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July 4, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
57:03
20240704_glenn-beck-on-biden-israel-russia-more
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Evolving Political Views 00:03:04
You gave it four seconds of your time, my departure from CNN.
You said on your radio show, so we're going to do that after we mourn the loss of Piers Morgan.
Okay, we're done with that.
He clearly has got a form of dementia.
We are being threatened as the West with nuclear weapons.
And this guy is the guy in charge.
You cannot replace her.
She's a black woman, the first black woman vice president.
Now you have the opportunity.
You're going to race her with a white man.
We have veterans that are living on the streets while we're putting migrants up in five-star hotels.
I'm sorry, that doesn't make me a racist.
You're destroying the country.
Is America actually heading to an ever darker, worse place?
If our nation goes dark, we'll make the Nazis look like rookies.
The reality in Gaza, though, you are going to, if you're attacking a terror group, you're going to kill a vast amount of innocent young people.
The purpose of war is to kill the enemy faster than they can kill you.
Glenn Beck is one of the most influential and acclaimed commentators in conservative media, like me.
He starred on both CNN and Fox News, but is most lauded for his fearless digital empire.
There's a lot we agree on and a lot we don't agree on.
I've actually never interviewed him before, so I'm particularly delighted to welcome Glenn Beck, the CEO of The Blaze, to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Glenn, they thought it would never happen and here you are.
We do agree on an awful lot and we disagree.
But, you know, you're a citizen of Great Britain and I'm an American.
And I think there's a lot of things that people just don't understand about America, including what a conservative or right wing means here in America.
It's vastly different than the understanding in Europe.
Well, actually, the first question I was going to ask you is you've kind of evolved.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but evolved politically over several decades.
How would you describe your personal politics?
I don't know if I've evolved in my politics.
I've evolved in my I've lost some of my youthful hubris, if you will.
But the question is, how would I describe myself and my politics?
A constitutional conservative that believes in the Bill of Rights, the right to free speech, the right for every individual to make it on their own.
So I'm a very small government, you know, closer to what a founder of America was, you know, believed in, where each person is responsible and also gets the success as well.
New York Campaign Strategy 00:14:35
And beyond that, the government really doesn't have any role just to play the referee on the field.
And then it's up for institutions like our churches or, you know, our social clubs or whatever to take care of everything else.
And in terms of the identity of the Republican Party, which remains the big flag waiver for the conservative movement in America, I mean, that's where I think you'd be very interesting because I remember in 2016, you didn't vote Trump.
You didn't want to vote Trump.
But you have, would it be fair to say, you've evolved when it comes to Trump?
And how much of that is down to him?
And how much is that down to other matters?
Very little to do with him.
Donald Trump is a guy who I thought, you know, he was unproven.
He was a New York liberal, big businessman.
And when he got into office, I said to the audience, I got to tell you, there's no way this man does half of the things he's saying because I think that he is big business.
He'll get into bed with the, you know, the parties and everything else.
And about a year and a half into it, I went on the air and I said, I have to apologize.
I told you that.
I didn't think I was wrong, but if I was wrong, I'd be the first to admit it.
You know, I think when I watched him, every president has said that they would recognize Israel and its capital city is Jerusalem.
No president has ever done it because they don't want to buck our Department of State.
And they've always been saying, oh, that's just going to be the worst thing ever.
And then he started making peace in the Middle East.
And I thought, I mean, you know, he may be doing some of the things that I didn't like, but there were many things that I never thought he would do that I agreed with.
So I like him off air personally a lot.
He's not the guy he appears.
I'm sure you know him.
No, he's not.
I know him very well like you do.
He can be very charming in private and he can actually show a lot of things like empathy and so on, which he just refuses to show as a politician, which I find really interesting.
When I left, well, I was going to say, when I left CNN, and I think Kevin Briden's saying that you gave it four seconds of your time, my departure from CNN, you said on your radio show, so we're going to do that after we mourn the loss of Piers Morgan.
Okay, we're done with that.
I think you mourned the loss of Piers Morgan to CNN in America for about four seconds, Glenn.
But I have to say, the reason I mentioned that, A, it made me laugh, and fair enough, because I'd whack you a few times.
But actually, what was interesting about it was when I came back to the UK in 2014, I can count on one hand the number of high-profile Americans who bothered to really contact me in the months after.
But Trump did repeatedly.
Either he sent me messages with the sort of normal thing where he'd seen something, he'd print it out, he'd scroll on it in his Sharpie, a good luck message, whatever it may be, or he'd seen something, or he actually physically just picked the phone up and rang me to ask how I was.
And so I've seen him firsthand when I was of no use to him whatsoever.
And he tried to get me a new job, but he really went out of his way, actually.
I've seen that side to him.
Why do you think he's so reluctant to show that side of him as a politician?
So the best story I know about Donald Trump is, and very few people know this, when he built the Trump Tower in New York, as you know, and probably the same in London, you don't just buy the land, you have to buy up.
You have to buy the airspace.
And I think it was Cartier or Tiffany, I think it was Tiffany's owned the airspace where he was going to build Trump Tower.
So before he went to the meeting with Tiffany's, he said to his architect, I want you to draw up a plan of the most beautiful hotel you've ever seen.
And then the most ugly hotel he's ever building you'd ever can come up with.
And he had both of them.
And he walked in and he said, look, here's the thing.
I got to build this.
It's going to be beautiful.
It's going to be a masterpiece.
And if you don't sell me the airspace, I'm going to build this.
And he said, don't think I won't do it.
And they said, we're never going to sell you the airspace.
So he went home, went back to his office.
By the time he got back to his office, they had called and said, okay, okay, we'll sell you the airspace.
He doesn't show weakness.
He is, he's a guy who, you know, I've always wanted a president that kind of for our enemies, not our allies, not our citizens, but kind of has a twitchy eye where you're like, that guy just might do it.
He just might do it.
But you have confidence that he won't do it.
Donald Trump has that twitchy eye with enemies and he likes that and thinks that anything where he shows the softer side of him weakens him in real power.
I think that's so true.
Yeah, I completely agree.
I disagree with him.
I've told him that I think, for example, during COVID, I felt that sometimes you've got to be comforter in chief as much as commander in chief.
You know, you've got to kind of embrace the people and say, I know what you're going through here.
Yeah.
I think if you'd done a little bit more of that, he might well have got reelected.
Yeah.
He's an interesting guy.
He called me after I said, you know, I was wrong.
He called me up like nothing happened.
And he said, Glad, I just want to thank you for your comment.
And I said, I said, well, I don't know if you know, you know, but when you were running and he cut me off, he's like, oh, no, I very well.
And I said, no, not that.
I said that I would be the first to admit if I was wrong and I was wrong.
And he said he appreciated that.
And he said, so tell me what you're thinking about stuff.
And we talked and I said, I have to tell you, I disagree with your trade policy.
I think that's, and we talked about it for probably 15 minutes and he kept coming around.
And then I would, you know, something.
And eventually he said something I've never heard a politician say, you know, I just got to be honest with you.
I've got to do it.
I'm just going to do it.
And I know you don't like that, but that's the way it is.
And usually a politician, especially when they're trying to repair a road, would say, you know, I've got to take that into consideration.
He didn't.
What's fascinating, and the reason why it was interesting to talk to you about him before we get to where we are today, but, you know, a year ago, this guy was dead and buried.
You know, well, you're in a bit, you know, like early part of last year, it was all over.
Ron DeSantis was the new wonder boy of the Republican Party.
Trump was nowhere in the polls.
And then the left began to weaponize the judicial system against him, which looks now like one of the great acts of political self-harm anyone has ever committed.
I mean, do you chart Trump's resurgence down to that decision that they took?
Part of it, yes.
There's two things going on with that.
The first part is that Trump is the only person that a lot of Americans who feel disenfranchised from the whole system and are sick of politics.
There's a lot of people that look at him and go, you know, he's a billionaire.
He could go off.
He doesn't need any of this.
And look at what they've done to his family.
Look what they've done to his business.
They're trying to put him in jail.
And he is the first one that speaks directly to the people.
You know, after the election in 2020, I spoke to him and in a just a real quiet moment before an interview, I came up to him and I said, how are you holding up?
How you doing?
And he said, I can't get past it.
He said, we had it.
We were on the right course.
And he said, and then the election happened.
And now they're reversing all of it.
And there's going to be so much pain in the country.
They're just destroying the economy and jobs and everything.
And he said, I don't know if I can live with myself.
I promised people that I would do it and I would take care of them.
And they voted for me and they went out and they worked hard.
And in the end, I didn't win.
And it showed to me that he actually cares.
He doesn't care about the press.
He doesn't care about the elites.
He really does care about the individual.
So like as policies are not, that is connecting with a lot of people.
So you have that.
But then you also have the arrogance of the progressive left that, you know, they don't take human nature into consideration.
They just think the big state or the experts know what's best and they're going to force their way.
And that doesn't work.
It always causes more problems.
And that's what's happening today with Biden.
The New York Times has reported that President Biden told a key ally his campaign may be unsalvageable if he can't convince the public he's up to the job.
But wait a minute, Piers.
You know the New York Times.
Two weeks ago, they were saying that anybody who was saying that Joe Biden was incapable, it was fake news.
It was a cheap fake, all of that stuff.
Now they have jumped all in on he's got to go.
So I don't know if you can trust.
You couldn't trust them then.
Can you trust them now?
I don't know who to believe.
Well, it seems to me it's almost reaffirming their bias because what they're really saying is we don't think he can win.
And so we need to get rid of him because it's self-interested because actually we are a Democrat newspaper without admitting it.
That's what it seemed to me.
I'm really torn because in some ways, politically, please just leave it alone because Trump will crush him.
Okay.
It'll be like a Reagan moment, I think, from 1984, where, you know, I think his opponent won one state.
And I think it's so obvious about him that I think it could end up being that.
So that's political.
What bothers me is everybody's talking about him dropping out of the race.
We are being threatened as the West with nuclear weapons.
Yes.
Not just Russian nuclear weapons, but Iranian nuclear weapons, North Korean nuclear weapons.
And this guy is the guy in charge.
He should not just step down.
If he's not good enough to run, he certainly is not good enough to be the president of the United States.
That's exactly what I was thinking when I was watching the debate, because as it unfurled this kind of catastrophe, you know, my 12-year-old daughter walked in halfway through and went, is he asleep about Biden?
And I was like, wow, he's the president of the United States.
And then I saw the briefing afterwards was, well, you know, he's quite good between nine and five.
But if it's later in the day, he's an old man.
He gets tired.
Okay, so what happens if Putin decides to rattle the nuclear cage at 7.30 or midnight or whatever?
It's a terrifying admission that for large swathes of the day, he is unfit.
Thank you for saying that.
Thank you for saying that.
I have to tell you, the main thing that I walked away from that debate was terrifying horror.
I just watched that and I thought, all of our enemies are watching the president of the United States.
Everybody knows if you're going to go for him, go right now.
This guy is literally asleep at the switch.
We cannot be in the position we're in and have a president that is incapable of understanding.
I don't know if you've read Annie Jacobson's book, Nuclear War.
Yeah, I interviewed him, but it's a great question.
I interviewed her about it.
Yeah.
Fantastic, isn't it?
There's no way Joe Biden could handle that.
I mean, we are not in the position to play games.
I don't know who's running the White House, but you cannot run the United States of America and be checking in at 11 o'clock and checking out at 4.
Can't happen.
Glenn, what is the likely scenario here?
Because there is obviously the reality check, which is that if Joe Biden does decide, as the New York Times is intimating, to step aside, if he does, then all the money that he's raised, which is a lot of money, many hundreds of millions of dollars.
$450 million.
It can only go to Kamala Harris.
It can't go to any other candidate that comes in.
From a political point of view, how restrictive is that on them going for, for argument's sake, a Gavin Newsome type?
In other words, does it have to be Kamala simply because of where the money is?
So I think the money isn't the only thing.
Kamala Harris was brought onto the ticket in this madness of equity.
So she was brought on because he promised I would select a black woman to be the vice president.
How about we just get the most qualified?
There's lots of qualified black women, okay?
But one of the congressmen was instrumental in this selection, and he's already raising holy hell.
It's going to be Kamala.
You cannot pass this woman up.
I mean, on the Democratic side, the progressive side, you cannot replace her.
She's a black woman, the first black woman vice president.
Now you have the opportunity and you're going to replace her with a white man.
That is totally against all of everything that they, they will implode.
The only person that they could replace her with that could win is Michelle Obama.
Protecting Qualified Candidates 00:06:51
Right.
Who doesn't want to run her?
She doesn't want it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I believe that, but I also believe her husband is actually the one kind of running the White House right now and the policies.
And she hates the White House so much and she doesn't want that role.
But if she could be talked into it by her husband by saying, this is it, we close the door on that American chapter and we begin anew if you're the president.
If she took it, she could win.
Yeah.
I mean, it's an extraordinary state of affairs.
There have been two incumbent Democrat presidents since World War II who have stood down in election year, Truman and Johnson.
Slightly different circumstances.
So I think in both those cases, there was a fear they may lose primaries, which obviously has not been the problem for Biden.
But there's also the 25th Amendment.
I mean, does that is Biden now coming into this?
I saw yesterday's press secretary insisting he's not got any form of dementia.
I thought that was a blatant lie.
I just think you look at a guy of 81 or two, whatever he is, he clearly has got a form of dementia.
I mean, it's inarguable.
And it's not a bad thing.
It happens to some people.
It's not an ageist thing.
You know, you look at Alan Dershowitz.
That guy is, what, 85?
Yeah.
Sharp as a tack.
Yeah.
So it's not just a, you know, it's an important thing for the president to be clear-minded.
I think they're lying to you again as well.
The 25th Amendment, however, smartly was written after Kennedy, that it can only be the president, the vice president and the cabinet.
So it's his own party, and the cabinet and the vice president have to agree.
Congress can't do it.
There's no laws that can be passed or anything else.
No one else can take him out.
That's important so you don't have political games going on to take the president out all the time.
But I don't think that these people in Washington, they've been running their own departments and their own show now for a while.
I would imagine they'd be like, why would we?
I mean, we've already been doing it for all this time.
We haven't really needed him.
Just leave it alone.
Why change horses when you don't need to?
In their opinion, I think.
Glenn, you've said on the record, I believe, that one of your spirit animals was Howard Beale from Network, one of my favorite movies.
And rather like Howard, you've tapped in to a lot of simmering anger and distrust and, you know, just a feeling of disenfranchisement from society and so on.
Is that accurate?
Is that how you see your role that you're sort of getting to the people that don't have a voice like he did?
No, not my role.
When I said that, it was kind of how I felt that this is a character I watched on TV, you know, in the movie.
And I'm like, gosh, I'm that guy now.
But, you know, that's a little, you know, that takes it too far.
It's genuine.
I'm not tapping into anything.
I'm feeling what I'm feeling and expressing it.
I'm just an I'm not a journalist.
I'm, I'm a self-educated man.
Only in America could somebody like me end up doing what I'm doing.
I have a pretty good gut.
I read a lot.
I dismiss experts an awful lot because I've seen the experts be wrong over and over.
And we keep asking them after they're wrong.
Okay, so now what do we do?
And then they're wrong.
And then we ask them again.
So, okay, so what's the plan now?
Stop it.
You know, everybody's convinced there's this system that's going to protect everything.
Well, it might protect a few at the very, very top, but it's not going to protect the average citizen.
And right now, all over the world, you're seeing people rise up and say, pretty much, I think, and I think I've heard you say this, for the same reasons, just different outcomes.
You're not listening to me.
You're not hearing me.
You're not helping me as a farmer or a teacher or anything else.
You're helping yourself.
You're helping corporations.
You're helping labor unions, but you're not helping me.
And people feel like, you know, you're making all these decisions as global governments about what I'm going to eat, where I'm going to live, what I'm going to drive, how many vacations I can take.
And you haven't even talked to me about it.
And every time I bring it up, you say, oh, that's not happening.
And then we find out, yes, it is happening.
And then you admit it, but there's something else now that you're saying is a conspiracy theory.
People, how big?
They've had enough of this.
How big do you think a part in the global unrest and feelings that you've just articulated comes down to failure to properly control borders?
Because it seems to me that's a running theme running through Europe, America, the UK.
That people feel not only all the things you've just said, but they also feel that the country that they're in is changing at such a rapid pace, they don't really recognize it.
And they're fearful about the impact on infrastructure, on health, education, all jobs, all these kinds of things.
But that also the very fabric and essence of what their country is is changing at such a rate.
They don't really recognize it.
So I was in Sweden a few years ago, and it was my first time.
And it's such a different country.
The architecture, everything is just different.
It's beautiful.
And I was having breakfast and I was talking to the waitress and I said, So, you know, tell me about your culture.
And she said, Oh, well, we don't really have our own special culture.
It's kind of like everything else.
And I'm looking out the window and I said, Have you looked at those buildings?
I mean, it's completely different than any place else.
And so the first thing that I think happened was people were told their culture is no better.
And in fact, if you're proud of your culture, you know, shame on you.
You're a racist of some sort.
Well, no.
I mean, there are people in Scotland.
There are people in the United Kingdom.
There's people in France that are proud to be French.
They're different.
You know, my wife, her family is from Italy.
She still is, you know, Italian in many ways.
Supreme Court Weaponization 00:13:34
And there's nothing wrong with that.
So they've been told, don't fly the flag.
Don't be proud of your country.
Your country's not special.
Then they were told, you're a racist if you believe any different.
And so a lot of self-examination on that happened for a long time.
Am I?
I mean, what have I?
How can I fix that?
And then they've overplayed that hand so much that people are like, no, you know what?
No, I'm not racist as you're letting people into the country, taking my job, destroying the infrastructure.
I can't get a place at the hospital.
In our country, we have veterans that are living on the streets while we're putting migrants up in five-star hotels and paying for their food.
I'm sorry, that doesn't make me a racist.
You're destroying the country.
And I think that was the final straw that people are just, I like my own sovereignty.
I like my country.
There are other great countries too.
And I believe in common sense and I want to help people, but this is not helping anyone.
This is going to get all of us the short end of the stick.
I want to play a clip.
This is from President Biden responding to the Supreme Court ruling on immunity, presidential immunity.
This is what he said.
There are no kings in America.
Each, each of us is equal before the law.
No one, no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States.
Today's decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.
I know I will respect the limits of the presidential powers I have for three and a half years.
But any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law.
What did you make of that?
That's not true.
Just a doubling down on the same tired lies that are no longer really working.
They're working for some people, but more and more people are waking up every day.
That is absolutely untrue.
The Supreme Court ruling said any constitutional actions.
So they have to be constitutional.
And we don't have a dictatorship here.
They have also, at the same time, they had that ruling, they have what was called the chevron deference, which just means that the government is given the benefit of the doubt.
And if they want to come up with a new regulation, they can do that.
And that's caused this out-of-control government spread and control.
People are, they don't know who to vote for because it doesn't seem to matter because the administrative state has so much power.
So at the same time, they said, no, there are some things that the president has to be protected on.
Those are official duties.
And if he does things, he can be impeached.
Then after he's impeached, he could go to court if it's something that was illegal.
He can be tried.
He's saying that that's the opposite, which it's not.
And at the same time, how are you making the case that the Supreme Court is trying to make a king when they just ruled the day before or the same day to reduce the size of the government and put the power back into the hands of Congress?
It doesn't make any sense.
This is just manipulation and lies.
I also thought it was interesting to see how they keep ramping up this.
It's terrible that Trump packed the court with conservatives.
And I'm like, well, what do you expect him to do?
If you win an election in America and one of the places on the Supreme Court comes up, you are allowed to put somebody on it.
And the Democrats allowed some of their people on the court to just go on and on and on to the point where they were inevitably going to die and therefore need replacing.
I mean, whose fault's that?
It's not Donald Trump's fault.
He just did what any Democrat would have done the other way around, didn't he?
Right.
Right.
And I will say, I think it was Barack Obama who was appointing very leftist judges said elections have consequences.
Well, yes, they do.
They do.
And that's why it was so important last time in 2016.
And I think again this time that we have a conservative that is not ruling from the bench.
This is the first time in my lifetime that our Supreme Court is saying, we're not elected officials.
This whole thing on abortion is so misunderstood.
What the Supreme Court said was, no, we're not going to get involved in the abortion thing.
That's for the people to decide, not judges.
And for the first time, I'm seeing ruling after ruling where they're saying, we're umpires here.
We're just here to tell you that's constitutional.
That's not.
You want to make the laws.
Make the laws.
But they have to be constitutional.
And that is the best thing that could be happening in a world where everybody's freaked out about fascism, communism, authoritarianism, or theocracy.
Reduce the power of these people.
So one of the things that I have got a problem with is the weaponization of the justice system under Biden's administration against Trump.
But I was also a little bit concerned when he came on your show and he said this.
You said in 2016, you know, lock her up.
And then when you became president, you said, we don't do that in America.
That's just not the right thing to do.
That's what they're doing.
Do you regret not locking her up?
And if you're president again, will you lock people up?
Well, I'll give you an example.
The answer is you have no choice because they're doing it to us.
I always had such great respect for the office of the president, the presidency, but the office of the president.
And I never hit Biden as hard as I could have.
And then I heard he was trying to indict me, and it was him that was doing it.
And he sort of extrapolates that he's going to have to do the same back.
I mean, is there not a danger that America becomes a kind of banana republic if every consecutive president is fixated on locking up his political opponents?
Yeah, so I've had conversations with real constitutional scholars about this for a long time, long time.
Because I always thought it was wrong that Nixon, you know, didn't go to jail.
There's nobody above the law.
And everyone I've ever spoken to, they said, Glenn, once you open that door, you cannot close it again.
Right.
Because everybody will want vengeance.
And now we've opened the door.
So now we're sitting here going, geez, and there is a discussion from very smart and decent people, unless you teach them a lesson, it won't stop.
But who's going to give up that power?
I don't see very many George Washingtons around.
And it makes me nervous.
However, if it's not weaponizing the court, if it's an action, for instance, I do believe that Joe Biden has taken money and laundered it for his family from China.
I'm sorry, but the president should know no one should be able to do that.
Don't sell the people out and your country out for the dollar.
And if there are real crimes, and that's what the Supreme Court did rule, if there are actual crimes that were not part of the constitutional duty, and in Biden's case, none of it was, because he wasn't president at the time, you can try them for that.
I think that should be done.
I think, however, if he does step down as the candidate, one of the things will be is Kamala will pardon him and his whole family.
So there won't be any case to go after.
What did you feel about Steve Bannon?
He's just begun a four months prison term on Monday.
Because on one level, he's a victim of this ongoing attack on Trump and everyone who ever worked for him by the judicial system.
On the other, he did refuse to appear at a hearing about the 6th of January U.S. capital rights.
He didn't provide documents and so on.
I mean, if somebody deliberately obstructs the process of justice, albeit you may have concerns about why they've been brought to that place in the first place, is that something that's defensible?
So I'm an equal justice guy.
The law is what it is.
The law, justice should be blind.
And I'm not a big fan of Steve Bannon, but I don't think in this case he should be in jail unless you're going to put Eric Holder for the same exact crime.
You're going to put Maorkis in jail.
You're going to put the head of our DOJ in jail.
You're going to put the people at the White House are doing exactly the same thing that Bannon did.
If you're not going to try them equally, then no, I'm not for it.
Equal justice under the law.
I'm all for anybody, my side, anybody's side.
If you break the law, you go to jail.
Everybody.
What do you feel about someone that I have strong views about?
And you might remember, it goes back to when he was saying a lot of stuff about Sandy Hook, the mass shooting when it happened.
He then screamed at me live on air, And then he launched a petition to have me deported, which actually I was saved for the American people by Barack Obama.
God bless him.
But Alex Jones has a guy on talking about.
Now, he carried on.
I'll put my case for why I think he should be punished.
Let's see what you think.
You know, I've had this argument with Elon Musk, who initially wouldn't let him back on X and then decided to let him back on.
This is a guy who deliberately monetized misery in the sense that he I absolutely believe he knew that when he was talking about it all being a red flag operation, sorry, a false flag operation, when he was talking about the victims' families being actors and so on, that the misery and hurt that he calls them and the tangible threats against them that then manifested themselves.
When you're making hundreds of millions of dollars by doing that quite deliberately, knowing what you're saying is wrong, should you not be properly punished?
I mean, should you be someone that allows you to hide under the banner of free speech when you do that?
So, well, let's clear up a couple of things.
First of all, I'm with you on Alex Jones.
My first real death threat came from Alex Jones' supporters.
He accused me of being a CIA agent responsible for the World Trade Center.
You know, I was doing cover-up.
Yada, yada, yada.
He said horrible things about me and others.
And we're not friends.
However, I am not friends with Roseanne Barr, who said that we should have a guillotine to cut off all the heads of any of the bankers during Occupy Wall Street.
I defended her, Bill Maher, when he said at least the al-Qaeda terrorists were brave, unlike our soldiers who just bombed from the sides.
They actually went in and flew it into the building.
He was fired by ABC.
I stood up for him, even though I found that despicable.
The freedom of speech is only important when it's the speech that nobody wants to hear and everyone finds offensive.
You have the right to say it.
Now, that doesn't mean that you have a right to be on ABC.
My problem with ABC is what part of politically incorrect didn't you understand when you had that show on.
But I think that the justice that he was dealt, because I have no, what he said and what was allowed to be said about the Sandy Hook parents, I found absolutely despicable.
However, they first, I think, went after him in the first judgment was like a trillion dollars or something.
Then it was a billion and a half dollars.
This isn't about, this is about vengeance.
And that's not justice.
How they're shutting him down and doing everything they can to shut him down seems like vengeance.
And that's why we don't let in our country, the family decide the punishment because it can get really hostile.
Market Vengeance vs Justice 00:05:46
And I think that there is a political element to this and it goes right into shutting voices down.
He has a right to be heard and say what he wants.
I don't have to listen to it.
I don't have to support his words, but I do support your right, his right, anybody else, to express themselves the way they feel fit.
If you're doing it for money, it makes it extraordinarily gross.
But look how many people are even on, you know, TikTok and all of the social media making lots of money and being driven by likes.
They're saying things because they know they can get viewers.
Do you think social media has been a force for good or bad on balance?
I think it's like everything.
You know, is television good or bad?
Is the internet good or bad?
It's both.
It's whatever we use it for.
You know, I'm a big believer in Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations, but his first book, the predecessor to that, was Moral Sentiments.
And in that book, he was talking about your culture matters.
What you as people believe matters.
Because if the free market, the invisible hand of the free market, if the people want pornography and violence, that invisible hand of the market will provide that for you.
So social media, I think, has been A, an experiment, including the cell phones and everything else.
Being able to take a picture of yourself has changed us.
And I think it was an experiment that we should be looking at now going, maybe we should make some changes here in our own life.
But the problem really lies with people, not the system, not the internet or social media, but the people who are running it, what their goals are, and what our goals are as people.
How is Glenn Beck today different to Glenn Beck 30 years ago?
And the reason I ask that is I think I'm right that in November this year, it'll be 30 years since you went clean.
You came off all drinking drugs.
Yeah.
That Glenn Beck is wildly different.
And, you know, when you surrender, and I just said on the air today, Piers, that, by the way, I don't know why we haven't become friends because, I mean, maybe you're just holding back on me, but we agree on an awful lot.
I always thought we did actually.
I've always found you one of the more interesting guys out there because I think you don't pack yourself into any tribe.
You're prepared to think about things, I think, with an honest mind.
I like that about you.
Principles.
Yeah, thank you.
The difference is, and this, I believe alcoholics can save the world.
What's happening with the Biden administration is they're acting like a bunch of active alcoholics.
They are holding on to the steering wheel, going, no, it's my way.
It's my way.
It's my way.
I can control this.
I can keep this together.
No, you can't.
And the longer you do that, the bigger the car wreck is at the end.
And it's only the people who can surrender and say, you know what?
I'm out of control and I can't control anything.
There's got to be a higher power that I serve.
And I just need to figure out who I am and what I believe and then make amends for the past.
And then don't do it again and help others so they don't do it.
I think if we just as societies practice the 12 steps to recovery, I think we would solve a lot of our control.
So right.
Do you still have any devil on your shoulder that occasionally is like, God, I just want to go and go completely nuts?
No, I mean, after the debate, I would have liked to drink that night away.
You know, kids, do not waste your blackouts.
You only have a certain number of blackouts before you really have to admit you have a problem.
Don't waste them.
Save them for later.
But no, I don't.
I found God and I know what I believe to be true.
And my biggest problem 10 years ago was I was certain. of many things.
And now I am certain that I am uncertain about almost everything.
Really?
You know, interesting.
Yeah, when you, I think when you, you know, you couldn't be me in America, Pierce.
And, you know, I went from the fourth and most admired man in the world on this AP thing they do every year in America.
And I was tied with Nelson Mandela and the Pope.
Okay.
I remember I read this.
We were on the thoroughly deserved came around Christmas.
And I said, I said, good, I brought it to the table with the family.
I said, good Lord, our country is so lost.
Look at this.
And I didn't belong on that list in any way, shape or form.
But a year later, I went to Fox.
Caution on Ukraine War 00:08:35
And just because leaving CNN, going to Fox, now I'm a different person and I'm the most hated man.
I didn't deserve either of those.
But did I do anything to cause the second one?
And the answer is yes.
And so when you, what I really think is important for everybody, we don't talk to each other anymore.
And if we could just learn, if we could just do this, when I say I can't talk, I'm not talking to him.
Well, what does that say?
That says that Piers Morgan has nothing to teach me, that I can't ask him questions and say, well, wait a minute, how did you get there?
That's arrogance on my part.
We have to listen to each other because it's our only path to the future to be able to figure out, wait a minute, okay, wait a minute, this is a giant misunderstanding, Pierce, because you just said this.
Okay, I understand you now.
Let's correct that together.
But we're not doing that.
We're being pushed to be separate.
Notwithstanding all the toxicity and tribalism and so on, is America in a better place actually than it's ever been?
I mean, many people like to say it's never been worse.
But if you go back into the history of America, there's been, you know, a lot of unrest, a lot of civil unrest, a lot of, you know, issues that go back right to when it was founded as a country.
Is America actually heading to an ever darker, worse place?
Or are things actually being exaggerated and inflamed, perhaps by things like social media?
So I don't think they're being inflamed.
They are being exaggerated in the view, in the world's view that we are two separate nations.
We're really not.
When you go through America, Americans get along and they're generally fine with each other.
So that's being inflamed.
However, you'll have to ask that question in a couple of years because we are at a crossroads and America could, and I said this back in 2008.
We are doing many things, including the division of each other and not seeing people as people anymore that will lead us to a place to where we could go very dark.
And if our nation goes dark, we'll make the Nazis look like rookies.
It's a terrifying prospect of America going dark.
We've never been in a place to where our dollar is as weak, our manufacturing is as weak, our churches are as weak, our schools are just almost decimated.
You can't find truth.
You can't agree on the sky is blue.
We are being pushed into a place to where we either have to find ourselves.
And basically, again, as an alcoholic, My mother committed suicide.
She was an alcoholic.
She committed suicide when I was 13, 14 years old.
And her bottom was death.
Mine wasn't.
Before I died, I decided I'm not going to do that anymore.
I don't know what our bottom is.
If we hit bottom and it's not the death of our republic, America is going to be much better off for all this soul searching and ripping ourselves apart.
We'll be much better as a nation.
But I don't know what America's appetite is for pain and suffering.
I don't know.
One of the big challenges for whoever wins in November are going to be the two ongoing wars, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and Hamas.
You've been extremely supportive of Israel to the extent that you've actually, through your charity, you helped bring back 440 people to the United States, from the region.
And I know you feel strongly that they should be allowed to finish the job.
Conversely, I'm interested how you would differentiate the two ideologically.
You've got Ukraine that was invaded by Vladimir Putin.
It is a sovereign democratic European country.
But I don't think you support America continuing to help Ukraine repel the Russians.
Why the difference?
One is, you know, these are two places, you know, not that far actually from each other.
Why feel so strongly that one should be helped and not the other?
Okay, so I actually, let me give you some nuance here.
What Hamas has done is just sheer evil, and there's no other way to describe it.
And if you do, I think you're part of the problem.
I agree.
Putin is a bloodthirsty killer.
Okay.
He's a KGB guy.
There's nothing about Vladimir Putin I like or want to be a part of.
And the Ukrainian people were invaded and it was horrible and they've paid a huge price for what?
For Putin?
Just wanting that territorial land?
Yes and no.
The problem is, for me, is that our hands are so dirty in Ukraine, so dirty in Ukraine.
It is a very corrupt country far as the government goes.
And I don't know what we're doing with the what, $150 billion.
Wait, we're not sending accountants over to watch that.
We're not having anybody account for that money.
We know this is a corrupt place.
We know we've been on the wrong side in Ukraine.
We know we've overturned them.
I don't trust the problem is I like the Ukrainian people and I'm for the Ukrainian people, but I don't trust our government.
I don't know where that money's going.
I'm not sure that money's going to do anything in Ukraine.
And I don't trust the Ukrainians.
If you would trust me.
If you're Trump and he says he can fix this in one day, I mean, A, do you think he can?
But short of giving Putin what he's taken, which would surely be a green light for him to continue taking stuff.
Yes.
How else does this get resolved?
I don't know.
I mean, there's going to have to be compromise on both sides, but we, on our side, we have to stop saying, and come on in, you're going to be NATO.
There is a reason, you know, historically, we made a prom.
We did, the United States, not England, anybody else.
We did.
We made a promise.
We're not going to take all these Soviet satellites and turn them into NATO countries.
We won't do that.
Well, then, I mean, the only thing that Biden really needed to do was say, we're not going, we're not going to have them become a NATO nation.
We didn't do that.
In fact, we doubled down on it, and then he goes in and invades.
I don't know how you solve it now where there's real justice because Putin is going to be Putin.
The problem I have with this, Piers, is no one wants to lose.
There's no one.
No, no, no.
There's no one who can afford to lose.
I agree.
If Putin loses, Putin loses, he could lose his country.
He's in trouble.
He'd be dead, probably.
If the United States loses, I mean, we're in worse shape than we're in now.
We cannot lose and be on the wrong side.
When you have those things, there's no reason.
Reason goes out the window.
I hope that Putin and Biden, I don't know about Biden, but who was ever in charge here in America remembers that it was both Reagan and Gorbachev who separately came to the same conclusion.
There's no winners in nuclear war.
There's no winner.
And so we had some common sense going.
Now it just seems like we have massive state egos that might just do it because they can't lose.
I just urge caution, caution, caution, caution in everything that's happening here.
Stopping the Israel Conflict 00:04:01
And in Israel, you know, I've said from the start after what happened October the 7th, they had a fundamental duty to their people to stop it ever happening again.
And given Hamas came out and said, we're going to keep trying to do this, they had to try and eliminate Hamas.
The reality in Gaza, though, of warfare is when you have a population of 2 million or so and half of them are under 18, you are going to, if you're attacking a terror group who are embedded amongst civilians, you're going to kill a vast amount of innocent young people, which is what's happened.
And this has created for me what I kept referring to as a moral quandary, because I'm not sure that the Israeli government has really thought through any proper end game for this or what happens after the war or anything.
And they seem just intent through Netanyahu of just finishing the job.
But I say, well, at what cost?
And how does that actually kill the ideology that fueled Hamas in the first place?
What are your thoughts about this?
So my thoughts go back, obviously, because it's Israel, to World War II.
You know, once we stop the war, I mean, let's first say something horrific.
The purpose of war is to kill the enemy faster than they can kill you and do it in such a breathtaking way that the other side just goes, okay, okay, okay, okay, I stop.
I stop, I stop.
Okay.
That's what war is supposed to be.
It's not a kind thing.
It's, in fact, I think probably more humane to just take the air oxygen out of the room to get them to stop.
But when we fought World War II, we didn't stop fighting the Nazis.
We were never against the German people.
We were against those Germans that embraced the Nazi ideology.
And when we stopped, we still were hunting for the werewolves, those Nazis that were hiding, who were still Nazi.
And we still went after the Nazis for decades after, because we know that ideology is corrosive and a nightmare.
And it ends the same way every time.
The same thing with Hamas and Hezbollah and those who, you know, their charters talk about the destruction of Israel.
There has to be a way to get the Gazans to say, we're not them.
We are not them.
We don't want them.
We're not them.
If Germans wouldn't have said that, we wouldn't have had peace.
We would have probably continued to kill.
And what do you do in that situation?
When the ideology is that bad and you have enough people, you know, 60, 70, 80% of Gazans identify with Hamas and think they were right.
How do you stop?
You've got to have a core number of people who say, we're not that.
We want to be something different.
When that happens, then you have a chance at real peace.
Otherwise, you're just going to be playing this game over and over and over and over again.
And in that particular case, with the viewpoint of Islamicists, it may be you never wipe it out.
You never do.
And you can never get people to see sense because they're so warped in their ideology of kill, kill, kill, and I'll go to heaven.
So I don't know, Piers.
I just don't know how you stop before they say, I don't want to do this anymore.
Finally Getting an Interview 00:00:32
Fascinating.
Glenn, it's been brilliant to talk to you.
Finally, I think 15 years I tried to get an interview with you, and you finally succumbed to my advances.
And it was everything I hoped it would be.
I've been watching you and seeing you are, I think your youth has been mellowed perhaps a little bit as well as mine.
I think we may have both calmed down slightly in our dotage, Glenn.
Yeah, I think so.
But I've really enjoyed it.
Thank you very much for it.
I'm glad to talk to you again.
Likewise.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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