were radical feminists were fans of yours and you've made balanced movies or you've tried to exposing both sides.

You made a film in 2016 called The Red Pill.

Explain what it was.

Okay, so in 2013, I was looking for my next documentary topic and I was considering making a film on rape culture, which was

a fear-mongering kind of

myth around 2012 with the start of fourth wave feminism.

There were many many what I've now realized are myths like the wage gap and rape culture was one of them.

And so I was really believing.

I did.

And I was considering making a film on rape culture.

And so I started digging into what feminists were saying was the cause of rape culture.

And they were pointing towards men's rights activists as preventing women's equality.

And I was fascinated by this men's rights movement.

I never heard of it before.

There's never been a film about it, never a documentary about it.

And so I started to to think, all right, I'm going to be the first filmmaker to ever go in the belly of the beast and interview the enemy.

That's right.

It's activists.

So if I, if

I don't know much about the men's activists, the men's movement, that is, as I understand it, more about I have rights as a dad.

When I get a divorce,

I automatically lose my children to

my ex.

Is that

what you were looking at?

Yes.

And men's lib during second-wave feminism really was

mostly focused on fathers' rights.

Yeah.

But it has expanded with the start of online forums and blogs and social media with men's rights activists having a more broader kind of

ideology around it.

Okay.

All right.

So you put this movie out, and

this one doesn't get good reviews.

This one they don't like you for.

Yeah.

And all my previous work was about women's rights and gender politics in some capacity.

And I'd always been

very supported by the feminist community.

I did screening tours that were hosted by Planned Parenthood.

Wow.

I mean, even feministing.com plugged my first documentary about sex education.

So

I was very...

successful and well-liked in the feminist community.

And then I released The Red Pill and now my reputation has been smeared.

I've had my name printed alongside white supremacists.

The SPLC now says that I'm a feminist trans men's rights activist that was funded by male supremacists, which none of that is true.

Okay, stop.

She's remarkable.

In fact, we start the interview last night with

10 years ago, you would have killed yourself before going on the Glenn Beck program.

She's like, oh, yeah,

I hated you.

She said, however, I didn't listen to you.

She said, this happened to me, and I've been starting to listen and watch you and see what you're saying.

And I understand what you're saying now, and I agree.

Now, I doubt we agree on everything.

But we absolutely agree on what is happening.

Now, here's somebody inside the movement.

And this is happening over and over and over again.

And you will, what's happening is common sense is waking up.

There is enough people on both sides of the aisle that do not want to live their life this way.

And they see what's happening and they're like, wait, that doesn't make any sense.

You're not being fair.

Americans are fair.

You're not being fair.

And the outrage is locking us into

being enemies.

And that is the goal of this movement.

And so if you want to be a part of the solution, I have always believed that this audience is going to be the solution.

I will tell you, I doubted that in the last few years, that there was going to be any solution, that there was any way out.

I think I've told you before, I don't know.

I do now.

Because I've taken a couple of years and I have really done my homework.

There is a solution, but no one is presenting you with all of the facts on why it must be done this way.

And once you understand what you're really facing, the game that is actually being played,

it will make total sense to you.

You'll be, oh my gosh, I get it.

And don't tell me that it's not working.

Wait until you see her tonight.

She's going to be on again tonight.

The conversation we're going to have tonight.

This was a radical feminist.

She's now, I invited her up to come in and spend an hour or so with me here in the studio so we could just talk and

just let her just tell her story.

She was, I would love to, I'd be honored.

She hated my guts.

I haven't changed my point of view.

I've changed my approach and allowed allowed people to hear me say, yeah, I wish I had that all over to do again,

which allows them to say, and all of the science behind that statement is in the book.

Why that statement, oh man, I wish I had that to do all over again.

Why that statement is important.

The science of that statement is in the book.

And it allows people to go, okay,

all right.

Well, you know, I've made some mistakes.

And once that happens, it's done.

It's done.

Pick up the book.

It's available in bookstores and everywhere books are sold here in the next couple of weeks.

And you know what?

This Bob Woodward book is just going to run crazy for the next,

probably until Christmas.

It'll probably be number one.

I would love to beat Bob Woodward.

I don't think that's possible, but I would love to beat Bob Woodward

because the media will.

I mean, what are they going to do?

What are you going to do?

Pick up the book, buy a couple of copies, give it to a friend.

Addicted to outrage.

We're going out for the first time in a very long time.

Theater near you, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Richmond, Hershey, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Kansas City, Evansville,

Tulsa, Tampa, Orlando, and a few other cities to to be added.

You can grab your tickets now.

The tickets are for pre-sale only.

There are three classes of tickets.

There's some really

posh behind-the-scenes kind of stuff that you can get, and then you can just get the regular tickets.

And a book comes with, I think, most of the tickets, at least the two upper levels.

You get the book and it's signed and everything else.

But I'd love to see you

and grab your tickets pre-sale only until I think tomorrow.

And you can do that at glenbeck.com slash tour.

Find out all of the information.

I think you have to use the promo code The Blaze.

Yes, you must use that for the pre-sale.

Theblaze is the passcode.

It's glenbeck.com slash tour.

And there's a few of the theaters I saw last night are approaching sold out.

The one in Dallas is like,

I think like three quarters sold out.

And we just announced it twice yesterday.

So grab your tickets now.

It's glenbeck.com/slash tour.

This is the best of the Glenbeck program.

And don't forget, rate us on iTunes.

Like listening to this podcast?

If you're not a subscriber, become one now on iTunes.

And while you're there, do us a favor and rate the show.

Linda Sarsour, the leftist equivalent of,

I was saying Milo Yapanopoulos, but I it might be Richard Spencer.

What do you think, Stu?

I think she's more like Richard Spencer.

Linda Sarsour pulls outrageous, logic-defying stunts.

Her side roars with chants and then pats themselves on their back.

That's why she's like Milo, but her actual policies are much more in line with somebody like Richard Spencer.

Make no mistake, Linda Sarsour is as bad as both of those people.

She's much worse, I think, than Milo.

Her virulent anti-Semitism, her anti-white racism, her flagrant disregard for America, the Western ideas, the Western laws, her support of Sharia law, her connection to Hamas, her connection to Louis Farrakhan, her

open misogyny.

I mean, I could go on, but the show isn't this long.

She's called for jihad against President Donald Trump.

She's called for the assassination of our president.

And yet, somehow or another,

the Democratic Party, not Democrats, the Democratic Party embrace her.

I don't know of a single Democrat that would embrace Linda Sarsour.

I do know the power and the money people that do.

But the media is not telling the Democrats the truth about who she is.

Well, yesterday she got herself arrested.

She was one of the dozens of obnoxious protesters that showed their classless outrage at Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings.

She leapt up.

She began screaming shortly after the hearing started.

Brett Kavanaugh's daughters, aged 10 and 13, were rushed out of the room for their safety.

Now,

is this

who we are?

Sarsure took the arrest as a badge of honor.

She said, I will be able to tell my daughters and my future grandchildren that I stood up, that I was not and will not be silent when our bodies and our rights are on the line.

Now, I find this a little ironic and hard to swallow, coming from a woman who's wearing a hijab, who believes in Sharia law, who has said that critics of

women critics of Islam, that she, quote, wishes she could take their vaginas away.

She has signaled her virtue by having stood up

when the bodies and rights of women are on the line.

Ayon Hersey Ali was her target.

Ayon Hersiali had genital mutilation happen to her.

And when she spoke out about it, Sarseur said, I wish I could just take her vagina away.

I don't know there is a place where, you know, bodies of women are at stake.

I have to side with Candace Owen on this one.

Candace Owens said, quote, you have to be a special kind of idiot to get arrested for women's rights alongside Linda Sarsour, an Islamist who supports Sharia law and the forced mutilation of women's genitals overseas.

Indeed, she said, if stupidity was the crime, they would have held you without bail, end quote.

Candace is right.

By the way, tonight, 5 o'clock, Glenbeck TV, on the blaze, I'm going into Linda Sarseur and her part in fourth wave

feminism, something you will not see anyplace else.

The radicalized new form of feminism that blends social justice, Marxism, and postmodernism.

It is the fight we're engaged in right now.

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Tonight, a way out.

5 o'clock only on the Blaze TV.

It's Wednesday, September 5th.

You're listening to the Glenn Beck program.

All right.

Bob Woodward.

He's got a new book out, Glenn.

I know.

I've heard.

Has there ever been a worse book launch?

They kind of leak all this stuff out, all this salacious insider Trump details.

Oh, I think this is a good one.

You think so?

Against the Kavanaugh hearings?

I mean, it didn't seem to get much at all yesterday.

I mean, even the places like CNN weren't leading with it, which is, you know, I mean, this is this is like catnip for MSNBC, right?

And even there, it wasn't getting the attention I thought it would get.

Now, the book's not out yet, but New York Times sort of savaged it in their review.

Did they really?

Yeah, I mean, you know, they said,

you know, it was, they said, of course, you know, you could tell the writer absolutely despises Trump, but like they were disappointed in it.

Didn't really get anywhere new.

You know,

there was not a lot of color in it.

It was just a list of sources, and you can tell who the sources were because all the people were

crazy.

Yeah, they looked good in the book.

That's what Bob Woodward does.

He praises people, and then they say things, and he promises that you'll look good in the book.

You just give me the dirt.

Okay, let's take all of the,

you know, he's an idiot, he's unhinged, he's retarded, all those things.

Let's take all of that out.

Okay.

Trump is denying that he called Jeff Jeff Sessions retarded, by the way.

Right.

So that is, that should be on the record.

Right.

Okay.

But

there's some other quotes about Donald Trump, supposedly from his staff, that are just as unkind.

Okay.

Yes.

And let's just take all of that out.

Let's just take all of it out.

And I looked at what the book said yesterday.

And

not only is there nothing new here,

I believe I have heard heard multiple, many Trump supporters, even die-hard Trump supporters,

who have kind of championed what's happening in this book.

For instance, how many Trump supporters do you know that say, I really like him, but I wish he would put Twitter down, right?

Very common.

Very common.

Expression.

I wish they would just take his Twitter away from him.

So part of the expose in this book is there was a committee that tried to come to him.

A White House group of advisors came to him and said, look,

we're just forming a committee

and we think we should vet all of your Twitter posts.

And Trump wouldn't do it.

Now, this is made to look like, oh, that's crazy.

No.

No, even his supporters, even his supporters are like, you know, some of the stuff he says are good.

Some of the stuff is crazy.

And I wish he would just stop it because it's hard.

And would you expect anything else to happen in a situation like that?

The staff is saying, hey, please restrain yourself from these activities that might throw us off course.

And then it's Trump's decision as the president of the United States to decide whether he wants to do them or not.

That's totally his call.

He made the call and he's continued to tweet.

Okay.

So now

here's the other thing.

And tell me if you actually have a problem with this.

There's a the book opens with a

story of Gary Cohn.

Now, Gary Cohn was the guy.

He was the chief economic advisor.

When we started going down the trail of

trade wars,

he wanted nothing to do with it, so he's gone, blah, blah, blah.

However,

it opens up with

this letter, a critical trade agreement with South Korea.

And

the letter would have taken us out of this agreement.

And it was sitting sitting on Trump's desk.

Cohen sees it, and he's like, I've got to get this away from him.

And he takes it.

And he says, according to the book, I stole it off his desk.

I wouldn't let him see it.

He's never going to see that document.

Got to protect the country.

Okay.

There's only two ways to look at this.

One, deep state,

which, strangely, the left has been saying there is no such thing as deep state.

Right?

Evidently?

So

you're you would have one way to look at this is evidence that deep state exists you are taking things away from the duly elected president you are taking things off of his desk the guy we voted for or didn't vote for but the people put in office and somebody who's not elected is taking it off of his desk and saying he's not going to even see that one.

Yeah, intentionally to hide it from him so he doesn't make the decisions he wants to make.

Okay.

So you could classify that as deep state, right?

The president gets in, he can't really do anything because people tie his hands.

All right.

So the left has to

decide, does that exist or does it not exist?

And is it a good thing or is it a bad thing?

Now, I generally think, in fact, I always think that that's a bad thing.

However, I haven't haven't been necessarily,

let me take this out.

I have talked to several people who voted for Donald Trump.

Many people

who have said, and let me give you the best spin on it,

look,

he doesn't know all of the ropes, but that's why he's going to have the best people around him.

And the best people around him, they're going to stop him from doing anything that's truly reckless.

Okay.

When it comes comes to war, part of this is about war.

That his advisors around him are like, no, Mr.

President, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no.

He wanted to go into Syria, according to the book.

Yeah.

And

assassinate

Assad.

Yeah.

And

Mattis, you know, got off the phone with him, reportedly, and said, yeah, we're not doing any of that.

And they drew up a much more conventional way of going about things, which is what they wound up doing.

I mean, that's what you have a

Secretary of Defense for, right?

Sounds like that's how it should work.

As long as they're keeping him in the loop, that's how it should work.

And I don't have a problem

with

in this particular case,

I don't like the fact that anybody would keep information from him.

Right, you need to have, you need to be able to talk to him and say, this is why this decision is wrong.

Here's why it's right.

And then he gets to make the decision.

That part of the

process, according to the book, has stopped happening all the time.

And

the people in the book claim the reason for it is he won't listen to reason like that.

So

you can't bring him things like that.

He's just going to dismiss you and do what he wants anyway.

So you have to do it this way.

That's their argument.

Well, okay.

But that's deep state.

Or

is it what I've heard many Trump supporters say a good thing?

He's got good, he doesn't know about all of those things, and it's a good thing that they just,

they're smart people around him.

They're not going to get us into trouble.

Okay.

So is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Usually, bad thing, but we're not dealing with usual stuff anymore.

Okay,

Porter said, a third of my job was trying to react to some of the really dangerous ideas that he had and try to give him reasons to believe that maybe they weren't such good ideas.

Does anybody have a problem with that?

Woodward claims that's a coup d'état.

Well, no.

No.

That's another amazing point, though.

How long have we heard that these things are not real?

And now liberals are saying, Woodward's saying it's a coup?

Right.

That's a remarkable part of this book that's not really getting attention yet.

And nobody is pointing out that, wait a minute, part of this is what Trump's supporters wanted.

They wanted a guy to go in and break all the China, but they also wanted really good people around that could say, don't break that China.

Right.

Okay.

That's what you have.

Trump supporters,

Bob Woodward, if you take all of the he said, she said stuff that you're never going to know if that's true or not.

Take all of that stuff out.

If you look at what he says is going on, This is what you knew going in.

And your backup was, I'm going to have really good people around him.

He's going to put good people around him.

That's what's happening.

Let me give you a couple of other things.

Woodward writes that Dowd, the Trump attorney, saw the full nightmare of a potential Mueller interview and felt Trump acted like a grieved Shakespearean king.

That's he said, she said.

Don't know if that's true.

Trump seemed surprised at his reaction.

You think I was struggling?

Now,

what's happening here is they did a mock question and answer, and Dowd played

Mueller and said, okay, let's just see, let's just play this out.

Is there any doubt in anyone's mind?

Because

let me read what he says.

The goal of this was to argue that Trump couldn't possibly testify because he was just incapable of telling the truth.

He just would make things up.

That's his nature.

The passage is an unprecedented glimpse behind the scene of Mueller's secret operation.

For the first time, Mueller's conversations with Trump lawyers are captured.

I need the president's testimony.

I want to see if there was corrupt intent.

Trump said, I think the president of the United States cannot be seen taking the fifth.

His attorney said, there's no way you can go through these.

Don't testify.

It's either that or an orange jumpsuit.

Okay.

I don't know if any of that language happened.

I don't know if he ever told, you know, Trump that you're going to go to prison and you'll be in an orange jumpsuit.

It doesn't matter.

Does anyone doubt that the president of the United States, whether he knows it or not, and I think I could make a very strong case.

He really doesn't even know what's true and what's not because of the way his mind has worked for so long.

He's a salesman.

That's who he is.

He's not a builder.

He's not anything else.

He's the guy who walks into the room and goes, You're going to love this.

You're going to, you have to have three of these.

You know, in fact, when I'm done with you, you're going to be working for me selling these because you're going to believe in him so much.

It's the greatest.

It's the best.

It's the biggest.

It's golden.

It's wonderful.

It's going to change the world.

He's a salesman.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

I want to introduce you to somebody who,

let me just read a little bit of the resume.

She has written for numerous magazines, including the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Vogue.

She is the recipient of the 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is also on the adjunct faculty in the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University School of the Arts.

If you read that, you would be certain that she has nothing to say to you that you might go, wow.

And I bet

that she, a few years ago, might have been certain that there was no way that she would ever.

say anything civil to Glenn Beck.

Megan Dahm is on the program with us now.

Hello, Megan.

How are you?

Hi, Glenn.

It's good to be with you.

I love that introduction.

I'm chuckling to myself.

Right, do I?

I'm happy to be here.

You're happy to be here.

Would you have been happy to be here five, six, eight years ago?

Five, six, eight years ago.

What were you doing back then exactly?

I have to say, Glenn, I always found you very intriguing.

I found you exasperating in a way that now that I look back on it, I think there must have been something in there that was making you particularly push people's buttons.

So I don't know.

Okay, well,

well, good.

Okay, so I want you to tell your story because I think there's something.

Let me start just so you know, we're kind of on the same page.

I just wrote a new book.

It's coming out in a couple of weeks.

This is the dedication.

To all those who are willing to step out in front of the crowd, to question, reason, and have dangerous conversations.

Men with whom I may strongly disagree at times, but I will always consider re-founders of reason and contemporary heroes, Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, Jordan Peterson, Brett Weinstein, Stein, Sam Harris, Jonathan Sachs, Penjillette, and Joe Rogan.

These are the kinds of people that changed your point of view.

They changed my point of view.

Well, you're asking me that question?

Yes.

So my story, let's see.

I mean, I guess I'm not sure that I have changed exactly.

I have always been a writer who's interested in contradictions and interested in

human tendency towards hypocrisy.

And I've always had the luxury as a writer of being able to kind of sort through those things in a thoughtful way and having the time and the space and a readership that would kind of let me

invite my readers to think alongside me as I sorted things out.

And I think what, yes, go ahead.

So,

let me make sure that I'm stating, I should state this much more carefully.

People think that I have changed my point of view.

I haven't.

I have lost certainty on the things that I shouldn't be certain about, and that is other people and

good versus evil, that everybody is in one of two camps, et cetera, et cetera.

That kind of thinking, to where it's exhausting to not be able to have a conversation and no nuance in people.

Right.

So the nuance was the thing that I was interested in.

So what I noticed starting a few years ago, and I think this really started heating up in probably 2015, was that, as you say, there was no room for discussion across the lines.

I was a newspaper opinion columnist for more than a decade.

I started in 2005, and the difference between when I started and what the climate has been like in the last last few years is striking.

And I'm not sure I changed as much as I saw some, not all, but some, many of my peers and colleagues

really taking on an approach that was pretty narrow.

And yeah, I started watching some of these folks on YouTube that you named.

And it was very,

I got drawn in.

And I didn't like everyone equally and I didn't agree with everybody, but it was quite compelling.

So what are you seeing?

First of all, to take us back because you had a really, I mean you've had a traumatic few years in your marriage and also with kind of looking at

you know the world and

some of the people that were around you or the people that were the loudest voices on the left.

Can you take me through some of that?

Well, so you're talking about a piece that just went up that I published very recently recently called Nuance a Love Story.

And in that piece, I talk about how over the last three years or so, I started noticing both as a journalist and just as a private person that

intelligent friends of mine were just not really willing to have conversations where they entertained that

people on the conservative side might have a point or that there might be some contradictions in their own views.

And it just became an echo chamber and it became really, really frustrating.

And I really felt ultimately a sense of loneliness about it.

And the reason that I kind of did this particular piece the way I did was that I wanted to get at the more sort of visceral human side of this.

Because certainly a lot of people have talked and written a lot about tribalism and polarization.

And that sort of approach is important, but it's nothing terribly new.

So I wanted to get at the more emotional components of this phenomenon.

And what are the emotional components?

Well, I just think that, you know, whether you're on the left or the right,

you're used to

agreeing with your friends or at least being able to talk with your friends,

you know, go to a party and everyone kind of is on the same page.

And I just felt like there suddenly,

you know, with with the 2016 election, there was such a feeling of crisis.

Within the left, I felt like the feeling was, well, this is such a crisis that we have no room for nuance.

We don't have the luxury of a complicated discussion.

Everybody needs to get on board right now and take down Trump and talk in the most simplistic,

ham-fisted terms.

And on one level, I understand where they're coming from, but on the other hand,

it's just not very interesting.

That was my problem.

It was just it's boring.

I mean, don't get me wrong.

I don't like anything about Trump.

I think we are in a crisis.

But that doesn't mean that we have to shut down

all thoughtful

conversation or refuse to ask complicated, difficult questions.

For instance, you talk about in this article, you talk about

that your friends, and

this happens on the right, too.

your friends will get a few drinks in them and then they'll start to say okay look I'm with you on this right but they'll never ever say that out loud in public they'll never take that stand they'll call you over and they'll be like look and I've had this without booze people have come up to me and go look I really appreciate what you're doing I mean don't tell anybody I'm with you, but I'm with you.

Right, right.

Well, and one of the things that drives that is social media, right?

Because there is a dopamine hit you get from virtue signaling on Twitter or whatever it is and saying the thing that's going to get you the most amount of praise in the least amount of time.

And people just keep doing it and keep doing it.

And I've had plenty of times where I've had people say, well, you know, I kind of, you know, I don't really think that, but, you know, I just, for my own personal brand or for my readership or whatever it is,

I'm going to say this very reductive thing.

So

what do you think about

Benjamin Franklin talked about this at about 1772?

And he said, I just can't go to parties anymore.

I mean, the guy was a bon vivant and just a great, I mean, I would love to hang out with Benjamin Franklin.

And he was like, I can't go to parties anymore.

I can't, because nobody is serious.

We are facing serious issues, and

nobody's really talking about any of that stuff.

Right.

I mean, do you kind of feel that way?

Yeah, and I think that people get really threatened.

I mean, so it might be helpful just to talk, you know, in specific terms for a moment.

So, like, one of the things that I talk about in the piece is the way this, this, you know, this group, very loosely defined kind of constellation of thinkers, has now sort of identified themselves as the intellectual dark web.

Okay, so one of the things I talk about in the piece is, you know,

my interest in that group, but also my wariness with the fact that this this you know

this tribe has supposedly devoted itself to anti-tribalism and and that's a contradiction there and that's something you've got to work out it's kind of like libertarians who tell you you're not libertarian enough it's like

you right but I mean these are people that wouldn't want to belong to you know a group that would have them as a member but then here they are in the group so you know but so I you know Glenn I mean one of the things that comes up a lot is this issue of the gender wage gap so this is a subject that is really complicated

and it gets a lot of people fired up emotionally and there's a lot of baggage around it.

And you know the problem is there is a gender wage gap.

I don't think anybody

who's looked into it at all could deny it.

Obviously there is.

In the aggregate, men earn a lot more than women.

Now is that because of a patriarchal conspiracy or institutionalized sexism?

Maybe a tiny bit, but overall there are very concrete and quantifiable reasons for this.

And if you want to look at issues around child care and issues around

the way the economy works and flexible hours and why women choose to go into professions they do,

that's a much more complicated question around economics.

And those are the kinds of questions that need to be asked.

But unfortunately, we can't even get to the point of asking those questions because people say, well, how can you even, you know, question

the gender wage gap?

You know, you're a sexist.

I don't even want to have this conversation.

It's threatening to have this conversation.

And you shut it right down right there.

And we can't even then begin to solve these problems.

And that's what's really frustrating.

Megan, I'd love to...

Maybe after the first of the year, fly you in and just spend an hour or so with you commercial free and just uninterrupted to have a real conversation with you.

I'd love that.

Great.

You know, I am new to the postmodern

concept, last few years.

I'm glad to be here.

Yeah.

So

as you're watching this and you don't understand what postmodernism is, you don't understand the world at all.

Once you do, you really see how destructive that is, and you're seeing it now in the colleges.

What do we, how can we have these conversations when it's a microaggression to say you're wrong?

Yeah, well,

postmodernism does have its uses.

I mean, as a way of talking about art, as a way of talking about literature, I mean, that's really, I think, where it's best applied.

I mean, so one of the things,

there's a lot of moving pieces here.

So,

one of the things that's happened is that humanities departments on liberal arts campuses over the last 20, 30 years have evolved so that

a lot of the the discourse is around this concept of intersectionality and and power and privilege.

So the students

get

get taught that every that the world needs to be looked at in terms of

who has historically had power and how to make that how to how to get rid of it, how to make everybody equal.

So instead of equality of opportunity, we need to have equality of outcome.

And so so that really then starts this

mentality where

anybody who has more than somebody else is framed as potentially a bad person.

And this has now become in many ways the sort of default mentality of a lot of the media.

I mean, one thing I really emphasize, Glenn, is that this is not the majority of college students.

It's not the majority of people.

This is actually a very small percentage of students that even get into this stuff.

I mean, mean,

most college students are like studying engineering and doing stuff having nothing to do with this.

The problem is that the people who do get into this tend to go into the media.

They go into education, they go into the media, they go into cultural institutions, and that's why we now have a situation where the quote, you know, mainstream media,

the younger generation,

a lot of people come in with this kind of sensibility.

And

that is what has they come in with this sort of sensibility and that is what has kind of made this discourse the default setting.

Megan, I'm sorry we're out of time.

I would love to have you join me for just a longer conversation.

And I'd I'd like to talk to you about postmodernism and how it's useful in literature.

Maybe you can open my mind on that one.

All right, I'll have to do my homework.

Yeah, okay.

Great talking to you.

Thank you so much for having an open mind and recognizing nuance.

Thank you.

God bless.

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