The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program ｜ Guest： Bryan Stern ｜ 12⧸15⧸25

00:00:00.180 Hi, I'm Christopher Ruffo.

00:00:02.340 And I'm Jonathan Kieperman. You probably know me as Lomaz.

00:00:05.440 We live in a time where the institutions have been captured by ideology that's fundamentally

00:00:09.840 contradictory to the American way of being and really for even understanding the world

00:00:15.280 that we live in.

00:00:16.520 What we do isn't just commentary. It's analysis. Cultural, historical, philosophical. We zoom

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00:00:28.400 too and curious to touch.

00:00:30.320 So if you want to understand what's happening and why it's happening, it's time to tune in

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00:00:53.020 Hey, it's Monday. So, you know, we're all going to drag ourselves out of bed on a Monday

00:00:57.700 and we go, ah, it's Monday. So let's get all some of the bad news out right away. Horrifying

00:01:01.540 weekend. What happened in Australia and Rhode Island on the first night of Hanukkah. Also,

00:01:08.580 there's problems in Germany. All over the world this is happening. Also, we're going to talk

00:01:13.640 to Brian Stern. He's the guy that got the dissident leader in Venezuela. Remember, she escaped

00:01:19.760 Venezuela and ended up in Norway for the Nobel Prize. Wait until you hear the story of getting

00:01:26.640 her out. It's amazing. And the true story. Yeah, I did. I went there. The true story of

00:01:35.160 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer all on today's podcast. First, let me tell you about relief

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00:02:48.460 Hello America. You know, we've been fighting every single day. We push back against the lies,

00:02:53.080 the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you. We work

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00:03:33.460 I remember as a kid, Christmas was a lot different than it is today. I remember my parents always

00:04:01.840 saying, it's Christmas again already and not understanding that because it seemed like Christmas

00:04:07.460 was a million miles away. It seemed like the year dragged on and dragged on and it was a different

00:04:15.000 life by the time you got to Christmas because it was for you.

00:04:21.000 Now that I'm older, I wish things would slow down a little bit, but it's just time is merely

00:04:32.340 perspective now, I guess.

00:04:37.420 But I remember being a kid and there was like this, I don't know, this, this, this code.

00:04:43.180 I don't remember how it happened and it wasn't, I don't think it was because of advertising.

00:04:48.280 I remember hearing about it at school and the playground and it was never from a teacher.

00:04:52.220 It was always really from my friends.

00:04:55.940 Tonight, tonight's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

00:05:00.180 Don't forget, Friday is Frosty the Snowman.

00:05:03.560 Charlie Brown Christmas is tonight.

00:05:04.960 Let me take you to a time before CBS television existed.

00:05:34.020 It was 1939 and the country was clawing its way out of the Great Depression.

00:05:41.580 Money was tight.

00:05:43.100 Dreams were even tighter.

00:05:46.340 Montgomery Ward, which had been around forever, was competition to Sears.

00:05:50.900 They had been buying and giving away children's Christmas booklets every year.

00:05:55.220 Someone in the executive chain finally said what corporations always say.

00:06:00.620 Why are we paying somebody else to make these books?

00:06:03.060 Why don't we just write our own stories?

00:06:05.440 Can we have anybody in-house that can do this cheaper?

00:06:10.420 And somebody said, yeah, we do.

00:06:12.180 We have this guy named Robert May.

00:06:14.920 And he was a copywriter, unassuming.

00:06:18.500 I mean, he did not look like a guy who was writing Christmas stories, a myth maker.

00:06:22.460 He was in an office.

00:06:24.020 His office for Montgomery Ward was barely whiter than the desk inside of it.

00:06:29.520 And when they came to him, he was a man who was drowning in grief.

00:06:36.900 His wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer.

00:06:39.060 The two of them had one daughter.

00:06:43.240 She was small, Barbara.

00:06:46.020 And Robert's medical bills were just stacking up.

00:06:49.680 And in the middle of all this, Montgomery Ward came to him and said, hey, can you write a cheery little Christmas story for children?

00:06:57.480 He said later, he almost turned them down, almost said, are you kidding me?

00:07:03.540 How do I possibly write joy when my life is collapsing around me?

00:07:09.360 He said he went home, and that night he looked at his daughter, this little girl trying to make sense of her mom dying, makes sense of sorrow that was way too big for her world.

00:07:28.740 And he remembered the offer to write something of joy.

00:07:32.620 And he thought, if I can give her something, even if I can't give her stability, if I can give her a moment, it's worth it.

00:07:46.780 So he started thinking back in his life, and he remembered being a small, shy child.

00:07:52.020 And he always felt different.

00:07:53.300 He always felt less than.

00:07:55.620 And so this character started to form, a character that was mocked for what made him different.

00:08:03.820 Until that day, that difference is what saved the world.

00:08:08.620 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

00:08:11.880 Rudolph wasn't a reindeer.

00:08:13.760 First, Rudolph was Robert May.

00:08:18.080 He was every child who felt small, who felt different.

00:08:21.880 And he would write in bursts.

00:08:26.720 He would scribble lines between doctor visits and shaping rhymes in the hospital hallways.

00:08:32.740 He would draft a few lines, and then he would go into his wife's hospital room with his daughter, and he would read them aloud.

00:08:44.480 His mom was fighting for breath.

00:08:46.200 When Evelyn died, he stopped writing.

00:08:55.920 Montgomery Ward urged him, finish it, finish it.

00:08:59.860 And he did.

00:09:02.580 When he finished it, he printed, the company did, 2.4 million copies of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

00:09:09.220 That first Christmas, 2.4 million.

00:09:11.680 And it was an instant sensation.

00:09:14.560 It passed from hand to hand.

00:09:17.440 It was read aloud in living rooms across America.

00:09:21.060 The country didn't know the man behind it.

00:09:25.780 But they knew the feeling of hope being born out of heartbreak.

00:09:30.960 And then something that I'm not sure would happen now happened.

00:09:41.500 Montgomery Ward, which was usually really strict about intellectual property, did something unprecedented.

00:09:48.340 They saw the devastation in Robert May's life.

00:09:55.180 And they said, Robert, we see you're struggling with these bills.

00:10:00.340 You wrote this.

00:10:02.000 You struggled with this.

00:10:03.320 And they gave him full ownership of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

00:10:08.580 All rights, all royalties, all future potential.

00:10:13.740 That is an act of Christmas generosity that is unheard of.

00:10:19.200 And especially in that era when everyone was struggling.

00:10:21.920 And it changed the course of May's life and his daughter.

00:10:25.360 His wife died, but his wife's brother was a songwriter named Johnny Marks.

00:10:37.880 He took the story and shaped it into a melody that we all know.

00:10:44.900 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

00:10:46.660 Bing Crosby was offered.

00:10:52.200 He said no.

00:10:54.540 They offered it to a singing cowboy.

00:10:57.100 And he's like, I don't think this fits my image, but I'll give it a whirl.

00:11:01.140 Gene Autry.

00:11:02.700 In 1949, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Gene Autry became the second best-selling song of all time,

00:11:11.660 only behind White Christmas.

00:11:13.560 It sold over 25 million copies.

00:11:16.660 And it turned Robert May's grief-born story and sorrow into cultural bedrock.

00:11:31.680 And then 25 years after the original booklet, Rankin and Bass brought the Rudolph to stop motion animation.

00:11:42.500 And Burl Ives played the snowman and the abominable snow monster in the island of misfit toys.

00:11:50.500 Nobody wants a Charlie in the box.

00:11:54.560 And the American myth was complete.

00:11:57.120 Economists have tried to figure out what the rights were worth in total.

00:12:11.840 They looked at the entire empire, the books, the records, the TV specials, the merchandising, the international licensing.

00:12:22.340 It's well over $100 million in revenue.

00:12:25.420 Adjusted for inflation, the money that is flowing to the May and the Marx family today.

00:12:34.140 The rights that Montgomery Ward handed to the grieving widower because it seemed like the right thing to do.

00:12:41.180 Well over a quarter of a billion dollars.

00:12:49.900 One of the most valuable intellectual properties in Christmas hero, in history.

00:12:55.600 Handed to a man who just needed hope for his daughter.

00:13:00.620 Wrote it for that reason.

00:13:02.440 And I think that's why we waited as kids and we still love it as adults.

00:13:12.260 Because behind the red nose and behind the jingle bells and the puppets and the fat snowman.

00:13:20.740 Is this a single man who in a very small office.

00:13:24.760 Wrote his way through heartbreak.

00:13:26.360 And then a company showed unexpected compassion.

00:13:34.120 And that created something remarkably true.

00:13:43.000 The Christmas myth about a reindeer.

00:13:46.440 Born from the pain of a father just trying to give his daughter one spark of light in the dark.

00:13:56.360 And that's why we waited for that sound at this time every year.

00:14:04.520 And while that sound isn't there anymore for our children.

00:14:10.800 Now it's the Apple logo.

00:14:15.200 It's the same story.

00:14:18.400 It's the same magic.

00:14:22.340 And it's the same message.

00:14:26.360 All life is worthy.

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00:15:37.780 Please call American Financing at 800-906-2440, 800-906-2440, or go to AmericanFinancing.net.

00:15:46.960 Now back to the podcast.

00:15:48.840 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program.

00:15:51.480 From the Wall Street Journal, listen to the opening of this story.

00:15:56.600 Maria! 0.97

00:15:57.700 A man's voice cut through the rain, pelting the pitch-black Caribbean Sea, just audible between two boats tossed around by 10-foot waves.

00:16:06.500 People on the smaller vessel, a simple fishing skiff, held up cell phones like emergency flares in the night.

00:16:12.380 Larger craft pulled closer.

00:16:14.440 A figure bundled in a bulky jacket and black ball cap waved her arms. 0.99

00:16:18.760 It's me!

00:16:19.500 It's me!

00:16:20.180 Maria! 0.97

00:16:20.500 This is the epic tale of the mission to get the opposition leader, Maria Carino Machado, out of Venezuela.

00:16:35.860 This was called Operation Golden Dynamite.

00:16:40.680 Dynamite is what the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel invented dynamite.

00:16:48.920 That's why he started the Nobel Peace Prize, blah, blah, blah.

00:16:51.680 She was getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

00:16:53.860 She was not allowed to leave Venezuela.

00:16:56.760 Somebody had the idea of, let's put her on a boat while the U.S. is bombing boats in the area. 1.00

00:17:03.020 Terrifying.

00:17:03.740 The guy who led it is the founder and CEO of the Gray Bull Rescue Foundation, Brian Stern.

00:17:10.440 Brian, welcome.

00:17:11.700 You there, Brian?

00:17:17.680 Hi, Glenn.

00:17:18.340 How are you?

00:17:19.760 Good, good.

00:17:20.760 I thought you were lost at sea here for a second.

00:17:23.680 Brian, what an epic tale.

00:17:26.520 Can you tell it from the beginning?

00:17:28.520 You're standing, I think, in the Miami airport on December 5th.

00:17:33.780 Tell us the story.

00:17:34.840 It was last Friday, and it's kind of crazy when I say it like that because a lot of things have happened since then.

00:17:42.160 Yeah.

00:17:42.640 It's just over a week ago.

00:17:46.760 My team and I were coming back from Aruba where we were setting up for Venezuela operations, and I've been very vocal about Venezuela for a very long time.

00:17:55.960 I've worked Venezuela for a long time.

00:17:59.300 We've known for a while that President Trump wanted a piece of Maduro.

00:18:04.020 We've known that.

00:18:05.080 He was very vocal about it as the 45th president and, again, as the 47th, as we've seen.

00:18:09.300 And so we were getting ready and transiting through Miami airport when I turned my phone on, and I had a whole bunch of missed text messages from a friend of mine.

00:18:19.920 So I call him back, and he says, hey, look, man, I know you're doing Venezuela stuff.

00:18:23.840 I've got a weird one for you.

00:18:25.760 You want to hear this guy out?

00:18:28.040 And I said, well, you know, is it real?

00:18:29.540 Is it not?

00:18:30.080 Lots of people call us like nonsense.

00:18:32.360 You know, what's interesting is this is our 800th mission that we've done as a team, 800 missions.

00:18:39.300 In four years.

00:18:41.180 So we get calls to do stuff all the time.

00:18:44.200 My team and I started August 2021, and we're in December 2025.

00:18:48.620 So we've worked all over the place, Russia, Ukraine, you name it, we've done it.

00:18:53.900 Gaza, we've done Israel. 0.98

00:18:55.800 So I asked my guy, I asked my friend, you know, is it real because I'm transiting, and I don't want to waste a lot of time, and we're busy, and he says, oh, it's real, it's real.

00:19:04.940 And I said, okay, cool.

00:19:06.320 Connect me.

00:19:06.720 He said, do you mind if I show you your number?

00:19:07.980 I go, yeah, sure.

00:19:08.640 You know, I go, are you in on it?

00:19:09.740 He says, no, not really.

00:19:11.400 Not really.

00:19:11.940 I'm not really in on it.

00:19:12.880 I go, okay, cool.

00:19:14.020 So he connects me with this guy who turns out to be on Maria's team.

00:19:18.900 And one of her folks.

00:19:21.520 And at first, he wasn't transparent that it was Maria.

00:19:25.700 So he asked me a couple of questions.

00:19:26.960 Do you do things in Venezuela?

00:19:28.080 Tell me a little bit about yourself.

00:19:29.060 We go through that.

00:19:30.240 And he asked me, and I go, you know, what's the project?

00:19:36.420 And he starts to kind of describe it his way.

00:19:39.180 And he's a good guy, but he's never done this before.

00:19:41.940 And I spent 27 years in the intelligence business, so I've done this a lot.

00:19:46.040 And I very quickly figure out that it's Maria.

00:19:48.540 And at first, he denies it.

00:19:50.260 He says, no, no, no, no, no.

00:19:51.660 How funny would that be?

00:19:53.280 And I said, look, man, you know when I know that it's Maria.

00:19:58.200 If you're not transparent and honest with me, I'm not going to be able to do a good job.

00:20:01.740 So I need you to, you know, we're going to be in this thing together.

00:20:05.500 I'm not saying I'm going to do this.

00:20:06.760 But if we're going to do this together, you need to be honest with me because things change.

00:20:10.320 And he says, okay.

00:20:12.000 And he kind of admits to it and cops to it.

00:20:15.420 And that was Friday.

00:20:18.580 Saturday, that was Friday night.

00:20:20.780 He and I spoke again Friday night when I got back to Tampa.

00:20:26.200 And then we spoke again all day Saturday doing things.

00:20:29.780 Sunday, we set conditions and planned.

00:20:34.820 I went to Miami to go meet with some Venezuelan friends of mine.

00:20:38.120 Monday morning, deploy, Monday morning early, deployed to the Caribbean.

00:20:45.800 We set conditions on Monday, initiated on Tuesday.

00:20:49.220 She was in Oslo for Wednesday.

00:20:52.220 That's unbelievable.

00:20:53.220 What does it mean that you set conditions on Monday?

00:20:57.640 What does that mean?

00:20:58.160 So it's kind of like, um, it's, um, this is an orchestra.

00:21:05.540 Okay.

00:21:06.160 The way these operations work is like an orchestra.

00:21:09.480 You have the string section, you have the horn section, you have the, the drum, the percussion

00:21:13.480 section.

00:21:14.180 Right.

00:21:14.500 You have the, you know, I don't play music, but whatever the, you know, all the different

00:21:17.600 things, all the different instruments.

00:21:19.800 Yeah.

00:21:20.200 You know, now, you know, you have like the violin people.

00:21:24.260 I was wondering why you missed the viola, but yeah.

00:21:27.080 Yeah.

00:21:27.340 Right.

00:21:27.600 You know, it's not my area.

00:21:28.440 I don't do that.

00:21:29.100 I do.

00:21:29.460 I do Maduro, you know?

00:21:31.480 Right.

00:21:31.940 So you have, you have, you have all these different people and it's all music and we're

00:21:38.180 all on the same team.

00:21:39.320 But the reality is the violin people don't know how to play a saxophone and the saxophone

00:21:43.480 people don't know how to play a violin and the music of the violin is different than

00:21:47.360 that of the saxophone and all, and all these different things.

00:21:50.040 So, but everything has to work in harmony.

00:21:52.620 And if one instrument in the orchestra is off key, you're not making music, you're making

00:21:58.160 noise.

00:21:58.820 And that's the one thing that everyone hears.

00:22:01.140 So when we build these operations and we talked about setting conditions, it's getting all

00:22:05.460 the instruments to be ready to rock and roll.

00:22:07.760 And many of those instruments, many of these people do not know what they're doing.

00:22:13.520 So there are people, lots of people who worked on this operation, who were instrumental in

00:22:18.980 this operation, who have no idea that they helped get Maria Karina Machado to safety.

00:22:25.480 They do not know for their safety.

00:22:27.920 For their safety.

00:22:29.040 And also because we need to, we need to understand, you know, Maria Karina Machado, Maria Karina

00:22:36.080 Machado from the Maduro perspective is like what Osama bin Laden was for us.

00:22:42.380 There's tens of thousands of intelligence officers have been looking for her from Cuba,

00:22:48.260 Venezuela, Russia, Iran, the Chinese, Hezbollah, cartels.

00:22:54.020 She is the most wanted person in the Western hemisphere.

00:22:56.800 And they had insult to injury because of the Nobel prize piece.

00:23:03.020 They knew if she was in Venezuela, that she's going to need to be making a move this week. 1.00

00:23:08.020 So they were really switched on.

00:23:10.080 They were really looking aggressively.

00:23:11.860 So how did you, how did you get her from hiding to the shore?

00:23:15.200 And then you got to tell the story about the water.

00:23:17.540 Cause that's insane.

00:23:19.440 So the water was honestly the harder part.

00:23:22.860 Yeah.

00:23:23.420 So really, we don't get into, we don't get into a lot of the specifics for security reasons,

00:23:27.100 as you would imagine.

00:23:27.840 Okay.

00:23:28.180 Okay.

00:23:28.480 Okay.

00:23:28.760 Yeah.

00:23:29.160 Yeah.

00:23:29.320 Yeah.

00:23:29.520 You know, she was in a, she was in a house and then had to get to a spot where there was

00:23:34.940 a boat and this is not a port where you're like getting a ticket.

00:23:39.500 This is a sandy, nasty, kind of, you know, kind of beachy, marshy area that you wouldn't

00:23:49.040 really want to be in, honestly, you know, and that's why we picked these sites for that

00:23:53.160 reason.

00:23:54.240 Um, you know, not pleasant.

00:23:56.220 And, uh, she embarks on boat one with a small, with a small group of amazing men and,

00:24:03.380 uh, they're embarking, uh, with the expectation of rendezvousing with the second boat.

00:24:08.580 That's the boat that I was on, which has come from across the whole Caribbean.

00:24:12.140 So our trip was very, very far.

00:24:14.220 Their trip was relatively short, but we're doing this on the cover of night in pitch black.

00:24:18.940 We had a little bit of moonlight, a little bit, and a lot of cloud cover.

00:24:22.680 We were in five to 10 foot seas, depending on, um, where, right.

00:24:28.380 Uh, and these are not big boats.

00:24:30.700 These are not big boats.

00:24:32.000 Oh yeah.

00:24:32.240 By the way, the whole world is trying to find her.

00:24:34.840 And oh yeah.

00:24:35.480 By the way, our military is dropping things from the sky onto boats.

00:24:39.660 So this is a pretty, uh, pretty, uh, so, so, so did you, so she is, she goes out, she's 0.98

00:24:47.120 running really late, right?

00:24:48.540 The boat launches really late.

00:24:51.380 Um, and then the, the seas pick up their 10 foot waves.

00:24:55.400 They start drifting.

00:24:57.220 You don't have eyes on her.

00:24:58.400 Nobody has eyes on her and you do have the threat from above.

00:25:02.440 Did, did anyone above?

00:25:04.120 No, don't, don't bomb us.

00:25:06.080 Please don't, just don't bomb us and don't, a little boat might be out there.

00:25:10.000 Don't bomb them either.

00:25:11.800 So this, this is where it gets, this is where it gets hard for people to understand.

00:25:15.720 This is where it gets hard for people to understand is that, you know, we, nothing we do is classified.

00:25:21.640 I'm not government, uh, contrary to common opinion.

00:25:24.880 We do not work for the CIA.

00:25:26.300 I'm not a, uh, I've been listed as a former assassin.

00:25:29.920 I've been listed all kinds of things.

00:25:31.460 None of these things are true.

00:25:32.920 We're, we're a, we're a nonprofit.

00:25:34.940 We're just the foundation.

00:25:36.220 What you see is what you get.

00:25:37.740 If you go to graywellrescue.org, you can read about all of it.

00:25:41.180 Um, uh, we're donor funded.

00:25:43.360 This operation was paid for by donors, uh, tax deductible.

00:25:47.460 Okay.

00:25:48.440 So, so, um, uh, you, because of who we are though, and because of what we've done and where we've done it and where we come from and where my board comes from, uh, and where my team comes from, we have our fingers.

00:26:04.880 We have a very large network of good guys and bad guys.

00:26:08.540 Because the good guys are at the highest levels of government, four-star admirals and generals, uh, deputy assistant secretary of fill in the blank, you know, um, uh, from the intelligence community, the diplomatic corps, the military community, the special operations community.

00:26:25.740 You know, I, I've only been doing this for 27 years only.

00:26:28.660 Right.

00:26:28.960 So we know a lot of people, um, and we have a very good reputation.

00:26:33.540 So when we call and say, Hey, look, you know, here's a lat long, we're going to be conducting an operation in the vicinity of this lat long around this time.

00:26:43.000 Be advised.

00:26:43.880 That's us.

00:26:44.760 Number one, don't get excited.

00:26:46.900 That's us.

00:26:47.480 Don't kill us.

00:26:48.420 Number one.

00:26:48.900 Number two, it would be super cool.

00:26:50.760 If you could tip us off.

00:26:51.620 If you see someone coming to someone else trying to kill us from, from, you know, flight time of a Venezuelan F-16 to where we were operating about four and a half minutes, five minutes.

00:27:01.540 So we are danger close to the bad guys.

00:27:06.160 And the way these work is you don't know if you have a problem until you're getting shot at.

00:27:14.320 They don't like call you on the phone and say, Hey jerks, we know what you did.

00:27:19.120 We're coming for you.

00:27:19.960 You better surrender.

00:27:20.980 They don't do that.

00:27:21.860 They shoot you full of holes instead.

00:27:23.120 So this whole time we're doing all kinds of tricks, all kinds of deception operations.

00:27:29.440 We're putting things out, uh, getting things on the street.

00:27:32.580 We had, we had some, a whole group of bad guys convinced that we were going through the land into Guyana.

00:27:38.160 That wasn't true.

00:27:39.280 So all kinds of things designed to create confusion, create space, to create, uh, noise, right?

00:27:49.200 It's the abracadabra of any good magic trick, right?

00:27:52.580 Uh, the Russians call me Amerikansky Valshavnik.

00:27:55.160 It means the American magician.

00:27:56.340 This is how I got the name is because, you know, when the, when the street card guy says,

00:28:02.160 don't take your eye off the card, here's your card.

00:28:04.280 Don't take your eye off the card.

00:28:05.940 The last place you should be looking is that card.

00:28:08.660 That's the last place you should be looking, right?

00:28:11.060 Okay.

00:28:13.160 That's how we do this stuff.

00:28:14.420 So, um, it's, it's a little bit of deception.

00:28:17.240 It's a lot of manipulation and it's a lot of really understanding how the bad guys function,

00:28:22.580 how they work, what they'll fall for, the cultural nuances.

00:28:26.980 I know they are hungry for Maria.

00:28:30.240 I know that.

00:28:31.140 I know that.

00:28:32.280 I spent 27 years in the intelligence business, hungry for very important people.

00:28:36.780 And I know how I would react if I got a tip, right?

00:28:40.740 From a reliable source.

00:28:42.180 So we create that tip for a reliable source from a reliable source and they go for it.

00:28:48.140 What happens?

00:28:49.100 They're dedicating resources to a figment of my imagination.

00:28:51.840 You're streaming the best of Glenn Beck.

00:28:54.500 To hear more of this interview and others, download the full show podcasts wherever you

00:28:58.440 get podcasts.

00:28:59.880 All right.

00:29:00.460 So let me just cover some of the headlines here quickly.

00:29:02.520 Brown university yesterday, there was a shooter, uh, two are dead.

00:29:06.600 Uh, the only one that has been named so far is the Republican, uh, club vice president,

00:29:12.680 Ella cook.

00:29:14.260 Um, there are nine that have been injured.

00:29:17.420 Um, they thought they had the shooter, but turns out.

00:29:21.360 It's not him.

00:29:22.560 He has been released.

00:29:23.960 Uh, and there's just some questions on this one that are weird.

00:29:28.540 Also Al Qaeda struck and killed, uh, U S soldiers over the weekend in Syria.

00:29:34.860 There will be a military response to that.

00:29:37.440 I am sure.

00:29:38.120 And yesterday, yesterday on the beach, Sydney's Eastern suburbs, Sydney, Australia.

00:29:47.380 It's summer there.

00:29:50.940 There's locals, there's people that are coming from all over the country, all over the world

00:29:55.280 for the warmth of summer and the community celebration of the first night of Hanukkah.

00:30:01.320 Uh, the rest of the world, it is the darkest days of winter on the other side of the globe.

00:30:09.120 Uh, it is still sunlight because it is in the middle of summer, but it was a dark, dark

00:30:15.300 day yesterday.

00:30:16.360 Uh, despite the sun being up, they were families with children.

00:30:21.960 They were chasing the waves, the smell of grilled food that was drifting across the sand, music,

00:30:29.120 conversation, laughter in the air.

00:30:30.900 And then around seven o'clock, laughter was replaced with the screams of terror.

00:30:40.000 Two men dressed in black and armed with high power firearms, positioned themselves atop a

00:30:45.300 small concrete pedestrian bridge.

00:30:47.400 It arched, uh, over the Campbell, uh, parade near the Bondi pavilion.

00:30:54.660 They stood on top in the center of this bridge.

00:31:00.900 And rained bullets as they fired into the crowd.

00:31:07.500 Shots rang out.

00:31:12.560 Astonished crowd.

00:31:16.340 It just went on and on and on.

00:31:23.280 Thousands had been gathered for Hanukkah by the sea.

00:31:26.720 They're now ducking for cover, some trying to push children to safety, others frozen in disbelief.

00:31:34.320 As friends and strangers alike fell all around them.

00:31:39.020 The carnage was unbelievable.

00:31:40.820 For ten minutes, these guys fired off this bridge.

00:31:46.340 The beach, usually alive with surfers and sun seekers, just transformed instantly.

00:31:58.000 Bodies were trampled.

00:32:00.200 Frantic dashed for some sort of shelter and protection as the waves just continued to lap

00:32:06.140 innocently at the shore while people were screaming for help.

00:32:10.880 Now, in the chaos, there were acts of individual courage.

00:32:17.920 A fruit vendor, later named by the media as Ahmed Al Ahmed.

00:32:24.320 He saw one of the gunmen firing his weapon.

00:32:28.200 And in a moment of pure resolve, he vaulted from behind a nearby car, tackled the shooter

00:32:34.540 from behind, and wrestled the rifle away.

00:32:37.480 It was an unbelievable scene.

00:32:41.240 Witnesses say, and it was all captured on tape, there he is.

00:32:46.820 Witnesses say, his bravery likely saved countless lives.

00:32:56.840 Police arrived, they started shooting at him.

00:33:01.580 They shot at the two that were up on the bridge.

00:33:04.600 They wounded both of them.

00:33:09.680 Fifteen people had been killed by the time of silver.

00:33:12.960 Dozens wounded young children to the elderly.

00:33:17.960 Cherished members of the Jewish community, including Rabbi Eli Schlanger.

00:33:23.340 He's a British-born assistant rabbi.

00:33:26.700 He helped organize Hanukkah by the Sea.

00:33:29.860 The beach won't be looked at the same ever again.

00:33:40.320 As the suspects went down, people from Australia just ran up onto the bridge.

00:33:46.680 And what I thought was an amazing, amazing moment that spoke volumes of our culture.

00:33:52.580 The police were on top of these men, trying to administer care to keep them alive.

00:34:00.440 While citizens, understandably, came up on the bridge and just started kicking them.

00:34:07.600 Police jumped on those people and pushed them away and said, stop, stop, stop.

00:34:12.220 And they did.

00:34:14.560 Because we're not a culture of death.

00:34:19.420 First suspect, 50 years old.

00:34:23.280 Saeed Akram.

00:34:27.320 50 years old.

00:34:28.540 He's a dad.

00:34:29.340 The second suspect is his 24-year-old son.

00:34:32.440 Both in critical condition, now in the hospital under police guard.

00:34:48.080 Let me ask you to imagine, just for a minute, what it must feel like to be Jewish today.

00:34:55.420 Not in theory, because we had an incident stopped in Amsterdam over the weekend, in Germany over the weekend, in L.A.

00:35:06.340 Somebody drive by just shot at a Jewish home with Hanukkah candles in the window, screaming F the Jews.

00:35:14.640 You want to know what, you want to chant, bring the infatata here.

00:35:19.480 This is what it looks like.

00:35:21.220 It is here now.

00:35:22.420 So what does it feel like to be Jewish today?

00:35:27.800 I don't know.

00:35:28.840 I can't relate.

00:35:30.840 But I want you to imagine, not as a talking point, but in the quiet moments when the phone would light up with another alert, another headline, another synagogue guarded by concrete barriers and armed police.

00:35:46.540 There's a particular fear that comes with memory.

00:35:52.420 Jewish people carry history, not as abstraction, but as inheritance.

00:35:58.640 And it lives in names that are whispered at dinner tables and photographs rescued from ash and stories that begin with, and we thought it would never happen here.

00:36:09.800 Europe told itself that very thing once, so did Germany, so did France, so did polite society everywhere, right before it happened.

00:36:22.480 And the world has been saying, and the world has been saying that for decades now.

00:36:28.880 It would never happen here, and here we are again, and here we are, the worst we've seen in America.

00:36:35.080 Shadows that all of us hoped were buried forever.

00:36:42.680 Hatred with organization, ideology, hatred with teeth, violence, justification.

00:36:49.080 They're no longer whispers.

00:36:50.500 They're shouting it now in our streets.

00:36:52.460 They're shouting it in the streets of Australia.

00:36:54.600 They're shouting it in the streets of Germany and England and France and Norway.

00:37:01.840 They're burning flags.

00:37:03.400 They're firing guns.

00:37:04.980 They're chanting not only death to the Jew, but death to the West, death to Canada, death to the U.S., death to Europe.

00:37:12.880 This is no longer confined to the margins anymore, and the West is tolerating it.

00:37:18.960 The West has explained it away.

00:37:21.260 We've minimalized it.

00:37:22.640 We've said it was a lone wolf.

00:37:24.040 Sometimes we even excuse it.

00:37:30.120 Just for the day, let's just stop and look at Australia for a minute.

00:37:33.160 For years, Jewish communities there warned the officials.

00:37:38.880 Anti-Semitism isn't theoretical.

00:37:40.800 It's here.

00:37:41.340 We're living it.

00:37:42.000 We're seeing it.

00:37:44.180 It's not just graffiti or angry words.

00:37:48.120 It's metastasizing into something ideological and organized and deadly.

00:37:54.040 And in Australia, the officials told them, calm down.

00:37:59.700 Trust the institutions.

00:38:01.080 We got it.

00:38:01.700 Somehow or another, multicultural harmony would manage itself. 0.89

00:38:09.320 But it didn't because it doesn't.

00:38:13.080 Ideology doesn't dissolve when it's ignored.

00:38:16.220 It consolidates.

00:38:17.220 It consolidates.

00:38:17.980 It grows.

00:38:18.740 It has across the Western world entirely.

00:38:22.880 Europe, Britain, Australia, Canada, the United States.

00:38:26.820 It's the same pattern.

00:38:28.720 Violent anti-Semitism rising.

00:38:31.020 Jewish schools guarded like fortresses. 0.92

00:38:33.480 Jewish families wondering whether visibility itself is now a liability.

00:38:37.780 And yet, all across the West, officials hesitate to name the problem clearly.

00:38:45.680 So, let me do it.

00:38:50.860 Precisely.

00:38:51.720 Precisely.

00:38:52.720 Truthfully.

00:38:55.120 Islamism.

00:38:57.860 Islamists.

00:38:58.900 Not Islam. 1.00

00:39:00.800 Not Muslim. 1.00

00:39:02.900 If you're a Muslim, you want to live peacefully, worship freely, raise children, continue, you know, to live and contribute to a society, you know.

00:39:11.800 And you're not an enemy of the West, I'm totally good with that.

00:39:15.940 Look at the fruit cart guy.

00:39:18.480 He apparently didn't hate Jews. 0.97

00:39:20.700 He wasn't part of a culture of death.

00:39:22.760 He stopped it.

00:39:24.360 And millions do that every single day.

00:39:26.700 But Islamism. 0.97

00:39:29.720 Islamists.

00:39:30.740 That's something entirely different.

00:39:34.020 Islamism is a political ideology.

00:39:37.240 It's not about faith.

00:39:39.080 It is about power.

00:39:40.360 It's the belief that society has to be governed by religious law, Sharia law, that freedom of conscience is illegitimate, that women are subordinate, that dissent is heresy, and that the world and everybody in it has to submit.

00:40:01.340 And it's very clear about all of this.

00:40:04.460 It writes it down.

00:40:05.280 It teaches it.

00:40:05.940 It shouts it from the public square.

00:40:08.640 For the love of Pete, it's everywhere.

00:40:11.920 It chants it.

00:40:13.800 It doesn't hide behind, you know, it doesn't hide its ambitions.

00:40:18.400 It doesn't hide behind anything.

00:40:20.600 But here's what it doesn't do.

00:40:22.920 It doesn't coexist with open societies.

00:40:25.940 It replaces them and has been replacing open societies for centuries.

00:40:36.040 Any culture built on individual liberty, freedom of speech, equality before the law,

00:40:41.640 it can't survive alongside an ideology that views all of those principles as sins or as an affront to Allah.

00:40:51.860 In that scenario, one side must yield or one side will be destroyed.

00:41:00.660 And history is very clear on which one does.

00:41:03.480 You know, we're very different people.

00:41:12.860 Even the difference between us and Canada and us and Europe, it might be seemingly stark.

00:41:21.560 It might be like we're very different.

00:41:23.160 But when you look at us as a civilization, we're very different together.

00:41:31.580 We're very different from the rest of the world.

00:41:34.040 And we don't understand these things because we project our values on everybody else.

00:41:40.940 We assume that everybody ultimately wants to live and to compromise, live side by side.

00:41:46.080 We assume violence is accidental.

00:41:49.360 We assume that it's a lone wolf.

00:41:51.400 We assume that words like tolerance and dialogue mean the same thing to everybody, but they don't.

00:41:59.560 And so we tolerate politicians and newscasters and everybody else that explain things away.

00:42:05.000 They explain the stabbings and the truck attacks and the shootings and the riots as isolated incidents.

00:42:09.980 They're not.

00:42:11.920 We talk about finding the root cause, but we won't name the root itself.

00:42:19.280 We call it extremism as though it's spraying out of nowhere, as though it was a weather event instead of a worldview that has been around for centuries.

00:42:31.140 I ask you to think about what it feels like to be Jewish today because of the Jewish people, but also because you're next. 0.88

00:42:43.760 Jewish communities always pay the price first. 1.00

00:42:46.860 They always do.

00:42:47.800 And believe me, you are on the list.

00:42:50.320 You, your faith, your freedom, your children are on the list.

00:42:54.580 And history shows this with brutal consistency.

00:43:00.900 When a society begins to rot from ideological cowardice, the Jews are always the early warning system. 1.00

00:43:10.040 They're the canary in the coal mine.

00:43:11.420 And when they're targeted openly and the state responds with hesitation, that society is already stick and in the hospital.

00:43:22.220 It's already in trouble.

00:43:24.140 And make no mistakes.

00:43:25.700 The violence is not far away.

00:43:28.100 It is already here.

00:43:30.740 Synagogues attached, Jewish students harassed on campus, Jewish neighborhoods guarded like war zones, public celebrations requiring armed protection.

00:43:39.960 Now, this is not normal, and it's not sustainable.

00:43:43.240 And the West likes to believe it understands freedom, but freedom is not a vibe.

00:43:47.580 It's not a comfort.

00:43:48.660 It's not the absence of conflict.

00:43:51.140 Freedom is costly, and it requires moral clarity.

00:43:54.520 It requires the courage to draw a line and say, this doesn't belong here.

00:44:00.860 And if we refuse to do that work now, our children are going to have to do it later under far worse conditions.

00:44:08.240 They will have to fight, not to preserve freedom, but to recover it.

00:44:15.080 And history always shows that's much more costly.

00:44:20.220 America, you are closer than you think to losing not only our country, but countries that took centuries to build.

00:44:27.840 Not through invasion, but through erosion, through silence, through the polite refusal to speak uncomfortable truths.

00:44:36.140 If not you, who?

00:44:39.100 If not now, when?

00:44:41.560 You're running out of time.

00:44:42.700 Nananananaee

00:44:46.560 Toi et le Père Noël ?

00:44:48.480 Les pros de l'emballage cadeau.

00:44:50.280 Mais Reese's se demande, côté déballage, c'est qui le meilleur?

00:44:55.480 Les moules Reese au beurre d'arachide mettent ton art du déballage à l'épreuve.

00:44:59.500 Et avec trois moules au beurre d'arachide crémeux et chocolat fournant par paquet,

00:45:03.200 tu as de quoi à t'entraîner

00:45:04.580 pour retrouver encore et encore

00:45:06.700 ce plaisir sucré-salé.

00:45:08.680 Et encore. Et encore.

00:45:11.240 Le Père Noël a ses biscuits,

00:45:12.720 toi, ta Reese.

00:45:13.980 Il n'y a rien comme Reese's.

The Glenn Beck Program - December 15, 2025

Best of the Program ｜ Guest： Bryan Stern ｜ 12⧸15⧸25

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