The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guests: Salena Zito & Seth Dillon | 8/24/23
Aired: 2023-08-24
Duration: 43:46


=== Puppets, Pre-Born, and Fact-Checking (04:13) ===

[00:00:00]  Today's program, puppets of all kinds.
[00:00:04]  Puppets, puppet masters, the puppets on stage, yesterday, the debate, and then the Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Twitter file or X file.
[00:00:18]  The X files.
[00:00:21]  Oh my God.
[00:00:22]  Truth is out there.
[00:00:25]  Anyway, we cover all of this and so much more on today's podcast brought to you by Pre-Born.
[00:00:31]  Pre-Born is trying to stop abortion, which, by the way, we do the fact check on the fact checkers.
[00:00:40]  Yesterday, I think it was, who was it, said on the stage that, you know, they want no restrictions on abortion, and we have to fight that.
[00:00:52]  And I think it was Washington Post or New York Times did a fact check and said, that's not true.
[00:00:56]  Seven states, seven states have passed that.
[00:01:01]  And this is not necessarily a loser, as Fox News said.
[00:01:05]  Abortion is a loser for Republicans.
[00:01:08]  Not necessarily.
[00:01:10]  It's really case by case, but 24 states now, almost half of the states, have put restrictions on abortions.
[00:01:19]  And the governors that have signed it, all those that were up for reelection, won.
[00:01:25]  So, you know, abortion is a very difficult thing to talk about, but if you talk about it with compassion and you act in compassion, you take care of the babies and the mothers, and trying just to move hearts, that's how you get things done.
[00:01:40]  And when an expecting mother hears her baby's heartbeat for the first time, she doubles the chances of saving the baby.
[00:01:48]  That's an amazing thing.
[00:01:50]  You can be able to say, I helped save a life through pre-born for $28.
[00:01:55]  We've already rescued about 22 or 25,000 babies already this year, just this audience.
[00:02:02]  One ultrasound is $28 to save a life.
[00:02:05]  It's worth it.
[00:02:05]  Just dial pound250, say the keyword baby.
[00:02:09]  Pound250, keyword baby.
[00:02:10]  It's preborn.com slash Glenn.
[00:02:12]  You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
[00:02:27]  Welcome to the Glenn Beck program.
[00:02:29]  Pat Gray joins us and I'm also surrounded by puppets because this is an amazing, amazing audience.
[00:02:37]  I just want to, if you happen to be watching us on Blaze TV, let me just share some of these puppets that are behind me.
[00:02:47]  And I feel awkward because they're staring at me.
[00:02:51]  This comes from Andrew Olson.
[00:02:54]  And he said, Glenn, I dropped all other work, work projects.
[00:02:59]  I took two days off from my job, and for the past 48 hours, I've worked building these four puppets.
[00:03:05]  Trump, Chris Christie, Mike Pence, and DeSantis.
[00:03:10]  I wish I had time to build all eight, but I'm going on vacation, so I could only spend two days.
[00:03:17]  And they are amazing puppets.
[00:03:19]  Yeah, like those are like professional puppeteer type puppets.
[00:03:23]  And then I got this one in from Valerie.
[00:03:26]  Valerie Perkins, she said, I'm one of the grandmas you mentioned that can make anything out of anything.
[00:03:34]  She said, I only had time to make one puppet.
[00:03:38]  Now, remember, we asked, I think, on Tuesday for puppets.
[00:03:41]  This woman knitted Donald Trump.
[00:03:46]  That's really good.
[00:03:47]  That is amazing.
[00:03:50]  Incredible.
[00:03:50]  I got these in, which are amazing.
[00:03:56]  This is from a woman named Sally Sawyer, I think.
[00:04:03]  Yeah, Sally.
[00:04:04]  She's an amazing artist.
[00:04:05]  But look at these.
[00:04:06]  These are bagged puppets.
[00:04:08]  Oh, wow.
[00:04:08]  That's Chris Christie.

=== Sally Sawyer's Bagged Puppet Collection (16:01) ===

[00:04:13]  I'm not sure who that one.
[00:04:15]  Barack Obama?
[00:04:16]  It might be.
[00:04:17]  Here's Nikki Haley.
[00:04:19]  All right.
[00:04:22]  Vivek or I don't know.
[00:04:25]  Maybe, I don't know.
[00:04:27]  I don't know.
[00:04:27]  Tim Scott, maybe.
[00:04:28]  Mike Pence, clearly.
[00:04:31]  Look at Vivek.
[00:04:33]  Oh, there you go.
[00:04:34]  That's a nice suit.
[00:04:35]  This is Tim Scott.
[00:04:39]  Yeah, and then this one is good.
[00:04:41]  This is Mike Pence.
[00:04:43]  Dear Glenbeck, my mom listens to you every morning.
[00:04:45]  I heard about your presidential puppet need.
[00:04:48]  I wanted to send mine.
[00:04:49]  Here's Mike Pence from Barrett in Big Timber, Montana.
[00:04:56]  That's awesome.
[00:04:57]  Yeah.
[00:04:57]  Jesus loves me.
[00:04:58]  That's great.
[00:05:01]  And there's so many more, but we get into it later.
[00:05:05]  What was the big thing that stood out to you last night, Pat?
[00:05:10]  A couple of things stood out.
[00:05:11]  Nikki Haley sucks.
[00:05:14]  And so does Mike Pence.
[00:05:16]  Not a fan of either one of them.
[00:05:18]  They're still enmeshed in warmongering.
[00:05:21]  I don't understand it.
[00:05:22]  Have you guys not progressed at all to say, okay, we've been at war long enough and we've been in enough places around the world and we've policed the planet long enough?
[00:05:33]  Let's see.
[00:05:34]  And it doesn't really work.
[00:05:35]  It doesn't work.
[00:05:35]  No, it doesn't work.
[00:05:36]  We've tried it that way for about 150 years and it's not working.
[00:05:41]  Well, we can do it all.
[00:05:43]  We can have the border and fight Canada and Mexico if we want to.
[00:05:48]  Let's start something in the Congo and we can definitely fight for Ukraine.
[00:05:53]  Let them fight their own battles.
[00:05:55]  Well, I mean, we can do, we could do a lot and still fight Canada.
[00:06:00]  That one I still do.
[00:06:02]  You're right.
[00:06:02]  That one we support that.
[00:06:05]  That's a good point.
[00:06:06]  It's not a terrible line that Pence brings up from a line perspective.
[00:06:09]  He's like, you know, we're the greatest country in the world.
[00:06:11]  We should be able to do more than one thing.
[00:06:12]  You have a bad view of our country.
[00:06:15]  First of all, he said it at the Iowa thing.
[00:06:17]  We'd already heard it, but it's the exact same line.
[00:06:20]  But secondly, like.
[00:06:21]  Actually, our country can't do either of the things one at a time.
[00:06:24]  No.
[00:06:25]  We can't do any of these things.
[00:06:26]  We can't do the most basic thing in the world that a government supports.
[00:06:29]  We're sending him money we don't have.
[00:06:31]  Yeah.
[00:06:31]  And I thought he also sounded really out of touch when he was going up against Ramaswamy, who was like, look, we are having bad times in America, and we've got to recognize that we're not the America we once were.
[00:06:44]  And we have to soul search and rediscover who we are.
[00:06:50]  He said it's not morning in America.
[00:06:52]  While I get what he's going for there, it felt a little shocking to hear that.
[00:06:56]  But it's true.
[00:06:56]  It's true.
[00:06:58]  Everybody knows it.
[00:06:59]  Mike Pence was just like, oh, you're insane the American people are bad.
[00:07:03]  No, that's not what he said.
[00:07:05]  No.
[00:07:05]  It's not what he said.
[00:07:06]  I will say, though, and this is the thing I did appreciate about the debate last night.
[00:07:10]  Yeah.
[00:07:10]  What you're talking about, Pat, is a serious policy difference in the party.
[00:07:14]  And it's good that they talk those things out.
[00:07:17]  There's actually some substance, some sort of depth.
[00:07:23]  One person who really thinks this is good, one person who really thinks this is bad, let them argue it out.
[00:07:26]  That's how this is supposed to be.
[00:07:27]  Okay, so let's reenact because Fox will not, this first time in my career, I've done this 45 years, I think, something like that.
[00:07:36]  It's a lot.
[00:07:37]  And every four years, this broadcast is usually as somebody that has been up all night pulling all the clips.
[00:07:46]  We're not pulling any clips because we can't.
[00:07:48]  We can't.
[00:07:49]  And you'll see it on TV.
[00:07:51]  Fox has hidden this debate.
[00:07:53]  CNN is not really playing any clips.
[00:07:56]  CNBC, MSNBC, no one is playing clips because Fox is, they're saying, we'll sue you.
[00:08:03]  Three minutes.
[00:08:04]  Why would you do that?
[00:08:05]  And it can't be in your archives.
[00:08:07]  Right.
[00:08:07]  So after a week, you can't play it ever again.
[00:08:10]  Right.
[00:08:10]  So any show that played a single clip.
[00:08:12]  You have to delete that part of the show.
[00:08:14]  Yeah.
[00:08:14]  It's impossible.
[00:08:16]  And, you know, most executives and media are just saying, okay, they're crazy.
[00:08:20]  Zero minutes.
[00:08:21]  Don't do any of it.
[00:08:22]  Right.
[00:08:23]  And quickly, as you're putting your puppets on, I would just point out, too, can we spread the blame a little bit for this?
[00:08:30]  Yes, Fox deserves the blame for not spreading these around.
[00:08:33]  I'm not taking any blame away from them per se, but I want to add additional blame here to the RNC for allowing this.
[00:08:42]  Next time you go to Fox, you say, you don't get this debate unless people get to see our damn candidates.
[00:08:47]  What was the whole point of this, to introduce these people to America?
[00:08:50]  And I understand why Fox wants to steal it all for themselves so they can have this, oh, it's going to be an exclusive and no one else gets to see it.
[00:08:57]  I get that from a self-interest point at some level, but like, that's not the self-interest of the RNC.
[00:09:02]  No, you know, here's what you do.
[00:09:04]  What we did when we did the summit, we had the summit.
[00:09:08]  It went all day.
[00:09:10]  It was behind the paywall all day, but you could.
[00:09:12]  We paid for the broadcast.
[00:09:13]  We paid for the broadcast and everything else could be taken.
[00:09:16]  So you saw that, even if you didn't see our broadcast, you saw those clips everywhere.
[00:09:21]  Everywhere.
[00:09:22]  And why not?
[00:09:22]  It's only good for you.
[00:09:24]  I know.
[00:09:24]  It's good for Fox for us to play the clips.
[00:09:27]  Hey, here's what happened in the debate on Fox last night.
[00:09:31]  It is hard to take you seriously with a pink puppet on your hand.
[00:09:33]  Oh, you like my Nikki Haley?
[00:09:36]  Yeah.
[00:09:38]  If you love Vladimir Putin so much, why don't you marry him?
[00:09:44]  You could tell it's Nikki Haley because it's the only feminine pink puppet, which she, by the way, made sure she pointed out to us over and over and over.
[00:09:52]  We got that you're a woman.
[00:09:54]  We can see it.
[00:09:55]  I know the actual history can't notice the differences.
[00:09:57]  Excuse me.
[00:09:58]  How contrived was that line?
[00:10:00]  I hate that.
[00:10:00]  How contrived was the line?
[00:10:03]  You know, should they be preparing that for a month?
[00:10:06]  Sneak this in when you can.
[00:10:07]  Yeah.
[00:10:08]  That if you want to talk about something, you ask a man.
[00:10:11]  If you want something done, ask a woman.
[00:10:15]  Like me.
[00:10:20]  All right.
[00:10:21]  Even though I'm a rhino and a war marker.
[00:10:24]  What is the audience you're playing to with that line?
[00:10:26]  I don't know.
[00:10:27]  Maybe if you're in the general election, but you think it's going to win people over.
[00:10:31]  But like what?
[00:10:31]  This is a party that's completely aligned against identity politics.
[00:10:36]  And you come out and your big point is, I've got a girly part.
[00:10:40]  Like, what is that?
[00:10:41]  I don't understand that at all.
[00:10:43]  Again, I don't have a, I don't have anything against Nikki Haley.
[00:10:46]  I just, I just don't understand.
[00:10:47]  I didn't either until last night.
[00:10:49]  Now I do.
[00:10:49]  She is out of line with me.
[00:10:51]  I need to add something to the Constitution of our program, Sarah.
[00:10:54]  If you'd write this down in the rule book, I don't want anyone to ever refer to Nikki Haley's girly part.
[00:11:01]  That made the Constitution?
[00:11:03]  Is there a method process on this?
[00:11:04]  Wow.
[00:11:05]  No, it's yeah.
[00:11:06]  That was an egregious event.
[00:11:08]  I had several other words I was going to use.
[00:11:10]  You should be happy I went that direction.
[00:11:12]  Now I feel a little weird as I'm holding a puppet on my hand, a Donald Trump puppet, and I'm pointing with Donald Trump's nose to Sarah.
[00:11:21]  But did you guys see the Tucker Carlson interview?
[00:11:25]  I loved it.
[00:11:26]  You did.
[00:11:26]  You watched it.
[00:11:27]  Did you really?
[00:11:27]  I watched it as well.
[00:11:29]  I thought it was really good.
[00:11:31]  I thought it was genuine.
[00:11:34]  Tucker is very genuine.
[00:11:35]  And bold.
[00:11:35]  Yeah.
[00:11:36]  I mean, when Chris Wallace came up and Trump said, I don't think that's a friend of yours.
[00:11:42]  And Tucker said, no, no, he's not a friend.
[00:11:46]  I mean, that's just honesty that you don't normally get.
[00:11:48]  Yeah.
[00:11:49]  And then for him to call him, what was it?
[00:11:52]  He called him a bitchy little man.
[00:11:55]  Wow.
[00:11:57]  I just brash and bold.
[00:12:00]  Well, I like the part where Tucker said, I mean, why wouldn't they just kill you?
[00:12:08]  And Donald Trump was like, don't.
[00:12:14]  Was there a tough moment at all for Trump in there?
[00:12:16]  Did he get a tough question about any of the hardball stuff?
[00:12:22]  No.
[00:12:22]  I mean, again, I think they are aligned on most policy issues.
[00:12:26]  I wouldn't expect it to be some hit job, but I was sure.
[00:12:28]  I was interested to see if he'd push him on something like, you know, the vaccine or the vaccine or something like that.
[00:12:33]  No, that's an interesting.
[00:12:35]  He pushed him, believe it or not, to get to that, why aren't they going to put a bullet in your head question?
[00:12:41]  He pushed him on Epstein.
[00:12:43]  Right.
[00:12:44]  It was really.
[00:12:45]  Did Trump say he didn't believe it?
[00:12:46]  No, Trump said he didn't believe it.
[00:12:48]  But Tucker absolutely said he was killed.
[00:12:50]  He was murdered.
[00:12:51]  And Trump said he was not.
[00:12:52]  No, not necessarily.
[00:12:54]  He said, I don't know.
[00:12:56]  But I don't think it's.
[00:12:56]  He kind of hedge, though.
[00:12:58]  I think it could go either way.
[00:12:59]  I got the impression he didn't believe.
[00:13:00]  He didn't believe it at all.
[00:13:01]  Yeah, because he was like, I don't think so.
[00:13:04]  I don't know.
[00:13:05]  I just think it was a very sloppy, sloppy situation.
[00:13:10]  Yeah, that's one way of putting it.
[00:13:12]  He also did talk about Bill Barr on how Bill Barr was a coward and he was afraid of impeachment.
[00:13:18]  And that's why he just kowtowed to everybody else.
[00:13:23]  So, you know.
[00:13:24]  Interesting.
[00:13:25]  Yeah.
[00:13:26]  It was better than the debate, I think.
[00:13:28]  Really?
[00:13:28]  I think Trump was a winner last night.
[00:13:30]  I think that's a very fair piece of analysis because no one.
[00:13:34]  I think DeSantis, I liked Vivek, but light cake.
[00:13:38]  Or according to my audience, like fake.
[00:13:41]  It's definitely a lot of pushback on the other thing.
[00:13:44]  He's very polarizing.
[00:13:46]  I don't know why.
[00:13:46]  I don't love him or hate him.
[00:13:47]  Yeah.
[00:13:48]  Which is interesting.
[00:13:50]  Again, we come from such a different experience here with Vivek.
[00:13:54]  We've known him long before he this audience knows him.
[00:13:57]  He was on the show 10 times before he announced he ran for president, probably talking about his books and everything else over the past five years.
[00:14:04]  So like we know this guy.
[00:14:05]  And I think like the American people who watched him were going through were two different experiences.
[00:14:11]  People like who were watching The Blaze and are informed on this guy and have heard him talk a million times.
[00:14:16]  I think watched that and were like, eh, not his best performance.
[00:14:19]  I think he was like, I think it wasn't his best.
[00:14:21]  He had some of those back and forth.
[00:14:23]  I thought he killed it.
[00:14:24]  Did you guys?
[00:14:25]  Yeah, I didn't think so.
[00:14:26]  I don't think anybody killed it.
[00:14:27]  I thought he stood.
[00:14:28]  Well, the Blaze audience stood up.
[00:14:30]  The Blaze audience poll had him at about 60% as the winner.
[00:14:34]  And the next closest was DeSantis, like at 37.
[00:14:36]  Part of that, though, I think, was that he dominated the stage.
[00:14:39]  I mean, they were all firing at him.
[00:14:41]  He was going back, but some of those, he even seemed to lose.
[00:14:44]  Like, I thought Chris Christie's, hey, you're repeating Obama's lines was actually a good slam on him.
[00:14:50]  I mean, it was, hey, oh, who's the skinny guy with the funny name?
[00:14:54]  Like, who's the skinny guy with the funny name?
[00:14:57]  Like, kind of, and this works with the puppet.
[00:15:00]  It does work with the puppet.
[00:15:02]  I thought that was a bad exchange.
[00:15:03]  Some of the other stuff I thought he actually sort of lost.
[00:15:06]  And while he was good and he made a big impact, I thought for someone, for people who knew him and like he was really good in Iowa to the point of like he blew the room away.
[00:15:18]  I mean, he owned the room when he was there.
[00:15:21]  With this, I thought he was up and down.
[00:15:23]  I've heard many people say to me, he felt a little like, car salesman, I'm giving you a 1999 Acura.
[00:15:30]  It was that type of thing.
[00:15:32]  Which I've never taken, I've never seen that from him before.
[00:15:34]  I never felt that way before.
[00:15:36]  On the other hand, for people who had no idea, the overwhelming majority of people who had not paid attention to him and never seen him before, maybe never even heard of him before, I think they got the impression he was the frontrunner.
[00:15:48]  Everyone was attacking him.
[00:15:50]  He came off, I think his awareness, his, he was taking a lot of people from zero to 60 last night.
[00:15:57]  And that, I think, worked really well.
[00:15:58]  I think he had the most impact in the debate last night, moving his position.
[00:16:02]  The only thing that he could have done better, I think, is when Christie was saying, I've had enough of you.
[00:16:07]  I've had it.
[00:16:07]  Well, you've had enough cheeseburgers too.
[00:16:09]  But that doesn't stop you from stuffing more down your fat face.
[00:16:12]  But that's not really his style.
[00:16:14]  No, no, it's not his style.
[00:16:16]  We invest in a lot of things as we go through life.
[00:16:19]  The gastric bypass was not a good investment for Chris.
[00:16:22]  It didn't work.
[00:16:22]  It just didn't work out.
[00:16:23]  Did he have one?
[00:16:24]  He had one and he lost a ton of weight.
[00:16:26]  Wow.
[00:16:27]  And he's just put it all back on.
[00:16:28]  Wow.
[00:16:29]  It just didn't work out.
[00:16:30]  Oh, boy.
[00:16:31]  You know, sometimes.
[00:16:31]  I better not tell you about my gastric bypass that I had.
[00:16:34]  Oh, wow.
[00:16:35]  Is that a wow?
[00:16:41]  This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
[00:16:44]  We have Selena Zito with us now.
[00:16:46]  Selena, where'd you watch the debate last night?
[00:16:50]  In a bar.
[00:16:51]  In a bar, okay.
[00:16:52]  All right.
[00:16:53]  Not because of the alcoholism.
[00:16:54]  I think that's under control.
[00:16:57]  But I wanted you on today because you're an observer of people and you have called the last couple of elections exactly.
[00:17:10]  And these, we're entering really difficult times.
[00:17:15]  How did the people react last night to the debate?
[00:17:19]  You know, people were really excited.
[00:17:23]  And I think that, and not I think, is after conversations with them during and after, and sort of watching their reactions, is that they understand that this next generation of Conservative populists, because that's basically what was on the stage, right?
[00:17:45]  This new formation of the Republican Party, which can be nothing, which is conservative populism.
[00:17:53]  They felt that they had a grasp of important policy issues.
[00:18:00]  They were each to a degree in a different direction, but basically in the same line with them.
[00:18:06]  And people were really excited last night because they got to see people most had governing experience, but also had a willingness to punch back and not take it in the same way that perhaps Romney would handle being attacked, right?
[00:18:30]  How is Mike Pence received?
[00:18:34]  With respect.
[00:18:36]  You know, people, whether, you know, he was nowhere on the chart for any one pick.
[00:18:43]  However, there is a deep respect for Mike Pence.
[00:18:47]  People look at him as a man who has served this country and did a good job while he did it and believed, even whether they still loved Trump or didn't, believed he did what he was supposed to do on January 6th.
[00:19:04]  No matter how hard that decision was, no matter how much pressure that he faced, they believed doing the right thing is not always easy, but something you have a duty to do.
[00:19:16]  But he was perceived last night as just not a factor, though, in this election.
[00:19:24]  No, no, I wouldn't say that he was a factor in terms of a choice.
[00:19:30]  Right.
[00:19:31]  However, I think what he had to say was important.
[00:19:37]  And, you know, there are a lot of conservatives that are concerned about saying out loud how they felt about what happened on January 6th in either direction, whether they thought that it was important, whether they thought it was overblown.
[00:19:57]  You know, no matter what you say about January 6th, if you're conservative, you are going to get bashed.
[00:20:04]  So they thought that Pence at that moment maybe spoke on both sides of it in a way that was comforting to them.

=== Conservative Governors Who Made Ground (08:41) ===

[00:20:15]  So there is, I think there were maybe definitely two, but maybe three players, if you put Nikki Haley in there, that made some ground.
[00:20:29]  So tell me about Nikki Haley, Vivek, Ramaswamy, and DeSantis.
[00:20:35]  What was the reaction?
[00:20:37]  Yeah, those three, well, when I walked out of that bar, those were the three that people really liked.
[00:20:44]  They liked what they liked about Haley and what they liked about DeSantis is that they've proven track records of good governing, right?
[00:20:54]  Governing as conservatives.
[00:20:55]  That's important.
[00:20:57]  They also punch back.
[00:20:59]  They like that.
[00:21:00]  They may not always agree with what they punch back with, but they liked that they aren't milquetoast, that they aren't, you know, they are the same people that would stand up for a Supreme Court nominee in the way that Trump did when his Supreme Court nominees were under attack, right?
[00:21:20]  They would look at them as those two as being capable and competent to do that, but also fiery enough.
[00:21:31]  And in terms of Ramaswamy, well, he, you know, I was the first person, I'm the one that actually broke the news that he was running.
[00:21:41]  I sat down with him in his home in Columbus, Ohio, and interviewed him the day before he announced.
[00:21:49]  And so he was, but he still had only been sound bites, right?
[00:21:54]  People didn't see him interact.
[00:21:57]  People didn't see, you know, what he was all about.
[00:22:00]  And they got a taste of it.
[00:22:02]  And it was a pretty divided room on some of the things that he said.
[00:22:10]  They liked his aspirational ideas.
[00:22:17]  They liked his youth.
[00:22:20]  They liked his willingness to punch back against the establishment of both parties.
[00:22:27]  But they're not quite sure totally on substance and not that he's not substantive, but on all things, they're not sure yet if he has the maturity to be or either that, the wisdom to surround himself with people that would make him good at the job of being president.
[00:22:50]  Because when you're president, you know, Reagan was a perfect example of this.
[00:22:55]  The things that you're weak at, you have to make sure you surround yourself with competent people that can help guide you, not tell you what to do, but guide you out of dangerous territories.
[00:23:10]  So who was the big winner last night?
[00:23:14]  I think Republicans were.
[00:23:18]  I think they had, you know, that, and this is based on watching people.
[00:23:23]  Everyone that left that event was very happy.
[00:23:27]  Everyone that left that bar was happy.
[00:23:33]  And for anyone who thinks that conservatism is dying or the Republican Party was dying, this was mostly young people.
[00:23:43]  And these were people that are professionals, that are in their mid-30s, in their mid-40s, which I now consider young.
[00:23:56]  And just were very excited about their choices.
[00:24:01]  I think the important thing to remember is that voter, we tend to forget that voters rarely, whether it's in politics or in their personal lives, look in the rearview mirror.
[00:24:18]  They always look forward.
[00:24:20]  Just think about the problems that you face in life.
[00:24:23]  If you stay stuck in the past, you tend to not be successful.
[00:24:28]  You tend to not be able to move on in your personal life, whatever the issue is.
[00:24:33]  But people that are aspirational tend to move forward.
[00:24:38]  And so while everyone that was there voted for Trump, they're not as glued to it as what you sort of hear about in the national news, right?
[00:24:53]  The national news has a narrative, blah, blah, blah.
[00:24:56]  But I think this is a very open race.
[00:24:59]  It doesn't mean that Trump's not going to win it, but I also think that we should pay attention to everyone.
[00:25:09]  So I agree with you, but strangely, because I think Trump, when he was talking to Tucker, there was a point towards the beginning where they were just talking about 2020 and the election results and all of that.
[00:25:24]  And I thought that that's not, if we focus on that, and it's important to figure out exactly what happened and make sure that we correct those things.
[00:25:35]  But that's what the GOP should be doing right now.
[00:25:38]  But if we are being dragged back, then we lose the future of the country.
[00:25:49]  That is, that's right.
[00:25:51]  But everybody is very, very loyal to Donald Trump.
[00:25:54]  I'm loyal to Donald Trump for what he's going through.
[00:25:57]  He doesn't have to go through this.
[00:25:59]  He's going in today to get a mugshot and fingerprint.
[00:26:04]  I mean, this is historic what they're doing to this guy.
[00:26:07]  Do the people that support him, will they even consider somebody else?
[00:26:16]  Yeah, they will.
[00:26:19]  It's a really interesting nuance.
[00:26:23]  And again, I don't mean to come across as saying that I don't think Trump will win.
[00:26:30]  I'm not trying to give that impression, but I think it's important to understand that voters can be willing to just be extremely outraged at what Trump is going through, be extremely happy with the policies that he set forward, and still not want him to be the nominee.
[00:26:56]  There is a portion of that, and I think it's important to pay attention to those voices.
[00:27:03]  And I think part of the challenge that Trump faces right now, and this is really to your point, and I'm so glad that you made this, is to not constantly talk about 2020.
[00:27:16]  We have to remember, we have to remember that 2020 was probably the worst year in everyone's lives.
[00:27:26]  If they didn't lose a loved one or a friend or a co-worker or a childhood friend or their profession wasn't dramatically changed.
[00:27:36]  Yeah, or their job or their business.
[00:27:38]  Their job or their business or their children haven't fallen behind or their finances haven't taken a hit.
[00:27:46]  Relitigating that race.
[00:27:48]  And by the way, that race was just absolutely horrible.
[00:27:51]  Relitigating that race means that we are forcing people to relive 2020.
[00:28:01]  And that is his challenge.
[00:28:05]  One of Donald Trump's greatest gifts in 2016 was his aspiration.
[00:28:12]  Yes.
[00:28:12]  Right?
[00:28:13]  People missed, reporters missed what Make America Great Again meant.
[00:28:20]  It meant being part of something bigger than themselves.
[00:28:24]  The reporters called it nationalistic, racist, bigoted, whatever.
[00:28:29]  You know, just add an issue at the name of the end of a word, and that's what they called it.
[00:28:35]  What they missed was that it was aspirational.
[00:28:38]  So he was always talking about going forward, going forward, going forward together.
[00:28:44]  And his problem right now is that he talks too much about 2020, and he talks too much about himself.
[00:28:54]  That is the challenge that he faces.

=== The Challenge of Talking Too Much (02:13) ===

[00:28:56]  Yeah, and that's a tough challenge.
[00:28:58]  I mean, especially when they are trying to put you in jail.
[00:29:01]  That's really hard.
[00:29:02]  Selena.
[00:29:03]  I completely agree with you.
[00:29:06]  That is what voters told me.
[00:29:08]  Thank you so much.
[00:29:09]  I appreciate it.
[00:29:09]  We'll talk again soon.
[00:29:10]  All right.
[00:29:11]  Good to talk to you.
[00:29:12]  Sounds great.
[00:29:13]  You're listening to the best of the Glendeck program.
[00:29:17]  Seth Dylan is with us.
[00:29:18]  He is the CEO of the Babylon Bee and wanted to get him in today to talk a little bit about the debate and where we are.
[00:29:26]  What did you think of the debate last night?
[00:29:30]  Well, I went on the internet where people tell me what to think.
[00:29:33]  Yes.
[00:29:34]  Yes.
[00:29:35]  Yeah.
[00:29:35]  So what did you do?
[00:29:37]  What did they tell me to think?
[00:29:38]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:29:39]  Well, I will say this.
[00:29:40]  I don't know how to judge how someone won a debate like this because there's so many people on stage vying for attention.
[00:29:47]  And sometimes the person who gets the most attention is the winner, even if they didn't do the best.
[00:29:52]  Right.
[00:29:53]  I feel like that was probably Vivek because, I mean, it seemed like it was like Pence and Vivek going at it like half the time.
[00:30:00]  Right.
[00:30:01]  There was a lot of back and forth between them.
[00:30:03]  Right.
[00:30:04]  Pence was kind of creepy.
[00:30:06]  Yeah.
[00:30:06]  Yeah.
[00:30:07]  At the beginning, very smiley, like excessively smiley.
[00:30:12]  And then went a little dark.
[00:30:13]  Yeah.
[00:30:13]  And that kind of, that was a little weird for me.
[00:30:15]  Yeah.
[00:30:15]  But, I mean, look, to your comment, it was his first time and he handled himself very well.
[00:30:21]  I think he really did.
[00:30:22]  But I don't know how to pick a winner in these things.
[00:30:25]  I don't know.
[00:30:25]  I think whoever we're talking about the most, whoever people are either attacking or praising the most is the winner of the thing.
[00:30:30]  And so you just have to kind of see who's trending on Twitter, I guess.
[00:30:32]  So X. Sorry, X.
[00:30:35]  Yeah.
[00:30:35]  Like that's going to catch up.
[00:30:38]  Who was the official winner?
[00:30:40]  Yes.
[00:30:40]  Daily Mail came out with the first, what I've seen, scientific poll for what that's worth.
[00:30:44]  Who had the best debate performance?
[00:30:46]  Number one was Vivek Ramaswamy, 28%.
[00:30:48]  Ron DeSantis, number two, 27%.
[00:30:51]  Mike Pence was number three, 13%.
[00:30:54]  I'm not surprised by that.
[00:30:55]  I mean, because to your point, he was aggressive.
[00:30:57]  He was very aggressive and engaged.
[00:30:58]  You know, he got in the middle of it.
[00:31:00]  And, you know, his views, I don't think, are exactly aligned with voters right now in the party, but he was aggressive and he was in the middle of those fights.
[00:31:07]  He had some good points mixed in there.

=== Who's Really Winning? (03:52) ===

[00:31:10]  And for a guy who has really not made any noise at all, and all you're talking about is turn out the volume a little bit, right?
[00:31:16]  He was so active, had there been a fly on his head, it probably would have flown off.
[00:31:19]  Yes.
[00:31:20]  Yes, possibly.
[00:31:21]  Questionably.
[00:31:22]  Tim Scott was next at eight.
[00:31:23]  That one was strange because I didn't think he made, he didn't really seem to stand out at all to me.
[00:31:28]  Nikki Haley, 7%.
[00:31:29]  Chris Christie, four.
[00:31:31]  Doug Bergamentum at three and Asa Hutchinson at two.
[00:31:35]  Poor Asa.
[00:31:37]  Oh, man.
[00:31:37]  I wish we had the transporter from Star Trek because I would have beamed a lot of them right back up.
[00:31:44]  So you also have the book about gender, The Babylon Be Guide to Gender.
[00:31:50]  Not a single question about this.
[00:31:53]  No, that was shocking.
[00:31:55]  Not one.
[00:31:55]  I noticed that.
[00:31:56]  Not one.
[00:31:57]  Well, you've got Fox running the thing, right?
[00:31:59]  And Fox has been under some fire recently from the right for being kind of like squishy or possibly even like pro-trans on some issues, you know?
[00:32:09]  So I was not really surprised by it, but I was disappointed that it was.
[00:32:12]  I mean, it's like, that's like the cultural issue of our time right now.
[00:32:15]  It's the reason we wrote this book.
[00:32:17]  Well, does this help us define a woman?
[00:32:21]  Because I, you know, there's, there is a test in here.
[00:32:25]  Listen, we are not biologists.
[00:32:28]  Right.
[00:32:31]  So we wouldn't be qualified to give you a definition of woman.
[00:32:34]  Yeah.
[00:32:35]  Well, your test.
[00:32:37]  Still not sure if you're a woman, take the test.
[00:32:40]  Are you always cold?
[00:32:42]  No.
[00:32:43]  No, I am always cold.
[00:32:44]  Yeah.
[00:32:45]  It's a practice one.
[00:32:47]  Has a human ever popped out of you?
[00:32:50]  No.
[00:32:52]  I don't think so.
[00:32:53]  No.
[00:32:54]  Have you ever decorated a bed with six or more pillows?
[00:32:57]  I refuse to answer.
[00:32:59]  Can you tell the difference between cream white and rustic farmhouse white?
[00:33:04]  I refuse.
[00:33:05]  You definitely can.
[00:33:06]  Glenn's got two points so far.
[00:33:07]  Yeah.
[00:33:09]  Have you run into a curb in the past 24 hours?
[00:33:13]  Be honest, Carol.
[00:33:15]  Do you bleed for an extended period of time at regular intervals?
[00:33:25]  Does it take you over three hours to decide what you want to eat?
[00:33:29]  Are you currently a member of at least three pyramid schemes?
[00:33:34]  Again, this just allows us to draw general inferences, though, but because we're not biologists, we can't say definitively that's not.
[00:33:40]  Of course.
[00:33:41]  This quiz will give you a good idea.
[00:33:43]  Right.
[00:33:43]  Do you find simple movie plots hard to follow?
[00:33:47]  Do you frequently describe your emotional state as fine when you're not, in fact, fine?
[00:33:53]  Is your Starbucks drink order anything other than black coffee?
[00:33:57]  Do you listen to Harry Stiles?
[00:33:59]  Do you know who Harry Styles is?
[00:34:01]  That's great.
[00:34:02]  That's great.
[00:34:03]  So we had this problem.
[00:34:04]  You know, for most of human history, we didn't have science.
[00:34:08]  We were all a bunch of bigots.
[00:34:10]  And we thought that there were just men and women.
[00:34:12]  And then science was invented very recently and they determined that men can get pregnant and that women can suffer testicle injuries.
[00:34:19]  And so once scientists discovered that, it opened up this huge, you know, awesome opportunity to explore the gender spectrum and how truly infinite it is.
[00:34:29]  Yeah.
[00:34:29]  I was really happy that Nikki Haley multiple times pointed out that she was a woman because how else would we know?
[00:34:35]  As onlookers, we wouldn't know she was the only female candidate, but she pointed it out like every three or four.
[00:34:39]  She had to say it.
[00:34:40]  Right, yes.
[00:34:40]  But is she a biologist?
[00:34:42]  Does she know?
[00:34:42]  Does she even know?
[00:34:43]  Does she even know?
[00:34:45]  Well, I make that reference because, I mean, this was that comes from the Supreme Court nomination.
[00:34:52]  You've got a situation where you've got somebody getting confirmed to the Supreme Court saying, I cannot define what a woman is.
[00:34:58]  That's how insane we've become.
[00:35:00]  I think, too.
[00:35:01]  That's how insane we become.

=== Comedians Predicting Reality (08:44) ===

[00:35:02]  And so to satirize it, you really don't have to satirize it.
[00:35:05]  No, no, you don't.
[00:35:06]  You really just have to hold it up there and say, look how absurd this is.
[00:35:11]  That's kind of what this book does.
[00:35:12]  We don't really have to go much further than you can.
[00:35:16]  Where else do you go?
[00:35:17]  Right.
[00:35:18]  Right.
[00:35:18]  I tell people all the time, they think our job is easier than ever because the world is so crazy.
[00:35:23]  And I say, imagine if your job is to write jokes that are funnier than what Democrats are doing in real life.
[00:35:28]  That's your job.
[00:35:28]  It's impossible.
[00:35:29]  Good luck.
[00:35:30]  That's why you guys keep predicting the future, right?
[00:35:31]  Exactly.
[00:35:32]  You keep writing these fake articles and then they come true like six months later.
[00:35:35]  Yeah.
[00:35:36]  We have a lot of those.
[00:35:37]  There are times when I honestly look at something and laugh because I think it's you.
[00:35:43]  Right.
[00:35:43]  And then I'm like, oh, dear God, no, this is real.
[00:35:47]  Well, we just, there's just that, I think it was New York Times op-ed about how elections are bad for democracy or something like that.
[00:35:52]  We had made a joke about that.
[00:35:54]  And that's another one of those ones that came true.
[00:35:55]  It's just, it's wild.
[00:35:57]  So are we, are we close to the end yet?
[00:36:00]  I mean, end of the insanity, not end of the country or anything else, but I mean, there are some, for instance, comedy is coming back.
[00:36:08]  Yeah.
[00:36:08]  And it's coming roaring back.
[00:36:10]  Yeah.
[00:36:10]  I think.
[00:36:12]  You're seeing things that just three, four years ago, you would have never seen.
[00:36:16]  Never seen.
[00:36:18]  Well, in comedy, you're saying?
[00:36:20]  Yeah.
[00:36:21]  I do appreciate that there.
[00:36:23]  And I think a big part of the shift will be when comedians start taking this stuff less seriously and actually joke about it.
[00:36:28]  This is one of the problems that we've had from my perspective doing humor and satire is there are so many of these comedians, especially the late night talk shows, stuff like that, is just propping up the popular narrative and not challenging it and poking holes in it.
[00:36:40]  It's almost propaganda.
[00:36:41]  It is propaganda and propaganda is not funny.
[00:36:43]  No.
[00:36:44]  But then you've still got guys like Bill Maher, for example, who I disagree with on almost everything.
[00:36:48]  He did a monologue on the whole gender issue and talked about how crazy it was.
[00:36:52]  He joked about how when he was a kid, he wanted to be a pirate.
[00:36:54]  Thank God no one scheduled him for peg leg surgery and eye removal.
[00:36:58]  And that was funny.
[00:36:59]  And those kinds of jokes, people don't understand the power of comedy to undermine these bad ideas and make them seem absurd.
[00:37:07]  And it's been my contention for a long time.
[00:37:08]  I've said this for a long time, that the absurd has only become so popular and sacred where you can't even criticize it because it hasn't been mocked enough.
[00:37:16]  Well, that is the one thing that dictators and authoritarian figures hate the most.
[00:37:22]  Yeah.
[00:37:22]  Being mocked.
[00:37:24]  Because once they mock you, I mean, look at how popular comedy was when they were mocking the right.
[00:37:31]  Right.
[00:37:32]  And you had Jon Stewart.
[00:37:33]  You had all these people mocking the right, mocking society.
[00:37:37]  It was very effective.
[00:37:38]  It worked.
[00:37:39]  Extremely effective.
[00:37:39]  Absolutely worked.
[00:37:40]  And then all of a sudden, all those shows went away.
[00:37:42]  Well, it's working in the other way now where they're all in support of the narrative and the powers that be.
[00:37:48]  And so they're not challenging it.
[00:37:49]  And so that just allows them to maintain their power instead of undermining it.
[00:37:52]  And the comedian's primary job, really, besides making you laugh, which is really rule number one, is to is to speak truth to power, right?
[00:38:00]  Just doing it through humor and mockery and making fun of them, poking holes in the popular narrative.
[00:38:04]  So I think if we, if we do that, if we start seeing comedians do that, if people start to really wake up, especially now that kids are involved in all of this, you see parents waking up and speaking up about these things, if people actually get the courage to start challenging this stuff and pointing out how crazy it is.
[00:38:19]  And I think we do.
[00:38:20]  The pendulum does swing back the other way.
[00:38:24]  How much of that do you believe?
[00:38:26]  Well, it all depends on if that actually happens.
[00:38:28]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:38:29]  If it actually happens, yeah, I think we make a lot of progress.
[00:38:31]  Otherwise, we'll be the lone lunatics who seem like lunatics who are still saying that two and two make four.
[00:38:36]  Yeah.
[00:38:41]  Is your job at all kind of depressing because you're pointing these things out and you're, I mean, comedy is fun.
[00:38:53]  Yeah.
[00:38:53]  You know, it's fun.
[00:38:54]  It's hard work, but it's fun.
[00:38:57]  But when you're writing it and then you see it come true, you ever sit around with everybody going, oh, God, man, what?
[00:39:05]  I mean, it is disconcerting when the jokes come true.
[00:39:10]  It is.
[00:39:11]  I mean, we do get a laugh out of it.
[00:39:12]  It's always a, it's, we have this list.
[00:39:14]  We have a spreadsheet where we're tracking the fulfilled prophecies and there's nearly 100.
[00:39:18]  I think we're at like 97 or so.
[00:39:20]  Like we're about to hit 100 of these.
[00:39:22]  Where over the course of the last, the B was started in 2016.
[00:39:25]  So we didn't have a lot of them early on, but lately it's been ramping up and they're coming true more and more quickly.
[00:39:30]  Sometimes we'll publish an article and within a matter of hours it comes true and it's reported in the headlines.
[00:39:35]  So that is disconcerting.
[00:39:37]  Can we get that list?
[00:39:38]  I'd love to go over that.
[00:39:39]  Oh, yeah.
[00:39:39]  Yeah.
[00:39:40]  Like right now?
[00:39:41]  Well, no, no, no.
[00:39:42]  Okay.
[00:39:42]  At some time.
[00:39:43]  Yeah.
[00:39:43]  But yeah, it's a spreadsheet.
[00:39:45]  I think I have a link to it in my in my in my bio.
[00:39:47]  I have like the link tree and there's a link to it in there.
[00:39:49]  Someone could pull it up if they wanted to.
[00:39:51]  But yeah, we have a lot of, we track them in a spreadsheet.
[00:39:53]  So it's insane.
[00:39:54]  It is disconcerting.
[00:39:56]  It is somewhat depressing that people think that they often criticize us.
[00:40:01]  Our jokes are too close to reality.
[00:40:02]  And that's why people believe them.
[00:40:03]  And that's not the case.
[00:40:04]  It's that reality is too close to satire.
[00:40:06]  Correct.
[00:40:07]  And that's why people believe our jokes because the real headlines, you remember the headline from a couple of years ago?
[00:40:12]  I think this is a great example of how shark attacks are being rebranded as negative interactions because it stigmatizes the sharks as these violent creatures.
[00:40:21]  Like that is comedy.
[00:40:23]  It's comedy.
[00:40:24]  But that's in the, it's in the New York Post.
[00:40:25]  It's a real headline.
[00:40:26]  And so like those kinds of things, it's just you laugh or cry, Glenn.
[00:40:30]  I don't know.
[00:40:30]  I mean, I know, I think you're going to, I think we're going to come back when we're past this emotionally and we're away from it and we've hopefully rediscovered the truth.
[00:40:43]  The truth will be rediscovered.
[00:40:45]  It's just whether we destroy ourselves completely before we rediscover.
[00:40:49]  Or we have to rebuild from the ground up.
[00:40:50]  Correct.
[00:40:51]  But it will be rediscovered.
[00:40:52]  And when it does, people will look back at this time.
[00:40:55]  I mean, they will write about this period of history in so many different ways.
[00:41:02]  I think the destruction, the way the left has pulled this off is brilliant.
[00:41:08]  It's happened quickly, too.
[00:41:10]  I mentioned Bill Maher a minute ago.
[00:41:11]  Dennis Prager was on Bill Maher's show a few years ago.
[00:41:14]  You remember this clip from like, what is it, 2018?
[00:41:16]  I don't know when it was.
[00:41:17]  Not that long ago.
[00:41:18]  I think it was.
[00:41:18]  And he was talking about how they were starting to put tampons in the boys' restroom.
[00:41:22]  And Bill Maher and his audience thought that was hysterical.
[00:41:25]  You're out of your mind.
[00:41:25]  You're making that up.
[00:41:26]  It's not really happening.
[00:41:28]  I mean, that's how quickly it's gone.
[00:41:31]  So tell me, who's this book targeted to?
[00:41:35]  Me?
[00:41:36]  Or is this, is this a book that, because I really, I want to ask the people who have gone down this road where I've got to have tampons in the boys' room.
[00:41:46]  Yeah.
[00:41:47]  You would have thought that was insane.
[00:41:50]  In fact, you know, the clip that you're talking about, they did.
[00:41:55]  All the Democrats in the room thought it was crazy.
[00:41:56]  All of them thought it was crazy.
[00:41:58]  There's no new evidence that has been revealed.
[00:42:02]  You know, we haven't found, hey, look at this.
[00:42:05]  You know, it's a removable penis on, you know, on old bones that we found.
[00:42:10]  Nothing has changed.
[00:42:12]  Right.
[00:42:12]  Except people have just told you that you have to say these things and this is the new science.
[00:42:19]  Yeah.
[00:42:21]  Do you think people will pick this up and maybe, maybe go.
[00:42:27]  Second guess it?
[00:42:29]  I think they might.
[00:42:29]  So one of our most popular articles ever was about how a motorcyclist identified as a bicyclist and set a world record.
[00:42:36]  And it went crazy viral.
[00:42:37]  It got like 6 million or 8 million shares or something like that on Facebook.
[00:42:41]  And I got a stream of emails, a steady stream of emails from people, no joke, emailing me straight face saying, I didn't really understand the men and women sports issue, what the issue is.
[00:42:52]  I thought it was all about tolerance and acceptance until I read this article.
[00:42:55]  It like made it clear for me how crazy this is.
[00:42:58]  It really does actually have an impact on people's thinking when you draw out the absurdity of it that way by putting it in a humorous context.
[00:43:06]  So I don't know.
[00:43:06]  Can you hand this book to a liberal Democrat who's on board with all this stuff and they will all of a sudden renounce all of it?
[00:43:13]  I don't know that that's necessarily the case.
[00:43:14]  But I'm going to leave one in the middle.
[00:43:16]  But a reasonable person, reasonable person reading through this, I think, will find a lot of it funny and they'll find it funny because it's true.
[00:43:23]  And like you said, you can't, the truth will assert itself at some point.
[00:43:28]  Yes.
[00:43:28]  And you can't overcome that.
[00:43:30]  Yeah.
[00:43:30]  Thanks so much for being here, Seth.
[00:43:32]  The name of the book is the Babylon B Guide to Gender.
[00:43:35]  It is pre-sale right now.
[00:43:37]  Comprehensive handbook to men, women, and the millions of new genders we just made up from Babylon B. Thanks, Seth.
[00:43:45]  Appreciate it.
[00:43:46]  Thank you, Glenn.