Glenn Beck and Jason analyze the June 14, 2017 shooting of Representative Steve Scalise by James T. Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old former Bernie Sanders worker wielding an M4-style rifle. Testimony from Mo Brooks details the chaotic response at Nationals Park, while Ron DeSantis recounts spotting the suspect. Despite speculation linking the attack to political rhetoric, Beck emphasizes individual responsibility and criticizes security failures, noting this is the first multiple-Congressman shooting since 1954. Ultimately, the discussion underscores the urgent need for proactive Capitol Police measures and national unity amidst deepening tribal divisions. [Automatically generated summary]
We have Mo Brooks, the report from him, Mike Lee standing in the wings ready to tell us what he knows about the shooting.
It's a tough day in America.
We begin there right now.
I will raise my voice.
I will hold your hand.
Cause we have won.
I will be my jump.
I have made my choice.
We will overcome.
Cause we are one.
The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
Welcome to the program, America.
Here is what happened, according to Mo Brooks, today, this morning around 7 a.m. between 7 and 8 Eastern Time in Washington, D.C.
We were, we get here about 6.15, 6.30.
If you're familiar with the movie, remember the Titans?
Well, we practice on their baseball field, 6.15, 6.30.
Tomorrow night is supposed to be the game.
Hopefully we'll still have it, but I don't know.
It raises about $600,000 for charity, and we play it in the Washington Nationalist Baseball Stadium.
Frequently, the president will come, so it's a pretty good time for all, except for the fact that the Democrats have been beaten so much.
But I was on deck about to hit batting practice on the third base side of home plate, and I hear a loud bam.
And I look around, and behind third base in the third base dugout, which is cinder block, I see a rifle.
And I see a little bit of a body.
And then I hear another blam, and I realize that there's an active shooter.
At the same time, I hear Steve Scalise over near second base scream.
He was shot.
He's our majority whip.
The gun was a semi-automatic.
It continues to fire at different people.
You can imagine all the people in the field scatter.
I run around to the first base side of home plate, and we have a batting cage that's got plastic wrapped around it to stop foul balls and hide behind the plastic.
You know, that plastic's not real good.
And I was lying on the ground with two or three others as the gunfire continues.
Heard a break in the gunfire and decided to take a chance.
Ran from home plate to the first base dugout, which is also center block in town about two or three feet so you can have better cover.
There were a number of congressmen and congressional staffers who help us lying on the ground.
One of them was wounded in the leg, took off my belt, and myself and another congressman, I don't remember who, applied a tourniquet to try to slow down the bleeding.
In the meantime, I'm towards the right field side of the dugout, and there's gunfire within about five or six, seven feet of my head.
And I look up, and there's a guy with a gun blasting away.
Fortunately, it was one of the good guys, one of our security detail who was shooting back.
Of course, it was pistol versus rifle, our pistols versus the shooter's rifle along the third baseline, just outside the chain-link fence.
And he was ordering us to stay down.
Another security detail person was closer to home plate.
Probably, I couldn't see him, but probably on the home plate side of the dugout outside the fence line, using the dugout as cover as he's firing back.
And there must have been 50 to 100 shots fired.
Hard to itemize them.
Eventually, it seems that the shooter shot both of our security detail people.
There were some congressmen on phones screaming for reinforcements.
Seemed like a long time, and we weren't even hearing sirens from local police officers, which tells me they probably did not yet know what was going on.
Eventually, the shooter started circling around third base.
This is my understanding.
Of course, I'm down on the ground helping the guy who's got a bullet hole in his leg.
And the shooter starts coming around home plate towards we are outside the fence line.
And my understanding is that's where our security detail, maybe some of the ones who were wounded still defending us, took him down.
At which point, once we got to the all-clear that the shooter was down, we ran out to second base, received Scalise.
He had crawled into the outfield, leaving a trail of blood.
And we started giving him some liquids.
I put pressure on his wound in his hip.
And Brad Winstrup, congressman from Ohio, Cincinnati, fortunately, the physician, he started doing what you need to do to try to minimize the blood loss.
Shortly thereafter, more of the police showed up.
Again, it seemed like forever, but it probably was shorter than what it seemed.
That's Mo Brooks, Congressman, telling us exactly what happened in Washington, D.C. earlier this morning.
CNN.
They had him on it for a long time, given the details.
If they would not have had the Capitol Police there, many of the Republican congressmen say that they would all be dead by now.
It was clearly some sort of an ambush.
Some of the congressmen were asked in the parking lot by a strange man if these were the Republicans or the Democrats that were practicing.
They said Republicans.
They now have identified him as the shooter.
We understand that the shooter at this point is still alive, but we have no motive and probably, not probably, it is not wise to speculate at this point on what his motives were.
We go now to Washington, D.C. and Senator Mike Lee.
Many of his colleagues, Jeff Flake was a part of this.
Rand Paul was out in the baseball field as well.
Mike, welcome to the program.
How are you?
Thank you very much, Glenn.
I'm sobered this morning.
My thoughts and prayers go out to my friends who were there.
I was not.
I heard about this a few minutes after the shooting started.
I got a call from my friend Ellen James, who used to work for me.
She's on the staff of Congressman Barry Lautermilk now.
She called and asked if I could find out what had happened.
This was the first I had heard of it, so I immediately started calling my friends who were there.
I called, got through to Senator Flake, who told me that Steve Scalise had been shot.
He had been hit in the hip and was being taken to the hospital.
I was, of course, shocked, and it's a very scary thing.
Mike, there wasn't, are you guys allowed to carry guns as senators or congressmen?
I do know that there are very restrictive laws in the District of Columbia with regard to gun possession.
I'm not certain what the laws are with regard to members of Congress specifically.
But I think you're right.
I think you're right in speculating that had Steve Scalise and his security detail not been there, these guys would have been sitting ducks.
Now, Steve has a detail, and we're trying to find this.
We can't find that he is in the line of secession, but I believe he is.
Isn't he like fifth or something in line?
I'm not sure that he is beyond being a member of Congress.
I think he has a security detail because of his position as a whip rather than based on his place in the line of succession.
Can you, for people who don't know what the whip is, can you explain what the majority whip is?
Sure.
The majority whip has the job of whipping votes into line, meaning it's his job to track where the votes are going to head on particular pieces of legislation that are important.
So if you watch House of Cards, he's the guy with the Congress map of Congress in his office, and he's counting the votes.
Yes, that's right.
His job is to count votes and to figure out where everybody is on the issue and to try to whip people into line.
Mike, what's your counsel for people today who are in the media and are looking to fill time and the speculation?
What's your counsel for those in the media and those at home who have, you know, words are not bullets, but we are in a different time period in our country.
And what is your advice on all the way to the White House?
How should we be looking at this today?
Well, first and foremost, I think you're right to counsel people not to speculate as to what the motive might have been, as to who the shooter was or what prompted him to do this.
Secondly, I think this is always a sobering reminder that words of reconciliation are always in order.
You'll never regret being kind, never regret uttering words that are brought to, that are meant to bring people together rather than tear them apart and inflame them.
And finally, if you're a person who prays, as I do, and I know you do, we should all pray for those involved and for the victims and their families.
Is this going to change things on Capitol Hill, Mike?
Gosh, I fear that it might.
This congressional baseball game is a great tradition.
It raises money for charity.
It brings people together from across party lines.
I'm not part of the team because that would be a severe disservice to the team, but I have a lot of friends who are and have always enjoyed listening to their updates about how their practices are going, about who's expected to win in a particular year.
I would hate for that tradition to die.
And I would certainly more broadly hate for events like this to cause people to have to live in fear.
It's a very sad thing.
This is not a well-publicized practice.
I mean, people in that area do know about the game.
They do know that people are practicing, but it strikes me as this wasn't, there was some homework involved in this.
It wasn't just a random guy who just happened to be in the neighborhood and thought, oh, here's, I wonder who these people are.
Basically, yeah, that's what it sounds like.
We're still piecing this together, but I heard my friend Ron DeSantis, congressman from Florida, say earlier today that he was approached as he was leaving the ballpark by someone who asked specifically, is this where the Republicans practice or the Democrats?
Speculation on Aircraft Carriers00:02:40
And I think he's wondering out loud whether that meant that somebody knew at least that there were members of Congress flying there.
It appears that he did.
We don't know for sure whether that was a shooter asking that question, but one could speculate that once someone shows up and does something horrific like this, that they might know what was happening.
Senator Mike Lee from Washington, our prayers and thoughts are with you and everybody on Capitol Hill today.
We thank you so much.
Thanks so much, Matt.
Appreciate it.
You bet.
We'll be back with some more and love to hear your thoughts at 888-727-BECK 888-727 Beck.
What are you thinking today?
By the way, I don't know if you saw this.
Defense Secretary Mattis said that North Korea's advancing missile nuclear programs were the most urgent threat to national security.
In fact, yesterday he said, quote, they are a clear and present danger.
That is war talk.
When you have the Defense Secretary saying clear and present danger, that's law talk for reason to go to war.
We have three aircraft carrier groups now off the coast of North Korea.
The only time that we can find that we have ever put three aircraft carrier groups together was right before the Gulf War.
And before that, I think it was Bosnia.
Anytime we have ever launched a strike of any kind where the country is near water, we have had three aircraft carrier groups in the area.
That's the only time that has happened in our past.
Hopefully, this is nothing to see here.
But with that and Mattis saying clear and present danger, the world could change overnight.
I will make a stand.
I will raise my voice.
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This, this, is the Glenn Beck program.
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Responsibility in a Deranged World00:12:15
So David from didn't take long, is the first to come out.
Virginia, no background checks, no licensing, no registration, no permit required for concealing, for concealed carry of long guns.
May I ask, how do you conceal carry a long gun?
I mean, you have really long pockets.
You have really long pockets.
Really long ones.
Yeah, I just have a concealed carry holster for my rifle.
I carry it on the inside of my pants.
Yeah, it's Neo from the Matrix.
I'm essentially the only person.
I mean, I guess there is no permit required for the concealing of long guns in Texas either because no one concealed carries a rifle.
I guess maybe Columbine, was that was it?
Because they were the trench coat boss.
Yeah, remember that whole thing?
Yeah.
Open carry long guns and handguns.
I thought, I really thought this time, okay, at least there won't be that immediate drumbeat of We gotta take the gods!
And certainly there already has a GOP guy.
From a Republican.
Yeah.
Unreal.
Congratulations on that.
You know, on the other hand, if one of those congressmen or senators had been carrying a gun, it could have been over even more quickly.
They only had two people armed, and that was the Capitol Police who came with the House whip.
If more of those guys had been armed, that guy would have been down a lot sooner.
I was just at the shooting range last week.
13 shots out of 13 shots.
Reload.
13 shots out of 13 shots.
So I started moving now because you're not actually going to be standing there, you know, like, okay, hang on, let me get into position.
Seven shots out of 13, all in a clump.
All you need to do is be a responsible gun owner, and you can stop stuff like this.
If somebody would have had, if Scalise didn't have Capitol Police protection, they all would have been dead.
That's certainly what Rand Paul believes.
Right.
The first responder is you.
Do you know who changed the, gave us the name of first responders?
We think that this is an old thing.
Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter is the one who started the first responder nonsense.
And nonsense meaning because they are not the first responders.
You are.
Yeah.
You are.
To be fair.
We are sitting and we cower until the first responders come.
That's up until Jimmy Carter, that was a new idea.
You don't wait for the police to come.
You first get away from it if you can.
You barricade yourself if you can if they're coming after you.
But if they're coming after other people, we have a responsibility to protect our fellow man.
And we can.
You just have to be a responsible gun owner and not live in one of these states where they require you to be defenseless and hide and cower where somebody with a gun is eventually going to come and find you because they have a gun and you don't.
Again, Rand Paul said, if it wasn't the Capitol Police were there, they'd all be dead.
Mercury.
This is a Clint Walk program.
I'm just going through the Twitter feed.
I don't know why.
The left is stabbing police horses in the neck and literally shooting our elected reps.
If you don't realize it's a civil war, you're naive.
Claire McCaskill, please, people, no partisan politics.
Let's come together against evil, united by our common decency.
Amen.
I wonder where she was at the last 18 years.
Not helpful.
Not helpful.
I mean, your mind can wrap it up.
Aren't you curious, though?
I mean, I'm just wondering.
Yes.
Yes.
But I think that's the appropriate response every time.
Yep, every time.
If that would be your response every time, good for you.
Well, I'm with you.
Let us lead the way.
Let us be consistent.
On Gabby Gifford's, we said, do not jump to conclusions.
Do not speculate.
And as it turned out, it was a mentally deranged guy who was also someone from the left.
Not a Republican, not a Tea Party member, a deranged guy from the left.
He was really just deranged.
If I remember right, he was the guy who was saying that he thought that one of the reasons he was because of grammar.
He believed grammar was like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was deranged.
He was deranged.
But he also was a lefty.
He was also a guy.
I don't know.
He was also a guy who was a Democrat, lefty, blah, blah, blah.
And then he went insane.
So I'm just saying, he wasn't a Republican that went insane.
He was a Democrat that went nuts.
And it had nothing to do with politics.
He was nuts.
And we said at the time, don't speculate.
Senator Palin put a target on this district.
Right.
That was their initial.
Let's say that again.
Don't speculate.
This guy may have been completely nuts.
This guy may be politically motivated.
This guy may be somebody who says the Republicans are evil and I've got to kill all of them.
This guy may also be saying the Republicans are evil because I'm a conservative and I think...
Now, I don't think that's what happened, but we don't know what happened.
Yeah, I mean, we know very little.
Mo Brooks, who's a congressman, we're big fans of him.
He's been on the show many times.
And he was there.
He was doing interviews with CNN, one of the ones we played earlier today, in his batting glove, still in his batting glove from baseball practice.
He hadn't even taken it off yet.
And he described the guy as a middle-aged white guy, dark hair, and, quote, chubby, end quote.
He's pretty amazing in the middle of this.
At one point, they said, but we have breaking news that we were hearing from Dana Bash that this was a deliberate act.
And Mo Brooks says, well, it certainly wasn't an accident.
Well, the guy was.
I don't know how he kept his head.
He really did.
You don't, you know, what are you driving around with your rifle and a whole bunch of rounds and you happen to see a baseball game and then you ask, are these the Republicans?
Yeah, we don't know for sure if that person was the person who was the shooter, but I mean, you know, it certainly seems that you can draw that conclusion.
So please, please, it is going to feel good to be the, I mean, literally, you will get a hit of dopamine.
You really will get a hit of dopamine when you read somebody, when you read a tweet or when you see something that makes you go, yeah, stick it to him.
You literally will get a hit of dopamine.
Your brain, it will feel good.
Just because it feels good doesn't mean we should do it.
And feeling good, you mean that the other side, you're...
Yeah, I am tired.
I am sick and tired.
Here's what I want to say.
Here's what I want to say.
Screw you, Democrats.
Look who's been, look at what's in Vanity Fair today.
In Vanity Fair, there's a whole painting of Trump's hell where they've made all of the people around Donald Trump, you know, Paul Ryan, everybody, look as they, although they are literal demons and Klan people and everything else.
What I want to say is, if we would have produced that stuff about you and Gabby Giffords, you would have been scooping people up.
You already were on the air saying, Gabby Giffords, this is the Tea Party rhetoric.
You did that for days, even after it was discovered the guy votes Democrat and he was insane.
You still were doing it.
Turnaround is fair play, isn't it?
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
We have to find a way to reduce the friction, to reduce the chaos, to reduce the hatred.
And it's going to go against everything that feels good.
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly tempting to, and we have no idea what this shooter.
I mean, he could have been someone who was, you know, who thought the GOP was too liberal, right?
I mean, we have no idea.
We have no idea.
It could just be a, we have no idea.
Someone who just wants to be a bad person.
Everybody's pissed off at the GOP.
Yeah, we'll probably never know because I think they're reporting now that the guy's dead.
Oh, they are.
Oh, wow.
At least Fox News has reported that.
I don't know if they've withdrawn that or not, but they had been reporting easily.
We'll get more updates on that.
But again, as conservatives, if you want to talk politics, one of the things we believe in is individual responsibility, personal responsibility.
And as always with these shootings, the person responsible for them is the person who did it, period.
It is not a responsibility of Bill Maher, who said something three weeks ago, that made this person do this.
It is his responsibility.
That is what our society is based on.
It's what our laws are based on.
And it's what they should be based on.
Look, I have lots of guns.
I have lots of guns.
sure do and and i uh a literal arsenal i would say Compound arsenal.
I have lots of guns, and I'm a good shot.
And I've been really pissed at a lot of people.
A lot of people.
There's nobody who's heard more Glenn Beck hate rhetoric than Glenn Beck.
Yeah, sure.
I've heard all of it.
Well, not the stuff we say behind closed doors, but most of it we forget.
So I've heard all the rhetoric and the poison spewing from my mouth.
I've never been tempted to pick up one of my guns and use it in anger.
Never.
It is what is in you.
This is all a personal choice.
See, the unfortunate thing, and we talked about this last night at 5 o'clock on the Blaze TV.
The unfortunate thing is we are all running to a group.
We're all running to a protector.
We're all running to the media to protect us or the president to protect us.
We're all looking for a champion of our cause.
That's the worst thing we can do.
This country was founded on the individual.
It was founded on us as individuals.
And collectively, what we do in our life is what matters.
Now, we don't know anything about this shooter yet.
Standing Alone Against the Crowd00:04:11
Other than him being chubby.
Other than him being chubby.
And, you know, one man's chubby is another man's.
She is chubby.
I wouldn't say he was obese.
It was a very particular line.
Really?
I wouldn't say he was obese.
I wouldn't say he was obese.
He said he was chubby.
Wouldn't that be the thing?
I mean, wouldn't you hate that to be said?
That's the thing that was said about you right before you died.
Whatever he hates is what I want to be said about him.
We don't know anything about him.
Even after the reports come out, we may not know really anything true about him.
What is going to be said about us?
What is true about you?
We've been talking about this for a while.
You know, I said, and I don't even know why I said it other than, you know, let's just put it this way.
I'm not smart enough to come up with this.
Everything that you think is solid will be liquid and everything liquid will be solid.
The world will be upside down and inside out.
When I started saying that in 2006, there was no reason to start saying that.
Now we see what has happened.
As convinced as I was on that, I am also convinced, equally so, that there now is no truth.
There is no truth, and that is by design.
There's no truth anymore.
Our colleges and universities are telling us all truth is subjective.
That truth is a lie.
It's a myth.
I want you to know, I am not going over the cliff with the rest of humanity.
There is truth.
It is easy to find.
Common sense does not exist anymore.
It is now uncommon sense.
But everybody has access to it.
They just have to listen to the small voice, to the still small voice.
Listen.
Truth speaks.
Lies whisper all the time.
But you can find the truth.
It is verifiable.
It is easy.
There is truth.
My question to you is what is the truth about us?
Are we people who are at civil war and are ready to condemn our neighbors and our friends who I am convinced, with an exception of probably 10% on the right and 10% on the left, that want us to hate each other, that want and need us to hate each other?
There is a good 70 to 80% of this country that doesn't want any of that.
And I stand in the middle on that point.
I will live next to any man no matter their faith, their creed, their color, as long as they respect my right to live my way, just like I respect their right.
It doesn't matter to me.
I believe that is the majority of Americans.
And you can go and be derailed and believe that that is the minority, but I will go to my grave.
Reality of Partisan Violence00:14:40
Not going over that cliff with the rest of humanity.
I do not believe that is who we are.
And I would rather go out believing that than buying into the darkness that we're at civil war, we've got to kill these people.
We've got to go to war.
We've got to strap our arms to us.
We've got to hate the other side.
I'm not going there.
And I invite you to join me because it's a much better place.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
Mercury.
The Glenn Beck Program.
Representative Scalise has been shot and taken to a local hospital.
We don't have confirmation yet on the shooter, do we?
We have Fox News reporting it, but we don't have that.
And they got it from Mike Lee, who didn't tell us that.
He didn't say that when we interviewed him about 45 minutes ago.
So I don't know.
Maybe he has better information now, or maybe it's unclear now.
But yeah, he told Fox News when he interviewed, I think, earlier this morning, that the guy had been killed.
The shooter.
Yeah, I've not seen that.
I've seen it anywhere else.
It does seem like Scalise went into first surgery.
He appears to be okay.
The report was he was in good spirits and talked to his wife right before surgery.
Seems like he's going to be okay.
Another one of the staffers was shot in the chest.
Seems like they will recover.
Not sure if it's male or female, actually.
And I don't know if I'm supposed to judge that at this particular point in our history.
But it seems like they will recover.
That's good.
I mean, this could have been horrible.
Way worse.
I mean, think about this.
Play the Randall Congressional members on that baseball field.
If he would have killed 25, if he would have killed 10, one shooting is bad enough.
One dead.
10.
35 dead.
If the Capitol police were not there, Rand Paul said they all would be dead now.
If that would have happened, can you even imagine what would happen in this country?
I mean, I fear for what's coming just because of this.
Back in a minute.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
Mercury. The Blaze Radio Network.
On demand.
There is.
There's a lot to say.
An awful lot to say.
And some of those things should remain unsaid today.
If we want to be consistent and we want to be people of character, we take our own advice from when this happened with Gabby Giffords and we say we don't speculate.
I mean, let me reverse the situation.
If this was a Democratic president and these were Democrats that were killed during the same week, completely unrelated,
During the same week that Shakespeare In The Park in New York had had a scene of that Democratic president being assassinated, and during that same week You'd have a shooting of Democratic congressmen and senators on a baseball diamond, Our guns would have been taken away by now, two hours later.
That's why we don't act rashly.
We also don't want to fall into the same pattern that sometimes the left and the media does.
Let's be consistent.
And you know what?
We all make mistakes and we all want to blow off steam and it feels good Okay, if you need to blow off steam blow off steam Just do it in in a private way and then let's move on and try to bring people together.
We have the latest news from the shooting in Washington DC and could this have been prevented?
I say yeah, pretty easily.
we go there right now entertainment and enlightenment This is the Glenn Beck program.
Representative Scalise, one Capitol Hill aide and two Capitol police officers have been downed in a shooting this morning at about eight o'clock Eastern time.
We have Leon Wolf, who's our editor for the Blaze, who's bringing us up to speed on the latest.
We also have Representative DeSantos, right?
DeSantis.
DeSantis on with us at the bottom of the hour.
He's the guy who left early, said he talked to a strange guy in the parking lot who said, are these the Republicans or the Democrats?
Not sure yet if this is the shooter that he spoke to, but we'll get it firsthand from him in just a few minutes, Leon.
So yeah, you know, you always want to be careful with stories like this because there's always some fog of war and always things are said that turn out later to not be true.
Right now, they're saying the shooter, we have conflicting reports.
Is the shooter dead?
Is he alive?
I think the most reliable reports I've seen say that he is alive.
He's in the hospital.
He's in police custody, but we have heard some rumors that he may have passed away.
So he was shot by the Capitol Police as he was attempting to go about his massacre there.
And there's some confusion.
We don't know.
We don't have an ID on him yet.
We don't know what his motivations were.
Obviously, you're going to talk to DeSantis in a little bit.
People are speculating that this may have been a partisan thing.
Well, he's described as a how old?
They say in 40s, 50s.
Mo Brooks said middle-aged, white guy, dark hair, and chubby.
Yeah.
That's all we know about him so far.
So what's interesting to me, and I know Jason's going to have more about this, according to Rand Paul, who is admittedly some distance away.
And, you know, when you're in a situation like this, you know, you can get your facts wrong very easily because your adrenaline is up.
But Rand Paul says that he heard between 50 and 60 shots.
And it is amazing in one sense that only four people appear to have been hit.
And so far as we know, none fatally yet.
I mean, as a joke, you can say, that's how I know it wasn't a conservative.
Right.
Well, I mean, we have, we fire guns.
But to take, even if he took 30 shots, which was the first report, now I'm hearing as many as 100 shots have been fired.
That includes, though, the Capitol Police.
Correct.
Correct.
But if he just fired 30, it is a miracle that that guy only wounded four people.
Well, here's the reality of this.
And of course, you know, Jason, this is something you know as well.
In the movies, it looks very easy to shoot somebody.
In reality, unless you're very practiced with a firearm, it's difficult to hit a person from any distance away.
And so even though the Capitol Hill Police may not have hit him initially, and according to Rand Paul's account, they started firing back soon.
You know, just taking return fire, even if it's not coming directly at you, is going to really affect your accuracy and your ability if you're the gunman who's trying to shoot, you know, being able to do what you want to do.
And if the Capitol Police were on the if he was on one dugout and the Capitol Police were behind the other dugout, that is a long, almost impossible shot with a fire with a handgun.
With a pistol.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's going to not doable.
And if he's shooting 30 shots, I mean, if it was 60 to 100 shots, this guy was reloading.
If he was shooting with 30 shots, that's probably one magazine and he was probably shooting some kind of AR type weapon.
That's just my guess.
But don't you think, I mean, that's a remarkably bad shot.
Oh, yeah.
I don't think this was a, just the way it looks, to me, it doesn't look like a targeted.
I don't think that Scalise was his target.
I think that was just whoever we think of the bomb were targeting?
I think probably in general.
That's the way it sounds.
But I wouldn't say that he was specifically targeted.
It doesn't look that way.
Hang on just a second.
So, you know, Jason is former military intelligence, also private security.
He was on my detail for a long time with Gavin DeBecker and Associates, which is the, I'd rather have Gavin DeBecker, and I mean this sincerely, than Secret Service because we have been standing with firearms inside of a Secret Service area.
And we were like, how do they not, I mean, how do they not see that hole?
I think the Secret Service is in trouble, quite honestly.
That's why I've said under Obama and this president, pray for the Secret Service because I think they are horrible right now.
But anyway, I saw this, and we know that he was in the parking lot after the game had started.
Then he was carrying his long gun.
He had to get it out of his trunk or his car, then walk up with his long gun to the baseball field.
They had Capitol Police there.
Just knowing what my security would have done, correct me if I'm wrong, you would have had a guy in the parking lot and you would have had a guy near me someplace seeing the whole thing.
You would have gotten him in the parking lot.
Would you not?
Absolutely would have.
There's a difference too, and it's how Gavin DeBecker and Associates runs their businesses.
They treat every single one of their protectees as basically the president of the United States.
And they're expecting every single time for wherever they show up, something bad's going to happen.
That's the mindset.
Now, there's a difference between, let's say, you jump in your car and go to 7-Eleven.
You're not sending out advance agents.
You know what I mean?
No, but if you're going someplace public.
Public and known.
So that is the big thing here is that it's known.
It would have been on a schedule.
Everyone would be talking about it.
Everyone knows that the Republicans are going here to practice at this time.
And there's 30 of them.
Here's the thing that's crazy.
The Capitol Police were only protecting one guy.
And that's because he's the majority whip.
But it's probably way past time for us to protect events where there's groups of these guys in the open.
And I know, Leon, that they love that walking around.
That's part of the DC ethos is we are senators and congressmen, but here we mingle with the people.
We just go out to restaurants and you can see us and come up and walk to us and talk to us.
And that's part of their totally fine.
But first of all, if I'm a congressman, I want to be able to carry a handgun.
I want to be able to defend myself.
The world has changed.
So if I don't want security, I'm going to carry a handgun.
You really can't do in DC, right?
I mean, there's not, I mean, it's very difficult to actually do that.
They obviously are fans of exempting themselves from things.
So they absent themselves from almost 10 years.
That wouldn't have helped here because they're at a baseball practice.
They're not going to be with you.
I would have a baseball practice.
I would have had it in my, I would have had it with my other congressmen and senators, and I would have said, guys, we're all in this together.
I've got my handgun right here.
It's in my bag.
Leon, I trust you.
Will you watch this?
I'm going up to bat.
And I would have kept it in a bag.
Because they did get back to the dugout where their stuff was.
Right.
So theoretically, if they had brought something, they could have potentially.
But again, I mean, look, you can't, it's a great thing as a general concept to be able to defend yourself.
There are situations where it's not necessarily going to be as helpful as others.
No.
Yeah, but at least I have a chance.
Yeah.
At least I have a chance.
Am I good at any sport?
No.
Oh, good heavens, we can all.
Do you think I'm coordinated at all?
You barely can walk down the hallway.
Correct.
No, and you're not exaggerating, right?
I'm horrible at all of that.
Jason, am I a good shot?
I was about to say, you're a good shooter.
Yeah, I'm a good shooter.
So, I mean, you don't have to be, you don't have to be, you know, Beretta or, you know, Iron Man.
You can be a good shot and protect yourself if you're responsible.
And I want the right to protect myself.
With that being said, Capitol Police need to be retrained.
If they are watching somebody, somebody needs to be behind in the parking lot.
So you're seeing what's coming in and somebody else needs to be watching.
Especially when you're protecting.
You're going to have five members of Congress on that baseball field.
And you're sitting ducks.
Security definitely needs to evolve.
It needs to evolve.
And I've said this before in terrorism, like at airports.
Now terrorists are not striking the birds in the sky.
They've evolved and they're now striking the backup, you know, the backlog as people are standing in line waiting to get into the planes.
It's the same scenario here where, yeah, Capitol Police, I agree.
They have to move beyond the mindset that they had.
It's a completely different era.
They have to set up, like in that mindset of we just described, as there is going to, there's something bad going to happen at every single spot.
If it's a public location, there has to be an advanced team that goes out.
This is just the arrow.
And I will tell you this.
Evolving Security Protocols00:03:37
Here's the problem with Secret Service in particular.
I know nothing about the Capitol Police, and I thank the Capitol Police for what they've done today.
And hopefully these guys, have we heard a report on the police officers?
I have not.
I believe that their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
Okay.
This is from what I understand.
So our prayers are with the Capitol Police, and I'm not tearing them down.
And I'm not tearing Secret Service down.
I'm warning America.
That is your line of defense between today and complete chaos.
The Secret Service, they rely too much on technology and money.
They're doing everything.
Let me tell you this.
When I went to CPAC, when I went to CPAC, the lines were out of this world, out of this world.
It took two hours to get in.
So all the people were standing in line for two hours.
One of my security officers said, you're not going to believe this, but you want to get in?
Yeah.
Come here.
We walked to an open door to a stairwell.
And I walked up that stairwell into the back rooms on stage.
Now, what the hell is the Secret Service doing?
We alerted them, by the way.
What is Secret Service doing?
They depend on the regulatory.
They just depend on the money.
This is how we always do it.
We're the best in the world.
You're not.
You're not.
You're just not.
I've told this story before.
We went to church with Mitt Romney.
He had Secret Service.
I sat right behind him with a gun.
Secret Service didn't bat an eye.
We had a guy who was in the parking lot walking around who was obviously armed security.
Secret Service never approached him.
My guy approached him and said, by the way, just want to let you know, I'm carrying a gun.
This is who I am.
Oh, okay.
Thank you.
Oh, okay.
Thank you.
It is possible that they didn't believe Glenn Beck was going to kill Mitt Romney.
It is.
I mean, that is possible.
Yeah.
But we had a tremendous run of luck in this country.
You know, if you think about JFK, he was the 35th president.
He was the seventh president to not finish his term due to death of one sort or another.
So prior to JFK's time, president had a 20% chance of not finishing his term.
Since JFK, of course, that has never happened.
And it's remarkable to think about.
If you think about the age of people, you know, who are elected president and all the pressures and all the partisan vitriol, it's remarkable.
And the mood of the country is getting such that I do agree the Secret Service does need to kind of maybe they've been lulled to sleep a little bit about this.
But I tell people this all the time.
As a guy who's done, you know, reporting in D.C., I say the secret to getting literally anywhere is just to act like you belong.
Like if you belong, if you act like you belong anywhere, you can walk.
I've walked right into senators office and they look up at me thinking I'm a staffer.
Like, hey, how you doing?
And I've talked to her.
So we were in here.
I don't even work in there.
Belonging Without Acting Like One00:15:44
I just started coming.
I worked with somebody who said that very same thing.
Just act like you were blown.
We were going to Pittsburgh to a Brooks and Dunn supposed to meet Dunn.
And he was waiting for us backstage.
The plane was late.
So we got there very, very late.
Huge line.
We drove on the other side of the road.
We pulled right up to the Kicks Brooks is who we were at.
Kicks Brooks.
So we pull right up to the cop.
And the guy says, he's sitting in the front.
He says, just don't look up.
Don't look at anybody.
Just look at me.
He said, we're getting in.
And the cops were there.
And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing?
He gets out of the car.
He takes cones, the yellow, the red cones, and he moves them and starts waving the driver in.
And the cop says, wait a minute, who the hell are you?
He said, I'm with Mr. Beck.
I'm his security.
He's supposed to be backstage.
Come on, keep going.
Cop says, you're not going anywhere.
Stops the car.
And he said, I'm telling you, Mr. Beck needs to go in and see.
The cop looks at us, not me, at the car, looks at another cop, then looks at the guy with the cones, shrugs his shoulders and says, okay.
Did it happen just like that?
Just like that.
I mean, you just have to act like you know exactly what you're doing and you get through anywhere.
Glenn Beck program.
888-727 back.
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This is not a police fail.
This is a difference in mindset.
Police are trained to react when something bad happens and then go in and get the bad guy.
Secret Service is trained to look for things that could happen to prevent them from happening and get the principles out to safety.
You don't have police officers work as protectors.
It's a completely different mindset.
Agreed, but there should have been a fixed security location.
I mean, there's 30 congressmen there.
They should have had roadblocks set up, police cars.
There should have been roving police officers that aren't actually protectors, just security.
And this is something I learned from working with working with Glenn Beck, which they were not there for 30 congressmen.
They were there for one congressman.
And the way that I remember hearing about this was, hey, if something happens to Glenn, you're on your own, basically.
We are here for the principal.
That is what now I know I'm going to run as close as I can to Glenn because I know we're going to protect him.
But that is not their job, right?
I mean, they are focused on one individual.
Now, of course, in that scenario, they're going to try to do everything.
Well, that's got to change.
That you can't let, and I don't want to get to a place to where we have roadblocks and everything else, but you at least you at least think things through where you have 30 people.
You have 30 congressmen and senators showing up in one place.
You need to have some watchers.
You need to have some security personnel.
At least.
I mean, even if there's not police out in the parking lot with actual, like, with security controls, basic security controls, it could have been contracted out.
Yes.
At least.
I mean, I highly recommend that things like this are contracted out until you solve the bad problems with secret or the secret service.
Back in just a second.
More on the shooting in Washington.
The Glenn Beck Program.
Mercury.
The Glenn Beck Program.
Congressman Ron DeSantis.
He is from the 65th District in Florida.
He is the guy who was out at the baseball game, left a few minutes early, and then went out in the parking lot and supposedly talked to a strange man who asked, are these Republicans or Democrats?
And shortly after the shooting fired, the shooting started.
We don't know if it was the same man that was the shooter, but Ron is with us now.
Congressman, our thoughts and prayers are with you and everybody else that is involved in this in any way, shape, or form all across the country.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, I mean, look, this is, we've been doing this for years, and it's just a kind of a municipal facility about 10 miles outside the Capitol.
The fact that Steve Scalise, the majority whip, was there meant that he comes with his security detail because the leadership gets Capitol Police security detail.
Had Steve not been there, there would have been zero security, and I think this guy would have mowed down a lot of people.
And so, Rand Paul was the difference maker.
Rand Paul said that he thought that you all might be dead if it wasn't for that security detail.
Well, I think that's right because, and here's the thing, Glenn.
I mean, for me, I'm just kind of coming to terms with it.
I mean, like, Steve is playing shortstop.
We're basically, the guys are hitting BP.
I had already hit, Scalise had already hit.
Jeff Duncan, South Carolina is playing short.
And we're just kind of taking the ground balls as they are hit to us, doing whatever, you know, turning to do the whole thing.
And then after about 10 minutes of that, Jeff and I kind of look at each other and say, hey, yeah, we've had a good workout.
Let's beat the traffic.
Let's get on.
Let's get out of here.
And so we're like, all right.
So we basically just jogged away.
And had we not left early, I mean, we would have been in that same line of fire and even closer to the shooter.
So it's just some of these things, you don't know kind of why they happen.
And I don't know if that's the same guy that confronted us in the parking lot that was the actual shooter.
I've given the police my description.
Jeff's done the same thing, and I think we'll figure out very soon.
I would recognize him if I saw a picture of him.
What was the description you gave?
He was kind of a non-description.
He's a middle-aged Caucasian male.
You know, his hair was on the dark side, but not the type of guy, if you were just walking down the street and you saw 30 people walking on the other side, that you would notice him.
I mean, he wasn't somebody that was terribly noticeable.
And what exactly did he ask you?
He asked Jeff.
So I was in the back seat, and he asked Jeff, he's like, hey, are those Republicans or Democrats out there?
And Jeff's like Republicans.
And then he just turned and walked towards the field.
Was he chubby?
Because he was described, the shooters described as chubby.
I mean, he wasn't thin.
I don't know that it struck me as necessarily being chubby, but I kind of, because I was in the back seat, so the way he came up, I kind of basically saw from like his chest up, is all I was able to see.
So I don't know if he was carrying anything.
I definitely didn't really see his, you know, his physique beneath that.
So it's hard for me to say.
What should we take from all of this, Ron?
You know the discussions that are coming.
Well, but I think we'll be able to figure out in short order this individual's motivation.
He's in custody.
These guys have digital trails, social media trails, and we'll be able to see that.
You know, both sides could just be a random thing that happened.
Obviously, that's problematic in some ways, and it could have been motivated by political for political reasons.
And that obviously opens up a whole new can of worms.
So I think we'll just have to wait and see what we know about this individual and then go from there.
But I will tell you, Glenn, the Capitol Police here have been on us about security in terms of when we go back to the districts, much more so than even in the past.
Your district offices, your town halls, all these things.
Here in Washington, everything's secure, the office buildings, the Capitol building, everything.
This is kind of an odd thing.
We're not in the district, but we're definitely off campus being in a place like Alexandria.
So I think how we approach that may have to change if, in fact, this was motivated politically.
But I can tell you, I don't know whether this was politically motivated, but we have received much more threatening communications since President Trump took office.
And that's just something that I think we've taken seriously.
But now just looking at this, if it does have a political connection, man, I got to start taking more of this stuff even more seriously.
It was reported that it has been confirmed that it was an M4.
You're a former service guy.
You know what an M4 is.
And you can't buy the well, you're not supposed to be able to buy an M4.
I guess you can buy them, but it's really more of a military designation.
It's an AR-15.
Well, but Glenn, I would bet that it is the kind of civilian version where you do not have select fire.
In other words, like with the M4I got issued, you have it's on safe.
You click one, one shot for every trigger pull.
You can do three shot bursts, three shots for every trigger pull.
Then you could do full auto, pull the trigger, continuous fire.
My sense would be it would be a rifle that probably looked like that, but probably didn't have the continuous fire.
It was probably just a standard semi-automatic weapon.
Because he was not firing in bursts.
Right.
And so it seems like I think like when news reports come out, very few journalists know anything about firearms.
So I think a lot of this stuff can be misreported.
So my sense would be it probably would have been a semi-automatic rifle.
And then I do believe he also had a pistol as well.
What's it like talking to your family and describing to them that just because you left baseball practice a few minutes early, you avoided potential death?
Well, I'll tell you, my wife is very, very concerned and shaken.
We have a six and a half month old daughter, and it's just the type of thing where, you know, when we first got into politics, I mean, my wife was with me every step of the way, you know, in 2012.
We're out knocking on doors.
I mean, we got into it because we wanted to make a difference.
We wanted to help change the country.
And then I think her perspective is, I don't want you in that type of situation at all.
And so I think it's been really, really tough on her.
And obviously, I was a guy who, you know, I wasn't, I was able to, I left before it even happened, even though I was obviously in proximity had I stayed.
You know, so imagine what Steve Scalise's wife is thinking right now.
So I think it's really, really tough on the family members because they just don't know what's going to happen to somebody that they love.
And I think we have an environment now where there's just a lot of currents going on.
And if one individual acts, that could really upend somebody's whole family life.
Does this make this more difficult for people to stand in Washington?
You know, Glenn, I think that at the end of the day, we'll see what this guy's motivation was.
But if he was targeting congressmen specifically or even Republicans specifically, I think that we'll all be taken aback by that.
But I think that the reaction for me has got to be, you know, it just means you got to stand stronger.
You can't let people like this grind you down.
We would not have a country if we allowed that to happen.
And so, you know, I think you're going to see a lot of resolve come out of this.
Do you want this game to happen tomorrow night?
I'll play if it's there.
If it's not, I understand.
I mean, there's a lot that goes on with it.
I know that they've canceled the votes here today.
We have a couple hearings that are still going on.
But I think that the leadership's just going to have to figure out how they want to handle this situation going forward.
But if the game's on, I'll be there.
Do you're for any stricter regulation on guns?
No, I mean, I'm a Second Amendment guy.
I want people to be able to, and here's the thing.
You know, those Capitol Police guys were the saviors.
You look back at other instances that have happened.
I'm not saying this is terrorism, but if you look at some of the terrorist attacks, the St. Cloud, Minnesota last September, where the guys stabbing people in a shopping mall, there was an individual with a concealed carry permit who shot the terrorists.
He probably saved 10 people's lives by doing that.
So I think responsible use of firearms can help save lives.
Congressman, did I hear right that the Democrats have a winning streak going in this baseball game?
Actually, no, they lost last year.
They could run for a time.
So the Republicans are 1-0 over the last year and multiple times going forward.
So you're denying that this is a false flag just to get out of the game tomorrow.
Exactly.
Congressman, thank you so much.
And again, our prayers are with you and the families and everybody who is involved anywhere they are.
Thank you so much.
Well, thank you.
Appreciate it.
This is the Glenn Vec program.
Mercury.
This is the Glenn Vec program.
Let's go to Patty in Connecticut, calling at 888-727-BECK.
Hello, Patty.
Hello, Glenn, and thank you for everything you do and all the guests that you have and the truth and the honesty that you bring to the American people.
Thank you.
And honestly and truly, I have to honestly say the truth is everything.
It affects how we think.
It affects our decisions we make.
It reflects how we respond.
And over my lifetime, I have never seen the country so divided.
I understand, you know, everybody has a different thought, but we should learn to disagree more agreeably and more tolerance and respect for each other because we are the people.
We, the people, is what makes this country strong.
It enables us to stand tall, and it has given us all these years of individual freedoms and liberties that are invaluable.
The truth is everything.
The dialogue that we are using can be calming, it can be hopeful, and it can be more communicating in a way that's more positive for our country as a whole.
When people work together to bring out a better outcome, it does appear to me that some of the language used and some of the words used are more divisive.
And truthfully, they are altering perception, and it makes people go into divisions.
Everyone is divided more than I have ever seen in my lifetime.
And I lived through the 60s.
There's more divisions, there's more intolerance, and there's more lack of respect for each other as a human being.
And with all due respect, that is a very, very concerning road.
And I think even politically, perceptions and agendas can be driven by words.
And some of the words are very destructive and they are destructive to we as a people and the country as a whole.
I think we should learn to respond and not react.
Patty, I appreciate your point of view.
I was having a meeting last night with the leadership of the Blaze.
Divisions and Lack of Respect00:07:12
And we are going through, I've done now about three months of research on some things, and we're going through another three months of probably research and training.
And I want to explain something that I've been reading for the last couple of months.
I'm going to lay this out on the chalkboard tonight at five o'clock, but I want to explain how our brain actually works and why we are one reason why we are so divided and how we get past some of that.
Next.
The Glenn Beck program.
The Blaze Radio Network.
On demand.
Well, we had a shooting this morning in Washington, D.C.
It is the first shooting with multiple members of Congress since 1954.
No member of Congress has been killed since the shooting of Robert Kennedy.
And we're in a different world today.
We have the identity now of the shooter, and we also have his political background.
We go there right now.
I will make it stand.
I will raise my voice.
I will hold your hand.
Cause we have won.
I will be my job.
Entertainment AND Enlightenment.
This is the Glenn Program.
So the suspect in the uh in the shooting, according now uh to the Washington POST, was a 66 year old man uh who owned a um uh home inspection home inspection um business that lost its license or didn't get its license renewed about a year ago.
Stu has some more details of him, and then I'll tell you the political affiliation of him.
Well, those are some of the details that I do have.
This is coming from the Washington Players.
This does not mean that this is why he shot at anybody.
We just talked to Congressman DeSantis from Florida, who said as he was leaving, he talked to a man in the parking lot, seemingly fitting the description, but he didn't know if it was the same guy, who asked if those were Republicans or Democrats playing.
He said they were Republicans, and he turned around and walked towards the ball field.
We don't know if this is the same guy, but here are the details.
So his name is James T. Hodgkinson.
As Glenn was talking about, he did own a home inspection business, which the license did lapse.
We are hearing now from an acquaintance of his.
And again, this early reporting, it's important to know that these things could change.
This doesn't mean that the news is lying to you if it does.
But what they're saying early, again, this is the Washington Post, so not a conservative source.
Charles O'Rear, who is 50, he's a restaurant manager in St. Louis, said in an interview Wednesday, which of course is today, that he became friendly with James T. Hodgkinson, who law enforcement officials identified as a shooter during their work in Iowa on Senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.
O'Rear said Hodgkinson was a passionate progressive and showed no signs of violence or malice towards others.
You got to be kidding me, O'Rear said when told by phone.
I met with him on the Bernie Trail in Iowa, worked with him in the Quad Cities area.
O'Rear described Hodgkinson as a quiet guy who was very mellow, very reserved, when they stayed overnight at a Sanders supporter's home in Rock Island, Illinois after canvassing for the senator.
He was this union tradesman, pretty stocky, and we played up, everyone's talking about his weight for some reason.
Union tradesman, pretty stocky, and we stayed up talking politics.
He said he was on the really progressive side of things.
The post reached out to O'Rear after seeing that he liked one of Hodgkinson's Facebook posts.
So again, this is an acquaintance of his.
However, they have obviously found his Facebook page, and you're going to be hearing a lot about this guy.
First indications were big-time Bernie guy, big time progressive.
That's all we kind of can jump to at this point.
But it is important to keep updating.
I don't think I've ever seen a shooter like this in one of these situations this old.
Yeah, 66, 60.
That's got to be the oldest ever.
That's amazing.
There's a guy who shot.
I don't think this is necessarily shocking.
My sister is 60, and she was at the tail end of the 1960s.
She just missed the 1960s kind of radical age.
She was, you know, what, 15 during the late 60s.
And so I think there's a, or 12, I think there's a difference by, you know, you're 66.
You were in that high school college range.
Yeah, and I know that, you know, I think you're right, Pat.
Like, usually this is, it's much younger people who do these types of things, especially mass shootings.
The one that did jump to my mind, which was a little bit different of a situation, was the Holocaust Museum shooting.
Remember this in 2009?
And the guy was 89.
I just remember that.
Holy, he was a white supremacist.
I don't remember that at all.
Yeah, I mean, different type of shooting and everything.
But again, that's, I mean, I think that kind of goes.
If you were a, you know, described by his friend, a deep, deep progressive, that has real meaning.
You know, a deep, deep progressive.
You know, what do you mean exactly by progressive?
There are two kinds of progressives.
Those who know what the American progressive movement really is about and was about, which is the destruction of the Constitution and a, you know, a new world order that is socialist.
And if that's how he understood progressivism, you know, somebody raised in the radical age of the 60s might say, I've had enough.
The True Progressive Movement00:06:38
I've had enough.
You know, I've got a home inspection business that's gone out.
I didn't get my license renewed.
I've worked hard my whole life.
I'm, you know, living.
You know, there's, I'm reading this book called Tribal Leadership.
There's a couple of books that I'm going to suggest that you read.
There's another one on the list.
I got to add.
Yeah, there's like five.
There's five now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We had a Fleeting meeting yesterday.
Glenn told us we had to read five books.
Just the five, though.
That was it.
There wasn't like 7,000.
It was only five books immediately.
Right.
Are they different than the ones who got the special email from on vacation to read?
No.
No.
Have you read any of those?
Absolutely.
You haven't read a damn word.
You're talking to a guy who can't read any words.
I know.
He does not have that ability.
So there's five books, and you don't have to read them if you don't want, but I just think they're game-changing.
And what I'm looking for is how do we move if we looked at this country like a business and a tribe, because we are, we're an American tribe, where would we be?
And there's five stages of tribal leadership.
And the first stage, and I'll go back and talk about these here in a second, but I want you to think of this as the country, not a business.
You're going to relate to it as a business, but it's exactly, I think it's exactly the same as a country.
The first stage is everything sucks.
Everything sucks.
Life sucks.
And because life sucks, you have knife fights, you have gangs, you have suicides.
Now, I've never worked in a place that was a stage one tribe where everybody was depressed or angry and stealing.
But I'm sure those places exist.
But those places do exist as cities in our country or neighborhoods in our country where life sucks.
Nothing has any value.
The second stage is my life sucks because of this boss, because of this hardship, because of my lack of education, because of my upbringing, whatever it is, something is holding you back.
Life sucks because of them.
I contend that that is where we are as a nation.
The next stage is I'm okay, you suck.
You are the problem, but I'm okay.
That's at least a step up.
I'm okay, you suck.
I think that's where we were maybe four years ago, six years ago, that we're like, okay, you know, we're okay, but everybody else kind of sucks.
The next one is we're okay and everybody else sucks.
Now, I think that's where we were, I don't even know when.
Maybe in the 50s, maybe we're okay.
Maybe we were this way under Reagan for a lot of people.
We're okay.
It's Russia that sucks.
That's the fourth stage.
The fifth stage is we're great and I don't really care about anybody else.
I mean, come on, join us.
It's great.
I think that's where we were maybe perhaps in the 1800s.
We're not paying attention.
We're not making you into an enemy.
I'm not worried about you.
Come and join us.
This is great.
Look what we can accomplish.
Our goal as a country should be as a stage five tribe.
But I think we're a stage one in some areas and a stage two and a wee stage two.
We're going down.
We're not going up.
We're going down.
Life sucks.
It's not going to get any better.
Nothing's going to change.
We've tried that.
It didn't work.
That's all language from business school.
That's all language of a stage two tribe.
It's not going to work.
We tried that.
We've done that.
You don't know.
You know what?
You don't know.
You don't know who runs this place.
You don't know.
You don't understand what the rules are.
They say one thing, they do another.
That's the country.
So as I'm reading and I'm trying to find out and figure out, okay, how do we break this cycle?
I want to tell you about another book that we've mentioned that I'm reading that I think you need to understand.
And I'm going to go over this tonight at five o'clock.
And this isn't going to be for everybody.
This is, I mean, I hope it's for you.
I think this tribe, this group of people, are going to be the ones that help save America.
I believe we still think alike.
We may have our differences of opinion.
And you may have disagreed with, quite honestly, the way I've behaved in the last couple of years with Donald Trump because I didn't hear you.
I didn't hear you.
I saw the principles and I didn't see the people.
And so I didn't hear you.
But I think I do now.
I get it.
I think.
And I'm trying to figure out a way.
Okay, so how do we proceed from where this country is and move forward and heal?
I'm going to give you a piece of what I'm reading next that I think will open up your mind of what we're facing right now.
In fact, the guy who wrote it said to me, I called him up and he said, yeah, it's not going to work.
And I'm like, you're presenting the answer.
And he's like, yeah, but it's such a slim chance of that working.
Well, no, it does work if enough people begin to work it.
So yeah, it doesn't work if we just rely on people, you know, one person finding this answer and then the next person, you know what?
Hey, six months later, I found this answer.
But if we as a group decide to do something, we can change it.
We have an amazing opportunity.
Phil Kirpin's Breaking News00:02:29
I'll share that coming up in just a second.
You're listening to the Glenn Beck program.
Mercury.
888-727-Z.
A lot of breaking news happening now.
We're awaiting President Trump's statement at 11.30.
My guess is it's going to be late only because there is so much news that is breaking now.
We have Barry Lautermilk also hopefully going to be on with us.
Barry was there.
I just saw a text into David Barton, who was trying to get him on the phone for me.
And he said, I was shot at several times, but, quote, God was there.
And we hope to have him on before the end of the hour, depending on what happens with the Trump speech on this shooting stations.
We are going to carry it live, just FYI.
And we also have more information.
We know that the shooter was an active Bernie Sanders report.
Early reports are.
Yes.
Sorry.
Early reports.
So we do know, confirmed by law enforcement, his name was James T. Hodgkinson from Illinois.
So there is an acquaintance that, in case you missed this, that was interviewed that said that he canvassed with this guy to support Bernie Sanders for president.
Now, his social media stuff is starting to come out.
Phil Kirpin is highlighting a bunch of this stuff.
Phil Kirpin is very reliable.
Yeah, he's not going to, I mean, I would assume it's right.
Although, again, it's early and we don't know.
He is saying, first of all, his picture, his avatar is a picture of Uncle Sam, but with Bernie Sanders' face.
He posted about how corporate corporations are the ones writing all the bills and forcing them through.
He called Donald Trump a lot of names, including Adolf Hitler.
He said for the Republican election that's coming up, he said he called the female Republican candidate there a bitch, wants people to work for slave wages when a livable wage is the only way to go.
Vote blue.
Legitimate National Crisis00:03:19
It's right for you.
He was at the climate march.
He was, again, anybody informed him that Congress doesn't set wages.
They don't determine what you're paid in your job.
Well, he wants them to be like them to be.
He did not like the Koch brothers.
He loved Neil deGrasse Tyson, which is not a surprise when you have someone who's on the far left and was seemingly an atheist based on posts here.
We're not playing this game, but if this guy was on the right and loved Glenn Beck and had liked Glenn Beck and the show and was, and was my god, and was this active in a tea party, they would all be being blamed right now on you.
Yeah, this is legitimately yep again, we don't know 100 yet.
This is legitimately what the left hoped for from the tea party or yeah, and constantly try to create out of thin air yeah, that there was all this violence that these people, this guy is, if these postings are accurate yeah uh, he is deep in this community um, and I mean campaigning for Bernie.
So now the question is, we must not be who.
We begged them not to be with us.
Can we do that?
It's going to be hard.
It is going to be hard.
It's going to be hard.
It is going to be hard.
We literally you know i'm not going to get to this, i'm not going to get to this other book um, because of the president's speech and louder milk and everything else um, but watch today at five o'clock and we're going to get into this later on in the summer, but you, you literally get a hit of dopamine.
Uh, dopamine is the, the chemical that your brain puts off that makes you feel good.
You literally get a hit of dopamine by either saying something or seeing someone else strike out and punch one of these people in the face.
So when you see a tweet today that says, you know boss Cnn, well you are, it's going to feel good and there is a chemical reason in your brain that it feels good.
Um, but you, you need to recognize that and and try to avoid that as much as you can.
Um, because it is only going to get stronger and stronger and stronger uh, and harder and harder to avoid.
And I, I truly believe and and, and maybe i'm wrong, but if i'm wrong I I I, I want to go to my grave wrong on this um, and proclaiming what I believe to be the truth.
I believe that 70 to 80 percent of this country, they're good people.
The Republicans and Democrats, they're good people.
There's maybe 10 percent on each side that want this vitriol and anger for one reason or another, but the average American is good.
Stand up as one of those people today.
The Glenn BECK program mercury, this is the Glenn BECK program.
Good People in a Bad Time00:05:55
President Trump is about to make remarks on the shooting of the GOP congressman and three other stations.
We are going to take it.
This is his first chance, really his first chance to be truly presidential.
A real moment of crisis.
Yeah, this is a moment of national crisis.
And, you know, the first national crisis that we watched under President Obama, he gave a shout out to Medicine Man Joe first, if you remember that.
That's right.
Right.
And it changed the way I was ready to have him really be my president on that day.
And the way he reacted to that by a shout out to Medicine Man Joe and blah, And oh, by the way, there's been a shooting really hurt him, I think, with a lot, at least a lot of conservatives.
My guess is President Trump is going to step to the plate and hit it out of the park.
I want him to.
I want him to so badly.
He has a real chance of making friends and influencing people and all of that.
We'll see.
They gave a five-minute warning about three or four minutes ago.
So we're waiting for him at the White House.
And there's been another potential social media account from this guy with the same type of stuff listed.
We, again, don't know for sure which one is which and which one is real and which isn't, but it does appear to be from every indication that he was a Sanders supporter.
This is not Bernie Sanders' fault by any means.
However, it's not progressives' fault.
No, it's his fault.
He did it.
He did it.
What about the gun?
You guys aren't blaming it.
It's not the gun's fault.
Here's the president, he's stepping to the microphone now.
For those who've been wounded, a...
We have...
We have him walking to the microphone.
Shortly after 7 a.m. this morning, a gunman opened fire on members of Congress and their staffs as they were practicing for tomorrow's annual charity baseball game.
Authorities are continuing to investigate the crime, and the assailant has now died from his injuries.
The FBI is leading the investigation and will continue to provide updates as new information becomes available.
Congressman Steve Scalise, a member of House leadership, was shot and badly wounded and is now in stable condition at the hospital, along with two very courageous Capitol police officers.
At least two others were also wounded.
Many lives would have been lost if not for the heroic actions of the two Capitol police officers who took down the gunmen despite sustaining gunshot wounds during a very, very brutal assault.
Melania and I are grateful for their heroism and praying for the swift recovery of all victims.
Congressman Scalise is a friend and a very good friend.
He's a patriot and he's a fighter.
He will recover from this assault.
And Steve, I want you to know that you have the prayers not only of the entire city behind you, but of an entire nation and frankly, the entire world.
America is praying for you and America is praying for all of the victims of this terrible shooting.
I spoke with Steve's wife, Jennifer, and I pledge to her our full and absolute support.
Anything she needs.
We're with her and with the entire Scalise family.
I have also spoken with Chief Matthew Verderosa.
He's doing a fantastic job of the Capitol Police to express our sympathies for his wounded officers and to express my admiration for their courage.
Our brave Capitol Police perform a challenging job with incredible skill, and their sacrifice makes democracy possible.
We also commend the brave first responders from Alexandria Police Fire and Rescue who rushed to the scene.
Everyone on that field is a public servant.
Our courageous police, our congressional aides who work so tirelessly behind the scenes with enormous devotion, and our dedicated members of Congress who represent our people.
We may have our differences, but we do well in times like these to remember that everyone who serves in our nation's capital is here because, above all, they love our country.
Choosing Real America Today00:08:49
We can all agree that we are blessed to be Americans, that our children deserve to grow up in a nation of safety and peace, and that we are strongest when we are unified and when we work together for the common good.
Please take a moment today to cherish those you love and always remember those who serve and keep us safe.
God bless them all.
God bless you.
And God bless America.
Thank you.
So he stuck almost entirely to the script and did what he had to do.
Didn't take on the media, didn't do anything.
Not time for that, and he recognized that.
Right.
And I hope we stay this course.
I would love to see somebody from the left on CNN have some sort of recognition of what they said about Tea Party people and how these things historically almost always come from lunatics or the radical left in America.
The shootings that we have had have always been lunatics, Palestinian, or radical left.
Those are the history of our assassination attempts in America and the unfortunate assassinations that have gone through.
That doesn't mean, like with Martin Luther King, that a white racist doesn't pop in either.
That happens as well.
But generally, those people are all unstable.
They're all lunatics.
They're all unstable.
They're all unstable.
I mean, it's not rational to go in and shoot someone.
But if you have a collective mindset, sometimes that happens.
And it seems more logical because the individual is not as important as the collective.
We are a republic.
And the Democrats I know do not want this kind of stuff to go on.
And the Republicans that I know do not want this stuff to go on.
We are all Americans.
We're all decent, good, many God-fearing people.
And today would be a good day to reflect on a couple of things.
I mean, you know, Barry Lautermilk said in a text a few minutes ago that he was there and he was shot at several times and he said God was there.
I just want you to recognize the divine protection we had today.
You had 30 Republicans on the field.
30.
You would have lost 10% of those in the Senate and Congress that were Republican.
10% of the Republicans could have been dead today.
That would have changed our country as much perhaps as September 11th did.
God only knows what would have happened to our country had this guy been successful.
He wasn't.
God was there.
And for those who are on the field, I know they have to be thinking, what am I doing?
What am I doing?
Is this really worth dying for?
Yeah, I think it is.
But are you doing it with integrity?
Are you really, what you're doing?
We spoke to DeSantis earlier today.
He was at the field, left the field a little early with Jeff Duncan from South Carolina.
As they were going to the car, a man came up to him, asked them if they're Republicans or Democrats at this field to review that story.
Jeff Duncan is now confirming that the shooter was the person they spoke to.
So there was a bit of speculation of whether that was true or not.
We didn't know.
They've seen the picture now.
It has been released.
And it was James T. Hodgkinson.
His wife has told ABC News that he had been living in Alexandria for the past two months.
So apparently, at least potentially, a long-term sort of plan here to do this.
And he had been, they're saying at least since 2014, they have social media postings of him being very critical of Republicans.
Latest updates there.
That doesn't make all progressives, Bernie Sanders and Democrats.
And I know I don't have to say this to this audience.
I know you know that, and people are rolling their eyes.
I know you know that.
But we have to say that out loud.
We have to say that to our Democratic friends because they won't believe us because, first of all, already the crackpots are on social media from the left saying they deserved it.
Well, a guy who wouldn't vote for healthcare maybe should have been shot.
All that kind of stuff is happening.
Do not engage in any of that.
Malcolm X was wrong.
Martin Luther King was right.
Malcolm X said, get them.
Martin Luther King said, faith, hope, and love.
Faith, hope, and love do not lead you to get them.
It's going to feel good and it's going to be hard, but please be a part of the real America standing up and saying, we said this about Gabby Giffords, and it turned out that it was a Democrat and a crazy man who did this to Gabby Giffords.
He didn't do it for political reasons.
He was crazy.
But they were trying to make that into a Tea Party guy.
He wasn't a Tea Party guy.
He was a Democrat and crazy.
We could make this about Bernie Sanders.
It's not about Bernie Sanders.
It's not about rhetoric.
It's not about words.
It's about the words this guy had in his heart.
The words that this guy brought out of his mouth.
The words that this guy turned into action.
We all have an individual choice.
If you don't want to live in a collective, then you can't blame the collective.
You're listening to the Glenn Beck Program.
Mercury is the Glenn Beck Program.
Seeing pictures of the shooter, the attempted murderer on television, James Hodgkinson, which I believe is a name we've used on the program as a made-up name.
Hodgkinson.
Pretty close.
Bert Stevenson.
Yeah, Hodgkinson.
Jensen?
Jensen?
But you're seeing pictures of him now from his Facebook post of him, you know, tax the rich.
He, like Stu pointed out earlier, he's called Donald Trump Hitler and a very passionate, passionate leftist progressive.
And as Stu pointed out a few minutes ago, it has been confirmed that he was the guy who came up to the congressman in the parking lot and said, are these Republicans or Democrats?
And when they said Republicans, he turned from them and walked right towards the stadium.
They didn't see a gun.
He must have had it stashed somewhere because he used a rifle.