The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 287 | Midterm Reality Check: Where Both Parties Stand | Mark Halperin | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: October 17, 2026

The 2026 midterm elections are not looking good for Republicans, journalist Mark Halperin warns. But is it time to panic? Is there still a way for conservatives to win? And is that even the best-case scenario for the Right, especially with the 2028 presidential elections in mind? Mark and Glenn discuss what Republican candidates must immediately start doing to combat Democrats who are hammering them on high gas and food prices, the war in Iran, and corruption claims. The Democratic Party is much weaker than it seems, Halperin says. But it’s not enough for Republicans to just condemn socialism while the DSA and Islamists take over the party. Mark and Glenn also discuss the Trump administration’s raid on Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in D.C., the real reason for Abdul El-Sayed’s popularity, and the Democrats’ new attempts to claim that Trump will steal the election.   GLENN’S SPONSORS            PreBorn: PreBorn invites mothers considering abortion to meet their baby through an ultrasound. For $28, you can sponsor an ultrasound and help save a baby’s life. Donate securely at https://PreBorn.com/Glenn. All gifts are tax-deductible.   Chapter: Chapter’s independent advisers are the only Medicare advisers who compare every plan nationwide, and they’re not paid to steer you anywhere. It’s free and takes less than 20 minutes. Dial #250 and say the keyword “Chapter.”   Home Title Lock:  Make sure you’re not already a victim of home title theft and protect your home against cyber criminals with Home Title Lock. Use the promo code “glenn” at https://hometitlelock.com to get a free title history report, plus a free trial of their million-dollar TripleLock Protection. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You advise Republicans to consider panicking about the midterms. I think there's just an enormously undercovered story about the question of how far left the Democratic Party's gone. Where the hell have the Republicans been on anything? The main thing I hear from Republicans is... So, Mark, you wrote a piece in the Daily Mail that I... I want to start here because I hope it doesn't get worse than this. You advised Republicans to consider panicking. about the midterms.

Fill me in on how bad you think it's going to get. Well, things have gotten a little better since I wrote the piece in some races like the Iowa Senate race. But when I wrote the piece, September was a very dark month. And this is not based on public polls. This is not based on media hysteria,

including liberal media hysteria. This is based on talking to Republican campaigns. They do not have an answer yet in most of these races for the economy, the sour mood voters are in, and the war and tariffs. You know, I have to tell you, it seems like the only person that is taking these midterms seriously is Donald Trump, but even Donald Trump, I don't think, has the message. We are battling socialists, and socialists are the only ones that are actually saying,

hey, you're feeling it at the grocery store, you're feeling it at the gas pump, and I've got an immediate solution. And I don't hear a report. Republican actually sound like they're connected to the people at all. That's a real problem. Well, and that's what I'm hearing from a lot of Republicans, including ones doing races. They want to blame the president saying he and his team need a macro strategy because what can they point to? They can point to the one big, beautiful bill.

They can point to the flaws they see in the Democrats. But most Republican strategists, and look, they could win some of these races. They might have some few moments where they say, you know, we should have a won the state by 10, we're going to win it by one, but a win's a win. But what they're worried about is, both in the individual races and nationally, what's the message that trumps voters' immediate concerns? What is gas costs? What is diesel cost? What a food cost? What is housing cost? I have said this to, I've said this on the air over and over again. I have emailed it to people. You can do certain things. Like you could get rid of the gas tax. That's 25 cents on every gallon.

you could get rid of it until February, you know, until maybe this war starts to settle down. You can relieve the fuel standards. There are things you can do, but they just don't seem to, I don't know, care, be willing to put an hour's worth of work in. What is the deal? Well, some of these things like getting rid of the gas tax

or stopping the export of diesel, there's division about whether they'd actually work. As you know, the gas tax goes to the trust fund to build roads. And some people, you know, don't want to mess with that. I think that, again, the challenge is it's too late. It's too late for some of these ads. It's too late for the spending. They may be, again, the main thing I hear from Republicans is

it lasts winter rather than focusing on the Kennedy Center, rather than focusing on the different monuments, the ballroom, the president should have focused with his team on, okay, the war might still be going on. The tariffs are still part of our long-term vision. We need to be invested in data centers. We need a big national plan for all those things. And instead, what Republicans say is he spent too much time on these other things.

And I'll say again, it doesn't mean they're doomed, but it is why they have a problem. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You know what? I like the president, but I am not carrying water for the president. I think the president has done some great things. He's also made some huge mistakes. If he doesn't stop talking about renaming oceans, I think I'm going to lose my mind.

You know, so the president, the president is the president. But where the hell have the Republicans been on anything? I am so sick and tired of hearing these people in the Senate and Congress blame the president. The president has actually been working on a big strategy, a global strategy. that I personally think is genius, but it's going to take us 10 years before anybody figures it out, if it works. Where's the water they're carrying?

Why do these Republicans just think that they can be elected to Congress and the Senate and then not even pass the SAVE Act? Well, I think part of the challenge... Yeah, I think part of the challenge is that you'll never go broke betting against profiles encouraging Congress. It's just not a body that's intended to act quickly, rationally, even in their own interest. And the president has never had much use for, you know, being Bill Clinton or Lyndon Johnson and spending time with them and really trying to figure out how to move them in his direction. He prefers to act unilaterally and he prefers to just get his way.

So there's plenty of blame to go around on that front. But there's no doubt. And I've said this to some of the congressional Republicans who've complained to me about the White House. said to them, tell me what you did. Tell me what you did along the way to try to make this better. And great examples, Roger Marshall, Republican Senator from Kansas, he may lose his race. I suspect he probably will. He might just pull it out. But right now, most Republicans don't think he will. And you've got to ask himself, okay, you've been Senator now for five, you know, five, almost six years. What have you done to avoid being in this position? And that includes just in the last year.

So how bad is it? What do you think we're looking at? Well, again, I try to be very measured here. I don't predict and I don't guess. What I do is I talk to people running campaigns and ask them, where do things stand? I think right now what people are missing, again, not a prediction. It's not something I'm wishing for. I'm just telling you based on my conversations.

The bad end of this for Republicans, I think is potentially worse. than most people are talking about. I think they could lose eight Senate seats, and I think they could lose north of 30 house seats. I'm not predicting it. I doubt it's not the base case. It's not the most likely, but it could happen because right now,

the biggest thing in the race by far, you're talking about all the other variables, how much money's being spent, are the ads good or not, etc. The biggest thing is the sour mood of voters who blame the president and the Republican policies for the high costs of everything. And that's what's driving.

That's why you see, you know, in Florida, the government Republicans might lose the governorship. In South Carolina, they could lose the Senate seat. In Mississippi, they could lose a Senate seat in Nebraska and Kansas. These are all places you wouldn't have expected competitive races, and they're really competitive now because of that one factor. So him going out, is it A, making any difference, or is it hurting? It's hard to say. You could make an argument for either. Net net, it's probably a slight advantage, I would say, simply because he's trying to, as you know,

he's going mostly to red districts, red states. You got to energize the base and you got to get Republicans, independents who lean Republican to come at. And those presidential visits are, you know, not planned haphazardly. The president's involved, but so are the data geeks. They're trying to get, make sure that they don't, in red states, red states are going to read. if you can turn out the people who voted for Trump two years ago, they should be able to salvage some of these seats. But there's no doubt also that there are some downsides to this. And I don't think Republicans or Democrats are kidding or bluffing

when they say that they like seeing the president on the trail because there is a downside to it. There's no doubt he's not popular right now. I have some good news. Over 50,000 babies have been saved this year alone by this audience and more than 5,100 commitments to Christ through the Ministry of Preborn, this year. Now, how is it happening? I'll give you this personal message from Dan Steiner. He is the president of pre-born. He said, because of you, we can invite mothers considering abortion into a

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if they win the Senate and the House, there's no way we're not going through impeachment. There's no way, is there? I'm not as sure. And that's based on talking to some of the congressional leaders. Donald Trump gets strength when he's attacked. He gets strength when people... I mean, the first smart thing they've done.

That's the first smart way of handling Donald Trump that I've seen in eight years, 10 years. I'll say this. I think they'll be focused on doing everything they can to win the White House back because their hope would be to have full control in 29. And so if they think impeaching him will help them win the White House back, I think they will. But if they think it'll backfire the way the others arguably did and the indictments did, I think they'll find other things to do.

Remember, they want to get rid of Pete Hagseth. They want to get rid of Bobby Kennedy. There are a whole bunch of people they can go after. Donald Trump has magical powers. He's shown that. And if you swing at the guy and miss, you pay a friend. price. So I'm not as sure they're going to impeach and try to convict him as some people are. So what do you think that means for Iran and the message that this is going to send to all of our allies,

all of the stuff that Donald Trump has set up and put in motion? You know, I talked to him before he won his election the last time. And he said, I said, can you do this? He said, Glenn, I don't have four years. I have two years. I have two years. years, two years. He said, because they can come marching through and stop all of it. He said, to fix this, he said, we actually need eight to 12 years to be able to stomp it out entirely. He said, but that's only just going to, it's just going to be on, is everybody doing their job and is everything work right? You know, two years, they'll just reverse all this stuff. What does that mean? Well, there's going to have to be some sort of compromise, even if they're

grudging through gritted teeth because he can veto anything they do. They can't pass things into law and they're not going to have veto-proof majorities in the Senate and probably not filibuster proof in the Senate and veto-proof in the House probably. So I think it's going to be up to the President to decide if he does lose one or both chambers, how he wants to approach the last two years. The eye needs to be on China. Iran is obviously a big deal, but Iran is all about China, just as Greenland was all about China, Venezuela, Cuba. These are all about China. And so my hope is that the president and his strategic advisors like Secretary Rubio,

Secretary Besson, my hope is they say, okay, we got to deal with the Democratic Congress now, but we also have to make sure we leave office having done our best to compete with China in this existential battle. So I have to tell you, I have never been, I've never seen a field of candidates. and maybe I'm just mainly talking about the Republican you know the the the 28 but I've never seen a field of Republicans that is as strong as the bench is for Republicans

and I've never seen a weaker bench for the Democrats I mean I'm seeing these these Democrats who are dangerous in my opinion dangerous and crazy if they're not Marxist they seem to be falling in love with the Islamists and as radical as you can possibly get,

why isn't the American people, is that who we are? I think there's just an enormously undercover story about the question of how far left the Democratic Party's gone and what it means. And now you see people who are not as far to the left. People like Gavin News and Barack Obama basically saying, well, look at all the areas where we agree with the socialists. Let's emphasize those.

I think that conversation is meant to, to tamp down division inside the party before the midterms. And I hope for the sake of the party and the country, that debate is more robust in the context of 2028. But Glenn, the polls are unambiguous. A large number of Americans prefer socialism to MAGA. A large number prefer socialism to capitalism. And just as we have to deal with the public opinion about Israel,

which has changed so dramatically, we got to deal with this. You can't just denounce socialism. You've got to figure out why so many of our fellow citizens are really attracted to it now and see what that's about under the hood. I think they're attracted to it because they people see that this is not working. We're not, it's not working. And so you can't just keep saying, if I hear one more Republicans say, I want to bring us back to the good old days. Look, I want to bring us back to the founding documents, but I don't want to bring us back to 1790.

I don't want to bring us back to 1950. I don't want to bring us back to 1950. We are on the edge of a whole new world. Use those principles to shape the world that is right in front of us. And I don't see, I don't see anyone offering, socialism's not a new idea. You know, that's been failing since 1850. So I don't see anybody taking, honestly,

and he's not good at articulating it. The only one that I'm seeing saying, this is the shape of a new world. This is the way it should look, in his opinion, is Donald Trump. I don't see Republicans or Democrats offering actually any new solutions. Democrats are getting away with just riding on socialism. Republicans, it's like they're asleep. Yeah. The weakness of the Democratic Party and the weaknesses, as you said, of their leaders,

including most of the folks thinking of running in 2028, And the strength of Donald Trump as a showman, I think has kept the Republican Party from really sharpening its arguments against all this. I think the Democratic brand is so weak right now that it's not a fight. It's never been a weaker. If there were someone like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, someone of extraordinary generational talent out there making a different argument, and they weren't socialist, but they made a different argument than Ronald Reagan and other Republicans, I think that would raise the game of Republicans.

but they're running against a divided party, a weak party, a party that's moved so far left that it's easy to occupy the center. I believe, and I'm a little bit of a one-noter on this one, I believe this is all coming back to artificial intelligence, or the president likes to call it superintelligence. That's about the future of the economy. That's about the future of capitalism. That's about the future of competing with China. And so all roads lead there, and I think the president has cast his lot with saying,

all in. We need data centers. We need AI. This is how we're going to do it. And I don't think he's won people over. He's on the wrong side of an 80-20 argument. And I think the battle for the future is going to be not Bernie Sanders saying ban it. I don't know how you ban something that can be downloaded on a computer from somewhere overseas. So that's not going to work. But I think the president and the AI companies have not been nuanced enough, thoughtful enough, expansive enough about how this works. So I think the future of the two parties of 2028 and of the fight over capitalism versus socialism is going to be about how AI goes. And that's a chapter and chapter and chapter yet to be written. What's the winning angle on that?

Because, you know, I have been studying AI since the 90s. Yeah. And I have been warning about we've got to have this conversation before it gets here. And it's almost too late to have this conversation about, you know, what do we think? it's you know i think they're right when they say we're at the singularity the the gravitational pull is is way too strong you're going to be sucked into it yeah but what is the winning argument because as much as i know about it as much as i've studied uh of it and much i've learned on it i think it is the greatest tool that man has ever come up with and i think it is the most

dangerous tool. I mean, it makes, it really makes nuclear weapons look like tinker toys. And so people are either you're living in utopia or you're just a doomsday person. And I'm neither. I want to balance that. What is the message that would win here? Yeah. You and I are totally sympathetic on this intellectually. And here's the metaphor I use. Imagine 200 Martians landed on earth. And they said, some number of us are here to kill you. Some number of us are here to make your society better than ever. And some of us are going to do both. And by the way, 400 million more of us are about to arrive. That's, if that happened, if that actually happened, we wouldn't be sitting around talking about the midterms. We wouldn't be talking about the NFL. We wouldn't be talking about

Taylor Swift. We'd be having national emergency conversations, whole of society conversations. What are we going to do about this and we're not so right you know we're just not having it so the so the first building block is there needs to be nightly national town halls which i want to put on my two-way platform about this with the best experts not the freaks who run these companies but serious thoughtful people clergy political leaders business leaders civic leaders about okay practically how do we integrate this into our lives. And then morally, economically, how do we make this, minimize the risks and maximize the benefits and beat China? That needs to happen. That's the message for me is we're not having an adult conversation. And there are people who are smart, serious, including a lot in Congress,

who don't know a first thing about AI. Not the first thing about it. Not the first thing. I mean, look, I'm 62, but I work to keep up on everything. Some of these guys in Congress, still think it's 1974. I mean, you talk to them about AI, and they have absolutely, I mean, they are barely catching up with Google at this point. And I don't mean Google AI, I mean, just search

engine Google. Yeah. 100%. I say all the time, if you're sitting around waiting for Congress to be part of the solution, looked at how they performed on one simple task. 90% of us of parents and people said, we need to regulate social media for kids, or we'll lose a

third generation. Yep. They've done They've done nothing. They've done nothing. So they couldn't handle that. You know, you talked about AI being more complicated than nuclear weapons. Yeah, it's way more complicated than social media. And they failed. So we can't sit around and wait for Congress to solve this. They have neither the expertise nor the will. If you know somebody who's turning 65, they might be feeling like they've been dropped into a constant stream of mailers and calls and ads telling them something different about Medicare. Most of it just makes things more confusing because this. This is not a small decision about your health care. You want to know you can see the right doctors. Get the care you need. Pay for a plan that fits your life. This is where chapter comes in.

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He said they were absolutely spectacular. You know, sometimes it's about the right health care and doing the right thing. The call is free. They've helped thousands in my audience and they can help you. Just dial pound 250, say the keyword chapter. It's keyword chapter pound 250 chapter. You know, the only person I think that could actually make this case is, running for a governor in Ohio,

Ramoswami. He at least understands it. Do you know, is he talking about this on the campaign trail at all? Everybody has to. He's probably going to lose, unfortunately, for him. And if you want him to have a big voice on these issues, Ohio is not in a great place for Republicans right now. The reasons why Vivek Ramoswami is not doing as well as a normal Republican in Ohio

are varied. But part of it is, his party and his president are on the wrong side of public opinion on these issues. And so it's hard if you're down ballot to, if you're not, you know, Bill Clinton or somebody can talk the owls down from the trees. It's hard to balance, as you said is right. It's hard to balance caution, not domerism, but caution about the risks with a positive outlook about it because the voters don't want to hear anything positive about this right now, most of them. But it is the solution. You cannot have a $40 trillion debt. I don't understand how people don't get this.

You know, it's just like your life. You run up enough debt. That means you have to go back to school and get a, you know, a degree in neurosurgery. So you're going to make a lot more money. And then you can actually bridge that gap. But if you don't do something different, you're never going to pay off that debt. And you're, you know, we don't have debtor's prison anymore, but you're going to go bankrupt. America and the rest of the world would only have debtors. There is no bankruptcy for countries. So this is the game changer.

There is nothing else on the horizon that is like this. I totally agree. And I'm frustrated because you and I, again, we're not experts. We're not living in Silicon Valley. But you and I see it's so clearly. And yet that point of view is not informing nearly enough of the conversation in America. There's not enough conversation. Are we even capable of ruling ourselves anymore?

I mean, there's this dumbing down of our society. There is a lack of interest in, I would guess, 50% of the American public. They just don't care. They don't watch or they make an excuse, oh, it's just too negative. I'm not going to watch. Well, what do you think is going to happen? You think it's going to get better without you watching it? You know, I hear from Republicans who are like, I'm just not going to vote.

I'm so mad at the Republicans. I'm not going to vote. Wait, wait, wait. There is a difference between the two. You may not like, you know, the one you're voting for, but is it better than the other choice? I don't understand it. Are we even capable of logically thinking things through anymore

and being able to come to logical conclusions with critical thinking? I mean, it's a reasonable question. question. I think that it's easy to blame leaders. It's easy to blame people in the media and certainly elected officials in the media play a role. I think to sound a little bit like Pogo, we've met the enemy. The enemy is us. Citizens have to demand it. That's the beauty of this country. If citizens want an unresponsive, dumbed down, national town square dialogue, if they want elected officials who aren't responsive to the will of the people, that's what they'll get. but I don't think it's going to change because suddenly we get a better class of people running for office or the media behaves like adults and concerned about being professionally responsible.

I think the people are going to have to demand it. And populism is often derided, but I think there's a brand of populism that I think can force the elected officials and the media to start to think about responding to the public wishes. Yes. I mean, populism, everything to extremes is bad. There is a level of populism where, you know, it's, I think, I think of Thomas Jefferson. I would rather trust the farmer, trust the American people. I trust people who put their hands in the soil every day over intellectuals. I mean, you know, we might get it wrong from time to time, but we will eventually figure it out and get it right.

Let me go back to the candidates. This Talrico thing in the flu, I don't think it makes a different. That's not going to make a difference at all, even if he was in an institution, which I don't think he was. I mean, yes, is it weird that he took 12 days for a flu? Yes, but diabetes, it could be it. I don't know. It's easy to have him just bring up the records and just say, here it is, just stop. But I don't think he does because I think everybody who's hitting him on this, I think it's hurting the Republican. I agree with you. And what I've said to my Republican friends who criticized me for not, you know, demanding to see proof of life, um, if,

If this is what you think you'll win the election. If this is your best argument with a few days, a few weeks to go, rather than we can make Texas better, we can do better on policy than this guy. You're probably not going to win. And I'm amazed at how many days they continue to waste on it. Again, if he lied about it, I agree with them. But there's no evidence that he did, truly evidence. People say, you can't have flu for 10 days. I've had the flu for 10 days.

It's a little weird, but he didn't want to get people sick. Maybe I don't know. But my point is, if you've got the goods, if you can prove that he lied about something like that, absolutely. But if you're just going to go on X and post things that are suggestive or bring up, you know, he answered that question, says he's never been to Ohio. Move on. Talk about the economy. Talk about health care.

Talk about better conservative ideas. And instead, again, if Tala Rico wins, I think people will look back at this period where Republicans tried to make the campaign about this, including the president. including Paxton, I think they'll look back and say, man, that was kind of ridiculous, that we seated the whole campaign. What happens if, I mean, Texas has a chance of going blue. You lose Texas, you lose everything. If Texas becomes a California that you can't count on,

you mean, electoral college, you don't have to change the electoral college, it's done. Yeah. Look, the governor's race, I think, is also in question now. And Governor Abbott has been a very good governor, very popular governor, but he's in the fight of his political life right now against a pretty liberal Democratic candidate, who's run a great campaign, by the way. She's done a very smart job of making it possible.

I'm not sure she's going to win by any means, but she's done a great job of making it possible that Democrats could win the Texas governorship first time since San Richards, first time in several generations. And it has to do with all the, these same issues, all these same issues about affordability and health care and about data centers. And you're right, it would be a massive, even if Democrats win races like that. And they could win governorships in Georgia. They could win them in Wisconsin. They could win them in Michigan. They could win them

in Ohio. They could win them in Iowa. Even if all that happens, it doesn't mean there's a realignment. It doesn't mean that 2028 is a big Democratic year and they start to compete. But it opens the door to that because it means they've unlocked the key to putting together a majority in the state or a plurality in some cases, but enough to win the electoral votes. And if they're smart, they can study that and say, well, what's the, what's the demographic and geographic formula? So it would be, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be a determinative and dispositive, but it would be a big wake-up call for Republicans if they lose some of these red states. I will tell you that I thought, you know, in 2020, when Trump lost,

and Kamala and Biden won, I thought, oh, the republic's done. He's just not going to survive that. And out of it, what we got was a different Trump. We would not have had the Trump we have today had he not lost in 2020. He wouldn't have done, he didn't have the clarity. He didn't have the mission. He needed time away to go, okay, what did I just go through? So I don't want to say it's going to be all horrible.

Is there a chance that because I don't think that, I don't think the socialist Islamist, you know, the red-green alliance of the Democratic Party, I think they're so eager and so arrogant. They just want to tell you who they are and what they're going to do. Is there a chance if we lose the House and the Senate that they become so arrogant that this actually flips around on them in a very,

because I don't think they're restrained at all. in a very dangerous way, and it could actually, in 28, could actually be the best thing for the Republicans. First of all, yeah. Now, first of all, not all your audience is familiar with me. So I just make it clear. I'm optimistic as a person in general. I'm optimistic about America. You and I are talking about some pretty dark things, not just to the Republican Party, but for America. But I'm optimistic. as if we see a Democratic Congress and we see a far left, and again, even the ones who are so-called moderates are pretty far to the left of what the Democratic Party was

not that long ago, I think it'll be an opportunity for the Republican Party to frame things and say, well, okay, here's the choice, look what they're doing. There are people who support J.D. Vance for president in 2028, who say, well, the loss of Congress would be the best thing that could happen to J.D. Vance, because now he's got a foil to run against, rather than just defending the Republican record in Washington.

I think that there's going to be a big fight in the Democratic Party. Do they want to be a party that can't answer the question, who's a bigger threat to the United States, Israel or Iran? Do they want to be a party that supports national funded health care, government-funded health care? I think they're going to have that fight. Do you think that that is not being fought now because the election is right here? I think that the Democratic.

Democrats are just, I think the traditional Democrats, a lot of them are gone and the rest of them, I just think, I think they're afraid. Most of them are. There's a few critics. No, there's a few critics, particularly on issues related to Israel. But for the most part, again, the template was set by people like Gavin Newsom and Barack Obama to say, well, I may not agree with everything everybody in the party says, but we all agree there should be more child care. We all agree there should be more taxes on billionaires. We all agree that the war should end. But that's not a fight, though, in the party. No, I'm saying. No, it's not. It's the opposite. It's the opposite. But I do, I do think there's a very good chance the fight occurs in the context of the presidential race, not just because someone will see a

so-called lane to be the moderate candidate, but because they'll want to win a general election. And while these positions that people like El-Sahed have, while they can win in a midterm in an environment like this, I don't believe that those positions will carry the day in a presidential, all other things being equal. But let's see, you know, the state of the economy, to see what happens with the Iran war, etc. But the Republican Party is on the verge of losing either badly or extremely badly to a far-left, very unpopular Democratic Party. and that, you know, that's going to require some explanation how that could happen. It's less likely to happen in a presidential year if the Republican candidate's skillful, but it'll be pretty cautionary.

And if states like Kansas and Texas and South Carolina and some others, if they go blue, it's going to raise a lot of questions within the Republican Party, is it about Iran and tariffs and data centers or is it something more profound? We'll have to see how that plays out. So talk to me about El-Sayed. How is this happening? Is this all Dearborn? Is this all economy?

He seems to be very good. I mean, he's disciplined. Somebody has helped him, you know, sit down and tutor him in a way of Barack Obama sort of way to where he just stays on message. Even in that debate where I thought it was just a knockout punch of, I can't tell you the difference between, you know, which is worse, Hamas or, or Israel. I thought that was really, really bad, but he answered it with, I think we should be talking about affordability.

And that just goes over the head of so many people. Do you think people in America understand how serious this threat of Marx, the Red Green Alliance? I mean, I've never seen anti-Semitism on both sides like it is in America. right now. It is terrifying. If you're Jewish, I got to believe it's terrifying to be a Jew in America in America today, let alone New York City. Do the American people wake up to this?

Well, the anti-Semitism and the anti-Israeli view is a subset. And again, you see some of it, as you said, in both parties, but just to focus on the Democrats that else I had for a moment, it's a subset of extremely radical views. Ten years ago, Glenn, if any Senate candidate in any state of either party had been asked who's a bigger threat to the United States, Israel or Iran, and they failed to answer, it'd be a disqualifying gaffe. It'd be done. Instead, I read a dozen news accounts of the debate. Some of them didn't even mention it, and none of them led with it. And so we just, just as I tell all my friends on the left, with almost without exception, you've done nothing to understand the rise of Donald

Trump and MAGA. You've done nothing to understand where that came from. Right. Yeah. And I say to my, I say to my friends on the right, this guy who if I'd shown you his bio, his family connections, the things he said in the past, Pike, association with Piker, if I'd shown you that five years ago and said this guy is probably going to win a Michigan Senate seat, you'd say no. And so now, so now I say to people on the right, if you want to hate him, if you want to be disgusted by him, let's do it on your own time on the national town square let's try to figure out why this is because this guy has a lot of things about him well it starts with that it starts with economics uh the the best way to understand this guy at the highest level what's his three sentence slogan money in your pocket money out of

politics uh medicare for all and he says that that's his slogan says it all the time and if you go ask a michigan voter what his slogan is they'll tell you almost without exception it's broken through. So what does that mean? Money out of politics. That's about the so-called Epstein class. It's about the billionaire class. It's about corruption. It's about all those things. And of course, Donald Trump, when he talked about draining the swamp, et cetera, we know that's resident in the populist left and rights. That's number one. Money in your pocket. I mean, you know, I've a very privileged person, but I spend enough time talking to folks across America and understand, I think, and both in my head in my gut. Sending a kid to college, buying a house.

These are things that are... Stopping for gas. Stopping for gas. I filled... I brought somebody to the airport and my friend went with me and we took his truck. It's diesel. It cost him $207 to fill his tank. Yeah. $207. Some fathomable, you know, affording health care. He's speaking to just the most gut level of money in your pocket being able to afford basics. So basically it's Bill Clinton. It's the economy stupid. Yeah, it's the economy stupid.

And well, the three slogans on the wall in Little Rock and I've written about this and it pertains to El Sad who's been compared to Bill Clinton. One of the things on the sign in the war room in Little Rock in 1992 said it's the economy stupid. But what it also said was

change versus more of the same and don't forget health care. And the two sleeper issues in the the two sleeper issues in this race, we all know about the economy and the price of gas. One is health care and one is corruption. And his three-word slogan, a three-sentence slogan, deals with both of those in a very vivid way, very simple, bumper sticker way. And so what are Republicans offering on corruption? They're offering the vice president's efforts on corruption, but the press doesn't cover them.

But they're also offering a lot of what President Trump and his family have done, which people see as corruption. they're also seeing defense of the so-called Epstein class, which they look at as a sign of a form of corruption. On health care, the Republican Party has done nothing, even though there are a lot of conservative ideas that they could be talking about. And then money in your pocket, you know, they've just come up short because of the war and the tariffs

and everything else. So how do I explain it? I explain it by a talented guy is energizing a lot of people over their most basic, immediate concerns, and he's doing it in a way that Republican, have trouble matching because he's talented and because they're the incumbent party right now. That is probably the most astute analysis of politics I have heard in, I don't know how long,

but very good. Let me talk to you about the shift in the way the Republicans are voting. Republicans seem to be voting early now. GOP wants to get people to vote early. You know, we've, we thought about redistricting was going to change things. I don't, what's happening? Is anything changing the game here at all? You mean in this election or broader?

This election and broader. Well, in this election, you know, we don't really have a good sense of how people are going to vote here. Who will vote early by mail? Who will vote early in person? Who will vote on election day? Because COVID's kind of screwed everything up. And frankly, honestly, President Trump's on a. again, off again, support for early voting and by mail voting has hurt a lot of Republican candidates

because voting early, voting by mail, it's better for the party. They can bank the balance. They don't have to worry about bad weather on election day or people being busy on election day. They can stop spending the money tracking each individual voter wants their ballots in. So I don't know how it's going to end up. I suspect Republicans will do better on early voting in person and by mail than they've done in the last couple, but I don't know how much they'll catch up there. I think in general, you know, I don't know what turn out's going to be like. We saw in 2018, half the country voted. It'd be great if we got that up to 75%.

And that would, you know, that'd be people across the spectrum. But I don't know what turn out is going to be like. It's a big mystery. Can I ask you about Ilan Omar? Sure. I was having dinner with some friends last night. We were talking about it. And the consensus was, you damn well better have it.

something quickly because to me if I'm an independent I'm like look it now he's doing what he's just been accusing them of doing and it better be something significant you can't you you know if you take her out on something her father did you know when she was seven I don't think I don't think that's going to go over well it might be legally correct but it's not going to go over well what do you think they have? Where is this leading? Did the president know and approve of 20 days before the election? You do this?

Yeah. Well, he was a little vague about his role. I will say this, it's a parent violation of Justice Department policy regarding overt acts of investigation for elected officials as close to the election. It also comes in the wake of many attempts at investigations. of the president's opponents that have fizzled out, that have been thrown out by the courts or where a grand jury wouldn't indict. So I agree with the folks you were meeting with.

I think if we can't end the cycle of prosecutions as persecutions, we're in dangerous a republic. Criminalizing politics is one of the most dangerous things a democracy can do. So the two last steps, I think, of any republic going into a banana republic is criminalizing your opponent and packing the Supreme Court. Yeah, you're a, you're a, I totally agree. So I agree. I hope there's something there that justified the acts they took. Now, they did get a judge to authorize a warrant. So there's some does that mean anything? I mean, everybody says, you know, it's standard's pretty low.

It's pretty low, but it doesn't mean nothing. Doesn't mean nothing. But I agree with you. It should be done quickly. But honestly, it shouldn't be done this close to the election. There's a reason that Justice Department rule exists. And I was very, critical of Jack Smith for clearly trying to get an indictment of the president of conviction before the election. He shouldn't have done that. And he was so open about it. He's like, well, the voters need to know. No, there's a reason we have that rule. It's not a law, but it's kind of a practice at the Justice Department. This close to the election, she's already fundraising off of it. I would bet more likely than not, she's never convicted. And so, no, I don't think this is great unless they have a great case

That's really bad. Yeah, I agree. I agree. It's unfortunate. Let me see. Let me talk to you about Mark Ruffalo. Yeah. He's saying now, we know the Republicans are going to steal the election, which I thought

that was like almost a criminal offense four years ago to say those things. Yeah. And he's not the loan. I mean, there are some crazy scenarios that Trump is going to, you know, take the National Guard out to seize ballots and all of these things. I mean, are we worried about any of these things, actually? Are this just ravings of lunatic minds? Well, certainly there's the double standard in the press

that they can accuse Republicans of anything. That's true. I'm a big believer that the system will hold. The president has shown he'll do some things related to elections that others probably wouldn't do. But I'm just a big believer that the other institutions in our society, the states, the local governments, the courts, the honest press, the citizen rate, the civic society.

I just think if the president makes some mistakes and overreaches, it'll be corrected and it won't imperil our democracy because I think it's one of the genius designs of the system that we do not allow there to be unfettered power, unchecked power, whether it's a co-equal branch at the federal level, whether it's state and local government, whether it's civic society. I just think if the president makes some mistake regarding the election, I think it'll be checked. Why did we not get any movement on the SAVE Act?

Especially from the Republicans. What does that story? Because they should have taken 40% of a loaf. If they'd taken out the stuff that kept them from getting enough votes to pass it through, I think they could have gotten a lot of what they wanted, which would have been good substantively and politically. But they wanted a whole loaf. And you see that both parties, happens with both parties all the time,

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Don't let the scammers have the upper hand. It's HomeTitlelock.com. promo code Beck 30. You just mentioned the press, the honest press. I think we are better off than we were 10 years ago, even five years ago. I think the ability to, you know, leave the networks and do your own thing and be your own man, you know. When I left and built the blaze, no one was doing live anything. I mean, it was HBO or Netflix was still sending movies.

by DVD. Yes. And everybody thought this was crazy. And this is the vision that I thought. If somebody could go out and just pioneer and say, no, this can be done. Then everybody will get, and they'll say, I don't need that.

I don't need the overlords. I don't need all that apparatus around me. It's nice, but I don't need it all. And I think we have seen, we've seen problems from it. But I think overall, things are getting bad. better with truth-telling. The concern I have, really, things like TikTok that people think, you know, you can get news from TikTok. But what is the state of the press in your mind? Well, the so-called establishment press, what I call the dominant media, still just laughably,

liberally biased more than ever because the Trump derangement syndrome. Unfortunately, they're amongst them the only places that have what I think is an important ingredient that you'll never have an independent media. Glenn Beck and Mark Halpern are not sending 50 people to Oklahoma City if somebody blows up the federal building. We have no foreign bureaus. We're not filing a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests and following up with lawsuits. Those economies of scale are necessary to do the two things I think journalism needs to do. Tell the stories of our time and hold all-powerful interests accountable to the public interest. So I worry about that because these places, besides being liberally biased, and part of the reason they're failing economic,

is because they're liberally biased. They're not succeeding. They're going through decline. So I'd like some strong places that aren't biased that have the economies of scale necessary to do those two things. I think it wasn't the first, isn't the first step to getting there

is to break the back of it. And by having alternative voices, 100%. We're not just glued to those. Yeah. But it's the problem. We're going to go. We're going through an ugly period, but go ahead.

The problem is, this. We recently had the largest media scandal in American history, an attempt, failed attempt, to cover up Joe Biden's mental decline, which occurred over more than seven years. Okay. Not only did they engage in the cover up or attempted cover up, but they've had no public acknowledgement that they did or reconciliation about how it happened. Okay. So not only does it speak to their corruption, but it also speaks to their lack of account and it further reinforces in the minds of more than half the country. Those places are clown shows.

Those places aren't serious. You can't have the biggest scandal in your industry's history and then pretend it didn't happen and expect people to have more trust in you. So the fact that we've had conservative media throughout the period of the attempt to cover up Joe Biden's mental decline. So you're right that the rise of independent media, including conservative voices, has created a lower market share for the dominant media. But it hasn't changed their ways.

I worked with Peter Jennings early in my career, and Peter said, let's try to make ABC News appeal to the whole country. Why leave half the consumers off our target list? And unfortunately, he passed away and wasn't able to see that vision through, but that is not the main view. And you still go to these places.

I still talk to my old colleagues in dominant media, And I say, aren't you embarrassed about the Biden thing? Aren't you embarrassed about Russia gate? Blank stairs. Blank stairs. So I don't think, I don't think any of those places, with the possible exception of CBS News under Barry Weiss, I don't think any of those places has had their consciousness raised by the rise of independent and conservative media.

How about the sale of CNN? Is that going to change things? Well, a lot's riding on David Ellison and whether he wants to institute. these kinds of changes. I don't know the answer. I know that bringing in Barry was a courageous thing. Yeah, I mean, if you just look at it, forget politics of the person involved. If you're just a businessman, what you just said about just cut it down the center, just be fair, cover all sides of the issue.

You would think just as a businessman, that would be good. but can you get the staff to do that? I mean, you know, I had some, I was at CNN and I asked somebody, one of the best writers CNN that worked for me, but very, very liberal. And I asked him, I said, I was going to do a tribute to Reagan.

I think Reagan had just died, or it was the year anniversary. I can't remember. But I asked him to do a tribute to Ronald Reagan for me. I said, can you write this up for me? I got it. And we're going on the air. And I'm reading it.

And I'm like, how? I said to him, how, what? what is this? He said, I'm sorry, Glenn. I tried so hard. He said, I just don't understand him. I don't know what people like about him. I tried really hard. I had to go on the ear and just ad lib all of the stuff because he just couldn't do it. How are you going to get journalists who, you know, be like me saying, I actually think I could do somewhat of a decent job because I would listen. But, you know, tell the other side. Can you get that when you're coming out of a school? that is just pumping out activists. You have to clean house. I mean, the problem, I tell my conservative friends all the time, the problem is so much worse than conservatives think. They're actually, the level of bias is so much more fervent and intense

than you actually see in the product, even though the product is completely biased. You have to clean house. And that goes to people on camera. them with. If the apple, if the tree is producing the same apples. You find people like me who exist in the world who just want to do the traditional job of holding everybody accountable. They exist. They're just not, they're just not hired. They're just not prioritized. Just the opposite is prioritized. So you go out and you create news organizations where the leadership says we're just

not going to have tolerance for people who don't want to be fair to everybody and hold everybody accountable and tell great stories. It's possible to do. It's a risk, though, because you'd have to fire a lot of people, including in some places, I think you'd have to fire almost every, almost every anchor would have to be fired. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I don't agree with Barry Weiss on a lot of stuff, but I am rooting for her. Does she win? Is it work? If David Allison supports her, I think it will. I think it will, because I do think there's a market for it. You know, Michael Jordan, who was a Democrat said he didn't endorse Democrats because Republicans buy sneakers too. And that's Barry's philosophy. They want to reach everybody. So she continues to have the support of David Allison,

as best I can tell she does. I think it can work. And that doesn't mean everything she do will be liked by Donald Trump. It doesn't mean that no one who works there will have an opinion. It means all voices will be heard. And that's what I do on my platform. And I'm proud to say we're having success because we say all voices hear, everyone respected. I want Bernie Sanders as much as I want Laura Lumer, as much as I want, you know, Speaker Johnson, as much as I want Chuck Schumer. I want all voices to be heard in a respectful way under one roof

and let the American people hear a conversation that is robust, interesting, charged at times, but respectful and pluralistic. I have to tell you, the most arrogant thing you can do is say, no to somebody, if they're honest, if they're an honest broker to say no, I don't, I don't need your opinion, I don't want your opinion, you're saying that no one has anything to teach me. And I think there's a lot to learn from people that you disagree with. If you're

both honest, you know, if you're both honest and say, this way I really feel and totally agree. I say to people, I get notes all the time from people who are members of the two-way community and they say, I'm never going to watch again when so-and-so is on. And I say, why is that and they say, I don't agree with anything they have to say. I say, you're missing the point of the platform. If all we put on the platform is people you agree with, listen to them because they speak for tens of millions. If you're a conservative and you're listened to Mayor de Blasio, I had him on last night. And you say, I've never watched with Bill de Blasio. I don't agree with Bill de Blasio. Listen to I have Jack Fasovic on. Same thing. You don't agree with Jack. Listen and learn.

How can you argue? I mean, it's, you know, that is the, that is the key to understanding and moving forward is actually listening enough so you can repeat their argument back. You have to, I mean, you know, every therapist will say, no, stop. Tell them what you just heard until they say, yep, that's what I heard. That's what I said. And then you can have an argument. If you're not listening to the other people, you have no idea what they're actually saying. And I think that's the problem with most of the media right now.

It is always great to have you on. and great to talk to you. Thank you so much. I'm honored to be invited. I love to visit with you. Thanks. I look forward to seeing you soon. You got it. Thanks a lot.