'Solidifying A Conservative Majority'? - 6/28/18

Glenn back.

Retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81 years old and the longest-serving current justice on the court.

President Reagan was the one who nominated Kennedy to the Supreme Court in 1988.

He was a compromise choice for Reagan after the Senate rejected his first

choice, which was Robert Bork.

I remember driving across the country.

I was just about to start at KOI in

Phoenix, Arizona, and I listened to those hearings on the radio and could not believe the way they were treating Robert Bork.

So it was a compromise, and it had huge ramifications as Kennedy developed a track record as the swing vote in many Supreme Court decisions, including the decision on same-sex marriage and votes that upheld Roe versus Wade.

Now,

He was not a constitutionalist.

I think he was actually trying to do the right thing,

but because it was just him trying to find a way to do what he felt was right, he screwed things up.

He voted on several pivotal cases.

Many on the right are giddy that he is leaving the court.

But before conservatives throw too much confetti about his departure, it is worth noting that he also sided with the majority on two decisions just this last month that have far-reaching impact for people of faith.

The first was the

Masterpiece Cake Shop decision.

The second was the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates

versus the California Attorney General.

In that decision, the court wisely struck down a California law that requires pro-life pregnancy centers to post signs in prominent places informing women that California offers a low-cost or in some cases free abortion.

The case was not about abortion.

The case was free speech.

And Justice Kennedy, he believes that he is the greatest defender of liberty currently on the court.

Again,

in his mind, I think he's right.

The way to achieve real liberty is to follow the Constitution.

But Justice Kennedy reprimanded his home state of California in a blistering opinion.

In light of insanity emanating from California every day now, his words are kind of an important reminder and a warning to the nation.

Here's what he wrote: The California

legislature has included in its official history the congratulatory statement that the act, the law requiring pro-life clinics to advertise for abortions, was part of California's legacy of forward thinking.

But it is not forward thinking to force individuals to be an instrument for fostering public adherence to an ideological point of view that they find unacceptable.

Think of just that statement.

It is forward thinking to begin by reading the First Amendment as ratified in 1791.

To understand the history of authoritarian government as the founders then knew it, to confirm that history since then shows how relentless authoritarian regimes are in their attempts to stifle free speech and to carry those lessons onward as we seek to preserve and to teach the necessity of freedom of speech for generations to come.

Governments must never be allowed to force persons to express a message contrary to their deepest convictions.

Freedom of speech secures freedom of thought and freedom of belief.

This law imperils those liberties, end quote.

So do you hear what he's saying?

Because it's important

because we are losing these rights.

What he's saying here is if you're forward-thinking, if you believe in progress and making things better, the most progressive thing any American can do at this point is to know and defend the Bill of Rights.

Because

not just your liberty depends on it, but everyone's liberty depends on it.

It's Thursday, June 28th.

You're listening to the Glen Beck program.

Kelly Shackelford is joining us on the program.

We have a huge, huge, jam-packed program today.

We have Kelly on now.

The bottom of

our number one, we have Mark Sanford.

This is his first interview since losing, I believe.

First, at least national radio interview, I think.

We also have Bill O'Reilly on today.

We have Selena Zito, one of the best writers around, and I believe Mike Lee will be joining us in hour three.

So we have a lot to get to.

Kelly Shackelford, he is the president and CEO of First Liberty Institute.

And

this is an organization that has dedicated themselves to protecting religious freedom for all Americans and win most of their cases, really make a great impact for the First Amendment.

And we welcome to the program.

Kelly, how are you, sir?

Great, Glenn.

It's a great day.

Yeah, it is.

As I was looking at Justice Kennedy, would you say that it is fair that

sometimes he comes up with

the right

rulings, but not for the right reasons?

He's looking for

that constitutional justice, but he's not finding it by using the Constitution.

Does this make sense to you?

Yeah, well, he's obviously considered the swingboat because he doesn't stick with one side or the other.

So

you're not going to find a consistency and sort of a judicial approach that you would find with more of the conservatives or more of the liberals.

And that's why you seem, like, as you said, I mean, he ended with a bang.

These last three opinions on the First Amendment, and that's obviously the area that

I am focused on exclusively, were tremendous.

They were great.

He ended yesterday on the right side on the, you know, you can't force people to pay union dues to express things that they don't agree with, just like that you mentioned the California case.

You can't force these crisis pregnancy centers, for instance, to communicate a message of here's where you can get an abortion.

This is the ultimate intolerance, the idea that the government could force citizens to say things that violate their conscience.

I mean, if the government wants to say it, say it yourself.

But to force other citizens to carry your message, that's, to me, you really lost freedom.

And he came out really strong on those.

So, you know, you've got those.

And then obviously people were very critical of him on the conservative side on the abortion decisions and on same-sex marriage and on some other opinions that you go down.

And they would, you know, sometimes liberals are criticizing, sometimes conservatives, depends on the opinion.

So, Kelly,

I tend to agree with what Ted Cruz said yesterday.

He said, I don't want a conservative court.

I want a constitutional court.

And for instance, one of the reasons why I looked at Kennedy

and looked at some of his more controversial, at least for conservatives, for instance, his vote on gay marriage.

I'm a libertarian and a constitutionalist.

I don't believe that the government, the federal government, has any place in anybody's marriage.

Not mine, not anybody's marriage.

And so I would be for gay marriage only because

I don't think the federal government has any business doing any of that.

Shouldn't we be looking for constitutionalists when it comes to the Supreme Court?

Yes.

I mean, we got the example.

We got Gorsuch.

You know,

I think he's been exactly that.

The issue is not what's important to him.

Yes.

It's this in the Constitution.

Correct.

And

he got criticized recently on an immigration decision, and people weren't looking at what he was saying in the decision.

The decision, it was about a crime and whether you send somebody back.

And his opinion might have been, if you looked at results, it was somewhat supportive of this criminal person and not sending them back.

But if you looked at his reasoning, he said this thing is ambiguous.

The way the Congress wrote this statute, you cannot tell which meaning to apply.

And so, therefore, rather than me as a judge determine that, which is inappropriate, I'm saying this is something Congress has to fix.

That's the kind of judge we want, a judge that doesn't think they're a legislator.

Correct, correct.

So, let's look at some of the

people that are on the list.

First of all,

is there a real chance, or is it just

my hope and dream of Mike Mike Lee?

Is there a chance Mike Lee could be a Supreme Court justice?

I don't think so.

I'd love to see Mike Lee on the Supreme Court, but,

you know, there's sort of an unsaid rule up there, which is if you're not a judge, you can't really, really be considered.

But

that's fairly new, though, isn't it?

It is, and I think it's kept some great people off that list.

Mike Lee somehow made it, but like Paul Clement, there's some just incredible people out there who I think would be great.

And the explanation you get is, well, if you're not a judge, so that most people think Mike Lee was kind of a,

you know, he's there, but he's really probably not going to be considered

because he's not a current judge.

How about his brother?

His brother would be great.

He would be great.

There are so many good people on the list.

And I'll say this, Glenn, and I think you would probably agree with me um there's two things I think that we do know um I think number one the odds are if you look at his track record the president's track record and I'm not just talking about Gorsuch I mean all the lower court judges and that's something we've been working at

I mean you know there are people that work at First Liberty who have been nominated by the president for instance to be federal judges for life I mean the types of people he is appointing these are solid constitutionalists who will never waver And that's what we've seen, not with you just with Gorsuch, but all the lower courts, the courts of appeals.

I think the odds are huge that the president will pick somebody who's really solid.

And that's certainly what we're all hoping for.

And I think the second thing we know is whoever he picks, no matter who they are, they will be attacked just horrendously.

It reminds me of last time when all the liberals were sort of standing out on the court steps holding signs when they didn't know who was going to be announced, saying bad things about the person and then waiting for their name to be filled in.

I think that's how they're going to do this.

And so whoever it is is going to be the worst person ever to be born as soon as they're nominated.

And so people need to be ready for that.

And I think that's unfair and it's unfortunate.

But

if you look at this list,

there are a lot of great, great choices.

Anybody that you worry about?

You know, there are people who there's more controversy over than others.

You know, I don't think some of those will be picked,

but there are people who have decisions where maybe there's been disagreements in the conservative circles.

And so

I think it'll be interesting.

I think we also know if you look last time, if you remember, he was down to two choices at the end, and it was Gorsuch or Hardeman.

And so I think you have to assume that Hardeman is towards the top of the list.

He was his second choice last time.

And all they've done since then is they have the same list, but they've added five more.

So a lot of people are focusing on those five new ones.

And there are some great people on that list.

I mean, I think a lot of people heard about Amy Coney Barrett.

She was the one who was attacked for her faith during the confirmation hearing,

you know, for being an Orthodox Catholic.

And

there was a backlash against the Democrats for doing that.

But I think those new people are being talked about in addition to Hardiman and the original list.

And look, I'll say, you know, express my prejudice, as you guess.

This is really important.

I mean, we've got, like just this week, Glenn, we filed two cases at the Supreme Court.

One was the coach who got fired for saying a 15 to 20 second silent prayer and going to a knee after the football game.

The other is a veterans memorial that's been up for over 100 years honoring World War I vets that a federal court of appeals said is unconstitutional now because it's a cross and has to be torn down.

Whoever this justice is is going to affect these cases.

And we have three others sitting at the, we have five cases now sitting at the court, and we have got to get this right.

I mean, a lot of these decisions are 5-4.

This is going to be huge on religious liberty, on the First Amendment, and on a lot of other issues.

And so

you know, I encourage people to really be in prayer that the president makes a really good choice because

this could set the court for 30 years.

Kelly, one last question.

I've only got about 30 seconds to answer.

The left is already saying, oh, it's a done deal.

Roe versus Wade, absolutely done.

I don't see it that way.

Do you?

No, no, I don't think we know.

It'll depend somewhat on the choice and on what case arises.

I think

I think

it will get there someday.

I do.

I think that, and all that means is it gets returned to the people.

I think eventually this is going to be up to the people to decide rather than five justices in a backroom.

As it should be.

Thank you so much, Kelly Shackelford.

He is the president and CEO of First Liberty Institute.

Thanks, Kelly.

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Can I give you one name I'm actually nervous about on the list?

It's the same name I am.

Yeah, Thomas Hardeman.

Now, Hardeman was supposed to be number two last time.

We talked about this when it was going down.

We loved Gorsuch.

Hardeman,

he's very qualified, very smart,

and a reasonable thought,

particularly for the Kennedy place.

However, if you look at, first of all, he's on the list reportedly only because he is tight with Rick Santorum.

And at the time, Trump was looking for kind of an endorsement from Santorum.

And

Santorum fought very hard, as friends with Hardiman.

Now, Santorum's pretty conservative, and there's a lot of things I like about Rick Santorum, but I don't like the idea that there's a name on the list because of that reason.

Their list is really solid.

Secondarily,

he is ideologically the most moderate of the entire list.

He's very close to Kennedy as far as his positions go.

You don't need that.

Between Kennedy and Roberts is where they put him on the scale.

And that makes me nervous.

He's also friends with Trump's sister and serves on the same court.

That makes me nervous.

So if there's one name on this list that I would be nervous, and also he finished number two, as you guys pointed out, in last time, he was very impressive, apparently, in the

interview.

and was very close to getting the nomination last time.

He's the one name that I'm nervous about on that list right off the top.

There's a few new names on the list that I don't necessarily know as well,

but there's a lot of really good names on the list, and the people that put this together are super qualified and would not put Hardiman on the list if they thought he was a liberal, like a suitor.

I don't think that that's the case here, but it makes me nervous.

I don't want a Kennedy

as a replacement for me.

I want a Clarence Thomas.

Yeah.

I want a Clarence Thomas.

You know who they have as closest to Clarence Thomas?

Mike Lee.

Yeah, I know.

That's the guy who, when you look at the ideological scale.

They're good friends.

They are really good friends.

You know, and Mike has clerked for the Supreme Court.

And

it would just be interesting to see how his Senate friends would turn on him.

You know, the most reasonable, the most nice guy, and a guy who has both supported the president and taken the president on.

Plus, he would be able to vote for himself.

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This is the Glenn Beth Program.

We have a big, big show today.

We have, I believe, Mike Lee is going to be on with us.

Selena Zito, who's one of, I think, the only journalists that really understand what's happening in the center of the country.

She's got a book called The Great Revolt.

We have Bill O'Reilly coming up in just a second.

And Mark Sanford,

Republican from South Carolina.

He was in with the House Freedom Caucus,

One of the better congressmen

who stood up for real conservative principles just lost his re-election bid, and we welcome him to the program.

Hi, Mark.

How are you?

I'm good.

How are you?

I'm good.

So,

well, first of all, let me just start with the Supreme Court.

Any thoughts on

what happened yesterday or what is coming?

It's monumental, and we need to recognize it as such.

I mean, the complexion of the court, the duration of conservative ideals within the court hangs in the balance, and so Kennedy

giving up the seat so that another conservative can be put on board is a big, big deal.

You concerned at all about the tenor, really, of both sides that

this could lead us into real

civil unrest, just the way we're headed down this road of incivility.

That's a bigger conundrum that goes well beyond the the Supreme Court.

Um,

and goes to just, I mean,

the inflection point that we're at as a society and the way that we deal one to the other.

Um and that goes to not being allowed to go into a restaurant, it goes to Maxine Waters' comments, it goes to, you know, the director of uh Homeland Security being in essence harassed out of a Mexican restaurant here in Washington.

It goes to a lot of subtext that is,

again, well beyond the scope of even the Supreme Court.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: You're one of the guys in Congress that I think really understood

what we're facing and what this postmodernist

or democratic socialist movement is that is headed our way.

Are the people in Congress even awake to really what's happening?

Yeah, I mean, you got a lot of people that are trying hard and focused, but what happens is, you know, the busier in life you get, at times the less focused you are.

And so

everybody's just trying to survive their day, and at times we can all miss some of the bigger

picture that's out there.

I liken it to this.

You get a very clear view from the mountaintop.

It's a little bit murkier when you're

in the jungle, in the valley with a machete just trying to make your way through the day.

Right.

And so I would say it's the sin of

omission rather than commission.

I think that when people stop and think about it, say, wait, there's some big trends at play here, but there's not a lot of time to do that.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: So, now on reflection on

the race, what you did in Congress, the stands that you took, et cetera, et cetera.

You're not going to change your principles, and that's what I liked about you.

You didn't change your principles all the way along.

Would you change

your approach in anything if you could do it all over again?

Respectfully, I'd say no.

And here's what I mean by that.

So if you look at my voting record, I have

about 90% of the time voted with the president.

On his agenda item, I've voted 100% with him.

Tax cuts, health care bill go down the list.

But a handful of issues that are either tied to conservative principles that I've long held and espoused,

I've voted no.

For instance, I voted against the omnibus bill.

And

I wouldn't see that as a vote against the president.

I would see that as a vote for common sense and for the taxpayer.

Correct.

Similarly, I voted, you know,

or didn't vote, but took a stand against the administration on the issue of offshore in South Carolina, simply because my point was this is not about whether you're for or against offshore, it's about the issue of federalism.

And

if every municipality along the coastline of South Carolina that I represent draws up formal proclamations with their mayor, their city council, and they say, we don't care about offshore as much for offshore as we do about its implications onshore, and we want to have a hand in the way that we grow and develop as a community, what am I to do?

In other words, if you believe in the concept of federalism, that all decisions should not be made in Washington, you'd say I have to at least give credence to those local voices and as their emissary to Washington, I have to carry that forward, particularly if the administration has said, you know, we're going to exempt Florida because they've got a lot of tourism, they've got a pretty coastline, and a number of people in the state don't want it.

You can't say if you believe that all laws and regulations ought to apply equally.

You can't say it's okay in Florida, but not in South Carolina given the tourism and the uni coastline we have, whatnot.

But my point was it was, again, not about the president.

It was about representing my neck of the woods.

And so I wouldn't because I think it's very important.

You know, our founding fathers were so deliberate in not setting up a parliamentary system.

They set up Article I and Article II, and they set up a tension between the different branches of government, dissent, that would create discussion so that we ended up with better mousetraps.

And what you don't want is a Congress that becomes subservient to

the executive branch because that's not the design the founding fathers set up.

We didn't want it under Obama.

We don't want it anybody.

Yeah, we don't want it under anybody.

As you're looking at this, are we in a temporary bubble, or is this how you think we're going now?

Where, I mean, you know, Donald Trump is, I've been wrong on him politically.

Um, you know, from what I thought he would do to what he has done, uh, I thought the only promise he would keep was tariffs, and I'm against tariffs.

Uh, he has done some remarkable things, uh, and could end up being one of the most influential presidents of my lifetime just due to the court appointments if he continues making great court appointments, like he is, you know on the um on the lower courts and also so far with gorsuch um

however we seem to be unable now to separate policies and say

well no i this particular policy is is not right it's not a conservative principle and that doesn't make me against the other policies are we in a bubble with this or is this where we're headed we're in one of two things we're either in a bubble, I mean, he has a forceful personality.

That's part of his success and charm,

but that can be a dangerous thing, too.

So

we're at an inflection point as to, okay, this is just about him and this sort of temporary phenomenon that's him, or we're moving toward more of a system wherein the legislative branch

is in a secondary role to the executive branch, which would be disastrous.

If you you think about Hayek's road to serfdom, which is really the story of

pre

World War II Germany,

what it talks about is how open political systems over time become more and more dysfunctional to the point that the populace grows incredibly frustrated with the way in which the system isn't working for themselves and those that they love.

So much so that a strong man comes along and says, look, I can take care of this problem for you.

You may have to give up a couple of rights and a couple of things, but I'll take care of it for you.

They make the trade-off, and obviously, it's the story of Hitler's rise to power in pre-World War II Germany.

Let me be clear: I am not likening Hitler to Trump in any way, shape, or form, period.

But the phenomenon that Hayek gets at, which is our legitimate frustration with the way Washington's not working for us, we cannot fall prey to

that phenomenon.

And it's happened in a lot of open political systems over the years.

So, what you want to watch out with the Trump phenomenon is a precursor to something that could be much more toxic.

Right.

It's

the same warning that we issued under Barack Obama.

Exactly.

Don't.

You can't give the president this kind of power.

The Freedom Caucus, they really went to bat for you.

The health of the Freedom Caucus.

It's a great group of guys

and a gal.

And so

they're comrades in arms.

Comrades, probably not the right word, because he's the most conservative of members of Congress.

I mean, just great folks.

And

folks that stand up for constitutional principles.

They stand up for

market ideas.

They stand up for limited government.

And so

it means a lot.

I mean, they've seen my voting record.

They've seen how I've consistently voted with the president.

But again,

it's not in my DNA, and I don't think it's in yours, the idea of gene effecting before another human being.

That's something I just, I'm not wired to do.

And it's not the wiring that the founding fathers intended in our system.

And so my nature is,

and I've taught my boys to do the same.

They do it, believe me, with many times I don't like it.

But, you know, they say, you know,

I like these parts, Dad, but this part over here I totally disagree with.

And

the conundrum I was in was to say I support the President in essence 100% on policy.

But when he says something crazy or when he proposes tariffs that are destructive in terms of, again,

the overall American economy, or in particular, a place like the port in Charleston, I think it's important to speak up.

And if we don't do that as a Congress, we are tilting the balance of power that the founding fathers designed in one direction away from, again, Article I.

It's telling that they had us as Article I toward Article II and what they described with the executive branch.

Trying to Representative Mark Samford.

Mark, do you believe that

you lost your primary because of Trump tweeting about it?

No, I think that was just the icing on the cake.

I think the larger construct of the race, it probably kept me from going in a runoff with only a couple hundred votes, and I would end up in a runoff, and I've ended up in two in my life and won both of them.

But

I think the larger construct of the race was the problem and that was

are you 100% Trump or not?

And I don't believe in blind allegiance to anything but the Constitution and to conservative principles.

And therefore it is important that, again, I agree with the administration and all they've gotten right,

and that's a whole lot.

But it's equally important that I speak out against, for instance, tariffs that I think are going to, I mean they have the possibility they bring with them the possibility of undermining all the good that's been done on regulatory reform and all the good that's been done on tax reform and so I you know I did the race became fundamentally about who is more Trump and that was a race I couldn't win and I think it's telling that my opponent at the in her acceptance speech said this she said that we are the party of Donald J.

Trump and I could not more wholeheartedly disagree the party is made up of the people who've worked in the vineyard for years.

They've licked stamps and they've put up yard signs and they've helped put out bumper stickers and all the goofy things that go with building a campaign or a political movement.

That's who the party belongs to.

It belongs to no one individual in Washington, D.C.

Trevor Burrus

On a policy note on this, because you're talking about tariffs and you're talking about kind of giving in to the executive, because fundamentally it's not about Trump, it's about the executive.

Should Congress get get control of international trade policy as

the Constitution demands?

Absolutely.

I mean, I mean Warren Davidson has a great bill

that's trying to pull back power in that direction.

I think that Congress has been its own worst enemy in adhering to the constitutional construct that the Founding Fathers created.

And so we need to pull back some power because it's not about Donald Trump.

It's not about Obama.

It's about, again, executive versus legislative as designed by the founding fathers.

Where are you going from here?

I don't know.

Figure it out.

I love that answer.

All right.

Mark, thanks so much.

Thanks so much.

God bless you.

And thanks for

standing strong for

so many rock-solid principles.

I've really grown to admire you.

Thank you so much.

Stay around.

Take care, sir.

God bless both.

Congressman Mark Sanford.

Reasonable.

Isn't that where we all need to be?

Just reasonable.

Doesn't seem like he's asking too much to me.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't know either.

I don't know either.

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Okay, for anybody who thinks, you know, this is crazy, the world is just getting crazy.

I need some sort of a, I'm looking for someplace new.

Well, the nation of Asgardia

has

just just elected a parliament and just sworn in its new leader.

Which nation?

Asgardia.

Asgardia.

Not familiar, perhaps, with

Asgardia,

Thor, the Hammer.

It's Asgardia,

City of the Sky.

It's a nation that has a parliament?

Well, actually, yes, it is.

And they're going to be building now space arcs

to

move to the moon and they believe

that they will have a hundred and fifty million people living on the moon within the next 10 years.

On a Monday morning in Salzburg, Austria, the crisp air beneath the Austrian Alps, the hills were alive with the sound of Justice Anthony Kennedy as he spoke to a room of 80 students about the unfolding world.

Here's an 80-year-old man,

knowledgeable about the murky future that we all face because of the cyber age.

Kennedy was a special guest at the Salzburg Academy of Media and Global Change, where lectures focus on the role of populism in global change.

He said, quote, journalists have to begin to understand we are in a new world.

Now, the course was, he spoke for over an hour.

He described the unprecedented change that the internet had brought to the profession and the immeasurable impact that digitalization has played on the fourth pillar.

He said, quote, the cyber age has tremendous potential, as indicated with Wikipedia.

But if it bypasses space and time, where there is just this obsession with the present, This neglect of our heritage and history,

well, then the world will change.

I think this is the key to our problems.

We don't know our own history.

There was a poll taken asking the question, where was the Declaration of Independence signed?

In that poll, only one person knew one.

The problem is,

not just that, this poll was taken in person, standing on the sidewalk in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

People who were walking by it had no idea what that building even was.

Oh, and the one person who did know the answer

was a Russian tourist that had only been in America for a day.

So listen to what he said again.

If this

cyber age bypasses space and time where there's just this obsession with the present this neglect of our heritage and history then the world will change I think the problem is too many in academia and in the camps of the Social Democrats

are

intentionally ignoring or intentionally destroying and distorting our history precisely for that reason.

I think there are too many people that look at what he said not as a warning, but as a hopeful promise.

Make no mistake, it is a warning.

Freedom is a rare and precious thing,

and it will not survive in a country where now 35% of those under 30 years old say that living in a democracy matters.

35%?

That shows a lack of knowledge of history and a lack of knowledge of man himself.

We have to learn our own history and our own heritage, and we have to teach it.

Probably the best place to start

is the Bill of Rights.

Man's freedom depends on each of us knowing the Bill of Rights.

Our neglect of this heritage and history

will be why the world

will change.

It's Thursday, June 28th.

You're listening to the Glen Beck program.

Mr.

Bill O'Reilly, man who loves history as much as I do, boy, history is being made

this week, is it not?

So many things.

Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of stuff going on.

And I, you know, I ironically was asked that question about

where the declaration was signed.

And, of course, I got it wrong, too.

I said Idaho and like a lot of people.

Really?

Yeah.

Interesting.

But anyway,

look,

Kennedy was a really good man.

I had an opportunity to talk with him in depth one time.

We were stranded at an airport.

And

hang on just a second.

Hang on just a second.

I just want everybody just to take a moment to think what a pleasure or a nightmare that would be, depending on your point of view, being stranded in an airport with Bill O'Reilly.

All right, go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, some people went screaming from the terminal.

I would imagine, man.

Yes.

Yeah, demanded refunds, right?

Kennedy was a very is, I mean he's still alive, a very deliberate guy who

really loves America.

I mean, it's a key

to any Supreme Court justice.

You really have to love what the country is and understand what it is.

And you were correct, Beck,

that most younger Americans, at least, don't understand it.

They live in the present.

It's the latest tweet that's on their mind, not much else.

Reading books is a burden.

Even watching a television program now is

like an ordeal because it's not fast enough.

It's not near enough.

So that

we have to basically sit back and say, all right, there's a struggle in the country.

I mean, the reaction to Kennedy's retirement was just

that was the best sitcom I've seen in years last night, watching the left wing react to Kennedy's retirement.

Oh, my God.

Oh, God.

Now, what's going to happen?

We're going to have a

Francisco Franco is going to be the new Supreme Court justice.

You know, I mean, it's just insane.

You know, isn't it crazy?

Isn't it crazy that they were talking about, I think this is the new Spanish Civil War.

This came from, what's his name?

Chris Matthews.

You mean when the

people

that were against the government rose up to put Franco in?

Wasn't that?

I mean, that didn't.

That's not a good example, Chris.

Your side is the bad side in that example.

You know,

they are so distraught, they being the far left, because despite the hatred and all of the stuff, I wrote a column I sent you called Virtue Fascism this week.

And despite all their money and all the media that backs them and all the vitriol they spit out, they're losing.

They're losing.

They're losing on the political front.

They're losing on now at the Supreme Court, on the legal front, because this vote is going to take place.

It's going to take place in September and there's going to be another Supreme Court justice unless somebody crazy like John McCain or somebody like this gets involved and tilts it.

And I don't think that's going to happen.

And I don't mean John McCain's crazy, but he hates Trump so much that he's blinded a lot of times when he goes to vote.

There's going to be another traditional judge.

That's what it's about, a traditional judge.

Wasn't it interesting, Beck, that this week, Soda Sonia Mayor,

the most left-wing of all the Supreme Court justices, even more left than Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

admitted that she dissented about the ability of a president to stop people coming here from a certain country.

She admitted it, not based on the law.

Not based on the law, but based on that Sonia didn't like Trump's rhetoric didn't like the way he presented the issue the law be damned Sonia was offended so Sonia is going to vote against what was obviously a power the president has it was obvious it's there in writing so that's what the whole thing is about it's about you you put another traditional judge on the bench and the far left is toast on the big issues they're not going to be able to rule on their own ideology, which is what they want.

Okay, so let's go through this here for just a second.

Let's say he puts somebody on, like my favorite, Mike Lee, or somebody like that, that is a constitutionalist and we can count on him.

And, you know,

he's a Gorsuch, which we think he is now,

or a Thomas, and he becomes this, you know, this stalwart for the Constitution.

I think that John Roberts is the kind of guy that becomes Anthony Kennedy.

I think he's

maybe,

maybe, and it's a pretty good observation.

I can't believe I'm actually giving you compliments today.

At least you understand my question.

Sometimes you're like, I don't have any idea.

I'm not, you know, I'm not that slow, but I can keep up.

All right.

Yeah, all right.

Stu loses me, but I can keep up.

Yeah, right.

That's what I thought.

Okay.

So Roberts, he's not an ideologue

like

Scalia was.

He will go out of the box, and he did on Obamacare, and he was so wrong on Obamacare.

So wrong.

Clearly.

And I'm not saying that because he voted for it on ⁇

I'm saying it because the law, the Constitution.

Even his own opinion, you could see that.

He was tortured.

Yeah, he rewrote it at the last minute.

I mean, it was...

It didn't make any sense.

If you were to put Roe v.

Wade in front of Roberts,

you wouldn't know.

I mean, you're going to know Clarence Thomas, all right?

You're going to know Alito.

They're not going to say Roe v.

Wade should stand.

They're just not.

But you don't know Roberts.

So you're right.

There would be some drama.

But what will never happen again is Ruth Bader Ginsburg actually saying,

if you look up what she said, I don't really believe that the Constitution as written should be upheld anymore.

I, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, believe it has evolved and it has evolved into whatever I want it to be.

That's how you ruin your country.

That's how you wreck what has made us the most prosperous nation ever seen.

That's how you ruin it.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg saying, I'm going to do and rule whatever I want and not what was written.

It's amazing.

It's amazing to me that the left is saying that they're putting these radicals

and

the radical to the left is the one that will read the Constitution as it was written.

I mean, there's no way that you're going to get rid of Roe versus Wade in America all across all 50 states.

However, the people in Utah and the people in, you know, South Carolina may say, you know what?

No, we don't want this here.

This is not who we are.

We believe it's murder.

It just goes back into the hands of the states.

That's what's going to happen.

And they just think that that is just so radical that the people would be allowed to decide if it disagrees with their position.

Because

they, the far left, believe that the people should not have any say.

That's the crux of the far left, that the government runs the economy, the health care system, the educational system, the entitlement system.

It runs everything.

And you, the American

citizen, serve the government, not the other way around.

That's what people don't understand when you look at the Rob Reiners and the CNN cadre and the NBC News executives.

They believe that the government should run everything.

Talk about the Bill of Rights.

Okay, you know what your primary right is in their mind?

To send your money and assets to them

so they can do whatever they want with it.

This is nothing new and I know progressives will say that's outrageous.

How dare he say something like that.

This is exactly

what you can't argue against it.

It is their philosophy of socialism, their philosophy of

basically income redistribution,

all of these things, Obamacare,

come back to the government calls the shots, not the citizens.

You don't have a right right to not have health insurance.

You don't have a right to

basically say, you know what?

I don't want to have my tax money paying for abortions because I believe that that's murder.

I, as a religious person or whatever, and I don't really want my money going into that industry.

Oh, you don't have that right because the government says we're taking tax money to give to Planned Parenthood.

you see, they can't dispute it, Beck.

I know.

They can't.

Okay, they can't.

They can dodge it, but they can't dispute it.

All right.

I'm going to try to find something that Bill is passionate about when we come back here in just a second.

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So, Bill, I want to stick with you here for a minute on

the announcement yesterday of Kennedy.

When you're looking at this and you see the response from the left, which was nuts, and you take into account

what they've been saying recently with Maxine Waters and the Red Hen, and we'll get into that here in a minute.

Does it concern you at all of what we might be headed for this fall?

Well, I don't know

if it can get any worse.

I mean, we're on the edge of violence now.

Well, that's what I mean.

I think we might be headed towards

that's what my column, you know, virtue fascism, is about.

We're on the edge of violence.

Somebody's going to get killed.

And the media is directly responsible for that.

And again, you can just see what happened last night.

I mean, it's this hysteria, and, you know, they're trying to

incite, and that's the word,

but not the word of the day.

Not the word of the day.

No, it's not, that's a little too mundane.

Well, I thought so.

Incite irrational behavior.

Right.

They are not perspicacious.

That's the word of the day.

Yeah.

There you go.

All right.

So,

you know, when they said that that's what the left was doing, that's what Fox News and Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly and, you know, Sarah Palin said, targeting districts.

They were looking for that.

Now they seem to not only not care about it,

I get the sense that they kind of feel like, well, look what Donald Trump's doing.

Two or two can play at this game.

That's fine.

He's the one that's inciting violence because listen to him at his rallies.

Well, that's not a totally

specious, another word of the day,

argument.

The president has

gone too far in his rhetoric

on occasion.

All right.

I mean, any fair-minded person knows that.

But,

Beck, I want you to listen to me closely.

All right.

You do not justify bad behavior by pointing to other bad behavior.

That's what fourth graders do.

Well, he was worse than I was.

Right.

You know, you don't, that's just ridiculous.

He started it.

But to point out, to point out that the rhetoric on the part of Donald Trump

has been, you know, destructive on occasion is true.

Yeah.

I, you know, I made an analogy last night that I won't go into on the News and Why It Matters, but

I think that Barack Obama was doing the same thing that Donald Trump is doing.

He was just doing it with, I don't know, more, I don't know, more class, more refinement to where he was, you know, walking around the stage and talking about those teabaggers.

You know,

that's a pretty nasty name to call people.

He knew exactly what that was.

You know, he was.

Correct.

He was just doing it

in a less fiery sort of way or a more classy, presidential sort of way.

But it's the same kind of stuff.

Get in the back of the bus, get in the back seat.

You already drove us into a ditch.

Same thing, isn't it?

I don't know if it's the same thing because it's not as specific.

See, the problem that Donald Trump has is that he gets so angry that he's very specific.

So when there's a demonstrator in front of him at a rally, he goes, well, get that guy out of here.

That's true.

That's true.

Okay?

So that puts the guy in danger.

To say you're a teabagger or you're grabbing a Bible, that's a specific thing,

a non-specific thing, I should say.

So that's the difference.

All right.

I want to go to Sarah Huckabee Sanders

and

some of the other things that you have been talking about.

Peter struck in a closed-door interview.

When we come back, back.

Mercury.

We're with Bill O'Reilly from BillOreilly.com.

We've got a lot to cover in about the next nine minutes, and I want to touch on one thing, make sure we get to it.

Bill and I have talked about this independence fund.

He He told me about this a few weeks ago, and I think this is really critical and something that really is good.

Right now, the Independence Fund has a matching gift campaign that is going on.

It's going to end on July 4th.

So far, they've raised $1.5 million, and these build

wheelchairs, I mean, real industrial wheelchairs for our returning vets that need them.

And both of us would like to get involved and have you get involved as well.

Again, matching dollar for dollar, and that ends on July 4th, and we can really make a difference.

Bill?

There's a woman out in California who wants to remain anonymous, but I have spoken with her through

the electronics who is matching every donation that anyone makes to independencefund.org to get these so-called track chairs.

That's the official name, track chairs.

And they're electronic chairs.

They go on the beach, they go in the forest, you can hunt, you can,

yeah, and and they give the severely wounded vets who've lost arms, legs, eyes, and brain damage, and all that.

They give them a sense of independence that they don't have now.

That's thus the name Independence Fund.org.

So it's very kind of you to mention it to your vast audience on the radio.

Independencefund.org, just go up there, give as much as you can.

It'll be matched by this very patriotic woman in California.

And I think we're approaching $2 million now.

That's great.

So, yeah.

Each track chair costs $15,000.

All right.

Independencefund.org.

Independencefund.org.

Even if it's five bucks, please do it.

All right, Bill, want to run through a few things.

Shouldn't we be allowed to reserve the right

to serve or not serve anybody we want?

I remember those signs in cafes and everything else years ago.

Bakers, you know, people who think that bakers don't have to make gay wedding cakes,

shouldn't they be supporting Red Hen?

And those who believe bakers have to do it,

shouldn't they be on the opposite side that they're on right now with Red Hen?

Well, legally, if you are an owner of a business and you want to deny someone service, you can do that unless the person is a designated minority.

That's the law.

Right.

So you can't deny African Americans or a religious minority or gays because they're protected.

They're protected by law.

But anyone else you can deny service to.

And

I would not change that law.

I think that law is okay.

You know, if you have somebody in there who is causing a ruckus and it's not a criminal offense, it's just somebody who's really hurting your business.

You should be able to deny them service and get them out of there.

So I

think the law as it stands is okay.

So why are so many people who say, hey, bakers have to have the right,

you know, to follow their conscience?

Here's a woman who said, you know, I have, you know, moral standards and ethics that we follow in my, and she doesn't fit them.

And she's basically saying, you know, this is my religion and I want her out.

Why are the people who believe it in one case with wedding cakes so against it in this case?

Because they don't like Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

That's simple as that.

No, I'm talking about the reverse.

You know, yesterday, the people who were against Red Hen, they were in the streets actually throwing human feces at people.

Oh, you're talking about the people who support the baker on religious grounds, but then don't.

Correct.

Well, I mean, I think that they're basically, and I don't know because I'm speaking to them, but I think you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're showing their displeasure

that you would be this

aggressively unfair to a government worker.

And if you think that that is bad behavior, you certainly have a right to protest it.

Yeah.

We're beyond monkey throwing poop at each other, though, don't you think?

Yeah, I mean, anybody doing gross,

but if you want to stand outside Red Hen with a mind saying

that woman is unfair,

you have a perfect right to do that.

Absolutely.

35%

now say that it's very likely that we will be in a civil war within four years.

An additional 11% say they are absolutely sure.

So now almost half of the country that have participated in this poll say we're in a civil war in the next four years.

What does that say to you?

They're right.

I mean, I think we're here.

I don't think the civil war is coming.

I think the social civil war is underway.

Okay, now, wait a minute.

There's a difference between a cold civil war.

I think we've been in a cold civil war for a while, but we are now entering.

No, I don't think we're going to have massive violence.

I think we're going to have selected violence.

But, you know, look, I'm a casualty of the damn thing.

I mean, people paid

far-left concerns paid people to lie about me.

If that's not war, I don't know

what is war if that's not war.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Yesterday they were talking, Chuck Schumer, Jeffrey Toobin.

Is that his name?

Jeffrey Toobin.

Yeah.

Jeffrey Toobin was on CNN, and he said,

in 18 months, absolutely, positively, Roe versus Wade will be overturned.

Well, first of all, he's a vile liar,

the man you just mentioned.

Wow.

And

I mean, it's just disgusting.

It really is.

He's a vile liar?

I don't believe that this man goes on to tell the truth at all.

Wow.

That's my opinion.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

All right.

Okay.

And,

you know, when you're quoting somebody who is absolutely

going to put, and as this goes back to

the

beginning of our conversation, is absolutely going to try to incite,

incite

people

to do things they shouldn't do by saying, well, Roe v.

Way is going to be overturned in 18 months.

I know it.

You don't know anything.

That's speculation.

All right.

It's speculation.

In 18 months, how likely do you think that is to happen?

I don't think it's likely.

I don't either.

Number one, you have to have a legitimate suit wind its way through the federal system.

Right.

Okay.

It just doesn't come out of nowhere.

Right.

And number two, the Supreme Court is not going to be, even if there is a traditional judge appointed, not going to be so enthusiastic about just blowing up

something that has been law for a long time

and something that half the American people support, at least.

I have two minutes left, Bill.

Tell me what your thoughts were on

the

elections this week, especially with the wins of the Democratic Socialists.

I don't care about the elections this week.

The Democratic Socialist in the Bronx and Northern Queens won because that is a very, very poor district, and

she is a very good campaigner and went around and knocked on the doors and spoke to the folks, and she deserved to win.

And the guy that she beat has no connection to that district at all.

He's a white guy.

This is a very heavily minority district.

So I'm not surprised.

Does it have any wider implications?

No.

It's a very,

very poor district.

And if you're going to tell them you're going to get everything free, they're going to vote for you.

And I would too if I lived there and had no money.

I mean, it's as simple as that.

And that's what the woman did.

And I'm going to give you everything.

All right.

Bill O'Reilly.

Free Medicare, free everything.

Bill O'Reilly from BillO'Reilly.com.

And your new book is.

One thing Beck.

Can I jump in?

Real quick.

I sent you an advanced copy of Killing the SS.

Did you get it?

No, I have not gotten it.

I have to have it.

Oh, my God.

I will call you after the show.

I want it.

I'm going on vacation.

I want to return.

I wanted a stew.

I got one, too.

I wanted this stew.

Wow.

Well, I'll take his copy if mine doesn't arrive.

Bill O'Reilly from BillO'Reilly.com.

Thank you very much, Bill.

All right, guys.

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Hey, so glad that you have joined us.

Selena Zito and Brad Todd are joining us here in a second.

They wrote a book called The Great Revolt.

Selena is probably

She should probably teach a class just for the media on how they have it wrong.

She is the one who saw Trump coming.

She understood why immediately.

She really has spent her time in the center of

the country, and she understands America and where we're headed.

I'm really excited to talk to her.

She's a good long-term friend and really, really smart.

One of the best journalists in the country, I think.

And we're going to talk to her in a second.

Also, Mexico said, hey, they're not going to help us on the drug war.

Why?

It's three o'clock in the morning, and the air is a little chilly and bitter as Pamela Tiran leaves Bar Yardin.

It's a restaurant and a bar in the middle of the town.

She steps out into the empty plaza.

The sun isn't going to begin rising for about three hours, and Pamela is enjoying a festive night before the elections bring higher tensions.

She's running for the town council as the member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

She feels at home here in Mexico,

in an indigenous little town in the southwest corner of the country, a brief car ride from the ocean.

Pamela has black hair, a kind-hearted smile.

Bracelets adorn her arm, and she wears a modest, hand-stitched dress in an elaborate elaborate and colorful design.

A design you really could only find right there.

She's with her friend, photojournalist Maria Del Sol, and a man, her bodyguard, who's also her driver.

The world around her is mostly quiet.

Tree frogs whistle, croak, ribbit, and grunt.

In the distance, a spider monkey wails out its strange call.

In the daylight, this place is paradise.

Cornfields weave into forests, ancestral homes sprawl to the railroad, past the farm with cows and pigs and goats and chickens.

Last year, the region was struck by one of the earthquakes in Mexico, one of the most deadly in the last century.

Pamela at the time appeared on television asking for volunteers.

The video is eerie with her standing in the dark as floodlights shine into into the rubble, people frantically searching for life or bodies as she looks into the camera.

Please, we need more people to help us, she said.

Please.

She was a doctor by profession.

She was also an activist who ran organizations for the dispossessed.

Two years ago, she was a candidate for mayor.

Maybe.

Maybe she's thinking about all of this as she crosses the plaza to her car, unaware of the cloaked figures waiting for her in the darkness.

Inside the car, they pause, stung by a strange feeling, something ominous and sudden.

But before they can react, the gunfire begins.

The killers empty their magazines and then shove in another.

They make sure no one is left alive, and then they vanish back

into the darkness and night.

On Monday, the military helicopters watched over the funeral.

At least a thousand people attended.

The details of Pamela's death are still spare.

Officials admit that it may have been gang-related as her father, Juan, has a criminal record and allege relations with the local cartel.

But either way, Her death is a far more ominous trend taking over the country just to our south.

Since last September, over 110 electoral candidates had been murdered throughout Mexico.

In the 24 hours before Pamela's death alone, armed civilians murdered two women politicians a few hours northwest.

The two women had been rammed into a ditch late at night and executed.

In the morning, Police uncovered the bodies.

The vehicle had been abandoned and nothing had been stolen from the women or the car, so police realized it wasn't a robbery.

Mexico is on the verge of presidential elections.

They begin July 1st, and the drug gangs have been murdering their way into the race, from City Hall all the way up.

Crime bosses have implanted their own batch of politicians, people who can be paid enough to stay out of the way.

Criminal gangs rove the country, eliminating any reformers or any dissenters.

Journalists in Mexico are now dying at alarming rate, a historical high.

So it's often hard to tell for sure what happens, because now

people just vanish in the dark at night

with the sound and the croaks and the whistle of the tree frogs.

But the warring drug cartels are growing in strength and getting bolder by the day, bringing their culture of death to every corner of the country.

And we sit here, oblivious, wondering why

are so many people trying to get across our border.

Glenn Beck.

It's Thursday, June 28th.

You're listening to the Glenn Beck program.

I would say that the next Supreme Court Justice of the United States is going to be joining us in about 30 minutes, Mike Lee.

But if I endorse or I'm excited about it, it's the kiss of death.

So a guy who I really don't want on the court and I really don't like, Mike Lee, joining us in about a half an hour.

There is, you know, this week it kind of started with me on Sunday with just a meltdown on CNN because I just can't take, I can't take the reporters anymore and the journalists anymore who are presenting themselves as really trying to understand.

And then they just will not listen to anybody unless they're in their little cocktail circle.

Somebody who actually works for CNN is a reporter for CNN.

And I think the best reporter at CNN and

probably I should say in many places, one of the best reporters in the country, she gets it.

She saw Trump coming.

She understood why.

And her and her co-author, Brad Todd,

have done extensive research into what's happening in the country.

They put it together in a new book called The Great Revolt.

Selena Zito is with us now and co-author, Brad Todd.

Selena, how are you?

Hey.

Hey, Glenn, how are you?

Nice to talk to you.

Good to talk to you.

I haven't talked to you in a while.

And I have to tell you, I read your stuff.

I've always appreciated it because you've always anchored it in history.

But now you're doing something that I think is a great service.

And quite honestly, I wish more reporters would listen to you because you understand what's happening in the country.

So

let's get into it real quick.

You say that there are seven types of Trump voters.

Selena, can you tell me what those are?

Okay, there's seven.

So Brad and I, sort of between

looking through data, but also through anecdotal reporting, we're able to sort out these seven different archetypes.

Now, they're not all of the Trump voters.

Not every Trump voter is going to follow these archetypes.

But these are the most surprising ones, the ones that I kept seeing, and I kept calling Brad and saying, dude, I'm seeing this.

What's going on?

But

most people missed.

So there's the King Cyrus Christians, there's the shy suburban voters, there's the Rotary Republicans, there's the girl gunpower, there's the Paroistas,

and who am I missing?

The

Rough Rebounders, and then Red-Blooded and Blue-Collar.

Okay, can you just quickly...

Hi, Brad, by the way.

And Brad,

are you doing more of the research stuff?

Because you did the Great Revolt Survey.

Selena and I have a great partnership.

She travels and study charts.

And it's

not quite that simple, but

it works out great.

And if you're ever going to write a co-author a book with anybody, Glenn, I would recommend you co-author with Selena.

Oh, I know.

She's unbelievable.

So can you just break down those categories just briefly in each of them so we can understand what each one is?

Brad, do you want to do that?

Sure.

The red-blooded and blue-collared voters are a lot of Trump voters people have talked about.

They're mostly voters who voted for Democrats most of their lives.

Many of them voted for Obama.

Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

This is something I found in the book that I have not heard anywhere.

I'm hearing about blue collar, but I am not hearing that there is a large number of people who voted for Donald Trump that were Democrats and voted for Barack Obama.

Nobody's reporting on that.

Well, you couldn't have.

He couldn't have carried Donald Trump couldn't have carried Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin and Iowa and Ohio without getting Obama voters.

And a lot of those voters were blue-collar.

In our Great Revolt survey, nearly a third of the voters said that they had voted for Obama in either the first or second election or both.

Wow.

And a lot of those voters fell into that red-blooded and blue-collared

archetype.

We have another group we call Peroistas because they sort of remind us of those voters who got activated by Ross Perot in 1992, people who'd been checked out of politics for decades and suddenly checked in.

And if you read the book, you'll find a woman who didn't register to vote until she was 70 years old.

Donald Trump's her first vote for president ever.

And that kind of, those voters, we call them the shock troops of American democracy.

They only come in for something really different.

Rough rebounders are people who probably are Trump's biggest fans.

They're less conservative than the average Trump voter.

They're more secular than the average Trump voter, but they're people who've had a big setback in their own life and they saw him as an underdog.

They thought the whole system was out to get him in politics and they identified with that.

We think that's about 6% of his total vote, by the way.

Give or take, girl gunpower are women who should have been persuaded by Hillary's campaign, which was entirely aimed at suburban women and at women with kids in the home.

If you remember all the TV ads with Donald Trump cursing on stage and looked at through the eyes of children.

But these women, girl gunpower, voted on the issue of the Second Amendment.

They voted on the right of self-defense in spite of misgivings about Trump and in spite of Hillary's campaign toward them.

Rotary Reliables are college-educated voters, sort of business types who are a very Republican group of voters normally.

However, the difference with these folks is they're small-town college-educated Republicans and medium-sized town college-educated Republicans, which means they have one thing very different from their suburban peers.

Their suburban peers, many of them who were Republican, defected from Trump.

Trump ran worse in most every suburban county in America than he did, than Nitt Romney had run.

But Trump did very well among college-educated voters who lived in smaller places.

So those Rotary Reliables are a group you might have thought would have defected.

King Cyrus Christians, those are evangelicals and conservative Catholics who obviously didn't identify with Trump some of Trump's lifestyle and behavior choices.

Who'd have thought that a regular guest on the Howard Stern show and

a man who cavorted with playmates and

would ever be the favorite candidate of evangelicals?

Trump maybe got 85, 88% of the evangelicals, just a huge number.

That's crazy.

We contend that that was a transaction for them.

They were threatened by religious liberty.

And they found a pagan, not a pagan, if you will, but the metaphor is to King Cyrus, who was a pagan king of Babylon and

sent the imprisoned Jews home to Israel.

And so

that group of King Cyrus Christians, in many ways, allied with someone outside their faith stream in Donald Trump to protect religious liberty.

Silent Suburban Moms is the the last one.

And the reason that category is one to itself is obviously Hillary's campaign was mainly aimed at women, mainly upscale, college-educated, suburban white women for the most part, trying to peel them away from their Republican tendencies.

And a lot of women resisted that.

They didn't talk about it.

Up to 30% of Trump's voters on our survey said that at one point they'd been either embarrassed or

anxious about telling their friends they were supporting Donald Trump because they knew they'd disapprove.

And this silent suburban moms group, it's a majority of those women felt that way.

So, Selena,

tell me,

because I know the description that you get on television, and when I hear the description of Trump voters, it's easy to watch him in

one of his rallies and see the highlights that they've pulled where there is somebody who is, you know, he's saying something vile and somebody else is doing something vile.

I don't want to believe that that is the majority of the country

that could elect a president, and I don't think that it is.

Can you take the cartoon away and describe

the typical Trump voter

and

then the most surprising Trump voter to you?

Well, let's step back for a second.

I think part of the problem with my profession is that

they all fly in together.

And I saw this on the election, during the election.

So they would all fly in together.

They all land at the airport.

They all

stay at the Marriott by the airport and get their points, right?

They all drive in together and they get to the event about seven minutes before it's fed.

And, you know,

we're all, and at this point, this is when I joined them.

We're all in like the same little cornered off area and we cover it.

So what happens is, is when they get there, you know, you're on the deadline and you got to write a story.

And sometimes your instincts are blurred

when you are under those kinds of high-pressure conditions.

And you find the oddest person, and then

you focus on that person.

And

then you pick out the seven worst quotes that he says.

And mostly out of context.

And you would watch every network and every cable news station and every social media sort of platform.

That's everyone's story, right?

That's not how I approach it.

I never fly.

I always drive no matter where I'm going.

I never take an interstate.

I always take a back road.

And I always stay in a town two to three days before a rally and/or event is about to happen.

I never stay in a hotel.

I stay in a bed and breakfast.

So the first person I meet is a small business person.

They pretty much know where all the bodies are buried in town.

They know what's going on in town.

And I get to know a community.

I go to church with them.

I go to a basketball game, you know, high high school basketball game.

And so when I get to the rally, I get there like four hours ahead of time.

And it's like a tailgate party.

I mean, these people,

these voters are very aspirational.

That's one of the things that people miss about the phrase, the catchphrase, the campaign phrase, make America great again.

They

thought it was hokey.

I heard Madeleine Albright call it a dog whistle, you know, and they think it's nostalgic and people rooted in the past.

What it is, is very aspirational.

It captures that aspiration that is very much a part of the DNA of the American people.

Whether you have lived here for two weeks or seven generations, you know, people want to be part of something bigger than themselves.

And so

that's more what the average Trump voter is than the stereotype of being uneducated, lazy,

bigoted, racist, you know, the sort of catchphrase that we see all the time on the news.

It's much more about their community.

You know, Brad will tell you

in the survey that he did, these voters, I think the number was 84%,

are feel good about their lives going forward and the country's going forward, but they're very concerned about their community.

So it's not nationalism, it's a localism.

Wow, you don't hear that.

Hang on just a second.

I need to

take a quick break and Brad, you pick it up with

the survey data that backs that up.

You do not hear this anywhere in the mainstream media.

The name of the book is The Great Revolt Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.

Brad Todd and Selena Zito, who I think Selena

is the best reporter in America, bar none.

Well worth your time to read this back with them just in just a second.

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Glenn Back.

We're talking to Selena Zito and Brad Todd, authors of The Great Revolt Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics, who are telling us all kinds of things that Trump supporters are not what the mainstream media is making them out to be, surprise, surprise.

But some fascinating facts.

Let's pick it up, Brad,

where we left off.

You were about to say.

Well, 87% of Trump voters are actually optimistic about their future career growth or financial situation, which, of course, flies in the face of the narrative that most of the mainstream media painted of Trump voters as being destitute and strung out on heroin and living in the shadow of a rusted-out factory.

But now that optimism does not go, and it's a very optimistic group of people, but they're scared to death about their communities, though.

Only 58%

of Trump voters in the Rust Belt in our survey for this book, The Great Revolt, say that their community has fewer or has more job opportunities than it did just 10 years ago.

And the communities we went to to find these voters all had switched from Obama to Trump.

They're 10 counties in the five Great Lakes states.

And if you look at places like Ashtabuel, Ohio, which hadn't voted for Republican in a generation for president, its population today is about the same as it was in 1970.

You know, and the country is 40-something percent bigger than it was at that time.

So

the economic opportunities in these communities certainly are challenging in a lot of places where folks supported Donald Trump, but they're actually pretty bullish on their own chances.

Selena,

I know you talked to plenty of people who were enthusiastic supporters, but you also talked to some people who had a struggle in the voting booth and really had to come to terms, really like some things, really didn't like other things.

I think that is typical.

Maybe this one was a little more exaggerated.

Why is it that we don't seem to see that?

Why is there such a demand for Trump purism?

That if you don't agree with everything,

then you are an enemy.

Right.

You know, that, I mean, you're right.

Okay, so it is, it always is a struggle.

It's binary choice.

And so you have to face what is most important to you.

And sometimes it's a buffet of decisions.

And mostly with Trump,

the concern was more on his comportment and not on some of the promises that he was making.

So

that was more the struggle than ideology.

I mean, he's not a very ideological person.

Bret and I argue that he blew up both parties in a lot of ways.

You know, you know what I mean?

He kept telling, I'm not signing the pledge.

I might run as an independent.

So he hurts the Republican establishment as much as he hurts the Democratic establishment.

And that kind of you know, people were really hungry for that.

I mean, I think the importance, and and Brad, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think one of the most important things about the Great Revolt to read and understand and sort of uses almost like your blueprint or your Bible in understanding the the country now and going forward is that this movement has been going on for a very long time and he is not the cause of it.

He's just the result of it.

And movements tend to take steam

rather than, I mean,

if this movement, if the movement's high point is going to be Mount Everest, you guys, we're on base camp.

We've got a lot more to go.

So

this is what disturbs me, actually, because I believe that.

But I believe, for instance, the media, I have tried to get the media.

They are just making, you know, they say, we want to stop him.

No, you don't.

No, you don't.

Because you don't understand what you're doing.

And every move that they make,

they actually make him stronger every time.

It just proves to people that, yeah, you know what?

They're they're absolutely out of touch.

You know what, Glenn?

I think Donald Trump's highest skill set is choosing his enemies.

And he builds his coalition by choosing enemies.

There are a lot of people who feel like that the media and popular culture and Hollywood looks down their nose at them.

And when they see those same forces attacking Donald Trump, it draws them closer to Trump, even if they don't agree with everything he says or tweets or does.

And I think that one thing that a lot of people are the political handicappers who missed Trump the first time, and I got to tell you, I missed him in the primaries.

I didn't predict he'd be the nominee.

I predicted the opposite several times.

And so it's luckily, Glenn, I'm the only person that missed it out there.

You don't want to say that on this program.

A lot of people who are predicting how these elections are going to go have to think really hard about this Supreme Court choice and how it affects it because plenty of Trump voters picked him in spite of reservations because of the Supreme Court.

You'll find that in this book, the stories and the data behind that sort of calculated gamble.

Well, those voters don't have to take a gamble anymore.

If the Supreme Court matters to you, Donald Trump picked Neil Gorsuch.

He's getting ready to pick another strong conservative.

don't, it's the scales are a lot more tipped.

And so there may be more people who come out to support Trump and his allies in the midterms than supported him.

So, Brad and Selena, I'd love to have you guys on again and continue this conversation.

I have Mike Lee coming up next, so I've got to cut it here.

But

I will tell you that I think you're right.

And I think that it might even be some Democrats as the Democrats continue to go hard, hard, hard left.

I think there's more of a a hunger for some common sense.

And believe it or not, a lot of people are looking at him as common sense.

He's getting it done.

The Great Revolt is the name of the book, Inside the Populist Coalition, Reshaping American Politics,

Selena Zito, and Brad Todd.

Thanks for being a part of the program.

Mike Lee,

who I want to make it very clear, every time I am for somebody, it becomes a train wreck.

So I am absolutely dead set 100%

against Mike Lee for the Supreme Court justice.

In fact, I am not for

anyone in the Lee family being appointed for the Supreme Court.

I'm against it, and he's only joining us now under protest, my protest.

Mike Lee, how are you?

Doing great.

That's good to know.

Apparently, that comes with some sort of good luck if you're against anyone with the last name of Lee.

I'll tell my brother we're in good shape now.

Yeah, yeah.

You tell him Glenn Beck said the last thing America should want is a Lee on the Supreme Court.

And

you watch the magic happen now.

So, Mike,

I don't want to put you in an awkward situation at all.

So feel free to, you know, avoid any answer and just say I don't want to answer.

But come on, this is pretty cool, right?

I mean, even

that people are talking about it, even if it's not in the Oval Office, I mean, right?

Oh, of course it is.

Of course it is.

And look,

I'm a law geek.

I'm somebody who started watching Supreme Court arguments when I was 10 years old for fun.

I went to the Supreme Court with my dad to watch him argue, and it turned into

a habit.

I found that I quite enjoyed it.

So, yeah, to even be considered for this is a real honor.

Who knows what will happen, but I'm glad my name's in the mix and that my brother's is too.

So, after you tell me something like that, I have to follow it up with a question.

Your children are adopted?

Or

it was some

you went to a fertility clinic and you weren't involved at all?

I mean, how did that work with your

I mean, because that's magic.

I mean, somebody who says at 10 years old, I was watching the cases come down, you're a magic guy.

You really are.

Look,

my wife, Sharon, my wife, Sharon, finds these things endearing for whatever reason.

Okay, so

let me talk to you a little bit about the Senate.

I am really concerned

about the direction that we're headed in.

Are we holding this back for the midterm election, or is this possible that we'll have a vote in September?

Do you know?

No, no, I think it's very likely.

I think it's a near certainty that we will have a vote at some time late summer or early fall.

We need to get this person confirmed before the Supreme Court starts its new term in October.

And I think that's the plan, and I do think that's what will happen.

Wow, that's great news.

I heard that we were possibly, or Mitch McConnell was possibly holding it back

to

closer to the midterms,

which I just think will tear us apart.

Yeah, you know,

I don't want to speak for him.

If he has has said that in the last few hours, that's news to me.

I'm not sure why we would want to hold it back because, again, when the Supreme Court starts, I don't know why we wouldn't want to have the person on the court.

Correct.

And we're talking about a matter of weeks anyway between the time the court's term would start and the midterm election.

So Ted Cruz said yesterday that he doesn't want somebody who is a conservative on the court.

He wants somebody who's a constitutionalist on the court.

I think that's perfectly reasonable.

But I don't don't think that's what the left wants, Schumer.

No matter who is selected, they are going to be the worst person ever born immediately.

Yeah, that's sad.

One would hope that it wouldn't be the case, but look at how some on the left yesterday were characterizing every person on President Trump's list, trying to say that all of them were just basically evil people.

And

that's difficult to hear sometimes, especially when you've got a lot of very smart, capable people on that list who love this country deeply and want nothing more than to read the law and the Constitution based on what they say.

And I think that's a difference between constitutionalists and progressives.

Constitutionalists just want to apply the law based on what it says.

I think that that's where Anthony Kennedy

sometimes got it wrong, even when he got it right.

He wasn't necessarily always looking to the Constitution.

He was looking to try to do the right thing.

And the right thing is, in his role,

to make sure that it's just constitutional.

That's where I think our justices go wrong, is

they're trying to right wrongs or

no, that's not your job in the Supreme Court.

That's not your job, is it?

No, that's exactly right.

As Justice Scalia used to say, show me a judge who always agrees with his own decisions, and I'll show you someone who's not a very good judge.

And I also agree with you on your assessment of Justice Kennedy.

I respect him.

I'm grateful for the 30 years of service he's given to the court.

And he got a lot of things right.

In many instances, he was a defender of federalism, of separation of powers, of religious freedom.

Sometimes he got a little flowery in his rhetoric, and sometimes in those same cases, he would deviate a little bit off into a field that wasn't so much based on law and the Constitution as on something else.

Correct.

Mike, the American people pretty much just dive into the Supreme Court when there's a controversial decision or someone's about to be named.

They don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, unlike people who, let's say, go visit when they're 10 years old.

But we're hearing.

We all do that.

Yeah, no, those people are weird.

They don't amount to anything.

There are two types of people in the world, people who do that and admit to it, and those who claim that they don't.

Okay,

third type.

But we'll get into that later.

The couple of words that we get tossed around a lot in these moments are originalists and textualists.

Can you kind of describe those?

Is there a difference between them?

What do they actually mean?

The two complement each other.

The term originalist refers to someone who, when examining the Constitution, likes to look at the words and understand how the words were used in common parlance at the time of the founding, at the time the Constitution was written.

A textualist is someone who looks at text, whether in a statute or in the Constitution, and just tries to figure out what the words mean.

They essentially mean the same thing.

They're at least complementary terms.

The term originalist refers specifically to what happens when you are looking at the Constitution.

The term textualist can refer to either constitutional or statutory interpretation.

Is there a sane argument for something other than those two things?

I mean, it seems to me that that's what you're exactly what you're supposed to do in the Supreme Court.

Well, look,

many on the left would say what really matters is to find the right outcome.

Find the right outcome and then help the law catch up, back the law into what is the right thing.

Does this decision feel right?

Remember when Judge now Justice Gorsuch went through the hearing process, they harassed him about some of his decisions, saying that that outcome just feels unfair.

And yet, in every instance, he had done what the law said, and they condemned him for that.

You were friends with Scalia, and you're friends with Thomas.

Scalia was good friends with

Ginsburg.

Do you have the same kind of feel for her that he did?

For Justice Ginsburg?

Yeah.

I didn't get to know her as well.

Each justice has four law clerks.

When I clerked for Justice Alito, we had the opportunity to take each justice to lunch.

Instead, Justice Ginsburg has the clerks from other chambers come into her office for tea.

And I remember it vividly.

We had a long, interesting discussion, but someone, one of my co-hours, while passing the teapot, spilled the tea right in front of me, and it looked like I did it.

And I've always felt kind of self-conscious around her everywhere.

Wow.

Wow.

All right.

Talk to me about one name that I'm concerned about, and that is Thomas Hardiman.

You know, I've met him.

I don't know him well.

He serves on the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

I've known people who have clerked for him, who have good things to say about him.

I wish I could say I have read his opinions.

I haven't.

Okay.

Anyone besides you that you would be rooting for and your brother that you would be rooting for that we should be looking for?

Well, look,

I didn't realize you were going to put in the caveat of I couldn't plug my brother, but my brother really is awesome.

He served on the Utah Supreme Court for seven years now.

He's brilliant, as smart as the day is long.

Look, the list put out by the administration is a good list.

I think if they stick to the list, even if they deviate from it, but they go with someone like that, as long as the person is a textualist originalist, I'll be fine with it.

This ultimately is up to the president.

And I do think he'll make the right choice here.

And are you concerned at all that John Roberts could become a Kennedy where he's unpredictable, he's kind of showing signs, so is Kagan, but kind of showing signs that he's not always going to go the way you think he will.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, look, he out-kenned Kennedy in NFIB versus Sebelius, rewriting Obamacare, not once, but twice, in order to save it from an otherwise inevitable finding of unconstitutionality.

So that does worry me.

I hope that that will prove to be an aberration, a mere blip, but it concerns me greatly that he did it in that case.

Finally, how do you feel about being the senior senator from Utah and possibly sitting next to Mitt Romney?

Well, you know, Mitt told me recently that he looks forward to having any title that comes with the word junior attached to it.

All right, Mike, good talking to you.

Thank you so much.

Hey, great.

Thanks so much.

Good to talk to you.

All right.

And make sure you tell the president Glenn Beck is absolutely.

One thing that will piss him off more, Mr.

President, pointing me, Supreme Court, he'll hate it.

Lee.

I'm on it.

I'm on it.

Thanks a lot.

You bet.

Mike Lee, the senior senator from the great state of Utah.

Not as great as Texas, but soon to be.

He's not currently the senior.

Yeah, well, he will be soon.

I mean.

that's just some breaking news.

All right, let me tell you about our sponsor this half hour.

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I will tell you that

I think we're headed for some trouble,

especially if you look at

the possibility of having a summer of 68 happening on our streets this fall.

I was glad to hear hear Mike Lee say that we're going to try to push this through, you know, late August, early September.

It will be really bad if this drags out,

especially, I mean, you know, people are going to come to the streets, unfortunately.

They already are.

And I think we're headed towards some violence.

We also have, you know, trade issues now around the world, and that is starting to affect.

Look at the stock market yesterday.

We have some real issues, and right now, houses are selling for an all-time high.

I believe we're at the top of the bubble.

You can never, ever know what the bubble is, but I think now is about the time.

That's why I'm selling my house.

I would recommend to you, realestate agentsitrust.com.

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Glenn back.

Hey, there's a new hands-on history episode now available at the Blaze Facebook page and YouTube pages.

Make sure that you subscribe to it.

Hands-on history, this one is all about presidential leadership, specifically revolves around Abraham Lincoln

and shows you some amazing artifacts, including some of the artifacts that were here for our recent Mercury Museum event.

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Hands-on history, this episode and more episodes are available on the Blazes' Facebook and YouTube page

right now.

Don't miss this week's exciting episode.

Stu, you and I both picked a story today that we have to get to.

It is a personal check.

A personal check.

Not like it's not, it's made up in hand.

Personal check for

and written out $974,790,317.77.

It's the most incredible chance, and it's real.

Yeah, it is.

It was a guy, actually, Trump named him from the stage.

I guess he's a Trump supporter,

big money guy.

Harold Hamm.

Harold Hamm.

Harold apparently went through a divorce.

Kind of a nasty one.

It looks like.

Kind of an

expensive one.

I'm saying it's an expensive one for sure.

Went through an expensive divorce and needed to pay a certain sum sum of money.

It happened to be almost a billion dollars.

There's something charming about the way, too.

Like, you know how when you write a checkout, you have to spell the words out of the next line.

And there's so many words he had to, it actually takes two complete lines.

And still, still all the way to the edges and small.

But do you notice something else about this?

That check was signed by him.

Yeah.

But that check was written by a woman.

Certainly the individual words were written by a woman.

Yeah.

Because you can tell the handwriting is completely different.

It looks like he wrote

the pay to the order of and signed it and then left the date, the amount,

and everything else to be just filled in.

Now, having that kind of money, you had to trust the person.

Don't you think?

You really had to trust the person.

Hey, you know what?

Here is my checkbook.

I've just made this out and

I just signed it.

You just fill in all the stuff.

Oh, okay.

$974 million.

A billion dollars.

A check, a personal check out of what looks like your check

from the bank, like your regular checkbook.

I would be so tempted.

Wouldn't it be fun?

You receive this?

And maybe you're so hoity-toity that you don't, you know, you're like, oh, I need another billion dollars.

But I mean, there's no one in the world that's like that, though.

Even the richest people.

I mean, even Jeff Bezos doesn't think, oh, it's just a billion dollars.

A billion dollars is a lot of money to everybody except the U.S.

government.

Yes, I would agree with that.

I mean, wouldn't you be, I mean, imagine just going into like a local bank, you know, and just like, hey, can you cash this for me?

I kind of said that they probably couldn't.

No, I don't think, well, nobody could, actually.

It would take to get it in cash.

It would take you forever.

I don't even know if you could.

And I believe you would be on the DHS watch list.

Oh, there's no doubt about that.

I'm just saying.

I'm just cashing my alimony check.

That's all I'm doing.

I don't even have to ask you if I'd ever see you again if you got that much money, but because I know the answer.

This much money?

My question.

You could give me, you know,

you could give me, take the first three numbers off, and I'm still gone.

Yeah, even the 77 cents is tempting.

The $317.77.

I'm thinking about it.

I'm thinking about it.

Glenn, back.

Mercury.