The Glenn Beck Program - Best of The Program | Guests: Tammy Bruce & Ken Paxton | 2/19/21

Episode Date: February 19, 2021

Stu’s house flooded after a pipe burst during the winter storm. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joins to discuss an investigation into ERCOT’s questionable handling of the power grid. Radio host Tammy Bruce joins with the story of how Rush Limbaugh helped her go from president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization of Women to an independent conservative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, we've got a great show for you today. It's a great, great podcast that you just don't want to miss. We had Tammy Bruce on today. We had Bill O'Reilly in a rare form today. Also, the Attorney General of Texas. He is going after Aircott, which is this advisory board to the Texas Energy plants, which there's something really, really wrong in Texas. when we can't generate our own energy because it's cold outside.

We talk to them about that, freedom of speech, and so much more, all on today's podcast. Don't forget to get your Andrew Cuomo isawful.com mugs and t-shirts. Go to Andrew Cuomo isawful.com for those. And don't forget, blazedtv.com slash Glenn, the promo code being Glenn, for 30% off right now. Your Blaze TV subscription. Get on board. You're listening to The Best of the Glenn Beck program. In a situation in Texas, we should not be in. There is no reason why we're in this situation.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is the one that actually runs and oversees all of the power grid and all of the companies that are making power. And there's a problem there. There's a real problem there. Now, this is a, is it a public-private partnership? I mean, I know it's overseen by the government of Texas, but I think it's a private corporation. This is one of those things that no one in Texas knew existed until this week. And now everyone is an expert on it. Like, everyone knows exactly what Erkot was doing and how they screwed this up.

Yeah. It's becoming the big talking point down here. Yeah. But, you know, they, the name reliability is what the R is. Yeah, and they're not doing it. And I don't know if you've seen the meetings, the meeting that they had two weeks ago. And the minutes of the meeting is absolutely unbelievable. Let me give you this.

Top officials at Aircott, the Texas Council regulates the state electricity grid spent. their time talking about the impending winter storm during the entity's board meeting last week. A recording of the board meeting from KSAT Channel 12 shows that the conversation went like this. Quote, one thing I want to say before we really get into the presentation is it's actually going to be winter here pretty soon. As many of you, those in Texas know, we have a cold front coming this way. We'll probably see our winter peak later this week or very early next week. The operations have issued an operating condition notice just to make sure everybody's up to speed with their winterization and ready for several days of pretty frigid temperatures to come our way. So more on that in the next few days, but it does look like we're going to have a little bit of winter weather here to contend with over the course of the rest of the week and into the next week.

end quote. That was the entire discussion of winterization for the Reliability Council here in Texas. So they covered it. Yeah, they covered it. Yeah, they covered it. And then they started talking about cowboy boots and everything else. It's fascinating. I mean, you know, I mean, there was a little bit of an issue with power going out.

And honestly, that's just one of the issues. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The electricity is one of the issues. I will say I didn't lose electricity at all. My electricity was 100% reliable. We didn't even have it blink the entire time. Mine went out all the time. Ours didn't, which I don't know why.

I've heard that like if you're near a hospital, if you happen to be in the same, they keep those up no matter what. So that may have been the reason. But like I will say I did get woke up, I woke up on Monday morning to a very loud alarm going off in my home. Okay. And I was like, oh, the kids.

must have like opened up the door before we turn the alarm off in the morning or whatever. Right. Tried to turn the alarm off didn't go off, which has never happened before. Right. So we started looking around. I'm like, oh gosh, is there a fire? Like, what is happening? And my wife turns around the corner and has this interesting thing happen where gallons of water

are gushing from the ceiling. Oh, you got a new water will do waterfall. Yeah. I was like, did you put in a new water effect? Like what exactly? Right. Yeah. And it was kind of pouring through the alarm.

arm onto the floor. And what happens, Glenn, when water comes up from your ceiling onto the floor, it starts to build up. So there's inches and inches and inches of water inside your home. Really? While it's two degrees outside. Right. Which is really fun.

So we couldn't take a shower one day, but you didn't have a problem with that. No, you didn't have a problem right in? Yeah, I could have just hopped in any time. So we go, we run around trying to figure out what's going on. I go up into the attic and I realize there's a burst pipe. So there's a pipe in our house, which by the way, was insulated and is still burst somehow and is just spewing water all over the place. There's no local shut off. But I do remember because I'm a homeowner, Glenn.

Right. And I know how to do one thing in the home. Turn the water off. Turn the water off in case of emergency. It's the only thing I know how to do. Out by the street. Everything else. If the house goes on fire, I just let it burn to the ground. Right.

I have no ability to correct any other problem in this home, except to turn the water off. Luckily, there's snow and ice all over the ground. And of course, the panel to do this is under the snow and the ice. Right. So that means digging through the snow and the ice to open up the little compartment while water's just gushing into my house. And of course, we were asleep. So we have no idea how long it was gushing into the house before the alarm went off. It was a while.

Right. Because there was a lot of water all over the place. Right. So I go out and I open up, I finally get the thing open. I, of course, obviously the valve is frozen. Sure. So I can't turn it. Right.

But so I eventually, you know, after a few minutes and a lot of swearing, I'm able to actually get the thing turned. So I run in as the hero, of course, that I am. And I run into the house and I go upstairs and I look at the pipe and the water is still gushing out of the pipe. Wow. Now, I thought that was interesting. because I just turned it off. Right. But I thought to myself, you know, it's going to take a little bit because there's water in the system.

Got to get it out of the pipe. It's got to get out of there. So this is going to end any second. So I sat there and I just got to stared at the pipe for 30 seconds and then like a minute and then like a minute and a half and two. And then I started yelling at the pipe because I think if you yell loud enough at the pipe. Right. Did you use French? Did you speak in any French words?

I came up with all new words for this situation. All new French words. Did you ask? Have you asked and said, pardon my French? I was respectful at the beginning to the pipe. I will say that broke down over time. Quickly. Very quickly.

Yeah, all right. And it just kept gushing and gushing and gushing and gushing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just, I kept at it. I kept screaming at it to turn off, which it would not do. It was like not voice activated at all. No voice activated pipe. It's unbelievable.

Yeah. Wow, that's what you're living in the Stone Age. So my wife is calling. the city and calling various random companies she's Googled. This is what you do in the situation. And so I would say maybe 40 minutes later, the city gets out there and turns the water off. So the water stops. At this point, I don't know, six, eight inches of water is throughout the house.

And there's like, I'm trying to protect certain rooms, like hoping that I can like save the room. And then I lose that line. You know, like we just kept falling back. Like retreating. It's like Normandy. Oh my gosh. A little like Normandy. Like an idiot, Glenn.

You know, just plastic bins, just pushing water out the door. Like, I have no defense. There's like, it's coming down. Like, you know, probably 50 gallons a minute. At any time did you go, eh? No, I will say, we called the company to come out. They come out almost immediately, which is amazing. I mean, I can't believe they came out this fast.

And they start cleaning the thing up. And we were talking to the guy. And he's like, yeah, he's like, you'd be surprised how many people we get here and this is going on and the house is filling up with water and they're just sitting on the couch. They're just like, there's like screw it and letting it happen. I was like an idiot doing everything I could to get the water out of the house. So eventually we get the thing all dried out and you know, I mean it's, but the house is a catastrophe. I mean, like it's going to be six months of disaster. Yeah. We're going to, I'm sure, be moving out to because I mean, the entire floors

of the entire house are going to have to be repaired. All the, you know, all the are redone completely. it's going to be lose the house type of stuff for months. So, you know, here's the thing that really pisses me off about this story. Because I saw, I saw what happened on Monday because your wife was, you know, on Instagram immediately. Of course. She wasn't with the buckets. She was right there with. She was just taking pictures and posting.

Yeah. And saving her. Legitimately, we're in the middle of this. The water's still pouring through the roof. And, you know, I've got, I'm setting up plastic bins. Bins. I'm bailing out water. And I come around the corner.

And I see. her wheeling in her peloton. Like she's saving the stupid exercise bike. That is so funny. And I'm like, what, what are you doing? And then all the dust settles. And I go into the room and her peloton is safe. That one was, I don't know if it was safe. I mean, it got water on it. So it probably isn't safe because it got all sorts of electronics in it. But then next to it are her weights. Like the rubber and metal things that you lift for exercise weights, she pulled those

out of the room to save the weights of all things in the world. It's the most resilient thing in the household. It's metal and rubber. Yeah, the picture's gone. Yeah, everything else is screwed. But she's got the metal weights. She got the metal weights. So, yeah.

So I'm watching, I'm watching her. I didn't see her pull the weights out, but, you know, she needed one hand, you know, for the phone and probably needed two hands for the weights. So I didn't see that part. But I watched it in my first reaction. Well, I should say my first reaction was, oh my gosh, poor Stu and Lisa. Then my next reaction was, wait a minute. I have been doing construction in my house.

And I've been renovating my house for about a year, spent all kinds of money. All I had to do was wait for a storm to burst a pipe. And it all would have been taken care of by insurance. I'm ripped off. I feel really ripped off right now. I feel like the dumbest guy in the world. Because my next whatever three, six months sound a lot like the thing you did by choice. Yeah.

Which is... And paid for. And paid for. Sounds terrible. All I had to do was wait for a stupid burst pipe. So you pissed me off. You piss me off. Yes, thank you.

Well, you know what? You pissed me off a little bit too. Oh, really? Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. Because as I said, I turned the water. off, but the water didn't go off.

Huh. How would that happen? Right. It doesn't seem possible. Did I just screw it up? Like very, probably. That was certainly my In the moment. In the moment was my explanation. And you should go with that moment. No. Because we learned later that what happened was, it was the sprinkler line,

which I guess is supposed to save our house from a fire and did a great job because no fire could have been lit at that moment, Glenn. Right. When the whole house was under water, the fire wouldn't have burned it down, I don't think. But it was a separate line.

So when you turn off the water, the one thing I knew how to do in the house, it doesn't turn off the sprinkler line. Of course not. Of course not. That would be crazy. Right. So you didn't know that? No, I didn't know that.

But you know who did know that. Who? You. I don't, what are you talking about? Because you told me after the incident that someone came to your house from your neighborhood. Yeah. And said, hey, by the way. Right.

Be careful with these sprinkler lines. Make sure you drain the sprinklers before the freeze because they can burst really easily. Right. And then Glenn had that information and locked it inside a little lockbox so that no one else would know. Well, I. So now he has a dry house and no one else does. Thank you, Glenn. Well, you're welcome.

Did it slip your mind? No, here's what I thought of. I didn't even know I had a sprinkler in my house in Texas. apparently you have sprinklers and you're you know like you have in offices you have sprinklers that pop out of the ceilings and it's like some law or insurance thing or i don't know what it is oh it's great it's great whatever it is it's fantastic it's wonderful i didn't even for two years i lived in the house i didn't even know we had sprinklers then a friend calls me i think on saturday or sunday and says sunday would be the day before this happened to me by the way i just wanted to point out what

could happen to me too and so he said do you have sprinklers and i said uh yeah And he said, are they off? And I said, I don't know. I have no idea. How do you turn them off? What is that? So he showed me, he and a friend came over and he and a friend came over and they helped me drain the lines. And I just thought, I mean, that's great.

I don't know anybody with sprinklers in their house. I mean, have you ever known anyone with sprinklers in their house? No, you know, and they're not everywhere. I mean, but you think, because what I find interesting about it is like, you look at that and be like, that's a great feature. What a great feature of the house. It's adding to the safety of the house. It's going to protect the house. No. No. It actually just the opposite. It destroyed the house. Yeah, we just built the vault over at Mercury 1 and, you know, it has to have fire suppression in it. And it's all full of rare artifacts and documents. They're like, well, it's going to put some sprinklers in.

We're like, no. And it's the same thing. I mean, it to sure, the outside of the building maybe if it's steel, fine, but everything else is destroyed. It's all destroyed with the water. Yeah. I mean, and I, Glenn, so the company that we called that came out in an hour is, we have friends who tons of friends who the same thing has happened to, not just with sprinkler lines, but all sorts of pipes bursting. And the same company we called out that came out in an hour on Monday is now currently on a

four week wait. Well, Sarah apparently had the same. thing and after your incident you didn't call Sarah and say you know what happened to my house am I right Sarah? Absolutely. Did you get a call from him? Nope. Nope.

Sarah follows my wife on Instagram. Right. She knows. That's the only way I communicate with people. My wife's Instagram posting. But yeah, but yeah, it's true because like in this, the friends that we talked to today had the same thing happen. We're not home.

They were in Hawaii. They were like pulling a Ted Cruz. They like went on vacation to avoid all this. Oh, those bastards. I'm going back to Ted Cruz on that. Oh, we've got to talk about that. Bastard was not around while your pipes were leaped. Right.

He could have come over with a plastic container. Never came by. Ted Cruz never showed up. Cleared zero water out of my house. I had to do it on my house. What else is he doing as a senator? I know. What else?

Your job is a... If you can't count a senator in for bailing your house out or coming in and making sure that your fireplace is lit or whatever, What good is he? Yeah. And he was gone for a full night. He brought his kids down to Cancun. Then he flew back the next morning. God only knows.

I hope to God, Stu, you say something because I'll bet you he was gone the night your water pipe burst. I bet you're right. And you know what? As a U.S. Senator, when power is out, heat is out, he should be going door to door with sticks and matching them together to start fires. Thank you. That's what he should be doing. Oh, man.

Well, you know, all of this happened because of, well, an outdated system. We weren't prepared for global warming or cooling or whatever we're supposed to be. Even though scientists say that it's had nothing to do with climate change. That is total bull crap. We'll tell you about it. And the Attorney General Ken Paxton from the state of Texas is going to be on talking a little bit about Urquhart, the shady little organization that didn't put weather stripping down on the doors of the nuke factories. The best of the Glenn Beck program. It is our Texas Attorney General, and this state is in real, real trouble right now.

We have got food shortages. We have all kinds of water damage, and we are just getting back online with our power grid. And the governor has issued a statement yesterday that he would like Aircott, which is this weird oversight company that is supposed to oversee and make sure that our electricity grid is stable and reliable. They completely drop the ball. There's an investigation starting there, and we have Ken Paxton on the phone to tell us about that and so much more.

Hi, Ken. How are you? Hi, good morning. It's been a tough week. Boy, you ain't kidding. Can you first explain quickly? And we've got so much to go through. and I don't mean to rush, but I want to make sure that we get to as much we can with you.

Can you explain what the hell Aircott even is? Okay, so Ercot was put together back in World War II, and it was a bunch of Texas utilities that sort of coordinated so that they could use their excess capacity to send the industries along the Gulf Coast to help production for the war. So that's how it got started, and then after the war, they realized there were some benefits to working together so they developed this network, which is lots of energy companies sort of working together to create power, and then they

use their access capacity and where it's needed. Okay. Obviously, that wasn't working. And it is also the only power, I don't even reliability system or whatever it is. it's the only one in the country that has also litigation protection from the government. So you can't sue this company. What is this?

Well, so this is an entity that the legislature oversees and also the public utility commission in Texas, which is appointed by the governor. So I believe if there is some type of liability protection, if it's at least at the state level, the legislature could fix that this session. They could say, you know, you're not immune from liability. And is this a public-private partnership between the state of Texas and these energy companies?

So it's an independent nonprofit organization that is running on its own, but it's overseen by a state agency called the Public Utility Commission, which has three commissioners appointed by the governor. So that commission is supposed to oversee the operations of this independent 501C4 is what it is. Okay. So we are now, we're building all kinds of windmills in the state. I don't know why we're doing that. They're completely unreliable. That's not, it wasn't a weather problem with the, or wasn't a wind problem with the windmills. It was that they didn't weather strip anything, you know, air-cons.

didn't do anything to get these things to protect them against a storm like this. I have some sympathy against the argument of we should be weatherized. We should have all of these things. No, this happens about once every 10 years in Texas. So we shouldn't have the salt trucks and the snow plows. It's a waste of money. But weatherizing our gas plants and our windmills, seems pretty obvious.

You know, it does seem pretty obvious because I think there are other parts of Texas that are not an Urquot, like around Beaumont, East Texas, and also in El Paso. And I think they had almost no problems because guess what? They had winterized their plants. Is it true? We know it can work, and we know that, you know, other parts of the state that are not part of Ercot did that. Is it true that Aircott did their winterization? on a Zoom meeting because of COVID.

They didn't actually do anything. They just did it on Zoom. You know what? I don't know the answer to that. That's part of, I think, what we're going to find out. We've started in my office. We get to have the opportunity to look at 501C3s and 501C4s. We've started our investigation to try to understand exactly what happened and why they

weren't prepared. So these guys are making a boatload of money, a boatload of money. a boatload of money. The board member president and CEO makes almost a million dollars a year on this. Five of the board members don't even live in the state. One of them lives in Germany, of all places. And I just, I am for the free market, but this company, whatever it is, doesn't seem like the free market. It's not responsible for to anyone, it seems. I don't like having any corporation in bed with a government of any government. What are you going to do? What are the plans here? I think the first thing is to figure out exactly what happened, which is why we started the investigation a day or two ago to figure out exactly what are they doing.

How are they doing it? I think this has been not so transparent to us and to the citizens of Texas. we're going to at least create some transparency and find out how they operate and then make suggestions to the legislature as to what needs to be changed and move forward from there. But until we know exactly how they did this and why we have these problems, it's hard to say what the remedy is until we know what the real problem is. So, Ken, we are, I mean, if Texas goes down, we lose the entire country. I know you know that in 2008, 9, 10, the recovery was mainly on the best. back of Texas. I think we created 60% of all jobs in the country. We can't go down. If we get into this green energy garbage, we're toast. Texas is Texas partly because, A, you're still free

here, but you have cheap energy. Is the governor going to stand against this push for the Green New Deal? Because that's all anyone is talking about. is how we're not prepared for the new world because we're not all green. Well, certainly Texas, we're all about the most reliable source of energy, and we produce a lot of it in our own state. So we've looked at all sources of energy, but the reality is we all know that right now, these renewable sources of energy are not reliable,

and they're not cost-efficient until they are. I'm very confident that the legislature and the governor will not put their full efforts into relying on unreliable sources of energy. What happened to our nuclear power plant? Why did the gas and the coal and the nuclear? What happened there? You know, I think it's the same problem. It doesn't sound like they winterized any of it. That's what's so shocking to me. it doesn't seem like it would be that expensive given that other places do it around the country, including other places in Texas. So I think that's going to be one of the first questions that we're going to, when we do our investigation, we're going to ask, why did you not winterize when El Paso and East Texas and other parts of the country do that as a matter of course? It doesn't make a lot of sense unless you can tell us there's some reason we don't, we don't understand at this point. Is there anything that the state can do?

so concerned about, you know, the price of plywood has gone from $15 a sheet, regular plywood, to almost $40 a sheet. And that was before this happened. This is going to cost a fortune and also the labor to do it. I mean, there's all kinds of regulations on who can touch what. I mean, Stu has had plumbers out to his house, but because he had a fire suppression system, they can't do anything. They can't touch it, and it'll be months before they get to that stuff.

Is there any kind of regulation that can be safely cut to help people out? Yeah, that's a great question. I think that's something the Texas legislature and that the governor, with his emergency orders, could actually implement right now to have a review of all regulations affecting construction and maintenance of power plants and other electricity generation sources. to make it less expensive and easier to upgrade these things so we don't have to experience this again. So yeah, I think there are definitely things that the state can look at doing to make it less expensive and make sure it gets done more quickly.

Ken, I want to ask you, really this is kind of a personal question, especially with the loss of Rush Limbaugh this week. You know, Biden said, and I'm quoting, that his administration is going to focus on demented and dangerous white supremacists. But through critical race theory, anyone who stands up for America and our traditional values is called a white supremacist. There is something approaching that appears to be extraordinarily

dangerous. I moved to Texas and I moved my company down here, a media company, which is now the largest subscription, right-leaning media company in the world. and it's based here in Texas. And I am terrified that, and so is 90% of the talent, that our voices are going to be squashed. Will Texas stand against this craziness and stand for the first and second amendment? Absolutely. And I have the same fear as you do, both from the government, from the federal government, but also from technology companies.

Yes. So we're in the middle of fighting the Biden administration already on immigration. I expect that there will be more issues coming up, including some related to free speech. And part of the issue with these technology companies is that they are controlling platforms that are monopolistic, and those monopolistic platforms are the gateway of speech in our country. And so we've got serious issues with those companies as well. That's why we've got lawsuits right now against Google and potentially more lawsuits down the road. But as you can imagine, when you take on those forces, there's a lot of force that comes.

back in Texas, hopefully isn't the only state standing up to fight these, these massive entities that may be trying to limit our speech. Are you working with other states to stand? I mean, I really think that it is our attorney generals and our states, our governors, attorney generals, and legislatures in the states that are going to have to stand up and say, this is a, these are our lines. and the lines are the Bill of Rights and

I'm sorry we are going to be a sanctuary state for the Bill of Rights. We will not go over the cliff with the rest of the country. Yes, and I think there are AGs that are going to stand up and fight. I'm concerned that we don't have the numbers that we've had in the past but

I'm certainly working behind the scenes to bolster that number and encourage other AGs to help us because I don't want it to be just Texas them. We need help. There's The forces against freedom are great. And I think that we need help. How can the people help you?

What should we do? I think they need to encourage their own attorney general is to get involved in the fight, to be involved in looking at what the Biden administration is doing, to be involved in these lawsuits against technology companies. And a lot of them are. So right now that's where the fight is for free speech. Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of the Great State of Texas. Good luck on your Aircott investigation, and we look forward to having you back.

Thank you. Thanks, Colin. Have a great day. Bye-bye. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening. I've been telling you about rec tech now for, gosh, it's been a year. And I have to tell you, I am as happy with my rec tech as I was the day it arrived. I still, I had somebody come under my back porch and said, what?

kind of grill is that? I said, hey, a grill. That's a rec tech. It is amazing. Now, Dallas, it's warm. Even if it's a little cold out where you are, you don't have to stand outside to grill. You're going to be mighty uncomfortable in Minnesota, but not with a rec tech. Sleak and sturdy, built from stainless steel. It's got smart grill technology, which means it automatically adjust to make sure you get the perfect temperature at all times. You can monitor and control it from an app. So you're inside while it's grilling and smoking or even baking outside. RecTech wins the day. Follow rec tech on all social media. Sign up for their newsletter at rectech with a cue at the end. RecTech.com. That's R-E-C-T-E-Q.com. I am a big fan of Tammy Bruce. She is a conservative, but that's not where

she came from. She made a change in her life and her thinking because, she was the president of the LA chapter of the national organization of women. And when Clinton was going through what he was going through with Monica Lewinsky, she thought that the organization should be consistent. And of course, it wasn't. That was her, I think, her first real awakening. And she is now somebody who is a independent conservative, quite outspoken. And yesterday or day before, she wrote a series of tweets, a tweet storm on her meeting with Rush Limbaugh back in the 90s when she was still a liberal, I believe.

Tammy Bruce joins us now. Hi, Tammy. Hi, there. It is great to be on with you, Glenn. Thanks for having me. You bet. So, Tammy, let's go through first the Rush Limbaugh story that you told on Twitter. I think it's fantastic.

Can you tell a story? Yeah, you know, I thought it was important because it's even though we knew he was ill, we expected to some degree, of course, this eventually happening. But it's still, it's hard when it does happen, even though you expect it. And it was important, I thought for me to convey, and a lot of people have great stories, have known him for decades. But ultimately, it comes down to having meeting him that led to my ability. to excise myself from the left. And it's, but it's also a very simple story. It wasn't anything very complicated,

and I think it's very important to this day, why and how that worked. I was the weekend liberal host at KFI, a station you know well. Yep. And I think many Americans do. And, of course, that was his syndicated station. And he visited on occasion to do his show there, you know, as you do as a syndicated host,

checking out the stations that carry you. And I went in there thinking, oh, you know, I'm going to go in during the week and I'm going to, I'm going to confront this monster with all, you know, he's not going to be able to escape. And so I march on in there. And instead of seeing a horrible person and being what I told he was, I met a generous, gregarious, open-minded, funny. it was not obviously what I expected, and I realized in that moment, it's like, wow, I had been lied to about him. If I was lied to about him, what else have I been lied to about? And it wasn't just like niceties when you meet someone. I think he said when I first met him as being the president of L.A. now there, he said, oh, and so you know, you're on the station and it's surviving.

And he laughed. And I think there were, I think there were a couple of feminazi jokes. And, and, and but, but in, in a manner where it was not, I mean, it was, it was, Tristan me was clear. So gave me pointers about my work. He talked about the, the nature of talk radio. I, this, that was my first media job was at KFI starting in 1993. And, you know, trends, even though we disagreed on many things,

at that point. His interest was in how I would do my success, arguing about the issues, and it was a generosity of spirit that does not exist on the left. And it was a revelation, as was Glenn, you know, just talking with conservatives every day, callers on radio. And that, you know, my associates at the time did not want me to go on talk radio. It was going to be the worst thing in the world, Glenn. It was going to be horrible.

And you can't go on KFI. That's where Dr. Laura is. And they've got Rush Limbaugh. He's a monster. And I thought, wow, you know, but what a great way to at least talk about the issue, God forbid, right? Yeah. And this is, but they were just adamant against it. Now I know why.

It's because of the potential of these kinds of conversations. It was the fact that people were talking at all that I would actually, for the first, time be speaking with conservatives who were regular people. It was the danger of the impact of debate and conversation and meeting people unlike yourself, because if that happens, of course, then the left can't control what you think of them. And that sort of, it was a combination of things within a short period of time where I realized, and it took me sometime more, a few years more, even, because this had been, you know, most of my life and point of view was the realization. And again, Rush, meeting him, it was such an icon, and realizing the significance of him and

his personal nature versus what I had been told, allowed me to first start to question what I was being told, then to be able to be safe saying, well, wait a minute, I don't agree with that, or this is not correct. And then ultimately leading to the point of resigning, of deciding to not identify as a liberal, to decide that it was okay, it would be safe, and it was more important to be honest than trying to placate members of a tribe.

And you mentioned, I appreciate your introduction. My very first book was I wanted to be able to not have my time on the left wasted. I wanted to do what Rush Limbaugh does. I wanted to, you know, at least inform people. And that was my first book, The New Thought Police, which was what I saw, which was this, this development of to silence a major section of the American public using threats and intimidation. So, Tammy, the, you know, I can, I can see threats coming. And, you know, I called the caliphate. the 9-11 thing in 1999 and said blood body and buildings in the streets and it'll have

Osama bin Laden's name on it because I take people at their word when they say they're going to do something horrific you have to take them seriously and it usually works out to you know a legitimate warning system when do we start taking the left dead seriously about you know, reprogramming, deprogramming, you know, basically brainwashing us, you know, into their line of thinking, or some sort of, you know, McCarthy committee on truth. You know, it's almost because Americans, we are romantic. We expect people to do good things. We have an opinion about our fellow Americans, which is an accurate opinion that we are good people. We want to be left alone. We are still a very young country. And it is against our nature to expect or believe why any other American would want to smash the system that we live in that brings so much wonderful, incredible things to people

not just here, but around the world. The saving of humanity, of civilization, certainly Western civilization, and we're seeing, you know, if eastern civilization can withstand what the Chinese Communist Party is doing. But what Americans, unfortunately, are going to have to realize is that the infection of Marxism and socialism knows no boundaries like COVID. It doesn't stop at a border. And that's what this is. It's not about an American sensibility. The mind is a fragile thing. And we've now, we lost the education system, the moment, even a little bit before, but certainly when Jimmy Carter created the Education Department. The federalizing of our public education system, that was the signal, that that was where they knew they needed to be to convince,

brainwash, transform generations of Americans. And we've looked away because we, who would do that? right, we couldn't believe it could be done. But it's happening. And again, it's not a natural projection, by the way, for any country. But it is a human framework that we've allowed to take hold. And the good news is, Glenn, is that it's weak. It does not have a foundation.

No matter what your culture, what language you speak, where you're from, it doesn't survive when confronted. That's why ultimately they end up turning to violence. In our country, the good news is we can protect ourselves. We are not in a position where it is easy to do that as it was, certainly in the Soviet Union, in China, and around the World War socialism and all of that has taken place. So I think it's about seeing these things really happen that they're serious, people like us reminding people, that you must believe them,

and that this can be solved, it's just a matter of confronting it.