Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Tim Ballard & Stephen Mansfield ｜ 7⧸3⧸23
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Summary
Ezra Levant is in France, reporting live from the city of Marseilles, Ezra tells the story of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and talks about the recent shooting of a 17-year-old African-American boy in Tunisia.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey, make sure to check out the pilot episode of my brand new podcast, Honest History.
00:00:05.940
The episode's titled, Control Freaks, The Scientific Roots of Progressive Tyranny.
00:00:12.100
It's available right now wherever you get your podcasts.
00:00:16.500
On today's podcast, the amazing Stewina returns.
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I'm not going to dead name her, but she is back and it is great to have her back, Stewina.
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We also talked, we all had a great, you know, had a few days off, drank a bunch of Bud Light.
00:00:47.180
I mean, because, you know, you really don't get any points after you've done the transitioning.
00:00:51.700
You need to constantly be in a state of transition.
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And that way, I'm kind of get all the woke points all the time.
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We have some reporting from, live from France on what's happening over there.
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And a new movie that comes out that you finance.
00:01:20.760
The actual operation that the movie is based on.
00:01:30.000
You need to make sure that you grab your tickets for it and see it.
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It's the movie about Operation Underground Railroad.
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All of that and more on today's broadcast and podcast.
00:02:08.720
Yeah, but this works four different directions.
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If it doesn't work in three weeks, it's probably not going to.
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So, 70% of the people who try it go on to order more month after month.
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You're listening to The Best of the Glenn Beck Program.
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I want to quote Teddy Roosevelt before we go to France.
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There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.
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When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I don't refer to naturalized Americans.
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Some are the very best Americans I've ever known.
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But hyphenated American is not an American at all.
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The one absolutely certain, intricate knot of German Americans,
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Irish Americans, English Americans, French Americans, Scandinavian Americans,
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Each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with other citizens of the American Republic.
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There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American.
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The only man who is a good American is the man who decides to become an American and nothing else.
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And proof of that is what is happening in France this weekend.
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I'm standing in Marseille, which is one of the largest cities in France.
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There's the beautiful French part of Marseille that you would see in a postcard.
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But just literally a few blocks away from the tourist center,
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it is what I think could be fairly called a slum.
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With many migrants, usually from a Muslim country, particularly Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, but also Iraq, Turkey.
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On those streets, you don't hear any French being spoken.
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And I think that the shooting of this 17-year-old North African young man, Nahel is his name,
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And I have to say, I mean, obviously we'll see what the facts are in the end,
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But that spark lit a lot of tinder that has been festering for decades.
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It's almost apartheid, except for much of it is self-imposed.
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There's a lot of cafes in the tourist spots here, Glenn,
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And there's men and women and they're dressed, as you might expect, in a tropical place.
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But you go a few blocks further into the Muslim neighborhoods,
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And the odd woman you do see is wearing an abaya from head to toe.
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Now, there's a law in France that you cannot cover the face with a veil.
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So you see Muslim women head to toe and then the COVID mask.
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I asked a lot of these folks in my broken French,
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I said, how do you feel being a Muslim in France?
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And the more assimilated ones said, we love it.
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We know there are races here and there, but it's not systemically racist.
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So there were some beautiful answers that were very much on point with your quote from Roosevelt.
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But there were other people who said, French don't respect us.
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But then I said, in your heart, are you a French person first or an Algerian first?
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And most of them, without hesitating, said Algerian.
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In fact, a man and his young boy came up to me and they wanted to say a lot about Nihal,
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And I listened to them and I said, who are you in your heart?
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And I was thinking, how can you be upset that the French don't welcome you fully as an equal Frenchman
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when you yourself refused to give up where you were, except for to come here?
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I said, if France is so racist, I said to some of them, why did you come here?
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And so I think both sides have some reconciling to do because you have a de facto apartheid.
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I mean, France has a declining birth rate for the ethnic French, whereas not only through
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continued mass immigration, but just through birthright, the city of Marseille will go the
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It'll still have the gorgeous sun and the port and the yachts and the cafes, but it'll
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be more like a Moroccan city than a French city.
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And it's because I think France and maybe America has something to say about this, too,
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is welcoming in people who are not willing to say America is first in my heart.
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You know, I agree with Teddy Roosevelt on immigrant Americans, naturalized Americans.
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The guy I work with who is Scottish, he's loved Scotland.
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And he came here and he was thinking about citizenship.
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And when he went back to Scotland just recently, he said, I saw Scotland for what it really is,
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because I now have the perspective of living in Texas and in America.
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You know, that that that kind of guy comes in and he starts businesses and he starts to take
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I want immigrants here that are coming in and they want to be Americans.
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I don't want an Italian coming in and saying, I want an Italian community and we're going to
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No, bring your culture with you, but become an American.
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You know, Charles de Gaulle, the great French leader, whose name literally means Frenchman.
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He was considered arrogant and he was considered many things.
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But and and he was a, you know, trans first kind of person.
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He was once asked, can a foreigner become a Frenchman?
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Can you join this country even if your bloodline is not French?
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But he said, yes, if you inculcate yourself, if you breathe in the history, the culture,
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you must learn the language, learn the history, learn the art.
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And by the way, Emmanuel Macron, for all of his flaws, says much the same thing.
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He gave a beautiful speech three years ago, right in the wake of a lot of the Black Lives
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He gave a beautiful speech in France, swearing in some new French citizens where he talked
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about their rights, but he went heavy on their responsibility.
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You know, those old French mottos, liberté, égalité, fraternité.
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He told these immigrants, he said, you must follow fraternity.
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You must be fraternal to your new French citizen colleagues.
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Now, I do not like Emmanuel Macron at all, but it was bracing to see what he said.
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Alas, his deeds don't live up to his words, and it is not happening.
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And I fear for what's, you know, this is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been
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And there were 1,300 people arrested in riots two nights ago.
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I look at the police, and I don't believe in affirmative action, but the police feel like
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They have no, and half the time, they're just defending themselves or the firemen.
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The police have to go in to escort the fire trucks out.
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It's almost like, you know, some of these dystopian movies like Blade Runner or something
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where the police are this foreign, hated, alien, disconnected force, and they're going
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You know, there's the bobbies and gritties and robert.
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Sorry to interrupt, but that was the secret of American police in New York.
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The Irish guy who had become an American, he was the guy who patrolled his own neighborhood.
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The Italian guy, he patrolled his own neighborhood, and so they weren't a foreign force.
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The problem with this is that, at least in New York, the New Yorkers cannot afford to live
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So they are a foreign, you know, they're not part of the community anymore, and you
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can't have people who swear allegiance first to Algeria being the cop for France.
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Now, by the way, one of the answers I got was, I said, are you Algerian first or are you
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She said, Allah first, and I believe in the Ummah.
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In some ways, that's like a Christian who would say, I put Jesus first.
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And I respect that, but as the Bible says, render unto Caesar what's Caesar.
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So yes, in your heart, your conscience, your morality, if you want to put Allah first, I
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Because if a Christian said, I put Jesus first, I would respect that.
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But in matters secular, in matters of civil law and order, in matters of police and learning
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the language, you have to put Caesar first, or in this case, put the Republic first.
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Doesn't an Ummah kind of suggest a caliphate kind of...
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And, you know, by the way, he later ran up there and demanded...
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So, listen, this is a beautiful city, but terrible things are happening.
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And I think that massive, unabsorbed, unintegrated immigration, in this case from Islam, is going
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De Gaulle insisted on absorption, assimilation, integration.
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Rishi Sunak is a South Asian prime minister of the UK.
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I said, could you imagine a Muslim president of France?
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If you can't imagine yourself having full access to the corridors of business and political
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and cultural life, I guess you do ghettoize yourself.
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I came here not knowing what to expect, and I leave with a feeling of fatalism that between
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demographics, open border immigration, and political correctness, all of these trends
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And I think that there's a whole new level of violence we saw this last week that I...
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I mean, listen, there's always riots in France.
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But this felt especially ethnic in its character.
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Well, I will tell you, the Norwegian countries are facing the same.
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But I was just over in England and Scotland and Ireland.
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Ireland is almost entirely gone because of the rapid immigration without assimilation.
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The world and Europe is completely changing and won't be the same in 20 years.
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We thank you for everything that you guys do up in Canada.
00:16:46.920
He has written biographies of Booker T. Washington, George Whitefield, Winston Churchill, Pope Benedict, Abraham Lincoln.
00:17:00.100
Publishers Weekly describes his book Killing Jesus as masterful.
00:17:07.720
But it's the same name as Bill O'Reilly's book.
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And I know Stephen's book has got to be better.
00:17:23.500
I want to talk to you about several people that you have written about, but let's start with seeing that we're, you know, on the doorstep of Fourth of July and Independence Day tomorrow.
00:17:37.700
Uh, let's, let's spend some time with, uh, Lincoln because, uh, Lincoln is a fascinating guy before he starts running for office.
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He had a really tough childhood and then he goes kind of off the wagon a bit.
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And I think it's why he's one of the most beloved in our history and what people often don't know is that he suffered horrible depression, uh, growing up.
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Uh, and this was largely due to the death that he endured in his life.
00:18:16.860
As you, as you allude to, he lost his mother when he was nine.
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He lost his sister when he was, she was, uh, he, when he was 19.
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We famously, he lost the first love of his life, uh, and Rutledge, uh, when he was in his early twenties.
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And then of course, throughout his life, he would lose two sons and then have to endure all the over 700,000 deaths of the civil war.
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So friends said that he dripped melancholy while he walked.
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Uh, he missed his first wedding date because he was considering suicide.
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So, um, very dark figure, uh, very sad, beset by depression.
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And, uh, uh, and this, this affected everything from his faith to his understanding of the civil war.
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So yes, it's, it's, he's a very, very complicated character.
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Now, is it true, Steven, in your research that, um, uh, Lincoln really, his father was a horrible guy and alcoholic and a Christian.
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And, um, and Lincoln rejected Christianity at first, uh, when he first kind of goes out on his own because, uh, of what he thought a Christian was due to his father.
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Uh, the father, uh, the father was a kind of character that we are, we are familiar with from literature and history, very religious, very sentimentally, emotionally religious, and yet brutal to his son.
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One of the best stories I can tell to describe this is that when Lincoln was president, he once spoke to a room full of ex-slaves and quite literally said that he knew what slavery was because he had been used like a slave.
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And he was referring to his first 20 years, 21 years of life when he was under his father's dominion.
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And of course, the people in the room kind of looked askance at each other like, well, Abraham Lincoln was never a slave, but that's how he spoke of it because that's how oppressed he felt himself to be.
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When he left his father's home at the age of 21, he owed his father his labor before then.
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Um, he went and thoroughly rejected Christianity, uh, read a lot of the rationalistic writers, Payne and others, um, fell in with a lot of religious skeptics in New Salem and, uh, was actually carried a Bible around town just to argue with people about it.
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So yes, he was the village atheist for a lot of years.
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And he also was very promiscuous, but freaked out because he thought he was going to get some venereal disease.
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He was a fought in a war called the Black Hawk war and he apparently had some time with prostitutes and later, yes, worried that he had problems.
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And maybe even his depression was related to various kinds of venereal diseases.
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He tried drink for a while and really lost control.
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And that's what Abraham Lincoln was for a good number of years.
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The turning point probably came gradually as he began to know, uh, ministers who were better than the ones he had known in his early life began to, and we all know that he became a state legislator.
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And, uh, began to live in Springfield, moving from a town called New Salem.
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And when he got there, he fell in with a bunch of Christians, um, who were articulate, who were learned, who were well-read.
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They weren't just the teary-eyed sentimentalists, um, emotionally imbalanced, kind of like his father was.
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And so he, he began, he came among, you know, a simple way to say it is a better class of Christians.
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Um, the turning point really came when he met a Presbyterian minister named James Smith.
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Um, he was a congressman, his, uh, stepfather-in-law had died, and he was taking care of the estate.
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He pulled a book down in his father-in-law's house written by this Presbyterian minister, James Smith, kind of a cross between Billy Graham and Daniel Boone.
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But the man could really write, and he made a lawyer's case for Christianity, which, of course, Lincoln, as a lawyer, respected.
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And that really began to turn things, and then, of course, uh, a progression began that carried him all the way through the White House years.
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So, he did say, though, uh, I wasn't a Christian, um, when I got married, I think he said.
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I wasn't a Christian when I, uh, lost my son, um, but I became a Christian at Gettysburg.
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Um, there's no question he had a deepening when he stood at Gettysburg.
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It's, it's sort of the same thing with all famous men who spoke well, like Churchill, others.
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But I don't think there's any question that Lincoln had a profound experience when he looked out on the graves at Gettysburg.
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And, um, and he, he alluded to it often, uh, to visitors at the White House.
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But, but, but the thing that really deepened his faith, the real things that really changed things were the deaths of his boys.
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Um, imagine that he lost two boys and lost them, by the way, to horrible diseases that lingered a long time.
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Um, and this just sent Lincoln already depressive, right, right to the edge of sanity, really.
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Um, and, and of course, famously, Mrs. Lincoln was known for her on just a loud, uh, extreme bouts of grief.
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She would fill the house later, the White House, with, with howls.
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The, the servants would describe them like the howls of wounded animals.
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And so it wasn't just Lincoln's grief that he had to deal with.
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It was the grief of his, of his wife that would go on for weeks and be terrible.
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Um, he finally took her to a window one time and pointed at a mental institution in, in D.C.
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and said, Mother, if you don't get control of yourself, we'll have to put you there.
00:24:33.540
But Lincoln, Lincoln dealt with agonizing death his whole life.
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And he said once famously that he was haunted by the sound of water, of rain falling on graves.
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Well, he had so many graves in his life that he would visit and, of course, had to attend funerals of people he loved.
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So all of this, uh, though it sounds dark, is what caused him to search.
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And it was at those moments that James Smith, this, this Presbyterian minister at First Presbyterian in Springfield,
00:25:01.520
stepped into his life and gave a, as the scriptures say, a reason for the hope that lies within Christians.
00:25:10.540
And I think that was, those times were the turnings for him.
00:25:14.240
You know, you say that, um, you know, the way you describe him while he's in the White House and her,
00:25:20.420
I can't imagine that a president would have been able to remain the president today,
00:25:35.540
When he lost Willie, um, named for William Wallace, by the way, uh, as a young boy,
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Lincoln would close the, his office and sit in the dark all day, every Thursday.
00:25:50.800
Now imagine that a modern president turns out the lights, closes the West Wing or, or, or, or the Oval Office
00:25:56.960
and, um, sits in the dark, uh, just, just in a depressive grief all day long.
00:26:01.980
People of course would question the sanity, but this is what Lincoln did for quite some time
00:26:06.320
until finally, uh, fairly famous minister made an appointment with him and said, sir, what you're
00:26:12.900
Don't you know that if you believe on Jesus Christ, you will go, though your son cannot come to you,
00:26:19.220
And this was a massive turning point in Lincoln's life.
00:26:23.580
And he stopped those Thursday darkness sessions.
00:26:27.500
Um, and he began to search the scriptures more thoroughly and buy copies of this minister's sermons.
00:26:36.900
You don't have one moment of a full turning, but you definitely have a leaving of the atheist years
00:26:42.420
and a deepening, a constant deepening, largely inspired by his recovery from grief
00:26:50.900
When he was, um, president, um, they say he didn't care about slavery.
00:27:01.100
Um, and I, uh, it's my understanding that he had a relationship somewhat, uh, with, uh, John Quincy Adams
00:27:08.980
who kind of passed the torch to him on anti-slavery.
00:27:19.200
And it's, it's folly, of course, to say that he didn't care about slavery.
00:27:22.500
I mean, uh, not only do we know about his famous trip to, to New Orleans, where he said,
00:27:26.860
if I ever get a chance to hit this thing, speaking of slavery, I will.
00:27:30.460
Um, also when he was a congressman for a very short period of time, only about 12, 14 months,
00:27:35.340
um, he proposed a bill that would have outlawed slavery in DC.
00:27:39.940
Um, he proposed the same kind of bill in, uh, Springfield back in, back in Illinois.
00:27:44.560
Um, so the, the, I, and by the way, we have some of the most fascinating writings we have
00:27:50.080
from Lincoln are where he's sitting alone at night in his office and he's sort of wrestling
00:27:57.900
God can't be a, for the same thing and against it at the same time.
00:28:01.980
He would, he would wrestle with his conscience on, on, uh, you know, scraps of paper.
00:28:06.960
And fortunately, when he died, his secretaries kept those for us and we still have them.
00:28:11.280
But to say he didn't care about slavery is silly.
00:28:16.960
And it actually was part, just since we're talking about his faith, it was part of the
00:28:20.720
reason that he, uh, you know, was troubled about the state of Christianity.
00:28:25.420
He couldn't believe that Southern clergy would make a case for slavery from scripture.
00:28:29.900
And since he identified with the slaves deeply because of his own labors, he, he, he was,
00:28:45.400
I, uh, I saw this movie three years ago, maybe.
00:28:50.460
Uh, and I'm not even sure it was locked at the point at that point, but, uh, watched it
00:28:57.320
with Jim Caviezel and, and you, and I, I think like a Prince of Italy or something was there
00:29:10.080
And this is a tremendous, tremendous movie called the sound of freedom.
00:29:17.180
So this tells the story of, of the launch of our, our rescue operation, which leads into
00:29:24.820
operation underground railroad, also the Nazarene fund.
00:29:28.300
Um, but this is the story of when, when we were in the government and was confronted with
00:29:33.660
this dilemma of, uh, if I want to stay on the operation and rescue these children, I had
00:29:40.040
And what's so exciting talking to you, Glenn, is that your audience should be reminded that
00:29:44.720
they paid for the, the operation that you're seeing depicted in, in the film, the, the
00:29:50.120
whole Island operation, all Island raid that was funded by your community.
00:29:54.140
So I've been so excited to get on the, on the radio to say thank you to you and your
00:30:04.980
And I think there's going to be, eventually there will be a movie maybe long after we're
00:30:09.560
dead, um, but there will be a movie about the operation that our audience funded in
00:30:16.360
I mean, it's, it's one of the greatest stories ever as is this one.
00:30:20.800
So, um, what are you hoping people walk away with Tim?
00:30:29.560
I'm tired of, you know, this is domestic release only this week.
00:30:32.380
And so many people in the United States say this is a problem far, far away from us.
00:30:36.720
And it's not, and this film shows you the, the first two arrests are right here in the
00:30:42.100
The first one, the first rescues on the border, which is so relevant today because we have
00:30:46.460
how many kids being trafficked into the United States into the highest demand country for
00:30:52.600
Um, you know, we have our kids being targeted by this crazy ideology of, you know, of sexualizing
00:30:59.480
So I really hope everyone can put the pieces together and realize that kids are in the crosshairs
00:31:03.760
and this is an American problem and it requires an American solution.
00:31:09.220
So there are a couple of movies that I really want to see.
00:31:12.080
I want to see till, and it came out a long time ago.
00:31:15.940
Um, and I've wanted to see it, but every time I pass it on Netflix, I'm like, I'm not in them.
00:31:28.060
This is not, uh, this is something you go to and yes, it deals with some awful stuff,
00:31:33.500
but you feel great leaving the theater after this.
00:31:39.140
And you know, one reason that is, I remember talking to Jerry Mullen, who's a friend of
00:31:42.100
yours as well, who won the Academy Award for Schindler's List.
00:31:44.740
And he said the one regret he had was they made that film 50 years too late because when
00:31:52.540
Um, but this film, The Sound of Freedom is, it's like, it's like Schindler's List had
00:31:58.800
It's like you can leave and do something and that's empowering.
00:32:01.720
And so I think that's why, you know, the movie begins for a lot of people as they're
00:32:05.920
And that's what I think causes hope and, and makes people feel good.
00:32:09.540
So when you, when you watch this, Tim, is there any part of you that is worried that this
00:32:18.580
just makes you much more famous and, oh, you are much more famous and the tactics that
00:32:24.800
you use more famous because you, you guys go in undercover and catch these guys, um, just
00:32:36.720
And then we've, we've had this, we talked about this when we were in Bangkok together
00:32:40.620
and we were walking down, uh, what's that cowboy street, um, um, in, in Bangkok.
00:32:47.200
And we were talking and I, I asked you, how do you live in this world and not take it with
00:32:58.060
These people, the, these people, and you have to kind of pretend to be part of that.
00:33:03.800
Yeah, I, this, this film has forced me out of all undercover work definitively.
00:33:08.560
And I've been doing it for 18 years and it does take its toll.
00:33:11.200
In fact, it's, it's, it's an amazing, crazy process to go undercover and then come out
00:33:18.680
Um, but I'll say this, um, the only tactics we've ever revealed in the film or in the
00:33:24.180
documentaries are things that people are doing anyway.
00:33:26.980
We never reveal something that's kind of a telltale sign that would give us away.
00:33:31.260
Um, you know, things that are happening anyway, parties or whatever.
00:33:35.040
Uh, so that allows us to protect our, our tactics while at the same time, uh, express to the
00:33:43.400
Tell a little bit about this movie, this story in particular on, and how you get the bad
00:33:48.680
guys, the, the, the, the operation that, as you said, this audience funded.
00:33:53.540
So, so I had been sent down as a government agent in 2012 to Columbia to consult on an
00:34:01.160
And I was, it was very clear I was to stop at that point, but I didn't.
00:34:10.160
And then I was told to come home because there's no U S case here.
00:34:14.380
Of course, I don't care about U S case, Columbia case, uh, human trafficking, child trafficking
00:34:19.160
knows no borders or boundaries, but, um, the law was the law.
00:34:23.780
And I, I said, I, I can't, you know, and that's when I, that's when I contacted you and
00:34:29.100
I, and my wife, and I didn't even know you all that well yet.
00:34:32.040
I mean, I've been on your show once and, and I thought, can I get ahold of him?
00:34:35.700
Can I, can I convince him to, to, to take the craziest risk and your attorneys are telling
00:34:41.440
you not to do it, but, but, but this was a pending operation, you know, and I don't
00:34:49.120
It was, you, you put yourself out there and, and, and, you know, we all put ourselves out
00:34:53.380
there and, and, you know, and we went for it and, and it paid off and it paid off in this
00:34:59.040
Um, I don't want to do too much spoiler alert, but it is, it's, it's, it, it, it
00:35:03.140
rescued over a hundred kids in, in, in about two hours and it's depicted on this big
00:35:09.480
Island scene in, in the, in, uh, off the coast of Cartagena.
00:35:17.220
Um, and I don't want to, I don't want to spoil anything in this movie.
00:35:21.320
So we'll talk about other operations you've been on.
00:35:24.260
Tell me what it feels like when, because you're undercover, you're arrested with the
00:35:30.500
bad guys and here are all these women and young girls, really young girls, and you're
00:35:38.420
down on the floor with your hands behind your back in cuffs and they're looking at you like
00:35:49.580
And so you never get that, you never get that thank you really from them or just even
00:35:57.100
the recognition that you, I would imagine I would want to say, I'm not one of them.
00:36:05.280
How does that feel when you're there on the ground with your hands behind your back?
00:36:12.340
I've had, um, I've had young girls and kids like even cuss at me.
00:36:16.360
I remember one spit at me as we were being taken out, like, got you, you might, you know,
00:36:25.560
And, and that's just part of it because, you know, if they know who you are, it's, it's
00:36:29.280
a security risk for our entire team, but something unique happened on this operation that you
00:36:36.800
Cause I think it's just so cool is, um, something happened on the Island operation where one of
00:36:41.320
the aftercare people on the Columbia side accidentally revealed that we were the good
00:36:45.760
guys after they took the bad guys, the real bad guys off on the boats, they left us there
00:36:50.480
and the, and the, and the kids started like singing and clapping and saying, thank you
00:36:55.640
And then we realized, oh my goodness, they know who we are.
00:36:58.000
And some of my operators were crying cause they'd never seen this kind of interaction
00:37:04.060
And he said to me, and it may sound cheesy, but it's the truth.
00:37:07.500
He said, it's not cheesy in the moment and the moment is beautiful and so real.
00:37:11.900
But he, he, he said to me, do you hear that sound?
00:37:16.380
And when I told that story to the producer, Alejandro Monteverde, the writer and director
00:37:20.360
of Sound of Freedom, he said, that's the name of the movie.
00:37:23.020
And they actually depict that scene on the Island, actually depict the scene where the operator
00:37:27.460
says to me those words and it, it plays really well.
00:37:32.580
The writer direct, the writer director of this is a genius, uh, and has done a great job
00:37:44.300
Um, he's done a couple of, I think, brilliant movies here.
00:37:47.480
And this is, this is of course, uh, one of them.
00:37:54.480
I mean, I, I, I, I wouldn't mind that happening if Jim Caviezel played me, but I'd get like fatty
00:38:04.060
Uh, uh, but, uh, he's a good guy and a good friend as, uh, as well.
00:38:15.160
Well, when they, when they approached me and said, you know, I didn't think they were going
00:38:19.660
to make this film because the chances were so small in my mind, but they said, we're
00:38:25.200
You don't get to choose, but you can, you know, request.
00:38:27.660
And right out of the gate, I said, I want Jim Caviezel.
00:38:30.300
Um, the County Monte Cristo is one of my favorite movies for one, but, but I told them, I said,
00:38:35.620
But I mean, Hollywood is the reason that I'm employed.
00:38:38.900
I mean, that's, they create the content that creates the demand that creates the whole problem.
00:38:47.200
And if I didn't love Jesus, I couldn't do what I do.
00:38:54.060
Cause he, you know, there's a, at the end of the movie, if you remember Glenn, it's really
00:38:57.680
They do this kind of transition into real footage and it shows some real footage from the,
00:39:02.660
And they said, you got to find someone to, that kind of looks like you, he's tall, dark
00:39:11.780
I don't care what, I don't care what he looks like, you know, he loves Jesus.
00:39:16.600
And so they went with it and Jim signed up in like four days.
00:39:20.180
So I will tell you that, uh, tall, dark and handsome does not come to mind when I think
00:39:26.960
of you coming to my house immediately following an operation.
00:39:30.980
And you'll fly in from someplace around the world and you'll stop in Dallas.
00:39:35.200
And you've done it a couple of times where you come to the door and I don't even recognize
00:39:38.680
you and tall, dark and handsome is definitely the opposite of how you look when you're on
00:39:49.700
So thanks, thanks for, for giving me a warm place to hang out.
00:39:59.080
Um, uh, and why is it, why, why did you set a goal for 2 million tickets?
00:40:04.480
So before I answer that, I want to announce something so cool.
00:40:07.500
They've already sold over 1 million, I think it's a 1.1 million tickets.
00:40:14.440
We literally be in, in the theaters where we were competing with Indiana Jones at this
00:40:18.500
weekend, which was Indiana Jones opening weekend, Sound of Freedom sold more tickets than Indiana
00:40:29.360
The, the, the Angel Studios is just going through the roof.
00:40:32.420
Um, but there's 2 million children forced into commercial sex, uh, yearly.
00:40:36.540
And so, uh, to, to kind of commemorate that and connect it to us to independence day, we
00:40:42.700
want 2 million people in the theaters this week, uh, celebrating the 4th of July, uh, considering
00:40:48.420
what freedom really means and, and, and also representing those 2 million kids.
00:40:53.840
Believe it or not, this is a really feel good movie.
00:40:57.180
You will walk out of the movie theater feeling really, really great.
00:41:02.420
Uh, especially if you're in this audience, because as Tim said, you paid for the operation
00:41:07.560
that is being depicted in the movie and it is called Sound of Freedom.
00:41:13.120
You can get your tickets, uh, online, go see it.