Glenn Beck analyzes President Trump's threatening Easter message regarding Iran's Strait of Hormuz, contrasting it with astronaut Victor Glover's viral plea for global unity from space. The host details a recent F-15E shootdown over Isfahan where a CIA "ghost rescue" operation saved a pilot after 36 hours in hiding, while destroyed aircraft erased evidence. Beck debunks rumors of 100,000 troops or a terminal illness for Trump, arguing that state actors like Russia and China exploit these conflicting narratives to cause a trust implosion. Ultimately, he urges listeners to slow down, question who benefits from emotional stories, and rebuild local trust to resist societal erosion. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Humanity's Place in Space00:10:21
What a broadcast today.
I'm going to give you the short version here.
This is the edited version.
You can find the full version at glenbeck.com slash torch.
But the president had an Easter message that didn't feel like here comes Peter Cottontail.
I mean, it was a little frightening regarding the Hormuz Strait.
What does it mean to you?
I break it all down.
Also, Victor Glover, he is an amazing astronaut.
You know, he's the first black man in space.
He didn't even want that to be.
He wants this to be about humanity.
But he took it into a different place.
His Easter message was incredible.
And who wins with lies?
Who wins with lies?
All this and so much more on today's podcast.
All right, so I want to talk to you about Victor Glover because I think this guy is absolutely amazing.
He is the pilot of Artemis II.
And yesterday there was a message from him in space, and I want you to hear the whole message.
Listen to this.
As we are so far from Earth and looking at the beauty of creation, I think that for me, one of the really important things Personal perspectives that I have up here is I can really see Earth as one thing.
And you know, when I read the Bible and I look at all of the amazing things that were done for us who were created, it's you have this amazing place, this spaceship.
You guys are talking to us because we're in a spaceship really far from Earth, but you're on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe and the cosmos.
Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we're doing is special, but.
We're the same distance from you.
And I'm trying to tell you, just trust me, you are special.
In all of this emptiness, this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe.
You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.
I think as we go into Easter Sunday, thinking about all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing and that we got to get through this together.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Now, remember, this is the same man who went viral last week for saying that he was, yes, proud to be the first black man going around the moon, but I don't want you to think of that.
I don't want to be known for that.
He said, I don't want this to be about race.
He said, This needs to be about human history.
It's not the story.
It's the story of humanity, not black history, not women's history, but human history.
Oh my gosh, how long have we been pining for somebody to say that?
Right now, everything in our world.
Is trying to shrink all of these stories, break it apart, divide it, turn it into smaller and smaller pieces until all we can see is us, me, myself, and I.
But then you get 240,000 miles away and suddenly none of that holds.
From that distance, you can't see red states and blue states, you barely see countries.
There's no trending outrage, no cultural tribes.
It's just a blue marble hanging in the black sky.
And if you're honest and you really look at it, there's no political argument there.
You see a miracle.
Glover just said, when you look back at Earth from space, that's what you feel.
And he would know.
I wish I knew it like that.
This is a man who has spent six months on the International Space Station.
On the International Space Station, he took communion every single week, every Sunday in space.
Think of that.
floating above the world, circling it every 90 minutes, watching sunrises and sunsets stack up like seconds, and choosing every week to stop and remember something eternal.
What a story.
He said something else there too.
He said, We've all heard the phrase, there are no atheists in a foxhole.
He said, There aren't any atheists at the top of a rocket either.
Because when you see creation like he's seeing it now, when you see the scale, the precision, the beauty, there's no guesswork in any of this.
It's math.
The whole thing is math.
You don't feel bigger, you feel smaller.
And somehow or another, More connected at the same time.
I think that's the part that we have lost.
If you live in a big city, I remember living in New York and the first time I went out to the mountains with my family and we sat around a campfire, we did what everybody does, what cavemen used to do, I'm sure.
Sit around and say, What is up there?
I mean, look at the vastness of this.
We are super small in the grand scheme of things.
And it puts the world into perspective.
You know, when we stop looking up, we start looking in.
And when everything turns inward, our problems, our identity, our grievances, our egos, everything, it becomes the entire universe to us.
Our own little gravity well.
And you get stuck there.
And you just begin orbiting yourself and your problems.
But space, if we allow it, has a way of breaking that.
It forces perspective.
Imagine being in that capsule and looking and seeing the side of the moon that no man has ever seen completely.
Not even in pictures.
We have never seen it.
They are seeing something no human eye has ever gazed on, and most of the world is yawning.
But if we can take that one moment and really imagine it for ourselves, it reminds you you are part of something huge and you're part of something.
You're not the center of everything, you're part of something.
And perhaps if we let it, that's why this mission matters right now.
Not because of the rockets or technology or what SpaceX is going to do or anything else.
It's just the simple reminder look up again, look up, look up.
Not just at the stars, but look up.
Who made them?
The book of Romans says, for since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made.
In other words, you don't need a rocket to find him.
You don't need to go to space.
It's all right here, but we get so lost.
But it's all right here in the order, in the design, in the mathematics.
In the moments we usually rush past, I made a promise to myself just recently.
I am not going to be the first one that stops hugging.
Do you know, in Disney, if you're a princess or a character, you're not allowed to stop hugging before the child does.
If that child hangs on to you for 20 minutes and is hugging you, you hug them for 20 minutes.
You are not allowed to break the hug first.
And I thought that spoke volumes.
They know psychologically, this is all that's all business.
They know psychologically what that means to the kid.
And I decided when I heard that, I am not going to be the first to break a hug.
And my son is a good hugger.
And he came home for Easter.
And I hugged him.
And I thought we were going to be there all day.
But we didn't rush past that moment.
And it was nice, it was special.
Victor Glover didn't find God for the first time in orbit, he found him the same place that you and I can.
At home, with his family, in the ordinary.
Space didn't give him faith.
Space gives him perspective.
Is it, perhaps, what Easter is really all about?
Not escaping the world, but seeing it clearly.
So right now, as he's looking down on us, maybe we should do something we haven't done in a while.
Look up.
Look up with humility and gratitude and the understanding that we are all part of a story that is much, much, much bigger than ourselves.
Not black history, not white history, not men history, female history, not political history.
Human history.
And it is still being written today.
I don't know about you, but with all the problems in the world, we are so blessed to live at this time.
We are seeing history written in so many different ways, good and bad.
We are seeing human history written in gigantic, bold, capital letters.
Letters that you could eventually, we will see it from space.
The story of humankind.
And we're writing it.
The Moment History Turns00:15:47
And part of me says, when I look at the bad stuff, it's going to be interesting to see what that story says.
Another part says, I know humans.
I know Americans especially.
We eventually get it right.
It's going to be exciting to see what and how we write in this next chapter.
This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Somewhere over the Isfahan province, over the weekend, an American F 15E fighter.
One of these jets doesn't just fall out of the sky, it's hunted down, and gravity does all of the work.
Two men punched out into the night.
Two parachutes opened over enemy territory.
One was found and rescued right away.
The other.
Disappeared.
He was wounded.
He was alone and he was hunted.
His body hit the earth hard enough to remind him that he's still alive, but not much more.
Sprained an ankle, maybe worse.
No time to check.
He has got to get on the move.
In war, the clock doesn't start when you land, it starts when someone sees you land.
And somewhere in war, someone always sees.
So he's got to move.
He moves up, way up into the mountains, 7,000 feet of rock and silence, and nowhere to hide.
So he has to hide in plain sight.
He can't trust the radio.
He can't trust that anybody is coming for him and find him.
All he can do is trust the math.
How long can I stay ahead of the men coming for me before the good guys come?
Because I know the good guys are coming, but so are the bad guys.
And they're not just soldiers, they're bounty hunters.
These are not people who are in uniform, these are people that just want the money.
A captured American is a big prize, a very, very big prize.
So he goes up, up the mountain.
And he finds a break in the rock, barely wide enough for him to breathe.
And he is jammed for 36 hours.
He stops being a man and he becomes part of that rock, part of that terrain.
No movement, no sound, no second chances.
Because if they find him, it will not be good.
There's only a video a thousand miles away.
Something flickers.
It's a signal, weak, intermittent, but real.
It's a beacon.
You don't run to the signal if you're in his situation, I understand.
At least not immediately, because in a war like this, the signal might not be friendly.
It might be waiting for you.
So the United States did something.
That we always do in war.
Everybody always does.
It lies.
The Central Intelligence Agency began pushing out noise into the system, whispers, signals, digital breadcrumbs, telling everybody listening that we've discovered the airman and he's already been recovered.
The story is over.
Nothing left to hunt.
A ghost rescue, if you will.
Fiction.
It was designed to keep this guy hidden in the rock until we could find him.
At the same time, a battlefield is closing in around him.
Communications are jammed, roads are disrupted.
Some sources say that it was the common Iranian that were disrupting the roads, trying to keep people off of that mountain.
One way or another, whoever was doing what, eyes were diverted and everybody was looking in the wrong direction.
This wasn't just about a rescue, this was about control and shaping a reality so one guy could slip through it.
Then night falls.
And with it, the part of the story that never makes the headline.
Nearly 100 special operations forces, trained, disciplined, very well aware of the odds, go in.
They go in quietly, deliberate, across a sovereign border that does not welcome them, and they begin to climb the same mountain.
Step by step, they close in the distance with a man they can't see.
But a man they've already decided they are not going to leave behind.
In the middle of the night, they find him alive.
This is where we always think the story ends.
You know, once you find the man, the hard part is over, but it's not.
Never is.
We had planes on the ground.
We had two MC 130 aircraft.
That's their lifeline.
They fail.
Mechanical.
On the ground.
Inside Iran.
Does any of this bring back memories of Jimmy Carter?
Understand the weight of all of that.
A hundred of America's best, suddenly not a rescue team, but now a target.
Waiting for rescue themselves.
And daylight is coming.
Enemy forces are now adjusting.
There is no easy exit.
There is no margin of error.
This is the moment that history turns on.
Have to make a decision.
Somebody has to make a decision.
Somebody has to make that decision who understands what failure looks like.
And that decision is made.
And they choose risk anyway.
Send in more aircraft.
Again, more aircraft go in, in contested airspace, in the middle of the night.
A hundred of our soldiers, our special operators, there on the ground rescuing one guy.
Send in more aircraft and then destroy the aircraft.
We can't leave a man behind, but we also can leave aircraft.
And for a few men, as those aircraft are coming in, 101 wait, no movement, no guarantees, just the quiet agreement that all of them have already made if this goes bad. we go bad together.
One official said, If there was a holy crap moment, that was it.
He's right.
That was the edge.
That was the razor.
And then again, with precision, the American military.
Smaller aircraft, lower, faster, come in pieces and they leave in waves.
And before they go, they erase all the footprints.
They destroy the aircraft, the helicopters that were there on the desert, burned.
Nothing left that can be studied, used, or turned.
Because in this What you leave behind will fight you tomorrow.
We know that because of Afghanistan.
And above all of it, while this is going on, no victory parades, no immediate leaks, nothing, no chest pounding, so quiet it feels like nothing happened until it's all over.
And our one man is out alive.
And then, and only then after the risk is passed, does the president say what can be said?
This was one of the most daring search and rescue operations in U.S. history.
And it was.
But if that's all you take from this, you've missed it.
Because this wasn't clean.
It never is.
Aircraft were hit.
Helicopters took fire.
Another jet went down.
13 Americans already gone.
Hundreds wounded and in Iran.
They're still there, they're still capable, they're still calculating, they're still watching.
So what do we call this?
A victory?
Yeah.
A warning?
Also, yes.
This is modern war.
Not lines on a map, but a single human being bleeding, hiding, waiting, while a nation bends itself to bring him home.
And others walking into the dark, fully aware they may not walk back out.
This is the line.
This is the line between chaos and order.
Between abandoning somebody and refusing to.
If you get anything from this story, you should get that.
Boy, you change presidents, you change whoever is running the Pentagon, and it's easy to go back to what took us centuries to become an honorable military that never, ever leaves one man behind.
That's the line, and for one night, on a mountain, on the side of a mountain in Iran, in between two rocks, We held that line.
President Trump tweeted something this weekend on Easter, mind you, and I'm going to quote Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran.
There will be nothing like it!
Open, open, and he says the whole thing, the effing straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll live in hell.
Just watch.
Praise be to Allah.
President Donald J. Trump.
Now, there are several ways to look at this, okay?
Oh, dear God, the president's gone insane.
Oh, my, a man who has never had a drop of alcohol in his life somehow or another on Easter decided to drink.
Or he's doing something else.
Now, I'm not claiming to know what exactly that tweet is all about, but I'd like to tender a guess here.
This sounds like a man who is trying to compress time, okay?
A deadline.
He named targets, power plants, bridges, infrastructure.
Dems, of course, are screaming for the 25th Amendment because they think he lost his mind.
And that is an important subcategory of this story.
I'll get to it here in a second.
But let's assume that this is intentional.
He didn't lose his mind, okay?
Because Donald Trump is not careless.
Whatever you think, when it comes to war, he takes it very seriously.
To the leadership in Tehran, especially the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, The tone is not the headline.
The clock and the specific bombing targets are.
That's the headline.
Because they have to ask themselves a simple question right now Is this guy serious?
Is this the last warning or is this the first move?
We don't know.
And I have always said that I've wanted our enemies to always look at our president and go, would he do that?
And them not know.
Okay.
It's kind of this.
You remember this from the movie Dirty Harry.
It's like this.
I know what you're thinking.
Did he fire six shots or only five?
Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kind of lost track myself.
But Ian, this is a .44 Magnus, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off.
You've got to ask yourself one question.
Do I feel lucky?
Well, do you, punk?
That is exactly what the president did.
Do you feel lucky?
Well, do you, punk?
Now, would Dirty Harry have pulled the trigger?
Did he have?
What?
How did that scene end?
Dirty Harry, the secret to that character is he's just crazy enough to do it.
And you don't know.
So that's what they're doing.
They've seen threats before.
They've survived.
How many presidents?
They are now asking themselves wait a minute, is this backed by strike packages?
What is the Navy positioning?
What are the quiet messages we're getting from behind the scenes?
Remember, this is a very dangerous territory because I've been telling you over the last year or so that wars, especially world wars, Are all started by a simple miscalculation.
If they believe this is a bluff or pressure just for negotiation, like all the other presidents, they just might test it.
And then what does the president do?
If they believe it's real, what they're going to do is they're going to look for the smallest possible concession to avoid a strike without appearing weak.
They're going to like, hey, let's try to bleed some time here.
This is the razor's edge we're on right now.
Now, there is a third option, and I want to come back to the 25th Amendment.
There is the third option.
They may think that our Congress and our people do not have the stomach for any of this, and so they'll just wait it out.
This is honestly, this is going to be the big story of 28 29.
If Donald Trump can be replaced by someone else who understands this method of MAGA and everything else, if he, if JD Vance or Marco Rubio or somebody like that win and we go down this same path, you are going to see those people who are just digging in right now begin to slip away.
Standing on the Razor's Edge00:05:01
Because I think almost the entire world is thinking there's only two and a half.
More years left.
We can outlast him.
That's what's happening with NATO.
That's what's happening with Europe.
It's happening with Russia.
It's happening with those people in the United States of America who have been playing fast and loose with our money and corruption and everything else.
We just have to wait him out only two and a half more years.
So you're going to see things change dramatically in two and a half years.
You're going to see a gigantic swing back.
Back the other way if we lose this next election.
If we win the next election, things are going to change and you're going to see these people go, Oh crap, I can't last another four years or a possible another eight years.
And that's when this is why I believe we need 12 years to totally wipe this thing out.
We've got now two and a half years or two years almost in our hip pocket.
We need about 12.
We need just another 10 more and we can wipe this out.
Now, that's what they're thinking.
Is he serious?
Is he not?
But what about the Iranian people?
That's really important that we look at what are the Iranian people taking from this, quite honestly, crazy-ass tweet from the president of the United States.
Is he playing crazy strategically?
I believe so.
But what are they thinking?
How are you feeling today?
A little tired, rundown, maybe somewhere between getting out of bed and getting into the shower, you just could have turned it around and just said, I'm going right back to bed.
I can't handle it.
I have been there, brother.
This is what bad sleep does.
It doesn't just stay in the night.
It follows you the next day into your work, your mood, your energy.
And before long, you're not operating at full capacity.
You're just trying to get through it, to get to bed the next day so you can lie in bed and wake and stare at the ceiling.
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Hello, America.
You know we've been fighting every single day.
We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you.
We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it.
But to keep this fight going, we need you.
Right now, would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast?
Give us five stars and leave a comment because every single review helps us break through big tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth.
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Rate, review, share.
Together, we'll make a difference.
And thanks for standing with us.
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Sponsoring Ultrasounds for Crisis00:07:53
You know we've been fighting every single day.
We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you.
We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth, because you deserve it, but to keep this fight going we need you right now.
Would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast?
Give us five stars and leave a comment, because every single review helps us break through big tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth.
This isn't a podcast.
This is a movement and you're part of it, a big part of it.
So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up, help us push this podcast to the top.
Rate, review, share.
Together, we'll make a difference.
And thanks for standing with us.
Now let's get to work.
All right.
Let me just go through some of the lies that I'm seeing online right now.
And they are very well crafted.
One, we're sending 100,000 troops into Iran.
We're not sending 100,000 troops into Iran.
That's not happening.
But if you look at that, if you look on social media, you will find that Trump was at Walter Reed this weekend.
Something seriously, seriously wrong.
He might be catching what Benjamin Netanyahu has, which is death.
The latest coming out today is Trump is crazy and he's going to nuke Iran tomorrow.
Okay.
How about this one?
Artemis is not in space.
Really?
Of course, you have the super classics of Israel is responsible for Charlie Kirk's death.
But now the latest is that Israel employed, and I'm not making this up, somebody else did, employing the Mormon mafia to do it.
Now, being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I've not heard of the Mormon Mafia.
I mean, unless it's there to, you know, change people's minds through the force of, you know, eating jello with carrots in it or, you know, having funeral potatoes.
I don't know how that is, but the Mormon Mafia apparently is the one that killed Charlie Kirk.
That's the latest.
They seem to be everywhere online.
You look at just go through X just as a test.
And just look at the comments of even the most inane stories.
It is all division and hatred.
And I mean like I've never seen it before.
And we are just slowly sliding into it as if nothing has changed.
Now, most of this stuff, it's coming out in studies that the most viral, the most divisive, especially on things like war and our politics, all originating from foreign sources and bots.
But we just shrug that off like, oh, well.
And yet we argue about what's real and what's not online.
I saw a story this weekend and I showed it to my wife and I'm like, this can't be true, right?
It said that Prince William and Princess Catherine or whatever her name is, Kate, yeah, whatever, that they're separating and they're living separate lives.
They're headed for divorce.
They've already, you know, split up all of the, you know, castles or whatever.
And my first reaction was not outrage.
It wasn't even skepticism because I just didn't think, who would make that up?
You know what I mean?
My first reaction was sadness.
I'm like, oh, you've got to be kidding me.
Almost an automatic acceptance that something stable has just broken.
And then I find out it's not true.
I mean, because I start looking into it.
I think I contacted Ricky and I'm like, Ricky, is this true at all?
Total fabrication.
Another rumor.
Another ghost story dressed up as news.
But it was really well done.
Really well done.
So my question was over the weekend that I kept kicking around all weekend was, who would do that?
Who makes that up?
Why would you make that up?
Years ago, I said that there is a phase civilizations enter before real collapse, before war, before economic failure.
And I called it the trust implosion or trust.
So I want to talk about the anatomy of that story.
What was that?
Because it's such a ridiculous, stupid story.
Why would you do that?
Well, first, it targets a symbol of continuity, stability, tradition.
Even that is collapsing.
Now, you could make a real case that it's collapsing because, oh, I don't know, the defender of the faith, King Charles, is a lunatic and didn't even issue an Easter message and instead is busy with Islam.
I mean, he's the defender of the faith.
You can make that case and that's real.
No, no, no.
This one was emotionally loaded.
And it was believable the way it was done.
Spreads fast, verifies very slowly.
And most importantly, it leaves something behind even after it's disproven.
Doubt.
It leaves doubt.
Now let me turn to the war with Iran.
This weekend, rising tensions again, centered around the Strait of Hormuz.
A narrow strip of water quietly determines the price of your gasoline, your groceries, our future, all of that.
But here's the thing.
Americans aren't just debating what's happening.
We're now debating whether or not we can trust what we're being told is happening.
And it's not just, you know, the government's doing propaganda.
No, no, no.
You don't even know where this is coming from.
One side says this.
We have to go in.
One side says we were tricked to go in.
Another side says the whole thing was a lie.
Another side says, you know, America is bad and it's all of these.
It's crazy.
And I don't know about you, but the more I read, the fewer and fewer. of them that I read, I believe that any of the people that are writing this are acting in good faith.
People are not making mistakes.
This is intentional.
Look at Europe.
Immigration tensions, protests, government saying one thing publicly, doing another privately.
Public knows it.
Okay.
Not because they trust official statements, but because they see contradictions that no longer line up.
So trust erodes.
Look at your own life.
Inflation is cooling.
Is it?
My grocery bill is not cooling.
Insurance isn't cooling.
Cost of a house isn't cooling.
Everything I see in my life tells a different story.
So you're not just questioning the numbers, you start to question who's giving you the numbers and why they're doing this.
And then comes the accelerant, the environment that we live in.
AI-generated content, conflicting narratives, entirely different versions of the same reality, each presented with absolute certainty.
And done in such a way that, you know, if you're my age, you just don't think you could fake because it's just too good, it's too elaborate.
Huh.
I told Stu once back in the 1990s, I said, there's going to come a time before 2030 where you will not be able to believe your eyes or ears.
And when that happens, all bets are off.
We're there, gang.
You know, there was a time when we argued interpretation, but now we're not even getting to interpretation.
We're getting to, is that story even real?
Chaos and Broken Trust00:09:12
So who's doing it?
Who benefits?
This one, I can usually say, well, that would benefit this group or this group.
But who creates a lie about the royal family?
Because it seems ridiculous.
Now, maybe not in England, but over here, it seems pretty ridiculous.
I find the answer to this a little uncomfortable because it's not just one group.
There are state actors, countries like Russia and China and God knows who else, Iran.
They understand that you don't have to defeat a military of a nation if you can fracture the country psychologically.
Then there are ideological movements that believe chaos is necessary.
That's the Twelvers in Iran.
That's the Marxists and the communists.
That a system has to be destabilized before it can be replaced.
Then there are algorithms that reward outrage over truth because outrage spreads.
Truth takes time.
It's a little boring sometimes.
And then there are just individuals.
Some of them cynical, some of them broken, some of them, honestly, this is the most frightening, just bored.
They've decided watching things burn is its own reward.
All of those agents of chaos.
Who is the author of chaos?
I ask you that because it is so important to realize that when you click on a story and send it and you don't know if it's true, you are an unknowing agent of chaos.
Because it's not just the chaos that is being created.
It is the chaos that has become its own ecosystem.
And the real damage is not the lie itself.
It's what it does to each of us.
You read the story, you believe it, you feel it, then you correct it.
And then comes the final step.
What else isn't true?
That's the purpose of all of this.
What else isn't true?
I can't believe anything.
When I saw that, I'm like, I can't believe anything.
Who would do this?
Who would do this about something so stupid?
Why would you lie about that?
And they're everywhere.
They're everywhere about stupid stuff.
Those agents of chaos know that when enough people reach that point, when suspicion becomes the default setting, that's when trust implodes.
And then what happens?
Well, not necessarily immediately, not always dramatically, but always consistently, the society loses.
It loses trust in institutions, in its information.
And ultimately with one another, you can't believe one another.
And what adds to that, we already don't trust one another.
We already don't trust our own family members, some of us.
We already are hostile to the people that we're around all the day.
We don't trust people who vote differently than us.
So they're part of the problem.
We all have somebody in our life that we feel that way about.
So then our life, our own connections, sometimes to our own family is unstable.
There's no cohesion on anything.
And in that environment, every new event, like the ones we saw this weekend, doesn't resolve the tension.
It adds pressure.
Crap.
This is not abstract anymore.
This is personal.
So what do you do?
Well, first thing you do is you slow down.
You slow down.
If something hits you emotionally really fast, It was designed to.
Truth can withstand scrutiny, but manipulation depends on speed.
So slow down.
Second, ask a better question.
Not just, is this true, but who benefits if I believe this?
Who benefits if I spend any time on this?
Because you already know the answer.
Agents of chaos.
And you don't want to be anywhere near chaos.
Third, you have to rebuild the trust where you actually can.
And I can't rebuild your trust in any of the institutions.
It's not going to happen nationally, at least not yet.
So you think locally.
Friends, family, community.
Civilizations don't rebuild trust from the top down.
They rebuild it from the inside out.
That's also how you destroy it.
You rot it from the inside out.
Fourth thing you need to do is reduce your own fragility.
Less debt, more stability, more awareness of where your essentials come from because when systems wobble, resilience becomes freedom.
And this matters.
Because with that, you start to demand something different from leadership, clarity.
You know, you watch what's actually happening.
You match words with actions.
You stop managing perception and you start rebuilding the credibility.
Because the American people can handle the hard truth.
They can.
What we cannot survive against is this constant contradiction.
And beyond Washington, the states, community, churches, They all have a role.
Local governments have to bring decisions closer to the people.
Communities must rebuild civic life that isn't just political theater.
And churches, especially the churches, must remember who and what they are.
That is a place where truth is not negotiated.
It's a place where people can disagree without becoming enemies, where moral clarity exists without hatred, and it must always be that way.
But it starts with tell the truth.
Because when trust collapses in a culture, people begin to look for anything solid.
And if they don't find it there, they will find it somewhere else.
And that is already happening.
So, that story about the royal family, it looks small, it seems small, but it's not.
I mean, that's what bothered me, I think, so much about it.
I've seen all the big stories, but that one seems so like such a waste of time.
It's a single thread.
But if you start pulling on it, you realize, oh my gosh, look at how many threads are already loose.
Trust collapse doesn't arrive with one headline.
It arrives as a quiet belief, a quiet correction, a lingering question.
If I can't believe this, what can I believe?
What else is breaking that I can't see?
Trust collapse doesn't come with a parade.
And it's happening right now.
It comes in quietly.
It's when you assume you're being misled.
You expect institutions to fail.
You stop believing that things can be fixed.
If we have enough people that reach that point, you know how it ends.
And it doesn't end necessarily in war, but conditions where war becomes possible.
So I want to urge you to slow down because this is not inevitable.
But it is directional.
We're going in that direction.
And the direction can only be changed the same way it was lost.
Not from the top down, but from the inside out.
One person, you, telling the truth.
No matter how unpopular it makes you.
And say it with love and respect.
Don't try to win.
Don't try to win.
One family choosing stability, one house, one neighborhood, rebuilding trust with the neighbors.
It's much slower than collapse.
But it is the only thing that history has ever shown that stops it.
Start building that in your own family and building that in your own community.
Honestly, it's why I have a house, and I've spent my summers in a town of 400 people.
Rebuilding from the Inside Out00:00:20
Because while we don't all know each other, we don't all agree with each other, we all have the same basic principles, and we're all looking out for one another.
And it doesn't matter if we agree or disagree, we're all a member of the community, and we know what is generally true.