On today's show, Glenn Beck is joined by Eric Bolling, Pat Gray, Andrew Klavan, Steve Dace, Matt Kibbe, John Miller, and Ben Ferguson to discuss the impact of President Trump's border wall speech.
00:00:46.740And it's fascinating to hear the highlights now from all of those voices across the spectrum.
00:00:54.020It was interesting to see that across everybody we talked to, some people were more positive on the speech than others and the approach than others.
00:01:02.100But everybody who was positive had one or two things they weren't comfortable with.
00:01:05.480And everybody who was negative on the speech had a couple things they really liked.
00:01:10.260You know, I mean, it was interesting to see the different voices.
00:01:12.720And I think that's kind of, you know, what we try to do today is bring a bunch of different people together to kind of hear all of those thoughts.
00:01:19.140There's much more in common than a difference.
00:01:22.140And you'll hear it on today's podcast.
00:01:24.020So last night, the president gave a speech from the Oval Office behind the Resolute desk.
00:01:45.800The first time he has addressed the nation from that, he did a, I thought, a really good job, really solid speech.
00:01:53.060Then Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, which looked like something that, I don't know, came from South Park, quite honestly.
00:02:02.740But I want to get with Eric Bolling, who has deep relationships at the White House and possibly can give us some insight on this and get his opinion on the speech and its effectiveness.
00:02:45.240And, you know, it was a few minutes I think he was making his case for what could be, you know, his declaration of a national emergency to get some of the wall funding.
00:02:54.760So, look, he's, I think he's being told, he's being advised by Kellyanne and Shine and Sarah Sanders, and it is kind of a team advisory panel, about what to do with this.
00:03:08.060I understand he didn't want to do the speech, and I understand he didn't really necessarily want to go to the Texas border.
00:03:13.740He feels those are a little bit more, I don't know, photo-op-ish than any substantive action.
00:03:25.480He's not going to give up without a fight.
00:03:27.960So, tell me, Eric, the story that he had lunch with all of the anchors, and he said, you know, it's a photo-op, and I really didn't want to do it.
00:03:42.700I read it as you did, and, you know, we have a room full of journalists, and off-the-record comments tend to become leaked.
00:03:52.400And so I guess it would be true, but, you know, I tend to agree with him.
00:03:58.060I don't think last night necessarily moved the needle.
00:04:00.800I think Trump's base, people who have supported him from the beginning, want to see a wall built and want to see him threaten to shut down the government until they get funding for the wall.
00:04:10.960And the people who didn't vote for him or don't like him, liberals or anti-Trumpers or whomever, didn't come to his side by watching that, nor did they become any more emboldened by watching Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer really look ridiculous.
00:04:34.440Let me just throw one thing at you, Glenn.
00:04:35.7202019 Request for Foreign Aid Budget, $27.7 billion.
00:04:42.280That includes $3 billion for Israel, you know, a billion for Jordan.
00:04:46.860You know, people like me and maybe libertarians like you would say, well, if we're willing to spend almost $30 billion handing out money to foreign countries,
00:04:55.220is $5 billion, whether you think it's effective or not, is $5 billion really a big deal to protect our southern border, even if a third of the country believes it needs to happen?
00:18:29.160But it's really amazing how much of the news about Trump is news about what the news people think that Trump is going to do.
00:18:36.820A lot of the sources talking from the Oval Office are people who think they're smarter than the president.
00:18:42.140You know, they're the typical kind of underling who thinks that their boss who works on his gut is an idiot where they went to a good school and they really know the truth.
00:18:51.240And they're leaking out stuff saying, now, Trump is a fool.
00:38:44.780And so what will be fascinating is if you see Jerry Crawford say, I got to give the old Democratic Party one more go.
00:38:51.380And that's why I'm going to back a Beto O'Rourke or I'm going to back a Joe Biden.
00:38:54.380Or if you see if you see Jerry Crawford sit back and wait to see which of the new Marxists emerges and says, you know what, I'm going to get on the winning side.
00:39:02.840He is the caricature, the archetype of what's happening in the Democratic Party.
00:39:07.460And I would watch a guy like him much more than I would watch the candidates themselves.
00:39:12.420Steve, if I were to give you three draft picks and you had to select the Democrat that actually wins, if you had to pick three out of that field, who would you pick?
00:39:21.260I think Joe Biden will absolutely beat Donald Trump.
00:39:26.240And the reason why I think he'll absolutely beat him is because he's got high name ID and because he has enough of the new Marxist cachet, having been Obama's VP and right-hand man for eight years, that while the Ocasio-Cortez crowd won't rally to him, he has too much street cred for them to reject him and openly revolt against him like they did Hillary in the last primary cycle.
00:39:50.400So to me, I think if they nominate Joe Biden, I also think Joe Biden is much like Trump.
00:39:57.300He is really good in interpersonal settings and casual settings, but is a malaprompt with the stagecraft like Trump is, which means I think he'll stand up to Trump's trolling and return fire and give him what for.
00:40:09.600He won't wilt under the Humiliation Act that Trump likes to do with his opponents.
00:40:14.620And so if they nominate him, then I think you'll see the 2020 election look like the 2018 House election.
00:40:21.520Everywhere Democrats can win, they will win.
00:40:31.460You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:40:34.180Our White House correspondent, and I cannot believe that I'm saying this about John Miller, John Miller, who started as an intern for me and then was my assistant for a while.
00:41:10.320Good. So I talked to Eric Bolling today, and he said that that that meeting that the New York Times is talking about with all of the the anchors happened yesterday at the White House with Trump, where he said, yeah, I really don't want to do this.
00:41:26.180And, you know, they're kind of making me do this, but I'll you know, I'll do it.
00:41:30.560But I don't think it's going to be so effective.
00:41:33.040Did you hear about this meeting yesterday that it happened?
00:41:43.280And I think that, you know, of course, they're going to have polling where they kind of jimmy the questions to make it seem like it wasn't effective.
00:41:51.080But I think last night what you saw was a pretty rational, reasonable case for a border wall.
00:42:10.660But, you know, the reaction is going to make it even more effective because the, you know, the reaction from Chuck and Nancy, I mean, that was a joke.
00:42:20.120I mean, that was it was widely mocked across the Internet.
00:42:22.560That, you know, even left wing outlets went to town with it.
00:42:26.240You had these two people looking like villains.
00:42:31.440They look like they're coming to you from their evil lair.
00:42:33.580But the most jarring part was that they were telling the American people that things that are common sense to Americans aren't so.
00:42:42.160And that's what made it surreal because this was not a partisan issue.
00:42:44.520So what we've been doing here is we've actually been talking to Customs and Border Protection this morning, getting their perspective on it because they're laughing at the idea that a border wall would be ineffective.
00:42:57.100Well, John, I can't believe and this is I don't know how you sit in the press room with all the members of the press.
00:43:06.120I mean, that's why my time spent with them is minimal, because in my in my judgment, they do not offer any adequate perspective on this stuff.
00:43:14.140The guys you want to talk to are the people who actually know what's happening.
00:43:17.820And in this scenario, it's Customs and Border Protection.
00:43:20.160Well, and it's the people are actually there who actually know.
00:43:22.360And it's their job to find out how to solve this problem when they say when they say because Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer said this is expensive and ineffective and just not worth it.
00:43:50.720And I mean, and then in 2006, I mean, as Kellyanne said, if you want to call it the Secure Fences Act of 2019, then they can work that out.
00:43:58.840But the idea that this is partisan, that this is radical and extreme and racist is mind boggling.
00:44:06.160And, you know, when when they have these hysterical reactions to very normal things, it discredits their hysteria, because when everything is extremist and racist and fascist and hateful, then really nothing is.
00:44:16.780So, I mean, to get better perspective, just talk to the guys who know actually what's happening.
00:44:20.940And it's like saying wheels don't work anymore.
00:44:24.380Now, of course, it's not a comprehensive solution, but I mean, walls, barriers are critical from a security standpoint.
00:45:21.820I think that that's the one thing that this speech probably I don't know if the speech moved the ball forward.
00:45:27.520I think it informed a lot of Americans of the realities of the border.
00:45:30.780But I don't know if it actually it was a development in the story.
00:45:36.580I think that, you know, what he's going to eventually I don't see the Democrats budging.
00:45:40.560And like you said, I don't see the president budging.
00:45:42.600So it probably will come down to what everyone's talking about, which is the, you know, emergency declaration act, which, you know, the Congress gave the president, which was a lot of things in that I disagree with.
00:45:54.200But it is a presidential power now since 76.
00:45:58.020So the president can use it and if he shouldn't use it to shut down businesses, but he can use it to do what is the federal government's fundamental job, which is national security.
00:46:08.560It's the one thing I think a lot of small government people can even get behind is actually securing our country and our borders.
00:46:14.280So I agree with you. I want the wall. I want border security, but I'm very concerned about the president, you know, declaring an emergency for national security because and it won't even take Trump doing it to get the Democrats to do this.
00:46:32.960But it'll make it easier for them to say global warming. Number one cause of of, you know, in, you know, instability around the world.
00:46:45.000It's going to cause famine and wars and everything else. So we're going to have to do something and we're opening ourselves up to real trouble.
00:46:53.700I mean, the hatch has already been opened on that, though, when they when Congress gave the president that power.
00:46:58.900So either we roll it back or we let the president use the power that he has.
00:47:02.680I think it's reasonable. And the president is going to have to make the case before the courts.
00:47:07.380But you look at the actual they're going to have a really hard time defending the fact that global warming is actually a crisis because the numbers just aren't there.
00:47:15.760But I mean, the numbers on the opioid crisis alone, I mean, I think it's hard to deny.
00:47:21.860And most of those drugs, as we know, are coming in from the border.
00:47:24.040I think it's hard for anyone to deny that that is a real crisis level.
00:47:28.180So the president already has the power. I agree that it's going to open the doors, but they do have to make these cases and they have to win these cases before the courts, before it actually gets affected.
00:47:38.900John Miller, our White House correspondent, and also you can watch his show on Blaze TV dot com.
00:47:46.540Thank you so much, John. Appreciate it.
00:47:52.100You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:47:57.700Matt Kibbe joins us on the Glenn Beck program.
00:48:03.060Good. I've been anxious to hear your point of view because you are on the libertarian side of the spectrum.
00:48:09.780And we're trying to get everybody's opinion from the from the MAGA guys to the libertarians, the conservatives and the millennials and try to get everybody's opinion.
00:48:20.840And I think with the exception of John, we pretty much have a consensus that the wall is important.
00:48:28.700Security on our border is important, but not the use of a of a of an emergency act.
00:48:39.600I'm interested to hear from you, even if you think that border security is important.
00:48:44.560So border security is absolutely important.
00:48:49.200And I think the president's argument with the Democrats in large part is is semantics.
00:48:56.240It's words. You know, we're talking about a fence or a wall.
00:48:59.500Are we talking about spending two billion or five billion?
00:49:03.840And it's important to remember that, you know, Mitch McConnell could have gotten this done and they could have cut other spending and they could have gone through budget reconciliation.
00:49:11.180But here we are at this point. I mean, as a libertarian, I would I would look at other things we could do to make sure that that the money we do spend on border security is actually targeting the bad guys.
00:49:27.520And I'll say some things that will make some of your viewers uncomfortable.
00:49:30.800But for one thing, we need to do something about the drug war.
00:49:34.440If we're worried about illegal drugs and deadly drugs coming across the border, we should look at what happened in Portugal, where they decriminalized all the drugs, including the very dangerous drugs.
00:49:45.440And the net result over the last 20 years has been a significant drop in drug deaths, a drop in in young people using drugs.
00:49:54.400And in the case of the border in our country, it would get rid of the incentive for a lot of bad guys to do a lot of bad things and to bring really dangerous drugs into our country.
00:50:05.280And why why don't we talk about why don't we talk about that more?
00:50:09.120I mean, that is it. Would you say it dropped significantly?
00:50:12.860No, no, no, Matt. It dropped dramatically.
00:50:16.420That was a country that was that was really in the situation that we're in now or or approaching to where death and suicide was off the charts.
00:50:57.880Yeah, they went from a hellhole to being the best in Europe in terms of eliminating drug deaths, eliminating crime associated with it and disease and all the problems that they had.
00:51:12.880And we're sort of schizophrenic on the subject.
00:51:16.220You know, you have a decriminalization of marijuana and medical marijuana.
00:51:20.480And the president has said some thoughtful things about that.
00:51:23.240But I think the heightened criminalization of opioid use is is a problem because, you know, addicts are going to go get what they can get if they feel they need it, whether or not we think that's a good thing or a bad thing.
00:51:39.140You know, incentives matter and and people are going to figure out ways to do these things.
00:51:43.080But I think this is a this is directly linked to border security.
00:51:47.520And the president talked a lot about all these these these dangerous drugs that are coming into our country.
00:51:52.380Let's pull the rug out from under the bad guys and let let let let people and doctors and freedom work itself through here.
00:52:02.960I agree with you, and I believe the I believe the opioid crisis and the heroin crisis is is much more than most people can deal with.
00:52:15.920And I have been somebody who have said you can't legalize all these drugs because we're not a society that's that's willing to deal with it.
00:52:24.860I think if you look at what Portugal did, I think we are running out of options because the drug war clearly doesn't work.
00:52:37.900And I think to save lives, we need something dramatic.
00:52:41.740And I am I hate to say this is I haven't really thought it through, but I think I am at a place now in my life where I am for the legalization of drugs because it's just not working.
00:53:16.600So, you know, some some libertarians use the phrase open borders.
00:53:20.460And I think I don't like the phrase because I think it means different things to different people.
00:53:25.460And I think we should be concise in our language.
00:53:28.180I think that the consensus libertarian view is that people that want to come to our country and work and follow the rules and.
00:53:37.940And our current immigration system doesn't do that.
00:53:46.080Immigrants, legal and illegal, are political footballs.
00:53:49.940Both political parties have agendas other than that principle that I just stated.
00:53:55.240And and another thing we could do to deal with how we how we actually get to real border security is to make sure that people that want to come here and work and contribute have a clear process.
00:55:04.940But, you know, the front the front door has you have to know where the front door is and you have to know what the rules of the game are.
00:55:10.500And you have to know that if you're going to if you're going to go through that process, I know this is going to take three months, six months, whatever it is.
00:55:21.140And this is where it's kind of fascinating to watch Bernie Sanders attack the Koch brothers for.
00:55:27.000Yeah, for for for for their position on immigration.
00:55:30.480But, you know, I think that the Kochs have a pretty clear what I would call a libertarian view.
00:55:36.080If you want to come here and work and contribute, this is part of what's made America a great place.
00:55:41.880And and I think, you know, politicians, you know, I think a lot of politicians are interested in in owning and controlling people once they get here, you know, for their votes.
00:55:52.580And and that's part of the reason it's a political football.
00:55:55.840But, you know, some of us need to just lay it out there.
00:55:59.560You know, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi didn't talk anything about making it safe and predictable and legal for good people to come here and contribute to our country.
00:56:13.480How does this play with the the swing vote, the independent vote?
00:56:19.400Where do they fall eventually, do you think?
00:56:22.780So, you know, the interesting thing is that, you know, Trump has dug his heels in on this and, you know, that the wall is every bit as much a rhetorical symbol as anything else.
00:56:33.860But, you know, a lot of the people that are hurt by this government shut down because Trump controls the executive branch are probably Democrats.
00:56:41.320So I wonder how long the Democrats are going to hold out.
00:58:22.740And the substance was intellectually dishonest and cynical as well.
00:58:26.100And I think there was plenty of that to go around between the president and his adversaries in Congress.
00:58:30.640Like nobody even attempted to move the meter for their side.
00:58:34.060And I think that's pretty sad when you look back on some White House speeches from days past that really aim to try to move people, not just terrify or belittle them.
00:59:34.240But to spend, I think, that time from the Oval Office sort of doing this just reciting of three, four or five, like really just awful crimes that you'd have to send your child out of the room to hear from the president, that is not normal.
00:59:49.220And we've not seen that kind of thing before.
00:59:51.000And I also don't think it is appropriate to use that platform to talk about these instances as if they are a normal and sort of like epidemic part of American life.
01:00:00.940You wouldn't accept that from President Obama on guns.
01:00:04.640You wouldn't accept that from a George Bush on the sort of epidemic of terror.
01:00:08.620You know, that's just not sort of our daily lives.
01:00:11.580And I think that was a misrepresentation.
01:00:14.020I do think we did hear that from Obama with the guns thing here and there, maybe not in the Oval Office.
01:00:19.600But do you think, Stephen, when it comes to the sort of delivery from President Trump, there's a report out today that basically he didn't even want to do this.
01:00:28.020Like this is not something he was interested in doing.
01:00:29.800He doesn't want to do the photo op on the border.
01:00:35.160The issue might be his passion, but like this delivery system is just makes him uncomfortable, it seems.
01:00:40.440I'm really perplexed by that because I thought that was exactly what his thing was.
01:00:44.740I saw that report and I heard John Miller talking about it again earlier.
01:00:48.300And I'm just sort of shocked because this sort of seems like what he is made to do to sort of get on TV and pound his fist and give a speech about something that he's passionate about.
01:00:58.900And it really you could see that he did not want to be there.
01:02:14.520Yeah, crime happens, and I think we have to do a better job of controlling who comes into this country, which I think is going to go to your next question about, you know, what do we do?
01:02:25.540But, again, that is a misrepresentation of the amount of people who come into this country, both legally and illegally.
01:02:30.080The majority of people who are in this country, technically illegally, are people who overstayed their legal right to be here, their visas, etc.
01:02:38.100You know, we don't have sort of a mass epidemic of murderers climbing over a wall and running into Los Angeles.
01:02:44.100That's not really what's going on here.
01:02:46.360So, what do you do at the border, Stephen?
01:02:50.500You know, I have conservative and libertarian tendencies, and they both fight for control every day.
01:02:54.820But here's my concession as a libertarian.
01:02:58.740I am very concerned that the populist movement in Europe is actively, if not already, overtaken U.S. politics.
01:03:06.400And our traditional, more open political parties are rapidly closing.
01:03:10.580And voters demanded something very radical with electing Donald Trump.
01:03:15.760A vote for him was a vote for the wall.
01:03:18.300And my fear is that ignoring this could have far worse consequences for the expanse of government than the project itself, which is just more of a cash hole and, I think, a bad symbol for the United States.
01:03:31.740I mean, what if Trump or the Trumps of the world, like, they get frustrated enough to expand the infrastructure for the war on terror and homeland security to even further grow surveillance systems and Big Brother to monitor people for immigration enforcement?
01:03:46.440I mean, if you live on the border, you're practically under drone surveillance all of the time.
01:03:51.320But imagine if it expanded more darkly.
01:03:53.360Like, so I just, I wonder if the wall would at least tame the vitriol that has been boiling up in our politics for the past decade, even if it compromises some of our values and imperils our national spending problems a little bit more.
01:04:07.560But good on Trump for not invoking emergency powers and kicking this back to Congress, because this is their failure, and they need to deal with it.
01:04:14.880Stephen, thank you very much for the perspective.