Best of the Program | Guests: Brad Reese & Bowen Troyer | 2⧸24⧸26
Episode Stats
Words per minute
153.05185
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
sentences flagged
Hate speech
14
sentences flagged
Summary
On this episode of The Glenn Beck Show, Glenn talks about the Democratic response to President Trump's State of the Union address, how the outrage headlines are actually re wiring your brain so it's impossible to have a conversation with anybody, and how to deal with it.
Transcript
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When you let aero truffle bubbles melt, everything takes on a creamy, delicious, chocolatey glow.
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All right, on the podcast today, we talk about President Trump, what he should say in the
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State of Union address tonight, how the outrage headlines are actually rewiring your brain
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so it's impossible to have a conversation with anybody.
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And we go through and start with the guy who was talking about Epstein and then goes into
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Mar-a-Lago, tries to burn the place down over the weekend.
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And what does it mean that the Democrats are bringing the Epstein victims to the State of
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Well, Brad Reese, as in Reese's Peanut Butter, he doesn't love them.
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And he has a reason why he's on today's podcast as well.
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Quality control looks different when production isn't 7,000 miles away.
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When your clothes are made halfway around the world, quality control often means hoping
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everything turns out right after it's shipped across the ocean in the container.
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When they're made here, it means something else.
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It means somebody is down the street that can walk in and go, hey, I want to see the line.
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They can fix a problem before it becomes 10,000 problems in a crate across the ocean.
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American Giant makes their clothing here in the United States.
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This is extraordinarily difficult to do, and they're one of the first people that were
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American cotton, American workers, American factories.
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It's not a marketing gimmick, and they didn't do it for trade.
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They did it because it was the right thing to do, and they took it on the chin for years.
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You want clothing built to last, designed with intention, made under standards that don't
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require a translator or a time zone difference to verify?
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Just like integrity, quality is not an accident, and when you buy something built with both
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integrity and quality, you're supporting skilled workers, stronger communities, and
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manufacturing base that still takes pride in doing things right here in America.
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So buy American today, American-Giant.com slash Glenn, American-Giant.com slash Glenn.
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Save 20% when you use my name for your first purchase.
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We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're
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We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it.
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Right now, would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast?
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Give us five stars and lead a comment because every single review helps us break through
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Big Tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth.
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This is a movement and you're part of it, a big part of it.
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So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up, help us push this
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Tonight at six o'clock, Dennis Pringer and I talk about his new book, If There Is No God,
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This is one of the first, um, public appearances.
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I think this is the first, I know it's the, the first national radio appearance that he
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Uh, and he is, um, it's amazing to watch this guy.
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I would not, I would be a little cantankerous, uh, just a little bit.
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Um, he is not, he is, he's a, just a remarkable man really.
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Um, but we talk about, you know, how, if we dismiss God, then everything falls apart.
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Absolutely everything falls apart, uh, including our happiness.
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Uh, it comes out tonight at six o'clock for torch subscribers.
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It'll be out everywhere on Saturday, but you really don't want to miss this.
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People are starting to refer to America as a Christian nation.
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And I said, is it important to have to, to emphasize this is a Judeo Christian nation and why listen to his response?
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Glenn, God, God bless you for asking that question.
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Uh, I intend to write, uh, a major piece on that issue.
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There is no Christ without the, uh, the Judeo.
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As I tell my Christian friends, uh, Jesus never read the New Testament.
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Uh, the, uh, the, uh, the gospel writers were Jews.
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I mean, the, all the ideas that Christians, all the ideas that Christians use to, uh, validate their faith.
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Are, are, are based on the, on the Jewish Bible.
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Uh, there is no, so there's no Christian without Judeo.
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And the Judeo would not be known in the world without the Christian.
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Uh, the reason people know about the 10 commandments.
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It's all over the world is because Christians publicized it.
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I'm going to get into a lot with Dennis Prager.
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You don't want to miss this exclusive, uh, interview with him.
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His book comes out, by the way, if there is no God, um, please, he can't do a book tour himself.
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He's doing very limited number of these interviews.
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We had to stop several times because he had to catch his breath.
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Um, but, uh, he, he so believes in the message of this book and so do I, I wrote the afterword
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Uh, he sent it to me, uh, and I wrote the afterword for it.
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Show your support for Dennis Prager and get a really good book.
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So tonight and Jason and Sarah and Ricky, I'd like to bring you in on this tonight is
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And I have a list of things that I think he has to talk about, uh, today, but I'd like
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to start, you know, Sarah, I'd like to actually start with you on, because you're more of the
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average person, you know, you, you got into this cause this was like, it's a job.
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So, you know, you're like the average American, uh, are you going to, are you going to watch
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Um, I'm excited for the pomp and circumstance as usual.
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They just introduced him five seconds ago and you gave him a standing ovation.
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And now you reintroduce him and you're going to give him another two minute standing
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If you guys would just sit on your hands for a while, but that's just me.
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Is there anything, is there anything that he has to say to you that you want to hear?
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I think a lot of times he's just, I'm the greatest and this is going to be the best
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Well, per the insiders, the president has to address the save act and election integrity.
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I'm really curious about because the president has made a big focus on outward facing threats.
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He's been in the middle, all over the Middle East.
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The point is he's very outward focused when a lot of people were saying make America great
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again is all about being inward focused economy, all those things.
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I want to know how this, and it kind of goes towards your question of him during his first
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hundred days on whether he was trying to fix a system that was built post-World War II.
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Talk about that and tell us how all these things you're focused on outwardly is really
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He's got to convince both sides of the aisle that when he does the targeted strike on Iran,
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it's not if, when he does it, it's in our interest.
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Speaking to what Jason was talking about, he's also got to convince both sides of the
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aisle and all of America that his policies with ICE, even though there may have been some
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distractions, we'll call it that, in Minnesota, his policies for ICE are for all Americans,
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to keep all Americans safe, not just Republicans.
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Okay, before I get to my list of things, because I wrote down about eight things that I think
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he has to do tonight, but give me a list of who's coming.
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I want to see Quinn and Jack Hughes, Jack still missing his tooth, grinning ear to ear.
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There's going to be some Epstein victims there that are brought in as props by the Democrats.
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I'm not sure that works to their advantage, does it?
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I mean, really, Bill and Hillary Clinton, you're going to, that party is going to bring
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I think, what was the stat, Jason, about the percentage of people who had, that Epstein
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89% of Epstein's political contributions went to the left and Democrats.
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By the way, I think Bill Gates is starting to really feel the heat.
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Did you see that he left that global conference?
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He didn't go to that big global conference, what was it, last weekend?
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Because of this, they were like, ah, I don't think we're going to lose speakers if you show
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I think he's finally starting to get some heat from it, which is good.
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You'd think the divorce with his wife would have been.
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But this is the guest that I'm most excited about.
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There's a lot of Americans who may not know the story of Jimmy Lai.
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He's facing 20 years, or he's supposed to be in there for 20 years.
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And Speaker Johnson and the Trump administration are working to get him free.
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And she has said that it's his Christian faith that has sustained him.
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And as you know, being a Christian in China is probably not the most popular position.
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So here are the things that I think the president has to do tonight.
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He's got to lead with, here's what I've done to make the economy for you better.
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And he's going to have to, you know, he has to express that it is in your best interest.
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All of these peace deals are in your best interest.
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More importantly, why have I done, like Jason just said, why have I done all these things overseas?
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How are they going to affect your children's future?
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He really needs to distill this and show everything I've done overseas will affect you and your wallet.
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So the explaining of the outward focus and the explanation of, of Iran is going to be really, really important.
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He then also has to talk about, um, the criminal illegals.
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We're not against, we're a nation built on immigration.
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Because we don't have any idea who's coming in, but are we against immigration?
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No, as long as they're the kind of people that come in and want to renew the promise of America.
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We, we can use those kinds of people to help build a more perfect nation.
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But what I'm trying to get off the streets are the criminals, which goes to your point, Ricky.
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And in fact, disproportionately affects people in liberal cities and low income people by taking these rapists, these killers, these, uh, thugs, you know, drug dealers, by taking them off the streets, it's actually affecting low income and liberal cities more than it is the, uh, the red cities.
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So I'm, I'm actually trying to be a president for all of the people here.
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Uh, you look across that border, man, this, this, this whole world is a powder keg.
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You're going to defund the DHS ice has their funding.
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Why are you taking our department of Homeland security at a time when we may need it most?
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He also has to hammer the save act and why that's not Jim Crow.
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And I think the most important thing he can do is define who we are.
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If we just disappear, what happens to your children?
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I would love for the president to say, you know, everybody's fighting all the time and we got to stop this fighting.
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We have to start saying, if we're going to fight, let's fight together for this vision of America.
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What would be interesting is if he ever did that, how the left would be forced to be against that vision of America.
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And it would be so telling because they would, if he was clearly articulating a vision of America that everyone could look at and go, I want to be like that.
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It would put people in a very awkward position because they would have to come out against that, which they would, which they would.
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I, I think he will be in danger if, if he takes a victory lap.
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He's got to say what he has accomplished in the last year.
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But if that victory lap doesn't include, I heard you.
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Everything that we have done is to get your cost of living down.
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And you may not feel it yet, but it's happening.
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If he does what the Democrats did last time, where you just don't get it.
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You just, you can't, what, you can't read wall street reports.
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He has got to say, look, I understand that you don't feel it yet, but I heard you.
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I had to take care of these big things to be able to get to the things that will actually now affect your table.
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And the other thing I think he loses on is if he spends any real time bashing the Supreme Court.
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I don't think people want to hear the bashing of our institutions.
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He can say they came up with a really bad thing and I disagree with it, but that's their job.
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And so I thank the Supreme Court because you've just made my tariffs stronger.
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If he gets waylaid into, and I'm ashamed of you and you're, then he's going to sound like the Democrats.
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And we don't like that when the Democrats do it.
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I wonder if the Democrats like it when they even do it as well.
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Tonight at State of the Union, we'll be watching.
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The burner launcher, when police lights were still flashing two houses down,
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when the couple turned off their bedroom lamp, even after the street went dark again,
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the image of that splintered back door would not leave their minds.
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It was a neighborhood break-in, middle of the night.
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Now they're lying there, quiet, for the first time, and the question feels real.
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If somebody came through our door, what would we do?
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It's another to actually live it and see it and not as abstract.
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When it's happening on your street, your neighbors, your family,
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you realize calling 911 is important, but that doesn't solve the first 20 minutes.
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Non-lethal, safe, self-defense tool powered by CO2,
00:20:05.440
What's happening with the State of the Union tonight?
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Tonight, you're going to see somebody who is laying out his vision of what needs to happen.
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And, you know, it's Donald Trump, and Donald Trump will be Donald Trump.
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But in the audience, you will see what the Democrats are doing.
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And today, or yesterday, a story came out in the Atlantic about how the GOP has become,
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Also, the week that somebody tried to go in and at least cause harm at Mar-a-Lago,
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he was motivated because he felt that Donald Trump was in with the pedophile, Epstein.
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They invite all of the Epstein victims to be sitting with them during the State of the Union.
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I want you to know this is why you can't talk to your friends.
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But let me explain something, how I know this to be true.
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What I just said a half hour ago, you know, in the last half hour.
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Now let me show you how I know this to be true.
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I've talked about this in bits and pieces, and I'll talk about it in a little maybe bigger chunk here.
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But years ago, about 2011, I started getting very, very sick.
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If you see my hand, if you're watching, you can see my hand shake.
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That's from the permanent damage that I did when I was in the early 2000s.
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I had macular degeneration in one eye, macular dystrophy in the other eye.
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All these things started happening, and I could barely think straight.
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And then I had something that researchers called time collapse, where I couldn't time mark anything.
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I could talk to you one day and have a meeting with you, and I could remember everything about the meeting.
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But I couldn't tell you if that meeting happened yesterday or last year.
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And every specialist I went to, I went for two years to doctors.
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Everywhere I went, I went to the best hospitals and clinics in the nation, best doctors.
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They all said the same thing when they first saw me.
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I mean, George Soros doesn't like me very much.
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Even though that's what they said, I wasn't ingesting chemicals.
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I wasn't eating paint chips or anything like that.
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After a couple of years, as I got sicker and sicker and sicker, I realized I was being poisoned, but I was poisoning myself in a way that the doctors hadn't talked to me.
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I wasn't by what I was eating, but I was consuming poison with the relentless diet of the republic is dying.
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The news, the history, the media, everything that was going on for nearly a decade from 2001 to 2010, I barely slept.
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I worked from 5 a.m. till well past midnight every day.
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Each day, I was onstage, offstage, back onstage multiple times.
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By 2009, I wasn't just battling what I believe were forces trying to reverse American freedom and evil.
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I was fighting for my life in business, in media, in smears.
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Physically, I was under threat all the time, and my body was responding to it.
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By 2015, finally, a set of doctors said, you know, some people don't even believe in this, but it's adrenal fatigue.
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I had been in fight-or-flight mode for over a decade, all day, every day, and your body is not built to live under constant siege like that.
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Because we are poisoning ourselves, and I'm not speaking theoretically.
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When you constantly call on your body to produce more cortisol, you're not just stressed.
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Cortisol is your body's built-in alarm system, okay?
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It's released when the brain perceives a threat.
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It mobilizes everything that you need to help you survive, okay?
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But it was designed for dinosaurs and lions, not headlines and social media.
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And when your nervous system is constantly activated by outrage, catastrophe framing,
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existential politics, doom-scrolling, Nazis, pedophiles, cortisol stops being a tool and starts to become a poison, corrosive.
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Your nervous system shifts into chronic fight-or-flight mode.
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Your sympathetic nervous system dominates heart rate, blood pressure, stay elevated all the time.
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Over time, hypertension, insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, and those are the easy ones.
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The second thing that happens is your brain begins to change.
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Chronic cortisol, if it's exposed into your brain, the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and emotional regulation,
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that reduces the volume of that part of your brain.
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At the same time, your fear center becomes much more reactive.
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So you're processing less, and yet your fear is going up.
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You literally become more threat-sensitive, more reactive, less reflective, okay?
00:26:52.240
And then the prefrontal cortex that's responsible for all the executive function, the impulse control, the nuanced thinking,
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that's less effective because it's also under chronic stress.
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That's why your friends cannot hold two thoughts.
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They can't say, yes, these protesters were protesting and they were out of line, but they shouldn't have been killed.
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Or they were killed by this ICE agent, but that doesn't make all ICE agents bad.
00:27:27.560
You can't do that because you no longer physically can do it.
00:27:31.740
But the last thing that happens, your mood shifts.
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High chronic cortisol linked to anxiety, irritability, sleep disruption, depression.
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Sleep suffers because cortisol interferes with melatonin.
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Research now in stress psychology shows that chronic threat perception reduces openness and increases rigidity.
00:28:10.480
When people feel under siege, they seek certainty.
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That's why everybody says you're either with us or you're against us.
00:28:18.060
And they become more prone to catastrophic thinking.
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Nuance is dangerous because that's what your body is made to do when a dinosaur is chasing you, okay?
00:28:33.700
So constant cortisol doesn't just affect your body.
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It makes the world look darker than it may actually be.
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Under stress, the brain notices negative information more than positive.
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Headlines, you know, that are catastrophic stick more than stories of progress.
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You start scanning for danger, and that scanning becomes your baseline.
00:29:19.260
It doesn't differentiate between positive and negative.
00:29:26.060
Your body, your mind does not distinguish between a charging animal and a cable news chyron that says,
00:29:38.920
And it calls your nervous system into battle every single day.
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It reduces hope because hope requires the belief that tomorrow can improve.
00:29:56.860
How many people do you know believe that tomorrow is not going to be better, that their life is not going to be better, or their kids' lives are not going to be better than theirs?
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That is, for the first time in American history, that's happening.
00:30:09.580
It increases aggression because your system is primed to defend.
00:30:14.640
Have you noticed people are much more aggressive than they have ever been?
00:30:21.700
This is why chronic outrage cultures feel the way you feel most likely right now.
00:30:35.140
Your body's designed for bursts of crisis followed by recovery.
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But if we've engineered, think of this with social media, we've engineered an environment where existential crisis is permanent.
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When you live in that state long enough, you begin to believe the world is permanently on fire.
00:30:58.340
When I say we're poisoning ourselves, I speak from experience.
00:31:16.500
Think about what our kids are going through just on social media.
00:31:20.040
Then put them into a classroom where everything is upside down.
00:31:28.340
And then you have the teachers teaching them they've got to go out and protest because the Nazis are in the streets.
00:31:43.520
And I wrote this in an article and we're going to post this today at glennbeck.com because it's why we can't talk to each other.
00:31:56.040
Because there are well-known, researched, proven scientific facts about our body and our brain that everyone knows.
00:32:10.780
I mean, they are consulting with the best behavioral researchers in the world.
00:32:21.720
Do you believe Facebook doesn't know what that little bing does every time it goes off?
00:32:34.720
What is it our politicians and our media are trying to get you to do?
00:32:55.720
When you see, when you see on either side tonight, somebody shouting pedophile, Nazi, in their actions or their words, sending that signal, know exactly what they're doing to your brain.
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You certainly don't want your children to pay that price.
00:33:25.280
This article goes into some things that work to rewire.
00:33:34.900
It takes a lot of work, but to rewire your body.
00:33:40.420
I'm still paying the price of all of those years.
00:33:55.760
Check out the full show podcast anywhere you download podcasts.
00:33:59.440
The grandson of the inventor of Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, Brad Reese.
00:34:12.920
I have to tell you, I grew up in a bakery, and I struggle with my weight.
00:34:19.100
You don't look like you struggled with your weight, and you grew up as a Reese.
00:34:35.280
So, you know, I was so glad to see your letter to Reese's, I mean, to Hershey, because I
00:34:47.960
I just have never had anything Reese's ever that I actually spat it out.
00:35:03.500
It might have been, I don't know, a heart or something.
00:35:08.640
So, whatever it was, it was a Valentine's package.
00:35:14.960
The Reese's peanut butter mini hearts unwrapped.
00:35:27.360
Or is this, I mean, how are you going to get Hershey's to stop this?
00:35:32.500
Well, as far as the ownership, you have to understand, 1963, we were celebrating our 40th
00:35:38.320
And my grandfather died seven years earlier here in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1956.
00:35:44.720
So, in 1963, it was seven years after his death, my father and his five brothers merged
00:35:51.100
Reese's candy company with Hershey chocolate in a tax-free stock-for-stock merger.
00:35:54.920
And we received 616,316 shares, which after two-for-one, three-for-one, two-for-one, and
00:36:01.940
two-for-one stock splits are now 16 million shares.
00:36:05.840
And they're paying an annual cash dividend with $5.48 per share dividend.
00:36:13.620
And I did help stop the sale of Hershey in 2002.
00:36:23.980
I fought tooth and nail because I was only seven years old when Reese merged with Hershey.
00:36:29.420
And as an adult, I wasn't going to allow the H.B.
00:36:31.880
Reese's candy company, which does business with Hershey company, being sold.
00:36:35.300
And, like I said, it was a done deal, but I helped stop that sale.
00:36:39.840
And since stopping that, the cash dividend has gone up 800%.
00:36:45.500
You have these companies that are no longer actually – there's no craftsman there.
00:37:01.900
Well, yeah, so there is, my understanding, chaos at the Reese plant.
00:37:11.480
So the cheap ingredients that you're using, compound coatings, are not working well with the chocolate machinery.
00:37:20.540
So apparently it's breaking down the production line.
00:37:26.540
And, I mean, there's a revolving door, I guess, in personnel.
00:37:33.700
I haven't been able – you know, how am I going to confirm that?
00:37:36.760
But that the – so cheapening the products, they basically – the machinery there is for milk chocolate.
00:37:45.000
So they're having problems, and so I guess they're stooping for pennies and passing up the dollars because what they're saving in cheap compounds, there's spiraling costs and the production problems.
00:38:00.900
When a line closes down, that's catastrophic, revenue-wise.
00:38:06.600
I mean, you can't have your production lines, you know, not working, you know, 100%.
00:38:12.540
Besides the stocks, what does – what does this candy represent to you?
00:38:42.480
So I figure I'm going to die where my grandpa died.
00:38:45.480
So, I mean, I'm just following in his footsteps.
00:38:54.420
But anyway, it's everything, and I love wearing Reese's swag, and it's so much fun because
00:39:07.740
It is so beloved that if I wear a hat or a T-shirt, people are going to mob me.
00:39:22.300
And it really is so much fun to interact with Reese's fans because they are just fanatical.
00:39:30.640
Anywhere from the four-year-old all the way up to the 104-year-old.
00:39:34.540
That's how, if I'm walking in Manhattan, the sidewalks will part, and everybody will be smiling
00:39:43.460
and nodding their head because they don't know anything about me.
00:39:47.520
They just, oh, there's a Reese's guy, or he must love Reese's.
00:39:50.140
But anyway, you're walking by, and they just recognize the brand because you don't see the
00:39:56.220
kind of swag that I wear in, like, a race car, a NASCAR jacket.
00:40:20.700
And he had a customer in Harrisburg, and they were getting peanut butter balls.
00:40:36.000
And my grandfather agreed to take on the job of doing that.
00:40:39.940
And what he found is that if you put it in a cup, it speeds up the production.
00:40:46.480
You have to understand, in his day, there was no air conditioning.
00:40:50.180
So he couldn't do production in the summertime.
00:40:54.760
So there was no air conditioning, and there was no automation.
00:40:59.440
So the peanut butter cup, just the cup shape, was a production decision.
00:41:08.360
And when the air conditioning came in and when things started becoming automated, it just took off.
00:41:15.100
But what really happened was his candies were sold in department stores in one-pound or five-pound assortments.
00:41:22.780
So it was almost like a Whitman sampler or Russell Stover.
00:41:25.400
And the peanut butter cups were just one of the many, okay?
00:41:30.880
He had, you know, peanuts, clusters, and coconut.
00:41:34.240
But the peanut butter cups were just one of many.
00:41:37.020
And customers would say, I just want the peanut butter cups.
00:41:39.680
So the salespeople would have to take the peanut butter cups out of the box and, you know, put them on the way in.
00:41:45.900
And they'd sell them, but then they had to replace the peanut butter cups.
00:41:50.640
And that was a, you know, that made extra work.
00:41:52.640
So the salesperson said, look, HB, and they called them HB.
00:41:56.440
They said, look, if we could make this, the peanut butter cup, and individually wrap it and sell it for a penny, let's try that.
00:42:10.100
So when you wrote this letter, what was the response from Hershey?
00:42:20.020
They are so arrogant, condescending to anybody, especially the Reese family, I find, unless you're, unless, you know, they want something from you.
00:42:31.640
But, no, they, see, I kind of, like, burned my bridges with them when I helped stop the sale in 2002.
00:42:38.700
And then you also have to understand that my cousin, Robert Reese, was the general counsel of Hershey, but he left before that sale was announced.
00:42:49.140
And, anyway, he then came back, after we stopped the sale, he then came back as the president of the Hershey Trust Company, which is a controlling shareholder.
00:42:59.960
He cleaned it up, cleaned up their act as the president of the Hershey Trust.
00:43:04.360
And he also joined the board of managers at the Belton Hershey School.
00:43:08.160
And he corrected so many things that were wrong with the trust and the school and the company especially.
00:43:15.620
And then he pursued the $19 billion takeover of Cadbury Schweppes in England.
00:43:22.260
Now, you have to understand, Hershey already owns the rights to manufacture and sell Cadbury in the United States.
00:43:28.180
So we were going to buy Cadbury around the rest of the world, which was huge.
00:43:38.660
And Richard Lenny, the former chairman and CEO of the Hershey Company, was a financial advisor to Centerview Partners, which was advising Kraft on a competing bid against Hershey.
00:43:51.120
And not only that, Richard Lenny, the former chairman and CEO of Hershey, was also the mentor of his protege, Dave West, who was then the CEO of Hershey.
00:43:59.660
And Dave West killed the deal and never went through.
00:44:05.220
Kraft bought it, which then Kraft then split into two, called Mandelaise.
00:44:09.560
That sect, Mandelaise, ended up with the Cadbury line.
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00:44:12.900
But then Dave West, who killed the deal for Hershey and wants a lifetime opportunity, became a general partner at Centerview Partners.
00:44:28.360
Yeah, the Reese family has been creating the wealth there.
00:44:39.240
Wall Street loves it when you increase your margins at whatever cost to the public.
00:44:53.540
Thank you for making me feel sane because I thought, what the heck, maybe it's my taste have changed, you know, as I get older.
00:45:01.360
And thanks for keeping your grandfather's, you know, vision alive.
00:45:08.100
And I don't trust people who don't, quite honestly.
00:45:23.540
It's really sad because Mr. Hershey was an amazing man.
00:45:27.600
I don't know if you know the original story of Milton Hershey, but he was an incredible guy.
00:45:33.680
His mother was even more so in a real American success story.
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