Best of the Program | Guest: Rep. Chip Roy | 7/1/25
52:00 Share

So you've got a business, but what about a brand? The difference? More of you. Wix gives you the freedom to create your website, own your brand, and do it on your own, exactly how you envisioned it.

Experience limitless customization. Boost your creativity and efficiency with AI tools for every part of your business journey. Scale up with built-in SEO, e-com, and scheduling features. Put more of you in your business. Go to Wix.com and do it all yourself. New poll shows. Democrats are less proud to be an American than they were after 9-11 by 51 points. That's quite a fall.

But when you hear the things that have been said over the last 25 years, I think you can understand why they might feel that way. So what do we do about it? Also, Chip Roy is on a little passionate about the BBB, the big, beautiful bill. And a reminder of what this week is really all about. It's not Fourth of July weekend. It is Independence Day weekend. What does that mean? All on today's podcast.

Preborn is our sponsor. Every day, women walk into clinics thinking they don't have a choice. They're scared. They're pressured. They're alone. You know, everybody is always like, oh, these moms that are going in for abortion. What are you doing? What are you talking about? Some of these are our daughters, and they are afraid, and they're alone, and they don't know what to do, and nobody in their life wants them to have this baby. They're not monsters. They're afraid.

And pre-born will offer a space for them where they are loved and actually provide other answers other than just killing the baby. And they start with free ultrasounds. And when a mom sees and hears the heartbeat and sees the baby, she's 80% more likely to not go through with abortion. But...

Once she makes that decision, she always says, but I'm alone. I don't have the money. I can't do this by myself. Nobody in the family supports. That's where pre-born comes in. After two years after birth, they're still with mom. They're still providing clothing, food. Whatever the mom needs, they're there.

And so far they have rescued over 350,000 babies, but there are so many more that need our help. Your tax-deductible gift makes this mission possible. Donate. Simply dial pound 250, say the keyword baby. That's pound 250, keyword baby, or visit preborn.com slash Beck. That's preborn.com slash Beck, sponsored by Preborn.

Hello, America. You know we've been fighting every single day. We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you. We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it. But to keep this fight going, we need you. Right now, would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast?

Give us five stars and lead a comment because every single review helps us break through big tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth. This isn't a podcast. This is a movement, and you're part of it, a big part of it. So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up, help us push this podcast to the top. Rate, review, share. Together, we'll make a difference. And thanks for standing with us. Now let's get to work. ♪♪

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Say hello to Stu here. Hello, Stu. How are you? Hello, Stu. We're here. Welcome back to you. Thank you. Yes. So 87% of Democrats in 2001, extremely proud to be an American. Now 36%.

Slight drop off. Slight, slight. No way to keep a country. No way to keep a country. No. Now the number for Republicans relatively consistent, right? Actually up, I think slightly. Up two points. Yeah. Now was this in the aftermath, the immediate aftermath of September 11th? Is that why it's so high with Democrats? Maybe, maybe. I think that, I mean, let's look at this though. You know, before September 11th,

You know, we all thought that we were all pretty much the same. We all thought we were pretty much the same. And there were those that, you know, were on the fringes. But in the last 25 years...

I mean, what have you heard about? If you're a Democrat, what have you heard about? You've heard about the genocide of indigenous peoples. You've heard about the massacres and the forced removals and the trail of tears and the boarding schools and the broken treaties and slavery and the legacy of racism and colonialism and imperialism and the annexation and the taking of Hawaii and the conquest of the Philippines and Puerto Rico's now a colony and all the CIA-backed

coups and the inclusion or exclusion in the internment camps and the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Japanese Americans and the Muslims for surveillance and how anti-Muslim we are. We're all really afraid of all Muslims. The anti-labor repression, the Ludlow massacre, COINTELPRO, the

The labor organizers and civil rights activists that have just been oppressed the whole time. And women were denied their vote until 1920. And there were restricted roles in the workforce and politics and reproductive rights. And what did we do on HIV? We did nothing on HIV. And homosexual rights, my gosh, we're still throwing people off of buildings if you're a homosexual. And trans, don't even get me started with trans. And then the environmental exploitation.

The rivers that have been set on fire, the poison communities. Look at Flint, Michigan, and the land is stripped for profit. Now we want to sell our own national parks. The medical racism, the abuse of the Tuskegee experiment and forced sterilizations and the racial bias in health care that's still evident today, you know. Suppression of dissent with the Palmer raids and McCarthyism and the surveillance of civil rights leaders and the protest movement.

criminalization. You can't even go out now and set any fires on the streets without being deemed a radical or revolutionary. And they want to throw you in jail just for breaking into a Macy's. Capitalism, it's nothing but an exploitation. Capitalism inherently generates inequality and alienation and commodifies every human relationship.

You know, the state is nothing more than a tool of class denomination in the police and the courts and the military. All they do is protect the elite interest, not the public welfare. They're against you, you know, be afraid of the police. Private property and wealth is just hoarded by the wealthy. Their inherited wealth, the land monopolies, the billionaire class accumulation is just fundamentally unjust.

And then we have a two-party system. It's nothing but a managed illusion. Real power resides with donors, lobbyists, unelected bureaucrats, the military, permanent war economy, the prison industrial complex, the gender and patriarchal control, the surveillance capitalism, and let me, don't even get me started on the genocide, the climate genocide.

That's all you've heard for 25 years. That's all you've heard. And some of that stuff is true. Some of it is true. But tell me, where is the perfect nation? Where is the nation that is better than that? Where is the nation that has corrected itself over and over and over again? You know, we've been told over and over about how bad America is, how America is just broken. Let me ask you.

What would your life be? How different would your life be if America hadn't existed? Because you live in a world now that America built. Not alone, not uniquely, but decisively. Decisively, we change the world forever. And in many good ways. You know, you've grown up only hearing the sins. Can you pause for just a minute today? Just a minute.

Because the nation's story is not propaganda, it's proof. Yes, it's brutal. Yes, it's flawed. Yes, it's ugly. Yes, it's undeniable. But there's also some undeniable truths. That one country rooted in liberty reshaped the planet, yes, for good. I mean, most people likely think World War II was just a foregone conclusion. If they even studied it. If they even know who Hitler was.

If they know what fascism, what the difference between fascism in 1930 and fascism today. It wasn't a foregone conclusion. Without America, Hitler wins. Japan keeps the Pacific. Fascism becomes the dominant force of the 20th century.

Oh my gosh, we just went over and all we tried to do was just kill the Japanese. We just wanted to vaporize the Japanese. Do you know what the Japanese military did? They were worse than the Germans, but we never focused on that, did we? America mobilized faster, produced more, fought longer than anyone else. We built more tanks and planes than the Axis combined.

We led the invasion that broke the Nazi grip. We dropped food as well as bombs. Did you know that? We did something even rarer. We didn't conquer. We rebuilt. And while communism tried to replace fascism, we were the ones on the front line and stood our ground again. For 45 years, we held the line. Not with brute force alone, but with ideas, with culture, with freedom, with genes, with music, with hope.

If you think communism is great, talk to somebody who lived under communism. You've been lied to your whole life. Your school, while you say America is just indoctrinated people, try your school. Try your university. Question things. Why do you question power but you don't question the power of the university? The Soviet Union collapsed because people wanted what America had and not genes.

They wanted freedom. They wanted the freedom to express themselves. They wanted freedom to be able to create their own music, live their own life, to buy the things they wanted, to own something. Do you know that before America's rise, extreme poverty was the norm? Extreme poverty. Kings had jewels. Nobody else had jewels. You had dirt.

And you didn't even own that dirt. And then came the engine of capitalism. It pioneered, it scaled, it was exported by the U.S. Yes, we did export capitalism. Oh my gosh, that was just nothing but exploitation. No, it wasn't. It was innovation. It was supply chains, trade routes, machines, markets, standards. It was also charity.

Over a billion human beings lifted from starvation-level poverty. Let me say that again. Over a billion humans lifted from starvation-level poverty in just 50 years. You know, here behind me is a potbelly stove, an old stove. You know where that potbelly stove came from? That potbelly stove behind me, I don't know if you can see it, or sitting over there in the corner right there, that old potbelly stove, you know who invented that? Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin.

You know what else Ben Franklin did? Ben Franklin, oh, he's a monster. Ben Franklin also developed what's called the patent. Do you know what a patent is? Do you know that America invented the patent? It was Ben Franklin that said we have to have a patent. Why? Because you want to talk about exploitation. Before America, you could invent something and you had no power to keep it. There was no such thing as your invention. You could invent it.

But some rich guy would come and steal it right from underneath you. And they would get rich and you would get nothing. You led your life in poverty because you couldn't invent and then scale anything.

You would invent, somebody else would steal it, they would get rich. It was Ben Franklin, one of our founders, that said this exploitation has got to stop. And he, when he took and invented thing after thing after thing, like the potbelly stove, which brought heat into people's houses. Do you know what the number one cause of death for women was? At the time, the number one cause of death for women was burning to death.

Because they would cook over the fire in the house and their dress or their clothing would catch fire and they would burn to death. The number one cause was burn to death. Potbelly stove kept that fire tamed. It heated the house. It gave you something to cook on without the open flame.

And do you know how much money Ben Franklin made on this? Oh my gosh, the exploitation. None. Why? Because he refused. The guy who invented the patent decided not to patent it.

Because he felt it was right to give this to the world. It was his choice. It wasn't the government telling him. It was his choice. Because not only did he believe in the wealth of nations with Adam Smith, he also believed in moral sentiments. You had to be good and decent. How about the Green Revolution? No, not the one you think about. The Green Revolution, an American scientist...

An American scientist saved up to 2 billion lives with seeds. That's the real green revolution. Today, your phone is made in Asia. Yeah, I know you hate this global thing. You hate the American system. It was made in Asia. It was shipped to you globally, sold online, all through systems created by American globalization.

We wrote the operating system for modern freedom. Every modern democracy borrows from our Constitution. Our founders invented a government designed to limit power. And what have you done on the left? You have only grown the power. You know, there used to be a thing that the right did. And the left used to be for small government, for human rights, for constitutional rights. You're not for that now.

You're not for the separation of powers. You're for consolidating all of the powers. Are you for the free press while you silence people on X? Regular elections, due process, this didn't come from perdition. It didn't come from a king. It came from America. All of those things. Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison. They didn't just write rules. They lit a fuse.

From Tiananmen Square to Tehran, dissidents quote our words. They hold our flags. That's not nationalism. That's impact. You are told today we never walked on the moon, and you think you're educated? Talk to somebody about the mirrors and the laser systems that we have on the moon now. How'd they get there? What movie were they put in?

Americans made this happen. You're online today because the Pentagon that you hate so much built the Internet. You carry a supercomputer in your pocket because of the moonshot and Silicon Valley. You know the phrase app store, cloud, AI, all American interventions, all of them. When new therapies or treatments are pioneered, mRNA.

Robotic surgery, cancer breakthroughs, they usually start here. And I'm just getting started. Let me tell you about our sponsor. It's Patriot Mobile. Every cell phone company claims to care about you. But the question is, where does their money go after you pay them? In other words, they claim to care about you, but do they think they care about the values that you hold? Do they actually care about...

Where you would like that money to go? Are they offending you? Are they working against you, really? With most major carriers, your money funds things that you would never support on purpose. Abortion advocacy, politicians who mock your values, radical social agendas. And why? Because they don't actually care about you.

I mean, in many cases, you know, you see this with politicians all the time on the left and the right. They don't actually like you many times. Patriot Mobile does. They're the only Christian conservative wireless provider in America, and they put their profits towards pro-life organizations, first responders, religious freedom, and veterans in need. And they use the same cell towers as the big guys, so your coverage isn't an issue. And their customer service, 100% U.S.-based people who actually pick up the phone and care.

You're going to have a cell phone provider either way. The only question is, are you going to fund the opposition or are you going to stand for something? Go to patriotmobile.com slash Beck. That's patriotmobile.com slash Beck or call 972-PATRIOT. Use the promo code Beck. Get a free month of service. Patriotmobile.com slash Beck or call 972-PATRIOT. Now back to the podcast. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. And don't forget, rate us on iTunes.

Chip Roy is with us from the great state of Texas. Chip is a congressman, and welcome to the program. How are you, Chip? Well, Glenn, I'm just continuing to work through and trying to deliver for the American people, but it's getting hard. I'm with you. I'm tired of this bill right now. You're living the dream, brother. Who doesn't want your job? My gosh, what a glorious, glorious, fun-filled life you must live.

So tell me. There's no sarcasm at all in what you're just saying. None at all. Tell me, has this thing gotten better or worse? Unfortunately, Glenn, I believe it's gotten worse. Now, we've not seen the final product out of the Senate. We don't have the text. We've got to review it. I try to be level-headed through these things. I have enormously strong and good friends in the administration who enjoy

who in good faith want to see this pass, just as you do, just as I do, just as the American people do. They want to see us move forward legislation to make tax cuts permanent, to deliver on the border funding that we need. You know, Stephen Miller is a longtime friend I've known for 25 years. Russ Vogt is a longtime friend I've known for 25 years. We've been working together in the trenches for as long as I can remember. We all want to deliver.

The problem is the swamp is going to swamp. And right now we have a bill that in my estimation violates the House framework, but more importantly, would add significantly to the deficits. Now we have differing views. More than it did. More than it did, right? Right.

by quite a bit in my view. And look, there's going to be a debate about this, about tax cuts and revenues and all this stuff. And I get it. It's baselines, you know, CBO, all these different things. I'm just telling you, Glenn, as objectively as I can,

I look at the math and I look at how you factor in economic growth, which I'm doing, factor in revenues and expenditures and what we're doing on mandatory spending, which is not enough. The fact that we're only repealing half of the green new scam, if we're lucky,

The fact that we're continuing to allow continuing to allow Medicaid to go to illegals because of some arcane Senate rules. The fact that we're continuing to allow Obamacare subsidies to fund transgender surgeries.

The fact that we are going to, in my estimation, have probably a couple of trillion of deficit spending in the first four years, which means you're going to have more interest, which means it's going to stack up all to get savings in the out five years. That's not what you and I signed up for. Now, I'm looking at this trying to say, OK, the president wants the tax cuts. So do I.

The president wants borders, so do I. I think the president wants us to repeal the entirety of the Green New Scam. I think the president wants us to get good reforms. Be careful, like handle Medicaid appropriately and all of that for our American citizens that are vulnerable or depend on it. But we haven't delivered because the Senate has a bunch of people in it who don't want to deliver, and they're hiding behind the parliamentarian

And they're delivering us a subpar product that I didn't come to Washington to sign up for, Glenn. All right, so let me ask you this. They're hiding behind the parliamentarian. Is that... I mean...

And they say there was a change in the bill because Medicare paid to illegals and the parliamentarian said you've got to keep it in there, some arcane rule or what. Couldn't the Senate Republicans just ignore that? Is it fair to... What?

They could overrule the parliamentarian. They could make a choice if they wanted to do so. Now, then they'll say, well, some of these things take 60 votes and so forth. If they want to address this, they can address it. But the real issue here is that behind closed doors, what you know is that there are senators who don't want to make the reforms, don't want to make the changes.

They're making their own policy choices, uh, based on what they want. Right? You've got Lisa Murkowski right now, instead of wanting to reform Medicaid, she wants to get a special carve out for additional spending for people in Alaska.

You've got, you know, tell us you've got others. They want us to go the wrong direction when it comes to Medicaid reform. And Glenn, I gotta be honest. How many times have you and I been on the phone over the last decade talking about shutdown fights on discretionary spending like every two years? Oh, I know countless times. Every time we have one of those fights, the people in this town say chip,

You need to shut up because the real problem is mandatory spending. It's Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid. It's not fighting over all this stuff. You're wasting our time. I didn't think it was a waste of our time. I didn't think we should be funding weaponized government. I didn't think we should continue to jack up spending for the alphabet soup of regulations killing America. But I said, okay, guys, here we are. We're going to do this reconciliation package. We're going to reform Medicaid, right?

We had to fight like cats and dogs to get the reforms and the work requirements we got out of the House. It was good, not great. The Senate, now they're working through it, and they're fighting every inch. And it got actually a little better in certain respects, thanks to Rick Scott. He's been fighting hard, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson. We got a little bit more of what's called provider taxes.

But overall, we're not meeting the moment. We're not getting enough Medicaid reform. We're getting the watered down stuff on on on illegals. How about remittance taxes, Glenn? We passed a measure in the House to to tax money going from America for people here illegally back to their own countries. The Senate watered it down and got rid of it. It's crazy. Why? Why? Why? Why?

- Because they don't like the policies, Glenn. Because here's the thing, there were bankers, banks, who came in and said, "Guys, this would be really hard on us if we had to enforce this policy of money flowing from our banks and institutions

to Mexico and to, you know, uh, Columbia and places, uh, we, we really need to carve out so that banks aren't going to be, uh, attacked by this. And then they go, but it would be, it would be way too burdensome on the people who come here and they're honest and they're working hard. They want to send money to their families. Look, you and I both have a heart as people say, if you want to say, Hey, I,

I get it. You got an honest person here who's following the law. They came here legally. They want to send money back home to their country. They can still do that. They can still find a way to do that. But we're taxing. And the Senate said, no, we're not going to do it. But the biggest thing at the end of the day, deficits go up. And I didn't sign up for deficits to go up. We're not doing we're not going to vote for that. You're not voting for this. I can't.

I cannot vote for this as it's currently structured. If we can come to some agreement, look, I, and Glenn, this is important. The president rightly wants us to find a way to get a bill done. I get that, man. I want to deliver for six months. I've been busting my butt. I voted for a bill that came out of the house that I didn't like. It wasn't good enough, but I thought it was an important step. I worked to come up with a budget framework with Jody Harrington and others to figure out how to get this done and get it out of the house.

I think we made progress. We did get Medicaid reforms that were good. We did get some tightening down on the green new scam when others didn't want to do it. But we're now fighting a Senate that's watering down important stuff. And importantly, the way they concoct the tax and spend policies overrides

Overall, I can't look at this in any way objectively without telling my voters, the people that sent me to Washington to represent them, the deficits will go up. Now, last point, the president and the administration will say, look, guys, don't worry about all that. We'll make it up with tariffs and we think higher economic growth.

Well, two things. Number one, on the economic growth front, we assumed growth in our bill, Glenn. We assumed 2.6% growth. Now, you might say, well, gosh, we can do three or four. Yeah, but we have to do a 10-year budget.

2.6% growth is a lot higher than what we've been experiencing the last two decades on average. We picked a sweet spot of 2.6% growth. It is true that if we have 4% growth for a decade, we will have much more revenue. I hope that's true. You hope that's true. And if it is true, then great. It's gravy that will give us money to buy down the debt and save money and get the deficits down further.

but I can't budget to 3.5% growth when we've been sitting at 2% growth. It'd be irresponsible. So I'm with you, Chip. I'm with you.

And I've said this for a long time. The Republicans are going to lose. They are going to lose. And they're going to lose because you're just not delivering for the American people what you promised you would. Donald Trump seems to be, you know, at least he's trying. He's doing a lot of the things he promised he would do. I don't see that happening with the Republicans. And so...

you know, I don't know what the midterm is going to look like, but I will tell you this. He has to have that tax cut. He's got to have it. If we don't get that tax cut, everything the Republicans have been trying to do or the Republican voters have wanted, it's over. It's over. Because the economy will spiral out of control without that tax cut. Agree or disagree? No.

I do agree that we must deliver on the tax cut and I believe we will. When push comes to shove, there's no way that we're going to get to December and not provide an extension of the tax cuts that were so important in 2017. Now, I want to remind everybody

The corporate rates were made permanent already, right? What we're talking about dealing with is the expiration of certain personal tax issues, marginal rates, but also child tax credits, also the standard deduction, et cetera. Now, I'm not sure how, you know, I've got different views on different ones of those policies, but overall, we want to ensure that that money is staying in the pockets of the American people. We have to deliver on that.

But I will tell you this, if we don't address the inflation tax, if we don't address the extent to which people are fleeing American bond markets because we're so irresponsible, then we're going to be doing a disservice to our kids and grandkids who can't afford a house. They can't buy a house because the mortgage rates are too high. They can't afford it now, Chip. They can't afford it now.

So I think what we need to do, like I'm prepared to go back to the drawing board today. I don't need to go home tomorrow or the next day. Let's just let's get busy. Let's we've been working on it. Let's tighten down some of the spending. Let's tweak what we've been doing and get the tax policy done and get it set. Let's go back.

House bill, for example, that we passed, it was a good solid bill and get the Senate to adopt it and pass it or make some modest changes. But we got to get rid of some of these ridiculous things like Medicaid for illegal aliens, like pork that's going through Alaska, like specific giveaways and get rid of those things, go back to the House bill, make sure the Inflation Reduction Act is getting terminated and make sure this map adds up.

We'll deliver on the tax cuts, deliver on border, deliver for the president. I'm prepared to do that, but I'm not going to swallow a crappy bill because the Senate tries to jam me with it before July 4th. I have to tell you, I don't know how it is unpopular to say, no, we're not giving illegals

Any Medicaid? We're not. I mean, do you remember when, who was it that was in Congress when Barack Obama talked about Obamacare and he said, you lie, Joe Wilson, wasn't it? And everybody had a cow. Well, look at what we're doing now. Look at what we're doing. Well, look at what we're giving illegals. No, the answer is no, no, no, no, no. And I don't understand how that is not so simple. I don't understand any Republican that doesn't understand the green new deal. No, no,

No. USAID. No. Doge. Cut it. Why can't they see what I just I there is. I mean, to tell you, Chip, I'm sorry. I don't mean to take this out on you because you're one of the good guys. You've been trying to do this.

We are in between a rock and a hard place. The president has to have what the president needs to get the economy going. We wait until January. You're right on top of the midterms. The president is not turning this economy around fast enough because he can't get anyone in Congress to do jack crap on anything.

You need to cut the frickin' spending and the waste and the garbage. And I tell you, I am with Elon Musk 100%. 100%. You are one of these weasel Republicans who don't, who just go along and just be like, you know what, we're going to add another $5 or $6 trillion to our debt.

I'm done. I'm done. And Elon has said, I will, if it's the last thing I do, I will make sure none of these people get reelected. That's not going to be good. It's not going to be good for the Republic, let alone the Republican parties. But you know what? I've had enough. I've had enough. And I think the American people have too. Glenn, I can just tell you this. July 4th is obviously...

Friday, Independence Day, 249 years ago. And we always celebrate it. We celebrate their courage and we celebrate Lexington and Concord and we celebrate all that they stood for. We celebrate the men that stormed the beaches in Normandy and we celebrate all of the great courage that our men and women in uniform have done to fight to give us this country. How can I say, no, sorry, I'm going to vote for this bill because there's going to be some political pressure to

When I regale the boys at the Alamo sitting there taking bullets, knowing they were going to die, or those that ran into a wall of bullets in Normandy, look, we have to deliver. We have no choice. We all agree on that. I'm sure I'm going to get labeled any number of things that I'm not delivering on the president's agenda, that I'm jamming up a bill. Look, and I get it. And I'm

And I'm not going to get defensive about it. The president wants his bill and he's right to want his bill. But Congress has to deliver a bill worth sending him. And I'm prepared to stay here until we do. But I'm not going to vote for a bill because I'm being told I have to because a bunch of freaking losers who are swamp creatures who want pork and giveaways and don't have the

cojones to stand up and deliver for the American people and to actually reduce spending and not hide behind parliamentarian, not hide behind tax cuts. They want to hide behind the tax cuts to tell me and the border to tell me you got to vote for this bill and don't worry about the spending. No, kiss my ass. I'm going to stand up and fight for the border and the tax cuts and the spending cuts. We've got to do it.

It was very reminiscent of Daniel Boone there for just a second. Or Davy, sorry, not Davy, Davy Crockett, not Daniel Boone. So thank you for that. Chip, God bless. Have a great holiday.

Stand firm in what you believe in and just keep fighting. I appreciate the attitude that you have towards the president. Give the president what he needs. Fight for the president, what he's asking for. But you've got to fight the swamp at the same time. Have to. Have to. Thank you, Chip. Appreciate it. This is the best of the Glenn Beck Program.

249 years ago, I think it is tomorrow, right? Is tomorrow the second or is it the first? What day is it today? Tomorrow's the second. So it was 249 years ago, tomorrow, that somebody sat alone in a one-room hotel room and scratched out the words, when in the course of human events.

Those are the first six words of a document that is so dangerous, still today so revolutionary. It was whispered in those candlelit rooms by men who knew, knew that if I sign this document, that's a death warrant. I'm dead. I'm dead. And in the course of human events, Jefferson wrote them. 33 years old. Adams would later say,

You do well to revere Jefferson, but he didn't write alone, basically. I was there, too, and so has been Franklin. The ideas were forged in the minds of men like Franklin, who was old enough to know better, and Adams, who was stubborn enough not to care. And they weren't perfect men. I love this about the left. They try to make you think that, yo, you think they're perfect. I don't think they were perfect.

I mean, Ben Franklin used to walk around naked in his house a lot. That shows, I mean, for as smart as that guy was, it shows maybe he had a lack of mirrors, but they weren't perfect. They owned slaves. They argued. They compromised. How does that make them different than us? I mean, we should be able to relate to them. What is it that we tolerate right now? What is it that we compromise on? What are our failures that future generations are going to go, pfft?

These people just didn't get it. Perhaps what we should notice is that they, unlike most of us, they were willing to gamble their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for something that had never, ever been done before. Something entirely new. The idea that rights don't come from a government or from a king or from a parliament.

They don't come from the majority voting. Everyone has certain rights. You know, for all these people who are, you know, going in Macy's and burning down towns and then stealing clothing and they're like, go because I've been oppressed. You can't. I've got rights, you know. Yeah, yeah. You know who the first people were to articulate those rights? You know the only country that actually has stood for those rights?

And we're imperfect. That idea came from the founders that you say you hate. But the actual rights come from God, which you dismiss. Think of this. Just ponder this for a second. That all men are created equal. That their rights are given to them by a creator. That's not a political assertion. That's a genius. That's eternal truth.

That's theological dynamite lobbed straight into the thrones of Europe. All over the world, it's still dynamite. They knew what they were doing. And I don't mean like, they knew what they were doing. No, they knew that the British crown had the largest military force in the world. And these guys, they were farmers, they were printers, they were lawyers, etc.

They were a ragtag collection of intellectual and idealists facing down an empire where they said the sun never set on the British Empire. Meaning the colonialism was everywhere. You could not escape England. And yet they declared it. We're leaving without apology.

And they said that when a government becomes destructive of the ends of liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness, it's not only the right of the people, it's their duty to throw it off. And you know what's amazing? That's not rebellion. That's not revolution. That's responsibility. That kind of language today, that'd have you flagged, shadow banned, labeled an extremist, in most countries disappeared.

But that is the foundation of what we call America, the American experiment. And it's just that, an experiment. We didn't know if we could get it right, and we haven't gotten it right. But isn't it worth experimenting? Isn't it worth trying to get that concept right? When you fail on that concept, you're like, that's a stupid idea. That's not a stupid idea. That's the greatest idea of all time. Why are so many people willing to just quit? The experiment is self-rule.

It's not perfect. Never has been. Slavery, Jim Crow, internment camps, assassinations. My God, forgive us for what we have done. But at the same time, what nation has done more to correct its own errors? What people have shed more blood, not for conquest, but for freedom. Twice in the last century, we crossed oceans. Not to claim territory, but to liberate that territory.

Our sons and daughters fought and bled on foreign soil to push the darkness back, to fight against Nazism and fascism and communism. And here we are. Here we are today. After 249 years tomorrow of that experiment, standing at the lip of the very abyss, those men feared. A godless chaos rising in the east.

and a cold atheistic utopia clawing at the foundations of the Western world. Islamism and communism, two ideologies that have killed tens of millions of people, now dressed all in new robes selling old lies. And we can't even teach a child where their rights come from. We've replaced Jefferson and Adams with TikTok influencers and bureaucratic groupthink.

We're raising generations to not even know the truth about their own identity, but to question their identity. And they could be, oh, you're a funny, funny colored unicorn today. What do you want to be tomorrow? We don't teach them anything about truth or their inheritance. Most importantly, their inheritance. What good are hot dogs and fireworks? If the soul of the nation is up for auction, what is the meaning in 4th of July today?

If we've forgotten the why, if we don't even call it Independence Day anymore. Most people don't even know who we fought against for independence. They think we fought for independence. Most people think we fought the South. And yet we'll light the sparklers and blow our fingers off because we're just that stupid. This Independence Day weekend, would you do me and yourself and your country a favor?

and read the words out loud, speak the words out loud. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another, and to assume among the powers of earth the separate but equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them.

A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. What are they saying? Look, we want to be decent people. We want to be decent people, and we have to separate, but we believe it's only right that we tell you why we have to separate. And it's not because of all the bad things you've done. We'll get to those later. It's because we're different, and you don't understand that.

You have been telling us all of these things we no longer believe in. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and they're endowed by their creator with certain unalienable, unchangeable rights. And just among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. My gosh, read those words and let your children hear what thinking and courage sounds like. That to secure these rights, I'm telling you,

The king who thinks that your government was given to you by God and you are the ruler and you will tell everybody what to think, what to do, what to buy, what to sell, what to tax, what not to tax, who gets land, who doesn't get land. No, no, no. Governments are instituted among men deriving their powers, their just powers from the people themselves.

And that government is only there established by those men to protect the rights that God has given each of those men. Let them feel the chill that runs down the spine when Jefferson writes, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the government or from the governed. Let them hear the words of responsibility. What responsibility sounds like with courage and freedom.

that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. In other words, you have the right, you have the responsibility to stop tyrants from

And if the government has gone bad, to throw that government off, but reconstitute a government that will do a better job at protecting those rights. Not to form a communist government, not to do anything else, but you want a new government? Fine. Let's find the way to make men more free. This is not a metaphor. This is a declaration of war on tyranny in all of its forms. I mean, I said yesterday, freedom isn't free today.

It was paid for by somebody's blood, but you have to remember they paid for their freedom, not for our freedom necessarily. It comes a time we have to pay for our freedom, and God forbid that it comes down to blood, but at least shake off the apathy. We must renew this promise of this experiment of America.

We need to fight for it as well. An out-of-control government that seeks to rope us into forever wars over and over again. We're all against forever wars. I'm against it. I hate them. But there is one forever war that is required in a free society, a different kind of forever war. A war against ourselves, a war against human nature in each of us. Because of human nature, we get fat, we get lazy, we get tolerant of abuses.

Let your children hear you speak these words, and when you speak them, ponder them yourself. Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And accordingly, all experience has shown that mankind is more disposed to suffer while the evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms in which they're accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object invinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it's their right, it's their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security. In one paragraph, they make the point twice, and they tell us, look, we've studied people, we know you're going to get fat and lazy and apathetic forever.

And you're not going to want to do stuff for transient causes because this is really not good. But when push comes to shove and everything is moving towards absolute despotism, absolute tyranny, then you must stand up. I ask you to ponder this, this particular part when a long train of abuses and usurpations prudence will indeed dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.

And accordingly, all experience has shown that mankind is more disposed to suffer while the evils are sufferer than to right themselves. Aren't we exactly the same people that their experience was talking about? Aren't we the people that are more disposed to suffer?

than to write ourselves because we're too comfortable or we're too afraid just to stand up and simply say no to lies. No, there is a difference between men and women. No, communism is to be feared. It's killed over 100 million people in the last 100 years. No, Muslims aren't bad. Islamism is.

It's evil. No, you can peacefully protest any time, any place, and I will fight to the death for your right to do that. But when you start burning cities down to the ground, no. We're just a few days away. We mark our 249th birthday. Maybe, just maybe, this year, can we stop asking what America was and start deciding what America will be?

before it just slips quietly into history in the dark of apathy and ignorance because the only thing more dangerous than tyranny is the people who have forgotten what it took to break its chains