The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 12 ｜ Bob Spitz ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 The Blaze Radio Network, on demand.

00:00:21.700 So, with all the people you've talked to over the years, and that is, you know, the who's who.

00:00:30.000 Why Reagan?

00:00:32.240 Ah, wonderful question.

00:00:34.780 When I had finished The Beatles and finished Julia Child, I was looking, of course, for another biography to write.

00:00:40.600 Somebody big, somebody juicy.

00:00:42.920 And my wife said, you know, there are two characteristics to all your books.

00:00:46.600 You write about people who are beloved and people who have changed the culture.

00:00:51.560 And so we sat down to make a list of people who could fill that.

00:00:56.340 And it was incredibly difficult.

00:00:58.500 We looked at all the Kennedy-centered nominees and the presidential medals.

00:01:03.580 And there was nobody who really encompassed both things.

00:01:07.420 And my wife said, what about Ronald Reagan?

00:01:09.220 And I went, absolutely not.

00:01:12.040 Because you're a Democrat?

00:01:13.620 I'm a lifelong Democrat.

00:01:14.860 In fact, I don't think I've ever voted for a Republican.

00:01:18.080 I'm just not wired that way.

00:01:19.840 Right.

00:01:20.240 Okay.

00:01:20.360 And so I rejected it out of hand.

00:01:23.980 I talked to a lot of people.

00:01:25.840 And my Democratic friends thought, you know, I'd abandon the cause.

00:01:29.280 And my Republican friends, and I have more Republican friends than you might imagine.

00:01:34.720 Both of my Republican friends thought that I lost my objectivity.

00:01:38.640 I wouldn't have the objectivity.

00:01:40.020 Right.

00:01:40.120 But can I insert something here?

00:01:42.060 Yeah, sure.

00:01:42.740 I learned, when I was at CNN, I assigned a monologue about Reagan to the best writer on

00:01:50.220 the staff, but he was liberal.

00:01:51.840 And I got it.

00:01:52.860 I was traveling.

00:01:53.680 And so I didn't write it myself.

00:01:54.940 And I get it.

00:01:56.800 Yeah.

00:01:57.100 And I read it, and it was good, but it was completely hollow.

00:02:02.640 And I called him up, and I said, Hal, what is this?

00:02:06.100 And he said, I tried.

00:02:07.540 He didn't like Reagan, and so he couldn't connect with him.

00:02:11.380 He just couldn't connect with him.

00:02:13.420 You have to find something to admire in the person that you're writing about.

00:02:16.820 And I decided I wanted to do that right away.

00:02:19.240 This was a man who was beloved to so many people in America.

00:02:23.520 And he was, you know, he's often referred to by people like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

00:02:29.180 They've cited him.

00:02:30.440 And so I thought, I need to learn why this man has these qualities that I never embraced

00:02:36.960 before.

00:02:37.440 I will tell you, I was really shocked when I read the book, because it is written as if

00:02:45.020 it, I don't want to say this wrong, as if it was written by somebody who liked him.

00:02:49.840 Well, I do like him, actually.

00:02:51.080 It doesn't mean that it's a revisionist history or anything like that.

00:02:55.900 It's just, you did find.

00:02:58.240 So what did you, where did you start with, I got to like him?

00:03:02.500 You know, I always believe that you don't know a person until you know where they come

00:03:06.320 from.

00:03:07.000 And so I went to all of his little hometowns.

00:03:10.280 I went to Illinois.

00:03:11.620 I traveled the circuit.

00:03:13.480 And I really found him.

00:03:15.220 I located the soul of Ronald Reagan in Dixon, Illinois.

00:03:20.080 I mean, I totally got him there.

00:03:22.900 I, and, and I went to his college where he found his voice and decided that this was

00:03:30.180 a man who had a lot of substance that had eluded me all these years.

00:03:35.900 And so would I vote for him now?

00:03:38.340 I, I still don't adhere to his policies.

00:03:41.660 No, no.

00:03:41.980 I still don't adhere to his policies.

00:03:43.740 Right.

00:03:43.940 But that doesn't mean that I can't really like, like the men and respect them.

00:03:47.500 I think we have a problem in society where we, um, everybody's a cartoon and they're not,

00:03:55.660 you know, the one thing about Reagan was he, there was a lot of depth to him.

00:04:01.300 You bet.

00:04:01.620 You know, if you really read his writings, not stuff that's just been pumped out for him,

00:04:07.260 but his writings, he's very deep.

00:04:10.320 But I'm, I'm, uh, I'm interested in how, when you got to Dixon, because a lot of people,

00:04:19.680 even if you find Reagan, Reagan is this guy who's a real throwback, uh, a very Frank Capra.

00:04:28.540 Yes.

00:04:28.920 Okay.

00:04:29.220 In many ways.

00:04:30.060 Right.

00:04:30.260 And a lot of people, um, just find that hokey.

00:04:34.520 They don't find that real.

00:04:35.960 How did you break through that?

00:04:38.460 How did you find the genuine person and not the cartoon?

00:04:43.000 Well, you actually led me into it.

00:04:44.680 His writings.

00:04:45.640 I saw a lot of his early writings as a student in high school, as a college student, and as

00:04:52.460 the president of the Screen Actors Guild.

00:04:54.280 And these were speeches he wrote longhand on his yellow tablets that are not in the library.

00:05:00.260 Uh, that, no, they're, they're his private papers.

00:05:03.480 And I was, I think one of two people ever to have access to Ronald Reagan's private papers.

00:05:08.780 And the first person, Ed Morris, never unwrapped them.

00:05:12.780 You're kidding.

00:05:14.000 Nope.

00:05:14.300 They were still bound with, uh, with the tape and everything that came out of the Oval Office.

00:05:19.200 And these were the papers that were by his desk that he went back to time and again to

00:05:24.800 look at, to shape a lot of his views.

00:05:27.340 And so the speeches that he wrote as a kid, the stuff that he wrote as president of the

00:05:33.840 Screen Actors Guild, page after page of, of yellow line paper in his handwriting were

00:05:39.880 truly amazing and showed me the whole character of the man right there.

00:05:44.480 So did you find, because he is, I mean, he's an actor, he's a showbiz guy.

00:05:51.640 He said, he understood that politics is showbiz, right?

00:05:54.980 Mm-hmm.

00:05:56.320 So in your book, you talk about the, the moment, and I want to come back to this, but you talk

00:06:03.920 about the moment where he is, um, about to, um, go in with George Bush for the debate.

00:06:12.060 Oh, yeah.

00:06:12.800 It's very dicey.

00:06:13.980 And he says, excuse me, I paid for this microphone.

00:06:19.020 Absolutely.

00:06:20.100 That's a line.

00:06:21.640 From a movie.

00:06:22.540 From a movie.

00:06:23.500 Yes.

00:06:23.920 So how can you tell the difference of where the Ronald Reagan actor and the learned, um,

00:06:33.980 performer?

00:06:35.300 Right.

00:06:35.640 And the genuine article was?

00:06:37.620 Yeah, it's a real amalgam.

00:06:39.740 You really have to, to look deep to find where that cleft is.

00:06:43.880 Um, he, I think most of the time that Reagan was really sincere in his life.

00:06:49.820 And yet when he needed a crutch, when he needed something, he drew on movie lines.

00:06:56.040 One thing that people don't really understand is that this, the, uh, strategic defense initiative,

00:07:02.080 the star Wars came out of a movie when, when he was a, when he was a young actor at Warner

00:07:07.360 Brothers, he played secret agent, Buzz Bancroft, and they built a bubble over the United States

00:07:13.720 that would shoot down rockets. 0.81

00:07:15.920 I mean, it's wonderful.

00:07:18.280 And yet Reagan, he, he really believed that that would work.

00:07:22.840 And, and he, it was deep in his soul.

00:07:25.820 And, and he, you know, so there was a lot of childness, you know, childness, whoops,

00:07:30.900 I'll say that again, a lot of childish, childishness, got it in him that he, um, that he used to

00:07:40.860 formulate a lot of his, his stronger ideas.

00:07:43.380 So let me just stop here for a second.

00:07:45.700 Yeah.

00:07:45.900 Um, the star Wars, cause I've only made it to the election.

00:07:49.460 I mean, this is a, you know, I think the presidency.

00:07:52.220 Uh, so, um, uh, star Wars, how much of that was bogus?

00:08:03.180 Yeah.

00:08:03.680 I mean, how much you say he believed in this, but it's my understanding that he was a very

00:08:11.020 shrewd negotiator that, yeah, this, this, we're, we're working on this, but we're really

00:08:14.880 not working on this.

00:08:15.800 Yeah.

00:08:16.340 Bud McFarlane, his, uh, national security advisor told me that they always had a feeling

00:08:22.800 that star Wars wouldn't work, but they needed to convince the Soviet union that it would

00:08:28.940 and that it was really in development and they were heading towards implementation.

00:08:33.280 That was part of the ruse.

00:08:34.840 I mean, it was, it was, they called it the sting because in a way it was a little like

00:08:39.740 the sting and, and whether it worked or not didn't matter at all.

00:08:43.960 Right.

00:08:44.140 It's how Reagan sold it.

00:08:46.280 And he did, he sold it to Gorbachev all the way.

00:08:50.580 All right.

00:08:51.080 So let's go back to his childhood.

00:08:53.460 Just give me the high points of the things that you found.

00:08:56.320 I mean, there's a ton of books.

00:08:58.380 There was just the Reagan book had been released in the last couple of years.

00:09:03.860 Yeah.

00:09:04.580 You come out with 800 and some pages.

00:09:07.440 Yeah.

00:09:07.640 Uh, so tell me what's, what I find in here through your eyes.

00:09:13.500 That's that tells me something new about him.

00:09:15.980 Yeah.

00:09:16.300 Well, I'll, I'll tell you a part of it is my Democrat eyes.

00:09:19.400 I go in there with no preformed judgment.

00:09:22.300 So I rely on the biographer's craft talking to new people.

00:09:26.840 I found schoolmates of him, his, who were still alive, 104 year old woman who not only worked

00:09:33.340 with Reagan, but worked with his father, Jack and his brother, Neil, who could really tell

00:09:37.960 me how they, they, they lived as a family.

00:09:40.640 Uh, and she sent me to other people who knew the family well.

00:09:44.960 Um, so tell me about his, tell me about his family.

00:09:48.200 Yeah.

00:09:48.400 He came from very humble beginnings.

00:09:50.340 Uh, I mean, they were poor.

00:09:51.880 They were really dirt poor.

00:09:53.680 There were times that Reagan didn't know if they were going to have enough food on the

00:09:56.980 table for dinner.

00:09:58.280 And so, uh, you know, his dad was, um, a gregarious guy, but an alcoholic who couldn't hold a job.

00:10:05.020 And often they had to move under the cover of night, uh, when the rent came due tough on a

00:10:10.520 young kid.

00:10:11.540 What did that teach him?

00:10:13.420 You know, it taught him resourcefulness.

00:10:16.460 It taught him to depend on himself, but he never lost sight of how much he loved his parents.

00:10:23.920 Even when they might not have been giving him the best, uh, the best advice.

00:10:29.440 Where did that, where did that come from?

00:10:32.200 I think when things are falling around you and they're not working well, you turn inward.

00:10:38.300 Um, I don't know where that comes from.

00:10:40.520 I think it's God given in a way.

00:10:42.680 He had a, he had a different, um, he was an optimist.

00:10:50.120 Oh, incurable.

00:10:51.480 Right?

00:10:51.920 Yeah.

00:10:52.100 He was an optimist and he, and what made him so contagious was he believed it.

00:10:59.520 And when somebody actually believes it, you know, and they can sell it to you.

00:11:04.820 Correct.

00:11:05.460 Yes.

00:11:05.840 So good or bad, he believed it.

00:11:08.380 He believed star Wars.

00:11:09.860 Right.

00:11:10.120 He believed that tomorrow is going to be better, but he didn't have a childhood that said tomorrow's

00:11:15.920 going to be better.

00:11:16.800 That's right.

00:11:18.120 I grew up in an alcoholic family.

00:11:19.680 That's not fun.

00:11:20.800 Um, where did he find that spark?

00:11:26.240 Yeah.

00:11:26.520 Books.

00:11:27.400 He, he lost himself in books.

00:11:29.780 His mother took him to the library.

00:11:31.780 His mother was a very pious religious woman who often was more involved in the church than

00:11:38.120 in her family.

00:11:38.900 And these were two parents who were so wrapped up in their own lives, his mother with her

00:11:44.220 religion, his father with his job and his alcoholism, that young Dutch couldn't even 1.00

00:11:50.320 see.

00:11:50.920 And they never took him to get glasses.

00:11:53.060 He accidentally picked up a pair of his mother's glasses one day when he thought he, he, he couldn't

00:11:59.560 study.

00:12:00.200 He was reading backwards.

00:12:01.520 He was dyslexic.

00:12:03.480 Um, he couldn't play sports because he couldn't catch a ball.

00:12:06.720 He accidentally picks up his mother's glasses one day.

00:12:10.440 Uh, he was, uh, 12 years old, 12 years old.

00:12:14.520 So all these developmental years, he can't see where he's going.

00:12:18.740 He can't see in front of him.

00:12:19.740 He can't see the school, the blackboard in school.

00:12:22.520 He picks up his mother's glasses and puts them on and the world opens up to him.

00:12:26.700 He did it himself.

00:12:27.980 His parents weren't there to do it for him.

00:12:30.620 Unbelievable.

00:12:31.440 So Reagan always had to get by on his own, on his own wits.

00:12:34.760 When he goes to college, he, he, he wasn't going to college.

00:12:39.040 He couldn't afford it.

00:12:40.240 His father told him he couldn't pay the money to send him to school.

00:12:44.120 So Reagan takes his girlfriend to a college that's way above his station just to help her

00:12:51.220 unpack.

00:12:51.800 And when he gets there, he realizes I am not going back.

00:12:55.760 I am getting into this college and I'm going.

00:12:58.100 And so he goes to see the Dean and on the spot, they create a scholarship for him.

00:13:04.400 Unbelievable.

00:13:05.220 Yes.

00:13:05.700 And, and to supplement it, he takes four different jobs.

00:13:09.840 He works washing dishes.

00:13:12.180 He works as a janitor.

00:13:13.560 He works in a plant.

00:13:15.480 And when he has enough money just to get by for himself with a little leftover, he brings

00:13:20.840 his brother to school and pays for some of his way as well.

00:13:24.580 This guy was resourceful.

00:13:26.580 He believed in a goal.

00:13:29.520 And it is interesting that he never wound up at MGM, which was the white picket fence

00:13:35.240 studio.

00:13:36.080 He winds up at the dark studio, Warner Brothers.

00:13:40.460 So, but we've jumped ahead a little.

00:13:44.760 Sorry.

00:13:45.080 Yeah.

00:13:45.280 So let's, so let's kind of stay in, in his teen years and his, in his college years.

00:13:52.180 Um, what was his view of who he could become or that he wanted to become 15, 16 years old?

00:14:04.960 Yeah.

00:14:05.160 Well, um, he, he read a book, um, and I'm having a senior moment because I'm, uh, that really

00:14:12.620 gave him a boyhood hero.

00:14:14.820 And it was somebody, it was a character who was not only idealistic, but worked through

00:14:21.220 his father's alcoholism and found religion and found faith and used faith to go forward.

00:14:28.140 And Reagan started to put it all together through that book, uh, for himself.

00:14:34.800 That became his backbone.

00:14:37.200 Um, when he goes to college, he goes to a school that is, um, underwritten by the disciples of

00:14:43.380 Christ, his mother's church.

00:14:45.520 And there he, uh, he gets a taste of socialism.

00:14:50.700 They had socialistic principles, this disciples of Christ.

00:14:55.220 And he starts to think about politics all the time.

00:14:58.260 And he finds his voice.

00:15:00.320 He leads a student protest.

00:15:02.740 In fact, it's a, it's a wonderful story.

00:15:05.060 They are shutting down the school to have a student protest.

00:15:08.460 And the seniors don't want to speak to the rest of the school to, and to get them to,

00:15:15.700 to shut it down.

00:15:17.260 So that, because the seniors would have, might've sacrificed their diplomas.

00:15:21.240 So what do they do?

00:15:22.280 They pick out a freshman, a freshman who they think, you know, he's just kind of a big mouth

00:15:27.460 and we'll put him up to it.

00:15:29.160 And Reagan makes the speech in front of the entire student body that gets applause, shuts

00:15:35.840 down the school.

00:15:36.660 And there it is there.

00:15:38.540 Reagan finds that he can communicate.

00:15:41.960 He's got that communication skills and he, he has charm that goes with it.

00:15:47.920 And he puts it all together.

00:15:49.300 And right there at Eureka college, we see the formation of Ronald Reagan that will take

00:15:55.360 him through three, four different professions.

00:15:58.400 But he is not the Ronald Reagan that, uh, becomes president.

00:16:03.760 No, he was getting C's and D's in school.

00:16:06.160 I mean, he did not do very well.

00:16:08.500 He wasn't a, Ronald Reagan, uh, I love to say, wasn't a deep thinker, but his thinking

00:16:14.260 was deeply felt.

00:16:16.580 I think that really sums up the man.

00:16:18.780 Tell me the difference.

00:16:32.920 He believed in his ideals.

00:16:34.980 He believed in his ideals based on his faith, based on principles that came from his father's

00:16:45.660 politics, by the way, democratic politics.

00:16:48.100 His dad was a Roosevelt Democrat.

00:16:49.580 And he believed, he believed in advancing the working man, uh, people who were underprivileged.

00:16:57.680 Um, he took that Rooseveltian, uh, ethic and he turned it to the right and into conservatism

00:17:07.260 and fused them together.

00:17:08.740 And that became Reagan Republicanism.

00:17:11.920 So where did, because he goes out to Hollywood.

00:17:14.900 Yes.

00:17:15.580 When did this first happen?

00:17:17.480 When did he say, I, I think I can be a star.

00:17:20.520 Well, actually he was in a few plays in college, loved it, got the acting bud.

00:17:25.040 But what he wanted to be more than anything was a sportscaster.

00:17:29.020 Ronald Reagan loves sports.

00:17:31.820 Uh, in college, he was, uh, on the football team, fifth man down on the bench, running back,

00:17:39.060 last man on the bench.

00:17:40.940 But, you know, he played pretty well.

00:17:43.820 Um, he couldn't see the ball since he, uh, until he was 12, I'm sure.

00:17:47.260 Exactly.

00:17:47.900 So we had a lot of making up to do, but he gets a job as a sportscaster.

00:17:52.640 WHO?

00:17:53.600 Exactly.

00:17:54.040 In Davenport, Iowa, and then he moves to Des Moines and literally in three years becomes

00:18:01.600 the voice of the Midwest.

00:18:03.920 I mean, really people in eight States listen to Ronald Reagan every night, whether he was

00:18:09.440 doing the Cubs or the White Sox games or interviewing Amy Semple McPherson or Gene Autry or whoever

00:18:16.560 was coming through town, he became a star, uh, Hollywood.

00:18:21.680 He could have forgone Hollywood and just had a great life as a broadcaster in the Midwest.

00:18:28.180 Uh, he loved doing it, but he still had that acting bug.

00:18:32.060 And so one day when he's gone out to the Cubs, uh, spring training in, uh, in California,

00:18:39.380 he makes a detour to Hollywood.

00:18:41.380 He was not an Orson Welles type.

00:18:45.340 Oh my gosh.

00:18:46.220 No.

00:18:46.480 Yeah.

00:18:46.900 Uh, and I mean that in there are many ways, but in the way that his radio was, um, him.

00:18:58.620 Yes.

00:18:59.300 Where Wells was always creating, yes, playing a character.

00:19:04.500 So he, when he's doing radio, he's honing his interpersonal skills and who he is.

00:19:11.880 That's right.

00:19:12.400 Not the performance.

00:19:13.520 Exactly right.

00:19:14.180 Does that make a difference?

00:19:15.200 Do you think in his life?

00:19:16.220 I, I think it does because when he got to Hollywood, Hollywood was looking for more nuanced stars.

00:19:24.420 You know, Bogart was there.

00:19:26.740 Jimmy Cagney was there.

00:19:28.300 Spencer Tracy was there.

00:19:29.760 They were all in the studio with him.

00:19:31.560 Betty Davis.

00:19:33.240 Reagan didn't have the nuance. 0.52

00:19:35.500 Reagan was himself on the air when he was an announcer.

00:19:38.480 And when he gets to Hollywood, he's basically limited to roles where he was himself.

00:19:45.540 Although I'll say the one character where he, you know, that the role that all that transformed

00:19:51.060 him, King's Row, it was his favorite role.

00:19:54.440 He really goes off the reservation there and, um, and try something different.

00:19:59.280 But I think Reagan was nervous to do that.

00:20:02.140 He loved playing cowboys.

00:20:03.800 He loved playing, um, guys who rode to the rescue.

00:20:08.280 Um, it was, it was part of who he was.

00:20:10.900 It was his persona.

00:20:12.520 Who is he friends with in Hollywood?

00:20:13.900 Not many people.

00:20:15.480 Um, why?

00:20:17.360 He had always been a loner.

00:20:19.100 He, he didn't have many friends in high school either, uh, nor in college, although he lived

00:20:23.860 in a fraternity house, but he always kept to himself.

00:20:28.060 Um, when he gets to Hollywood, it's odd because his friends are,

00:20:33.800 mostly Republicans.

00:20:35.720 Dick Powell was his closest friend, an ardent Republican, and Robert Montgomery, also an

00:20:42.140 ardent Republican.

00:20:43.620 And they always worked on him.

00:20:45.620 Those guys fought like cats and dogs, you know, they, but the thing was they really respected

00:20:51.460 each other's opinions.

00:20:52.980 Uh, and at night, you know, they'd fight like crazy and then they'd go to Chasen's and have

00:20:57.020 a couple of drinks together.

00:20:59.080 So, uh, but he is still, he's, when he goes to Hollywood, he still believes in...

00:21:06.420 Died in the wall Democrat. 0.69

00:21:08.440 Yeah.

00:21:08.780 I mean, FDR Democrat.

00:21:10.720 Big government programs.

00:21:13.440 Absolutely right.

00:21:15.440 Leaning socialist kind of.

00:21:17.440 Oh yeah.

00:21:17.860 Yeah.

00:21:18.180 No doubt.

00:21:18.680 In fact, he flirts with joining the communist party.

00:21:22.000 He had to be talked out of it by an actor.

00:21:24.580 By an actor.

00:21:25.660 Right.

00:21:25.900 An actor said, Ron, I don't think you really want to do this.

00:21:29.620 And it was a democratic actor who said, those, those loonies are way too far to the left.

00:21:36.860 Wow.

00:21:37.180 Stick to Roosevelt politics.

00:21:40.480 Don't go there.

00:21:41.660 And, and Reagan listened to him.

00:21:43.660 Did he ever attend a communist party meeting?

00:21:46.780 He didn't attend a communist party meeting, but he went to many different meetings of

00:21:51.800 little organizations that were supposed at Hollywood, lefty organizations, um, that really

00:21:59.860 leaned that way.

00:22:01.200 Reagan still didn't understand how, how far left that might've taken him off the deep end.

00:22:09.980 Right.

00:22:10.520 So what was his turning point?

00:22:12.900 Did it come, did it come?

00:22:14.260 Um, because I want to stay here in the early years.

00:22:16.860 Sure.

00:22:17.180 I know in the sixties, in the late fifties, things change for him, but where is the turning

00:22:23.260 point early?

00:22:24.320 Where does it start to, he start to wake?

00:22:26.940 It's actually a humorous, uh, a little anecdote.

00:22:30.480 Reagan went into the army.

00:22:32.120 Uh, he worked for the first motion picture unit and he basically served in LA in Hollywood,

00:22:38.560 uh, making training films for, uh, servicemen and also for the Enola Gay plan that flew

00:22:45.580 over, uh, over Japan and dropped the bomb.

00:22:49.620 While he was in the army, he read that soldiers during the first world war were forgiven their

00:22:55.880 taxes when they came out of uniform.

00:22:58.560 So Reagan figures, you know, I'm not going to pay my taxes for a couple of years.

00:23:03.420 Oh my.

00:23:04.000 Yeah.

00:23:04.920 Uh, they'll probably forgive, do the same thing.

00:23:07.860 And of course it didn't happen that way.

00:23:10.440 So he gets out of the army and he finds that he's $90,000 in debt to, to uncle Sam and starts

00:23:18.900 feeling like big government has its hand in his pocket all the time.

00:23:23.420 Um, and that's when Dick Powell and Robert Montgomery start to go to work on him.

00:23:27.820 And there was a very strong community of Republicans in Hollywood during that time.

00:23:34.700 Um, it wasn't a big number, but it was a lot of major people who, uh, John Wayne, uh, John

00:23:41.320 Wayne.

00:23:41.860 Yes, absolutely.

00:23:43.120 Bob Hope.

00:23:43.940 Bob Hope, Jerry Colonna, another comedian, um, and, and a half dozen other artists.

00:23:52.800 And they all knew each other and Reagan saw them socially and little by little started

00:23:58.920 to really appreciate what they were saying to him about big governments, smaller taxes.

00:24:03.900 You can see it forming right there.

00:24:05.860 Yeah, right.

00:24:06.400 Reagan conservatism.

00:24:07.520 So he is, um, he kind of leaves, uh, acting and becomes the head of the screen actor guild,

00:24:15.800 the actors.

00:24:16.460 Um, he was, he was still acting while he was head of the screen actors guild, but his career

00:24:20.820 was really on the wane.

00:24:22.140 Right.

00:24:22.320 When he comes out of the, out of the army, he's a little too, he's, he's getting a little

00:24:28.140 too old to play those boyfriend parts.

00:24:30.540 And there are other stars like Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and James Dean, who were nothing

00:24:36.860 like him who are starting to come up at this time.

00:24:39.360 What was the, for Ronald Reagan, what was the McCarthy era like?

00:24:44.680 Yeah, it was really, uh, it was really, uh, it was really cataclysmic, uh, in many ways.

00:24:50.500 Um, he, I, I had a really incredible experience and in understanding his, his involvement.

00:24:59.660 I had been communicating with somebody who was involved in this by email, um, who lived

00:25:05.800 in Paris and my wife and I were headed to Paris and I said, can I come over with you

00:25:10.560 and discuss Ronald Reagan?

00:25:11.820 Um, because you were involved with the formation of the screen actors guild.

00:25:15.420 And so I got to spend three hours with Olivia de Haffland.

00:25:19.400 Wow.

00:25:19.840 Yes.

00:25:20.380 Who was just about to be a hundred who said, who rarely sees anybody and who said, Ronald

00:25:26.680 Reagan, please come.

00:25:28.480 I want to tell you all about the blacklist and the, uh, the screen actors guild and the

00:25:34.400 politics of the studio at the time.

00:25:36.920 Um, I will say that we, we talked for about three and a half hours and she drank me under

00:25:41.900 the table.

00:25:43.460 You're a hundred.

00:25:44.380 You're allowed to do it.

00:25:45.140 You bet.

00:25:46.060 I figured I could be a hundred by following her.

00:25:49.460 Um, she told me that Reagan was a very strong leader and, um, and, and didn't know which

00:26:00.240 way to, but didn't know which way to turn politically at that point.

00:26:04.400 Um, he discovered that a lot of the people who were causing the union trouble in Hollywood

00:26:11.800 were his old lefty friends who were, um, flirting with communism, uh, or.

00:26:19.460 Outright communists and he could not abide.

00:26:23.080 But of course there was violence involved in a lot of these union strikes too with, at

00:26:27.940 the time at the studio.

00:26:29.560 Reagan was right in the middle of it.

00:26:31.320 Very early on, he became an FBI informant.

00:26:35.420 Uh, and, and he, he reported on activities.

00:26:39.160 I, I think this is a, this must have been really hard living in that era because.

00:26:43.800 You bet.

00:26:44.960 Communism, they were our allies during World War II.

00:26:48.240 Yes.

00:26:48.840 And, you know, FDR, I've, I know a lot of communists who I like.

00:26:52.480 Um, so it does, it, it doesn't have the weight that it took almost immediately after World War II.

00:27:02.740 Right.

00:27:02.900 At one point, Reagan says, when they asked the Screen Actors Guild to, uh, to throw at

00:27:08.600 anybody who's communist, Reagan says, I don't throw anybody out who's, who has a different

00:27:12.980 political leaning than I have.

00:27:14.480 Right.

00:27:14.700 So for him, it was still a political leaning.

00:27:17.020 Right.

00:27:17.760 It wasn't the enemy of the state.

00:27:21.000 Right.

00:27:21.620 Uh, it would.

00:27:22.540 The evil empire.

00:27:23.240 The evil empire.

00:27:23.900 Right.

00:27:24.080 Um, was he, I, I'm, if I could go back into American history and watch the time period,

00:27:36.320 I would, I would go back there because I think we're repeating some of those same things now.

00:27:43.160 I fear that you're right.

00:27:44.140 Yeah.

00:27:44.900 Um, and, uh, and, and so I'm, I, I have a difficult time with anyone who tries to silence anyone.

00:27:53.500 You know, where in a constitution does it say I can't express your opinion, can't express

00:27:59.120 my opinion.

00:27:59.520 I can't be a communist.

00:28:01.060 Right.

00:28:01.360 Um, it can't be a violent communist, but where does it say I can't believe on those things?

00:28:06.540 Right.

00:28:07.140 Um, how conflicted was he not on necessarily communism, good or bad, but the shutting down

00:28:15.940 of people, because he seems to be, uh, later in life, an icon for the bill of rights.

00:28:26.460 You bet.

00:28:27.660 Where.

00:28:28.440 And compromise.

00:28:29.340 Right.

00:28:30.140 Where is he?

00:28:31.840 What, what's, how much of a conflict is he in?

00:28:35.800 Oh, I think he was in personal chaos during this time.

00:28:38.620 Uh, these people who were communists had been his friends.

00:28:43.080 He knew them.

00:28:44.140 A lot of the screenwriters personally, he had worked with a lot of them.

00:28:48.060 Right.

00:28:48.760 Liked them.

00:28:50.160 Thought they had sharp minds.

00:28:52.400 And yet he realized that they were creating a havoc that was more insidious than he had

00:28:58.880 seen on the surface.

00:29:01.020 Uh, yet he spoke as the president of the union for all the, all the actors, all the people

00:29:07.140 who were involved.

00:29:07.940 So he was really conflicted all through this, um, during the blacklist, when he's asked to

00:29:14.980 go and name names, oh, he was, he was tormented by it.

00:29:20.380 He decided to name a few names that had already been named, but he, um, he was very careful

00:29:27.600 in his comments when I went back and read that, cause I recreate all the strike tension

00:29:33.040 and all of the violence, uh, in the list, uh, in the book.

00:29:37.620 Um, I, I got a sense that, that Reagan was a torn man, just tormented by the whole thing.

00:29:44.780 Didn't know what to do.

00:29:45.920 Um, um, had to steer through that very carefully.

00:29:52.060 We don't have to stop here, but if you want to stop for just a second, um, cause I am fascinated

00:29:57.700 by this time period and the things that we're repeating now, we have calls for violence.

00:30:03.200 Um, we have calls for silencing people.

00:30:07.560 We're not at the name names, but I could see us getting there.

00:30:11.100 Um, and, and on one hand, you want to be able to say, no, they have absolutely, everybody

00:30:21.500 has a right to speak their mind, but violence is starting to, to come into it now.

00:30:29.940 How do we, are we going to navigate?

00:30:32.140 What are we missing from in this time period, if anything, that maybe they had in that time

00:30:37.460 period that we need to revive quickly.

00:30:39.740 Respect for the, for the knowledge that not everybody has to have your opinion.

00:30:46.000 There are other opinions.

00:30:47.440 That doesn't mean those people are out to get you.

00:30:50.100 It just means that they don't believe the same thing you believe.

00:30:53.200 Right.

00:30:53.800 You know, it goes further and deeper.

00:30:56.620 It has to do with religious respect as well.

00:30:59.520 And, you know, Reagan makes that incredible speech at the end of his presidency, the last

00:31:04.840 speech that he makes to the American people where he talks about, he talks about that shining

00:31:09.020 city on the hill.

00:31:10.440 It is the best speech he may have ever given.

00:31:12.320 I think so.

00:31:13.000 Where he says, and boy, does this have shockwaves today, where he says, if the cities have to

00:31:18.580 have walls, if the cities have to have walls, then the walls have doors and everyone who

00:31:26.960 wants to live in peace and harmony should be allowed to come through those doors.

00:31:31.400 I mean, wow.

00:31:33.420 It's chilling when you think of what we're going through today.

00:31:36.460 And he, he warns about how parents need to teach the things that were automatically taught

00:31:45.420 through society.

00:31:46.540 Yeah.

00:31:46.900 And we have lost all of those things.

00:31:49.540 You began this discussion, Glenn, by asking me of what I latched on to, to really take myself

00:31:54.980 through this book.

00:31:55.740 And it was really the, the realization very early on that Ronald Reagan always believed

00:32:02.860 in the goodness of the American people.

00:32:05.260 He was a uniter, not a divider.

00:32:08.220 And I found that so attractive so that when I, you know, reprobate liberal Democrat set

00:32:16.840 out to write a book about really the father of presidential conservatism, I had plenty

00:32:24.120 to admire from the get-go.

00:32:26.020 And that's, that's what really pulled me through it.

00:32:29.400 Real quick.

00:32:29.640 And then we'll go back to the book.

00:32:30.540 Sure.

00:32:30.780 Do you see anybody now cut from this cloth?

00:32:35.740 Well, no.

00:32:36.920 Yeah.

00:32:37.160 None whatsoever.

00:32:38.220 And that's really frightening because, wow, do we need somebody like that right now?

00:32:43.040 We do.

00:32:43.680 I'm hoping that someone comes out of the woodwork, someone we never expected.

00:32:49.760 I mean, I'm sure you won't like to hear this, but I was a great fan of Barack Obama's.

00:32:55.420 And I thought he, you know, there was never a scandal while he was in office.

00:32:59.520 And I think he really, he had dignity and he didn't disparage anybody.

00:33:05.900 I would like to see a Republican step out of the woodwork like that and emerge.

00:33:11.780 I would like to see two candidates, opposite parties.

00:33:15.740 When a conservative can look to the way things were, people were behaving during the Obama

00:33:26.320 administration and say, ah, remember the quaint old, good old days?

00:33:31.020 You're saying something.

00:33:32.760 Yeah, you really are.

00:33:33.740 Because every side, every position, every institution has gone insane.

00:33:39.840 I wasn't a fan of George W. Bush.

00:33:42.060 Boy, would I love to go back to the George W. Bush show.

00:33:44.720 Yeah, it seems quaint, doesn't it?

00:33:46.200 You bet.

00:33:46.620 It really does.

00:33:46.960 Yeah, I need somebody that I can believe in as an American.

00:33:50.560 You know, I'm looking for somebody that I can look up to.

00:33:52.900 What was, I keep saying this, but then we will go back to the book.

00:34:17.980 This is about, this question is about him.

00:34:20.400 Yeah.

00:34:22.900 And in looking at the country and trying to find what the heck do we do, I have found

00:34:32.580 that we've lost the unum in e pluribus unum.

00:34:38.920 We don't remember what we came here for in the first place.

00:34:42.760 What we have, and it's the idea in the Declaration of Independence, and it is the Bill of Rights

00:34:52.120 in practice, in actual practice.

00:34:54.760 We've never been perfect, but we've always been striving for that.

00:34:58.320 The two greatest documents in world history.

00:35:00.920 Yeah.

00:35:04.280 We're not even talking about those things anymore.

00:35:06.540 Right.

00:35:06.840 Is, what was his, was that what he was?

00:35:10.980 When you get down to it, you boil it down.

00:35:14.100 Is, was that his message that we connected with?

00:35:20.180 I think Reagan knew the Constitution and the Bill of Rights backwards and forwards.

00:35:25.120 And he knew them not from when he was governor or president.

00:35:28.260 He knew them from when he was a young boy.

00:35:30.360 He memorized those documents.

00:35:33.440 And, and I think he kept all of that close to his heart.

00:35:37.560 And when you keep that close to your heart, it translates into what kind of a leader you're

00:35:42.960 going to be.

00:35:43.820 So, Bob, how do you, because you say he was a uniter.

00:35:47.880 He was optimistic.

00:35:49.060 Yeah.

00:35:49.180 He really believed this.

00:35:50.760 He, he was a, I don't remember how you said it, a deep thinker.

00:35:55.840 Or, um, I said he wasn't a deep thinker, but his thinking was deeply felt.

00:36:00.100 Okay.

00:36:00.400 Yeah.

00:36:00.720 But he, he, he was not a, he was not a dummy.

00:36:03.980 Oh, by any means.

00:36:06.060 No.

00:36:06.280 So, um, he, he's, he's not sitting around and pondering deep thoughts, but he's, he's

00:36:12.600 not a pushover when it comes to that.

00:36:15.620 That's the opposite of what half the country believed about Ronald Reagan.

00:36:22.020 Oh, yes.

00:36:22.520 You're right.

00:36:23.020 So how do, how, how do we cut through and not make, you know, one president into, you

00:36:36.480 know, a monster and then the next time they make him into a monster.

00:36:40.360 How do we, how does somebody who is genuine survive?

00:36:44.840 Yeah, that's tough.

00:36:46.020 But here's the short answer.

00:36:47.500 Read my biography.

00:36:48.500 Read biographies of great men, great historians, uh, great, uh, great figures in, in history

00:36:55.740 and, and learn about, learn that they're more than what you said at the beginning, a cartoon

00:37:00.500 character.

00:37:01.980 John F. Kennedy had the same kind of spirit as Reagan.

00:37:07.560 Um, I don't know what party either of them would fit in at this point.

00:37:12.680 Yeah, neither.

00:37:13.500 Yeah.

00:37:13.860 I don't think so either.

00:37:15.440 Um, but both of them with really almost the same message and the same packaging, they'd

00:37:24.540 be successful today, wouldn't they?

00:37:26.100 Oh, I think so.

00:37:26.860 I think it's like the second coming.

00:37:29.520 People are waiting for that person to emerge out of the mist and put this country back together

00:37:35.640 again.

00:37:36.020 You know, it's not about making this country great.

00:37:38.260 This country is pretty darn great.

00:37:40.040 Yeah.

00:37:40.640 It's about making us realize what we have, all the, the great things that we have and

00:37:46.860 the ability to work together and to respect each other.

00:37:50.620 I have a very large collection of American history and, um, uh, because of a conversation

00:37:59.820 I had with my daughter, I have a very large collection of some of the worst things in American

00:38:04.800 history.

00:38:05.780 Dreamers and descent.

00:38:06.760 I mean, I know, I've read the book.

00:38:08.600 Okay.

00:38:08.860 So I, I, if we don't know both sides, we're fooling ourselves.

00:38:14.800 We are neither bad nor good.

00:38:16.740 We're both.

00:38:17.460 Yeah.

00:38:17.720 Winston Churchill.

00:38:18.780 He was both.

00:38:19.880 Yeah, exactly right.

00:38:20.740 John Kennedy.

00:38:21.480 He was both.

00:38:22.020 He was both.

00:38:22.360 Yeah.

00:38:22.500 Um, uh, did Reagan, did Reagan connect and know the dark side of America?

00:38:33.720 What we could be and what we had been at periods of our life?

00:38:38.880 I think only on a surface level.

00:38:41.880 Reagan looked at a lot of things surface wise.

00:38:45.020 And so he would connect with things like our military industrial complexes falling apart

00:38:51.460 and I've got to put it back together again.

00:38:53.580 You know, Ronald Reagan thought in, in big ways.

00:38:57.140 And stories.

00:38:57.800 And that's when I said, and stories, and that's when I said he, he wasn't a deep thinker,

00:39:01.960 but the thinking was deeply felt.

00:39:04.340 That, that's one of the things that I hoped in the, in the book to convey to people that

00:39:10.140 while you might've thought he was Ronnie Reagan and the Hollywood bedtime for Bonzo, um, there

00:39:17.960 was a guy who might not have been the most complex thinker, but he was, he, he, he, he thought

00:39:24.620 in, in wonderful ways.

00:39:26.680 I don't think I answered your question though.

00:39:29.000 Uh, I don't think so either.

00:39:30.060 Yeah.

00:39:30.280 Want to try it again?

00:39:31.580 Yeah.

00:39:31.740 Ask me the question again.

00:39:35.480 Um.

00:39:35.920 Did he understand the dark side?

00:39:39.400 Yeah.

00:39:40.660 I, I don't think so.

00:39:42.420 I think he looked at things through rose colored glasses, hence the Star Wars, hence Mr. Gorbachev

00:39:50.360 tear down this wall.

00:39:52.440 So for instance, uh, somebody I would imagine he liked, um, Eisenhower.

00:40:00.400 Very much so.

00:40:01.360 The, the, I think one of the last really, truly honest, brave speeches anyone has given

00:40:10.160 in the Oval Office was Eisenhower.

00:40:12.640 If you read that entire speech of the industrial complex, did he, did he take that into consideration

00:40:23.580 at all?

00:40:24.260 Yes, he did.

00:40:25.100 He took, he read Eisenhower backwards and forwards and he wanted to speak to him quite a bit.

00:40:32.240 And Nixon as well.

00:40:34.100 He always looked to Nixon.

00:40:35.580 I have a, a.

00:40:36.420 What did he learn from Nixon?

00:40:38.700 Yeah.

00:40:39.000 He, he learned, he learned how to be a little more political from Nixon.

00:40:43.840 He received an 11 page memo from Nixon, uh, right before he chose his cabinet in the

00:40:50.540 first term and Nixon laid out all the do's and don'ts for him.

00:40:56.140 It was pure Nixonian strategy.

00:40:58.340 But Reagan, Reagan really absorbed a lot of it.

00:41:01.820 I mean, he respected Dick Nixon.

00:41:04.220 Um, what do you learn from Eisenhower?

00:41:06.940 I think he learned how to be a compassionate president from Eisenhower, how to, uh, this

00:41:13.280 is an interesting thing, how to be the president for all the people, which he felt that was

00:41:18.640 Eisenhower's greatest quality.

00:41:20.400 Here's a really interesting thing about Reagan that you might not know.

00:41:24.560 As governor of California, he signed one of the earliest therapeutic abortion bills in

00:41:30.980 the country.

00:41:31.480 This was six years before the Roe v.

00:41:34.400 Wade decision.

00:41:35.720 Now Reagan completely was against abortion.

00:41:39.700 Why would he do that?

00:41:41.360 So I called Tony Bielenson, who was now deceased, who was a democratic assemblyman from Hollywood,

00:41:48.440 who, who proposed that bill and saw it all the way through.

00:41:53.060 And he said, Reagan opposed it from the beginning, but I convinced him that 62% of the California

00:42:01.700 residents were in favor of it.

00:42:03.880 And Reagan said, I'm willing, if 62% are willing, I'm willing to look at a study that you find

00:42:12.840 to bring it to me.

00:42:13.940 And he saw us trust the people, trust the people.

00:42:17.460 And he saw that more than 62% were in favor and he opposed it, but he signed it because he

00:42:24.040 said, I'm the governor of all the people, not just some of the people.

00:42:29.240 Now, what a remarkable, this ties into a lot of things you were saying, the governor of all

00:42:35.460 the people, in every state, in every city, in every room, there are, there are people have

00:42:44.400 different opinions on things.

00:42:46.840 And, and Reagan decided if I'm going to be the leader of, if you've entrusted the leadership to

00:42:53.060 me, then I'm going to listen to you.

00:42:56.340 Where is that today?

00:42:58.420 So it's strange because some would say, oh, well, that's just a governing by polls, which is not.

00:43:05.460 No, no, it's not the case.

00:43:07.200 What's the difference?

00:43:08.580 I think if you're governing by polls, then you don't bring anything of yourself to it.

00:43:14.820 And there were so many other bills where the polls were strong, but Reagan, Reagan wouldn't,

00:43:23.500 he wouldn't destroy the environment, the seashore in California, even though the polls told him

00:43:28.480 they wanted development on the seashore.

00:43:30.340 He became the environmental governor.

00:43:33.020 Go figure.

00:43:33.500 How did this guy get to be the evil Ronald Reagan?

00:43:39.280 Well, as you said, that was the cartoon character, Ronald Reagan, that, you know, the press and,

00:43:45.120 and the media gave, gave to him.

00:43:49.280 And, you know, he was a, an actor, so he was easy prey.

00:43:53.320 Um, but deep down, he had a strong core.

00:43:57.700 Uh, that's what I discovered.

00:43:59.180 He had a really strong core.

00:44:01.640 I want to, let's, let's skip ahead and go, and go into his presidency just a little bit.

00:44:07.720 Yeah.

00:44:07.820 Um, first tell me about, and I have not reached it yet.

00:44:12.060 Yeah.

00:44:12.300 Tell me about the Iranian when he lifts his hands. 1.00

00:44:16.200 I remember Reagan was the first president I voted for and I couldn't vote in 1980.

00:44:23.080 Um, but I remember him lifting his hand and then hearing that the hostages were being released

00:44:29.220 at the same time.

00:44:30.940 Well, they had, they had always sensed that the hostages were going to be released.

00:44:35.500 And people always said, well, they were worried about the October surprise and, um, not the

00:44:40.960 case at all.

00:44:41.620 Was it Jimmy Carter that negotiated that or was it a combination or what?

00:44:46.200 It was Jimmy Carter and Reagan really acknowledged Jimmy Carter and all his efforts on their ride

00:44:52.520 to the inauguration, the presidential ride where the two, the outgoing president and the

00:44:58.400 ingoing president share a car together.

00:45:00.880 They didn't talk much.

00:45:02.740 I didn't, they didn't say anything because Reagan knew that Carter had been up for four

00:45:06.880 nights straight negotiating.

00:45:09.060 Um, Warren Christopher, his secretary of state briefed the Reagan cabinet all the time.

00:45:16.720 They kept each other in the loop and the Reagan people assured Carter that if Ray, if Carter

00:45:23.820 brought the hostages back, the Reagan people were going to make a very big deal of Carter's

00:45:29.400 initiative.

00:45:30.720 Um, the Ayatollah on the other hand, uh, wasn't about to bring them back until Reagan was president 0.84

00:45:37.560 because he, he, he was scared of this guy.

00:45:41.020 I mean, Reagan came with the reputation of being a saber rattler and had once said that,

00:45:47.340 you know, he could make turn Iran to run into a parking lot very quickly.

00:45:53.040 Uh, so they decided to bring him back.

00:45:55.100 Uh, the, the wheels were up as Reagan was being sworn in.

00:46:01.440 In fact, Dick Allen, who was a national security advisor told me that he got wind of it as Ronald

00:46:09.100 Reagan was taking the oath and he duck walked down the aisle, tapped Reagan on his tuxedo

00:46:15.820 pants and handed up a piece of paper that just said wheels up in Tehran and Reagan turns

00:46:22.920 around classic Ronald Reagan and he winks at him and he puts the paper back in his pocket

00:46:28.860 cause he did not want to steal Jimmy Carter's thunder at the inauguration.

00:46:33.240 Wow.

00:46:33.940 That tells you a lot about that kind of that guy.

00:46:37.180 Yeah.

00:46:39.380 The evil empire speech.

00:46:42.340 Yeah.

00:46:42.860 I think that's one speech Reagan would like to take back.

00:46:45.360 He, um, he wanted to be, he wanted to underscore how strong he was.

00:46:52.020 He would be with the Soviet union.

00:46:54.180 And, you know, in his first term, he has three different Soviet premieres to deal with.

00:46:59.300 They all died one right after the other.

00:47:01.740 And he had no regard for, for either of them.

00:47:04.680 They were hard liners.

00:47:06.260 They made it very clear from the get go that they weren't going to negotiate with him.

00:47:10.080 And Reagan wanted to make it clear that he wasn't somebody to be, uh, to be taken lightly.

00:47:16.620 In fact, he tells, I believe it's, uh, Bud McFarlane at one point, you tell that Russian 1.00

00:47:23.820 negotiator you're talking to, you work for one tough son of a bitch. 0.99

00:47:28.020 Um, he wanted to make a point and, and, but I think he regretted calling it the evil empire 0.99

00:47:34.300 because it came back to haunt him in a few times with his negotiations with Gorbachev later

00:47:39.300 on.

00:47:40.760 Um, he got a lot of flack for his, uh, stance and, you know, he's a warmonger, et cetera.

00:47:52.360 Yeah.

00:47:53.400 Was he, or was he, I've always wanted, I've always wanted to, I thought the president is

00:48:00.680 always best when he has kind of a twitchy eye, not to the American people.

00:48:07.160 It's bad when he, when the American people are like, good God, I think he might do it.

00:48:11.420 But to the adversary, somebody who has that cowboy spear, like, you don't know, I might

00:48:17.320 just pull a gun on you. 0.98

00:48:18.720 That's right. 0.99

00:48:19.200 So was he, was he the cowboy with a twitchy eye or was he prepared to blow up the evil

00:48:27.480 empire?

00:48:27.740 He was never prepared to blow up the evil empire.

00:48:30.680 Never, never entered his mind.

00:48:32.800 He thought mutually assured destruction was the craziest thing he had ever heard of.

00:48:39.740 It was.

00:48:40.500 It was.

00:48:41.440 And he wanted to be known as a man of peace.

00:48:44.780 In fact, um, we, uh, we owe Nancy Reagan a great, uh, a great debt.

00:48:52.380 Nancy Reagan, as I was writing this book, I thought, well, you know, I had written a book.

00:48:57.540 I was the Beatles biographer and Yoko Ono was the heavy in the Beatles biography.

00:49:03.060 People always think that it was Yoko who broke up the Beatles.

00:49:06.260 It wasn't.

00:49:08.220 Um, and I thought, well, here I have my Yoko Ono character from the outset.

00:49:12.080 It's Nancy Reagan.

00:49:13.580 And wow, I couldn't have been wronger than wrong.

00:49:17.280 Um, Nancy Reagan had one thing in mind, and this goes back to your question about would

00:49:22.560 he have blown up the Soviet Union?

00:49:24.480 She had one thing in mind, and that was to preserve her husband's legacy for the future.

00:49:30.500 And she wanted him to be known as a man of peace.

00:49:34.420 And so very early in the first term, she keeps saying to him, make peace with the Soviet Union.

00:49:42.880 Find some common ground that you can talk to them.

00:49:46.340 And when Reagan's in the hospital after the assassination attempt, he writes what his staff

00:49:51.480 thought was a very fluffy letter, handwritten to Brezhnev saying, if we could only sit down

00:49:58.980 and talk like two men across the table, I know we could solve all the world's problems.

00:50:03.440 Typically, Ronald Reagan, you know, they decided not to send that letter.

00:50:09.360 Mike Deaver said, they've always been telling you not to send those things.

00:50:13.280 You're the president. 1.00

00:50:14.220 Tell him to go to hell and send it. 1.00

00:50:16.120 But he ultimately didn't. 0.98

00:50:18.280 He basically wrote that same letter to Gorbachev later on.

00:50:22.420 So, you know, Ronald Reagan was never looking at war as a possibility.

00:50:26.380 He was looking at peace all throughout his presidency.

00:50:31.340 And that comes, excuse me, by the way, from his childhood.

00:50:35.140 It's what his mother taught him.

00:50:36.820 Yeah.

00:50:38.260 But he had a reasonable partner with Gorbachev.

00:50:41.540 He did.

00:50:43.080 He did.

00:50:43.740 He found a man who was not a rock hard ideologue.

00:50:49.960 Gorbachev was a lot harder than we think.

00:50:52.260 We always envision him as like this cuddly little guy.

00:50:56.140 He wasn't.

00:50:56.780 He was a—

00:50:58.320 He was still a communist.

00:50:59.600 He was a communist.

00:51:00.980 But you know what?

00:51:01.960 Ronald Reagan, and this is when he knew he had Gorbachev.

00:51:05.700 He came away from their first meeting in Geneva, shaking his head.

00:51:10.860 He learned something.

00:51:12.380 Gorbachev kind of intimated that he believed in God.

00:51:17.440 And Reagan couldn't get over this.

00:51:20.500 It was a communist who believed in God.

00:51:23.700 And he saw that as an opening.

00:51:26.600 Yeah, that was—

00:51:27.820 And how did that play out?

00:51:30.100 I think it kept bringing Gorbachev back to the negotiating table.

00:51:36.500 When they get to Reykjavik later on, they are this close away to eliminating nuclear weapons.

00:51:46.060 This close, Glenn.

00:51:48.080 And Reagan ultimately walks away from it. 1.00

00:51:51.820 But I think it played out because these were two men who found that not only could they talk to each other,

00:51:59.220 but they weren't closed individuals and they both wanted peace ultimately.

00:52:03.600 And Gorbachev has, of course, been excoriated now for it.

00:52:08.240 How difficult was it for Ronald Reagan to walk away?

00:52:15.560 It was the most difficult moment, aside from the Challenger blowing up, the shuttle Challenger, in his presidency.

00:52:24.040 Jim Kuhn, who was his executive assistant with him every day, all day,

00:52:28.700 told me that when he got into that car and left Reykjavik, he was consumed with anger.

00:52:37.760 Like he had never seen Ronald Reagan before.

00:52:40.380 He was angry at the situation, angry that they were that close and neither man could get right further.

00:52:49.220 And just angry that—angry with the world at that time.

00:52:52.820 I mean, he really—he had a brief moment where things got very dark for him.

00:52:57.860 Was there ever a time—I remember I lived in New York—I lived in Washington, D.C.

00:53:15.700 Yeah.

00:53:15.940 And it was the time of KAL 007 going down.

00:53:19.160 And I remember, I was on the air, and I remember keeping the old teletype door open

00:53:24.160 so I could hear the bells and the warnings.

00:53:28.800 And I was—I was—I remember thinking, I am in the blast zone.

00:53:35.340 Yeah.

00:53:35.920 Was there ever a time we were that close?

00:53:38.320 I think the only time—and this is just a strange story.

00:53:42.940 And John Poindexter, his third security advisor, told me this story.

00:53:49.800 The trickiest time was when the Achille Laro incident occurred.

00:53:57.360 And the two guys who shot Leon Klinghoffer got away.

00:54:02.260 And they were being housed by Hosni Mubarak.

00:54:06.800 And he had put them on a plane to let them escape.

00:54:11.480 Mubarak told Reagan, oh, they've left Egypt a long time ago.

00:54:14.900 But Israeli intelligence said, and they haven't left.

00:54:19.340 We have men who have seen them here, and we know what plane they're leaving on.

00:54:24.560 So Reagan sent up three fighter planes, one with their lights off, to tail the jet.

00:54:33.400 And they used flashlights to see the tail number to make sure they had the right plane.

00:54:40.480 They had to hunt around in the skies.

00:54:42.440 He sent a jet out behind him and a jet on either side of the plane.

00:54:46.480 And they turned their lights on at one time and told them that they had to land, because we wanted those two terrorists.

00:54:58.140 Poindexter had called Reagan, who was giving a speech at the Sarah Lee factory in Chicago, of all places, and said, there's a good chance that they will not land the plane.

00:55:08.020 And Reagan said to him, then bring it down by any means necessary.

00:55:13.140 So that was the one time that we came close to an international incident that might have steamrolled into something much, much bigger.

00:55:23.260 Do you think if Reagan could see where we're at now with Islamic extremism, he would have treated Beirut differently?

00:55:31.560 Oh, I think he would have treated Beirut differently the day after that Marine barracks blew up.

00:55:39.280 What do you think he would have done, should have done?

00:55:42.700 Well, first of all, he would have retaliated.

00:55:44.720 He wanted to.

00:55:46.220 The orders were given.

00:55:47.840 He gave them to McFarlane to go in there and get those guys.

00:55:51.100 We knew where they were.

00:55:52.720 We knew where their camp was.

00:55:54.260 And Caspar Weinberger called Reagan that night, bypassing the White House phones.

00:56:02.260 And he called through the office of the Marine who carries the football, knowing that nobody would be able to intercede.

00:56:09.420 And he talked Ronald Reagan out of retaliating.

00:56:13.440 McFarlane told me he was furious with Weinberger.

00:56:16.400 I mean, it was against the whole American policy at the time and the orders that Reagan had given.

00:56:22.360 And we didn't retaliate.

00:56:25.280 And I think Reagan would have gone in there and wiped them out. 1.00

00:56:28.580 And Beirut might have been a different place.

00:56:31.840 A whole world today.

00:56:32.580 Exactly right.

00:56:33.880 It wouldn't have pulled the plug on that.

00:56:39.020 Iran-Contra.

00:56:40.460 Yeah.

00:56:41.260 Did he know?

00:56:43.420 I think he knew.

00:56:44.980 Why do you say that?

00:56:45.840 Well, you know, I have the luxury of talking to all his advisors.

00:56:52.620 I spent 80 hours with Bud McFarlane.

00:56:55.560 I spent about 45 hours with John Poindexter.

00:57:00.260 McFarlane told me that he first broached the subject to Reagan when Reagan was just coming out of anesthetic.

00:57:07.360 He had been having a little polyp removed.

00:57:12.920 And he went in and said, Reagan had one thing in mind, and that we had seven hostages who were still in captivity.

00:57:21.380 And they were around the Middle East.

00:57:24.500 And he wanted them home.

00:57:26.840 He had met with families.

00:57:29.340 And he was a sentimental guy.

00:57:30.880 His advisors told me, please don't meet with the families because they knew it would pull his heartstrings.

00:57:37.120 But he wanted those hostages home, and he wanted them home for Christmas.

00:57:41.300 Oh, boy.

00:57:42.280 Yeah.

00:57:42.740 So McFarlane lays this out.

00:57:44.280 We can bring the hostages home.

00:57:46.340 Here's a way we can do it.

00:57:49.160 We've found a faction in Iran who are, we believe, moderates.

00:57:56.720 The Israelis have told us.

00:57:58.440 They've identified some moderates.

00:58:00.200 And if we give them a number of missiles for which they will release the hostages, they might, with these missiles, have some power and overthrow the Ayatollah one day.

00:58:12.380 Reagan only heard what he wanted to hear.

00:58:14.400 He heard, bring the hostages home, overthrow the Ayatollah. 0.66

00:58:18.620 Absolutely.

00:58:19.640 And he said, yeah, let's explore that, bud.

00:58:22.260 Well, once you say let's explore that, all the machinery went into play.

00:58:28.940 And unfortunately, McFarlane had an associate, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who was more than happy to really make it happen.

00:58:40.800 Yeah.

00:58:41.000 And I think it snowballed from there.

00:58:43.160 But along the way, Reagan was told that this could be illegal.

00:58:48.700 There was a meeting in the residence of the White House with all the top brass.

00:58:53.040 It was McFarlane and Poindexter and George Bush and Weinberger and George Shultz.

00:59:02.720 And Weinberger and George Shultz had never heard of this before.

00:59:06.180 And they were beside themselves.

00:59:08.960 They said it was absolutely—I mean, Shultz told me, he said, this is absolutely illegal.

00:59:14.080 Don't do it.

00:59:15.100 And Reagan, he kept wanting to pursue it because, you know, a little more leeway and we'll get a hostage back.

00:59:24.060 Well, they gave them 500 tow missiles.

00:59:26.300 We got no hostages back.

00:59:28.180 So we gave them another 500, and we got one back, not all seven that they promised.

00:59:34.380 Soon they were talking about, you know, sending 3,500 missiles over, which they did.

00:59:39.900 They did, through the Israelis, through back to Iran, so that it couldn't be traced. 0.83

00:59:47.140 See, we weren't giving the missiles to Iran.

00:59:49.840 The Israelis were giving them to Iran from their stockpile of missiles we had given the Israelis. 0.86

00:59:55.280 And those missiles were kind of out of date.

00:59:57.700 And then we said, we'll replenish your stockpiles after you give them.

01:00:01.540 Oh, boy, it just—it snowballed and snowballed and snowballed.

01:00:05.040 And at one point, somebody said to Reagan, you know, this isn't going the way we want.

01:00:11.240 If this ever gets out, you know, we're really going to be in trouble.

01:00:14.040 And he said, well, let's not tell anybody.

01:00:16.260 Oh, Jesus.

01:00:17.700 So did he know?

01:00:20.440 He knew.

01:00:21.280 He knew.

01:00:21.820 It was breaking the law.

01:00:23.180 The Boland Amendment was in place.

01:00:25.120 It was against American law that we had established.

01:00:29.920 But he did it because he wanted those hostages back.

01:00:35.040 I have a postcard, a little letter written on Ronald Reagan's stationery.

01:00:41.660 Uh-huh.

01:00:42.500 And it was written to his daughter, Patty, the day that it came out in the press that he had Alzheimer's.

01:00:55.140 Yeah.

01:00:55.280 It is the most heartbreaking letter ever where he talks about, I remember, the little girl who used to sit on my lap and ask me to marry her.

01:01:05.740 Yeah.

01:01:05.900 She sold that for drugs. 1.00

01:01:08.780 Mm-hmm.

01:01:09.480 Um, tell me about his, tell me about the last few years and the, and the, the, the, not only the slipping away, but the, the slipping away of the family.

01:01:26.340 Yeah.

01:01:26.600 Well, let, let me at least set the scene for you with the Alzheimer's.

01:01:32.260 Um, his chief of staff, Fred Ryan, who was there the day he was told, really laid it out.

01:01:40.580 And it's one of the saddest scenes in the book.

01:01:43.700 Reagan had no idea.

01:01:44.800 And he was at home with Nancy and she said, Ronnie, we, we really have to tell you a few things.

01:01:52.360 So let's go into the library.

01:01:54.300 And she sits him down and she brings Fred Ryan into the room, who's going to be their chief of staff post-presidency and his doctor.

01:02:03.700 And she said, the doctor has something really important to tell you.

01:02:06.660 And he tells Reagan that he has signs of Alzheimer's disease.

01:02:11.020 This was no shock to Ronald Reagan.

01:02:15.400 His mother had it.

01:02:16.580 His father had it.

01:02:18.580 His brother died of it.

01:02:21.760 I'm sure he knew it was coming.

01:02:23.520 It was on the horizon.

01:02:25.220 But while the, the doctor and Fred and Nancy are talking about how we're going to get through this, Reagan gets up out of the chair and walks over to a little desk that's by the window in his library.

01:02:37.320 And he sits down and he writes that letter to the American public, explaining what he's going through and what they can expect from him.

01:02:46.700 Wow.

01:02:47.820 And he writes it in longhand.

01:02:51.000 And if you've seen that letter and it was published, there are no cross outs.

01:02:56.760 It's intact from the get go.

01:03:00.340 First draft.

01:03:01.160 And he gives it to Fred Ryan.

01:03:04.140 He walks over and interrupts the conversation and says, Fred, you know, I think we should put this out.

01:03:11.280 Get somebody to type it up.

01:03:13.020 And Ryan looks at it and he said, Mr. President, we're going to put this out in your own handwriting.

01:03:18.940 We're going to send it to the press.

01:03:20.440 We're going to offer it to all the newspapers.

01:03:23.360 This has to go out this way.

01:03:24.980 And that was it's really an incredible moment.

01:03:28.640 The head of the Reagan Foundation told me she cried when she read that that scene in the book because it's Reagan.

01:03:35.960 How did it affect him?

01:03:37.120 You know, he six months out of office on July 4th, he and Nancy are taking a horseback ride in Mexico at the home of the ambassador.

01:03:51.580 And he he falls off the horse and he hits his head.

01:03:56.860 And, you know, I'm not a doctor, but everybody who saw him thereafter says this was the beginning of the end.

01:04:03.920 He starts now to slip away very quickly.

01:04:07.740 And friends told me about how he would come to parties at their homes in L.A.

01:04:13.380 And, you know, he would sit in a chair and he just he wasn't himself anymore.

01:04:18.680 He got to get snappish with his his family and with some of the younger kids, the grandchildren.

01:04:25.540 And but he still went to the office every day, read the Hollywood trades every day.

01:04:33.160 I mean, he he stayed active as long as he could.

01:04:40.340 Did the family ever come back at all?

01:04:44.780 Not really.

01:04:46.800 Not really.

01:04:47.820 It was all very superficial.

01:04:50.400 He said he said in this letter, he said, I don't even remember what we're arguing about anymore.

01:04:56.100 Yeah.

01:04:56.380 Well, it wasn't so much divisiveness.

01:04:59.780 It was just that there was I think there was a lack of the parental expression of love there.

01:05:07.200 The love that Reagan had gotten from his mom and dad.

01:05:10.420 He didn't know how to translate to his kids.

01:05:14.720 And it's I think the one flaw of serious fall in character that's in my book.

01:05:21.520 He was never there for his kids.

01:05:23.560 His kids have told me that he he never put his arms around them and told them that he loved them.

01:05:28.720 So strange.

01:05:29.800 So strange.

01:05:30.700 A man who had a huge heart.

01:05:32.840 And yet he loved Nancy and seemed to really be affectionate with Nancy.

01:05:37.980 But I think he didn't have love in his heart.

01:05:41.140 I think there wasn't room for anybody else in his heart.

01:05:44.640 I think it was.

01:05:45.240 I mean, he loved his.

01:05:46.020 Did he love his kids?

01:05:47.100 I'm absolutely certain that he loved his kids.

01:05:50.640 He didn't know how to relate to them.

01:05:53.240 You know, he wasn't.

01:05:54.360 He could be a touchy feely guy if he met you.

01:05:58.200 But to his family, he just wasn't that way.

01:06:01.280 There's a scene in Michael Reagan's book where he's graduating from high school.

01:06:08.360 And the guest speaker is Ronald Reagan.

01:06:11.160 And when Michael walks up to get his diploma, Reagan shakes his hand and says,

01:06:16.000 And your name, young man?

01:06:17.320 And he goes, Dad, it's me.

01:06:20.100 It's Michael.

01:06:20.960 And he said there was something in his eyes.

01:06:22.560 His father just didn't make the connection.

01:06:24.800 It was a performance.

01:06:26.760 When it came to family, he wasn't the family guy.

01:06:31.920 And I guess Nancy really wasn't the warm and fuzzy mom that somebody like Patty and Ron needed.

01:06:40.960 Do they love their parents?

01:06:42.600 They do.

01:06:43.760 They do, I think.

01:06:44.740 But it was a difficult, as so many of us have difficult relationships with our parents.

01:06:50.820 They did.

01:06:52.260 You started this because you were looking for somebody.

01:06:55.840 You said two things.

01:06:57.420 Changed the world and...

01:06:58.660 Beloved.

01:06:59.080 Where does he fit in the 20th century?

01:07:06.580 His life is framed by the 20th century, Glenn.

01:07:11.140 This is the most wonderful thing about my job as a writer.

01:07:14.440 I get to write about the Midwest and the settling of the Midwest, about the birth of broadcasting games on radio, about coming to Hollywood just two years after, three years after talkies with all the studio politics and the golden age of cinema and the birth of conservatism in the Republican Party.

01:07:42.920 What a life.

01:07:44.100 Where does he fit into the 20th century?

01:07:45.980 He was the 20th century.

01:07:47.980 He was the walking 20th century.

01:07:50.480 And that's why I feel like this, together with the Beatles, is a life's work.

01:07:58.640 I've asked people.

01:07:59.680 I'm a big fan of Walt Disney.

01:08:01.680 Yeah.

01:08:02.500 And I've studied him.

01:08:04.180 I've read his papers.

01:08:05.340 I've gone through his diaries.

01:08:06.680 Yeah, my friend Neil Gabler wrote his biography.

01:08:08.880 And I've asked people before, try to imagine an America or a world without him.

01:08:18.180 Yeah.

01:08:18.600 And you can't.

01:08:19.940 Right.

01:08:20.220 I mean, it was so all-encompassing.

01:08:24.720 And it gave us a Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse.

01:08:31.820 They gave us this sense of the little guy struggling, but they're going to win and it's happy.

01:08:36.740 Right.

01:08:37.020 You know, imagine a world without Ronald Reagan.

01:08:40.580 Absolutely.

01:08:41.760 It's hard.

01:08:42.620 It's hard.

01:08:43.520 And this is why I have led such a charmed life.

01:08:46.240 I wrote about the Beatles, who have changed the way we regard music in this world.

01:08:51.460 I wrote about Julia Child, who changed the way we eat and live.

01:08:56.020 And now I get Ronald Reagan.

01:08:58.000 I mean, wow.

01:08:59.520 Would you come back and talk to us about the Beatles and Julia Child?

01:09:04.400 Oh, absolutely.

01:09:05.280 I'd love to.

01:09:05.960 I'd love to.

01:09:06.520 Yeah.

01:09:07.040 Fascinating.

01:09:07.620 Thank you.

01:09:07.700 Yeah, this was great.

01:09:08.580 My pleasure.

01:09:11.380 I thought that was fantastic.

01:09:13.360 Wow.

01:09:13.640 Was that good for you?

01:09:14.380 It was.

01:09:14.960 You were the easiest guy to talk to.

01:09:17.580 Thank you.

01:09:18.120 Yeah.

01:09:18.480 And I have to tell you, you know, Glenn Beck in my household when you were on TV was.

01:09:24.480 I know.

01:09:24.920 You know.

01:09:25.560 I know.

01:09:25.960 I know.

01:09:26.620 But I knew that this was going to be a really easy talk just because I've listened to some

01:09:33.520 of your shows, you know, now.

01:09:35.080 And you are a wonderful interviewer.

01:09:37.460 You really are.

01:09:38.480 Yeah.

01:09:39.060 And really, in a lot of ways, and my liberal friends will kill me for saying this, the voice

01:09:44.320 of reason in so many ways.

01:09:46.140 Can I tell you, that's what Tom Brokaw said.

01:09:48.300 On election night, can you, he said, what kind of world do we live in?

01:09:53.840 Because I had just done an interview.

01:09:55.720 And they said, well, he said, what kind of world do we live in when Glenn Beck is the

01:09:58.820 voice of reason?

01:09:59.900 Yeah.

01:10:00.280 And I was just as freaked out by that as well.

01:10:03.400 I'm like, we are in deep trouble if I'm the voice of reason.

01:10:06.140 But guys like you, guys like me, guys who've had strong opinions about things before, who

01:10:13.420 have something deeper in their heart, can sit back and say to themselves, I'm not going

01:10:19.940 where this world's taking us right now.

01:10:21.720 I'm going to believe in my core values, which Reagan did as well.

01:10:26.140 May I leave you with this?

01:10:27.920 Because you just said that.

01:10:28.900 Yeah.

01:10:29.400 I brought my family over to Auschwitz in 2012.

01:10:34.980 Pretty stunning.

01:10:36.040 Yeah.

01:10:37.280 And I wanted my older kids, as well as myself and my wife, to decide who we are.

01:10:42.600 If the world ever goes insane, who are we?

01:10:44.760 Yeah.

01:10:45.680 And I lined up a conversation with my family and this woman who was one of the righteous

01:10:57.580 among the nations.

01:10:58.640 Mm-hmm.

01:10:59.780 And she gave me the best piece of advice.

01:11:02.260 And I think we are living in those times right now.

01:11:04.660 She said, I said, I believe everybody has the potential of being a righteous person.

01:11:13.660 You know, everybody has the potential of doing what she did.

01:11:17.660 Mm-hmm.

01:11:18.780 How do you water the seeds?

01:11:21.020 Mm-hmm.

01:11:21.660 And she looked at me perplexed and she said, you misunderstand.

01:11:30.420 The righteous didn't suddenly become righteous.

01:11:32.860 Mm-hmm.

01:11:33.600 They just refused to go over the cliff with everyone else.

01:11:37.860 And it's, all we have to do is just remind people, you know better than this.

01:11:43.340 Yeah.

01:11:43.900 Stop it.

01:11:44.620 Stop it.

01:11:45.380 The one question I'm glad you didn't ask me, which everybody else does, it may be too

01:11:50.780 obvious, is how would Ronald Reagan have felt about Donald Trump?

01:11:58.060 Horrified.

01:11:59.120 Horrified.

01:12:01.340 You know, I'm a New Yorker.

01:12:02.620 We know Trump.

01:12:04.340 I know Trump.

01:12:05.860 Yeah.

01:12:06.120 I don't know if you've heard me speak about Trump.

01:12:08.560 I have.

01:12:10.080 I think this is the darkest and the scariest I've ever felt as an American.

01:12:14.700 I agree.

01:12:15.780 I was concerned about Barack Obama because of the people he surrounded himself with early

01:12:20.780 on that no one would recognize.

01:12:22.700 Mm-hmm.

01:12:22.860 All you have to do is take the skeletons out of the closet, show everybody, and explain it.

01:12:26.720 Yeah.

01:12:27.380 Nobody would.

01:12:28.100 And the fact that we were starting to grow apart and not only grow apart, but grow the

01:12:36.440 power of the office and the media, that's dangerous.

01:12:41.740 Very.

01:12:42.160 And I warned on Fox over and over again, don't do this, Democrats, because someone's going

01:12:48.360 to come and it may be on our side and you're not going to like it.

01:12:51.440 Mm-hmm.

01:12:52.220 And here he is.

01:12:53.160 I never saw Donald Trump coming.

01:12:55.220 Me neither.

01:12:55.780 He is everything I warned about.

01:12:58.100 He is.

01:12:59.800 I never could have predicted this.

01:13:02.680 I thought the country had more common sense than this.

01:13:06.420 You think you did?

01:13:07.340 It was my people that I had been talking to forever.

01:13:11.800 Yeah.

01:13:11.880 I said, I almost left broadcast afterwards.

01:13:14.920 I couldn't.

01:13:16.440 It gets darker every day.

01:13:17.860 It does.

01:13:18.400 Yeah.

01:13:18.900 And I don't know where we're going with it either because.

01:13:21.400 I was really concerned, what was it, yesterday when the Democrats came out and said, they

01:13:27.700 have to be not more radical, more ruthless.

01:13:30.540 Mm-hmm.

01:13:31.160 Oh, dear God.

01:13:31.640 Don't play that game.

01:13:32.840 Don't.

01:13:33.320 Right.

01:13:33.980 No.

01:13:34.200 Don't.

01:13:34.620 We need some fresh voices in here very quickly because the old order doesn't know how to

01:13:40.020 deal with any of this.

01:13:41.200 I don't know.

01:13:41.360 And they're dealing badly with it.

01:13:42.920 I know.

01:13:43.960 Thank you.

01:13:44.620 This was great.

01:13:45.280 Thank you.

01:13:45.680 Thank you.

01:13:51.400 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on

01:13:56.560 to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

01:13:58.660 We'll be right back.

The Glenn Beck Program - November 24, 2018

Ep 12 ｜ Bob Spitz ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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