Glenn and Stu talk about the Democratic Debates, who won, who lost, and why Megyn Kelly was the real winner. They also talk about Mike Lee's comments about the Constitution and what is happening with Section 702, and the first day of Hanukkah.
00:00:00.500Great show today. Great show. We talked to you about who won, who lost. Also, Megan Kelly, who was on her way back to New York for her program later after our podcast, she hopped on the phone for a few minutes.
00:00:15.980We talked to Mike Lee about the Constitution and what is happening with Section 702 of FISA. They want to renew it. We've never seen our country this out of control. Also, persecution. Talk to a couple of Catholics who have written a new book on persecution.
00:00:34.500They're being persecuted in the church. And as we found out late last week and earlier this week, the FBI is still going after Catholics. What is happening?
00:00:47.340And the first day of Hanukkah, all of this on today's program brought to you by Relief Factor. If you could make your pain go away, how much would your life improve?
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00:01:42.320You're listening to The Best of the Glenn Beck Program.
00:01:56.420Well, let's say hello to our executive producer, Mr. Stu Bergeer.
00:02:02.180Thanks. Hello, Glenn. Great debate last night. I thought it was interesting.
00:02:05.960I thought it was, too. I thought it was really good.
00:02:07.700Me, too. Me, too. I think the real winner last night, out of all of them, was Megyn Kelly.
00:02:14.180She was great. She was really, really good.
00:02:17.700She's on a plane today. We're hoping to catch her in between.
00:02:21.360But she was the winner. This was the best debate.
00:02:26.580She held everybody's feet to the fire. She asked tough questions.
00:02:29.740She was fair. She told people, shut up. Nobody can hear you when they were talking over each other.
00:02:38.020And it ended it. I mean, I thought she was really, really good.
00:02:42.160Yeah, really, really good. She, you know, her questions, and this goes back to her previous debate performances as well.
00:02:47.660They're very well laid out. You might not like the question.
00:02:52.540And I think that's kind of the point with her.
00:02:54.300She's trying to ask a question that's going to put you in a difficult position to see what you can do with it.
00:02:59.520And that's the whole point of these debates.
00:03:01.500But she wasn't asking them for liberal reasons.
00:03:06.280She was framing all of her questions the way a conservative would want it framed.
00:03:12.600There are certain things that we want answered that the liberals don't even understand.
00:03:17.680Yeah. I mean, if you think about how the left handles these debates, they ask the questions that they care about, which makes sense, right?
00:03:23.780But they ask, hey, what about January 6th or whatever?
00:03:28.600Instead, you got questions last night, I think, that were substance related.
00:03:32.540They were actually issue related. They were policy related.
00:03:35.720They were important questions that all the candidates needed to answer.
00:04:21.680Honestly, if I were Donald Trump, I would consider running the campaign that Joe Biden did with an exception of the, you know, one chair and then a big circle around around it.
00:04:31.780And then like 12 feet later, another circle with a chair in the middle.
00:04:36.660But I would just stay quiet because everybody is hanging themselves and Joe Biden's economy and his, you know, the way he speaks and just hope that he would be shamed into a debate because we do need a debate between the two of them.
00:04:55.120Do you think that's really an option for Donald Trump?
00:04:57.400Because I think he's doing that now at some level with the assistance of the media.
00:05:02.720The media seems to not really want to be focusing on Donald Trump right now for whatever reason.
00:05:08.700You know, you talked about this, I think, a couple of weeks ago.
00:05:19.780Other than a quick maybe mention or headline.
00:05:22.180Normally, they'd be wall to wall saying how bad this guy is or whatever they want to say.
00:05:27.020Right now, it seems like they have made the decision, along with a bunch of Democrats, that the person they want to face in this election is Donald Trump.
00:05:36.580That may very well be a terrible decision for them.
00:05:40.060As we saw in 2016, they made the same call and it didn't work at all.
00:05:43.660But if they're making that choice, it seems like once we get past the primary, Donald Trump is locked in as the candidate.
00:05:51.940They're no longer going to leave every word he says on the sidelines.
00:07:53.760You know, Nikki Haley's polls have also looked pretty strong, but there's even some polls where Trump's ahead of Haley running in a general election.
00:08:01.420The issue, of course, with this is we also are showing in these polls, you know, 10 and 12 percent for RFK Jr.
00:08:10.000And you're seeing you're seeing Cornel West at 2 percent.
00:08:14.260When we get further on in this process, what happens?
00:08:19.220You know, one of the big if you look at the latest polls on Joe Biden, he is down.
00:09:04.600But when we get after a couple billion dollars are spent and we are now in October of 2024, do you think those younger voters whose complaint about Joe Biden is that he's too pro-Israel right now are going to come back home?
00:10:14.040If that happens, it's going to get much more difficult.
00:10:16.760Well, I really believe the only way that happens is if the press brings the the half of the country back to this place that Donald Trump is Hitler.
00:10:32.520And I don't know if that works universally anymore.
00:10:36.540And and here's why Joe Biden conned a lot of people.
00:10:42.280The Democrats conned a lot of people that he was going to bring back normalcy.
00:12:23.740He goes through these trials and people are so upset about it and think he's being targeted that they all side with him and he wins easily.
00:12:51.160It's going to be difficult for Donald Trump to make that same argument because he's got that same type of thing built into him.
00:12:58.220Everyone's made up their mind on both of these people.
00:13:00.580You know, Haley DeSantis have a little bit of more of an opening.
00:13:04.800It may come down to the vice president, because I think everybody is like, man, if he wins, I don't want Kamala Harris to be the president.
00:14:28.460It's a little bit different, obviously.
00:14:30.420But like it's someone who is, I think, respectable, quote unquote, would please a lot of those voters who think, you know, Donald Trump is, you know, his tweets are too bad and all that other stuff.
00:15:22.840You get a game changer and you get a bulldog who will go on television 900 times a day and say and just argue with passion for every point that Donald Trump makes.
00:15:32.480And I think Donald Trump would like that.
00:16:10.880I thought that Donald Trump was going to pick him.
00:16:12.940Um, but I I think if Nikki Haley is a strong, you know, number two in the primaries, if she starts to to become just a juggernaut next to him, he'd probably be foolish not to take her.
00:16:30.940We should also point out that precisely zero votes have been cast in the primary.
00:17:36.500By a 50 to 38 margin, likely voters say they prefer a smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes.
00:17:44.740Now, the reason why this is important is if you want a small government, you can't be a fascist because a small government won't have the controls that a large government has.
00:18:00.540When asked, does the government spend taxpayers' money wisely and carefully, 72% say no, 16% say yes.
00:18:09.760And by a 14 point margin, most voters still prefer limited government.
00:18:16.020Republican voters, 74% overwhelmingly prefer a small government with fewer services and lower taxes, as do 30% of the Democrats.
00:18:25.480Listen to that, 74% of the Republicans, 74% smaller government, small government for the Democrats, 30%.
00:18:38.460Majority of Democrats, 58% prefer a more active government with more services and higher taxes, as do 21% of the Republicans and 32% of unaffiliated voters.
00:18:50.880Democrats, 31% are much more likely than Republicans, 10% and unaffiliated voters, 6% to say government spends taxpayer money wisely and carefully.
00:19:03.820I'm shocked that those numbers are that high.
00:19:08.560We go to Megan Kelly, who is calling us, I think, probably from the airport.
00:20:12.080You're trying to foster a great debate, good TV.
00:20:14.580And so when we had that opening exchange, for me, it was fun because it was kind of like what I imagined it's like to be in the NBA where you're kind of passing the ball behind your back and somebody catches it with ease and they go.
00:20:28.980So, like, we kind of got into a rhythm where I'm like, you go and you go and we'd make eye contact like I'm coming to you.
00:20:35.020And that's what I hated about the NBC debate is they just they didn't let the candidates debate each other.
00:20:40.980I don't want to hear a Kristen Welker interview of Nikki Haley.
00:21:59.740And if you are one of the 75 percent who doesn't like him, you probably enjoyed watching some of the other candidates get into it with him and some of the questions that the moderators had.
00:22:08.580I have to tell you, we were watching it as a team last night and we all cheered when you when you went to Chris Christie on transgenderism.
00:22:17.900We were like, oh, this is going to be good.
00:24:10.020I felt like, you know, she's been so strong at these debates in terms of defending herself and attacking others.
00:24:15.220And of all moments, she should have put her hand out and she should have said, Chris, I appreciate the help, but I got this and then defended herself.
00:24:23.940And I could only conclude, was it because she was shaky on the Ukraine, you know, counties like the provinces?
00:24:35.760Like, maybe she doesn't know the answer and she's stalling or she just wants this moment to pass because it wasn't a good moment for her.
00:24:42.320I read that moment with the three provinces is, wait a minute, I know them, but are they provinces or regions or those cities?
00:24:49.560You know, just that moment of hesitation where you don't want to get it wrong.
00:24:53.220And then that moment just passed her and then and then she came in, unfortunately for her, when everyone was talking and nobody really heard her give the answer.
00:25:03.460And I still don't because I didn't hear all of them.
00:25:05.880I don't know if she was right or wrong.
00:25:16.200It could be if if the body language were different, it could be the power move to not take your opponent's little test, you know, like I can see that being like, screw you.
00:25:28.740I don't I don't take your little exams.
00:25:44.820And I do think I bet you there's going to be a little movement in the polls after this, because DeSantis, you know, it was like it was the guy we kind of thought he could be.
00:25:54.440And it wasn't in any way set up like this.
00:25:57.680But DeSantis had issues that are important to him brought up last night.
00:26:03.680And it's not like we said, oh, let's let's bring these up for our distance.
00:26:06.120We brought these issues up because conservatives care about these issues.
00:26:14.620He hasn't really had a chance to speak to a lot of these issues in the last debates because you got the Univision anchor out there talking about the dreamers.
00:27:22.780And I think he understands that there's a certain psychology within the Republican Party that is recognizing the two people likely to be the nominees are too old.
00:27:31.160And they are really not as fit as we'd like them to be.
00:29:15.640Um, I didn't, he's definitely going to get convicted in multiple, uh, jurisdictions, but Andy McCarthy, who's very smart on these things, was pointing out that judge Chutkin in DC in the federal case on, um, J6.
00:29:31.360You know, he, she hates him that everybody knows that in DC, the jury's going to hate him that he thinks there's a, there's some pretty good odds.
00:29:39.640She will not release him from jail pending appeal after his likely.
00:30:57.760You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:31:01.440Well, let me say hello to a couple of people.
00:31:03.560Alex Torres, he was a former speechwriter for President Trump.
00:31:06.900And my good friend and former co-author, Joshua Charles.
00:31:11.720He is also a former White House speechwriter.
00:31:14.760And he is the co-author of Original Argument, The Federalist Case for the Constitution, adapted for the 20th century, which is something we put out.
00:31:37.240So, guys, tell me, and I guess, Alec, if you want to start, tell me about Persecuted from Within.
00:31:44.780Yeah, Persecuted from Within is a book that's really rooted in something that Josh and I were noticing, that if you're a good, faithful, traditional Catholic, even just a good, faithful, traditional Christian, all around you, you're under attack.
00:31:59.180And frankly, we saw in our own church, a lot of people in our church don't like us, and they're trying to crush us.
00:32:04.840So, we wanted to know how to respond to that.
00:32:07.100We wanted to figure out how do you act as a good Christian, a good person of faith, in response to institutions that you love persecuting you.
00:32:16.480And we thought of a better way to do that than to look at great historical figures, really monumental Christians from the past who had to live under pretty terrible circumstances, frankly, circumstances that are oftentimes worse than our own, and learn the lesson straight from them.
00:32:30.700You cover one of my favorite guys, Fulton Sheen, the archbishop from New York who I didn't know about growing up.
00:32:40.600I found out about him probably in 2008, and I just think he's one of the greatest guys ever.
00:32:45.920I don't think of him as persecuted, but he's a part of the book.
00:32:50.080How do you look at him, and what did you learn from him?
00:32:53.840Well, he was persecuted in a way that was a little hidden.
00:32:59.820What happened with him was that his cardinal at the time, it was just this interpersonal dispute.
00:33:04.900Bishop Sheen was in charge of distributing charity to the poor, and Spelman gave him a bunch of dry milk from the government that he got for free to distribute to the poor.
00:33:13.240Spelman asked Sheen to pay for it, and Sheen said no, so you think it's a small matter, but it actually made the cardinal livid against Sheen, and he vowed revenge, moved him out of his position, cut him off from his TV program, and sent him off to work in Rochester.
00:33:31.720He was totally ill-suited for his role, but he had to do it because it was his boss, essentially.
00:33:36.240He was under the cardinal, and he had to submit, so he looked like this great figure, really had a golden touch, media personality, invited to these big events in New York, and then boom, pretty much a failure when he was sent over to Rochester, all because he refused to take money from the poor and give it to his boss.
00:33:53.080You know, Joshua, you're having this persecution.
00:33:59.900A lot of people are questioning the way their churches are behaving, because we're in a time of great change, and I think most of our churches have gotten fat and sassy and, you know, are too timid to take on the real gospel truth and how it applies in our lives.
00:34:17.600And so a lot of people in a lot of faiths are having this problem.
00:34:22.420In the Catholic Church, you just had something unheard of happen here in Texas, where the Pope got involved and kicked somebody out.
00:34:35.560Yeah, Bishop Strickland, who is actually a friend of mine.
00:34:39.260Right before COVID, I was able to spend some time with Bishop Strickland in what we Catholics call Eucharistic adoration, where we pray before what we believe is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord in the Eucharist.
00:34:53.200And we did that for what's called a holy hour, and I'll just say the bishop's the real deal.
00:34:58.640He wears his garments everywhere he goes.
00:35:01.420He's a humble shepherd of the Lord, and I think in his reaction to the situation, we see how many of the saints that Alec and I write about in this book reacted, and we cover about, you know, 2,000 years' worth of saints.
00:35:16.460And Bishop Strickland has asked Catholics, he's asked them to pray for Pope Francis, he's asked them to not engage in reviling, but he's also spoken the truth about some of the issues that are going on in the Church.
00:35:30.180And frankly, that's the sort of behavior that many of the saints engaged in in this book.
00:35:36.120One that comes to mind is St. Athanasius, who was a great bishop of Alexandria.
00:35:40.980He was reviled and booted from his diocese multiple times.
00:35:45.220He was exiled five times from Alexandria.
00:35:48.120There was one time some soldiers were coming to pick him up that had been sent by the emperor, who was coordinating with some Arian bishops, and he just barely made it out.
00:35:56.480He basically covered his face and snuck through a crowd and escaped.
00:36:00.360And so there's some pretty harrowing stories.
00:36:02.240And Athanasius had to—the phrase was Athanasius Contramundum, Athanasius against the world.
00:36:08.900And he found support in Rome and in other parts of the world, particularly in the West.
00:36:14.900But he stood firmly for the truth, unwaveringly.
00:36:18.460But to do so, he had to experience persecution from within the family, as we say.
00:36:23.900And that's one of the great lessons of these saints, is that to follow Jesus, Jesus says we must take up our cross.
00:36:29.300And the cross includes not only being attacked from external enemies, you know, pagans and heathens and whatnot,
00:36:35.000but from members of the family, so to speak, within the church as well, as Jesus himself was, from Judas and the denial of Peter and many of the problems that the apostles addressed in the early church.
00:37:18.240But she went to her execution faithful, praying to God, and she remained Catholic.
00:37:25.060And so, you know, that's the great story of these saints, is that they do things that are quite literally otherworldly.
00:37:32.860And I think that's what was so inspiring.
00:37:34.980It's like either this Christianity thing is a complete fraud, or it's otherworldly.
00:37:41.100And it actually gives its followers something that they could never give themselves.
00:37:46.100And that's this peace, and that's this sense of fortitude in the face of extraordinary persecution.
00:37:51.520And the saints, by engaging in this, by suffering it, they find the humility that ultimately takes us to heaven, frankly.
00:38:00.720I was just talking to Megyn Kelly, and I don't think that—I could be wrong, but I don't think that you guys wrote this because of the persecution that's going on right now.
00:38:14.900I have a feeling that you're thinking that it's going to get much, much worse.
00:38:18.920I could be wrong, and I'd love to hear your opinion on that.
00:38:23.740So, Megan and I were talking about, you know, what's coming.
00:38:28.320They put Donald Trump in jail or whatever.
00:38:30.760There is going to be a moment where people have had enough.
00:38:35.980And when that happens, persecution and the government will just come down hard.
00:38:42.900So, what is the things that we can pull from your book that tells us what to do and what not to do?
00:38:51.660I think when we're facing, you know, a lot of institutions turning against us, perhaps most terrifyingly, our government here in America, because of the amount of power that it has.
00:39:02.640And we've seen attacks on religious people, especially Catholics, even just within the past few weeks, frankly.
00:39:08.080It's holding on to the truth, especially the truth of our faith matters more than anything else.
00:39:14.920That gives strength that can overcome any of these difficulties.
00:39:18.020When other people are crumbling or being manipulated or falling to the wayside, it's our faith that allows us to be able to get through even grave difficulties and circumstances we've really never had to experience in our generations and make it through in the end.
00:39:33.360And the saints, time and time again, when it looked like their circumstances were dire, when they themselves were imprisoned or martyred or, you know, shut up away from the public sphere without, you know, had their rights to speak, their liberties taken away from them, they really did cling to their faith and God saw them through.
00:39:51.340That's what's so wonderful about these stories.
00:39:53.040You think looking at the history of persecution of great Christians would be a depressing subject, but in a way, it's actually quite inspiring because you can see their strength and how we can imitate that.
00:40:03.800And you can see how God is always with his people.
00:40:06.880When you're faithful to God, God is faithful in greater abundance than we could ever know.
00:40:11.560What do you guys think we're facing, especially as Catholics?
00:40:15.580You guys are, I mean, we have a Catholic president.
00:40:19.900The only second time in history, last time we had one was, and the first time was JFK.
00:40:25.660And now we have a Catholic president who seems to be going after the Catholics.
00:40:36.100Well, Glenn, this is a topic I've been pondering for really since COVID.
00:40:41.240I came into the Catholic Church in July 2019.
00:40:44.960And then so my first Easter was in 2020.
00:40:48.520And, you know, we know that that was a somewhat eventful year.
00:40:52.460And masses around the world were canceled for Easter.
00:40:55.020And what I discovered in the Church Fathers and in many of these great saints is this articulation of this idea, as I said before, that persecution comes not only from the outside, but from within.
00:41:05.740And as we all know, those of us who've had any family issues, which I'm sure is pretty much all of us, that's the hardest thing to deal with.
00:41:12.840But that's exactly what these saints dealt with.
00:41:15.120And frankly, you know, President Biden, I hope he repents.
00:41:23.680And frankly, we have many shepherds who aren't calling him on it.
00:41:27.300And they'll be held to a very high standard at the Day of Judgment.
00:41:31.380We Catholics believe that every single one of us will have to answer for what we did and what we failed to do to Jesus Christ at the Day of Judgment.
00:41:38.840And the people who have the highest standard for behavior will be bishops, will be priests, and will be the pope.
00:41:45.120And, you know, the pope has to go to confession.
00:42:15.160But when Jesus comes back, and Jesus warned about it, the apostles warned about it, some have called it the anti-church.
00:42:22.100And it's basically this dark side of the church.
00:42:24.820And these saints exhibit an astounding level of humility when they're faced with this kind of persecution.
00:42:31.920So, for example, I joked with some of my White House colleagues that the thing that sucks about being Catholic is we can't complain about suffering.
00:42:40.380And what I meant is there's this idea in the Catholic faith of redemptive suffering.
00:42:45.340And the idea is that through his cross, prior to the Lord's cross and his death and resurrection, suffering was basically meaningless.
00:42:55.320It was the effect of the fall and whatnot.
00:42:57.460But after the cross, every single human being, if they follow Christ, can join their suffering to his, and it becomes fruitful.
00:43:06.540It becomes fruitful for the salvation of others.
00:43:08.940It becomes fruitful for the salvation of their own soul.
00:43:11.200And so literally everything that would have been futile and meaningless, which suffering oftentimes feels like, through Christ and his suffering, becomes meaningful.
00:43:21.540And that's what so many of these saints show.
00:43:23.560You know, Stephen Colbert, I don't think he's the most, the paradigm of an Orthodox Catholic per se, but he had this beautiful line in an interview with Anderson Cooper, where Anderson Cooper was mentioning all these horrible tragedies that happened to him.
00:43:36.740And he basically said, how'd you get through it?
00:43:39.300And Stephen Colbert said that in the Catholic faith, God does it too.
00:43:43.900And that's essentially what you see in the lives of all these saints with Athanasius and St. Thomas More.
00:43:53.900They come from all sorts of walks of life.
00:43:56.460Sometimes they're having to criticize popes.
00:43:59.300Sometimes they're having to be, you know, persecuted by their bishops or their cardinals, as Alec talked about, with Venerable Fulton Sheen.
00:44:05.800And sometimes they're literally being executed, or like St. Joan of Arc, or they're being exiled from their diocese and on the run, like St. Athanasius.
00:44:16.060So they're dealing with all these things, but they know they can join their sufferings to Christ.
00:44:21.140And these saints, to this day, we believe, are in heaven, praying for all of us, reaping the most possible fruit a human being can ever reap for the salvation of the world.
00:44:31.260And that's what their suffering did, by joining it to Christ.