The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | 6/10/26

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

Glenn analyzes the horrifying attempted beheading of a man in Ireland. Glenn lays out some concerning facts that show that despite being the most connected, younger generations are experiencing a lone...liness epidemic. Glenn gives three warnings about the Left’s support for controversial Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, today is a really good best of podcast. You don't want to miss any of it. I start with a Carmelo story out of Texas and what it means. But really what it means, how do we get here? And how do we stop this from happening to our kids? I spoke a lot about this in several different parts of the show today. But we're focusing on how did we get here? Then also, the Belfast stab, because we're talking. talking about two stabbings. We're talking about Carmelo stabbing in the United States and the attempted beheading of an Irish citizen and the nonsense that's going on there. What is the solution? What are we missing? And Graham Platner, he wins. He is now the official Democratic nominee. And I give the Democrats and really all of us three specific warnings on this.
Starting point is 00:00:56 And all three of them should be listened to. All this and more on today's podcast. Father's Day is coming up. It's right around the corner. And every year we all go through exactly the same exercise. We try to find a gift for dad, even though most dads spend their whole lives, you know, insisting they don't need anything. The best gifts aren't usually the flashiest ones.
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Starting point is 00:01:56 American dash giant. com slash Glenn. Hello, America. You know we've been fighting every single day. We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you. We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it. But to keep this fight going, we need you. Right now, would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast? Give us five stars and lead a comment because every single review helps us break through Big Tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth.
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Starting point is 00:02:58 You're listening to us in New York City. Stan, welcome. Glad you're here. Hey, who's this, Dylan? Yes, it is, sir. Oh, pleasure to be speaking with you do. Thank you. Thanks for taking my call.
Starting point is 00:03:14 Yeah, I wanted to comment on your segment you were just doing about the stabbing in Texas. Yeah. Yeah, I just, I'm a black guy, right? And, you know, I just want to say, first of all, that, you know, all black communities don't feel the same. I hope people. I know. Yeah, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of, you know, weird, Stan, because it's like not all white people think the same.
Starting point is 00:03:41 Why don't all black people think the same? I would imagine. You know, people tend to group and tend to think that that's the case, but it's, but it's really not. You know, people are individuals. You know, collectively, tell you the truth, we're all Americans. So truthfully and so we all need to stop the ball. You know, we're all Americans.
Starting point is 00:04:04 Let's just stop the crap. It's really ridiculous, you know. and because let me tell you, had that been, had that scenario been reversed, or it would have been a big, it would have been a, you know, that would have been a big, you know, and, you know, too, it just seems like either way it goes, the race car is always pulled, and that's always an issue, you know, we, but you know what, Stan, I think that, you know, because I said, I hope that, you know, what we're seeing are just a few NGOs, and a few people that really don't get it.
Starting point is 00:04:40 And I believe because there wasn't a big uprising yesterday in Texas, that that's not the way the black, the majority of the black community feels. Some do, some don't. But, you know, maybe we are getting past this. Maybe this is a sign that we're getting past it a little bit. This is maybe a baby step in the right direction. Thank you, Stan.
Starting point is 00:05:00 I appreciate it, especially hearing common sense coming out of New York City. You know, we have two knife attacks, and that's what everybody is talking about. And these knife attacks were not supposed to notice a pattern, I think. We were just talking about in Texas, you know, Carmelo Anthony, convicted of first-degree murder, 35 years for stabbing, verbal spat, we got it. Now, what happens next? Jury took two and a half hours, evidence is clear.
Starting point is 00:05:33 But across the ocean, there is another knife attack that everybody's talking about. happened in Belfast. That's Northern Ireland. Just days ago, I don't know if you saw it. It was horrible. June 8th, a 30-year-old Sudanese asylum seeker. They're still not sure where he's from. But he was charged with attempted murder after a brutal knife attack on a local man in his 40s, Stephen Ogleby. And we have the video of him now on the ground, just hacking at this guy's throat. It is horrible.
Starting point is 00:06:07 Straddling the guy on the ground, slashing his head and his neck, trying to hack his head off. Victim lost his left eye, suffered devastating wounds to his face, his neck and his back. He's still fighting for his life in the hospital. He's not dead yet.
Starting point is 00:06:23 Now, so what happened? Well, I think you're starting to see the Bubba effect in Ireland. Protests erupt all across Belfast, fires burn, vehicles, clashes. Because it's years of frustration now. boiling over. And it was bad because what have I told you in the Bubba effect?
Starting point is 00:06:42 What is the Bubba effect? The government has screwed things up. Bubba goes in. He thinks he's going to take vengeance on a Muslim. He kills a sheik because he's wearing a turban, even though Muslims don't wear a turban. And everybody's like, Baba, what did you do? And they know they have to punish Bubba. They know he has to go to jail.
Starting point is 00:06:59 But the federal government comes in and they're like, no, back off. we know Bubba did wrong, but we'll take care of that, not you, you're the cause of it. So what are you seeing in Belfast? They went and they set fires at houses that supposedly were for immigrants. Some immigrants are, you know, they're not Muslim, they're not from Africa, whatever, and they were standing outside, go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, doesn't matter. You've enraged the mob. and the world wants to talk about isolated incidents
Starting point is 00:07:33 and then far right group unrest. Let me tell you what's really happening here. Everything you're seeing, these are horrors, they're downstream from progressive policies that have weakened our kids, they have erased our borders, erased our history, erase common sense, and punished anybody who dares notice the consequences.
Starting point is 00:07:54 We here in America have raised generations now without any clear identity. I'm going to get into this next hour. You've got to listen to next hour. No moral guidelines, no self-control, no personal responsibility. Race has been weaponized by politicians to divide us instead of uniting us under one creed.
Starting point is 00:08:15 Kids don't know who they are anymore. So a disagreement over a seat and a tent escalates immediately to murder. We have sown entitlement. We have sown grievance. and we're now reaping the knives in schools and parking lots. In Belfast, cross the UK, Europe, same globalist mindset open the floodgates. Diversity is our strength.
Starting point is 00:08:40 Since when? Unity is our strength. Coming together, even though we're diverse people, coming together under one principle, that's a strength. Imagine having an army and going, you know what, these guys are all going to do whatever they want. They're all from different armies and they're all from different things. we're just going to let them do what they want.
Starting point is 00:09:00 Diversity is our strength. They'd be slaughtered on the field. Then the people who are preaching this garbage to us, brand-concerned citizens as racist for pointing out the obvious. You know, not every arrival comes to assimilate, to melt into Western society, to respect our laws and customs.
Starting point is 00:09:20 Not every incident is about race. We've seen the spikes in knife crime, grooming gangs, rapes, violence, authorities that downplay or deny and then accuse the people who are saying, wait a minute, this is my neighborhood, accuse them of being racist. And let me just talk about beheadings. Because I don't know the last time you saw somebody in the street trying to hack somebody's head off. But I looked it up.
Starting point is 00:09:44 England hasn't had beheadings since 1747. We weren't even a country. And the guy that they beheaded was executed for treason. So 1747 was the last time people were beheaded in Great Britain. until the mass migration from certain Muslim majority countries brought the ideology and the blades with it. I have now seen in the last five years two people on the streets of England.
Starting point is 00:10:14 One was beheaded. He was a soldier. Gee, I wonder what that was. And now this one where they tried to cut the guy's head off. Gee. And the press is like, I don't know. We don't have a probable cause. Probable cause? probable cause. We don't know the cause, but you don't know the probable cause? I know it was probably rooted in that guy's culture. Probable cause. I mean, it could be the cultural class rooted in
Starting point is 00:10:51 Islamic patterns of violence that have no place in Western society. That's probable, isn't it? I mean, good. Enough is enough. Enough is enough. People are rising up because the elites ignored them for too long. If you keep telling people that they are stupid, bigoted, far right, just for preferring safe streets and a coherent community where their children aren't continually raped,
Starting point is 00:11:21 and you, and, and they just don't want imported chaos because they got enough chaos. in their lives. We have enough problems with crime, with Americans. We don't need to bring more people in that are criminals, that want to behead people. You know, towns just didn't slide into third world violence by
Starting point is 00:11:41 accident. It happened when leaders prioritized open borders and brought the third world in. And then they added political correctness over integration and vetting over the national interest.
Starting point is 00:11:57 I'm telling you, Britain does not have a civil war yet, but you are at the, you are at the Bubba effect in Great Britain now. And if the elites keep denying reality and blaming the native population instead of confronting failed policies, they're lighting the fuse themselves. Victims are being stabbed here in America, nearly beheaded in the streets of Great Britain, their own citizens. Aren't these the people that our governments are sworn to protect? You're not very kind. This isn't about kindness. This is suicide. Suicide by compassion without any wisdom at all.
Starting point is 00:12:40 What do you say? We plant the flag deep in the heart of truth. Borders exist for a reason. Assimilation isn't optional. Here in America, self-control and moral clarity are not relics, their survival. I mean, look how far we have fallen. Look at what our society has become over the last 20 years.
Starting point is 00:13:10 We weren't like this before. We were not like this. What has changed? Oh, I don't know. The progressive nonsense. And I think our children deserve a better future than knife fights. Our neighborhoods deserve better than imported tribal violence. Here's the good news.
Starting point is 00:13:35 All of these things, they provide an opportunity for us to wake up. When people see that guy on the street in Belfast where the guy is hacking at his neck, it provides a chance for everyone to wake up. Now, I think the people are awakened. People in Great Britain, they do not have a Martin Luther King example. They don't.
Starting point is 00:13:59 Their example is Gandhi, but Gandhi used it against the English, so they're not really happy with Gandhi. They don't have that example. They only have Christ and Christ. Christ is almost dead in Great Britain. There is no real church in Great Britain. It's starting to revive a little bit, but it's on the ropes.
Starting point is 00:14:21 These people are not going to go for a Martin Luther King. There is no understanding of that over there. If we can reject the division, we can restore real accountability, we can secure our homes, and remember who we are under God, then perhaps these tragedies are not going to be in vain. Because we can still choose life, we can still choose order, we can still choose courage over chaos. You know, they're calling the one guy who stopped the beheading a hero.
Starting point is 00:14:57 And I find that kind of sad. It's true, but there are a lot of people standing around just taping it with their phone. What do you say? You put the phone down. Now, I understand if it's one person, I get it. but if there's lots of people standing around, why don't you, does no one say,
Starting point is 00:15:16 hey guys, let's stop videotaping, or you, you videotapes so we have it on record, and the rest of us, let's go stop that guy from being beheaded. Personal responsibility in all things. All we have to do is choose wisely. We haven't been doing that lately,
Starting point is 00:15:35 but I think that time is coming quickly. The hour is late, America. Choose wisely. We get fired up during the campaign season. We volunteer. We donate. We vote. And then when the election is over, we go back to our lives and assume the people we elected will handle the rest. How's that working out for us? The other side never stops.
Starting point is 00:15:53 They don't take years off. They don't wait for the next election cycle. They understand that culture is shaped every day by the institutions, organizations, and businesses that receive our support. And that is one of the reasons I talk to you about Patriot Mobile so often. Yes, they provide excellent wireless service. You get the coverage on all three major networks, unlimited data. you know, mobile hotspots, international roaming, customer sport right here in America.
Starting point is 00:16:15 All of that stuff, it's better than with the big guys. You can keep your phone number, keep your phone, get a new one, whatever you want. But they take a portion of their profits and they donate it to organizations that defend the values
Starting point is 00:16:27 that help make this country great in the first place. So join me in this mission. Patriotmobile.com slash Beck. 972 Patriot. Use the promo code Beck for a free month of service. Patriotmobile.com slash back. 972 Patriot. which today. Now back to the podcast. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Starting point is 00:16:48 So we heard about Carmelo and the stabbing. We've seen our society, our classrooms, our kids, just start unhinging and self-mutilating and suicide and all of these things. What's happening to us? If you're a parent or a grandparent, I want you to listen carefully. here. We are a people that have misplaced our own story. We have lost the thread of who we are and how we got here. Humans must have a story. And the story they're being fed to replace that is just of grievance and anger and revenge. That's not healthy. Do yourself a favor. Ask somebody under 25. Heck, ask them under 30, 35. Tell me. me the American story. Most people can't do it. On the last national history exam, 13% of
Starting point is 00:17:58 eighth graders came out proficient. 13. They're in school currently. 13. Four in 10 couldn't clear the bottom bar, which was, we're going to set a document out in front of you. Tell us anything about it. They couldn't do it. And you can guess what those documents were, right? The civic scores fell for the first time since they started keeping record in 1998. We are raising a generation that cannot explain the country they're standing in. And it's not just the story that is thinning out. It is everything that used to hold a person in place. Stories, your family holds you in place.
Starting point is 00:18:43 The church holds you in place. A church is used to anchor a town. Fewer than half of us now belong to a congregation. Gallup has its lowest measure since they started asking this question in 1937. Then, friendships, they used to hold you in place. In 1990, three percent of Americans said they had no close friend at all. 3%. No close friend at all.
Starting point is 00:19:15 That's now 12%. Since 1990, we didn't drift apart slowly. we hollowed out in one generation. So, of course, we're lonely. Surgeon General said that it's an epidemic of loneliness. He gave a body count. He said isolation does to a person, to a human body, roughly what smoking 15 cigarettes a day does.
Starting point is 00:19:42 Loneliness. Now, it used to be that the loneliest people in America were the old people. Not now. it's the under 30s, the most wired, the most connected, the most in-touch generation that has ever drawn breath is also the most alone human beings have ever produced. Hang on just a second. Try to hold all of that in your head at once and then say, what do you think's happening to our kids? no shared story, emptied out churches,
Starting point is 00:20:17 emptied out clubs, a friendship, drought, a loneliness that doctors are calling a health emergency. Now, picture being born into that. You don't know all the stuff
Starting point is 00:20:28 that you've known in the past. Picture that country being handed to you one day. You don't even know where you are. You have no map. You have no name for who your people are. There's no seat saved at any table for you. You just have a screen in your hand and a thousand strangers glad to tell you who you ought to be.
Starting point is 00:20:50 That's the ground our kids are standing on. They didn't crack it. Don't blame them. They didn't crack it. They inherited this. And it's exactly why, out of everything I could talk about, I want to talk about them. Because we all know stuff, but we may forget from time to time. Kids don't know who they are.
Starting point is 00:21:11 They don't. We think they do, but try to remember all the things that you used to think about, yourself. They're not supposed to know who they are at 19. They're not supposed to know who they are at 16. Certainly not at 11, and that's how young this starts now. 11 is starting to be old. Identity is not something kids have. It's something that kids build piece by piece, and they build it after whatever is reflected back at them. Here's what's changed since we were growing up. When you and I were building ourselves, the mirrors were our friends. Remember?
Starting point is 00:21:50 What did your mom used to always say? Show me your friends. I'll show you your future. It was our friends. It was our family. It was a coach. It was a teacher. It was a pastor.
Starting point is 00:21:59 Today, your daughter is 12 years old, and she's holding a mirror in her hand eight or nine hours every day. More waking hours than she spends in any classroom or doing anything else. she's looking at that mirror. It's actually worse than a mirror. The phone, the feed, the algorithm, the shows she watches, the influencers she follows, what she hears at school.
Starting point is 00:22:24 This mirror is actually talking back to her, whispering the same question, this is who you are, right? This is who you are. This is who you are, right? Now, some of that noise is just noise. Companies trying to sell her things. Fine, we grew up with that as well.
Starting point is 00:22:40 but some of the voices reaching your kids, they are not random. Okay, you've got people who know exactly what they're doing. They have a vision for who your kid should become. They're patient, and they didn't ask your permission. They don't care about you. I'm telling you, stop assuming that everything coming through that screen and that classroom door is neutral. It isn't neutral at all.
Starting point is 00:23:12 So picture it. A kid, younger than you think, still under construction, swimming in a sea, an ocean of a thousand voices. And then one of those voices steps forward and offers the whole package, finished identity. Here's who you are. Here's your people. Here's your club. Here's what you stand for. Do you understand now how that lands?
Starting point is 00:23:37 Why that lands with kids? Kids, the kid doesn't feel like they're joining. something, they feel like they're finally becoming someone. That's the hook. Oh, you're going to join the club for, you know, because you're by or you want to be trans. You're joining a club and all your friends are there and you're accepted and you're cool. And the hook is set into your kid the deepest when your kid is lost, when they're cut from the team, when they're dumped, when they're left out of the group chat, when you move to a new town, a new schools. Nobody's save them a seat. You know how that feels, even at your age. When a kid feels invisible,
Starting point is 00:24:20 a ready-made identity, stop becomes attractive and becomes irresistible. Because they're looking for a shore. And the people I want to warn you about the determined ones, they know all of this. They're not looking for your kid at their best. They're looking for your kid at his loneliness, the loneliest. Don't kid yourself that the one, my kids are fine. My kids are really because a lot of them are hurting you just can't see it you don't remember and here's the other half of this trap you've seen this movie over and over again our kids have never seen this movie before we've watched movements rise and fall our whole lives we we know things are going to constantly change we know the smell of it they don't they can't spot the bad movie yet the group that says sure you belong over here
Starting point is 00:25:12 but hand your doubt over at the door. Stop questioning. Stop pushing back. That one thing, that one group that promises to transform your kid and all they have to do is just obey. Just obey. Just fit in. That's the bind. The poll is stronger on the young.
Starting point is 00:25:36 The danger is harder for them to see. And the recruiters now have to have to not. go out and search everywhere. They just, they find the recruit right there. It's in their pocket. Your gut might say, make a list. Good groups are here, bad groups are here, block this app, ban that channel, switch schools.
Starting point is 00:26:01 Look, you use your judgment, you're the parent, you know your kids. But you're not going to be able to list your way out of this. Some of these movements are harmless. Some are propaganda. Some are extraordinarily dangerous. your kid's vulnerability is identical for all of those categories because the weakness was never in the movement. The weakness is in the normal unfinished kid and the normal lonely moment that is now not normal, or it's becoming normal, at epidemic proportions.
Starting point is 00:26:37 And it goes wherever they go. You can't pre-screen the whole world. So I got a couple of ideas, and I want you to actually write this down, if you're following me on this, write these two things down. First one, give them a place where they belong. And more importantly, where they belong, where they can sit and disagree, and it's allowed. Okay? Your dinner table.
Starting point is 00:27:04 Your church is even better. You disagree. I don't know. I have a question about this. Good. Question, question, question, question. Question with boldness, even the very existence of God. For ever be a God, he'd much surely rather honest questioning over blinding.
Starting point is 00:27:17 folded fear. Yes, question. Because if the only place you're offering your kid belonging is a place that demands their silence, they will pay that price. And when they're hurting, when they've gone quiet and pulled away, that's not a moment to give them space. That's the moment to move towards them because somebody's going to fill that void in your kid. And the only question on the table is who. second thing, tell them about the trap. Tell them. Share this monologue. Talk to them like they're adults because they understand a lot more. Speak in plain English. If anyone ever tells you that you have to stop doubting in order to belong, run, run from them. If they promise that they will transform you and all that you have to do for payment is be compliant. That's the tell. Tell them this now before. they need it because they will need it if they haven't already. And when they do, you need them to be able to recognize it on site. You cannot bubble wrap your kids. You can't vet every voice that reaches them. That world is long gone. But you can make sure that when they walk out your door,
Starting point is 00:28:37 their eyes are wide open and they have a home worth coming back to. Listen to your kids. encourage them to question, even you. Oh, that's going to be so hard. I hated the teenage kids. I hated the teenage years with my kids. I hated it. But they are, you know, God is just a genius. Do you know why our kids get so nasty when they're teenagers?
Starting point is 00:29:08 Because God needs them to find out who they are, and they can't do it if they're living with you and they're 20. So there's this natural thing that says, I just, you don't know anything. You're stupid. That's good. That's good. You want them to have that because that means they're questioning everything and they want to find who they are. You have to make that safe for them. Because if you are fighting that all the time, it will only get worse and then they won't. listen to you anymore. They barely listen. If they're, you're like my kids, they barely listen to you anyway. But you've got to make sure that you are a place where you can, they can tell you
Starting point is 00:29:58 anything. And believe me, my, my son and my daughter's have told me things that I'm like, oh my gosh, don't react. Don't react. You ever have you ever heard you kid tell you anything like that? Where you're like, oh, oh, okay. Yeah, that's a big deal. And inside you're like, Don't react that way. Okay. All right. I understand that. I need some time. Can I think on that? Let's talk about that some more. That's really interesting. I'm glad you told me that. No, I'm not inside. No, I'm not. I didn't want to know that. I didn't want to know that.
Starting point is 00:30:32 Yes, you do. Because they are so lonely. They are looking on who they are. If you can't help them find safe places to help moat. My father said to me when I was young, I've said this a million times, son, the two most powerful words in any language is I am, and it's usually followed by a blank. I am blank. I am happy. I am sad.
Starting point is 00:30:57 I am a monster. I am worthless. I am great. Whatever it is. I am is usually followed with a blank. And if you don't fill that in, I'll never forget the way he said it. He leaned into me and he said, believe me, there are all kinds of people that are just waiting to fill it in for you.
Starting point is 00:31:18 You make the choice on what you fill that blank with and be very careful because that's who you will be. Share that with your kids. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Last night in May, a Democratic Party got the candidate and had been told it could not afford to lose. Graham Platner.
Starting point is 00:31:48 We know him as an oyster farmer. He is a combat veteran. He is an outsider. And he beat the establishment's own recruit. Janet Mills, she was the governor. He beat her so thoroughly that she quit the race weeks before the votes even were counted. She's still got 20% of the vote.
Starting point is 00:32:08 That means 20% of Democrats voted for a hat that is not going to be the senator over this guy. and now he is the nominee, the official nominee for the Democrats against Susan Collins. Collins is the only Republican senator that is sitting in a state that did not vote for Donald Trump for Democrats trying to take back the Senate. Maine is the doorway and they think Platner is the key. Well, there's just one problem. Actually, there are several problems, but let's start with this one.
Starting point is 00:32:38 There is the tattoo that he covered up. It is the Totenkov, that is the deathhead that the SS-1, that the SS wore on their caps and they had the same tattoos on their bodies. That's how, I mean, if you were a member of the SS, that's why you went to prison most likely afterwards because you had the tattoo. And everybody knows it.
Starting point is 00:32:59 And that is happening. They're turning a blind eye to that at a time when this just happened on the subway in New York. Listen to what this woman said to another woman, who she just, I guess, assumed was Jewish. Listen to this. So Jews, Jews are eating kids. Did you guys smell the kids?
Starting point is 00:33:21 Yeah. Don't touch me. Don't touch me. Do you want to eat it in kids? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's okay for her to eat a kid, but I can't choke her down? I was just assaulted. Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah. Jews are eating kids. It's okay for her to eat children, but I can't choke her out. At least there were some sane people on the subway with her. But we're entering insane times. You don't mess with this.
Starting point is 00:33:51 Then, let's look at the old posts. There was a report in the New York Times. Remember, the New York Times, their paper, not ours, which three women who used to be in relationships with him described the behavior they called toxic and unsettling. One of them said that he physically restrained her in a room until she was in his word calm. You're not leaving until you're calm.
Starting point is 00:34:16 Wow. And the party is lining up behind him. This is the Me Too party. So yes, he's done these things, but I mean, he can win. He can win. The stakes are too high. I mean, yes, he's done these things, but, you know, this time it's different. No, no, no.
Starting point is 00:34:33 Remember what I told you last week. Everything you say before the word but is what your principles are. what you believe. Everything after the but is what you're willing to trade those principles for. Okay. Yes, he's got a Nazi swastika, but we have to win the Senate. Okay, I want to give you three warnings. One of them is political. One is about a movement and what it becomes when it makes this trade, and the other is very, very old, older than our country, older than the idea of our country even. And I promise you, by the end, you will see that it's all the same warning bell. So let me start with the political one. And I want to aim right back at, you know,
Starting point is 00:35:14 the Republicans first because, you know, the only way you can gain trust with people is when you aim at your own side first. So let me do that. Republicans, they have walked into the same fire and this same trap over and over and over again and they get burned every single time. Roy Moore in Alabama, 2017. Party rallied around a man drowning in allegations because the seat mattered. They lost the seat, red as state in America, went to Democrat. Todd Akin in Missouri, Richard Mordock in Indiana, two winnable seats in 2012 thrown into the ditch, not over policy, but over the candidate. Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, the insurgent who knocked off the electable guy in the
Starting point is 00:35:57 primary and then just lost in the general and just went away. 2020, Mitch McConnell stood up and said the quiet part out loud, he said it was candidate equality. And I don't like Mitch McConnell, but he's right. He admitted his own voters had handed the other team a majority by nominating people who couldn't close the deal. There's a body of research behind this, you know, a scandal stain or an extreme nominee reliably runs behind in what a plain generic candidate of the same party would have gotten in the same state. I don't know if it's going to happen in Maine, but the party always tells itself, the movement's energy.
Starting point is 00:36:41 It's going to outrun the baggage. But the baggage wins the race almost every time. That's the political warning. And it's bipartisan. And it's earned. The seat you believe you cannot afford to lose is the exact seat you're most likely, you're most tempted to likely throw away.
Starting point is 00:36:59 Because need makes you stupid. And you'll talk yourself into a candidate that you would have laughed out of the room a year ago when the stakes felt, smaller. Now, here's a second warning. And this one's harder because it's not about strategy. It's about the soul.
Starting point is 00:37:17 For a decade, one word has been used. It is an artillery shell that has been fired by the American left over and over and over again. And that shell is Nazi. It's been
Starting point is 00:37:33 pointed at parents, at school boards, it's been pointed at Catholics. Anyone who wouldn't get in line, for their political viewpoint, they've been called a Nazi. It's like this universal solvent. Pour it on your opponent and you never
Starting point is 00:37:49 have to argue with them again because you don't debate Nazis, you destroy them, right? I have seen good people get that label welded to their foreheads for the crime of just disagreeing. And now the people who have used that as a
Starting point is 00:38:05 shell made that word, it's sword, is, wait, what? You're, you got a guy who has a deathhead tattoo, covered it up after, but he's, he stands accused by women who knew him and called him frightening, controlling, and he's got a deathhead, wait, wait, what? And you're swallowing it? What happened to the artillery shell? They're doing it because he's useful. When you excuse your own people in what you damned in everyone else, you've just confessed that your use of Nazi was never a principle.
Starting point is 00:38:41 You're not actually worried about Nazis. You use that as a weapon, and that's it. A principle is something you hold even when it costs you the election. A weapon is something you drop the second it gets too heavy to swing. A movement that figures out, it can do this, that virtue is just a tool you pick up,
Starting point is 00:39:03 up to hit the other guy and set down when it's inconvenient. That movement loses its soul long before it ever loses the vote. And I believe that has already happened. That's why you have the problem with the Democratic Party. They don't have anything they actually believe in except win. Everything else is a tool. The temptation to weaponize your own goodness, that's human, not partisan. It's human. And the day we start excusing our own side, that's the day to be afraid. Because the day we've become the thing
Starting point is 00:39:38 we've warned everyone about is the last day for us, too. Democrats just went through this with Eric Swalwell. I mean, despicable, horrible human being, discarded, disgrace. The minute he stopped being useful. And they think they're going to do this with Platner. The minute he becomes no longer a use, They think he can get rid of. But, you know, remember, with Nazis, they've tried that before and it didn't work.
Starting point is 00:40:03 Now, let me give you the third one. The third warning, this one goes back 2,400 years to Athens. I want to tell you about a guy you probably've never heard of. Most gifted man of his generation in Athens. His name was Al-Sulbidiya, Sulbiades. Solbiades, that's it. Al-Sulbiades.
Starting point is 00:40:26 Sorry. I don't speak great. Picture this guy, charismatic. Think of him as the most charismatic you guys have ever met and then multiply it because he's also beautiful. He's famously rich, he's brilliant, he's brave in battle. He was a student of Socrates. The two of them had saved each other's lives on the battlefield.
Starting point is 00:40:50 And when he shows up at the Olympic Games, he didn't just enter one chariot team. He entered seven. and he took first place, second place, and fourth place, in front of all of Greece, just to make the point, no one alive can touch me. So Athens sees this guy in there like, this guy is fabulous. He's great.
Starting point is 00:41:11 He's the future. And they were right to be dazzled. He really was that good. But that's also what made him so dangerous. Because a mediocre man, you can dismiss. A brilliant one, you convince yourself you have to. have them. So at the moment, people decide it needs a man. It loses the one thing it has to keep, and that is the ability to judge him and dismiss him. So this guy goes in and he is talking to Athens
Starting point is 00:41:42 and he talks them into a great gamble of war, the Sicilian expedition. And you all know, you never take on the Sicilians. It's an enormous fleet and he sends it across the sea, to conquer Syracuse. The cautious men in Athens said, don't do it. But he is who he is. And he wins the argument. But on the eve of the fleet's departure,
Starting point is 00:42:11 Athens wakes up and they find across the whole city, in the dark, somebody had gone around smashing all the sacred statues, the urms, whatever they are, that stood at every door. And somebody went, did that. The city was horrified. suspicion fell on on this guy and his fast crowd and they knew it was him his enemies were clever but
Starting point is 00:42:35 that didn't stop him from sailing they just said uh let him go so they let him go and then recalled him to stand trial knowing that they had him okay here's where you learn who he really was rather than come home and face Athens he defects and he defects to sort of Sparta. That's the enemy of Athens. And he didn't just sit there. He handed Sparta the playbook to destroy his own city. He's not going to go back. Fortify this position in our territory, he says. Send aid to Syracuse. Both things happen. The great Sicilian expedition, his idea, ended in total annihilation. The Athenian army was destroyed. All of its generals executed. A generation of young men from Athens gone.
Starting point is 00:43:29 The man that Athens had needed so badly authored their own death. Now, you'd think that would be the end of it, but it wasn't because somebody still found him useful. They still found him useful. He wears out his welcome in Sparta because that's what these guys do. He was reportedly, I guess,
Starting point is 00:43:53 seducing the Spartan king's wife and then he fled to Persia. And then astonishingly, Athens takes him back. The fleet recalls him. He won them some victories. He sails home in 407, and he's a hero.
Starting point is 00:44:10 Didn't you just turn and, yeah. Then for the first time, things go wrong on his watch. And they turned on him again. And he went into exile again. And he died in a foreign land with his house and flames all around him murdered, some say,
Starting point is 00:44:27 at the request of the very people he'd served. Why am I telling you this story that happened in 407? Because the warning that history is handing the Democratic Party this week, it's handing this lesson and warning to all of us because none of us is too good to need the warning, or to not need the warning. Athens did not fall because it lacked talent. It fell because it could not stop reaching for the talented man
Starting point is 00:45:02 that they had every reason not to trust, but they had to win. They needed him so much to win. They never trusted him, never enough to follow him safely, and so he did the worst possible thing. It used him again and again. and then the using is what got them all killed.
Starting point is 00:45:28 So when a party stands out front of a flawed but dazzling candidate, whispering to itself, he's the only one that can win. Stakes are so high, this time it's different. Understand this has happened over and over and over again in history. This is not a moment of strength. This is the precise sound a civilization makes right before it decides that the man it can't afford to trust is the man it can't afford to lose. The statues came down the night in Athens,
Starting point is 00:46:00 but they let him go anyway because they needed him to win. Listen to me carefully. Watch what gets covered up in the night. And watch who sails him anyway. They are destructive.

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