Andrew Klavan argues that art like Dostoevsky's and Hitchcock's works reveals societal decay caused by the loss of faith and Nietzschean philosophy, asserting that true Christian art must authentically depict evil and violence to explore the battle between natural man and Christ. The episode also features a promotional read for Relief Factor, a call to rate the podcast against media censorship, and an interview with President Trump where his wife Tanya Beck initially refused to appear but later praised his historical knowledge despite finding him intimidating. Listeners critique the lack of focus on economic issues like the debt bomb while Klavan contends that avoiding darkness in art prevents a genuine exploration of the human condition. [Automatically generated summary]
Today on the podcast, we hear from you on what you thought about the interview with President Trump.
And if you missed it, we play some of the highlights, some of the shocking things that he said.
Also, Andrew Clavin, a good friend of the program, tries to talk down to me just a little bit because, well, he's smarter than I am.
And the one and only Tanya Beck, my wife, usually not wowed by anything.
Sarah wanted to know what did she think about the White House tour and visiting the White House with President Trump and the history stuff he talked about.
Yesterday, we got her on the phone as well.
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Laura and Pam's Excellent Call Back00:14:17
Sarah said to me in the break, she said, I'm more interested in what your wife has to think about it.
And I'm like, I mean, I'm the broadcaster of the family.
But she is not a huge history nerd like you are, and she's not impressed by anything.
So I figured she might be impressed about this trip.
Yeah.
You know, it's so that is so Tanya in a nutshell.
She is, she's not, she's been invited to, I've gone to the White House maybe three times.
I take my kids every time because she's like, no, I'd rather, I don't want to go.
I mean, what are we going to do?
We're going to get all dressed up and go someplace.
And I'm like, honey, it's the White House.
And she's like, yeah, whatever.
So she's, she, first time she went to Mar-Lago was just a couple of months ago.
This was her first time at the White House.
And I know she had an amazing day, but you're right.
I would like to hear what she has to say about all the history stuff.
It's interesting.
Unfortunately, she said no.
Oh, did she say no?
She won't come on the air.
She won't come on the air.
Oh, call her back up.
Call her back up right now.
Call her back up.
I'll do it.
I like my job.
I'm not going to.
You work for me, not for her.
Oh, I don't know if that's true.
She's more important for sure.
There's no call her up.
She said no.
Just call her up.
No means no, Glenn.
I'm calling her, I'm calling her on my, I'm going to FaceTime her.
This is a, no.
This is a good idea.
I'm going to FaceTime her right now.
Why?
Why is this so dumb?
I mean, I'm just saying she has expressed what her will is, and you are seemingly harassing her.
I'm not harassing her.
She's at home right now.
She's at home.
I can track her.
Oh, I'm tracking her.
I can track her.
There's a lot being uncovered right now.
There is.
We're learning a lot about this relationship.
Is that Nellie?
Here we go.
Here we go.
Oh, yeah.
I wish she blocked him.
That would have been the best.
She blocked me.
She just said again.
You're just.
She's listening and she's fucking me.
Yeah, because she doesn't want to come on.
She said specifically no.
She just did it again.
Because she's not interested in you or what you want.
She's with her boyfriend.
She's with Manuel, the Pew Pool Boy.
I didn't even know we had a pool boy, but that's who she's with.
Unbelievable.
Oh, I'm calling you.
I am calling you when you least expect it, honey.
Expect it.
I'll call you.
Can you describe how she felt about this?
Was it different than previous?
I mean, you've been in the middle of the day because I didn't even think of that.
I didn't even think about it.
You didn't think about your wife's feelings.
No wonder she said about it at all.
No.
I mean, we were with each other, and I know she had a great time, and we talked about it, but I didn't ask her, like, what'd you think of the history part?
You know, it's like, she's not into that.
You know, she is like, we are polar opposites.
And so it's the reason why we have such a great marriage because if we were the same, we'd destroy each other.
It'd be bad.
It would be bad.
And so we get along because she's just not interested in a lot of this stuff.
She's not interested in politics and she's not impressed by anything.
And I love her for that.
She's the one that's kept me grounded because she's like, oh, really, big shot?
Oh, yeah, that's really cool.
And I'm like, well, I thought it.
This is you being grounded?
Wow.
I guess I'm sure she had a positive influence.
Let's go to Chris in Texas.
Maybe I'll find a friend there.
Hi, Chris.
Hey, thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
I appreciate those marriage tips from Glenn.
Hey, I wanted to say a great job on the interview last night.
You know, getting President Trump unfiltered and kind of unbiased.
I was listening to my 10-year-old at dinner last night.
And it's really tough to get quality, truthful sources, and especially for the kids, right?
And so it was great to kind of see him in that, where you were kind of not guiding him, but letting him be himself.
And to me, it kind of equated to the, during the campaign, the Joe Rogan moment, where he did the interview for a couple hours.
Yeah.
First time people really saw him.
Like, that's kind of what I thought about last night.
It's like, man, I'm going to wait for an update for two, three months.
Now I'm finally seeing it, you know?
Wow, good.
I'm glad you got that.
You know, when you're doing it, you have absolutely no idea.
And even I'm watching it this morning and I was like, I don't know if that, I don't know what worked.
I don't know what didn't work.
I don't know what people got out of it.
So I'm glad to hear that.
Thank you.
Appreciate it, Chris.
Let me go to Laura in Florida.
Hello, Laura.
Hello, Glenn.
It was really excellent.
I've been able to watch all of his interviews with all these different anchors and people and maybe missed a couple.
The nature of my professional life has made that possible.
I was so struck by your command of the situation.
And I'm telling you, Trump trusts you.
And I think that's why it went so well.
Your questions were spot on.
There were pauses where no one was trying to talk over or interrupt him.
You found the moments.
It was just a flow that I just had not seen yet.
I loved it.
I thought it was most excellent.
And as you were saying earlier in the program, it really shows us who Donald Trump really is.
And it told me a lot about you too.
So I want to thank you for that.
It was really, really excellent.
Great.
Thank you, Laura.
I tell you, I wish I'm going to go back and ask him if he'd do something different with me at the White House next time.
Next time I go, I'm going to see if I can get some different kind of interview because you really didn't see.
You didn't see the best parts of him.
You really didn't.
I was allowed to.
And his staff even said, they said, as he was leaving, his staff said, he's not like this with other people.
She said, he's like a kid in a candy store with you.
He's like all about history and just like, look at this, look at this.
Cause he was taking me.
I mean, he was literally almost like dragging me into places like, come here, come here, come here.
I got to show you this.
It was so amazing to see how excited he was about the history of our country and preservation of our history.
He was just remarkable, just remarkable.
I wish I could show that part of him to you.
Pam in Texas.
Hi.
Hi.
How are y'all doing this morning?
I am good.
How are you, Pam?
I'm good.
I totally agree with the last caller, Laura.
I thought it was one of the best interviews I've seen, and I've caught every one of them.
He was.
He was different with you.
He was relaxed.
And he was.
I can't really put my finger on it, but he just seemed to enjoy it, relish it.
And I really thought it was one of the best interviews I've ever seen of anybody.
Wow.
Wow.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
I appreciate y'all doing that.
And I can't wait for the next one.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
It's so odd because I can't judge it.
It's so odd.
I don't see, did you see it?
Did you feel it was different than other interviews that you've seen with him?
Are you sensing that?
Because I just didn't.
It did feel more relaxed.
It felt more conversational.
It didn't feel like he was trying to get some agenda through.
I think he was legitimately trying to answer your questions and bring you through his thought process.
He didn't stop a couple of times.
It shocked me.
I was like, I'm not prepared for you to stop.
You know what I mean?
Because he can talk and talk, Oh, yeah.
You know what I mean?
And he answered a few questions like, okay, go ahead.
Come back at me, which I thought was interesting.
It was the first time I think I've seen that with him.
So maybe that was different.
Melanie in Florida.
Hi, Melanie.
Y'all know how to make our day by making us laugh.
And you seem pretty real, too.
And I sure did enjoy it that you addressed the tyrannical judicial insurrection.
That was one of my main concerns.
And you showed us that he is totally aware of it.
Oh, yeah.
And he knows his options.
And he just seemed in control of it.
And I really appreciated that because that was one of the worst things that I was fearing.
Nothing was going to be done about that.
So I want to thank you.
You did a really good job.
Thank you.
You know, we were up in the Lincoln bedroom and we were talking about Lincoln.
And he looked at me at one point and he said, you know, you said that you don't like Jackson.
Why don't you like Andrew Jackson?
And I said, well, Trail of Tears was not real good.
And he went, okay, good point.
Good point.
And I said, and he was corrupt.
You know, he would tell his friends, hey, by the way, I'm going to be seizing this Indian land and be auctioning off, you know, first come, first serve.
Maybe you should get down there.
You know, it's going to happen tomorrow.
So he was enriching his friends.
I said, so he's corrupt and dirty.
And he said, but the judicial part you were okay with.
And I said, oh, yeah, with what he did with the judges, absolutely fine.
It's constitutional.
Yes, I'm fine with that.
And he's like, yeah, that's the part that I really like.
So he has been thinking about what do we do with these judges?
And he's not going to, I didn't get the impression he's going there first.
He's going to write it out and try to work the system as long as he can.
And then if they just won't, if they just keep doing this, he's going to draw a line.
And he has the right constitutionally to do it.
When you have somebody like Mike Lee, who is the least radical of anybody, I mean, I'm surprised the guy doesn't have a flat top haircut.
You know what I mean?
He's like, Mr. Leave It to Beaver 1950s.
He's so clean cut.
But when he says this is judicial insurrection, you can pretty much bank on that, that it would have constitutional weight behind it if he acted that way.
And I was pleased to see that he has really thought deeply about it and constitutionally about it as well.
Let me go to Bill.
Hi, Bill.
Welcome.
Hey.
Hi, Glenn.
I've got a little bit different take on your interview with the president yesterday.
I thought even I'll start at the beginning where you did.
You spent the first five to seven minutes talking when you could have been asking the president questions.
Okay, hold on just a second.
Let me take these one by one here.
Okay.
If you've ever interviewed a president where you know you're going to ask tough questions, and you had told them that this was about the hundred days and the accomplishments that the administration has made, you better start with the accomplishments that the administration has made and give them a little candy before you sour things up.
So that's the reason why I did spend about three, four minutes there at the beginning making it very easy.
And another part of it was Donald Trump kept going back to, oh, 2016, we had the greatest economy ever.
And I walked away with it thinking I didn't learn anything that I previously didn't know.
And in addition, one of the biggies is the debt bomb, which he kind of danced around, but nothing, and you briefly mentioned it with, hey, you started with $2 trillion, but you ended up with $150 billion in cuts.
You're right.
I didn't push him on that.
I wish I would have.
I didn't push him on that.
Okay, that.
And the other one was the Pam Bondi deal in the Justice Department.
And let's use the Teslas with it was supposed to be an act of terrorism.
We have somebody going.
Wait, wait, wait.
She is going after the Tesla people.
That they are going after.
I don't have a problem with what she's doing with the Tesla.
I'm worried about some of the other things that she has been ignoring.
But tell me where, I mean, she has been going against the Tesla.
Where is she dropping the ball on that?
Well, let's start with the JFK special when she announced that.
Well, that's different because I'm with you.
Here's what we're going to do.
This is going to be a bombshell.
It's going to be this.
And nothing happened.
We haven't heard anything since then.
So let me, I did explain the Pam Bondi thing, and the reason why I let him skate on that is because I have information from people who are around those individuals that I pushed before the interview.
They were not connected to the White House.
And I pushed them beforehand.
And I said, look, I am really concerned.
My audience is very concerned.
If people don't start to go to jail for things that are legitimate, legitimately jailworthy, if they're not prosecuted, my audience is really going to be upset.
And I am too.
Nothing will change if we don't clean this system up.
And both in separate situations, both of them said, you don't understand.
Congress, and it's the rhinos, Congress is holding back some of the people that they need as second and third ranks that have to be confirmed.
And Congress is saying, you know, we gave you everybody you wanted.
You can wait.
We'll take our time on the rest of them.
And they're holding them up until possibly even August.
And that's, that's, you can't do that.
And so it's Congress.
And so I was stuck in this trap with him of pushing him into a place to where if that is the answer, he wasn't going to give me the answer because he was negotiating with Congress, I believe, on the big beautiful bill.
So the only answer I was going to get from him was, it's not Congress.
Pre-Born: A True Miracle00:02:57
That's not what it is.
And so what he gave me, and I accepted because of the additional information I had, I accepted, he said, it's early.
Let them work.
It's early.
What I interpreted as is they've got things they have to do first.
And I will come back to him, you know, if I talk to him again, we have another sit-down by the end of the year.
I will come back to him if nothing has changed and said, okay, it's not early anymore.
We've waited.
What's happening?
And Bill, just to summarize what you're saying here, you're saying Glenn was a miserable failure during the interview.
Is that correct?
No, that's not what I was thinking.
Thank you, Bill.
You are a genius.
You're a genius.
Bill, thank you very much.
I hope that answered your question.
Did that help you?
Yeah, it did.
Yes, it did.
All right.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
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Now, back to the podcast.
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Andrew Clavin, host of the Andrew Clavin program, the Andrew Clavin show.
How are you, sir?
I'm good.
It's good to see you.
Good to see you.
I don't think I've seen you out of your element.
I don't think ever.
Yes, I've been here many times to this.
Have you?
Yeah, sure.
Really?
Well, they're memorable every single day.
Yeah, I get this reaction a lot.
No, I just love you.
I just love you.
And you, I got to tell you, the best compliment I can give you is your son is remarkable.
He's remarkable.
And, you know, I hope someday somebody will say that about my children.
Claven 2.0.
Murder, Movies, and a Dead God00:13:23
Yeah, really remarkable.
You and your wife are amazing parents.
Oh, well, thank you.
So tell me about the Kingdom of Cain and talk down to me.
It's a really simple book and very entertaining because it's about the movies that we all love, like the sockets.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
He says this.
Let me read this to you, Stuart, and see if you understand what this is.
The Kingdom of Cain looks at three murders in history, including the first murder, Cain's killing of his brother, Abel, and at the art created from imaginative engagement, from those horrific events by artists ranging from Dostoevsky to Hitchcock.
To make beauty out of the world as it is shot through with evil and injustice and suffering, it is the task not just of the artist, but Clavin argues of every life rightly lived.
Examining how the transformation occurs in art grants us a vision on how it can happen in our lives.
What's this book about?
I don't know what you're missing.
That was perfect.
I'll tell you, I'm a crime writer, right?
I write Mystery and Suspension.
I get this letter all the time, constantly.
It says, you call yourself a Christian, that part is true, and yet you write about horrific things.
You write about murder, you write about prostitutes and gangsters and all this stuff.
Why do you do that?
And the reason is very simple.
I believe that God is the central fact of reality.
And I believe that any artist who speaks truthfully about reality will speak about God.
And so what I did was I took three murders, three very famous murders, and I showed how they inspired works of art over and over and over again.
Not just one work of art, but they kept coming back.
And those works of art inspired other works of art.
And how those works of art actually speak about something that happens to a society when it begins to lose its faith, as our society has certainly done, you know.
And they chart those works of art, and some of them are just, some of them are like the stupidest little horror movie, and yet the guy who was making that horror movie understood what he was talking about and can show you, if you go back, for instance, and watch a slasher movie like Halloween, which is actually quite a good little scary movie, it actually is about the fall of the end of faith and how that destroys sexual responsibilities.
So that it takes place in a suburb.
Wait, wait, wait.
Have you seen it?
Yeah, I have seen it.
It takes place in a suburb where there are no moms and the dads are very weak.
And this knife-wielding crazy man comes back and basically preys on kids having sex while nobody's watching it.
And it's a very, very stark picture.
I'll bet if you asked the director what he was doing, he would tell you that.
Because it's right in the movie when you notice it.
But you have to be watching for it.
And the thing is, these movies are, you know, not just movies, but novels.
The arts really reveal the conscience of a culture.
And so taking the way that they look at murder tells us things that are bad about our culture, but it also tells us about ways that we want to go in the future.
The role, for instance, of psychiatrists in these films.
Most of these films are based on murder committed by Ed Gein in the 1950s, a guy in Wisconsin who used to kill women, right, and then dress up in their bodies, just like in Silence of the Lambs.
That inspired psycho.
It inspired a really good horror movie called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Even though it's crazy title, it's actually a good movie.
The Silence of the Lambs, all of these movies grow out of that one murder.
And what's it about?
It's about confusion, about sexual, about gender.
We don't see a lot of that going around nowadays, but in fact, it's everywhere.
And these things were happening.
These movies were being made in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s and on.
And so they were predicting, as art often does, what was going to happen and explaining why.
Do you think Alfred Hitchcock knew that this was coming, or was he just making a good, he was a good storyteller?
If you are a good storyteller, who was it?
T.S. Eliot said a great poet writes himself, and in writing himself, he writes his time.
And I think that that's what happens.
These artists basically bring something out of themselves, but it reveals where we all are, and that reveals where we're going, right?
If you see where we are, you can tell where we're going.
And that's why the book does not just concentrate on the darkness.
It actually says, well, what do you do?
How do you react?
Now that we know what's happening, how do you react to those things in a creative, joyful way?
Because this is what, look, the Bible doesn't say things are going to be great, right?
The Bible says, yeah, you know, if God says that we crucify him.
And yet at the same time, it says, rejoice evermore.
And so one of the things that really bothers me about Christian movies is they don't really represent life.
If you do a Christian movie that has real things in it, you get slammed.
Why would you put that in?
Why was there sex?
Why was there violence?
Why was there murder?
One of the major influences that turned me to Christ when I was 19 years old, it took three decades to kick in, but it was reading Crime and Punishment, the great novel by Dostoevsky about an axe murder and about a prostitute who basically turns this axe murderer's life around.
If you walked into a Christian bookstore today and said, could I have that book about the axe murderer and the hooker?
You know, they'd look at them.
They would look at me there.
Yeah, they would look at you like you were nuts.
But because Dostoevsky was a great artist and a great Christian, one of the truly deep and interesting Christians in history, he revealed something about the philosophies that were rising up at that time and that are still with us today, the philosophies that later became spoken out by Nietzsche, and Nietzsche affected all of the leftist philosophers that you and I love so much and have done so many good things for our society.
So let's pretend somebody didn't read that by Dosovsky or whatever his name is.
And tell us the story and exactly what, what he was teaching.
Well, the idea was that God is dead, God is gone, and therefore instead of having this horrible Christian philosophy that is nice to the poor and the weak and has charity and compassion, we need strong special men like Napoleon, for instance, who are going to make their own law.
And this man in the story, Crime and Punishment, says, well, if I can make my own law, I can murder somebody and it won't be a sin.
It won't be wrong.
And then he actually accomplishes this murder and finds, oh, wait, oh, wait, I have actually shattered the moral order and now my life is spiraling out of control.
Now, Nietzsche wrote his philosophy, which was the exact philosophy in this book, after Dostoevsky wrote the novel.
And then his philosophy inspired two murderers in America named Leopold and Loeb.
This was called the Crime of the Century, the Crime of the 20th Century.
I don't remember.
I know, nobody remembers it now, but it was one of the biggest crimes of the century.
It inspired countless movies and television shows.
It was two kids.
They were rich, gay, Jewish kids in the suburbs.
What year?
This is 19, I want to say 30.
30 or 40.
And yeah, it was the 30s, I'm sorry.
And they decided, well, we're supermen, like Nietzsche.
They read Nietzsche and they thought, yes, this is what we want to be, one of them.
And we're going to commit the perfect murder just to show that we can do it.
And so they just picked a kid at random who they knew and took him out and killed him.
This is rope.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And rope became the Hitchcock film and also inspired Compulsion is another movie, almost a true movie about it.
And it just pops up again and again.
Two people who say we're going to commit the perfect murder because we're superior.
If you look for it, you'll find it in one story after another.
And it's based on the idea that there's no God and therefore anything is permissible and strong men have to make the rules.
That's one of the best movies of Hitchcock.
And nobody even knows it.
Great movie from Hitchcock and great movie with Jimmy Stewart.
Yep.
I mean, just really.
And disturbing.
And written, the original play was written by the guy who also wrote a play called Gaslight, which is where we get the word gaslighting.
Yeah.
And so I talk all about these works of art and these works of movies.
And listen, I think it's an entertaining book, Glenn.
I will read it.
I love your work.
I love your work.
Most people, if you don't know who Andrew Clavin is, you've written movies.
I mean, you've written some just thrilling novels and novels that have been made into movies.
And I'm a huge, huge fan.
But I mean, you know, you are talking to mice here.
Well, I try to just make it about things that people like and enjoy.
So what is the lesson that we learn from all of this?
Well, I think the most important lesson, if I can call it that in the book, is that beauty has something to do with the answer to evil.
You know, one of the things that keeps people from believing in God, they say there's so much evil in the world.
How can a good God allow this evil to exist?
And at the end of the book, the last third of the book, which is a very personal statement about what I do to basically live joyfully in a world that I can see as evil, it ends with looking at the Pietà, the statue by Michelangelo, that is one of the most beautiful works of sculpture on earth.
It's beautiful.
But think about what it's about, Glenn.
It's about a mother with her dead son.
It is about a world with a dead God.
It is the worst moment in human history.
And yet Michelangelo, a man, made it beautiful.
And my question at the end of the book is, if a man can take that misery, that suffering, that evil, and turn it into beauty, what can God do with the world that we're living in now when he works in the marble of eternity?
And so I work my way to that point by going through the movies that we watch and the stories that we read and why we're so fascinated with murder.
Think about true crime.
This is what this is about.
It's about true crime.
Why are we?
Because it is the borderline where you cannot say there's something right about this.
It's the place where we suddenly realize that the moral order has its gray points, but it also has a very stark platform.
Explain to me, explain to me why shows like, let's say, Yellowstone are so satisfying because you're kind of like, I kind of like seeing that guy taken to the train station.
You know what I mean?
You know that it's wrong, but you're kind of in there.
You know what I mean?
You're kind of like, you know, and you feel, at least I do.
I mean, I'm sure a lot of people watching there are like, ah, that's fine.
I watch it and I'm like, I don't like the fact that I kind of, I'm rooting for them.
I think the best art does that to you.
It makes you think like, yeah, I'm really enjoying this, but that actually tells me something about myself that now I have to think about.
And that's what art, see, see, a lot of people think that art is like a sugar pill that they use to give you a little lesson in life, a little parable sort of.
But I don't think that's what it is at all.
I think it's an experience that you really can't have in your life that broadens the way you look at life.
It broadens your view of humanity.
And so when you get Christian stories like, God is not dead, I don't want to pick on anybody, but still, you get somebody.
I'm just going to pick on them.
I'll pick on them.
The guy is hit by a car and everybody says, well, at least he was saved.
And I think, really, we can't just say, we can't call his wife first and say this is a sad moment, you know, that we grieve when people die.
We can't say we're horrified by death and afraid.
So I want Christian art that deals with life in a real way, that shows people are afraid and people have evil thoughts and people want to justify murder and there are moments when we all sort of think, look, if you go off into a room by yourself and ask, how can I make the perfect world?
Within two minutes, so help me, you will be committing mass murder in your mind.
You'll be saying, well, first I got to get rid of these people because these people can't be reformed.
You'll wipe them out, right?
And so that's who we all are.
And when we start to see that, I believe that that's actually a layer on top of who we really are.
I believe who we really are is who Christ wants us to be, this loving person.
And so that's the question.
How do you get through that layer?
And so that's what artists do for us.
They show us our true selves and they lead our conscience to the place that it's supposed to go.
Our natural soul is who Christ wants us to be.
Right.
And then we're encapsulated in this flesh and the natural man is an enemy to that.
That's right.
And it's the battle back and forth.
And that's what art is, right?
That battle.
That's where drama comes from.
That's where tragedy comes from.
You know, one of the stories I mention in the Kingdom of Cain is Macbeth because it's such a great story about murder.
And it ends with the most beautiful speech about nihilism, about things, nothing makes sense, nothing is worth anything, right?
Life is a tale told by an idiot.
But because you're watching the play, you understand that Shakespeare's not saying that.
A guy who has detached himself from the moral order is saying that.
He's lost the meaning of life because he's detached himself from the meaning of life.
And so studying murder and writing art about murder takes you to the most serious questions about who we are and who we really are and what we really want and how we, you know, we, that inner battle that goes on, which is, to me, the source of drama.
Salisbury Steak and Tariffs00:13:07
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Hi, Tanya.
Hi.
Hello.
How are you, honey?
Oh, great.
Yeah, I know.
Excited to be on, Tanya?
I'm so excited.
I can't even tell you.
She's impressed with Showbiz.
I was waiting for it.
I was waiting for the call, quite honestly.
I was like, why haven't they called me yet?
So Sarah said she's less interested in hearing me talk about the experience of the White House and wants to hear more about you.
Now, remember, you did sign a nondisclosure on some parts.
Yeah.
But what was your whole...
Sarah, what was it you wanted to...
Well, I've known Tanya, I love you dearly.
Don't take this out on me.
But I've worked with Glenn for 20 years.
He's talked about you so much and how you're never impressed with anything.
And he is like a kid in a candy store with that sort of stuff.
So I was just wondering how you considered it.
Was it impressive at all?
Was it something that you...
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, it was unbelievable.
Just being in the Oval Office was amazing.
I've never been in the office before.
And so that was just walking in there was so humbling.
And, you know, just I keep pinching myself because I couldn't really believe I was there.
And then getting the tour after the interview was phenomenal.
I think the last time I was there was in a high school trip, and we actually could go into the White House at that point and didn't see very much, but what we saw yesterday was phenomenal.
What did you think of him?
Oh, he's great.
I mean, he's a normal, regular guy.
You know, he's very intimidating at first when you meet him, but he just makes you feel comfortable.
How do you mean he's intimidating when you first meet him?
What does that mean?
Well, he's the president of the United States, for heaven's sake.
I mean, my gosh, yeah.
Like, his responsibility.
No, I know, I know.
You know, that's why he says, he'll say to me from time to time.
He'll say to me from time to time, he'll be like, why didn't you call me?
And I'm like, because you're the president of the United States.
You don't just call him, hey, Don, what are you doing?
Yeah, right.
You know.
So I get that.
What did you think of the history that he, I mean, and his grasp of his history?
Yeah, he's, he, he knows his stuff.
It's clear.
Pretty amazing.
He studied and he knows, yeah, the history, the presidents, you know, what they did, the kind of people they were.
Yeah, really amazing.
Did you sense any hesitation on anything that we talked about on, you know, and where he was going or that you felt like, I felt a little weird about that?
No.
No.
He was clear.
He was really clear on everything.
So you were impressed by where your husband took you yesterday.
I was.
Yeah.
It was great.
It was awesome.
Yeah.
Were you impressed by your husband or by meeting Donald Trump?
No.
Just right there, close second, right behind him.
Yeah.
Right by.
He did great.
The interview was great.
He did a great job.
Wait, who was behind who?
Was I right behind Donald Trump?
I think that's clear, Glenn.
We didn't need any clarification.
I love you, sweetheart.
I love you.
Love you, Sarah.
Love you back.
All right.
That was nice.
I mean, I didn't get any love, but whatever.
You know, Amitis.
That was good.
I mean, it's nice that you can get your wife on the phone now.
Thank you.
That's good.
Thank you.
So she's the one I can still kind of get on the phone from time to time.
From time to time.
It's good booking by you.
Yeah, thank you.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
You know, somebody called up and said that they felt that I was nervous in the interview.
I wasn't nervous at all.
I thought there was a couple.
I had that feeling a couple times.
That I was nervous?
Yeah.
Like, I don't know.
I mean, it's, I had two different feelings actually about the tariffs because you brought up the tariffs and you said, look, I don't, you know, I don't like tariffs.
We've talked about that before.
And then you started going into it.
And he kind of like he went, he started explaining why he thought they were necessary.
And you kind of like just gave ground on it.
And three times.
But sheepishly each time, I thought.
I thought it was sheepish.
He's the president of the 30-minute conversation with him on tariffs where I pushed him to the wall.
Remember?
He's not changing.
No, he's not.
And he's the president.
And he actually, towards the end, he said, you'll like him.
In a year, we'll have another interview and you'll tell me that you're going to be able to do that.
And I said, I've been wrong with you before, and I hope to be wrong again.
You did.
It's funny because my initial reaction was you didn't, because you kind of got into this setup of, I don't really like tariffs, but I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.
That was kind of your concept of that.
He got in the middle of it and he kind of interrupted you and went on to a point about why he thought tariffs were important.
And you did bring it up a couple of times.
And my first inclination was like, you didn't really fight him on it.
And then my second instinct was, I will say, I mean, I've seen a lot of interviews, especially with people on the right with Donald Trump about this topic.
And it was more pushback than I've seen from anybody, really, to be honest with you.
At least mentioned that.
And I thought it must be difficult at the White House, in the Roosevelt room, sitting with the President of the United States, to be like, you know, this particular policy is not my favorite.
I mean, there must be, that must be, was there any special?
Even with Donald Trump.
I mean, Donald Trump, you know, he will go for people who don't like his policies and he will push them to the wall in a good spirited way and try to figure out why.
Yeah.
But like Zelensky, if you've had that conversation and it's already decided, you know, don't keep fighting.
Don't keep fighting me on it because you're going to get the same answer over and over again.
And then you're going to become a pest.
And then it's like, what are you doing?
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
I mean, you weren't trying to have some big adversarial argument, but you did want to get the context out there.
But I will tell you, this is one of the, and I haven't told him this yet.
I'm waiting for the right opportunity to tell them this because I think he'll really appreciate it.
But I don't know how to tell him this story.
We were in Mar-Lago.
Stop me if I've told this story before.
We were in Mar-a-Lago and he invited, you know, I'm just doing an interview and he's like, you having dinner tonight?
What are you doing for dinner?
I said, I think we're all going to McDonald's.
And he said, no, no, no.
Come on, have dinner with me in Mar-a-Lago.
Now, Mar-Lago is a jacket player.
I'm in a jacket, but everybody else in the crew is in like, you know, black pants and a black t-shirt, you know, their crew.
And I said, well, Mar-Lago?
And he said, yeah.
And I said, I kind of pointed at everybody and he's like, no, everybody.
So he invited everybody to have dinner on him at Mar-lago.
So really nice.
So we're all sitting at this table.
And he comes by and he says, we're looking at the menu.
And he says, Ladden, you got to have the Salisbury steak.
Have I told you the story?
Got to have the Salisbury steak.
And I said, okay.
Now, I don't really like Salisbury's.
I remember having Salisbury steak when it was like in the TV dinner kind of thing, you know?
And I was like, okay.
And he's like, no, trust me, you and me, look at us.
We like the same kind of food.
And I was like, I think he just called me fat.
And he said, you love it.
You love it.
Everybody tells me the Salisbury steak, best they've ever had.
I'm like, okay, well, I don't know.
I'm a Salisbury steak.
So I order the Salisbury steak and I eat it.
And everybody's waiting at the table.
They're like, well, well, how's the Salisbury steak?
And I went, meh.
And they're like, what?
And I said, yeah, I mean, it's not, it's not bad, but it's not, you know, the greatest Salisbury steak.
Don't know what is the greatest Salisbury steak in the world, but not your favorite dish.
It was not bad, but it was meh.
Yeah.
And who's talking about it?
And I said, you know what it is?
Because he said, everybody tells me it's the greatest Salisbury steak in the world.
I said, nobody is willing to tell him that it's meh.
You know what I mean?
He'll recommend it and then you'll order it.
And then he'll come back and say, what'd you think?
And they'll say, it was great.
So nobody has the balls to tell him because he's the president of the United States.
Right.
And he right then comes to the table.
What'd you think of the Salisbury steak?
Best I've ever had, Don.
I mean, that's really what I said.
And I was, as it was coming out of my mouth, I'm like, oh my God, I'm one of those people.
I can't tell him the truth about a stupid Salisbury steak.
So he still thinks, if you go into Mar-Lago, meh, meh.
No matter what he says, meh.
But I guarantee you, if you order it and he asks you, you'll tell him it's the best you've ever had.
Guarantee.
So I thought I did pretty good.
No, you did.
I think you did.
It was a good interview.
It's not easy.
It was a good interview.
And it was enjoyable to watch.
I think, by the way, it's on YouTube tonight.
YouTube.com.
Is it Blaze TV or is it Glenn Beck?
Do you know?
Glenn Beck.
Okay.
So go there.
Go to one of those and you'll find the interview tonight.
Or you can go to Blaze TV, Blazetv.com slash Glenn.
Promo code Glenn save 20 bucks.
It was a good interview, though.
You went through kind of every big topic and covered a lot of what they went through.
But you know, it's hard with him, especially it was interesting because I feel like earlier interviews you've done with him, you would ask a question and he would kind of, I wouldn't say filibuster is the right term exactly.
It's just kind of who he is.
He goes on and he kind of goes to his thing.
He was much more willing to have a conversation.
Yeah.
Like he stopped a couple of times where I thought he was going to kind of go on a rant and let you follow up and everything.
And I think that led to getting to a good amount of stuff rather than two questions and the things over.
I thought it was good.
I mean, that must have been a cool experience.
I asked him after the cameras were off because I just wanted to tell him this story because I didn't know if he remembered.
I mean, I knew he knew, but I didn't know if he connected.
I said, is it ironic to you that when Nikolai Tesla died, your uncle, John G. Trump, who was at MIT, was asked by the government to come in and go through his papers to see which is good and which is dangerous, what could be shipped back with him to his home for his museum and his library, and which needed to stay classified.
And here you are now working with the new Tesla.
You're working with a guy who brought the name Tesla even back.
And he is our generation's Tesla.
And now you're working with him.
I said, have you ever seen the irony in that?
And he just lit up and said, You know, he likes it when people know stories that nobody knows.
You know what I mean?
And he said, Yeah, let me tell you about my uncle.
And he just shot an extra, I don't know, five minutes.
They were yelling at him about the, you know, National Security Council is waiting.
I'm getting dirty looks for even asking it.
And he's, he's like, yeah, I want to tell you.
And his whole staff is like, oh, God.
I mean, there might be a war that breaks out.
Can you just let him go do his work, please?
And so we have that as an extra.
And then I also gave a tour of the Roosevelt room as we were setting up.
Because it's just, it's, it's the White House.
I wish people could really take tours of the White House.
You can't.
I mean, you can take a tour of the White House, but I wish you could take the tour I took with him.
It's a remarkable building.
And unlike the other places that are being treated like trash in Washington, D.C. now, the national, I was in the Smithsonian in the Portuary.
I think it's Portuary.
I can't remember.
It's one of the museums, art museums.
And it was, I mean, it looked like it hasn't been cleaned since, you know, 1872.
It was just in horrible shape.
And it's just, it's disgusting the way it's all been taken care of.
And it's all woke now.
And I talked to the president off that we were talking about art.
And I said, the woke art.
He's like, right?
He's like, it's just garbage.
And I'm like, you know, maybe some people appreciate it, but I just, I can't take, I can't take it in your face as, look how bad America has been.