5/18/17 - What President Trump should be doing right now! (Sen. Ben Sasse)

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On demand.

Boy, are we living in the days where it is massive news story after massive news story?

Roger Eugene Ailes,

president of Fox News, founder of Fox News,

CEO of the Fox Television Station Group, consultant for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W.

Bush, Rudy Giuliani's first mayoral campaign, helped brief Donald Trump with the debate preparation,

and so much more

has passed away.

The news broke about a half an hour ago, and

I want to spend some time there.

Roger Hales

right now.

I will make a stand.

I will raise my voice.

I will hold your hand.

Cause we have won.

I will be my drum.

I have made my choice.

We will overcome.

Cause we are one.

The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.

This is the Glenn Beck Program.

Statement has just been released by Elizabeth Ailes, Roger Ailes' wife.

I am profoundly sad and heartbroken to report that my husband Roger Ailes has passed away this morning.

Roger was a loving husband to me, to his son Zachary, and a loyal friend to many.

He was a patriot, profoundly grateful to live in a country that gave him so much opportunity to work hard, to rise, and to give back.

During a career that stretched over more than five decades, his work in entertainment and politics and news affected the lives of many millions.

We mourn his death and we celebrate his life.

Could this

month

be any more

impactful?

Every day, it seems there is something massive that is happening.

Roger Ailes and I

had a very interesting relationship.

And

I will tell you that

I am torn as Roger Ailes

is one of the biggest

tutors in my life

and one of the most, one of the biggest disappointments in my life.

Roger was

a tremendous performer and chameleon.

He could be

whoever he needed to be at the time,

whoever he was around.

He was a brilliant, brilliant man.

And

I truly believe, I could be wrong, because he was such a great performer.

I truly believe I saw the best side of him.

In private conversations,

I really liked him.

The side of him that I saw, I really liked.

The side of him that I saw come out

towards the end,

I despised and couldn't get away from fast enough.

He was a...

He was a very dangerous man.

And I think he knew that.

I know he knew that.

But I think it bothered him.

I think Roger and I had

a relationship

that honestly,

when I left Fox,

we had a gun to each other's head.

I'm the only one to have left Fox with minimal damage.

As he said, you're not leaving here.

Nobody leaves here.

I said, I am.

And because I had my own PR department, because I had my own radio show completely disconnected from him and Fox, because I kept my whole staff in my office and not in their office,

we did some things right that had never been done before.

And it really made Roger

upset

because he couldn't get his thumb on me.

The one thing I learned at Fox early on,

and I thought early on that it was a good thing,

I would say, you know, you have so many opportunities.

You know, what about, have you thought about doing X, Y, and Z?

And people would say, oh no, I could never, I could never leave here.

I could never leave Roger.

I owe him too much.

I always thought that was really nice and loyalty, and he really could mentor you.

As I found out within my first year, I'm not sure that's exactly what everybody meant.

I think Roger could, would and did,

find out the dirt on pretty much everybody and then put his finger down on you and

he would control you.

One of the reasons why I said no to him three times and I didn't want to go to work at Fox News.

At the time, we were talking about doing something and creating something for HBO.

And I wanted to get out of news.

And

Roger had called several times and finally met with me in

Rupert Murdoch's dining room.

And I said,

he said,

what is it about the more money and the bigger ratings that we're offering you that you don't seem to be interested in?

And I said, Roger, you're very smart.

You're very smart.

But watching you, I know what you do.

And I said,

you collect curiosities curiosities and you put them in a cabinet.

And I said, right now I'm a curiosity.

And I said, I'm, I'm,

I would probably do the same thing if I were you.

Anybody who could, anybody who could make a name for themselves outside of my empire, if I had your money, I probably would say, you know what, bring them in here.

And then we'll just set them on the shelf and we can bring them out when we need them.

I said, I'm not going to be kept in somebody's cabinet.

I remember the first month when I still really believed that we were on the same team.

He had something called the brain room.

We've never talked about this before.

He had something called the brain room.

And

little did I know what that brain room was really for.

And he had talked about, let me just, let me put that through the brain room.

And this is when I saw the good side of Roger Ailes.

I saw the patriot.

I saw the guy who would use his resources for good,

somebody who was really a genius, truly a genius.

And he would say, let's put this through the brain room.

And we were talking about the border and everything else.

And if you remember one episode early on at Fox, I talked about the border.

And I said, you know, I made a promise to these families down at the border that we would tell your story.

I said, I couldn't get the resources at CNN.

I said, but the resources are here.

And the Calvary is coming.

That never materialized because

it wasn't in the agenda.

But the brain room had helped me on so many different things because we were looking at such complex figures.

And what the brain room was,

former cops, former investigators,

IT people, you name it.

And what they did was they would do research.

Now, I thought they were doing research

for

all of us.

Roger had given me access to an email and said, just send it to the brain room.

Okay, I thought everybody did that.

Well, I also was somebody who appreciates when people are doing hard work.

And so they had just done something.

I don't remember what it was, but they had tracked down something for me.

And so I went into my office and I got a whole bunch of swag.

I got a whole bunch of Glenn Beck stuff and, you know, books and t-shirts and polos and caps and everything else.

And I just brought boxes of stuff to Fox that day.

And I went down into the basement where somebody had told me where the brain room was.

And it was just down down this one hallway and it had a combination lock on the door

and a peephole

and I

knocked on the door or rang the doorbell and it opened like a crack and a guy inside said hey mr.

Beck

how can we help you and I said hey it was weird awkward Hey, I just got a bunch of stuff here and I just wanted to give it to you guys and personally thank you for all of your help.

And he's like, um,

okay.

And he kind of looked around behind him.

The door was still open.

I couldn't see really into the room.

The door was open just a little crack and he's like, okay, well, you know what?

Our boss just walked out.

I said, I just want to just shake everybody's hand and thank them.

And

he's like,

okay, quick, come on in.

He opens up the door and I bring the box of stuff in and I shake everybody's hand and I see this

pretty impressive room,

and

a whole bunch of people in there.

And I'm like, hey, I just want to thank you guys.

And so, what is it you guys do here?

And they were all like, oh, you know, just, you know, just, you know, stuff like you.

And I'm like, oh, that's great.

Well, thanks, guys.

I leave.

That was the last time I was allowed to even discuss the brain room.

The brain room was the private division of Mr.

Ailes.

So when people said, I owe Roger too much,

I believe that to be true.

I'd like to check with my attorneys before I tell you another reason why I believe that,

but

it was a scary place.

Roger was a very, very powerful man.

There are reasons that I have said

very little about leaving Fox, and it has only spilled out in dribs and drabs.

He's a very powerful man or was.

You did not take on Roger Ailes.

When I left Fox, we each had a gun to each other's head.

I knew because I had started the blaze and I knew that we had such power and Roger knew I was smart and effective and I also knew his power.

that we walked out of the room the last time, kind of smiling with little finger guns pointed at each other, figuratively, saying, We're gonna play nice together, right?

Right?

We're not gonna, we're not gonna, we're not gonna hurt each other, right?

Because it would be bad for the country if we decide to attack each other.

He knew that he could absolutely destroy me,

but he also knew I would put chinks in the armor at Fox

if we wanted to.

I didn't think it was the right thing to do

because I thought Fox did good.

And I knew that there's nobody else.

And you start taking Fox down, there's nobody else, as we are now seeing.

And they did a few things, like

insinuate that you'd been fired.

Yeah, all of the things that you

all the things that you heard about me

that were, you know, Glenn Beck was fired.

Those all came from

Fox.

But

let's concentrate on Roger, on the good things and the bad things.

Those were the bad things.

Roger could be a very wicked man.

However,

he was unbelievably likable.

And when I said I think I saw the real Roger Ailes,

I could be wrong.

But Roger and I, from the very beginning, had some things in common.

He was an optimist from Ohio.

He was a guy who believed in the American people to an extent.

He was a guy who, I think at one time, really wanted to do good.

And I think he made his choice, maybe back in the seventies,

that power

is important

and that you have to make compromises for power.

And quite honestly, I think

I think it bothered him to see me

not make compromises.

He tried to get me to compromise.

I walked into his office one time

and

I had found out that

his brain room and a private investigator were doing investigations

looking into me, trying to find a thumb hold.

And it was right after restoring honor.

And

my wife and I, who had already had people go through our garbage cans, laughed.

Go ahead.

I mean, guys, you can just knock on the door.

I mean, we'll show you everything you need.

You want to see our bills?

Want to see, you know, prescription drug bottles?

I'll show you whatever you want.

I'm clean.

I'm open.

And Roger called me to his office and

he said, you know, there's a lot of people

that would like to see you fall.

And I said, oh, I know.

And he said, and there are a lot of people that are doing investigations on you.

And I looked at him and I said, I know.

And he reached down and he put a stack of probably about a foot tall

of files on his desk that he had pulled out from his credenza behind him.

And he put his hand on it.

People are searching for everything on you.

Now, I contend there was nothing but blank paper in that stack.

And

I had absolutely no fear because I know who I am.

And I said, I know.

Then he made the hair stand up on my neck.

As he kind of just petted this stack, he said,

you You have such a good wife.

And I said,

Yes, I do.

And I moved up in my seat.

And he said, It's always a shame when a man hurts his wife.

And I said, Yes, it is.

And that's why nothing like that has ever

happened.

And then we went into a stare-down for about 30 seconds.

And he broke his gaze.

He picked up his stack and he said, I know.

And he put that away and he said, I'm just telling you to be careful.

If I didn't know who I was,

it was

it would have destroyed.

If I wasn't clean,

it would have destroyed me.

How can a guy say or do things like that and then have you still have respect for him?

Let me tell you,

he was diametrically opposed to himself, and I think miserable in some ways when he allowed himself to reflect on it.

Because let me tell you the amazing things

about Roger Ailes and how he's affected your life,

and you didn't even know.

You're listening to the Glenn Beck program.

The Glenn Beck program.

I will beat my drum.

I have made my choice.

We will overcome.

Cause we have won

Mercury.

You're listening to the Glenn Beck Program.

You know, there were two Roger Ailes that

I knew.

And one was the guy who sat behind the desk and was the guy who

made Mr.

Potter look like a Girl Scout.

Mr.

Potter from It's a Wonderful Life.

Yeah, just, I mean, he, he was a,

he was a dangerous man.

There was that guy, and then there was the guy who would say,

come on over here and sit on the couch.

After he would do something like that, and he would,

he would realize,

I've just,

I didn't win here,

he would break.

And I want to tell you the story of

how I really first saw that break on probably one of the most important days of my life that you don't even know.

Most important day of my life, or at least most important day of my career.

And the key was Ronald Reagan.

And I'll tell you that story when we come back.

The Glenn Beck Program.

Mercury.

This is the Glenn Beck Program.

Roger.

Roger Ailes.

Roger Ailes dead at 77 years old.

So many stories.

I could fill the whole day with Roger Ailes stories because he affected you in ways that you just don't even know.

He, you know, in his life, he produced a Tony Tony Award-winning show.

He, he produced,

you know, or was responsible for giving birth to

sitcoms and all things that you just don't know.

You know, he's 29 years old and he's producing the Mike Douglas show.

The stuff that he taught Reagan, the stuff that he taught, unfortunately, Nixon, the things that he taught me are remarkable, just remarkable.

But as I said, there's a double edge to him.

And

a story

I don't think I've told

outside of my inner circle, it was probably the most important day of my career.

And

it was the

it began the day that Gabby Giffords was shot.

And you have to go back in time and think about what was happening at the time.

This was at the apex of,

you know, the look, they're trying to, this rhetoric is going to get people killed and they're trying to start a war and they're yada, yada, yada.

And everything was being blamed on anybody who said anything about the president.

And it was me and Sarah Palin who were at the point of the spear.

And

I was sitting in a Broadway show, and about halfway through, my security came in and passed their phone down the aisle.

It made them very popular.

Could you pass this to that guy down there?

They passed their phone to me, and on it, it just had the story, Gabby Gifford's shot in the hospital.

And I looked at my wife and I said, the whole world's about to change.

At least ours is.

That Monday, I got a call from Roger Roger Ailes.

I want you to my office 3 o'clock Thursday.

I'll never forget this.

Joel Cheetwood came to my office, who was

still working for Fox, and he said,

you're dead.

You're dead.

Roger was trying to get his thumb on me and trying to control me.

and trying to have something and he couldn't find any dirt on me and he needed me to owe him.

And he's like, You go in there, and you are either going to have to fold, or he's going to fire you, and your career will be over because they'll fire you, but they'll

quietly say, Yeah, well, I think you know, Beck was kind of responsible for the Gabby Giffords, you know, that rhetoric, we can't have that.

That would have destroyed me forever.

Literally, I had

reached out to one very powerful friend friend who had run in these circles before, and he said,

you are dealing with, that's the first time he had said that he really knew Roger really well

and

had experiences with him and said, you are running in circles, Glenn, you have no idea.

And then he said in the middle of the conversation, you're having a heart attack, aren't you?

Are you okay?

And I'm like, what the hell are you even talking about?

You need to get to a hospital right away

and uh i finally got it what he was saying was

don't tell anybody but you have to go someplace for medical reasons because you can you will not survive this conversation

i thought about it i went to my wife and i said we're living a freaking movie Do we have a we have passports with other names on it?

Is some safety deposit box in Switzerland too?

This is crazy.

We decided, no, I'm not going to do do that.

I'm going to rely on

God.

And I'm going to the meeting.

We brainstormed, brainstormed.

There was no way out.

I get to the meeting and I'm praying for that three-block walk from my office to his.

And I'm praying, Lord,

I got nothing.

I have absolutely nothing.

I am walking into the lion's den and I got nothing.

It's in your hands.

I wait in front of in his waiting room.

I nervously am thumbing the newspaper of the day, which was all about Gabby Giffords.

And

he calls me in.

And usually he would say, young man, and he would hug me or he would give me a firm handshake.

This time, Mr.

Beck.

And he shook my hand.

And he sat behind his desk and I sat down.

And he said,

as he leans back, we need to have a talk.

Country's at a crossroads.

And I said, you know what, Roger?

Can I say something before we start?

I had not planned this.

The moment I crossed the threshold of his office, I was filled

with compassion for this man.

It was unbelievable, almost made me cry.

I saw him for this man who had done so much good in his life and yet had fallen into such darkness

and was battling and was battling now at the end of his life his own accomplishments who was he what was how was he going to be remembered

what had he done what was good what was bad and i was just filled with compassion i couldn't believe it and i sat down and i said before you start can i say something he said yes and i said

as i walk into this office i realize that in many ways you helped provide my freedom.

He said, what are you talking about?

I said, I know the stories about you and Ronald Reagan.

I know what you did for Ronald Reagan.

And if it wasn't for you and your advice, we may not have had Ronald Reagan.

We may not have had George H.W.

Bush

in the way we had George H.W.

Bush.

Because you started Fox News.

Imagine an America without Fox News after 9-11.

How fast would we have gone to the it's our fault America?

How many things have you taken a stand or because of you, somebody had taken a stand?

I want to thank you

for giving me a chance to raise children in America that they can kind of understand.

I come out with this.

It just pours out of me.

It's honest.

It's genuine.

I'm really feeling it.

And I look at him and he's crying.

And he said,

you really mean that, don't you?

And I said, I thought to myself, strangely, yes.

And I said, yeah, I do.

He gets up from his chair and he says, come here.

And we sit in his couch.

We talk about just the world and how crazy the world is.

We talk for 45 minutes until he says, you got a a show to do.

Go downstairs.

I leave his office.

Before the door closes, he's back behind his desk, and I hear him say,

Get Effing Palin on the phone.

What happened?

What I don't have any idea.

But

to me,

this is the Roger Ailes

that died today.

A guy who was examining his life

saying,

I didn't mean to be a bad guy.

I don't want to be a bad guy.

I started out trying to be a good guy.

I wanted to do the right thing.

And somehow or another got lost and tangled up in

all kinds of stuff.

I found him an inspiring guy

in more than one way.

Inspiring because the things that he knew, the things that he had done in his life, you know, I was at his house and

in his library, he had this amazing library with artifacts and things that were like that he collected.

Not like I went to an auction and bought it.

I was there.

And

the door to his library was a solid wood door, and he went in and we were going to have a talk, and he closed the door.

And

as I'm walking out after this meeting with him, I don't even remember what it was, we were just talking.

And I'm getting up, and he's taking a phone call or something, and I get up and I start walking towards the door.

And

I see this picture, this black and white photo of a young Roger Ailes, maybe

29,

in the Oval Office.

And he is, there's a camera

beside him, and he is pointing down to the left.

And he hangs up the phone or whatever.

And I said, now this is behind a door.

The door is usually open.

And I said, Roger, what is this picture?

And he said, oh, that's...

That was the first split screen.

And I said, what?

And he said, somebody had to come up with a split screen.

You know, we didn't always have split screen.

And I'm like, don't talk down to me.

And I said, what was it?

And he said,

we were in the Oval Office.

It was Dick Nixon.

And I said,

we should come up with a way to where Dick

can talk

to Neil Armstrong.

But we should split the screen so when Neil is on the moon, he's in one box and the president is in the other box.

This is revolutionary thinking at the time.

And he said, but when we put it together, you know, Neil is on the moon.

We don't know which way he's going to be facing or turning or anything else.

And I don't know which side of the screen the box of the president is going to be on.

He said, so we set up three TVs.

one that I could see and two, one on one side of the resolute desk and one on the other side of the resolute desk.

And I said to the president, look at me.

As soon as you go on and you say, Neil,

they're going to go to this new split screen.

When I see which side of the television you're on, I'm going to point to one of the televisions.

You look at that television because it will look like you're looking at Neil in the picture.

So he said, that's the moment where I'm looking at the television seeing Neil Armstrong on the moon, and I point to the president, that one.

This is the kind of stuff that

was just kind of like hanging around him.

The kind of life that you're not going to find on Wikipedia.

You're not going to find, and if you go to Wikipedia today, all you're going to see is the bad stuff.

If we have time today, I'd like to talk about a couple of the good things, the ronald reagan things the the things in the 1960s the

the the hardest job interview if you're a millennial and you think you just get these jobs

no you don't

let me tell you about the hardest job interview i've ever had And everyone I've ever told this story to, they all said,

good Lord,

that was the first five minutes.

I'm like, uh-huh.

Roger Ailes,

dead at 77 today.

By the way, Ben Sass is going to be with us.

He's joining us in hour number three to talk about the news of the day because there is more news of the day.

Robert Mueller is special counsel now.

He is

going to be looking into the Russia connections.

There's some new news breaking that the Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russia.

Chelsea

Manning is now back in the world.

How does everybody feel about that?

And Bill Cosby gave his first interview in two years.

What happened to the Bill Cosby pull yourself up by the bootstraps, take responsibility for your life?

That man

is long gone.

This is

the Glenn Beck Program.

Mercury.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

Just watching a little

Dana Lash on TV commenting about this, the new special counsel.

Mistake, good.

What do you think of this?

Robert Mueller being named special counsel.

So now there's a special investigator.

It's amazing that we went through eight years and didn't have one with all of the things that could have happened.

Yeah.

With the Republicans in charge,

they never appointed a special.

With the IRS, they never appointed a.

Right.

But the Republicans

do this.

And quite honestly.

Fast and furious.

Yeah.

Quite honestly.

Yeah.

Fast and furious.

We know he lied.

Yeah.

And incredible.

And guns were used in terrorist

hits.

Now, now we've got a special prosecutor.

And see, this is the problem.

We are letting that dictate what should.

That's such a low standard.

Oh, yeah.

Well, Obama.

Yeah, that's a pretty low standard that we should not be aiming for or using as an excuse.

This is the Glenn Beck Program.

Mercury

The Blaze Radio Network

on demand.

Roger Ailes, the former president of Fox News, has passed away, died at home, 77 years old.

We spent the last hour talking about him.

We may spend a few more minutes later on today.

Also, Bill Cosby gives his first interview in more than two years.

What is his excuse?

Well, I don't, I mean, I don't know what happened to the old Bill Cosby, but he hasn't been seen around for a while, at least in this interview.

And the

Trump campaign and special prosecution.

There are whispers now with Republicans.

They are now starting to talk about President Pence.

The stock market took a nosedive yesterday because the stock market priced in all of tax cuts, reform, everything else.

They believe this agenda is now over.

So where do we go?

What do we do?

I'd really like to hear from you.

The number is 888-727-BECK, 888-727-BEC.

I want to take your phone calls.

I want to hear what you're feeling

about

where we go.

If you had the president's ear,

what would you be saying to him right now?

What's your advice to make this go away?

What's the best course of action?

888-727-BECK, we want you on the phone right now.

I will make a stand.

I will raise my voice.

I will hold your hand.

Cause we are one.

I will be my drum.

I have made my choice.

We will overcome.

Cause we are run.

The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

Cosmo

has a story today about Cassandra Fairbanks.

She's a Twitter star.

And about how Donald Trump is now becoming punk.

He is a punk rock hero.

She is far left,

anarchist,

you know, pro-choice, you know, all that stuff.

Far left, she's a huge fan now of Donald Trump.

And when asked why,

because he's counter culture, he, everybody hates him.

And he is,

he's becoming this according to Cosmo punk rock.

At the same time,

the Republicans

are starting to say, President Pence,

what is this going to do to the country?

Just having this conversation is going to tear us apart.

Well, the good thing is it's only been, what, 120 days?

That's crazy.

Since he took office over there, don't worry about it.

They're non-stop.

Can you imagine

relentless against him?

And you know what?

The press has zero credibility.

You know, the reason why Donald Trump was right, I could walk across the street and Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and nobody's going to care.

The reason why is because you don't believe the press reports.

They have no credibility.

I mean, the one thing, and this is not an excuse, but it is true.

Are you kidding me?

For eight years,

the IRS,

The people around the president that lied, that destroyed the evidence on their hard drive.

Are you kidding me?

The attorney general that was running guns

that were used in France in a terrorist attack, and you did nothing.

Zip Zero.

And so

the right

is blind with rage,

and quite honestly,

righteous rage.

Are you kidding

how we get past that because I even do it I'm sitting here I can't watch television I can't watch it

I can't watch it

because there's no self-awareness there there's nobody there's no one saying

on the left in the news organizations wait a minute wait a minute guys

We should examine ourselves here.

You know why?

I mean, I saw some story in the, I don't know, New York Times.

When will Republicans and the right wake up?

Well, never, as long as you're the alarm clock.

Never.

Never.

We don't hit the snooze button.

We pull the cord out of the wall and throw it on the sidewalk.

We don't want you.

We don't trust you.

Really?

You got to get up right now.

You got to get up right now.

You got to get up right now.

For the last eight years, you've been like, I don't know if I'm going to go off or not.

I don't know.

That time's not really that important to me.

I don't really care.

And now you got to get up.

I'm here.

I'm your dependable alarm clock.

Excuse me.

No, you're not.

And that was Trump's argument in his Twitter today,

which he said in his speech yesterday.

He doesn't necessarily help himself.

He said, with all the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign and Obama administration, there was never a special counsel appointed.

And he's right.

And he's right.

Well, there was for Clinton.

Yes, there was.

I think he meant

Hilarise campaign.

So

here's the problem.

That doesn't make what he's done right.

It just makes us almost blind

to everything else.

Because the messenger

Don't shoot the messenger.

Are you kidding me?

The messenger betrayed the Constitution for the last eight years.

The messenger should be in jail.

You know what I mean?

Are you kidding me?

This is what Trump said in his commencement speech.

I think it was to the Coast Guard Academy

yesterday.

Now, I want to take this opportunity to give you some advice.

Over the course of your life, you will find that things are not always fair.

Look at the way I've been treated lately,

especially by the media.

No politician in history,

and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

No, that's not true.

That's not true.

Abraham Lincoln.

The country hated him.

Hated him.

And he didn't realize how much he was hated until he was actually in a carriage in disguise.

He went to go give a speech.

He was on his way to the White House, okay, for the first inaugural

first inauguration.

And they have him in Baltimore where he's supposed to give a speech.

He gives the speech and everything's polite.

And then they wrap a shawl around him, take his hat off and say, we need to go out this door, but I need you to crouch down.

You're way too tall.

So they put another kind of hat on him, put a shawl around him.

He crouched down like he was old, and he gets out and he's walking amongst the people and then in the carriage, and he's hearing everybody saying, That Lincoln, that Lincoln, what a bad dude, that Lincoln.

Can you believe he's president?

That moron,

he's going to be the president.

And he realizes, holy cow,

this country is completely divided.

It's until that moment, he knows there's trouble, but he doesn't know how deep the hatred is running until that moment.

So please don't try to tell me that you're having a harder time than Abraham Lincoln.

And you don't have to go back 150 years.

You can go back 10 years.

How much did the press hate George W.

Bush?

I mean,

it was continual.

Oh, my gosh.

Selected, not elected.

Yeah.

And it didn't stop during the last eight years of Obamacare.

How sadly did they hate Ronald Reagan?

A lot.

Yeah.

Right.

And we get that sometimes because now they praise him.

Right.

And quite honestly, let's be fair.

Let's go back in the last eight years.

How much did Barack Obama now I happen to believe some of it was very righteous, but how much crap did we give Barack Obama?

He was the first time that I know of where we were, we did it.

There was a whole industry.

It's the first time the the Republic, the Democrats ever had to face any real scrutiny from anyone in the press because there was a new arm of the press.

Anyway,

even though, let's say he's right,

that doesn't excuse.

And what we have to do is

by saying,

well, look what happened with Barack Obama.

Is that what we want to be our standard?

Hey,

Obama did worse.

Yeah,

yeah, he did, but I'd like you not to even be around that room.

Obama set up a tent, office, a couch.

Hell, he had a bed in there for a while.

I don't want to live in that room.

I want our president to be clean.

I want our president.

to not be near any kind of that.

Now, I honestly do not think that there is some sort of, you know, cabal with Russia.

I'm not afraid of this special prosecutor

because I don't think, now they may find, I do believe they will find people around Trump, but people around Trump is not Donald Trump.

I don't think they're going to find anything on this.

When it comes to Comey, I think they are.

I think the president has shot himself in the foot over and over and over again because he doesn't have common sense.

He's not using common sense.

When you're a target, you turn to the side.

You make yourself thinner, not bigger.

And he takes the opportunity always to puff himself up and say, look at me, look what a big target I am.

Stop it, Mr.

President, please.

We would like to get some things done, please.

On that note for a moment, is it i haven't heard anybody entertain this possibility so it's probably completely unrealistic but if the goal was to actually get things done

is there an opportunity for the republicans in congress to start doing things to actually advance the agenda while the media is completely focused on these scandals because all trump has to do is sign them yes

and and it's like you have all these this you have this opportunity where the media is not going to be constantly focused on every little piece of your health care plan.

Yes.

Get that crap done while they're all looking at Russia.

What do you always used to say about Obama?

Watch the other hand.

Use your other hand.

Get some of these things done now while they're all focused on

the drama of that.

The problem is the Republicans don't have, they don't have a leader there.

They don't have an agenda.

They don't agree on an agenda.

I mean, you know, now the reason why stock market went down and it took a beating yesterday and we're not done with the correction.

We may be done this week.

We're not done with this correction.

Remember, what did it go up?

3,000, 4,000 points, 3,000 points after he was elected?

We, you know, over this period of time, they just baked in, okay, healthcare reform is going to happen.

Tax cuts are going to happen.

Regulations are going to be reduced.

Well, that all began to fall apart yesterday because people are now starting to say there is impeachment coming.

Don't even look at the stock market.

Don't even look at anything.

With this special prosecution going on,

what are our enemies going to do around the world?

We're no longer able to focus on North Korea.

We're no longer able to focus on what new things Putin is doing.

What about ISIS?

What is going to happen on the world stage because of this?

Did this affect, and I don't think it did, but did this affect Donald Trump yesterday coming out and saying, we're not moving the embassy?

That's a blow to

Israel.

That's a real blow.

That's a big,

big

disappointment and a breaking of a promise, a big one.

Now,

I think when he said that, I thought, there's no way he's going to do that.

There's no way he's going to do that.

Because that takes balls of steel.

I mean, that is a dangerous thing to do.

And you better be really buttoned up to do that.

So I didn't think he'd do it because no president ever has.

They all say that, and they never do it.

Okay, whatever.

It's like, I'm going to admit that Turkey actually killed some Christians.

No,

they never do it.

They never do it.

Okay.

State Department is way too powerful.

However, if anybody was going to do it, this is the argument that I kept hearing.

hearing, it'd be Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, right?

Because he's just going to do what's right and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, he didn't.

Did he not do it because the generals all said, don't do that?

Or did he not do it because he doesn't have the clout anymore to do that?

I mean, I agree with Stu.

If you're going to do this, now's the time to pile it on.

Because, I mean, if this isn't about Donald Trump and it's about actually moving these things forward, Trump has a real opportunity here to say, and let's just say, like, he's completely innocent of all of these charges.

What a great opportunity, however, to distract the media, the thing that he's supposedly so great at, distract the media, let him take the political arrows for a while and protect the Congress to push these things through, and then all he's got to do is bring his pen.

But you know what?

I don't think he'll do it because he watches too much television.

He cares about what is being written and said about him.

And the president cannot care about that.

I agree.

But it doesn't necessarily mean that Trump has to do much.

The Congress, however, has to get their ass in gear and start moving these things through now.

No one's going to be focused on

the bill.

No one's going to be focused on that right now.

You have an opportunity that everyone wants to talk about Donald Trump 24 hours a day.

Do your job separately and let him sign the bill.

Glennbeck Program.

888 727 back.

Mercury.

The Glenvech Program.

I want to talk to you today, if I have time, if not on the Blaze TV tonight, I have a chalkboard on.

Flynn.

Flynn is getting a lot of heat now because he, you know, he stood with Turkey on an idea to arm the Kurds.

Okay, the way the media is spinning this is completely wrong.

And Flynn was right to do it.

Now, you've heard from me over and over again, why aren't we supporting the Kurds?

Why aren't we arming the Kurds?

Well, there's a really good reason not to have anything to do with the Syrian Kurds.

Mainly, They're not the same people.

They don't even have the same language as the Iraqi Kurds.

You want to arm Kurds?

Arm the Iraqi Kurds.

The Syrian Kurds are Marxist Leninists.

They are also a designated terror group.

Why would we arm yet another terrorist organization?

It's insane.

I don't know who comes up with these plans.

But if anybody says that Flynn was taking money from Turkey and that's why...

no, no,

for months before this decision, he had not been taking money from Turkey.

He had already disclosed that he had been taking money from Turkey.

But on this particular case, even if he was, he's absolutely right.

But you won't learn that from the media.

I'll show you in a chalkboard tonight.

5 o'clock, your phone call is next.

The Glenbeck Program.

Okay.

The Glen Beck Program.

All right, taking your phone calls, I want to hear from you.

What are you thinking about what is happening?

And if you had a chance to whisper into the ear of Donald Trump, what would you tell him to do?

Trish, welcome to the Glenbeck Program.

I would tell him, first of all, he's got to grow up.

Yeah, they're not fair.

Guess what?

You're in the human race.

It's not fair.

It stinks what they're doing to you, but tough luck.

Put on the big boy boots and get to it.

All right, these Nancy boys in the media, these friggin idiots, and yes, sorry, gay people, it's not meant to offend you.

That's just what they are.

They're a bunch of Nancy boys.

Get to it.

You don't give more power to the devil.

The devil is evil.

That's what the media are.

Just dismiss them.

You've got to do certain accountability.

Fine.

I'm all for that, for transparency.

But enough.

Ignore them.

They are the toe jam.

All right.

Just ignore them.

And as far as these Republicans,

these Republicans.

It's nice to have Joe Pesci's mother on.

You're getting that really strong Idaho accent.

And the Bronx coming out.

All right.

A lot of people.

These Republicans are akin to what used to be called Democrats.

They are not Republicans.

And trust me, I'm not really a Republican.

I only go with them because they are the lesser of the devils.

That's the only thing about them.

But, and while I never thought Trump was going to be the great saver us, I was a Ted Cruz person, but he was a lesser choice because I could never vote for the devil in a dress.

All right?

But they have to get with it.

All right?

And the first thing he should work on is term limits for all these creeps that have sold this nation.

I will tell you that, I will tell you, Trish, I love your attitude.

I love your spirit.

I will tell you, there's not a chance in hell you're getting term limits through now.

But thank you so much for calling.

Let's go to Tim in Illinois.

Hello, Tim.

Hi, Glenn.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

This is the number one, I have to get over this last call.

She was amazing.

But

bottom line is, you know, we talked about the stock market to begin with in the program.

And the problem is it's undermining authority.

If we're waiting for either party to pick a leader, they're never going to pick a leader because they want to be leaders.

They don't want leaders.

They want to be in there forever.

Term limits is just something a miracle I hope happens, number one.

Number two, if the media continues, and I'm sorry, my man, I've been listening to you for 10 years.

You've got to take some responsibility for this.

If the media continues to talk to him, it's going down to the worst

instant where Bob Beckle called him a punk last night on the five on Fox.

If they continue to do this, they are the reason for the crash of that stock market.

Okay, hang on just a second.

I want to go back.

Wait, wait, I want to come back, Tim.

I want to know what do I need to take responsibility for because I'm more than happy to do that.

You can't.

It's called undermining any authority.

All right.

To get behind the guy who was elected by a lot of people for the authority.

Wait, hang on just a second.

Hang on just a second.

Wait, wait, wait.

Hang on just a second.

Just because I am behind his authority as president of the United States, I've made that very clear.

And I have supported him

when he did the policies that I thought.

It is very un-American not to question.

We didn't elect a king.

So we question the

actions.

We don't question the office.

I do not question the office, and I certainly do not question that he is the legitimate president.

I have said to the press, get over it.

And also, Donald Trump needs to get over that.

The election is over.

He's the president.

Now act like the president.

And the criticism that I really like to hear is what Stu said earlier, where he's got two hands.

He should be doing something on one side while continuing what he's doing on the other.

Because attacking the press and doing what the people want him to do, I held my nose when I voted for him.

I'm becoming more and more of a fan of this guy.

I mean, that's all it's to it because the politics, the devil, she was right, previous caller is all over the place in this, undermining authority.

I was a union president and a youth minister, and

I saw it in both of these instances.

And things totally collapse when that happens.

Tim,

thank you for your call.

You're exactly right.

It is chaos.

What is happening is the promotion of chaos.

And

I'm sorry, but Donald Trump is an agent of chaos as well.

He likes that because

of

the ratings and the,

what do you call it?

The reality show part of Donald Trump.

What Donald Trump needs to do is focus right now.

Let the storm

go and build all around him.

It doesn't matter.

Focus.

Stop responding to the press and every single thing they say.

Focus.

Focus on your agenda and do that.

But I will tell you, I think what he'll do is

he is going to start paying back.

He did that with

Comey.

I hope you don't have tapes.

Well, I happen to have notes.

Don't try to pay back in kind.

How much do you want to make a bet?

He's going to suggest we now start to go after Hillary or we now start to have a special investigator on.

I think he pays back in kind.

He punches back twice as hard.

Stop punching back.

They will look like bullies.

Don't bully back.

Be the president.

We were talking earlier this morning about the vitriol from the left-leaning media is so ridiculous and so relentless that it's pushing us to be bigger Trump supporters.

You know, that's what happens when you're attacking a guy so much and to the point of it being unreasonable, then even some of the people who maybe weren't his biggest fans start to become fans.

I mean,

driven to.

Yeah, look what happened with Donald Trump, with Barack Obama.

The more we said, and we didn't say this, but the more we said, oh, birth certificate, the higher his ratings went with those who were on the fringe.

They were like, shut up.

And that can happen with this, but not with him making stupid mistakes.

Stop.

Zip your mouth.

Focus.

Be presidential.

Rise above it.

And you might be right.

I don't know.

I don't have tons of faith in that, but I always think that the best sort of observations are the ones that come from recognizing a reality that might not be so obvious.

Now, capitalism is the best example of that.

Like every king from the beginning of time tried to enforce all sorts of different things from the top down.

And our founders were smart enough to realize, wait a minute, people are going to pursue their own rational self-interest.

And if we set up rules that actually accentuates that process, it's better.

It may very well be that what Republicans need to realize is this is just reality.

This is what he's there to do.

He's president of the United States not to pass anything about a wall because he likes this.

He likes to fight.

He likes to get in these battles.

He likes to go back and forth.

And instead of trying to constantly

stop him from doing that, realize maybe that it's just providing you an incredible distraction to do actual work.

It is one of the best strategies I've heard

because I don't hear a lot of good strategies, but

for the Republicans just to push things through and to not be dragged into this,

I would hope that Donald Trump is enough of a strategist

that he can

take it on the chin for a while and be quiet.

He just can't add to this.

It's getting too serious.

He can't just add to this.

If he does, he's done.

There's just not going to be a way out of it because he just keeps throwing things in, and you're like, oh,

why?

Why would you say that?

That's not going to help you.

That's going to make you look this way.

And so it's just going to get out of control because the media, Hollywood, everything, they despise him.

They despise him.

And

that's hard enough.

We knew that going in, though.

We knew this was going to happen.

Now,

he said he would change as president.

Don't worry, I'm not going to be this guy all the time.

Well,

but you are.

So please, Mr.

President, fulfill that promise and don't be that guy.

Don't make this any worse.

And on top of that, Republicans, get off your ass and use this distraction.

Quickly, too.

I mean, you can blame the media all you want for his not being able to pass things.

Both the callers brought up term limits.

Therefore, on the first day of my term in office, first priority, propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.

You know, that didn't, it's not a long series of scandals that stopped that.

That was the thing he promised he would do first of all.

I know, but here's the problem.

If he proposes that, he will only have people like Mike Lee and the Freedom Caucus.

He will lose all support of agenda and everything else from this.

But if he wasn't going to do it, he shouldn't have said it.

I agree.

But I'm saying now, he could have done it and used his bully pulpit.

I think, and I think there's still a chance if he understood discipline that he could still come in and plow through a lot of this.

And if he is indeed clean, which I actually believe he is, he's just making himself look guilty.

But if he is clean, which I believe he is,

and

he can plow through this if he's disciplined, but he's not going to have any support in Congress or too little to actually get any of his bills passed.

if that's what he says he's going to do at this point.

If he would have done it on day one, it would have been another thing that people would have hung their hat on.

Right now, they're hanging their hat on: hey, he did the Supreme Court, and that's a big one.

He needed a few more of these, and he needed to put them up.

Now,

his ideas for Trump care: I don't know what's going to happen.

I don't know what the agenda is, how is he going to get taxes done?

He's got to reconnect with the people,

he's got to stop making stupid mistakes.

Roger Ailes died last night.

He's 77 years old.

I just thought of something he taught me.

He called me into his office

and he said,

Glenn,

you have to stop being a shooting star or a solar flare.

and recognize that you need to be a son.

And I said,

you're going to have to break that down to me because I don't understand what you're talking about.

And he said,

solar flares are part of life.

Solar flares happen all the time.

And if science is looking up and they're seeing solar flares,

they're regular.

They're part of the pattern.

But if they start to see solar flares over and over and over and over again, and they just keep happening and they're gaining speed.

That's when science says the sun may be unstable.

He said, you're making good points.

You're saying things, but you're moving at such a high rate of speed that

you say this, then you say that, then you say that, then you say that.

And all of those are pretty hard for people to get their arms around.

All of these are solar flares.

You look unstable.

The show looks unstable because you're taking too many chances and too many, you're pushing spikes out too far every day.

And I said, well, I'm just here for a short period of time.

I'm just going to do this anyway for a short period of time.

I had a different philosophy.

As it turns out, he was right.

He was right.

That's what's happening with Donald Trump.

There's too many of these things.

And so the average person becomes uncomfortable because it looks unstable.

Now, we're going to harden into positions because that's what happened with Barack Obama.

They hardened into positions where they would not listen.

Do you see what he's doing with the IRS?

Do you want the IRS to be used as a weapon?

Do you see what he just did?

He's running guns with the Attorney General.

They wouldn't listen

because they had been pushed into a place of complete defense.

That's going to happen to us.

But unfortunately, I think because this guy has the press with him, you're going to be the minority again.

And it's not going to go well for us

unless he stops being a shooting star or a series of solar flares.

He's got to look stable.

Did anybody hear that they're talking now about there are people in Washington that are talking about can we use, what is it, the 28th Amendment, 25th Amendment,

that he's not fit to be president?

Holy cow, he's 120 days into it.

Needs to back down.

Be the president that we recognize.

You don't have to be, you don't have to propose the same policies, but act like the president.

This is the Glenn Veck program.

Mercury.

The Glenn Veck.

So there's a program.

There's some interesting pictures with our next guest, Senator Ben Sash.

Ben Sash, that are going around the internet right now.

In his own words, he just tweeted this out.

It looks like Chuck Schumer and I are smoking reefer out back behind a wedding.

And

it does.

It does.

It's trending quite wildly, and we'll talk to him about what the name of his reefer and dealer is.

Senator Ben Sass joins us here in just a moment.

The Blaze Radio Network

on demand

U.S.

Senator from the state of Nebraska, Ben Sasse,

is

in the bullpen, ready to come out.

And I'm not sure he's in any shape to come out based on these pictures that are now trending on Twitter of him and Chuck Schumer

and John McCain,

where honestly their hair is messed up and he's sitting in shorts.

Sure, he might say the story he's going to spin is, I was just coming out of the Senate gym and these guys were walking by, but he looks like, as he himself pointed out, he and Chuck Schumer are behind the back of some wedding getting high smoking reefer.

I'm just saying.

Ben Sasse with

the truth about these stories, which we have to, these pictures which we have to get to, what's happening in Washington, where we go here, and he has also written an incredible book called The Vanishing American Adult.

Something that I can highly recommend that

every adult, every parent should read this book.

Ben Sasse, the senator from Nebraska, on the topic of the day: chaos right now.

I will make a stand i will raise my voice i will hold your hand because we have won i will be my drum i have made my choice we will overcome cause we are one

the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment this is the glenn beck program

senator ben sass we would we'd like to treat you with respect and then we saw the pictures of you in the red shorts.

You know what it is?

It's reminiscent of.

Remember the book that Arlen Specter wrote?

Where he talked about the Senate bathhouse?

Yeah, that's right.

Jon Thune was naked in the hot tub.

Yeah.

We made tender love for him.

I don't think he wrote that.

Ben Sasse,

welcome to the program, sir.

I am here just to be your straight man.

Wow.

What unfortunate timing for you to be on this program after these

pictures are trending now?

Yeah, I think my phone's breaking up, but it's been good.

I've enjoyed the interview.

Thanks for that, Doc.

Not a problem.

Do you stand by?

I mean, I'm sure you stand by the red shorts, but how about the little pencil legs?

Wow, pencil legs.

That's too soon, brother.

Too soon?

I'm sorry.

Okay.

All right.

I'm just happy I'm not wearing umbrows because I was a lot early this morning where I would have been in 1992 garb.

Yeah, so well you know we'll come back in about 20 minutes it won't be too soon um

uh i want to talk to you about your book the vanishing american adult which i think you are you are spot on on so much i would we were kicking around that we believe that there should be a constitutional amendment that uh makes it illegal for any senator to write a book um because they usually don't have anything to say and i mean who the hell do you think you are writing a book

i am i am if the book has a little bit of substance,

I'm ashamed.

I apologize.

All right, okay.

Okay.

I do want to get to the book, but can we start with the news of the day and the storm that is happening in Washington, D.C.?

Can you tell us the weather pattern?

Yeah, there's weather and there's climate, right?

So let's talk about weather as you want to, but let's be sure we also then back up and put it in the context of climate.

Because

the chaos here isn't just the last four months.

It isn't just the last 18 months.

It's not just this presidential cycle.

It's that for a heck of a long time, we've forgotten to do basic civics.

And when you don't do basic civics, you lose that sense of what politics are for.

Because I'm of the one-cheer for politics school.

Zero cheers doesn't work.

The world's broken.

And so you need a framework for liberty.

You need security.

We need spies.

We need to protect sources and methods.

We need to have clarity about when and what foreign interventions we do and don't do and what allies we support and not.

But you don't want Washington to be the center of the world, and five of the seven richest counties in America are now here.

That's because we've not been doing civics, and so there's a drift toward government filling that vacuum.

What is the

forecast for any of the president's

initiatives going through?

Tax cuts, health care,

the border, with all of this going on, the wall.

I mean,

is any of it going to come

happening?

I really hope, I obviously overwhelmingly hope, and

partly believe some of it will still happen.

There will be some movement on an agenda.

But the reality is there's just not much of a decision-making process in the White House right now with a really big carve-out, which is on the national security side.

General McMaster is a really good pick by the president, and he's doing a really good job.

The president has named a bunch of exceptional people on the foreign policy and national security space.

So Mattis is arguably the most impressive person at the Pentagon in half a century, for example.

And those folks are working together, trying to develop a strategy.

You know, the president's plan to still leave town tomorrow night and go to the Middle East, and his idea about trying to foster and facilitate more Arab-Sunni cooperation as a counter force against the last administration's willingness to let Iran expand its sphere of influence.

Lots of things happening there that are important and worth deliberating about.

The problem is, on the domestic policy and the economic policy side, there's really not any decision-making process inside the White House because you just have kiddie soccer.

He's just, that's exactly right.

He has really done a great job on

the

security side, especially with foreign policy in the Pentagon.

I think McMaster,

tremendous, tremendous.

However,

where are the Republicans?

I mean, you have the greatest cover going on right now.

I mean, Barack Obama used to try to overwhelm the system and have the news cycle going out of control so you couldn't pay attention to anything.

You didn't know what to watch.

And I used to say on Fox all the time, watch the other hand.

Well, there is no other hand here.

Can anyone in Congress actually start to put together some proposals that the president only has to sign?

So here let's distinguish between what should happen and what is really possible.

Because one of the places where I've changed in the two and a half years I've been here is I still believe that what should happen is the legislature as the Article I branch should be the place where policy deliberation and initiative happen.

Right.

But now descriptively, the reality is since the rise of television, since the late 40s, early 50s, when television became the main way that we communicate together, and now let's let's call call it television, let's call it moving imagery as opposed to print-based culture, right?

An image-based culture.

So now the rise of digital media, descriptively, you've really never had any big things happen in Washington the last six or seven decades if the president wasn't using the bully pulpit to focus attention on one issue.

And right now, obviously for lots of reasons, this White House doesn't have any kind of clarity about policy initiatives.

And so they kind of bounce around from thing to thing.

That doesn't exonerate the Congress.

The Congress has a 9% approval rating, and to quote my wife, that seems insanely too high.

So the Congress is not doing its work, but neither of these two political parties have had clarity of an agenda for the American people for a decade, two decades.

And so right now, both parties' main job, they think, is to flit about doing hot take to hot take and mainly saying that the other people are even worse than we are.

That's different than casting a vision.

You get back in.

The particular vision we should talk about, but as a descriptive

Why is that, though?

I mean, you guys can come up with the rules.

You guys can pass the laws.

You guys can.

Maybe it's a good thing.

And

it's not that hard.

Cut

spending.

You know, I mean, it's not that hard.

But we had seven,

but spending is really mostly about entitlements now, and the public doesn't seem to want us to focus on entitlements.

We still should, and I would gladly lose, right?

I've run for one thing once in my life.

Politics are not the center of my life or identity.

I would gladly try to have a big conversation about actually being honest with the American people about entitlements.

Most people here have zero desire to do that.

I thought until the last presidential cycle, only the Democrats were indifferent to whether or not we bankrupted our children.

But now, when you had 17 Republican candidates for president and 15 of the 17 started the election cycle saying we need to tell the truth about entitlements.

Only two didn't.

And it seems like the public didn't really care.

There isn't enough domestic discretionary spending that can possibly make a difference to move the needle.

I'll give you one stat.

When Kennedy was president, 52% of our federal spending was national security.

1% was health entitlements.

Today, 71% of our spending is five entitlement programs.

And the remaining 29% of all federal spending is half and half defense and non-defense discretionary spending.

Wow.

Well, I think we underinvest in defense.

I can make a bunch of cases about why I believe that.

The 14.5% that's non-defense discretionary, you just can't solve the problems of bankrupting our kids there, even if you took all of it away.

The problem is in entitlements, and there's no political will or courage here to tackle that.

But hang on just a second.

Is there enough political will?

Forget about the courage and the,

can you muster up enough will to

get a consensus consensus on something?

Because with this swirling around, the press is so busy feeding in the bloody water that I think you guys could get almost anything through at this point.

So let's talk about Obamacare entitlements as an example about why so many Republicans don't seem to actually want to repeal and replace Obamacare.

We could then all start technical stuff about why it takes 60 votes to do most things in the Senate.

We only have 52 senators, so you've got to do reconciliation, which is only a subset.

But for a minute, just bracket all that.

Substantively, there are 50 Republicans.

We have the vice president, so we need 50 of the 52 of us to do anything at all.

And then you could use my expense as the tiebreaker.

You'd need 50 of 52 of us to agree what's wrong in American health care.

I have very well-formulated views.

You can argue with me, but I have a clear sense of what I think is wrong in American health care.

And though Obamacare exacerbated lots of problems, it isn't the case that the problems of American health care just began eight years ago.

The American health care system had unsustainable premium growth of two and a half times inflationary growth annually for year on year on year on year.

Why is it that we never get higher quality, lower cost care in American health care?

There's a technical business case and policy argument for why that is.

I didn't know before I got here that most Republicans don't really understand that or want to fix that.

You have Republicans who really think the worst part of Obamacare is the Cadillac tax.

That's insane.

It's a tiny, tiny little piece of the program.

And you can debate the merits of whether or not a tax on employer-sponsored insurance that equalized the individual market is good or bad policy, but it's a tiny part of what the story is in Obamacare.

And we seemingly have Republicans who have so little clarity about a vision for a system of health care where you have an insurance policy that's portable across job and geographic change for American families, which is what we need in American health care.

More and more jobs are going to get shorter and shorter, and most of the uninsurance in American life is from people changing jobs.

So Ben from health status.

So Ben,

when does somebody like you and a group of you, even if it's three or five,

when does a group of you say,

basically what the Republicans said in the 1850s, neither party is serious.

I'm not going to play this game anymore.

And in a very short period of time, without social media, what started as about 20 people elected the president in 1860.

What is a tipping point?

Because I hear this from Republicans all the time, and you're seeing the number of people who are saying, I'm not having anything to do with the Republican Party.

I'm not having anything to do with the Democratic Party.

There is a large, growing number of people who are sick of both of them.

When is it that your guys are going to just come out and say, I can't do it anymore?

Because it's all lies.

Well said.

So let's unpack it a little bit.

I'm third or fourth most conservative guy in the Senate by voting record, but I'm not very partisan in that I'm very unimpressed with both of these parties.

So I have thought of my calling and my approach to this job has been that I think of myself as functionally an independent who caucuses with the Republicans.

And so

when you have Republican versus Democratic fights on the things that we're voting on now, I'm not just Republican.

I'm

at the conservative end of the Republican continuum.

So I am Republican when the choice is Republican versus Democrat.

But what I'm really for is limited government.

I'm for families and mediating institutions and markets, and I'm for the future in that we should be talking about the challenges of 10 and 15 and 20 years from now before they're fully upon us, with the way cyber is going to remake warfare, for example.

And so I am trying to have a conversation that is, okay, fine, on the continuum of stuff where

in my mind I'm sort of

three levels of this the bottom level is right to left continuum on small policy then one layer above that is right to left continuum on the bigger policies that we know how to think about right now but there's not a lot of political courage or will that stuff like entitlement reform what would a portable health care system really look like but then above that there's another tier which is the most important one which is basic civics education and what are we trying to do as a people in America because America is the most exceptional nation in the history of the world because we believe in the dignity of 320 million Americans.

We believe in the dignity of 7 billion people that God gives rights to by nature.

And government is a shared project to secure those rights.

And we need to pass on that understanding of a republic.

And right now, we've allowed our foundations to erode for so long that we don't have a shared American narrative.

So a bunch of people, you know, sort of reduce down to tribe.

And when you're lonely at home, which is a lot of what's happening in America right now, as we hollow out these local institutions, institutions, people are projecting more onto politics.

These two parties aren't worthy of projecting your grand hopes and dreams on.

Parties are tools, and these tools are pretty spent and exhausted.

So I'll stop here.

But to your point, Glenn, I do think these two parties are going to be disrupted and disintermediated.

That doesn't mean I'm for a mushy middle between these two.

No, no.

I'm for a conservatism that goes beyond this present moment of constant short-termist kiddie soccer.

I will tell you, just what I heard was one of the most stirring and exciting things I've heard from

any leader in a long time.

Ben is going to continue to be with us, Senator Ben Sasse.

He's written basically what you just heard is what he's talking about here, a bigger picture.

The vanishing American Adult, Our Coming of Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance.

That's the name of his book.

You know, a lot of books, I'll read Mike Lee books because

they're deep on the Constitution.

But

it was just like, okay, I got it.

This is an important book, especially if you're a parent.

Ben Sass, the vanishing American adult, it's available in bookstores everywhere.

Back with Ben Sass here in just a minute.

We are one.

The Glenn Beck Program.

Mercury.

This is the Glenn Beck Program.

Sign up for the newsletter and get all the info you need to know at Glenn Beck.com.

Hey, Senator Ben Sass is with us.

Ben, I just want to just off the top of my head, I'm just thinking about the different states.

Does Nebraska have a rule about running for Senate and, let's say,

president at the same time?

Yeah, the only thing I've ever looked at is noxious weed control board and Husker offensive coordinator.

So you're talking to the wrong guy.

Talking to the wrong guy.

You should check into that because you're you're up for uh re-election in 2020 and uh

that's the same year there's a presidential election

yeah i'm not i'm not i'm not great with math i don't know about that

i was i was told there would be no math all right well yeah there also we were told there wouldn't be any embarrassing pictures of you and chuck shuma too so is it still too soon

I think that I think that's probably been Photoshopped.

I think you should move on.

The The vanishing

since we've been on the phone, though, somebody handed me a Photoshop version of it that has Schumer with a huge joint in his hand in the photo now.

Well,

we should doubt the veracity of all these photos.

I mean, you do reflect Cheech and Chong sitting there.

You really do.

What was the...

Open up, man.

It's me, Dave.

What was going on there in those pictures, Ben?

What are we talking about?

So

I work out early in the morning, and then I sneak outside the gym and

start out the day talking to my kids on the phone, and I do some radio.

And so, I was sitting outside the Russell building where our gym is, getting ready to do some radio.

Cotton came up, and he and I were talking some national security stuff.

Okay, so what I said, what I heard here, I hate to interrupt you, you are a sitting senator, but what we heard here is he starts his day smoking pot with Chuck Schumer every day.

Back in a minute, Ben Sash.

You're listening to the Glenn Beck program,

Mercury.

Glenn Beck Program.

There's truly so much in this new book by Senator Ben Sasse that has nothing to do with politics, has everything about restoring America.

The problems really stem from within our own homes.

No matter who you are, no matter how big you think you are or how much of you're a United States Senator, the most important work you will ever do will be within the walls of your home.

And he has not just a, this is not just a screed against what's happening.

This is an actual plan to help restore it.

The vanishing American adult, our coming of age crisis, and how to rebuild a culture of self-reliance.

Ben, I don't even know where to start on this book.

I want to start on one of the, no, let's start with you defining the problem, and then I want to start with one of the one of the solutions in the book that I

am personally going to do with my family.

I think it is such a great idea.

Start with what the problem is.

Thanks.

So I think a lot of our kids are caught in a state of perpetual adolescence, and that's not good for them, and it's not good for our communities, and it's not good for the Republic.

But the book is not, The Vanishing American Adult is not a blame-laying book.

It's two-thirds, as you said, Glenn, constructive project.

What do we do about it?

How do we make this better?

But if we were going to lay some blame we're not laying it really directly at the feet of teens and 20 somethings this is not an anti-millennial book it is more about parents and grandparents we haven't done a good job of recognizing that this new category of perpetual adolescence that's drifted in has led us sort of start to think of adolescence as a destination as opposed to a means to an end childhood is a glorious part of life it's supposed to be protected our kids' innocence is supposed to be guarded.

And then adulthood, you get to pursue the good, the true, and the beautiful and the heights of human achievement, loving your neighbor, and building the new app that's going to change the world.

Adolescence is that transitional state between the two, and it's not an eternal idea.

It's only a couple thousand years old that we've had this idea that you hit puberty, you get to biological adulthood, and you don't have to be totally an independent adult yet.

And that's a pretty special thing, except if you act like adolescence is a destination.

And right now, it's really hard to tell 10 and 15 and 20-year-olds apart.

That's not good.

I will tell you, it's sometimes hard to tell parents parents apart from the 15-year-old.

Yeah, I mean, we have started to think of life as different consumption opportunities.

We are the richest people at the richest time and place in all of human history.

Of course, there are some bumps over the course of the last seven, eight, nine years, but this is a couple decades in the making problem, and it's going to last for a half a century in the future.

We are largely unable to feel in our belly the distinction between production and consumption.

And that's new across time and space.

Explain the difference.

So when you work, when you're needed, when you're producing something, when you're serving your neighbor, you do something that's for the benefit of somebody else.

Consumption is a different kind of a thing.

And lots of consumption is great, right?

I mean, there are all sorts of things that when we consume a fine meal, it is recreating.

It revivifies us to go back and serve again.

But we're not satisfied in life if we just consume more and more stuff.

And right now, we're having a kind of pop cultural sense that we're drifting toward a world where more and more cotton candy may be good for us.

We all know that's not true.

There's a two and a seven minute dopamine hit that feels good to take more cotton candy.

But two and seven hours later, let alone two and seven years later, I never look back and say, oh, that was great.

I'm glad I did that.

And right now, our kids are not developing a work ethic in any sort of intentional way.

And it's our fault that we're not celebrating scar tissue with that.

So let's go celebrating scar tissue.

This is the kind of stuff that is in this book that you please go out and buy this book.

It is

just that is worth the price of it.

Celebrating scar tissue.

What do you mean by that, Ben?

Well, scar tissue is the foundation of future character, right?

At our house, when we get stitches, we throw a little party.

Because if we get stitches and it didn't come with a spinal injury that's going to have permanent problems for us, we think we got away with something.

My wife and I use the frame, and I want to be clear, we're not setting our family up as a model in this.

We stumble and fall every day.

We are sinners.

But we have a shared theory of what we're trying to accomplish as parents.

And we want to get our kids toward an independent adulthood.

And so Melissa and I use this idea that a huge part of parenting kids from 8 to 10 to 12 to 14 to 16 is about training wheel removal exercises.

How can we help them get from a place where they need our protective,

they need our protection, where they're still dependent, to get them to a place where they're independent so they can live a life of gratitude to God by serving their neighbor and doing something productive.

I am a no-training wheels guy when I teach my kids to bike.

I'm sort of a freak about this.

I've trained my three kids and a lot of neighbor kids.

I like teaching kids how to ride a bike, but we don't do training wheels at our house.

The time we bubble wrap them, because I'm critical of bubble wrapping in this book, but we're going to teach them how to ride a bike, we wrap them in all their snow gear, right?

They got ski pants and a big winter coat on.

We put a hat on them, and I put the bike, no training wheels, on a slightly declining hill, and I run behind them, and I bat them.

I'm straddling the back wheel, and I bat them shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, trying to let them finally catch their balance.

And when they do, it's like a two-hour learning process, and all of a sudden they catch their balance a few times, and it's glorious.

Like, there's this moment, and now they can ride a bike.

And the goal of teaching a kid to ride a bike is not for them to have training wheels forever.

It's for them to ride next to you and smell the flowers and have a great workout.

And so much of parenting should be about figuring out how we can take off the training wheels.

Let's protect them as we're taking them off.

But the goal is to get them to independence.

Ben, I've talked to you several times and I've always been impressed by you.

But

this is remarkable stuff.

And you and your family are going to be added to my family's nightly prayers.

You have

a lot to teach.

Can we jump to a part in the book where you're talking about the five-foot shelf?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The book is structured.

One-third is cultural stage setting.

Where did this perpetual adolescence come from?

Then the last two-thirds is, let's think of five things we could do to help our kids realize what it means to be an independent adult.

Because it's not just progressing through grades in school.

That's one of the problems.

Is that we've started to think that what growing up is about is about checking these markers of just grade progression.

And mostly school, which is really important, is a tool.

It's a means to an end, but we want them to get to these certain ends.

So I framed the book around The Vanishing American Adult is built around developing a work ethic.

It's about learning to limit consumption, distinguish among different kinds of consumption, and especially know the difference between need and want.

Don't assume that everything you might feel a yearning for, an appetite for, that you might want, that doesn't make it necessarily a need.

How do you learn how to travel?

How do you build intergenerational relationships?

And to your point, Glenn, how do we learn to be a truly literate people?

Not functionally literate.

Can you read a passage if you sit down to do it?

But how can you build appetites where you want to be a reader?

Because our republic is premised on the idea of deliberation, the ability to be dispassionate and to reflect on other ideas, to persuade or to be persuaded, not to be in a safe space, but to actually encounter hard and different ideas.

And so we built this idea.

It's related to some canon fights, but it's not really about a one-size-fits-all canon for America.

It would be fun to have that discussion too.

But it is, how do I teach my kids to get to a place where they've got a shelf of books that they want to read, that they've started to read, that they want to go back to again?

How do we get them to love both quantity and quality as they actually become appetitive readers?

So, but, you know, for instance, the founding documents, how do you get your kids to want to read those?

Well, for one thing, you let them understand that there were big debates, right?

We sometimes read these documents and it feels like they're scripture handed down from heaven and everything about them can start to feel boring because it's just eternal truth where there was no dispute.

And so one of the things we do, again, distinguishing quantity and quality, we want them to be addicted to quality.

We want them to be formed and shaped by a certain set of books.

I sort of made up the idea that the average width of a book is about an inch.

And so we call it a five-foot shelf because we wanted to put 60 books on it.

We want our kids to have a

60 book, five foot shelf that when they leave home, they've already started through these books and these are books they want to go back to.

Well, it's fine for us to use quantity as a pathway into quality.

When my kids were seven and eight and nine and starting to read, we just wanted them to read more, more, more.

And so we let them read stuff that felt a little bit cotton candy-ish.

And then once they were developing a real appetite and a desire to to read, then we'd start substituting in a little bit more vegetables for some of the ice cream.

So

let me go through some of the books that you say are on your shelf, and it's different for everybody.

C.S.

Lewis, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, all understandable.

You put George Orwell, Karl Marx, and Moneyball.

Yeah.

Why?

Well, so first what I tried to do was I wouldn't let there be more than five books in any particular category.

So first I thought about genres.

My wife and I I got out a bunch of index cards and we started looking at our shelf and pulling down books that we would say, this is so important that even if I think I disagree with big pieces of it, so Marx, as an example, or Rousseau's Emile, which is sort of one of the most interesting books ever written on child rearing, but written by an absolutely despicable person.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, you know, abandoned his own kids at an orphanage so he could have more time to write, and then he had the hubris to write a book about how you'd raise kids.

So there are people that I strongly disagree with, but I wanted the criteria to be: this is a book so important that I would want to read it more than twice in my life, and I would want to spend 20 bucks to buy it to give to other people I love and care about because I'd like to frame a debate with them where we keep coming back to some of these ideas.

So we've got index cards out, started naming a bunch of our books, we started building stacks, and as we'd name categories, like you know, sort of fundamental theology, or American history, or founding documents, or markets or American literature.

In each of these, we would only let there be five books.

You had to max out at that.

So I was trying to get to 12 categories of five or fewer books.

And I just randomly realized that I had a prison-lit category.

Prison literature from Mandela

to the Apostle Paul to Martin Luther.

There's a whole bunch of really into Martin Luther King, a whole bunch of really interesting stuff that's been written when people were in prison.

And so we just sort of organically built a list.

It took weeks and months of haggling at my house as we came up with a list.

And our list is totally imperfect.

And when people read it, they're going to want to scream, my goodness, what's wrong with you, man?

There's no poetry category in your list.

You're a broken intellect.

And when people want to start arguing about the boundaries of our list, then I think we've succeeded.

Because the Vanishing American Adult is not saying, I know the one way to parent.

It's that lots of American parents are worried that we're not parenting well, and we don't have a deliberative context to talk with our friends and neighbors about it.

And the purpose of the Vanishing American Adult is to bring people together in the conversation where we argue about this because we're all going to do a better job if we're more intentional about our parenting.

So, Ben, you were supposed to come in today.

You were going to be with us, but you had a vote that you had to be back for.

And I wanted to pay.

You offered to come in and sit with me at 5 o'clock in the morning to do an hour on television.

And I said no to that because what I'd really like to do is see if there's a time where you and your wife can come in and just talk about this.

I think this is

exactly where my head is right now, that we are in a culture of absolute chaos because we don't know what's true anymore.

And everything is up for grabs.

And we have to find our way.

to putting things back together for our kids enough for them to be able to then wrestle with some of these new ideas that are causing chaos.

Can I invite you and your wife to come in together?

Would she ever say yes to that?

I like it a lot.

In general, she doesn't like to do media, but for you on this topic, I think there's a chance I could twist her arm and persuade her to do it.

So let's talk more about that offline.

One of the things that you said there that I want to completely underscore is the word virtue.

You didn't use it, but you were speaking about it.

When people hear virtue right now, we all get a squeamishness.

Oh, that sounds like a highly moralistic tone.

Actually, the root of virtue is from the Latin word for strength.

And a huge part of what America presupposes is that when we go through hard times, we individuals and we families and we local communities are actually tough enough to navigate lots of these problems.

And right now, we have a kind of national drift toward a belief that we're all so fragile that, A, these problems probably can't be solved and if they can be solved they better be solved by some strong man who says if I were your political leader I can fix everything that is not an American idea and the truth is these young people these teens and 20 somethings are going to have to be more resilient they're the hero generation

than anybody before because nobody we've never had a time when 40 and 45 and 50 year olds regularly lost their jobs because of technological change and that's the world that our young people are going to enter we need them to be tough.

It's because we love them that you want them to be gritty.

Not because you're trying to harm them, but because you want them to be able to navigate this world and love the good, the true, and the beautiful and serve their neighbor.

Ben Sasse, The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming of Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance.

You're going to be hearing a lot of that on this program.

Please go out and buy this book now.

This is one that every single American who wants to solve the problems and are tired of looking at the problem in Washington need to put their nose in this book for a while.

It will spur you into some action.

Ben Sass, the Vanishing American Adult.

We'll talk to you again soon, Ben.

Thank you so much.

Great to be with you.

Senator from

Nebraska.

You're listening to the Glenn Beck Program.

Welcome back, America.

Again, the name of the book is Ben Sass, The Vanishing American Adult.

Penn Gillette joins me tonight at 5 o'clock with an awesome interview.

Unlike anything else I've ever done before, I found Penn's pivot point,

and it's fascinating.

This is the Glenn Bank program.

Mercury.