Record-setting holiday spending and record-breaking sales numbers. How did all of this happen? Is it because Americans vote with their wallets or is it because of the media? Is the election of Donald Trump a referendum on the Trump administration?
00:01:39.760I mean, it's just kind of the mantra of people.
00:01:43.500Now, the problem for the president, in my opinion, is the fight with the media that's been picked that he's not really shied away from.
00:01:51.880Don't necessarily blame him, but his style is in your face.
00:01:55.540He dragged the media with him through the primary process.
00:01:59.840They were real numbers when you saw the amount of free press that was given to Donald Trump during the primary
00:02:07.120because he was such a controversial figure.
00:02:09.640He said so many things to and about the media, to and about his opponents on the dais during that, you know, that what was there, 37 Republican candidates
00:02:17.700that he was able to get over a billion dollars worth of free coverage because of the way he handled the election cycle.
00:02:58.240U.S. Department store stocks jump on holiday spending record.
00:03:01.920Tuesday, MasterCard said shoppers spent over $800 billion during the season, more than ever before.
00:03:14.020So the economy has been growing at a very slow pace over the last eight years.
00:03:18.660We hit rock bottom, the end of the Bush presidency, the housing bubble that burst, people short selling and losing their homes.
00:03:25.080The economy was down, the stock market crash, in comes President Obama, the stimulus spending that was supposed to fix things.
00:03:32.940By the way, the agenda for President Trump moving forward into the next election year.
00:03:38.400Mitch McConnell saying, and this is something we're going to get into, Mitch McConnell saying that the agenda for the Senate can't be to take up the benefits and take up what's going on in Washington, D.C.
00:03:50.740and entitlement programs because the Senate Democrats aren't really going to go along with that.
00:03:55.860So they're going to work on infrastructure.
00:03:59.800Wasn't the stimulus package about shovel ready jobs and infrastructure?
00:04:03.840Didn't we fix the highways and the bridges like eight years ago?
00:04:08.240I'm just asking the question because we spent a trillion dollars in a stimulus package that I thought we're supposed to fix the infrastructure of the United States.
00:04:15.980All we ever hear after that is the infrastructure is broken.
00:04:18.420What happened in that trillion dollars?
00:04:20.740But we know that the agenda for the president moving forward, he talks about a bipartisan infrastructure bill to bring some of the Democrats on board.
00:04:32.660It's an election year and they want to win back the House.
00:04:35.480So I don't know if they're going to go along with anything.
00:04:37.880But how are they spending is not a partisan issue, nor is the stock market.
00:04:42.400The Dow, the Nasdaq, and the S&P, all of them up.
00:04:46.500The Dow is going to add 5,000 points for the first time ever in a year, ever.
00:04:52.400You can argue about politics and numbers a lot of times, but in the end, it doesn't matter.
00:04:57.900The partisan Republicans and the partisan Democrats are going to vote that way.
00:05:01.620The candidates that are able to talk to that large swath of people down the middle.
00:05:06.840So here in Arizona, where I am, the answer is going to be for people that are trying to win their seat back or people that are trying to take seats from someone else.
00:06:14.220Now, especially in this next year, what's interesting about this is if you are going to see a huge jump in anything as far as spending and manufacturing, it will be in the next 12 months.
00:06:24.140Because businesses taking advantage of the tax cuts to begin next year for them, being able to take advantage of the write-offs by purchases that they make, you will see that in the first 12 months of 2018.
00:06:35.120Now, how it carries over into 2019 is another story, but if 2018 being an election year and we watch the stock market continue to climb, we see manufacturing numbers go up, we see unemployment numbers go down, wages going up for people.
00:06:51.460I mean, just based on that, the report said holiday sales in stores and online between November 1st and December 24th rose 4.9%, the fastest year-on-year pace of increase since 2011.
00:07:09.740MasterCard, which tracks spending by combined sales activity in its payment network with estimates of cash and other payment forms, excludes automobile sales from its figures.
00:07:22.000So retailers had their stocks tumble this year as they continue to lose sales to online stores like Amazon.
00:07:29.780Shares in JCPenney rose 7.6% on Tuesday.
00:07:37.740Online sales rose 18.1% during the holiday season, but that's probably only 11% or 12% of total retail sales.
00:07:50.220The bulk of sales are still very much in stores, according to people, and it was true.
00:07:58.840So if sales are up, if stores are beginning to see their stocks go up again, and we know retailers are in trouble.
00:08:06.080Well, the brick-and-mortar stores are in trouble per square foot, what they pay in rent compared to the people that go in when they buy online.
00:08:11.960But if you went out holiday shopping, Christmas shopping, as I did, like everybody else did, you know that those stores were busy.
00:08:25.900And you're seeing people buying gifts and spending more than they had before is an indicator of a good economy.
00:08:34.080So if that's the case, which now it appears with this spending is the case, if the left wants to say that's all Obama, okay, they can do that.
00:08:47.160It's not going to work with the average American family.
00:08:50.260The average American will go with the status quo when things are going well.
00:08:54.960The hard left and the hard right are already set in their ways.
00:08:57.720If you're listening to this show, chances are you are someone that is invested and you vote in primaries and you watch candidates for a long time.
00:09:11.800But you also are not the typical voter in a general election, which is why in primaries you see people sprint left and right depending on their party and sprint to the middle for a general because there is a huge swath of people that they have to speak to.
00:09:27.980It's going to be easier for Republicans next year to speak to constituents and to speak to potential voters.
00:09:35.380If you're a Republican, it's going to be a lot easier to go to them and say, look where the economy is going.
00:09:41.800But the Democrats are going to have to hit this head on, and I'm going to explain to you how they're going to do that.
00:09:47.020Bernie Sanders speaks, Krugman speaks, and it's as if they are living in a different planet from most of us.
00:09:55.040So coming up at 720, we'll tell you how they feel about it and how they are crafting the argument.
00:10:01.160Krugman says America's not dead yet, but the way he starts that op-ed piece would make you think he is living in an alternate universe.
00:26:12.500So somebody sat the president down and said, you know, there are a bunch of things in the North American free trade agreement that can be fixed.
00:26:19.460And if we sit down and talk about them instead of getting out of NAFTA, and the president, all right, let's talk.
00:26:25.100And both the Canadian and the Mexican leaders said, let's sit down and talk.
00:26:30.620Let's talk about a NAFTA that's good for all three nations, that makes all three nations work together when they do things like tariffs and when they do things so that we're not fighting amongst ourselves in this tariff war.
00:26:42.740That a unified North America is a great trading partner.
00:26:46.940So I'm not saying everything the president's touching is turning to gold.
00:26:54.360I'm saying there's some method to the madness sometimes.
00:26:58.360If the U.N. is going to pass a resolution where it's denounced by so many nations, where some of our friends sided with us and some of our friends just abstained from voting, and then America says, okay, that's fine, then we're going to cut back.
00:27:14.540The generosity is not going to be there.
00:27:17.840They have a right to vote the way they want to vote.
00:27:34.040Now, they should do some things with the budgets, the United States budgets for the different departments of our government when they're putting this together because the same principle applies.
00:27:41.480Because the redundancy and the waste in the American budget and all of the federal agencies that are tied to it, we could wipe out 10% of just about every department of the government's budget.
00:27:54.920And just get rid of redundancy and waste and not change one ounce of service provided by any one of them.
00:28:01.160If there was just some strict oversight.
00:28:05.120So, Nikki Haley making this announcement.
00:28:11.280So, we will remember when, this is what the president said, we will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations.
00:28:20.500Well, Haley said this on behalf of the president.
00:28:22.100And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more, to use our influence or for their benefit.
00:28:30.440The final budget cut exceeds the $200 million reduction targeted for the budget.
00:28:36.380Haley says the U.S. will look for other areas in which it can make additional cuts.
00:28:39.940While we are pleased with the results of this year's budget negotiations, you can be sure we will continue to look at ways to increase the U.N.'s efficiency while protecting our interests.
00:37:31.420But now we're seeing, after those eight years, the president, the former president, giving speech, making a statement about the economy, and talked about the growth and what was happening.
00:37:40.860And then said, thanks, Obama, as if he put the wheels in motion and got this thing spinning, and Donald Trump is reaping the benefits of Barack Obama's work.
00:37:55.600People on the left are going to try to say it.
00:37:57.400People on the left are going to try to believe it.
00:37:59.540But the American people are not going to buy it.
00:39:10.600Because she told the American people, we're going to put the coal industry out of business.
00:39:14.720Then we're going to come in with government programs, and we're going to retrain the coal miners that have worked for generations in those coal mines to doing different jobs.
00:39:23.260We're not going to forget about you, West Virginia.
00:39:25.300We're going to turn your lives upside down.
00:39:27.260We're going to get rid of the coal industry.
00:39:28.580But then we're going to come in and train you for another job.
00:39:33.980She was told, don't even bother coming to West Virginia.
00:39:37.260So the American people believe Donald Trump, 206 counties that twice voted for Barack Obama, voted for Donald Trump.
00:40:13.980According to MasterCard, the American people, between November 1st and December 24th, spent $800 billion, $800 billion, the highest spending in history, up 4.9% year over year, the biggest since 2011.
00:40:36.200So you look at those increases, you look at the stock market, 5,000 points up in one year for the first time ever, and you ask yourself, how in this day and age, when you go into an election year, is the momentum not on the side of the Republicans?
00:40:56.980Because if you watch or listen to the traditional media, they will tell you either this is a flash in the pan, this is an anomaly, or this is something that is going to get the rich richer, and it's going to crash down upon the middle class any day.
00:41:16.540Bernie Sanders says this is the worst thing ever for the American people, because 10 years from now, this is what's going to happen with taxes.
00:41:24.56010 years from now, it's five sessions of Congress.
00:41:32.840You mean the two-year term of a member of the House of Representatives, they aren't able to fix whatever the impending doom you say is possible?
00:41:40.760Well, that's why the Republicans have to be out.
00:41:42.660That's why we have to have Democrats in charge.
01:04:16.000And Mitch McConnell says he's not going to take up entitlement reform because the Democrats won't want to.
01:04:21.260I think Mitch McConnell needs to learn how to fight.
01:04:23.640I think Mitch McConnell should be up at the podium saying the Democrats do not want to talk about entitlement reform while we continue to spend at billions and billions, almost trillions of dollars in deficit still.
01:04:36.100They don't want to talk about getting rid of the abuse and the inefficiency that goes on within these systems.
01:04:44.120The Democrats want to keep spending at deficit level.
01:04:46.920Instead of fighting that way, Mitch McConnell says, ah, the Democrats aren't going to want to do it, so we're going to have to go to something else.
01:04:53.640I don't think that's the right way to be in leadership.
01:05:04.100I'm just saying he doesn't sound to me like he's much of an effective leader right now if he's already saying we're not going to do this next year because the Democrats don't want to.
01:05:11.760You are the leader of the United States Senate.
01:05:13.780It's your job to rally your people, rally your caucus, and whatever you have to do to drag some of the others with you, you need to do it.
01:05:27.480If you remember that, well, as President Obama said, the JV squad called ISIS and how they ran roughshod over the top of the Iraqis and took over a big chunk of that country.
01:05:37.740They controlled the Syrian border, the entire border between Syria and Iraq.
01:05:41.640Well, there's news about ISIS and what they've lost just from the rules of engagement changes that were made when President Trump took office.
01:05:50.040So that comes up here in just a few moments, and we'll talk more about holiday spending.
01:05:54.380And, of course, we can't go through this day without talking about the Trump dossier and CNN.
01:05:58.460So all that's still coming up on the show.
01:06:00.100I'm Mike Broomhead, and this is the Glenn Beck Program.
01:06:23.100And what I mean by that is I've always believed that in leadership, one of the best things to do is surround yourself with people that are great at what they do and then let them do what they're great at.
01:06:37.700Senator John McCain was talking to me very early in the Trump presidency and said that this is the best cabinet he's seen assembled in years and years and years and that the men and women that the president had surrounded himself with were excellent people.
01:06:54.480And you look at the foreign policy, and I thought foreign policy was going to be a very weak point for President Trump at a time when the country needed somebody that was strong in international policy and foreign policy because of the mess that was made during the Obama presidency.
01:07:10.000And, you know, I'm not – I mean, I am a registered Republican, but I'm not a hater.
01:08:47.620The Iranians at every turn shouted death to America throughout the process of the nuclear deal.
01:08:53.480The Ayatollah was speaking in public, and the crowd began to chant death to America in Farsi.
01:08:59.440He responded, yes, of course, death to America.
01:09:02.220One of the military leaders, one of the generals from the Iranian army said, it doesn't matter what deal is ever struck, the Americans will always be our enemy.
01:09:14.740I believe there are 200 members of the Iranian parliament were voting, and during the vote, members of their parliament were shouting death to America in which this anti-American bill passed 199 to 1.
01:09:30.880And I imagine the one vote in our favor, that guy probably was never seen again.
01:09:35.940So at every level of the Iranian government, they shouted death to America while John Kerry and the president of the United States negotiated behind the scenes to make sure that Hezbollah could sell drugs in America and weren't punished for it.
01:09:53.820It's also the president that called ISIS the JV squad, if you remember.
01:10:01.480The JV squad then that took over the entire Syrian-Iraqi border, major portions of the nation of Iraq.
01:10:08.260ISIS has lost 98% of the territory it once held, with half of that terror group's so-called caliphate having been recaptured since President Trump took office less than a year ago.
01:10:19.140The massive gains come after years of erroneous rules, or onerous rules.
01:10:27.660The micromanagement by the Obama administration, the rules of engagement under Obama administrations were onerous.
01:10:33.480I mean, what we were doing, have individual target determinations being conducted by the White House.
01:10:39.120Surround yourself with good people, and then let them do what they're good at.
01:10:43.060That's what they've done, and they unleashed the American military, and we're winning.
01:10:49.720Talk about holiday spending, the Trump dossier, all that coming up in the next hour.
01:11:15.640Doc Thompson will be in, I believe, the next couple of days.
01:11:19.040So let's talk about, first of all, political motivation, because we're going to get into the holiday spending numbers, which should be good news for everybody in America.
01:11:26.960But it's bad news for some people, and I'm surprised at this.
01:12:08.340I would rather get questions from high school students.
01:12:10.900And as much as we talk about public education and there's a problem in our schools and the dumbing down of America, I will tell you that the classrooms that I go into, actually the more assemblies that I go into, you know the kids ask the same questions we ask.
01:12:27.100They're concerned about the same things we're concerned about.
01:12:29.200And there are some real issues that are out there to be discussed.
01:12:50.720But I think maybe for just a moment at this time of year, before we talk about the money side of things right now, let's take some inventory.
01:13:06.520I have two girls that I love with all of my heart.
01:13:13.040And I want those two young women to realize that if they want to accomplish something, they should feel like they're able to.
01:13:20.720That their gender should not impede their success as long as they are physically, intellectually able to do that job.
01:13:29.020And it's kind of an American principle.
01:13:31.300It's a great time, I think, to be a woman in America.
01:13:36.300I mean, the Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken stuff aside.
01:13:42.500But you mirror that with the rest of the world.
01:13:44.680You know in Saudi Arabia what the big changes are this past year in 2017?
01:13:48.660In 2017, the Saudis have allowed women to drive cars.
01:13:53.620I want you to think about, you know, an industrialized country.
01:13:57.920Now, obviously, living under religious law and a lot of things that happen there.
01:14:01.700But think of the differences there in the conversations and how many decades behind rights they are when just now women are able to drive.
01:14:12.400There are still many countries that we would do business with that women are more property than they are individuals.
01:14:20.420Look how far we've come in leading the world in that regard.
01:14:23.960I'm not saying we don't have a long way to go.
01:14:26.000I'm not saying that there aren't real issues that should be discussed.
01:14:29.120But for a moment, let's at least recognize where we are and who we are.
01:14:33.140The former president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was at a U.N. assembly and decided to go and speak to a university in New York City while he was here.
01:14:46.420And during the speech, he told these university students that there are no gay people in Iran.
01:14:52.240To which the student body laughed out loud at him.
01:14:57.120And he was indignant and said there aren't.
01:14:59.560The truth of the matter is, there obviously are, but they're in hiding or they are put to death.
01:15:10.380Does that mean we don't have a ways to go or improvements that can be made in the relations between the gay and straight communities and the way people treat each other in this country?
01:15:21.860I'm saying for a moment, why not take inventory on how we lead the world in many ways?
01:15:29.560Poverty, the poor in America, real problem, real issue.
01:15:37.980I talked with a man from, I believe he was from Ethiopia.
01:15:43.240He crossed into another country and was homeless there for seven years, waiting for his visa to come through to come to America and get on a pathway to citizenship.
01:15:56.620And he was homeless for seven years, left his family behind.
01:16:00.600And he must have said, God bless America, 15 times in the short cab ride from the hotel in Vegas to the airport.
01:16:09.320And talking about American politics, he laughed and said, you know, you guys argue and fight and call each other names.
01:17:08.180Your 401k, my 401k, IRAs going up, getting stronger.
01:17:13.660American business is getting stronger because they're going to have more of their money back.
01:17:17.780And yet, the Bernie Sanders of the world, the Paul Krugmans of the world, the Nancy Pelosi's of the world are all saying, this is death to America.
01:17:31.600There's always got to be a villain in politics, right?
01:17:33.820There's got to be somebody that the government has to defend you against.
01:17:38.900It's the old argument of setting up the straw man and then they're going to knock it down.
01:17:47.520I talked about immigration and the man I met who left his son when he was two years old and didn't see his son again until he was 17 years old.
01:18:15.980This man didn't see his son for 15 years, nor his wife.
01:18:22.880And he just talked about what a great wife he had, that for all of those years, she would raise his son and take care of his children until he could bring her here.
01:18:33.300And after he went through the process of becoming a citizen of this country and was able to bring his family here, now they are all citizens and he has an American-born daughter.
01:18:40.740And he just kept saying over and over again, God bless America.
01:18:45.760So on the immigration argument, what do we tell those legal immigrants?
01:18:49.760What do you tell a man that spent seven years homeless waiting for a visa and 15 years without seeing his family, that now we're going to take people that have snuck across the border and we're going to make them the same, give them the same standing he has?
01:19:03.900What do you say to the Cubans that got on fishing boats and got on shrimp boats that crossed and went into Freedom Town and spent weeks there going through the screening process to become citizens of this country the right way and to do things the legal way?
01:19:20.800What do you say to those immigrants when you tell them that a family that sneaks across the border now is demanding in-state tuition and full standing as American citizens?
01:19:38.200What do you say to the people that bore the expense of all of that?
01:19:44.020But we have the argument and it's always us against them.
01:19:46.960And in this case, all of the dreamers in this country are good upstanding people that no fault of their own that I feel for them.
01:19:55.500I think the dreamers deserve protection under American laws, but there's a price to be paid and there's a price to be paid because the people that did it legally paid a price.
01:20:09.080It's always been my dream to bring my family to America.
01:20:30.100We have to protect the dreamers from the Republicans.
01:20:31.800And the Republicans are shrugging their shoulders right now and they're saying, we've been working with the White House since the president said you have six months to fix DACA.
01:20:41.900Legislatively, the way it should have been done in the first place, instead of by executive order, I'm repealing this executive order.
01:20:58.520So next year during the election cycle, when something is done for the dreamers, Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi can call it a victory for Democrats because without them, the dreamers wouldn't have had the protection and the Republicans would have done to them what they did to the poor people by giving the rich tax cuts.
01:21:16.440American politics can be dirty and it's a shame.
01:21:18.920It happens on both sides of the aisle, but it's a shame.
01:21:21.020I'm blown away by the way we're fooled by the soundbites of people in American politics.
01:21:38.360The anti-Trump sentiment that permeates our society has gone to some very big lengths, very, very, you know, it's from the two scoops of ice cream to other things.
01:21:51.760At 920, the obsession that CNN has with the Trump dossier and there is still one CNN reporter reporting that the Republicans paid for the dossier and it is erroneous.
01:22:07.020So we're going to talk about some of this and Melania Trump being maligned for having a tree cut down at the White House.
01:22:13.400I mean, it sounds silly, but it's just one more level of how they're demonizing the sitting president and the first lady of the United States.
01:22:21.320So all that coming up at 920 a little bit later on.
01:22:24.140I want you to meet an author of a book, the Social Justice Warriors Handbook, which is a tongue in cheek look at the politically correct in our world.
01:22:31.540We'll do that before we get out of here as well.
01:22:33.000My name is Mike Broomhead and this is the Glenn Beck Program.
01:22:37.020You know, the the obsession with the Trump dossier and what's happened from the left, it's a great question.
01:22:54.120We've talked about this investigation.
01:22:55.540And depending on where you are politically, again, we are picking sides.
01:23:00.280And to be honest with you, this is one area where I haven't picked sides.
01:23:03.860And what I mean by that is I've maintained from the very beginning because I was not all in as a Trump supporter.
01:23:10.400Now, if you've listened to the show the last couple of days, it probably sounds like I've been wearing a make America great again hat since day one.
01:23:38.640And it's it's actually kind of silly and a little bit insulting to anybody who can see.
01:23:44.560But I have maintained from the beginning that if the president's campaign on any level colluded with the Russians to change our election, the American people have a right to know if the laws were broken, someone should pay.
01:23:56.040Even if laws weren't broken, the voters have a right to know in the next election cycle if the president colluded with a foreign government to change the election.
01:24:04.240So from the beginning, I was in favor of an investigation.
01:26:25.260Removing a document from that room is against the law.
01:26:29.400So in the world we live in, I'm 50 years old, the world we've all grown up in, that makes perfect sense.
01:26:35.500If Hillary Clinton had gone into the skiff, taken a document from that room and walked to her desk and set it on her desk, put it in a drawer, put it in her purse, it didn't matter.
01:26:50.940She took documents on a private server that she owned and set up and transmitted and received those documents amongst the people close to her.
01:27:02.780But in correspondence, this guy, Peter Strzok, is talking with this girl that says to him, maybe you are where you are to stop or to protect America from this menace, meaning Donald Trump and the possibility of him being elected president.
01:27:17.720He responds that there are many ways that he can protect his nation and hope and doesn't know if it would help.
01:27:24.660This is when he is supposed to have an unbiased investigation into the Hillary Clinton scandal in the emails.
01:27:29.740He was also the guy assigned to interviewing Michael Flynn.
01:27:35.680Somebody tell me this is an unbiased investigation in the eyes of anybody that's reasonable.
01:27:40.200So the obsession with the dossier that got this all started, one CNN reporter claims, now this is in a story that just yesterday, Evan Perez told the network viewers on Tuesday, yesterday, that the anti-Trump Republicans first funded the infamous Trump dossier.
01:28:37.680The law firm that represented both the DNC and the Clinton campaign, they commissioned the dossier to be done.
01:28:47.000That dossier was then created, and now the real questions are, was that dossier used as evidence in a FISA court to get a FISA order to surveil the Trump campaign?
01:29:01.900Because the dossier has been debunked.
01:29:06.300There are accusations in that dossier against Donald Trump that his lawyers produced evidence.
01:29:12.400He wasn't even in the country when those accusations were made.
01:29:17.000So if the dossier has been debunked and CNN is still trotting it out there, A, is factual, and B, someone on their network claims that the Republicans paid for the dossier.
01:29:30.640Anyway, you tell me how the American people are getting an unbiased view of the news and the information they need to know so they can decipher for themselves.
01:29:42.100Again, the Melania Trump story makes me laugh of what they've done to Melania Trump, as dumb as it sounds.
01:29:47.740Put out a tweet saying that Melania Trump ordered a tree to be removed that's 200 years old from the White House grounds.
01:29:56.680And they reported back and said, no, the tree's been falling down for years.
01:30:00.600It's being completely held up by unnatural means.
01:31:55.360And I was in our newsroom doing show prep when the story of the Sandy Hook shooting first came out and that there were fatalities at an elementary school.
01:32:05.340And as the day progressed, we learned and saw that number go up.
01:32:09.920And then we found out that it was an entire classroom full of first graders that had been gunned down.
01:32:16.840And I, for the first time, probably in my life, but definitely in my career, was speechless.
01:32:23.620I was so sick to my stomach that one of the people I reached out to was Glenn Beck.
01:32:33.460And I said, how do you make sense of this?
01:32:37.480How do I go on the air for three hours and talk reasonably about a young man who murders his mother at point-blank range and then guns down an entire classroom full of first graders?
01:32:51.040So for anyone to categorize me as someone who doesn't care about dead children because I'm a Second Amendment advocate is probably the most insulting thing that's ever been said to or about me.
01:33:10.300I can, there's something in religion, in ministry, that anybody that's ever gone through a seminary will tell you is called apologetics.
01:33:22.640And apologetics is being able to defend your faith.
01:33:25.900It's not just about being able to tell somebody what you believe, but describe why you believe it.
01:33:31.040And it's important for anybody, if you attend a church or, you know, your church's doctrine, to explain why you believe what you believe.
01:33:40.280So I have a defense of my Second Amendment stance.
01:33:43.400I am able to defend why I believe what I believe and why I don't think making it more difficult for me to get a firearm makes us a less safe or makes us a more safe country.
01:33:53.300As a matter of fact, it's the other way around.
01:33:54.820And how I can maintain my strong stance on the Second Amendment and my right to keep and bear arms and have it still be consistent with wanting to end the mass shootings all over this country.
01:34:09.080And yet, for the people on the far left, the fact that I am pro-Second Amendment means I don't care about dead children.
01:34:22.000That because I'm in favor of tax cuts for the rich, the middle class, the working class, whatever you want to call anybody.
01:34:29.980I am in favor of anybody getting more of their own money back.
01:34:33.680That somehow I don't care about the working poor in America.
01:34:37.740Most of my life, I was the working poor in America.
01:34:40.260So what's defeating that political argument, this definitive you-are-what-I-say-you-are mentality that has driven me and makes me really happy to do this for a living.
01:34:55.640I was asked a little less than a year ago to write a book, which really shocked me because I figured if I ever wrote a book, it would come with a box of crayons.
01:35:07.460And there is a woman named Lisa DePasquale, who is an author, and she's written a book called Social Justice Warriors Handbook.
01:35:16.960And she was tasked with helping me do this.
01:35:26.080Let's talk about, first of all, tell me about your book, because reading your book is a lot of, there really is a lot in there that really did make me LOL.
01:35:34.000I laughed out loud at a lot of the things you've written.
01:35:35.860Tell me about the principle of the book.
01:35:38.260Yeah, I mean, I definitely want listeners to know that it is a parody of Social Justice Warriors, but it's all true.
01:35:47.720They are really this outraged about, you know, little things like, you know, the song Baby It's Cold Outside and, you know, anything that you can think of.
01:35:58.180And that's because, you know, once you start to monetize outrage, you can find it under a rock.
01:36:02.920And it's a fun read because you'll see a lot of truth in it.
01:36:06.320But I think it also, like you were talking about before, really shows what, you know, the left's playbook is.
01:36:13.080And that's just rather than coming up with ideas, it's just being like perpetually outraged.
01:36:17.940Every family has this in it somewhere, whether it's one person or the majority or whatever.
01:36:23.440There is a political argument that's going to happen during the holidays that's going to involve probably a little bit of wine at dinner and it's going to deteriorate into a fight.
01:36:32.040This book is actually a way to kind of disarm that in a way because it's a funny look at the at the social justice warriors.
01:36:39.820Yeah, I mean, and there's so much material there, you know, obviously to laugh at.
01:36:45.740And that's why I wanted to just present it in a different way, because, you know, I don't want to be angry all the time.
01:36:51.420I'm sure you don't want to be angry all the time.
01:36:53.120Um, and I think the best way to disarm that side and to, um, you know, get new people on, you know, thinking about these issues is to show them like, look, this is what they actually, you know, believe.
01:37:08.220And then to categorize it in a humorous way, if someone's got a sense of humor, at least they're going to be able to see the humor in it.
01:37:12.840So you were asked, and I mean, I think it's because I asked you if you would write this with me when we were asked to write it, because obviously I'm not an author.
01:37:21.340You figured that out very quickly and working with me, but, um, well, really, but working with you has been a lot of fun on this book.
01:37:28.140And the name of the book is, if you're going to be dumb, you better be tough and a perfect title for a book that I would write.
01:37:42.840Um, no, it was interesting because, you know, I listened to your show and I listened, obviously, whenever you fill in for Glenn and, you know, you know, I would get mad at you when you would start to tell stories that are in the book, um, because there's a lot of like really good stuff in there.
01:37:57.080And I get mad at you if, if you talk about it on the radio or if you talk on the radio, a story that I didn't put in the book.
01:38:03.760So it was always, you know, adding, adding, adding, because that's where a lot of the really good stories are.
01:38:10.000It's not with, you know, someone who's famous that you already know everything about or that already presents, you know, some PR version of themselves.
01:38:17.220Um, you know, the real stories are, you know, in everyday people and that's what, what you are.
01:38:21.660It's, it's interesting because I didn't want to write anything autobiographical.
01:38:25.680I think that that's where nobody want to read my, that part of the story, but the lessons I've learned from the people that I care about the most and hopefully that comes across.
01:38:33.580I think you've done a very good job of putting the nonsense that we did for hours of talking into, into a, you know, what is a fairly short book, but I, I appreciate the hard work that you've done on it.
01:38:43.740And, uh, and I got to tell you, Lisa is a brilliant writer.
01:38:48.520The social justice warriors handbook is a really funny book.
01:38:51.780If you want to get a great gift for somebody, if you forgot somebody on your Christmas list, where can they get your book?
01:38:56.400Cause mine's not coming out until May.
01:38:57.680Yeah, that, um, they can get the social justice warrior handbook on Amazon.
01:39:01.800They can get, uh, my new novel that just came out in November called I wish I might.
01:39:06.340If you're like frustrated with women's magazines and women's media, it's a novel and it's sort of, it's like the handbook in that it talks about those issues, but like in a more fun way.
01:39:16.660It's not like a preachy book about women's media.
01:39:19.320Uh, you know, it's just like a fun romance novel and that's also on Amazon and, you know, just follow me on Twitter at Lisa DEP.