The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guest: Ryan Mauro | 12/16/25

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

The FBI announced it had prevented a deadly terrorist attack that would have taken place on New Year's Eve by a radical group called the Turtle Island Liberation Front. Glenn speaks with Capital Research Center investigative researcher Ryan Mauro to discuss the seriousness of this potentially deadly attack. Glenn tells the story of the great Christmas truce during World War I, when German and British soldiers unanimously agreed to a ceasefire for the holiday. Glenn plays his latest AI Christmas song: "For a Night, We Were Human." Glenn analyzes the Christmas classic "It's a Wonderful Life" and how its message has only become more relatable over time.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yesterday, our DOJ and FBI busted and is prosecuting a few people out of California. The Turtle Island Liberation Front. What is that? Well, if you listen to this show, you heard about it, I think back in April for the first time. We've talked about it a couple of times. It's very, very, very dangerous. Ryan Morrow joins us because he's the guy who did all the research on it. And thank goodness the country is now waking up to this.

But we talk about what it is and what it means, why you have to pay attention, because there's something much deeper and more sinister, even than the attacks they had planned all across America, you know, on New Year's Eve. Also, the Christmas truce. It is a true story from World War II about something that I know of, this never happened in war before, an amazing story with the documentation. Also, a movie that we watch all the time at this time of the year. It actually was a giant failure and what the movie actually is trying to say to us.

It's a wonderful life. All of this and more on today's podcast. First, let me tell you about choosing life. Around the holidays, we talk a lot about hope, about new beginnings, about the value of every single life. I don't know. Price Child comes to mind. preborn puts those beliefs into every action, into action every single day

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Rate, review, share. Together, we'll make a difference. Thanks for standing with us. Now let's get to work. You're listening to the best of the glen. But it is one of the, I think one of the most historically important moments

in war to ever happen. I was lucky enough to be able to add to our collection just a few months ago. This, it is called the Christmas truce. The Christmas truce is something that happened in World War I, in 1914. And this is a very, very rare letter from one of the people, it's seven or eight pages long from one of the people that was there. And this is an eyewitness account, not years after.

This was written the day after it happened and sent to the guy's mom. And it tells the whole story, kind of, kind of. there's another letter from I think his name was Otto Hahn and he's German and he was actually there as well not actually on the field

but he played a different role I'll tell you about that here in a second but let me just read this letter it says Dear mother it was awfully good of you to send chocolate which arrived safely and went down very well indeed

I've just come out of the trenches again after spending Christmas day in them. If you imagine by any chance that we would have had a rotten Christmas, I can assure you you were very much mistaken. Now remember, the trenches are some of the worst places you can be. They're not, they're just killing people. They're just slaughtering people and nobody is advancing. And it just goes on and on and on and they're giant mud holes. He said, on Christmas Eve, it was chilly.

and we were shelling the German trenches, but then it stopped. There was a little rifle fire until about 5 p.m. when it became dark. It was Christmas Eve. We started singing carols and songs. We heard the Germans do the same. Then one of them pushed a Christmas tree

on top of their trench. After that, we decided we would light candles and lights. and put them on top of the trenches to cheer them up a bit and carry on some sort of, quote, I love this line, matey conversations with the enemy. Merry Christmas, one of us shouted. As things seemed to be going very well, we thought maybe we can get out of the trench and go up on top. Now, imagine the risk of this guy.

He said, four of us did this. imagine you're you're killing each other it's a killing field dead bodies of your friends are right on top of this trench and you think they just pushed up a christmas tree we've been singing christmas carols they've been singing christmas carols we just put candles up maybe four of us and these were highlanders so you know that the the highlanders you know they have matey conversations all the time. These are Scots that actually were the first to do it. So four of us got on top, and first we struck matches, which was received well by them on the other side. So then all of us got out, and we decided to hold a concert and dance out in the open. After this, a few men thought it

would be swell to shake hands and exchange cigars, cigarettes, and gingerbread with them. We called out to them. I met a few halfway between the trenches, and they were jolly good sports as well. I shook hands with a German officer. We spoke with them and exchanged small gifts. Chocolate, cigars, buttons. We shared stories from home and photographs. It seemed impossible that we were actually really enemies. We also had time, so we took it and buried our dead. We buried them together, with short prayers spoken in both languages. For a time, the war simply was not there. It was strange, very strange, because tomorrow we will have to shoot at one another again. It will be hard to shoot them now. That's the letter that we have at the now at the American Journey Experience Vault.

that I just acquired and will go into our clay pot project to save our history and to save what our civilization really was like. This is a moment here where Judeo-Christian values come to play a role. It's the healing power of Christmas and the message of Christmas that in the middle of this war, they stop and they're able to come out of the trench. They've just been killing each other. they come out of the trenches they stop here's what one german soldier wrote in another letter what i still believed to be madness just several hours ago i could now see with my own eyes one englishman was joined so soon by another they came towards us until he was more than halfway toward our trenches he's responding he's talking about the guy of the letter i just read to you

by which point some of our people had already approached them. None of us had our rifles. Between the trenches, the hated and the bitter opponents met around the Christmas tree, and we sang Christmas carols. I will never forget this sight for as long as I live. Listen to this line. One could see that the man, the human being, lives on, even if he knows nothing more in these days than killing.

Christmas 1914 will be unforgettable to me. I wanted to share this with you today for a couple of reasons. One, it's one of my favorite stories of Christmas. There have been a couple of movies made about this moment. This is the original letter that told the story that the movie makers used. but I wanted to tell you this story because it feels really dark at times. And it's in that darkness that the light really matters, that that candle really shone.

They lit matches. I mean, they're not close to each other. And there's barbed wire and dead bodies in between them. They light matches. And that light signaled something. That is the spark of, Christmas. That is the light of Christmas. That is what we built our whole civilization on. And you can say, yeah, but look at what happened in that war of, you know, World War I. It was

awful. The Germans gas, et cetera, et cetera. Well, the guy who wrote the German letter, the most famous German letter, he's actually a guy who was there. And he was on the chemical squad, if you will. He saw it deployed once and he asked for a transfer and he wrote to his wife and said, this is an abomination. This has got to stop. He stayed in Germany. He was one of the guys who got the Nobel Prize for splitting the atom, 1933, 37, 38, I don't remember. But he's one of the guys that got the Nobel Prize. And he never joined the ranks of the Nazis and never went to build the atomic bomb. He warned, you can't, you can't do this, he can't do this, can't do this. Is he a good guy or a bad guy?

He's really, he's, he's really neither, really. I think he's something rarer. He's a man that understood too late that knowledge is never neutral. It's what you do with the knowledge. So what are we doing with our knowledge now? And what are we doing in this holiday season? Are we finding those striking matches?

Are we looking for the light? We learned a couple of things, a couple of things this week in my life tomorrow is the last TV show I'll be doing the last Wednesday night special on Blaze TV and I urge you to join me but it'll be the last and kind of a end of a I don't know end of a chapter and we also announced yesterday that Stu is going to be leaving the show shortly after the new year I have been begging him borrowing him bribing him threatening his family, doing everything I could to keep him with me for 27 years.

And he has finally found something that he really wants to do. And how can I possibly stop him? I want to support him in that. So he'll be leaving. But I want you to know, while there is an ending to some of these things, there is a match strike in January. and I call it the torch. And let me bring it back to the history here.

You know, when you read a letter like that or you hear somebody tell a story like that, you realize something uncomfortable. History is not living in textbooks, and it's not about dates and memorizing the date and the name. It lives in breath. It lives in cold hands. It lives in fear and in longing.

And a letter like that is not data that you should remember. 1914, that letter is a heartbeat that has long gone, long been silenced, and I have been spending years collecting things like this, letters and artifacts, and moments that were never meant to survive. But if you want people to learn history, you can't just tell them what happened. They have to feel it. Let me tell you about our sponsor.

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anti-capitalist anti-government group that calls for violence against the United States and its officials. The plan allegedly plotting an attack on two U.S. companies with improvised explosive devices. This New Year's Eve. We don't know what those companies were, but it was not good. The Turtle Island Liberation Front. Turtle Island Liberation Front. Ever heard of Turtle Island? That's what the indigenous people

call America. Turtle Island. That's what they call the North America. This is a far-left pro-Palestinian anti-government and anti-capitalist group. When I say it was pro-Palestinian, I want you to understand.

this. That is not their main thing. They are anti-American and anti-capitalist. This is part of what's called the Red Green Alliance, and we'll explain that here in just a second. But they were preparing to conduct a series of bombings against multiple targets in California beginning on New Year's Eve. They also planned to target ICE agents and vehicles. The four were arrested. They faced federal charges of conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive advice. This was called Operation Midnight Sun, and they were going to plant backpacks and pipe bombs and complex IEDs to detonate simultaneously at multiple locations, targeting U.S. companies on New Year's Eve at midnight.

It's considered, obviously, a terrorist attack. Their searches of their homes uncovered Turtle Island. Liberation Front posters like Death to America and Death to Ice. You know, one of the funny things that I read was, this is from their Facebook post. Little known extremist group has paraded around six slogans like death to America and insisted that the United States' mere existence is inherently violent. Now, this is what they posted on Facebook.

When we say death to America and call for an end to colonization, it doesn't mean the displacement or harm of non-indigenous citizens. Wait, you were targeting ICE officials and you were going to blow things up. I do not think it means what you think it means, but maybe that's just me. Sorry, thought of Rob Reiner there for a second. It's sad to lose Rob Reiner with, anyway. Let me go to Ryan Moore. Ryan is with us now, a researcher and joining us at the torch as somebody who's just really going to sharpen us on all of our warnings and all of our research into these radical groups.

Welcome. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. So it was in April, I think you were on, and you said, Glenn, you have to pay attention. One of the groups you have to pay attention to is Turtle Island Liberation Front. And here it is, almost exactly what you said would happen is happening now. Right. So what had happened was, is that with my colleagues at the Capital Research Center, we had mapped out basically the entire anti-Israeli extremist movement,

over 150 groups, and that was with limited time. So it's much bigger than that. But one of the things I saw in their ecosystem, and this just shows how we live in completely separate worlds, is that this term, Turtle Island, was commonplace. So whether you're a communist or an Islamist or you're an anarchist or whatever, you would refer to the U.S. as the so-called United States or Turtle Island and say it's occupied and is liberated just like Palestine. And so they would refuse to say Israel, they say Palestine. They refuse to say the United States and say Turtle Island.

Why? And it's because of this conception out there that I'm not even sure is that accurate, that the Native American tribes referred to the U.S. and Canada and Mexico as Turtle Island, because, because they believed that the continent was created on the back of a turtle. And then, and so the evil white settler capitalist came in and ruined everything, that's what it inherently was and so it's equivalent to Palestine. And so the conclusion of my study,

and I debuted some of the findings with you, and in fact, I think you were the only media outlet that actually made a point of this and got this, was that there's a certain level of diversity among these pro-terrorist. So what's the unifying factor, the theme? It's liberating Turtle Island. It's a way that's of calling for violence and the destruction of the U.S.,

just like they want to destroy Israel, but to do it in a way that goes over the heads of people, but people who understand the language know what it means. And it's frankly smart because of all the sympathy and the way American students have been taught about the history of the Native American tribes. So it taps into something where if you think that there's a lot of sympathy for Palestinian, the people that American, the youth, don't know anything about. Now imagine happening into what they feel about what happened to the Native Americans.

I will tell you, the left has been courting the Native Americans for a very long time because the right just hasn't paid attention to it at all. And so the left saw an opportunity, and they are deeply in, especially in the Navajo, deeply, deeply in with the left. or the left is deeply in bed with Navajo. And there is an opportunity to turn people very, very radical. And that's what you're talking about here. And, you know, when you say this is an anti-Israel thing or pro-Palestinian,

I want to make sure people understand, just as the Marxists were the ones who helped overthrow the Shah of Iran and bring the Ayatollah in, they were partners with the Islamists. The Islamists, and I think the Marxists too, they're not part of the same end game. They don't have the same end game in mind other than in that case the destruction of the Shah of Iran and freeing its people and having a revolution. When Iran was overthrown in 1979, within two years, 30,000 Marxists were. were either killed, jailed, or disappeared.

And this is the same kind of thing, this alliance with the indigenous people, with the Islamists, with Marxists, they're all going to sort that out later. They just want to kill us first. They want to overthrow the government first. Then they'll start eating each other. Do I have that right or wrong, Ryan? you have that right um they don't even bother talking about scenario too much because they just kind of feel like when you burn things to the ground what's natural and good will rise from the ashes and so uh the theme of turtle island is kind of the use that's why i called it the turtle island in taffata is kind of like was bringing together all of these ideologies but what uh we also talked about back in april and actually before that too uh was well what's the targeting strategy going to be uh and what we concluded was that it The campaign is going to broaden because they were openly, I was seeing in their communication,

they're saying, look, this Israel issue is going to go away. And they didn't want to say it. It was partially because Israel was kicking their butts so badly. But they said, this issue is going to not rally people anymore. What do we do? We need to become an anti-police movement. And to whatever degree we can broaden it out to be an anti-Zionist, anti-capitalist movement. And so you were able to tell what was the next stage?

It was going to be under the banner of Turtle Island. And they were going to target law enforcement. specifically ICE was the one that was most talked about, so that was able to be forecasted as well, but also companies that they can connect, even by some leap, to the Zionist infrastructure, because that way you're hitting all the themes, anti-police, anti-Zionists, anti-capitalists, Turtle Island and pro-Palestine. And that's exactly what this plot was doing. It actually keeps the fruition in a way that's much more vivid than I anticipated.

So although this plot was foiled, make no mistake about it. It is a marker in time for this new era, this new offensive that has begun. How likely is this going to be, how likely is this to become the next BLM movement? This, you know, Turtle Island liberation, you know, from, you know, from sea to sea, Turtle Island will be free kind of crap. I think it's extremely likely. The chances are far better than 50-50. In fact, I think it's inevitable it's going to get a lot of support just by people talking about saying,

well, what is this Turtle Island thing? Oh, the Native Americans, oh, well, there's this almost biblical narrative that follows this, where it was like the Turtle Island was the Garden of Eden, the capitalist, white colonists, white supremacists with their patriarch, came in and infected it like the snake. And then the Native Americans were, essentially, it's like a Jesus narrative at that point. Well, they died for our sin. and so now we need to restore the original garden of Vietnam. So sometimes they use that language specifically.

Most of the time it's just that type of theme, but that's kind of the emotional pull that comes in by tapping into that narrative. And by the way, one of the accounts that this specific terrorist group followed on social media was the Christian anarchists. Now, I know you've said in the past, you've noted how some of the anarchist language

went over even into the white supremacists. And people say, oh, if they think of anarchists, they just think of the far left. like, no, if you watch this, how this goes, like, that is the cycle. Like, there is a, I guess you can say right wing, but it's more like anarcho-capitalist anarchists that sometimes identifies Christian. And so this propaganda goes from the terrorists overseas governments to Turtle Island folks over to the Christian anarchists.

And then it cycles around. So this is all one seditionist movement. Do you think the Trump administration gets it? I mean, hats off to the FBI and Cash Patel for. you know, thwarting this and stopping this as they were in the desert beginning to assemble these bombs. Do you think the administration gets how deep this goes and is willing to do the things? I mean, Brian, you and I both know, the West is on the verge of being lost forever. If we don't wake up to this and we don't start calling, you know, calling evil by its name,

we are, we're going to lose. We're going to lose this. We're close to losing Europe. Well, three business days after you and I released, my report that I wrote about the $80 million that went from Soros' network to the pro-terror groups, it was reported that the government administration had launched the investigation, specifically naming the report that we released on the Charlie Kirk show

one week after he passed. So do they get it? I don't know it's possible to fully get it if we don't. Like, are they doing things? Yes. Can we help them do things? Yes. Remember that groups like the FBI and all them, they can't just collect intelligence on everyone's free speech protected activity.

But civilians can. That's where civilian researchers come in. And so that's what happened to the source report. We can collect all of that. We can make the case. And so does FBI know all of it? No, because we and the citizens having given them everything that they need. And so I think two things have to happen.

First, we need to put together a team to map out the Turtle Island and Safada and map this out so action can be taken. And the second thing is actually what I think you're doing with preserving history is very important here because the counter narrative is going to require us to use historical documents to tell the truth of everything that went on with the Native American tribes, the good, the bad, and the ugly, so that this type of simplistic hijacking of a biblical narrative for evil ends can't really happen for these anti-American tribes. end. Even if the perpetrators if it don't realize it's a biblical narrative, that's where it's coming from. It's a combination of the Garden of Eden's story

and the Jesus Christ story put together and framed for evil propaganda that even Satan is sometimes parrot. Ryan, I mean, we're supporting you. We're doing everything we can.

I want to make sure that others, because you run a non-profit, your research center, capital research center, a nonprofit and you you operate on donations. If you are interested in helping, what Ryan is doing, and this way I'm bringing him on the air a lot beginning next year and working closely with him,

because what he is finding, the research that he's doing is unlike anybody else's, and it's critical that it happens. If you happen to want to make a donation to a charity or to a 501C3, three, please consider Ryan's group. How do they contact you, Ryan? How do they give?

Well, I partner with Capital Research Center, who are excellent to donate to. So that's kind of like a research wing. And then also Ryan Morrow.com, which is my personal website, that's where my specific intelligence gathering group is also based. So I would say check out those two, because Capital Research Center is broader. But if you want to focus just on the Turtle Island countertremism stuff, then ryanmarrow.com is where people can contact me or make a donation so that we can, I mean, your fans can, like, they give me great intel, but I don't have the resources to

act on all of it. And so I'm trying to rectify that because you've gotten, you've got an intelligence gathering army behind you and it's time that we use it. Thank you so much, Ryan. I appreciate it. Ryan, Morrow.com, Ryan, M-A-U-R-O, Ryan-Morrow.com. they could use your support because we're about to turbo the research. You're listening to The Best of Glenn Beck. Need a little more? Check out the full show podcasts.

Anywhere you download podcasts. Let me tell you a story that you think you already know. It's about a movie that feels like it has been there our whole lives. It's like a tree in the town square or the hymn. You don't ever remember learning, but somehow you know it by heart. but this particular movie hasn't been around forever. It just seems like it was actually born out of failure. It was born out of exhaustion.

And it was born out of people who felt just like its lead character, George Bailey. It's a wonderful life has a fascinating story behind it. And it speaks volumes about us, our hope. our fears, our desires. The movie was made by Frank Capra, and it was right after World War II. Frank Capra had just come back. He didn't come home triumphant.

He came home a changed man. He had spent the war making film for the United States government, the war department, about why the West is worth saving. This film series are fantastic. It's called Why We Fight. and when he returned his old style of doing things,

the old machinery just didn't fit Hollywood anymore. So he started his own studio. He bet absolutely everything on it. And It's a Wonderful Life was supposed to be the movie that proved Frank Capra is still Frank Capra. And it nearly ruined him. The movie lost. money. Critics really didn't like it. They mocked how smaltzy it was. Audiences stayed home.

Jimmy Stewart, this was his first movie that he made when he came back home from the war. And this was his start. And between Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart, oh my gosh, you've got a massive hit, right? Nobody came. Nobody watched it. Jimmy Stewart, the most beloved man in America, gave a really raw, shaken, almost too real performance for people at the time. He wasn't the cheerful hero that is coming out of war as a victory. This was a man that was cracking under the weight of responsibility, a man who did everything right, but he still felt like he was a failure. Any of this sound familiar?

It was a story about what happened during the Depression and the crash of 29. Well, America had been living that forever. They had been living that since 29. They went through the long depression. Then they went through the war and the first thing out of war, they don't want to watch a movie about how depressing life can be. Okay. So it was a total failure. Film disappears. Goes into a vault. It's a noble misfire. Good idea. It just didn't land. Maybe wrong time. Maybe too schmaltzy. Then something weird happened.

Everybody forgot about it. And so the rights lapsed. There was no grand relaunch. There was no marketing genius, just a legal oversight that let the rights lapse. Enter Ted Turner. Ted Turner and Superstation TBS. Do you remember Superstation TBS when he had bought a bunch of stations across the country and he tied them all together, and then cable came in,

and his Superstation TBS became TBS, Turner. Well, he was looking on Superstation TBS. They needed some holiday programming, and they needed it cheap. And when I say cheap, what Ted really meant was free. We need a bunch of free programming that we can run all Christmas, okay? No rights, no royalties. What is out there? the vaults open up and lo and behold they find it's a wonderful life suddenly it appears in our life

and i don't know about you but i always thought it had been around forever i mean didn't seem like it was a new relaunch it was like hey have you heard about this new movie it just was there and on and we thought everybody knew about it nobody knew about it our grandparents probably didn't even know about it because it was a massive failure It's on afternoons, late nights, it's on morning. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. Black and white snow flickering in the living rooms as our kids are playing on the floor.

And we as adults are in the kitchen, half listening and half watching. And slowly, slowly, its message found us. It found us this time because America had changed. We weren't fresh from despair and we weren't fresh from victory. anymore. We weren't those people. It wasn't so close to us that we didn't want to look at us. Yes, we were tired, we were busy, we were stretched thin, but we were also a group now that measured our lives in promotions and in square footage and bank balances. We were starting to become a little Mr. Potter-like, and we didn't want to be Mr. Potter. And there on the screen,

is George Bailey standing on a bridge wondering, would the world be better without me? He's not a villain. He's not a loser. He's actually a really good man. He's the best of us, and that's why it still works. Think of all the happy endings that we have and everything else

and all the stories that we tell ourselves. This movie doesn't tell you that life is going to turn out the way you planned. This one tells you something much, much harder. that the measure of your life is probably going to be invisible to you while you're living your life. Because Clarence ain't coming down in his 1800s clothing and having a hot toddy with you. So you probably won't know the real measure of your life. And the biggest victories in your life don't come with applause. And the sacrifice, it usually doesn't feel heroic at the moment.

It just feels like sacrifice and Christ. Why me? Why me? Why don't I ever get the adventure that I planned my whole life? Remember, George never left Bedford Falls. He never becomes famous. He just stays. And he shows up. And he keeps his promises. And he holds people together. What is the real, what's the real miracle of the film? There's not Clarence. It's not the bells. It's not him getting his life back. The real miracle is the ledger.

That's the miracle. The names, the faces, the small kindness, all stacked up one on top of each other until you realize, oh my gosh, all of those little acts, they amount to a life that actually mattered. We're all looking for the big, splashy, he didn't get any of those.

He didn't get that. And that's why he felt like he was a failure. That's why when the town shows up in the end, and they're all giving, you know, just a few dollars, it breaks us every single time. Because deep down, we're not watching George Bailey. Deep down, we're checking our own books, our own ledger. Did I, do I matter to any person?

buddy, would I be missed? The things I gave up, the things that I really wanted to do in life, but because something else came up, or I had to serve, I had to do this for my kids, or I had to do this, the things I gave up, does it mean anything? This film answers it with a whisper. It doesn't shout it. It whispers. You'll never fully know the good you've done.

I can't give you an answer. You'll never know it. You'll never see the ripples while you're standing in the water. but they're there. Believe me, they're there. So this year, when you either just have it running while you're all in the kitchen

and you're watching from time to time, oh, I love this part, I love this part, and everybody gets quiet for a minute, or you just curl up on the couch and watch it again. Remember, you're not watching a Christmas movie, but you're watching as a reminder that life doesn't have to be loud to be important,

that staying can be braver than leaving, that loving your family and your neighbors and your town, imperfect as it is, that's not settling, it's choosing. And whether Ted Turner knew it or not, I can guarantee you that Jimmy Stewart did, and Frank Capra certainly did, that every time you see that, why we, year after year, when the snow starts falling in that old piano theme plays, we come back, not for the nostalgia, but for the reassurance. Because every once in a while,

all of us need somebody just to look us in the eye and say, you're here. You mattered. And it is a wonderful life.