The Glenn Beck Program - 'President Trump's Scorecard' ｜ Guest Host： Mike Broomhead

00:00:00.000 The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment. This is the Glenn Beck program.

00:00:10.060 Welcome. My name is Mike Broomhead in for Glenn Beck. Today, we are going to talk this morning

00:00:13.480 about the government shutdown. What does it mean to most American people? Why is it happening?

00:00:17.720 How long is it going to last? Is this really the beginning of the end for President Trump?

00:00:21.680 So much to talk about from the pullout in Syria, the new turnover inside the staff this morning,

00:00:26.240 the migrant caravan, how all of that ties into the government shutdown, and the seriousness of the

00:00:31.900 pullout of Syria. It's going to be a big part of the show today. The economy is on everybody's

00:00:36.880 minds. It seemed like there was a slowdown as people begin to be a bit fearful. A lot of government

00:00:41.060 employees, up to 80,000 of them, are going to be affected by this government shutdown. So the

00:00:45.940 first part of the show, how does it affect you? How does it affect me? And what will happen next,

00:00:51.100 and how quickly could it possibly be over? All of that coming up this morning on the Glenn Beck

00:00:55.120 program. My name is Mike Broomhead, and this is the Glenn Beck program.

00:01:02.160 This is the Glenn Beck program.

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00:02:16.160 Merry Christmas. My name is Mike Broom. I'm in for Glenn this morning. We appreciate you spending

00:02:20.040 part of your morning with us. This is so much happening in the world this weekend. As I was

00:02:24.900 watching the news, the incoming chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, explaining that this is a game of

00:02:29.580 chicken that the president is ready to go long term with. This could go into, well into the next

00:02:34.380 session of the Congress. Members of Congress in my home state I've had on the show, no one is very

00:02:38.780 hopeful for when this is going to end. The Democrats digging in their heels because, of course, they are

00:02:43.360 coming in in the House of Representatives in power and they are digging in their heels in the first battle.

00:02:49.020 Which side will blink first? The White House has indicated they would take less than the $5 billion

00:02:53.740 for the wall funding, which will be a big part of the show this morning as we talk about

00:02:58.260 the wall funding itself and what does all of this mean? This goes back much longer than the Trump

00:03:03.760 presidency, even before Obama into the Bush presidency, all the way back to Reagan. We've

00:03:08.680 been chronicling this forever. Why is this such a big issue now? And we'll get to the wall part of

00:03:14.140 it in a moment. But what does this shutdown mean for all of us, the average person? Is it going to

00:03:19.080 affect us? Well, the SBA, if you own a small business, if you're trying to get a loan, we know the

00:03:23.100 Small Business Administration will be closed for the most part, key pieces of staff. It's going to affect

00:03:27.820 lending. Is it going to hurt people? Of course it is. There will be some key members of the federal

00:03:32.640 government that won't be working. But as we saw with the government shutdown during the Obama

00:03:36.840 administration, for most Americans, it didn't affect your day to day life. But what this shows

00:03:41.780 is an immense dysfunction inside our federal government. And what I mean by that is when you

00:03:47.820 can't get anything done, everyone keeps talking about a bipartisan way to work together. Well, there's

00:03:52.880 a few things at play with all of this. The Trump supporters, the base for the Trump camp,

00:03:59.960 don't want to see the president give in on any level when it comes to the wall, which is another

00:04:04.580 reason why the Democrats don't want to give him a victory on this. There is a huge amount of politics

00:04:09.200 tied with all of this, that when you look at American politics, each side needs to be able to show a clear

00:04:15.860 win. This does have a lot to do with 2020, with them trying to destroy President Trump.

00:04:20.720 The Mueller report, which believe it or not, there's not a whole lot to report on the Mueller

00:04:25.360 report and the investigation. How much does that, they're not going, I don't believe they're going

00:04:30.440 to impeach this president. The House is going to talk about it. There's going to be tons of

00:04:34.060 investigations, but this is going to be a lot more about making sure they damage this president's

00:04:39.760 reputation and perception with the American people going into 2020 more than it's going to be actual

00:04:45.360 action that's taken because impeachment's never getting through the Senate. So starting with the idea

00:04:50.280 that they're not going to give this president a victory. The president ran on building a wall.

00:04:55.040 He said Mexico was going to pay for it. And it looks as if they're not going to out, they're not

00:04:59.840 going to overtly pay for the wall. He says through some of the restrictions and some of the changes

00:05:04.460 that were made to the NAFTA agreement, that the Mexican government, the Mexican people will

00:05:08.700 indirectly pay for this. Five billion dollars in the grand scheme of our budget is not a lot to fight

00:05:14.600 over. It's the principle of this. I'm not saying that people in Washington are necessarily principled,

00:05:20.360 but this is about the principle of this fight. The Democrats are saying that this wall is inhumane.

00:05:26.820 It's un-American. What's fascinating to me is the lack of anywhere else beside talk radio that you're

00:05:33.660 hearing the actual words of the Democrats. My problem, my mantra has been about the, my mantra

00:05:42.540 has been about the problem with the media. Traditional media in America has done so much

00:05:48.420 to tell only one side of the story. As if you've heard me in for Glenn before, I was a Ted Cruz supporter

00:05:56.320 like Glenn was in the primary. I was not a Trump supporter. And then I, when the president won the

00:06:02.000 primary, um, I wanted to give him a fair chance at winning the election. I voted for the president,

00:06:07.480 but I was not necessarily a diehard supporter or defender of this president. What I ended up being

00:06:14.080 was a defender because the media has been so immensely unfair to this president. There are two

00:06:20.120 sides to every story and the media is supposed to be very critical. I think they should ask the

00:06:24.860 difficult questions of everyone, but they have been nothing fair to this president at all. Now there are

00:06:31.540 some disagreements. I disagree with the pullout of Syria. We're going to talk a lot about that this

00:06:35.600 morning, but the president has been treated immensely unfairly. And by that, I mean, Chuck Schumer

00:06:42.100 in 2009, speaking to a college group, uh, president Clinton, 1990 in the 1990s, I think 1994, maybe

00:06:50.500 in a state of the union address asking for funding so that he could expedite, um, expedite the deportation

00:06:58.860 of illegal immigrants, the harsh criticism he had for, for illegal immigrants, Chuck Schumer himself

00:07:03.780 saying years ago, um, in 2009, illegal immigrants, you shouldn't even use the word undocumented by

00:07:10.460 calling them undocumented. We're showing the American people that we're not serious about

00:07:14.680 stopping it. If it's illegal, you should say it's illegal. He said, I believe it's illegal and it's

00:07:19.460 wrong. Why is the media not asking Chuck Schumer now, why he's digging his heels in on this?

00:07:24.740 Nancy Pelosi, the funding for the wall that was signed when the Congress wanted to stop illegal

00:07:31.000 immigration, the Obama administration, Bill Clinton, Chuck Schumer, the Democrats were hard

00:07:36.200 liners on illegal immigration. Now we've got a standoff in a government shutdown. The president

00:07:41.360 taking one of the bullets out of the gun of the Democrats by saying, if the government shuts down,

00:07:45.660 I'll own it. Well, now he owns it. He owns the shutdown. The Democrats are putting out memos about

00:07:50.900 how horrible this is. They downplayed all of this and blamed it on the Republicans during the Obama

00:07:56.000 administration. That part of it is American politics. That's what political parties are going

00:08:01.640 to do. The media is the one that is supposed to give you both sides of the story. The Democrats would

00:08:07.160 say this. The Republicans are saying that the Republicans want this. The Democrats are only going

00:08:12.240 to give that. But instead, we see a one sided view of how devastating, how horrible the Trump

00:08:18.800 shutdown is. Is it bad? Of course, it's bad. It's never good when the government is not functioning

00:08:25.380 properly. And our government hasn't functioned properly in a very, very long time.

00:08:32.140 But the government shutdown is about politics more than it's about principle. The principle

00:08:37.980 that they're fighting over is whether or not they're going to give any funding for a wall. Is the

00:08:44.400 president going at the going to at the end of all of this be able to put out a tweet that says,

00:08:49.200 we win, we just got X amount of dollars to build a wall? He's already showed you the prototype of the

00:08:56.020 wall. He's putting all of this, the fencing out there where we can see through the fence to the other

00:09:02.180 side, big steel fence. It's got the it's pointed at the top. If you've seen, it's got it's aspires at the

00:09:08.400 top. And it's effective and beautiful is what the president said. They do not want to give him

00:09:14.420 anything that looks like a victory on that front. That's politics. But where is the media explaining

00:09:20.740 this and asking the simple question, how did the Democrats get away with doing a complete 180 on the

00:09:26.560 immigration issue? Now, I'm from the state of Arizona. I'm on vacation in Florida, but I live in the

00:09:33.360 state of Arizona. We are a border state and this is a nonpartisan issue in the state of Arizona.

00:09:38.700 This is about border security. When you're looking at the border strike force and the stories that

00:09:43.620 we've told the necessity for border security, whether it's an actual physical wall all the way

00:09:48.200 across the southern border, which I'm not an advocate for, by the way, I'm not an advocate for

00:09:53.300 a border wall across our southern border. There are places that fencing works. Incidentally,

00:09:59.720 speaking of the Democrats, where are the people in the media reporting this? You may not remember it,

00:10:04.480 but it happened. Duncan Hunter Sr. was a member of the Congress and he pushed a piece of legislation

00:10:11.260 that built a two-tier wall in southern California. That was approved by the Clinton administration.

00:10:19.600 They have a two-tier fence in southern California that is very effective in stopping people crossing the

00:10:27.020 border illegally. Is it perfect? Nothing is. Has it done the job they wanted it to? Absolutely.

00:10:33.660 There are places where fencing is necessary to stop border crossings. In other places,

00:10:40.360 it is technology. It should be manpower. We should be equipping the manpower at the border patrol. We

00:10:46.900 should be making sure they have every piece of equipment they need to do their jobs. Can we use

00:10:51.240 drones? Can we use sensors? All of that is true. We can do all of that. But there are immense parts

00:10:57.260 of the border that are easily walked across where there is no fencing. There's maybe a barbed wire

00:11:02.440 fence or none at all. I've seen it with my own eyes. So how do we, as Americans, hold our government

00:11:13.120 accountable when you're only hearing one side of the story? There are a lot of people listening that are

00:11:18.040 astute. They are politically astute. They pay attention. They are educated people on the issue

00:11:24.580 of illegal immigration and border security. And what ends up happening with them is they had no

00:11:30.000 idea or probably had forgotten the two-tier wall that happened in Southern California, Duncan Hunter,

00:11:35.460 a Republican, staunch Republican, and the Clinton administration approving and getting that two-tier

00:11:40.600 wall built. Well, how is the shift happening? Now, all of a sudden, a fence is immoral and un-American.

00:11:46.240 No one is asking that question of them. How is it that you've changed 180? Explain to us the change.

00:11:54.680 Everyone changes their mind. People get divorced. At one time, you say, till death do us part. And then

00:12:01.140 years later, you've changed your mind. Well, there's something that happened that made that

00:12:06.140 drastic shift for both of you. No one is questioning the drastic shift. Is it purely politics? Is it purely

00:12:13.940 because this president ran on a border wall? It seems like it. It seems as if this is the victory

00:12:21.780 they don't want to give him to further diminish his chances at reelection in 2020. And if that's the

00:12:27.760 case, why are they not being held accountable for forsaking the right thing to do the politically

00:12:33.980 expedient thing? So a lot of this falls on the shoulders and at the feet of the media.

00:12:38.620 Big part of the show. We'll talk a little bit more about the shutdown immigration specifically and some

00:12:44.460 more of the the the details of all of this coming up here in just a few moments. We're also going to

00:12:50.240 talk about the news changeover inside the Trump administration, why that happened in my disagreement

00:12:55.060 with the president when it comes to the pullout in Syria to a certain degree and why I disagree and what

00:13:00.740 I'm suspicious of as many others are. All of that can happen this morning on the show. So stick around for

00:13:06.420 that. My name is Mike Broomhead and this is the Glenn Beck program. This is the Glenn Beck program.

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00:14:26.500 Merry Christmas from all of us here at the Glenn Beck Program. My name is Mike Broomhead in for Glenn

00:14:40.280 today. We appreciate you spending part of your day with us. It is a lot happening even during this

00:14:45.640 Christmas season as the members of Congress have gone home deadlocked. Nothing is working. Nothing's

00:14:49.940 going to happen. President not signing anything. So they have all gone home. They're going to try again

00:14:54.220 in the next session with this government shutdown as it continues to roll. Which part of the

00:14:59.140 governments are affected? They say that there's, you know, the impacted shutdown include the Department

00:15:03.240 of Homeland Security, Justice Department, Interior Department, State Department, Department of Housing

00:15:07.920 and Urban Development are all affected by the shutdown. How much will the average American feel

00:15:12.520 this is part of the question. The bigger question still is why are we having a shutdown when it seems

00:15:19.040 like border security is something both sides agree is necessary on a certain level? You can take this

00:15:26.060 back to the Obama administration and just a quick history lesson. You know, I was on the border in

00:15:31.560 McAllen with Glenn and everyone else in McAllen, Texas when these children were being brought across the

00:15:36.580 border in 2009 and watched the horrific treatment of these kids and how they were separated even then

00:15:43.980 by age group and put into different rooms and and this then needed to stop. All of those pictures

00:15:50.340 you saw it start again. AZ Central, my hometown publication, put out a picture of showing these

00:15:56.360 kids in cages that outraged everyone until they figured out that those pictures were actually taken

00:16:01.500 during the Obama administration. The demonization of this president by the media. That's who I'm holding

00:16:07.740 solely accountable for the one-sided story. Do I like the way everything is being handled? Absolutely not.

00:16:13.980 But you're only telling half the story. The government shutdown is a game of chicken. This president

00:16:20.360 said I will not accept any any spending bill that doesn't include the five billion dollars for the wall.

00:16:27.500 The White House has now put out word that they would accept less somewhere around two and a half billion.

00:16:34.060 The other side doesn't seem like they want to blink. They believe they're going to win on this

00:16:38.260 politically. But speaking about illegal immigration and what's happening, I can just give you a few

00:16:43.960 first-hand accounts. Some 75 or 80 miles north of the border on the American side of the border in

00:16:50.160 Arizona. There are signs in the desert from the Department of Homeland Security that say do not stop on

00:16:58.360 these roadways for hitchhikers. Do not approach abandoned packages. Do not approach abandoned vehicles

00:17:04.500 because this is a drug corridor. So we know our government is aware of the fact that the cartels

00:17:11.560 have got a corridor deep into the United States that is so dangerous that the only thing they can do

00:17:18.740 is warn the American people. Well, if it's not easy to traverse the border there, if a wall isn't

00:17:24.320 necessary, how are they walking across the border? They have on the hilltops, they have got lookouts for

00:17:30.860 the drug cartels that are outfitted with food for days with radios and their job is twofold. One is to

00:17:37.820 keep an eye out when their cartel is trucking drugs in through that corridor to watch out for law

00:17:43.280 enforcement and for rival cartels. Their job also is when they have their own hit teams to rob rival

00:17:51.640 cartels as they make their way through that same corridor. It's called Vico Valley. You can look it up.

00:17:57.700 One small indicator. We're seeing the government, there's this migrant caravan. The members of the

00:18:03.220 caravan are now blaming the organizers of the caravan for making it so dangerous. That's the other

00:18:08.360 question. Why would this caravan travel north through Mexico and then make a turn to the west and walk

00:18:14.980 all the way to Tijuana when they could have went to Brownsville, Texas? It would have been the closest

00:18:19.180 port of entry and tried to enter there. No one wants to point out the politics. Of all places, I saw

00:18:26.460 on MSNBC some accurate reporting by one reporter that walked around and said that, you know, there are

00:18:33.000 women and children. Here they are. But when you hear reports that this is mostly men, that's accurate.

00:18:39.080 Look at all these young men. He went on to say that most of these young men are not talking about asylum

00:18:44.220 for the sake of asylum, but filing for asylum for the sake of a better life and for, you know, because they're

00:18:50.120 poor, which is not a reason to seek asylum. There are so many different things that can and should be

00:18:57.580 done and they're not helping. The media enjoys protections and they always should. The media should

00:19:03.820 be able to be critical of the government on every level without fear of retribution. They should always

00:19:10.280 have that protection. It helped keep a free society free, but not when they're voluntarily telling

00:19:18.380 one side of the story. That's how reason I became of an adamant Trump defender was to give both sides

00:19:26.780 of the story. And they just aren't. There is not an accurate picture of what's happening at the

00:19:31.960 border. There's not an accurate picture of these unaccompanied minors of the numbers of families that

00:19:36.700 are crossing the border that aren't even families. These are adults posing with children that are not

00:19:41.860 their children because that was the easiest way in. This is a long way from over, but until the media

00:19:50.640 begins to give two sides, until one member of the media that they call credible on the other side of

00:19:55.900 the aisle, whether it's the MSNBCs or the CNNs of the world, until they begin to ask Chuck Schumer and

00:20:01.340 Nancy Pelosi about their 180 degree shift and what it's going to take, that when they are going to do

00:20:06.900 some conceding, as long as they've got the cover from the traditional media, this could go on for

00:20:12.280 months. And I don't believe the president's going to blink. I think the president's going to do his

00:20:18.160 best to ensure, as they did with the calls to Wall Street, I believe he's going to do everything he can

00:20:23.660 to ensure that the stock markets have the least amount of jitters possible and the country begins

00:20:32.640 to at least run as close to normally as possible in spite of the shutdown. But as the furloughed

00:20:38.960 workers go on, this is going to take a very, very long time to fix. And when you've got people,

00:20:44.660 even if they get the money back later, you've got to eat today. It's something to keep your eye on.

00:20:51.940 I mean, it really is something to keep your eye on. It is, um, it's pretty dangerous.

00:20:57.280 So the, the immigration issue is something obviously we're going to talk about a lot this

00:21:02.580 morning because it is the key to the government shutdown. Coming up, we're going to talk about

00:21:09.000 replacements in the white house, Mattis leaving early because of criticisms about Syria. Talk to

00:21:15.680 you about Syria, what my doubts and fears are on the shutdown or on the pullout of Syria and other

00:21:21.180 places in the world. Is it the right thing to do? The president says, yes. We'll ask some questions

00:21:25.220 about that coming up right around the corner. Again, my name is Mike Broomhead in for Glenn Beck.

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00:22:55.860 Merry Christmas from the Glenn Beck program. My name is Mike from Head In For Glenn today.

00:23:00.920 Hope you got a great Christmas planned. So a lot of criticism happening. The president announcing

00:23:07.220 last week that he was going to pull the troops, some 2200 troops that we had out of Syria. And

00:23:13.920 a lot of criticism coming from Lindsey Graham and others. Not surprised that Rand Paul was very

00:23:22.860 supportive of this move. I have mixed feelings on this. I come from a military family. Many of you

00:23:28.460 know the story. My brother was killed in Iraq back in 03. I was more than disappointed. It's hard for me

00:23:34.420 to describe. Despair would be part of it. Depression. Actually, I suffered watching our troops leave

00:23:42.520 Iraq. Our former president was warned of the vacuum that would be created. And that vacuum created the

00:23:49.720 uprising of ISIS. ISIS came into fruition in Syria. And at their height, controlled the entire border

00:23:56.260 between Syria and Iraq, parts of northern Iraq, the devastation of what they were doing, the Muslims

00:24:01.680 they were killing, who disagreed with them, and the murders they were committing, and the heinous acts

00:24:07.680 of terrorism around the world that they took credit for. And that all happened because our former

00:24:13.220 president didn't heed the warnings of the great military minds that said, we will create a vacuum

00:24:18.700 by leaving. Much bigger force, different situation. But are we going to see some of the same results?

00:24:25.540 Are we sending the wrong message, A, to the Syrian people, B, to the Russians because of their influence

00:24:33.040 in that region? If anybody believes that Vladimir Putin is on a humanitarian mission in Syria to help

00:24:41.540 stomp out ISIS, you're wrong. No one with any knowledge of Vladimir Putin and the evil guy that he is

00:24:50.380 believes that that's what's happening. This is about widening the footprint and economic strength

00:24:54.920 of the Russian people, trying to rebuild the Soviet Union as a world power again. We know that he's

00:25:00.720 testing nuclear weapons. We know what Vladimir Putin's about. I am not someone that believes we should be

00:25:07.400 the world's police force. I also don't want another military family to have to endure what my family

00:25:14.620 endured. But is leaving going to create on a smaller scale of vacuum? Are we sending the wrong

00:25:21.420 message? Don't forget, it was the Russians who were charged with making sure the chemical weapons

00:25:26.900 were pulled out of Iraq, that they were destroyed. And they certified that they were. And then there

00:25:34.880 were Russian agents there when he used, when Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his own people.

00:25:42.840 And so we struck back, if you remember the missile strike on that airfield. And we warned them not to

00:25:52.240 do that again. Is leaving that region and claiming victory against ISIS the right thing to do in the

00:25:59.700 world? We're talking 2,200 troops coming out. Well, it appears as if General Mattis doesn't believe it's the

00:26:08.940 right thing to do. He was critical of this. The president is removing him a couple of months

00:26:13.380 early. Interesting enough, as much as there were disagreements, and that's putting it mildly,

00:26:22.860 between the late Senator John McCain and Donald Trump, it was Senator McCain that said on my show in

00:26:29.820 Arizona that the Trump cabinet was the best cabinet he has seen for any president since the Reagan years,

00:26:37.660 and maybe even better. Well, we're watching a lot of turnover in that cabinet and some of the great

00:26:43.220 respected military minds and the people that gave credibility to the Trump administration are

00:26:48.980 leaving. And then is this the right message to be sending? Are even Trump supporters beginning to see

00:26:55.420 chaos or have doubt? And that is a big concern for me or for the president, I'm sure. The bigger

00:27:04.880 concern for me is the long-term effects in the world of what's happened. Go back to the 1990s and the deal

00:27:13.100 that President Clinton cut with the North Koreans and the speech he gave saying that the deal we cut

00:27:18.880 with the North Koreans was going to ensure that the North Koreans never had nuclear weapons.

00:27:24.400 Fast forward, what, 27 years later, and here we are. We were dealing with the North Korea that was test

00:27:35.160 firing ICBMs and threatening nuclear war. Well, then we saw the deal that President Obama cut with the

00:27:43.480 Iranians, and it mirrored the deal in many ways with the North Koreans, and his speech regarding the deal

00:27:50.680 certainly mirrored the speech by President Clinton, saying that it would ensure that the Iranians

00:27:57.680 would never have nuclear weapons. Look what we're dealing with them now, test firing missiles.

00:28:05.500 Still set on destroying Israel. Matter of fact, the Iranians, and this is where it connects,

00:28:11.280 the Iranians in Syria on the Israeli border firing missiles or trying to fire missiles into Israel.

00:28:20.680 So the long-term effects of a decision sometimes aren't felt for years. Sometimes they're felt

00:28:27.960 almost immediately. The pull out of Iraq, the creation of ISIS, the vacuum created in Iraq,

00:28:33.900 we felt almost immediately. Is this sending a message of recruitment, a message of victory to our enemies?

00:28:43.720 When you proclaim victory against ISIS, what intelligence did the president have to make

00:28:53.020 that victory? And again, giving the president the benefit of the doubt from my perspective was

00:28:57.540 he obviously has the intelligence reports that no one else is privy to. And then the Congress gets

00:29:05.320 briefed later. What was it that the president had on his desk that made this the right move?

00:29:12.820 Because there were many people on his side of the aisle. Lindsey Graham has been a fierce defender

00:29:17.120 of this president when it comes to the wall. He was a fierce defender of this president in his choice

00:29:21.500 of Brett Kavanaugh for a Supreme Court, but is fiercely critical of this.

00:29:27.020 Who was the president listening to? It's another valid question. The American people that want to

00:29:34.700 support him. And I'll be honest with you, I've become more of an observer. I'm not invested.

00:29:39.540 The last president I was invested in was George W. Bush. I was I volunteered on the Bush campaign in

00:29:46.960 2004. And still, I I think the world of George W. Bush is as a human being. I think he is a terrific

00:29:55.080 man. I was invested there. I'm not invested here. I want what's right for America. From the Mueller

00:30:03.860 investigation that we saw going on, if the president had done something wrong, the American people have

00:30:08.560 a right to know if it wasn't criminal, but it was the wrong thing to do. Let the voters decide in 2020.

00:30:14.060 You know, but I've also watched this thing morph into from a collusion with the Russians investigation

00:30:20.160 to an obstruction of justice to campaign finance violations and anything they can try to hang this

00:30:25.300 president for. I can see that with my own eyes, but as an observer of what's happening, good people

00:30:34.540 and the president has been phenomenal at business. He's got great instinct, but he surrounds himself

00:30:39.720 with people that know what they're doing. Well, this president did exactly that at the beginning

00:30:44.920 of his presidency. And I gave him huge kudos for his foreign policy decisions, which I thought were

00:30:51.820 not going to be good at the beginning of his presidency. And he proved me wrong. His first foreign trip by

00:30:59.400 going to Saudi Arabia and then visiting the Vatican and then visiting Israel or Israel and then the

00:31:06.160 Vatican speaking to the three major religions of the world before going to that NATO summit and

00:31:11.600 beginning to renegotiate NATO. I thought his first foreign policy trip was a home run that no one gave

00:31:18.880 him credit for. I thought the moving of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was the right thing to do.

00:31:25.120 I thought that was the right thing, the right message to send the Israeli and the Palestinians for that

00:31:30.460 matter. But when your top advisors and some of the best military minds that America has to offer

00:31:38.300 is suspicious of your leaving Syria, my question is, what is it? What are the reasons behind this

00:31:45.180 president making that decision? And what I haven't heard much yet, and I'm sure that we're going to

00:31:50.240 maybe morning Joe has said it, but I'm not a necessary. Believe it or not, I don't watch Joe and

00:31:55.660 Mika very often because every episode of morning Joe is like watching the Festivus airing of the

00:32:04.500 grievances. And but maybe they've said it. But when do you start hearing about, well, this is all part

00:32:11.540 of the what Russia has on Trump, that they're telling him behind the scenes if he doesn't get out of

00:32:17.660 Syria, that there's going to be bad news for him. So he's doing this as a cover for the rut. I haven't

00:32:22.340 heard that yet, but it's got to be coming if it hasn't already been said. The reasons for this

00:32:30.300 worry me, not because of not for any other reason than the long term effects it may have

00:32:37.500 for the American people and for the horrible things that Bashar Assad continues to do to his people.

00:32:45.640 So more of this before we finish up this hour of the show. Again, my name is Mike Broomhead,

00:32:49.920 and this is the Glenn Beck Program. Hey, thanks for being here. Merry Christmas from the Glenn Beck

00:32:57.660 Program. My name is Mike Broomhead. In for Glenn today, I'll be in a few days this week as well.

00:33:03.320 The government shut down a big part of the story, the pullout of Syria. We're going to take troops

00:33:07.760 out of Syria. There is a lot of a lot of argument among the American people of how involved we should

00:33:13.600 be and where we should be involved. We've got to have an influence around the world. The world has

00:33:18.200 become much smaller. We all know that from North Korea to Iran and everything across the Middle East

00:33:23.900 and North Africa. We've got to have an influence. Russia is proving that the Russian influence and

00:33:29.720 the teaming up with Bashar Assad and what Bashar Assad has done to his people. The millions of Syrian

00:33:35.500 people that are either exiled, imprisoned or dead at the hands of Bashar Assad is a worldwide tragedy.

00:33:43.900 I don't necessarily believe that we should be fighting everyone else's war. I agree with that

00:33:51.940 principle. But if we are not involved, if we are not invested, if we are not an influencer,

00:33:58.340 others will be. What will that region look like? Just look geographically at where Syria sits in

00:34:06.720 reference to Israel, to Iraq, to Iran. You look at that region of the world and what happens when

00:34:13.560 you've got an evil person like a Bashar Assad partnering up with a Vladimir Putin.

00:34:21.520 And it's not just the governments, but it's the people that thought the Americans had their back.

00:34:27.700 I have had I've been proven wrong by the president before. I'll be honest with you.

00:34:32.460 I'm not a fan of terrorists, tariffs, tariffs. I'm not a fan of tariffs. I am. But I'm no economist.

00:34:39.220 The president is a brilliant businessman. So I am a free market, free trade person. What are the

00:34:48.540 tariffs long term going to do to our economy? He says long term it's going to be better for America,

00:34:53.780 giving him the benefit of the doubt. But I will say this. I don't think tariffs are the right way to go.

00:34:58.340 So this worries me.

00:35:05.260 Losing a family member in service to the country in any for any reason, when you lose a family member,

00:35:11.920 it's devastating and nobody wants to feel like it was for nothing. And there are families that deal

00:35:18.200 with a tragedy like that, where myself included, where you worry, was it for nothing? We have had

00:35:24.940 the great privilege and honor of hearing my brother's story of how he was killed with the men that he

00:35:28.820 served with, with the lives that he influenced, with the lives that he saved. And as horrible as

00:35:34.320 that loss is, it is it is somehow healing to know that it was not for nothing. When I watched ISIS

00:35:44.380 invade Iraq, invade Iraq, and I watched ISIS, then destroy things and use American military vehicles

00:35:54.320 to murder people, it tore me apart personally, because it felt like it was tearing down everything

00:36:04.040 my brother fought for. I know that's personalizing things way too much. But how else is a family member

00:36:10.380 supposed to feel? What is going to be the fallout of us leaving Syria? Is there going to be a negative

00:36:18.820 effect? Of course, the goal is end the wars and the conflicts and bring the American military members

00:36:24.880 home. Incidentally, if we're not going to send our members of the military in to win, if we're not

00:36:32.220 going to take the gloves off and allow them to be the warriors that they are, we shouldn't send them

00:36:37.640 in the first place. I also believe that. But are we leaving a vacuum behind? And if we do, what

00:36:51.920 effects will we feel of it? We should learn lessons from the past. And, and I'm, I'm nervous that this

00:36:59.560 is going to be every president has made big mistakes. Is this going to be the big mistake by Donald Trump?

00:37:07.640 I wish I had a definitive answer in my heart. I wish I had a definitive feeling in my heart about

00:37:13.180 this. It's a difficult situation. I'm happy that the men and women that are there will be returning

00:37:21.400 home safely. But would they tell you it's time to come home? Would they tell you mission accomplished?

00:37:28.480 Would they tell you that ISIS has been defeated and it's now safe for the American people to come home?

00:37:34.660 That in the end should be a big, you know, a big question that's asked and have answered.

00:37:45.480 We're going to talk about obviously the government shut down, how long it might last, how it affects

00:37:49.820 people, what areas of the government are affected, why it's happening. Immigration going to be a big

00:37:53.860 part of this as well as an update on some of the things I know about illegal immigration across this

00:37:58.860 country, how we should be and why we should be fostering legal immigration. We're also going to

00:38:04.440 talk about Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the next hour. RBG undergoing surgery for cancer. Another reason

00:38:12.100 why the Democrats are feverishly trying to make sure Donald Trump doesn't finish this term

00:38:16.940 would be one more Supreme Court nomination with the Republicans holding onto the Senate. Very,

00:38:22.740 very interesting stuff. All that coming up in the next hour of the show. Stick around for that.

00:38:26.620 Again, my name is Mike Broomhead. This is the Glenn Beck Program.

00:38:35.660 The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment. This is the Glenn Beck Program.

00:38:42.080 Coming up in hour number two, of course, we're going to talk more about the government shutdown,

00:38:45.320 the duration of it, who it's affecting, how it will affect the American people, all of those things

00:38:49.420 coming up. More about Syria, the pullout, and the changes in the Trump administration. Who exactly

00:38:54.460 will replace Mattis? Some of the biographical issues. But Ruth Bader Ginsburg undergoes surgery.

00:39:01.100 What does that mean for the makeup of the court moving forward? All of that coming up on the

00:39:05.620 Glenn Beck Program. My name is Mike Broomhead. Stick around.

00:39:11.240 This is the Glenn Beck Program.

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00:40:13.180 Hey, Merry Christmas on the Glenn Beck Program. My name is Mike Broomhead. I'm here all day for

00:40:27.780 Glenn and part of the week. Hope you got a great Christmas planned. Let's start this hour off

00:40:31.560 talking about RBG. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, word came out she was in the hospital, went through cancer

00:40:37.240 treatment. She's up and around and working after cancer surgery. A spokesman for the court also said

00:40:43.160 she remained in New York Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. No information released on when

00:40:47.480 she might return home. Her surgery was on Friday. It removed two malignant growths in her left lung.

00:40:52.920 Doctors say there's no evidence of any remaining disease. Of course, the question has been about

00:40:57.960 the health of Ruth Bader Ginsburg because she is up in years. And will she stay on the court throughout

00:41:04.040 the Trump presidency? First term, second term, if that happens. And what would the makeup of the

00:41:09.460 court look like with the liberal stalwart that she is gone? And who would Trump nominate to replace

00:41:16.500 Republicans still holding on to the majority in the Senate, at least in this term for the president?

00:41:22.740 And what would that look like? Now, the nomination process for Brett Kavanaugh was a complete disaster.

00:41:29.320 Most people would say it was an embarrassment. And it really was. That should have been handled much

00:41:36.180 differently. And just to give you an explanation, there's a mechanism mechanism in place in the

00:41:41.920 Supreme Court. Most of you are familiar with it. But I talked with Senator John Kyle, who for 18 years

00:41:48.520 was on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He left the Senate. If you know the name, Jeff Flake, Jeff Flake

00:41:53.900 replaced Senator Kyle when he left the Senate. But when John McCain passed away, John Kyle took his seat

00:41:59.460 over again and replaced John McCain until the end of this year. And now Martha McSally had been replaced.

00:42:04.940 That's kind of the makeup of the Senate in Arizona. But John Kyle came on to talk about the Brett

00:42:09.540 Kavanaugh situation because of how familiar he is with the process of the courts and talked about what

00:42:15.260 a complete political disaster that was. And there is a mechanism where all of that could have been

00:42:21.840 done behind closed doors weeks and weeks and weeks earlier. This was the Hail Mary pass that came in

00:42:27.840 from from Dianne Feinstein and the Democrats on that committee trying to damage Brett Kavanaugh enough

00:42:34.020 to stymie that nomination. It was a Hail Mary pass that almost worked. It almost worked.

00:42:39.400 But what they do and if you when you go through an FBI investigation, which Brett Kavanaugh, I believe,

00:42:44.400 went through seven of them, you fill out a booklet that's over 100 pages long.

00:42:50.200 And you will give every detail of your adult life that you can remember.

00:42:53.920 And they ask you for references. Well, knowing the FBI, knowing that you're going to give references

00:42:59.160 that are going to say good things about you, they don't stop at the references that you give them.

00:43:04.440 They ask those references for the names of other people that you associated with and hung out with

00:43:09.300 in your past. And they dig deeper and they continue to dig to find a clear picture,

00:43:14.360 as clear as they can of your life. And Brett Kavanaugh had passed every single one of those

00:43:20.620 and had been, by all accounts, a very upstanding member of what they called the second highest court

00:43:26.560 in the land, which was the D.C. Circuit. Then he gets nominated for the Supreme Court

00:43:31.400 and he becomes public enemy number one because of his association with Trump, purely for that reason only.

00:43:37.680 Now, the process with Dr. Blasey Ford, normally the way this works is Dianne Feinstein gets that letter.

00:43:47.260 Dianne takes the Dianne Feinstein takes that letter to the chairman of the committee.

00:43:51.720 They put it in the file and it gets investigated.

00:43:55.220 Now, the FBI could have done a much more thorough investigation much longer than a week if it wanted to

00:44:00.340 than what the restrictions were put on it if they'd have done that at the beginning.

00:44:04.200 And if they had so chosen, they would have bought brought Judge Kavanaugh in behind closed doors.

00:44:11.560 They would have bought Dr. Ford in behind closed doors.

00:44:14.840 Her name would have been private.

00:44:17.900 She would have not have had the death threats. She would have not had the public scrutiny.

00:44:21.040 She would have not had any of the other things she complained about.

00:44:23.720 They would have interviewed her under oath in a private setting.

00:44:29.140 Judge Kavanaugh would have brought in to answer the allegations.

00:44:32.100 And as Senator Kyle explained, what ends up happening in those situations can happen one of three things.

00:44:40.140 The nominee sees what he's being or she's being accused of or has been said about them.

00:44:45.980 And they pull their own nomination and they say, I no longer am going to try for this job.

00:44:50.320 And they pull their own nomination.

00:44:52.560 Sometimes the committee pulls the nomination for the reasons that they've been given,

00:44:56.660 which you and I would never find out about.

00:44:59.760 Or sometimes in spite of whatever the allegations are, they are passed through.

00:45:05.020 All of that could have been done behind closed doors.

00:45:07.700 It wasn't.

00:45:08.880 It was made.

00:45:11.420 As a publicity stunt.

00:45:12.980 And I'm saying all of that because I and as much as I'm not a fan of the politics of RBG,

00:45:23.120 I don't wish ill on anybody, especially not cancer.

00:45:28.080 So I'm not wishing her ill health.

00:45:30.060 I'm not wishing her to leave the court for health reasons.

00:45:32.780 But it's a real possibility that she doesn't stay on the Supreme Court long term.

00:45:38.020 What do you think the next judicial nomination is going to be like from this president?

00:45:43.460 You want to know why the vitriol and the idea of impeachment is being brought up?

00:45:47.560 You want to know why they are so crazy about doing what they can to replace this president?

00:45:53.440 A, yes, it's because Hillary got beat.

00:45:55.860 It's because they hate him because he beat the heir apparent.

00:45:59.840 No doubt about that.

00:46:01.460 But the other part of it is going to be judicial nominations.

00:46:04.220 We all know that the longest lasting legacy for any president whatsoever is Supreme Court nominations.

00:46:14.200 What would a court look like with an RBG gone and a Trump nominated replacement in place?

00:46:21.800 Now, as Brett Kavanaugh said, and he stated all the time that he thought Roe v.

00:46:26.560 Wade was already decided law didn't matter.

00:46:29.160 They were ginning up the fear.

00:46:30.460 He makes a decision recently about Planned Parenthood and sides with the liberals because of legal reasons, which enraged some of the base.

00:46:39.400 But it also showed that the that this judge said, I will judge things based on their legal merit, not on how I feel about them.

00:46:48.100 And he did it.

00:46:49.680 We saw Chief Justice Roberts do the same thing.

00:46:52.780 When Roberts went on the court, the decision he made about Obamacare.

00:46:58.540 And his response was, if you don't like bad law, elect better lawmakers.

00:47:04.520 It's not our job to say whether it's good or bad.

00:47:07.220 It's legal or it's illegal.

00:47:08.600 It's constitutional or it's not constitutional.

00:47:13.580 So Kavanaugh has already shown himself to not be a one issue person.

00:47:18.140 He's not going to be a cowboy on the court.

00:47:20.280 It doesn't matter.

00:47:21.180 The left created a narrative and that's what it was going to be.

00:47:24.340 If you thought that was crazy.

00:47:27.080 If you thought that was crazy train, you wait for the crazy train that starts down the tracks.

00:47:33.340 If RBG has to leave the court or decides to leave the court for her health reasons.

00:47:39.840 You want to know why the vitriol and the anger?

00:47:42.560 This is why.

00:47:43.300 The 20 or 30 year legacy of a Supreme Court nominee for any president, especially since the Republicans held on to the Senate and with the rule changes that were in place.

00:47:57.360 Thank you, Harry Reid.

00:47:59.700 Now it takes only a simple majority to push a Supreme Court nominee through as opposed to the 60 votes from before.

00:48:06.940 The Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for these things.

00:48:13.160 You know, I'm I'm a I am a an armchair historian, especially in 20th century politics in America.

00:48:20.480 And when Harry Reid says years and years and years ago that to invoke the nuclear option would change the makeup and would do irreparable damage to the to the United States Senate.

00:48:31.860 And then when it's politically expedient for him to do it, he does it.

00:48:36.680 And everybody warned him.

00:48:37.900 As a matter of fact, Mitch McConnell turned out to be the prophet on this one, saying you are going to regret this sooner rather than later.

00:48:45.620 Along comes Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh.

00:48:48.140 And now it only takes a simple majority.

00:48:50.000 And they lost their minds.

00:48:53.580 They created the situation.

00:48:55.340 Again, let's go back to the idea that the media is never going to give you the full picture.

00:48:59.660 Did you hear anybody in the media say the Democrats are the ones that change the rules?

00:49:04.020 They didn't.

00:49:05.640 They didn't.

00:49:07.480 In the end, it was the changing of the rules by Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats that made it so it was only a simple majority and not 60 votes.

00:49:15.700 So now the potential there for Donald Trump to name another Supreme Court nominee or another justice.

00:49:23.300 Is is a real possibility.

00:49:26.140 And again, I'm not wishing ill on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not by a long shot.

00:49:34.080 But she is an elderly woman undergoing a major surgery for cancer.

00:49:39.640 I mean, that is that is not a good prognosis.

00:49:43.140 If she can return to the bench, then she should.

00:49:45.760 It is it's something that we should be watching.

00:49:54.700 What we're going to do in just a moment is we're going to go back to the illegal immigration issue, which is at the forefront of why we have a government shutdown.

00:50:02.400 What is the history of all of this before we talk about all of the things within the shutdown that are going to affect the average American?

00:50:10.260 How much of it will affect the American people?

00:50:12.680 The Democrats are making it sound like devastation.

00:50:15.200 Is it truly going to be devastating?

00:50:17.800 So all of that coming up in the next part of the show.

00:50:20.080 Again, I'm Mike Broomhead.

00:50:21.220 This is a Glenn Beck program.

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00:51:25.900 Welcome and thanks for listening.

00:51:51.460 My name is Mike Broomhead in on the Glenn Beck program.

00:51:53.620 I'm in all this week for Glenn with the exception of tomorrow.

00:51:56.520 We appreciate you spending some time with us.

00:51:58.180 This is odd times in America.

00:52:01.120 Now we're looking at the government shutdown over a wall in border security.

00:52:05.520 And it seems as if the Democrats have shifted sides, which is odd to me that no one is asking that question of how they could possibly have spun the 180 that they have spun.

00:52:16.400 And for everybody from their leadership, Bill Clinton.

00:52:19.660 And I'd hoped that at some point Donald Trump maybe will.

00:52:25.780 During the State of the Union address, I would love it if the president gave the State of the Union address and just ripped the speech that President Clinton gave in his State of the Union address demanding more money for border security.

00:52:37.820 To beef up the border patrol, to expedite the deportation of illegal aliens, when Senator Obama spoke so eloquently about what illegal aliens are doing, especially in the face of legal immigration, that it needs to be stopped and no American or every American should be upset about it.

00:52:53.360 We have a right to be upset about illegal immigration in this country.

00:52:56.300 Chuck Schumer calling it illegal.

00:52:58.160 Why these leaders in the Democratic Party, two of which are no longer in leadership, but Chuck Schumer certainly is.

00:53:04.120 Chuck Schumer is the one that is fighting this shutdown, saying the president is throwing a temper tantrum and this government shutdown is his fault.

00:53:11.380 The president said, I'll take the blame.

00:53:13.000 I am not signing a piece of legislation that doesn't include billions of dollars for border security.

00:53:19.460 Wall, fence.

00:53:21.120 By the way, it's going to be a fun couple of years.

00:53:23.220 At least let's look at the silver lining on the dark cloud of the Democrats taking over the House again and Nancy Pelosi being the Speaker of the House.

00:53:30.520 We will have plenty of soundbites from Nancy Pelosi to deal with over the next couple of years.

00:53:37.580 Nancy Pelosi was being asked about the wall and she said a wall is un-American.

00:53:43.720 The wall is is immoral.

00:53:46.160 And then someone used the phrase fence and said, you you supported a bill that gave billions of dollars, including a couple of billion dollars for the fence.

00:53:55.880 And Nancy Pelosi's reply with a straight face was, well, now you're talking about a fence and not a wall.

00:54:04.400 If those are the kind of gems we're going to get over the next couple of years, at least it's going to be a fun to watch.

00:54:09.680 But I don't understand the 180 degree turn what to do with people that are in this country illegally already is a political fight that we're going to have to have at what level, at what cutoff point to the people that have already put down roots here because the American government has turned their back.

00:54:28.680 At what point do the American people have some responsibility via their government for those people?

00:54:35.700 But border security shouldn't be one of them.

00:54:38.380 If you think about what's killing people, we now know that the opioid epidemic in America is killing people at an alarming rate.

00:54:47.100 And, you know, that problem is is something we can argue about as well when you have people being prescribed opioids.

00:54:55.480 And these are everyday people that would never imagine they would be dependent on anything.

00:55:00.580 And then by taking medication at the doctor's prescription and becoming dependent on those drugs and an opioid addiction, for what I'm being told, is one of the hardest addictions to overcome.

00:55:13.040 New regulations and reporting on the prescribing of opioids means that you cannot go to multiple doctors to get opioids because once you're in the database, they cut you off as far as the prescription goes.

00:55:23.940 And now you find people that never in a million years would have imagined themselves going to an illegal drug dealer on the streets buying heroin because they can no longer find the prescription opioids they were taking before.

00:55:39.780 Well, where do you think those opioids are coming from?

00:55:43.720 They're crossing the border from the south.

00:55:46.960 Opioids, fentanyl.

00:55:48.480 By the way, fentanyl doesn't take a whole lot to get people high or kill them.

00:55:54.420 So it's also much easier to conceal because it comes in in much smaller amounts.

00:56:00.580 In the early 1980s, all the all that ATF worried about.

00:56:06.420 Or I'm sorry, not ATF, DEA worried about was marijuana.

00:56:10.040 That's what they chased was marijuana.

00:56:12.180 Along comes Pablo Escobar and the cartels and cocaine into Miami and the rest of the United States.

00:56:17.900 And cocaine was there.

00:56:19.920 Now the drug cartels in Mexico are trucking in opioids, fentanyl and meth.

00:56:25.900 Methamphetamines they call ice.

00:56:27.600 I don't want to get confused with immigration and customs enforcement, but ice crossing our borders at an alarming rate.

00:56:34.500 The reason why this is such a passionate issue for me is I will tell you, I am a transplant to almost 24 years ago from Florida, where I am on vacation to the state of Arizona, which I now call home.

00:56:45.880 I don't think there's a greater place to live than in Arizona.

00:56:50.100 I love the state of Arizona.

00:56:51.900 It is being overrun at its southern border by the drug cartels.

00:56:55.880 They control corridors on our soil.

00:56:59.140 As an American, that should outrage you.

00:57:01.520 What should equally outrage all of us is right now, let's say that everything the Democrats are saying about this shutdown is 100% true, that it's going to affect millions of Americans.

00:57:12.360 It's going to be devastating 80,000 federal workers, furloughed federal workers, many of them in law enforcement that won't be paid until the shutdown is over.

00:57:20.060 Let's say that the worst case scenario painted by them is absolutely true.

00:57:26.500 Why are we not equally outraged at both sides of the political aisle or the two branches of government fighting about this?

00:57:35.640 Or as our friend Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would say, chambers of government, the three chambers of government, the House, the Senate and the White House.

00:57:45.040 She did say it.

00:57:46.080 Another reason why it's going to be a fun couple of years.

00:57:48.140 Why are we not saying to the Congress, it's your job to write laws?

00:57:55.340 This has been going on that we know of with the separated children and unaccompanied minors has been happening since oh nine.

00:58:04.100 Where have you been?

00:58:05.400 Where have you been?

00:58:07.140 What are you doing?

00:58:08.600 Where is a piece of legislation?

00:58:10.520 And everybody says elections have consequences.

00:58:12.880 The Democrats are going to take over the House.

00:58:14.520 That is absolutely 100% true.

00:58:17.300 I believe in that principle.

00:58:20.000 Elections have consequences.

00:58:21.920 Well, Donald Trump won the presidency and elections have consequences.

00:58:27.500 When Barack Obama won, they said it was a mandate from the American people that the Obama agenda needed to be pushed through.

00:58:35.020 When he said he had a cell phone and a pen and he'd go around Congress, the left politically and the media applauded him as somebody that was going to get things done and go around the gridlock in Washington.

00:58:45.640 Not so much now.

00:58:47.840 But the Democrats that were border hawks 10, 15 years ago, not actually less than 10 years ago, are now people that are saying a wall is immoral.

00:59:01.100 Well, let me tell you what's immoral.

00:59:02.400 Human trafficking is immoral.

00:59:05.480 Bringing people to this country and then putting their somewhere against their will to work off many times in prostitution, the money they owe for being brought to this country illegally.

00:59:16.100 Enriching the drug cartels by human trafficking, allowing the cartels to control corridors and put this poison in our country.

00:59:23.000 That's immoral.

00:59:25.340 That is absolutely immoral.

00:59:29.420 And those are the things that we as Americans should be fighting for and the media should be our voice in all of that.

00:59:36.220 You want to hold someone accountable, start holding some of these members of the traditional media and tell them to stop being so lazy and ask the real questions.

00:59:43.300 Coming up, we will talk about the changes in the Trump administration, Mattis out, but his replacement, Shanahan, who exactly will replace Mattis.

00:59:53.920 That is going to be a big part of the conversation coming up here in just a few moments.

00:59:57.560 Talk about the big changes and the pullout in Syria.

01:00:00.700 All of that right around the corner.

01:00:02.000 My name is Mike Broomhead.

01:00:03.200 This is the Glenn Beck Program.

01:00:04.620 You're listening to Glenn Beck.

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01:01:25.080 Welcome back. Merry Christmas. It's the Glenn Beck Program.

01:01:34.940 My name is Mike Broomhead from Phoenix, Arizona, in for Glenn this week.

01:01:38.500 And Patrick Shanahan will replace General Mattis as Defense Secretary.

01:01:42.980 He is the assistant or the deputy defense secretary.

01:01:47.840 He's worked for Boeing as an executive. He is not a military man himself, but he was raised in a military family.

01:01:54.860 Said his father taught him service before self, which was a big part of his upbringing.

01:02:00.800 Liked by the White House, according to most, wasn't very close necessarily with Mattis.

01:02:07.820 But they called him the fix-it man at Boeing, that he has got an illustrious career in that industry.

01:02:13.360 What's that going to do for him being the defense secretary?

01:02:15.720 And the questions arise with General Mattis leaving disagreement between the president and Mattis, that the expedited departure, as opposed to waiting around for the confirmation of the next person, he's going to be out as of January 1st.

01:02:28.560 According to the president's announcement, that the new or the acting defense secretary, Shanahan, will take his place January 1st.

01:02:35.740 Again, all of this going back to who knows which decisions, all of them, but the decision to pull troops out of Syria in an expedited fashion, the way it was announced, whether or not it was a good idea.

01:02:47.740 And anxious to hear more from some of the military minds around the world, people that I've talked to in the intelligence industry, people I've talked to that I believe in and trust, most of them, I would say 9 out of 10 of them, think this is a bad move.

01:03:04.660 Rand Paul likes the move, but Rand Paul, I wouldn't say he's an isolationist, but he leans that way for sure.

01:03:11.360 In principle, I agree on many levels, we should not be the world's police force, especially using our military the way we do.

01:03:19.540 We send our soldiers and we send our troops, I shouldn't just say soldiers, whether it's Marines, sending airmen, sending our Navy, our sailors in to combat zones to be a police force is not the way they're built and what they should be used for necessarily.

01:03:35.040 But we understand post-World War II, we still have a presence in Europe, Japan, all these years later, we still have military presence in those countries.

01:03:46.620 And if we're going to invest the way we do in doing things, how long are we willing to be a part of those parts of the world in peacetime to maintain those things and have a ready force where it's needed?

01:03:58.620 Is the world safer now than it was 10 years ago?

01:04:04.180 I don't think many people believe that it is.

01:04:05.860 I think we're safer from ISIS.

01:04:07.340 I do believe they've been decimated.

01:04:09.060 Have they been beaten?

01:04:10.900 I don't know about that either.

01:04:13.780 Isn't that a question?

01:04:15.500 We look at the military minds of this world, many of them saying that this is, of all people, not a military mind, but Lindsey Graham saying that this is an insurance policy.

01:04:26.120 That the small footprint of troops that we have in Syria is an insurance policy.

01:04:34.180 Going backwards is not something I want to see.

01:04:38.700 There are two things here that concern me.

01:04:40.940 One, the background my family has, losing a brother and then watching Iraq fall apart years after my brother was killed in Iraq.

01:04:50.220 It felt to me personally like everything that he had been a part of working for was being decimated.

01:04:56.120 It was devastating to many military families because the only thing you have to hold on to is that feeling that it wasn't for nothing.

01:05:04.140 Well, if everything we had gained is lost, then it feels like it was for nothing.

01:05:10.580 I don't want any family to feel that way.

01:05:12.640 I don't want any family to feel like it was for nothing.

01:05:20.500 Additionally, we send men and women into harm's way.

01:05:25.600 They sign up to do the job.

01:05:27.880 But when we send them to do that job, they have to feel like they have the support of the American people.

01:05:33.600 Are the American people just tired?

01:05:35.940 It sounds silly, but are they just tired of war?

01:05:42.740 Are our enemies going to say that they've outlasted us?

01:05:49.140 Because I believe this is going to be a recruiting tool.

01:05:55.860 There's no doubt that they are going to play this up as a victory for them.

01:06:02.400 So I'm not, I am not a big fan of sending men and women into combat zones without the equipment and without the orders to go and win.

01:06:14.820 But are we going, are we setting ourselves up for failure?

01:06:18.180 Are we setting ourselves up for, for going back?

01:06:22.340 I speak in high schools or I used to quite a bit in Arizona.

01:06:26.420 I would ask to go to speak to social studies groups or, you know, the classes would all come together in an assembly.

01:06:31.080 And I would always handle it more as a question and answer.

01:06:33.760 I didn't give a speech and high school kids don't want to hear a 51-year-old guy speak.

01:06:37.260 I would let them ask questions and do my best to answer them.

01:06:40.040 And high school kids, at least where I'm from, are concerned about the same things we're concerned about.

01:06:45.260 Jobs, terrorist attacks, are we safe?

01:06:48.600 At the time, nuclear war with, with the North Koreans.

01:06:51.340 And I had someone ask me about, you know, because of my unique situation, having lost a brother, how I felt about the different wars and why I was still supportive of us being in some of the countries we were in, you know, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria.

01:07:05.100 And I looked at these kids on a Friday.

01:07:08.860 So a bunch of the boys were wearing football uniforms and some of the girls were wearing cheerleading uniforms.

01:07:13.540 And I said to them, some of you are seniors, which means next year or the year after, some of you will be trading in those football and cheerleading uniforms for military uniforms.

01:07:25.900 And what's been going on since 2003, March of 2003 was the invasion into Baghdad.

01:07:34.440 What's been going on all of these years and not been solved in the Middle East as long as the Afghanistan war has been going on and our involvement there across North Africa now where we have troops in harm's way dying as we speak.

01:07:46.480 And the idea that we, as a generation, didn't do it, we didn't fix it, we didn't take the gloves off and finish the job the way we should have, we pulled out of Iraq way too soon.

01:08:04.660 We should have, hindsight's 20-20, but we should have done something about Syria years ago.

01:08:10.660 We could have knocked down the air capabilities of Bashar Assad and at least leveled the playing field for the Free Syrian Army to give them a fighting chance to take their country back without a big military footprint years ago and saved millions of lives being devastated, lost, or changed.

01:08:28.400 Whether it's exile, imprisonment, or death, we could have played a part in allowing them to fight their own battles, but helping them.

01:08:36.600 Hindsight's 20-20.

01:08:37.760 Hindsight's 20-20.

01:09:08.540 The oldest of which is seven years old.

01:09:13.880 Less than 15 years from now, what's he going to do?

01:09:19.240 If he decides he's going to join the military, where will we be in the world?

01:09:26.120 So this serious situation is more than politics and it's more than just about 2,200 troops being pulled out of a region.

01:09:32.440 What are the after effects and the long-term effects of this and what generation and how many people is it going to affect?

01:09:40.720 Go look at your kids.

01:09:41.800 You got kids that are 15 years old.

01:09:43.540 How will this affect them five years from now when they're 20?

01:09:46.200 How many of your sons or daughters have said, I want to join the military?

01:09:54.500 Where will they be in the world?

01:09:55.980 And will this, what's happening now with the pullout of Syria have an effect on them?

01:10:00.180 The commander-in-chief makes very serious decisions.

01:10:06.060 And before I had a knee-jerk reaction one way or the other to denounce what the president did or say it was the right thing to do, I wanted to be a bit more educated on the whys.

01:10:15.700 The people that I know are saying that this could be a big mistake, that this could come back to bite the president because if ISIS or another group, you change the name, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, what would be the next group?

01:10:36.360 Is this going to fester into something else where we are going to be sending men and women a couple of years from now back into a region because of the uprising of terrorism because we didn't leave a footprint behind?

01:10:52.140 And it's more of a thoughtful question than it is a political question.

01:10:56.440 And is this going to be that mistake?

01:10:58.940 Every president makes one or more.

01:11:01.500 Is this going to be that huge mistake that ends up costing this president and the American people?

01:11:12.440 More to discuss on this topic, of course, the shutdown that's affecting everyone, the exact places that it's affecting and the people that it's affecting.

01:11:21.220 A lot more still coming up on the show.

01:11:23.040 I'm Mike Broomhead.

01:11:23.920 This is the Glenn Beck Program.

01:11:25.000 Merry Christmas from the Mike Broomhead Show or from Mike Broomhead on the Glenn Beck Program.

01:11:35.980 We are thrilled you've joined us for part of your day.

01:11:38.460 There's so much happening and we're talking about the pullout in Syria and the seriousness of all of this.

01:11:44.960 Britt Hume made an interesting point.

01:11:48.180 He said, criticism of Trump has been overblown, but Syria and the madness is a big deal.

01:11:52.560 So this is the part where I think the Democrats have overplayed their hands so many times.

01:11:57.480 Everything that's happened with Donald Trump has been the end of the world.

01:12:01.620 And you can only scream.

01:12:04.660 The sky is falling so many times before people start ignoring you.

01:12:10.040 One of the criticisms I have of the 24 hour news cycle, even on Fox News, you see it all the time.

01:12:16.460 There's this constant breaking news and the big breaking news, that ominous sound in the and then it turns out to be nothing.

01:12:25.700 You know, locally, I'll get a tweet from our local newspaper and it will say breaking news and you'll open the tweet and it'll be a weather report.

01:12:34.660 Well, see, in Arizona, if it rains, that's breaking news.

01:12:37.020 But that's not breaking news.

01:12:41.880 Every move that this president has made since he won the election has been grounds for impeachment.

01:12:50.040 The president of the United States wasn't even president for two weeks when Maxine Waters called for impeachment.

01:12:57.020 And someone pointed out to her.

01:13:00.780 He's only been the president for two weeks because the amount of time doesn't matter.

01:13:06.700 So they've been screaming impeachment.

01:13:11.040 Since the election, never mind the inauguration.

01:13:16.640 This, I believe, is a bigger deal for this president.

01:13:19.520 General Mattis is a well-respected military mind on both sides of the political aisle.

01:13:29.860 When you have an advisor like this that's leaving and then there's an expedited exit because of the disagreements with the president.

01:13:38.380 This is one of those situations where instead of every time someone leaving this administration, they add them to the tote board and they have pictures across the screen.

01:13:51.500 This is one of those areas that can be held up as a as a concern.

01:13:55.360 The, the location of Syria, the involvement of the Russians, the uprising of ISIS in the past, the genocide in that country is a world problem because of what can happen next, what will happen next.

01:14:17.260 And if we don't get our arms around this, if for whatever reason, General Mattis disagrees with the president to the point of one or the other saying, I quit or you're fired, it's a big deal.

01:14:37.000 The change in policy of removing troops from Syria is another big deal, but it can fall on deaf ears to many people because we've been hearing everything's a big deal.

01:14:53.000 Just go through the Mueller investigation, going back to, well, Manafort and Michael Flynn and everybody was going to be the, this was going to be the one.

01:15:06.060 This was going to be the one that turned around and destroyed this president.

01:15:11.820 Every single person.

01:15:14.400 Well, this one's cooperating.

01:15:15.720 This one's been arrested.

01:15:16.740 This has happened.

01:15:17.560 That happened.

01:15:18.340 This is it.

01:15:19.040 This is the one.

01:15:22.180 So you heard about Michael Cohen being the one that knew all the secrets and was going to be the demise of this presidency.

01:15:27.600 And then you heard about the people that own the National Enquirer and you heard how they were going to be the ones.

01:15:34.000 They're the ones that really know the secrets.

01:15:35.440 It's always the next one.

01:15:36.980 It's the next one.

01:15:38.120 And it hasn't happened.

01:15:39.720 People just kind of roll their eyes because every time it's a problem, every time this is the one that's going to devastate it.

01:15:46.040 This is the end.

01:15:47.200 This is where impeachment or resignation is the only choice.

01:15:50.160 And you've got many members of the media saying they have no choice in the House.

01:15:54.160 The House has no choice.

01:15:56.200 They are obligated by law to seek articles of impeachment.

01:16:00.180 And you look at things and you wonder, what do you what exactly are you talking about?

01:16:07.780 So that idea of impeachment of this president is obviously something to discuss in the next hour.

01:16:13.200 Is this president going to face impeachment?

01:16:19.880 Should he face impeachment?

01:16:23.020 Or is this just more about politics with the serious issues that face our country?

01:16:27.680 The history lesson is not over on illegal immigration in America and what needs to be done.

01:16:33.860 And believe it or not, one publication saying this whole thing is politics because this is how the president could build the wall without Congress.

01:16:43.060 He doesn't need Congress to build the wall.

01:16:45.560 How could the president pull that off?

01:16:48.420 What could he do if he really wanted to and end the shutdown by building it without Congress?

01:16:54.520 All of that coming up.

01:16:55.660 We'll do that in the next hour of the show again.

01:16:57.740 My name is Mike Broomhead.

01:16:58.740 I'm in for Glenn Beck all of this week.

01:17:00.540 This is the Glenn Beck Program.

01:17:02.760 We will be back.

01:17:09.960 The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.

01:17:12.900 This is the Glenn Beck Program.

01:17:15.560 We're going to talk about education in America in the next hour of the show.

01:17:19.780 Talk about the least educated state.

01:17:21.480 It's not always about money.

01:17:22.660 We are going to talk about what's happening in the world as far as the government shutdown goes, what it means to most Americans.

01:17:28.380 We'll catch up on that.

01:17:29.680 Illegal immigration and the history lesson continues as well.

01:17:33.180 Because if we don't understand the history of things, we are doomed to repeat it.

01:17:37.140 This goes back much longer than many of us realize, although it seems to be squarely on the shoulders of this president.

01:17:42.480 All that coming up in this hour of the show.

01:17:44.180 It's the Glenn Beck Program.

01:17:45.620 I'm Mike Broomhead.

01:17:46.680 Stick around.

01:17:47.120 This is the Glenn Beck Program.

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01:19:00.680 Merry Christmas on the Glenn Beck Program.

01:19:02.540 My name is Mike Broomhead.

01:19:03.360 We are here just for another hour.

01:19:05.720 I appreciate you spending some time with us.

01:19:07.860 And education in America is going to be a part of what we talk about this morning.

01:19:12.560 California, the least educated state, which kind of surprised me,

01:19:17.000 the amount of money spent on education in the state of California,

01:19:20.940 they have got the most people over the age of 25 who have not completed the ninth grade.

01:19:26.540 And they also have the most people that don't have a high school diploma of any age.

01:19:33.360 And it's not just numbers of people, but highest in percentage, highest in per capita.

01:19:38.260 So the state of education, which is something that's become more important to me the older I get,

01:19:44.360 will be a part of what we're discussing, not just for the sake of bashing California,

01:19:47.980 which is easy to do sometimes with the government they have,

01:19:51.000 but it is more about learning lessons from other people's mistakes.

01:19:55.160 And so that will get to the changeover in the Trump administration can't be overstated.

01:20:01.500 This is a big deal with with Mattis leaving and the circumstances and manner in which he left.

01:20:07.380 That will also talk about the illegal immigration issue is a big one for me because it's led to the shutdown.

01:20:12.980 The cornerstone of this president's campaign was building a wall.

01:20:16.900 And it was about stopping illegal immigration.

01:20:21.440 There are three things that the Trump administration wants to accomplish.

01:20:24.940 And I think he wins on all three.

01:20:27.480 One is, of course, border security.

01:20:31.000 Arizona has something called the border strike force made up of state police officers and state troopers.

01:20:35.400 And the DPS director and our governor came up with this border strike force and what they are as a liaison.

01:20:40.420 And they work hand in hand, filling the gaps in the local, you know, the the the more low income border counties

01:20:48.660 where those police agencies need help with some of the crimes being committed by people that have come across the border illegally

01:20:54.520 and a liaison with federal law enforcement and trying to work with them where they can,

01:20:58.480 whether it's Border Patrol or ICE, in trying to stem the tide of the crimes that are coming across the border.

01:21:03.380 And it's an important issue across the country because all of the drugs we've talked about that cross into Arizona,

01:21:10.700 the opioids, the fentanyl, the ICE or what we call a meth crossing the border ends up in places all over the country.

01:21:18.600 You look at the spike in the opioid epidemic in America.

01:21:21.580 We talk about taking it seriously.

01:21:23.320 Well, shutting down the flow or at least making it more difficult to get those drugs into this country are important.

01:21:28.940 So there are two things happening with the migrant caravan and illegal immigration as it stands.

01:21:34.860 First of all, it overwhelms ICE.

01:21:38.460 Now, Border Patrol stops them from crossing the border.

01:21:42.020 But once they're here, once they're in the states, it becomes an immigration and customs enforcement issue.

01:21:49.120 Now, the FBI was revamped after 9-11.

01:21:51.920 They are an anti-terrorism organization and by most accounts doing a stellar job in stopping terrorism.

01:21:57.580 You know how we know that? We don't hear what's going on.

01:22:00.420 They stop many attacks, but they have been refocused and retasked.

01:22:04.900 Immigration and customs enforcement should be doing just that.

01:22:07.900 But they do drug interdiction, human trafficking.

01:22:10.100 They do so many other things that they should, I believe, this is my personal opinion, narrow the scope of what ICE does.

01:22:17.600 Immigration.

01:22:18.780 They should be tasked with people that are overstaying their visas.

01:22:21.640 We have got the digital technology to track people down that overstay their visas and make sure that they leave the country.

01:22:28.560 An enormous amount of illegal immigrants in this country are people that overstayed visas.

01:22:34.120 The other part of that is the customs enforcement part of it.

01:22:36.820 But the immigration side of it could be that could be one of the things that they focus solely on.

01:22:42.680 If there are other crimes being committed by illegal immigrants, put it off on the DEA if it's drug crimes.

01:22:48.880 ATF.

01:22:50.540 Let those other investigative branches do those jobs.

01:22:56.000 But if we're going to get serious about it, the president wants border protection, which I don't know how you cannot, how anybody can believe that the border is secure.

01:23:05.280 On any level, it isn't.

01:23:08.300 But secondly, it is about chain migration.

01:23:11.540 It's odd that we are allowing the current generation of immigrants to choose the next generation.

01:23:18.140 I'm not talking about minor children.

01:23:20.100 That seems to be a no-brainer or spouses.

01:23:22.500 But it's parents, it's brothers and sisters that are adults.

01:23:26.040 It should be done on a merit basis and not on a chain migration basis.

01:23:30.280 That makes sense.

01:23:31.460 And then the visa lotteries as opposed to people coming based on their merit.

01:23:36.560 Our litmus test should not be wealth.

01:23:38.760 Our litmus test should be ability.

01:23:40.240 I am an advocate for a guest worker program.

01:23:44.340 I live in a border state.

01:23:46.020 I can only give you anecdotal evidence from where I live.

01:23:49.620 In the state of Arizona, at our peak, I believe, 08, somewhere around there, there were 60,000 new home starts.

01:24:02.240 They were building 60,000 homes in one year.

01:24:04.660 The market crashes.

01:24:06.840 It starts to make a comeback.

01:24:08.660 The economy is going very, very well.

01:24:10.900 The construction world is working very hard again.

01:24:13.340 And there is a lot of work out there for them.

01:24:16.000 They're now at a little over 20,000, somewhere around 20,000 to 25,000 home starts in the middle of this housing boom.

01:24:21.880 You want to know why we don't get anywhere near 60,000 home starts in Arizona?

01:24:25.880 I'm just giving you anecdotal where I live.

01:24:28.840 Because they don't have the manpower on job sites to do the jobs.

01:24:33.460 I have friends who own construction companies because that's the world I came from.

01:24:37.180 I was an electrical contractor.

01:24:38.740 My friends in the framing and drywall business could hire 30 or 35 people.

01:24:43.380 They have three people show up.

01:24:46.300 If we had a viable program where people could come and work, not able to take advantage of any public services whatsoever,

01:24:54.580 they could come and go as they please.

01:24:56.300 They could send money home as they please.

01:24:58.580 It would help the economy south of our border.

01:25:01.320 It would help the American economy and jobs that Americans aren't doing, that really aren't doing.

01:25:08.060 And we would have the ability to then alleviate some of the pressure at the border.

01:25:13.420 When we hear about the migrant caravan in Tijuana and the vast majority of these young men that are a part of this caravan wanting to work,

01:25:22.220 why not alleviate the pressure on the border patrol?

01:25:25.080 And I'll tell you why it makes sense.

01:25:27.560 The cartels are not stupid.

01:25:29.180 So while on one hand you've got people posing as families and crossing the border and demanding asylum and tying up ice with all of this paperwork and holding people in ankle bracelets and turning them loose and hearing dates,

01:25:45.540 the drug cartels are continuing to truck in tons, billions of dollars of worth of that poison that's going into the veins and up the nose and citizens.

01:25:55.080 So you tie them up in one area and you're making money there, but then your drugs and your crime cross the border because they can't be in two places at once.

01:26:05.820 So alleviating the pressure at the border where we're able to, you know, and there can be strict rules and all of those things is a big part of what we could be doing, what we should be doing.

01:26:20.260 And we're not.

01:26:24.180 This goes back to Reagan getting the promise of border security, which was never fulfilled.

01:26:29.140 You know, that Bush signed in the law to build a fence, never got funded.

01:26:35.320 And now this president says we're no longer going to get empty promises.

01:26:39.860 But isn't it fascinating?

01:26:42.800 That a story was written that President Trump doesn't need them.

01:26:45.780 He could go around them.

01:26:46.720 The president is able to, if he wants to, pull money from other executive agencies, without Congress.

01:26:54.840 He says he will do that.

01:26:57.480 The Congress will blame him.

01:26:59.600 The Congress will say he's doing the wrong thing.

01:27:02.220 But the Congress is not doing anything to work with him on any level.

01:27:07.600 This is a – I heard from a family court lawyer a great analogy.

01:27:12.900 The difference between criminal law and family law is that in criminal law, you see good people – or I'm sorry, you see bad people on their best behavior.

01:27:22.180 Defendants.

01:27:23.240 In family law, you see good people on their worst behavior because it's such an emotional time when couples end a marriage, especially when kids are involved.

01:27:31.900 How many times a judge gives the lecture, you've got to love your children more than you hate each other.

01:27:36.940 Well, this is a nasty divorce.

01:27:40.720 You've got Trump on one side.

01:27:43.000 You've got the Democrats in Congress on the other side.

01:27:45.940 And neither side wants to give an inch.

01:27:48.160 And all of us, we're those kids caught in the middle of a nasty divorce.

01:27:53.780 No matter what happens, we are going to lose.

01:27:58.460 Because neither side wants to give an inch.

01:28:01.400 The president has so much on his side just on the border security and the popularity with the American people.

01:28:08.500 Don't you find it odd – I talked about this with the Democrats – isn't it odd that Barack Obama ended, during his time in office, the wet foot, dry foot rule with the Cuban people?

01:28:20.000 He established the embassy again, raised the American flag in Havana, and reestablished normalcy and a relationship with the Cuban government.

01:28:28.280 By the way, the Cuban government and what they're doing to their people has not changed.

01:28:32.740 It is an oppressive communist regime.

01:28:35.400 And if you say anything against the government, they reeducate you, so to speak.

01:28:39.140 You're punished.

01:28:40.100 You're hauled away.

01:28:41.380 The people still have zero freedom in that country.

01:28:44.360 We've done nothing to change the lives of the Cuban people, and neither is their government.

01:28:49.540 But we reestablished a relationship with them.

01:28:51.920 Then what we did was end the wet foot, dry foot rule, which was if you were a Cuban citizen and you got on dry American soil, you were given political asylum.

01:29:03.200 I watched boats when I was a kid being chased to the shore by the Coast Guard.

01:29:08.260 If they got to dry land, it was like playing tag, and you get to base, and you're safe.

01:29:14.180 Well, the Obama administration ended that wet foot, dry foot rule.

01:29:17.260 Well, isn't it odd now, just a few years later, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the people in leadership in the Democratic Party, in essence, want to do that with the illegal immigrants coming and posing as families?

01:29:31.520 If you can get across the border, you should get asylum.

01:29:34.780 How is that any different?

01:29:36.320 They applauded the Obama administration for ending it with an oppressive regime like the communist regime of Cuba.

01:29:42.020 And yet, they want to establish it for these people coming from Central America.

01:29:47.440 By the way, the stories are still out there about MS-13 gang members being captured, about known child molesters being captured crossing the border.

01:29:55.220 There's no vetting process here.

01:29:58.660 A long way from over.

01:30:00.140 This is a long way from over.

01:30:01.520 This talk about this government shutdown, the reasons for it are as entrenched as they can be.

01:30:06.120 But how long will it last?

01:30:07.260 We're going to do that coming up here in just a few moments.

01:30:09.080 Once again, I'm Mike Broomhead, and this is the Glenn Beck Program.

01:30:12.020 This is the Glenn Beck Program.

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01:31:43.080 My name is Mike Broomhead.

01:31:44.020 This is the Glenn Beck Program.

01:31:46.780 Illegal immigration.

01:31:47.880 And here's something else I don't think is done very well by the people on the right is the designation or the differentiation between legal and illegal immigration.

01:31:56.600 The analogy I've been using is this.

01:31:58.780 If your neighbors across the street next door had a house fire, God forbid, and they needed a place for a couple of days until they figured out housing until their house was repaired,

01:32:10.820 you'd open your home.

01:32:11.780 You'd give them a place to sleep.

01:32:13.200 You wouldn't think twice.

01:32:14.120 You'd invite them in your home and you would give them refuge until they got to where they needed to permanently.

01:32:21.680 If you came home from work and your neighbors had had a house fire and you walk in your front door and they're already sitting on your couch eating your Funyuns and watching television,

01:32:29.120 it's going to be a different conversation.

01:32:33.260 Same predicament, same situation.

01:32:36.080 It certainly is the way it was done that matters.

01:32:40.120 And that's what's happening.

01:32:42.560 Our laws are being broken.

01:32:45.480 This caravan is a perfect example, although it was trumped up, no pun intended.

01:32:51.060 It was made up.

01:32:52.540 It was politicized.

01:32:53.800 It was made for television.

01:32:55.480 They were burning the American flag and waving the Honduran flag.

01:33:02.460 That is not the way to seek asylum.

01:33:06.660 They had opportunities along the way in Mexico to seek asylum the right way.

01:33:10.680 They refused.

01:33:11.640 This is politics on their side.

01:33:15.020 For the American media to do what they're doing is shameful.

01:33:22.540 The Mexican media is telling the truth.

01:33:25.120 The Mexican people don't want them there.

01:33:26.820 The Mexican people wanted the Mexican, the new Mexican president to clamp down on the next caravan, which he's doing.

01:33:34.620 They are going to close their southern border.

01:33:37.060 Those the next caravan is not going to be greeted with high fives, food, water and rides.

01:33:43.800 But instead of instead of telling that story, they continue to blame the president and act as if he's some kind of a racist, xenophobe, isolationist.

01:33:58.660 I am a firm believer in legal immigration.

01:34:05.660 I've watched many families in one generation live the American dream, come to this country with nothing, raise their children, become citizens at the very first opportunity, flourish, buy a home, retire and watch their children and then grandchildren live the American dream.

01:34:26.760 Most of us applaud that.

01:34:30.380 Not too long ago, the the the 80s singer Billy Idol became an American citizen.

01:34:36.200 The picture him that went viral waving an American flag.

01:34:39.640 Well, it just happened to be that he's a celebrity.

01:34:42.600 But how many of us have stopped when it's in the newspaper or we see it on the news?

01:34:46.820 Fourth of July, there will be a swearing in party, a swearing in ceremony for new citizens.

01:34:52.260 We all stop and applaud that or most of us do.

01:34:54.800 I believe that we should be a place of refuge and asylum.

01:35:00.420 But when you've got Syrian refugees that want to come here and they're being infiltrated by terrorists, then the president says we need a better vetting process.

01:35:08.680 He's right.

01:35:11.220 I had to get on an airplane.

01:35:12.640 I'm going to get on an airplane to go home in a few days.

01:35:15.580 You go through a different process now than you did pre 9-11.

01:35:19.060 As the terrorists have morphed their tactics, our government has morphed its in stopping the terrorist attacks and the bombs on planes and things of that nature.

01:35:32.180 New screeners, take off your shoes, put your laptop in another compartment, show us your cell phone that it works.

01:35:38.120 All the things that they do to try to be one step ahead of the terrorists, air marshals, they change what we do on airplanes, how they lock the cockpit door.

01:35:47.800 They do all of those things in answer to to try to be one step ahead of those that would harm us.

01:35:53.280 But somehow now in this process of illegal immigration, we're not supposed to morph and change how we handle things.

01:36:01.500 So we've taken refugees in for a long time.

01:36:04.120 Now we know that the refugees are infiltrating with the refugee or I'm sorry, terrorists are infiltrating the refugees and coming to America.

01:36:11.320 And we're not supposed to change our vetting process.

01:36:13.620 We now know that there is a 400 percent increase at our southern border of adults posing with children that are not theirs as families.

01:36:22.080 But we're not supposed to change our vetting process based on the data that we know.

01:36:28.420 None of that makes sense.

01:36:31.780 Being in a border state, I'll tell you another statistic that Border Patrol and ICE keep track of the people that come north of the border.

01:36:39.540 And there is a category called OTMs, other than Mexicans.

01:36:46.220 It's people crossing the Mexican border from other countries.

01:36:49.460 And of course, you get Central and South American countries, but you get the communist Chinese across the Middle Eastern terrorist states.

01:36:56.060 And there are statistics you can find.

01:37:01.040 The question of whether or not we should be doing something is a no brainer.

01:37:05.020 But when you constantly hear in the media that this is just a racist agenda, this has been going on for five presidents that I know of, you know, in my lifetime.

01:37:17.380 When is Congress going to be held accountable to write some kind of a law that gives real teeth to border security and it gives a real immigration program that people can live with?

01:37:32.580 Make it easier for good people to come and make it harder for bad people to get here.

01:37:38.560 Easier to do it legally, much harder to do it illegally.

01:37:41.980 That seems like a no brainer to most of us.

01:37:49.260 Talk about education, the lack of education in America and how it's affecting our children, how it's really affecting our future.

01:37:56.300 I have the privilege of speaking in high schools quite a bit in Arizona, and I am always my faith is always renewed in youth when I talk with them.

01:38:03.640 But what are we doing about education?

01:38:05.440 Is it money that's really the issue?

01:38:07.240 And the reason why I want to bring this up is it's been a big issue in my home state, but I think nationally, this is a big, big, big issue.

01:38:14.820 Immigration.

01:38:15.440 And before we get out of here, one of my favorite things to talk about on a Christmas Eve, the assault, the war on Christmas.

01:38:22.580 We're hearing more Merry Christmas than you are hearing Happy Holidays.

01:38:25.920 All of that we'll be talking about in the final half hour of the program.

01:38:30.220 Again, my name is Mike Broomhead.

01:38:31.880 This is the Glenn Beck Program.

01:38:33.280 So much still to discuss.

01:38:34.700 Glad you're with me.

01:38:35.800 Stick around.

01:38:37.240 You're listening to Glenn Beck.

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01:39:46.180 Want more Glenn?

01:39:48.340 I mean, who doesn't?

01:39:50.180 Besides my wife.

01:39:51.720 Stream live or download later at glennbeck.com.

01:40:00.320 Hey, Merry Christmas.

01:40:01.520 It's the Glenn Beck Program.

01:40:02.560 My name is Mike Broom.

01:40:03.280 Had him in for Glenn this week.

01:40:04.420 We hope you're, or I hope you're having a great Christmas.

01:40:06.420 It's hard to believe it's Christmas Eve.

01:40:08.100 I'm still writing 2016 on stuff.

01:40:11.120 We appreciate some of your morning or some of your day, actually.

01:40:14.280 Um, the state of education.

01:40:17.800 It's interesting.

01:40:18.860 Um, I was quite possibly the worst high school student on the planet for quite a while.

01:40:25.660 Um, I wasn't a bad kid.

01:40:27.240 I was just obnoxious and I didn't take it very seriously.

01:40:29.980 The older I got, the more I realized that I was very fortunate.

01:40:33.220 My education at its base when I was younger was very good.

01:40:37.700 I learned to read.

01:40:38.720 I learned to write.

01:40:40.000 I learned to comprehend what I was reading so I could convey a thought.

01:40:43.040 Um, and all of that served me very well.

01:40:46.240 Uh, basic math.

01:40:47.540 I became an electric electrician, which is now, you know, everything you do as an algebraic

01:40:51.580 formula.

01:40:52.380 I was fortunate that I took education seriously at its foundation so that when I had to catch

01:40:59.680 up, when I got older, I had the ability to.

01:41:02.080 And one of the questions kids always ask is, when am I ever going to use this again?

01:41:07.300 And the answer is, I don't know.

01:41:10.580 But we, we take education serious, or at least as adults, we do with our kids.

01:41:15.420 And when you look at the state of education, it seems like a lot of times what it is, is

01:41:22.340 more indoctrination than education.

01:41:24.020 I've said for a long time, if we create critical thinkers, they will figure it out.

01:41:31.500 And the numbers of people at the foundation of our country that could read and write, it

01:41:37.680 astounded the rest of the world that we were the best, we were the most educated society.

01:41:43.720 And that's fallen way, way, way off.

01:41:46.520 We tend to indoctrinate more than we educate.

01:41:49.200 We tend to tell kids what they should think as opposed to teaching them how to think.

01:41:53.500 And there's a lot of complaints in that.

01:41:55.120 But California spends a lot of money on education.

01:41:59.240 They are dead last in residents that are 25 and older who have never completed the ninth

01:42:05.020 grade and the 49th for the percentage of who have graduated from high school.

01:42:12.560 9.5, 9.7% of California residents, 25 and older, never completed the ninth grade.

01:42:19.720 And only 82 and a half percent have graduated from high school.

01:42:25.120 That is a staggering number of people that have not.

01:42:31.680 When we talk about the issues, the history lesson of immigration that we just went over

01:42:38.160 and how we're doomed to repeat it if we don't understand.

01:42:43.980 If we aren't teaching our kids about the Holocaust, what our, the greatest generation, the World

01:42:54.320 War II generation were able to accomplish D-Day.

01:42:56.740 I was in, I was in France.

01:42:59.560 I went to Normandy and Luxembourg, Belgium over the anniversary of D-Day last June.

01:43:04.940 And as much as I am a student of history, there was nothing like standing in those places.

01:43:15.220 Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, Pointe-to-Hawk, the Pegasus Bridge, going to these different places

01:43:20.120 and meeting some of the men who fought there.

01:43:23.160 And realizing that they were 18, 19 years old when they did it.

01:43:30.380 And the struggle that they had to endure and had it failed, what America would look like.

01:43:40.020 That everybody east of the Mississippi would probably be speaking German and everybody west

01:43:46.040 of the Mississippi would be speaking Japanese.

01:43:51.680 That there is a necessity in teaching, not just what we've done, but why we've done it.

01:44:02.160 The consequences of intervening or not intervening.

01:44:06.440 Should we have intervened earlier, maybe Pearl Harbor doesn't happen.

01:44:13.720 Those questions.

01:44:15.500 Would Hitler's impact on the world have been diminished had we done some kind of a preemptive strike?

01:44:25.700 But that's just one part of education.

01:44:29.340 When you see a statistic where you're setting people up to fail, and it's a system where you

01:44:35.300 are throwing billions of dollars at the problem with no accountability, really, it makes me

01:44:43.940 wonder what education is in America.

01:44:46.920 Is it a business?

01:44:49.260 Because if it is, it's failing.

01:44:51.760 Except the executives, which would be the teachers unions and the big organizations invested

01:44:58.700 in education, aren't going to lose their paycheck.

01:45:05.220 And I'm torn because when I go into high schools and speak with students, these are thoughtful

01:45:11.940 people.

01:45:13.460 They are not selfish, mind-numb idiots that they're portrayed to be sometimes.

01:45:18.480 But we do them a huge disservice.

01:45:21.160 We don't challenge kids nearly enough.

01:45:23.340 We don't hold them accountable.

01:45:24.560 We don't make them work hard.

01:45:26.780 We, you know, there was one teacher that was fired because school policy said the lowest

01:45:31.080 grade you can give is a 50%.

01:45:32.720 So even if you don't turn in a piece of paper, you don't get a zero.

01:45:36.780 You still get 50% for not doing the work.

01:45:43.920 Those are the things that concern me when I talk about education.

01:45:48.340 But in the end, whose fault is it?

01:45:54.960 It's yours and it's mine.

01:45:58.520 If my kids would have graduated from high school and couldn't read, that's my fault.

01:46:04.760 If I don't know that my children can't read when they are in the second grade, third grade,

01:46:09.860 that they're not learning to read or they're at least not learning what they're being taught,

01:46:15.040 that's on me.

01:46:16.120 But the education system seems, in my opinion, seems to be failing because where we used to

01:46:27.400 lead the world, we don't.

01:46:30.480 We aren't challenging people.

01:46:32.500 We're not making sure that we're creating critical thinkers that can read something,

01:46:37.180 convey a message of what they've just read, comprehend it, and repeat what they've just

01:46:41.600 read.

01:46:41.980 Instead, we make sure we're churning out good citizens.

01:46:49.960 Well, good in the minds of the people that are doing the indoctrination.

01:46:55.120 And I say this with all due respect to teachers because we all have teachers that influenced

01:47:02.060 us.

01:47:02.720 We all have somebody or people in our lives that we look back at and say, that person was

01:47:08.580 a huge influence on me.

01:47:12.700 I'm sure I've mentioned here on this show before, our dean of students, when I was in

01:47:18.980 high school, I always thought hated my guts.

01:47:22.940 I was a maniac of a kid.

01:47:24.820 You know, I drove this guy crazy.

01:47:26.680 Years after I was out of high school, I saw him at a high school football game, and he

01:47:35.740 remembered not only me, but he remembered my younger brother's name, my youngest brother's

01:47:40.160 name, who never even went to that school, my mother's name, asked how we all were doing,

01:47:44.620 asked how my electrical career was going.

01:47:46.440 He knew what I was doing for a living.

01:47:47.880 And he's someone that's been a promoter of this radio career when it happened and has

01:47:57.120 been a great support system to me.

01:47:58.980 And I was under the assumption that he just disliked me immensely.

01:48:03.340 I was just a bad kid.

01:48:04.540 He was trying to straighten out.

01:48:06.240 This was one of the people instrumental in keeping me from going completely off the edge.

01:48:10.620 His name is Bill Geddes, and I'm in touch with him once in a while.

01:48:18.700 We keep in touch on Facebook, and there are literally thousands of kids that have the same

01:48:23.920 stories about him and people like him at our schools that made impacts on us.

01:48:30.280 So I am not denigrating the service of teachers.

01:48:38.040 There are many, many, many great teachers in this country.

01:48:42.060 The system has got issues.

01:48:45.220 When you've got a national standard, it's one thing.

01:48:48.640 When you have a national way of educating, I want you to think of how is it possible that

01:48:55.060 the same issues that an inner city kid from Brooklyn, New York faces the same kid, same

01:49:00.620 issues as a kid in Butte, Montana.

01:49:02.540 How does some kid from Fountain, Colorado face the same challenges as a kid from Clovis, New

01:49:11.520 Mexico?

01:49:13.540 It's different.

01:49:15.860 And teachers should be able to educate students and not have to just be teaching them to pass

01:49:21.240 tests.

01:49:21.780 One of the fun things I've had the pleasure of doing over the last few years is making

01:49:30.580 fun of, because they deserve it, the assault on Christmas.

01:49:34.360 It does seem to me this year that I'm hearing a lot more Merry Christmas than I am Happy Holidays

01:49:39.920 in years past.

01:49:41.200 So before I close it out on this Christmas Eve, a little defense of Christmas itself as a holiday

01:49:46.280 and a Merry Christmas from us here at the Glenn Beck Program.

01:49:49.500 My name is Mike Broomhead.

01:49:50.420 I'll be back.

01:49:55.080 And Merry Christmas.

01:49:56.200 My name is Mike Broomhead.

01:49:57.120 I'm in for Glenn.

01:49:57.720 I'll be in the rest of this week with the exception of tomorrow.

01:49:59.840 I appreciate you spending part of your day with me.

01:50:02.440 And I truly mean it.

01:50:03.240 Merry Christmas.

01:50:04.060 It's a great, my favorite time of year.

01:50:06.280 If you're a social media user, the Mike Broomhead Show fan page on Facebook or Mike Broomhead,

01:50:11.100 all one word on Instagram.

01:50:12.400 I'm the king of blurry pictures.

01:50:14.400 If you want to follow my escapades and blurry pictures, you can follow me on Instagram.

01:50:18.280 All one word, Mike Broomhead.

01:50:20.420 The assault on Christmas, the war on Christmas has always surprised me.

01:50:25.380 It is an overtly Christian holiday.

01:50:28.380 And let me explain, and I'm not going to proselytize or preach.

01:50:31.140 I'm just going to explain to you.

01:50:32.300 There are some very good people in this world that have a humble belief that all of us were created

01:50:41.920 and all of us do the wrong thing on some level.

01:50:47.300 And there was the prediction by the Jewish people of a Messiah, and that Messiah was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

01:50:57.760 And the birth of Jesus is when we celebrate, although we realize December 25th was not actually Jesus' birthday,

01:51:03.780 we celebrate the birth of that Savior, God become man.

01:51:08.620 Easter, we celebrate the finish of that ministry with his death, his physical death and resurrection at Easter time.

01:51:17.640 But it is truly like you have Hanukkah and Passover for the Jews.

01:51:24.100 These are devout, well-respected holidays.

01:51:28.700 The Muslims that have Ramadan.

01:51:31.900 Would anybody, honestly, would most people in America question the way a Muslim celebrates Ramadan?

01:51:40.440 How dare you?

01:51:43.440 But in America, there is this assault on Christianity.

01:51:46.540 It's an overtly Christian holiday.

01:51:48.800 I don't know of any Christian in the world that asks you to celebrate the way I do or we do.

01:51:54.400 There are some people that go to church on Christmas Eve.

01:51:56.860 There are those that go on Christmas Day.

01:51:58.300 There are those that don't go at all.

01:52:01.060 We all celebrate differently.

01:52:03.120 But it is an overtly Christian holiday.

01:52:06.300 We have a lot of immigrants in this country.

01:52:11.660 Can you imagine on the 4th of July?

01:52:14.060 This is a great thing to imagine.

01:52:15.680 You're going to have a 4th of July parade in your town, Independence Day.

01:52:20.500 And someone in your city government says, you know, we are a very diverse community.

01:52:27.740 And having only the American flag in the 4th of July parade or having any American flags really is exclusive.

01:52:36.860 We are not being inclusive of the non-citizens that are here.

01:52:40.980 So we want to have the parade.

01:52:43.940 But there can't be anything overtly American in the 4th of July parade because we are then going to be excluding and not being inclusive of those people that are not American.

01:52:57.940 And you say, but we're celebrating the independence of America.

01:53:03.920 I know, but, and there's always people that would believe that way.

01:53:11.060 It is an overtly Christian holiday.

01:53:13.760 Whether you celebrate it that way or not is your business.

01:53:18.280 Get a tree, don't get a tree.

01:53:21.040 Wrap presents, Santa Claus, whatever you want to do.

01:53:27.740 I don't waste my time even getting angry about it.

01:53:31.120 I think it's the funniest thing I've ever heard of.

01:53:33.920 It's like telling you we're not singing you happy birthday on your birthday because there's other people in the room that aren't having a birthday that day.

01:53:41.720 And we don't want to exclude them.

01:53:43.800 It's your birthday.

01:53:48.560 I say that because it's my favorite time of the year.

01:53:53.720 We get reflective.

01:53:55.660 We count our blessings.

01:53:58.180 People tend to be a little nicer to each other.

01:54:00.400 I love the way Christmas affects everyone.

01:54:08.960 And I really do wish we could start it earlier and carry it on throughout the year.

01:54:14.840 Our problems don't change.

01:54:17.040 The important issues in this country are not changing.

01:54:20.040 The government is still shut down.

01:54:21.820 We still have, you know, the economy to worry about and the pullout in Syria and the changes in the White House.

01:54:29.920 But isn't it nice that there's something now that's going on that puts a lot of that in a perspective where we can drop our guards a little bit and wish someone a Merry Christmas that we've been battling with politically for a long time or otherwise.

01:54:45.060 One of my friends from youth is a very liberal guy who happens to also be Jewish.

01:54:55.680 I wish him a happy Hanukkah every year and he wishes me a Merry Christmas.

01:54:59.800 When we talk to each other, it is nothing but great things.

01:55:03.400 But we fight like crazy when it comes to politics.

01:55:05.840 But we never lose a sense of respect for each other.

01:55:09.660 So my wish for you this Christmas is that you would have peace and joy.

01:55:16.940 And if you're like me, the celebration of the birth of the Savior.

01:55:23.600 So until the 26th, I'm going to enjoy the time with my family here in Florida.

01:55:29.960 I hope that you're enjoying your time with people you love.

01:55:33.040 From the bottom of my heart, I wish you all a very, very Merry Christmas.

01:55:37.200 And thanks to everyone here.

01:55:38.820 This is the Glenn Beck Program.

01:55:40.580 God bless.

01:55:41.060 You're listening to Glenn Beck.

The Glenn Beck Program - December 24, 2018

'President Trump's Scorecard' ｜ Guest Host： Mike Broomhead ｜ 12⧸24⧸18

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