The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guests: Brad Reese & Bowen Troyer | 2/24/26

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

What should Trump focus on during tonight's State of the Union? Glenn polls his staff and his Torch subscribers on what they consider the most pressing issues. Glenn breaks down the dangers of the Left's increasingly fiery rhetoric. Glenn speaks with Brad Reese, the grandson of the inventor of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, to discuss how the quality of some Reese's products has declined after Hershey changed ingredients due to rising costs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you were little, you had braced in the course of recreat, always in trying to negotiate, to exchange these cards of hockey, the bonhom, these bracelets, even of the collation. You know that each

has a value, well, to have been before the things have not really changed. Negoti-tit-T-D you can't to renew with

your instinct of negotiation. With, without operation gratuit, no amount of minimum and no-frey-mensue

and you're made for negotier, and the appellee-tit-tit-tit-td and fete to you add. Telecharger there right. On the podcast today, we talk about President Trump

what he should say in the State of Union address tonight. How the outrage headlines are actually rewiring your brain. So it's impossible to have a conversation with anybody. We go through and start with the guy who was talking about Epstein

and then goes into Mar-a-Lago tries to burn the place down over the weekend. Where did that come from? And what is it? mean that the Democrats are bringing the Epstein victims to the state of the union today. What are they reinforcing here? Also,

Reese's peanut butter cups. Who doesn't love them? Well, Brad Reese, as in Reese's peanut butter, he doesn't love him and he has reason why he's on today's podcast as well. Quality control looks different when production isn't 7,000 miles away. When your

clothes are made halfway around the world, quality control often means hoping everything turns out right, you know, after it's shipped across the ocean in the container, when they're made here, it means something else. It means somebody is down the street that can walk in and go, hey,

I want to see the line. I want to see the stitching. I want to see the fabric. They can fix a problem before it becomes 10,000 problems in a crate across the ocean. American giant makes their clothing here in the United States. This is extraordinarily difficult to do. And they're one of the first people that were leading the way on this.

American cotton, American workers, American factories. It's not a marketing gimmick, and they didn't do it for trade. They did it because it was the right thing to do, and they took it on the chin for years. You want clothing built to last, designed with intention, made under standards that don't require a translator or a time zone difference to verify. Just like integrity, quality is not an accident. And when you buy something built with both integrity and quality, you're supporting skilled workers, stronger communities, and manufacturing base that still takes pride in doing things right here in America.

So buy American today. American dash giant.com slash Glenn. American dash giant.com slash Glenn save 20% when you use my name for your first purchase. That's 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. This isn't a podcast. This is a movement. And you're part of it, a big part of it. So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up.

Help us push this podcast to the top. Rate, review, share. Together, we'll make a difference. And thanks for standing with us. Now let's get to work. You're listening to The Best of the Glenback program. Dennis Pringer and I

talk about his new book if there is no God, the battle between who defines good and evil. It's an amazing conversation. He is paralyzed from the neck down. This is one of the first public appearances. I think this is

the first. I know it's the the first national radio appearance that he has done since he left his own show. And he is, it's amazing to watch. This guy, wait until you hear how positive he is. I mean, he has no reason to be positive.

I would not. I would be a little cantankerous, just a little bit. He is not. He is, he's just a remarkable man, really. But we talk about,

you know, how if we dismiss God, then everything falls apart. Absolutely everything falls apart, including our happiness. And he talks about that. You don't want to miss that. It's episode 280 of the podcast. It's a Torch exclusive conversation. It comes out tonight at 6 o'clock for Torch subscribers. It'll be out everywhere on Saturday, but you really don't want to miss this. Here is a clip of the interview. I spoke to him. I think I started the conversation. Well, no, let me go here.

People are starting to refer to America as a Christian nation. And I said, is it important to have, to emphasize this is a Judeo-Christian nation? And why? Listen to his response. Glenn, God bless you for asking that question. I intend to write a major piece on that issue. Good. There is no Christianity.

There is no Christ without the Judeo. Jesus was a Jew, as I tell my Christian friends, Jesus never read the New Testament. Jesus was a Jew. The gospel writers were Jews. The apostles were Jews. Paul was a Jew. I mean,

All the ideas that Christians, all the ideas that Christians use to validate their faith are based on the Jewish Bible. Yeah. There is no, so there's no Christian without Judeo. And the Judeo would not be known in the world without the Christian. the reason people know about the Ten Commandments all over the world is because Christians publicized it. We need each other tremendously, and I believe there's a divine role for both. I'm going to get into a lot with Dennis Prager.

You don't want to miss this exclusive interview with him. His book comes out, by the way, if there is no God, please. He can't do a book tour himself. He's doing very limited number of these interviews. It took a lot for him to do this interview. We had to stop several times because he had to catch his breath. But he so believes in the message of this book. And so do I.

I wrote the afterward for it. I read it. It was shortly after Charlie's death. He sent it to me. And I wrote the afterward for it. It is really good. Buy it. It's available in bookstores everywhere.

show your support for Dennis Prager and get a really good book if there is no God available now. All right. So tonight, and Jason and Sarah and Ricky, I'd like to bring you in on this. Tonight is the State of the Union. And I have a list of things that I think he has to talk about today. But I'd like to start, you know, Sarah, I'd like to actually start with you on, because you're more of the average person, you know, you got into this because this was like, It's a job. I push buttons. It's a job.

And you're a raging alcoholic. Yes. Right. Raging alcoholic. So, you know, you're like the average American. Are you going to watch this tonight? I'm definitely going to try. I'm excited for the pomp and circumstance as usual. Really? You like that part? I do. I do because it pisses everybody off. I hate that part. Okay. Okay. All right. It's typically you. Okay. Now I understand it. I understand because it does. It pisses me off. I'm like, shut up. They just introduced him five seconds ago and you gave him a standing ovation. And now you reintroduce him and you're going to give another two minutes standing ovation. We could all go home. We could be in bed in 15 minutes if you guys would just sit on your hands for a while. But that's just me. No, that's very true. Is there anything that he has to say to you that you want to hear? I want stats. I want numbers. I want him to come with facts. I think a lot of times.

he's just, I'm the greatest and this is going to be the best economy ever. I want, number, I want comparisons. He's going to give that tonight. I hope so. He's going to give that. Jason, what does the president have to do? Well, per the insiders, the president has to address the Save Act and Election and Integrity. They are leading in the poll right now.

So that's what they really want. And it's hard to kind of argue with that. I'm really curious about because the president has made a big focus on outward facing threats, South America. He's talking about Greenland. He's tried to bring peace to Ukraine. He's been in the middle, all over the Middle East. The point is he's very outward focused when a lot of people were saying, make America great again, is all about being inward focused. Economy, all those things. I want to know how this, and it kind of goes towards your question of him during his first hundred days, on whether he was trying to fix a system that was built post-war War II. talk about that and tell us how all these things you're focused on outwardly is really about focused on inside the United States. Make that clear to the American people. That's paramount. Excellent. Excellent. Ricky? He's got to convince both sides of the aisle that when he does the targeted strike on Iran, it's not if when he does it.

It's in our interest, speaking to what Jason is talking about. he's also got to convince both sides of the aisle and all of America that his policies with ice, even though there may have been some distractions, we'll call it that in Minnesota. His policies for ICE are for all Americans to keep all Americans safe, not just Republicans. I agree. Okay, before I get to my list of things, because I wrote down about eight things that I think he has to do tonight. But give me a list of who's coming. The hockey team is coming.

The male hockey team is coming. So Sarah wants the pomp and circumstance. I want to see Quinn and Jack Hughes. Jack still missing his tooth, grinning ear to ear. It's going to happen. Yeah, he's going to be there. There's going to be some Epstein victims there that are brought in as props by the Democrats. Right.

I'm not sure that works to their advantage, does it? I mean, really Bill and Hillary Clinton, you're going to, that party is going to bring in Epstein victims? Yeah. Okay. It's awkward. All right. Whatever. I think what was the stat, Jason, about the percentage of people who had,

Epstein had donated to? 89% of Epstein's political contributions went to the left in Democrats. 89%. 89. 89. 89. So, yeah. By the way, I think Bill Gates is starting to really feel the heat. Did you see that he left that global conference? He didn't go to that big global conference.

What was it? Last weekend? Because of this, they were like, I don't think we're going to lose speakers. if you show up. I think he's finally starting to get some heat from it, which is good. You'd think the divorce with his wife would have been in. Yeah, but it would have been enough. No, apparently not. But this is the guest that I'm most excited about. She was invited by Speaker Johnson. There's a lot of Americans who may not know the story of Jimmy Lai. He is currently in a Chinese

prison. He's a pro-democracy activist. He's facing 20 years, where he's supposed to be in there for 20 years. And Speaker Johnson and the Trump administration are working to get him free. His daughter, Claire, was invited, and she's recently just started speaking out, and she has said that it's his Christian faith that has sustained him. And as you know, being a Christian in China is probably not the most possible position. No, no, not at all. Not all. Let's get her on. I'd really like to talk to her. All right. So here are the things that I think the president has to do tonight. He's got to lead with affordability. He's got a lead with, here's what I've done to make the economy for you better.

And he's going to have to, you know, he has to express that it is in your best interest. These tariffs are in your best interest. That Iran is in your best interest. All of these peace deals are in your best interest and why they're in your best interest. More importantly, why have I done, like Jason just said, why have I done all these things overseas?

how do they affect your wallet? How are they going to affect your children's future? He really needs to distill this and show everything I've done overseas will affect you and your wallet. I had to take care of that first. So the explaining of the outward focus and the explanation of Iran is going to be really, really important. he then also has to talk about the criminal illegals.

He needs to make it really clear. We're not against. We're a nation built on immigration. Should we pause on immigration? Yeah, perhaps so, because we don't have any idea who's coming in. But are we against immigration? No,

as long as they're the kind of people that come in and want to renew the promise of America. Okay. we can use those kinds of people to help build a more perfect nation. That is good. But what I'm trying to get off the streets are the criminals, which goes to your point, Ricky. I think it was your point.

This affects everybody and in fact disproportionately affects people in liberal cities and low-income people by taking these rapists, these killers, these thugs, you know, drug dealers, by taking them off. the streets, it's actually affecting low income and liberal cities more than it is the red cities. So I'm actually trying to be a president for all of the people here. He also has to address the DHS funding. We are with what happening in Mexico. You look across that border.

Man, this whole world is a powder keg. You're going to defund the DHS. ICE has their funding. What are you doing? What are you doing? Why are you taking our Department of Homeland Security at a time when we may need it most? You've got to restore the funding. He's got to hammer that. He also has to hammer the Save Act and why that's not Jim Crow. What they're doing is Jim Crow. And I think the most important thing he can do is define who we are. What is it we're really fighting for? why is America an important place?

Why are our values important? What's important fighting for? What's not important? What happens to the world if we just disappear? What happens to your children? I would love for the president to say, you know, everybody's fighting all the time.

And we've got to stop this fighting. We have to start saying, if we're going to fight, let's fight. together for this vision of America. What would be interesting is if he ever did that, how the left would be forced to be against that vision of America. And it would be so telling because they would.

If he was clearly articulating a vision of America that everyone could look at and go, I want to be like that. I don't care who I voted for. That's the America I want. it would put people in a very awkward position because they would have to come out against that, which they would, which they would. Those are the things he needs to do. I think he will be in danger if he takes a victory lap.

Now let me explain that. He's got to take a victory lap. He's got to say what he has accomplished in the last year. But if that victory lap doesn't include, I heard you I heard you everything that we have done is to get your cost

of living down and you may not feel it yet but it's happening and here's the proof and we're not done yet I heard you then I hear you now if he does what the Democrats did

last time where you just don't get it you just don't what you can't read Wall Street reports he'll lose people he has got to say, look, I understand that you don't feel it yet. But I heard you then. I hear you now. And we're not done. I had to take care of these big things to be able to get to the things that will actually now affect your table. I had to do it in this order. And the other thing I think he loses on

is if he spends any real time bashing the Supreme Court. I don't think people want to hear the bashing of our institutions. He can say they came up with a really bad thing and I disagree with it. But that's their job. I disagreed with what they came up with. That's my job. And so I thank the Supreme Court because you've just made my tariffs stronger. That's the way you should handle it.

If he gets waylaid into and I'm ashamed of you and you're, then he's going to sound like the Democrats. And we don't like that when the Democrats do it. I wonder if the Democrats like it when they even do it as well. probably they do but I don't that's what the president needs to do tonight at state of the union we'll be watching the burn a launcher when police lights you know we're still flashing two houses down you know uh when they couple turned off their bedroom lamp even after the street went dark again the image of that splintered back door would not leave their minds it was a neighborhood

break in middle of the night now they're lying there quiet for the first time and the question feels real. If somebody came through our door, what would we do? It's the one thing to talk about safety. It's another to actually live it and see it and not as abstract. When it's happening on your street, your neighbors, your family, you realize calling 911 is important, but that doesn't solve the first 20 minutes. That's why the burner launcher exists. Non-lethal, self-defense tool powered by CO2, launchers, powerful projectiles and tear gas. It keeps the bad guys away. Time for the to get there. Go to burna.com slash Glenn. B-Y-R-N-A dot com slash Glenn, do it now. Now back to the podcast. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. So I want to talk to you about what's happening with the

State of the Union tonight. Tonight, you're going to see somebody who is laying out his vision of what needs to happen. And, you know, it's Donald Trump and Donald Trump will be Donald Trump. but in the audience you will see what the Democrats are doing and today the or yesterday a story came out in the Atlantic about how the GOP has become it's called the notzification of the GOP okay so you hear more Nazi Nazi Nazi also the week that somebody tried to go in and at least cause harm at Mara Lago if not kill the president he was motivated because he felt that Donald Trump was in with the pedophile, Epstein. So what do the Democrats do? They invite all of the Epstein victims to be sitting with them during the state of the union. Okay. So reinforcing Nazi and pedophile.

I want you to know this is why you can't talk to your friends. And this may happen to you as well. But let me explain something, how I know this to be true. What I just said a half hour ago, you know, in the last half hour, that's science. Now let me show you how I know this to be true. I've talked about this in bits and pieces, and I'll talk about it in a little maybe bigger chunk here. But years ago, about 2011, I started getting very, very sick. And I'll share this.

If you see my hand, if you're watching, you can see my hand shake. That's from the permanent damage that I did when I was, in the early 2000s, okay? And I lost feeling in my fingers. I started to shake. I started to have bad pain. I had macular degeneration in one eye, macular dystrophy in the other eye.

All these things started happening. And I could barely think straight. And then I had something that researchers called time collapse, where I couldn't time mark anything. Okay. I could talk to you one day. and have a meeting with you, and I could remember everything about the meeting. But I couldn't tell you if that meeting happened yesterday or last year, and it was freaking me out.

Okay. So I started going to doctors, and every specialist I went to, I went for two years to doctors, everywhere I went, I went to the best hospitals and clinics in the nation, best doctors. They all said the same thing when they first saw me. I'd describe the symptoms. they'd say, you're being poisoned. And the first time I went, well, maybe, I mean, George Soros doesn't like me very much, maybe. We tested. I wasn't being poisoned. And I go to another doctor, so you couldn't figure it out. You're being poisoned. No, I'm not. We've already tested. I want to

test you again. You're being poisoned. I'm telling you you're being poisoned. Well, I wasn't being poisoned, okay? Even though that's what they said, I wasn't ingesting chemicals, I wasn't eating paint chips or anything like there. There's no foreign agents. After a couple of of years as I got sicker and sicker and sicker, I realized I was being poisoned, but I was poisoning myself in a way that the doctors hadn't talked to me. I wasn't by what I was eating, but I was consuming poison with the relentless diet of the Republic is dying, the news, the history, the media, everything that was going on for nearly a decade from, from 2001 to 2010, I barely slept, okay? Three hours a night, if I was lucky. I had no dreams for almost

10 years. I worked from 5 a.m. till well past midnight every day. Each day, I was on stage, off stage, back on stage, multiple times. By 2009, I wasn't just battling what I believe were forces trying to reverse American freedom and evil. I was fighting for my life in business, in media, in smears, physically, I was under threat all the time, and my body was responding to it. By 2015, finally a set of doctors said, you know, some people don't even believe in this, but it's adrenal fatigue. I had been in fight or flight mode for over a decade, all day, every day. And your body is not built to live under constant siege like that. mine broke and I still pay the price for it. Why am I telling you this story? Because we are poisoning

ourselves and I'm not speaking theoretically. I'm speaking from experience. When you constantly call on your body to produce more cortisol, you're not just stressed. You're rewiring the brain. You're reshaping your body. You're altering the outlook on life. Cortisol is your body's built-in alarm system, okay? It's released when the brain perceives a threat. And in short burst, cortisol is brilliant. It's great. It mobilizes everything that you need to help you survive, okay?

But it was designed for dinosaurs and lions, not headlines and social media. And when your nervous system is constantly activated by outrage, catastrophe framing, existential politics, doom scrolling, Nazis, pedophiles, cortisol stops being a tool and starts to become a poison, corrosive. Your nervous system shifts into chronic fight or flight mode. Your sympathetic nervous system dominates, heart rate, blood pressure, stay elevated all the time, blood sugar stays higher. Over time, hypertension, insulin, resistance, cardiovascular disease,

and those are the easy ones. The second thing that happens is your brain begins to change. Chronic cortisol, if it's exposed into your brain, the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and emotional regulation, that reduces the volume of that part of your brain. At the same time, your fear center becomes much more reactive. So you're processing less and yet your fear is going up. You literally become more threat sensitive, more reactive, less reflective. Okay. And then the prefrontal cortex that's responsible for all the executive function,

the impulse control, the nuanced thinking, that's less effective because it's also under chronic stress. That means more black and white thinking. That's why your friends cannot hold two thoughts. They can't say, yes, these protesters were protesting and they were out of line. but they shouldn't have been killed. Or they, you know, they were killed by this ice agent, but that doesn't make all ice agents bad. Got it? You can't do that because you no longer physically can do it.

The last thing happens to your mood shifts. High chronic cortisol linked to anxiety, irritability, sleep disruption, depression, sleep suffers because cortisol interferes with melatonin. Then poor sleep increases cortisol. It's just this endless loop. You wake up tense. You scroll. You confirm your fears.

Your body prepares for battle. You repeat. When that happens, your worldview narrows. Research now in stress psychology shows that chronic threat perception reduces openness and increases rigidity. When people feel under siege, they seek certainty. That's why everybody says you're either with us or you're against us. and they become more prone to catastrophic thinking. Nuance is dangerous because that's what your body is made to do when a dinosaur is chasing you.

And opponents, any opponent is more hostile. So constant cortisol doesn't just affect your body. It changes the way you interpret reality. It makes the world look darker than it may actually be. There's something called threat bias. under stress, the brain notices negative information more than positive. Headlines that are catastrophic stick more than stories of progress. You start scanning for danger and that scanning becomes your baseline and your body cannot change.

My father used to say this. There is no bad thought. Your mind will process all thoughts. I'm a bad person. I'm a good person. It will react the same way. It doesn't differentiate between positive and negative. It's just, it just creates.

Your body, your mind does not distinguish between a charging animal and a cable news Chiron that says, threat, they're coming to kill you. Nazis are here. It reacts the same way. And it calls your nervous system into battle every single day and your condition to expect war. over time this does really bad things. It reduces hope because hope requires the belief that tomorrow can improve. How many people do you know believe that tomorrow is not going to be better?

That their life is not going to be better or their kids' lives are not going to be better than theirs. That is, for the first time in American history, that's happening. It increases aggression because your system is primed to defend. Have you noticed people are much more aggressive than they have ever been? they don't listen to each other. This is why chronic outrage cultures feel the way you feel most likely right now. You're just exhausted. You're just exhausted.

Your body's designed for bursts of crisis followed by recovery. But if we're we've engineered, think of this with social media. We've engineered an environment, environment where existential crisis is permanent. There is no recovery. When you live in that state long enough, you begin to believe the world is permanently on fire. When I say we're poisoning ourselves, I speak from experience. Think about the media. Think about politics.

Think about social media. Think about social media with our kids. I saw firsthand what this did to my body. Think about what our kids are going through just on social media, then put them into a classroom where everything is upside down. They're questioning absolutely everything. There is no stability. Everything is under attack.

And then you have the teachers teaching them. They've got to go out in protest because the Nazis are in the streets. What do you think our kids are going through? There are things that you can do. And I wrote this in an article and we're going to post this today at glenbeck.com Because it's why we can't talk to each other. because there are well-known, researched, proven scientific facts

about our body and our brain that everyone knows, I mean, they are consulting with the best behavioral researchers in the world. They know exactly what is happening. It's the same thing. Do you believe Facebook doesn't know

what that little Bing does every time it goes off? That bell, of course they do. They also went to behavioral scientists. They are trying to get you to do something. What is it? Our politicians and our media are trying to get you to do. They've trained you to do it. And here's what they've trained us to do.

Not talk to each other. Not trust each other. Just scream Nazi at each other. Pedophile. That only leads one place. When you see on either side tonight, somebody shouting pedophile, Nazi, in their actions or their words, sending that signal, know exactly what they're doing to your brain, know exactly what they're doing to your body. You don't want to pay that price.

You don't want to pay that price. You certainly don't want your children to pay that price. This article goes into some things that work to rewire. It takes a lot of work, but to rewire your body, I'm still rewiring it today. I'm still paying the price of all of those years. You don't want to pay that price. Please go to glenbeck.com. We'll post that after the show is up today.

Read the article. You're listening to the best of Glenn Beck. Need a little more? Check out the full show podcasts. Anywhere you download podcasts. The grandson of the inventor of Reese's peanut butter cup, Brad Reese. Hello, Brad. Hi. It's good to talk to you. Yeah. You know, I have to have to tell you, I grew up at a bakery and I've, I struggle with my weight. I look at you. You don't look like you struggled with your weight and you grew up as a Reese. how is that possible how is that possible?

No, I've got the dad bod, no doubt about it. I'm saying to me. Oh yeah, I've got I got the tummy. Okay. So, you know, I was so glad to see your your letter to Reese's, I mean,

to Hershey, because I didn't know, I didn't know what was wrong with it. I just have never had anything, Reesus ever. that I actually spat it out. I was like, oh my gosh, what is that? It's nothing real.

What product was that? Exactly, which? I don't remember. It might have been, I don't know, a heart or something. It was a little, it was Valentine's candy. So whatever it was, it was in a Valentine's package. That's what I had. Yeah, you probably had the same thing I did.

Yeah, the recent peanut butter mini hearts unwrapped. Yep. And it was. That's what started and awful. Yeah. Awful, awful. So do you own part of this at all, or is this, I mean, how are you going to get Hershey's to stop this? Well, as far as the ownership, you have to understand, in 1963, we were celebrating our 40th anniversary, and my grandfather died seven years earlier here in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1956. So in 1963, it was seven years after his death. My father and his five brothers merged the H.B. Rees Candy Company with Hershey Chocolate.

in a tax-free stock-for-stock-merger. And we received $616,000, $316,000, which after 2-4-1, 3-4-1, and 2-4-1 stock splits are now $16 million shares. And they're paying an annual cash dividend with $5.48 per share in dividends. And I did help stop the sale of Hershey in 2002. William Wrigley made a $12.5 billion offer. was a done deal. I fought tooth and nail because I was only seven years old when Reese merged with Hershey and as an adult, I wasn't going to allow the H.B. Reese Candy Company,

which does business as the Hershey Company being sold. And like I said, it was a done deal, but I helped stop that sale. And since stopping that, the cast even has gone up 800%. You have these companies that are no longer actually, there's no craftsman there. There's no chocolatier there that's it's it's stocks. It's it's money. Doesn't that make a difference? Well yeah. So I understand in chaos at the wreath plant. It's interesting. So the cheap ingredients that you're using compound coatings are not working well with the chocolate machinery. Hello. So apparently it's breaking down the production line. And I mean, there's a revolving door, I guess, in personnel.

And again, this is scutble butt, okay? I haven't available, you know, how am I going to confirm that? But that the, so cheapening the products, they basically, the machinery there is for milk chocolate. So they're having problems. And so I guess they're stooping for pennies and passing up the dollars because what they're saving in cheap compounds, there's spiraling costs and the production problems. When a line closes down, that's catastrophic. Revenue lies.

I mean, you can't have your production lines, you know, not working 100%. Besides the stocks, what does this candy represent to you? Everything. It's my whole, I mean, I'm 70 years old. I've grown up with it. That's why I'm here on West Palm Beach. He died here. I've got cancer and I'm dying. So I figured I'm going to die where my grandpa died. Yeah, so I'm going to die where he died. But he died at St.

Hershey's logo. It's so much fun to interact with Reese's fans because they are just fanatical. Anywhere from the four-year-old all the way up to the 104-year-old, walking in Manhattan, the sidewalks will virtually, and nodding their head. About me, they just, oh, there's a Reese's guy or he must love Reese's. And they just recognize the brand because you don't see the kind of swag that I wear in like a race car, a NASCAR jacket. You don't see that. You know, that's not a common sight.

It's fun, fun, fun. How did your grandfather come up with this? A lot of things happen. And he had a customer in Harrisburg and keep them on the job of doing that. that if you put it in a cup, you can, his day, production in the summertime, he had to canned vegetables, air conditioning, and there was no automation, so everything was done by hand. So the peanut butter cup just came in, and when automation, when things started becoming automated, it just took off.

But what really happened was his candies were sold in department stores, five-pound assortments. So it was almost like a Whitman sampler or Russell Stover to look for that. And the peanut butter cups would just. one of the many. You know, peanuts, stuff were just, I just want the peanut butter cups. So the salespeople would have to take the peanut butter cups out of the

box and, you know, put them on the way and place the peanut butter cups to work. So the salesperson said, what will it make to me? They said, look, if we could make this, so for a penny, did that, he burned a mortgage. Wow. So when you wrote this letter, what was the response from Hershey? Nothing.

Nothing. You haven't even heard from that? No, of course not. They, I find, unless you're burned my bridges with them when I helped stop the sale in 2002. Yeah. And then you also have to understand that my cousin, Robert Reese, was the general counsel of Hershey, but he left before that was in San Juan. He went to Coors. He then came back after we stopped the sale.

He then came back at a trust company, which is a controlling shareholder. And he cleaned up Hershey. He cleaned it up, cleaned up the Hershey Trust. And he also joined the border manager. the belt corrected so many things that were wrong. Through the $19 billion takeover of Cadbury Schweps. Oh, you have to understand. It's to manufacture and sell Cadbury in the United States.

I couldn't buy, which was huge. And I was a $19 billion deal. We had it locked up. Hershey. Richard Lenny, the former chairman and CEO of the Hershey company, was a financial advisor to Centerview Partners, which was advising crap, heeding bid against Hershey. Richard Lenny, the former chairman of CEO of Hershey,

was also the mentor of his protege, Dave West, who was then the CEO of Hershey, killed the deal and never went through. Kraft bought it, which then craft then split into two called Mandelaus. That sec Mandelaus ended up with the cabaret line. But then Dave West, who killed the deal for Hershey and watched a lifetime opportunity, became a general partner at Centerview Partners. I mean, talk about a conflict of interest. So anyway, so there's a lot of bad blood.

You have to understand. Chocolate Wars. Chocolate Wars. Yeah, the Reese family has been creating the wealth there. The stock is doing very well. The stock at Herschina is doing very well. Wall Street love or cost to the public. It's long term is what I'm getting at.

It's going to not work out long term. No, it won't. Brad, thank you for writing the letter. Thank you for making me feel sane because I thought, what the heck, maybe it's my taste have changed, you know, as I get older. But thank you. And thanks for keeping your grandfather's, you know, vision alive. I just love peanut butter cups.

I don't trust people who don't, quite honestly. But thank you for everything. I'm doing what I can. All I can do is to do the best I can. Thank you so much for your encouragement. Thank you. You bet. And God bless you on your health.

Thank you so much, Brad. It's really sad because Mr. Hershey was an amazing man. I don't know if you know the original story of Milton Hershey, but he was an incredible guy. His mother was even more so, and a real American success story. It's sad that they've fallen so far. Want to go electric without sacrificing fun? That's the Volkswagen ID4. All electric and thoughtfully designed to elevate your modern lifestyle. The Volkswagen ID4 is fun to drive with instant an acceleration that makes city streets feel like open roads,

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