Matt Kibbe on Meteors, Millennials and How the Election Is Really Rigged

Staunch libertarian and freedom-lover Matt Kibbe joined The Glenn Beck Program on Friday for a rousing discussion about the 2016 presidential election and the future of American politics. Formerly President of FreedomWorks, Kibbe is currently President and Chief Community Organizer for Free the People, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting libertarian ideals. According to Kibbe, disenchanted young people don't believe in our corrupt political system, so reaching them with a non-political, pop culture-oriented approach is critical. The ultimate goal of Free the People is to permanently shift power away from political insiders and Washington cronies and back to local communities.

RELATED: Death by Meteor Polls High With Millennial Voters

Kibbe, along with Glenn, is also featured in the new documentary Rigged, which takes a deep look into how the political system is intentionally set up to give citizens two false choices.

"The rigging of the system goes to the presidential commission alone, which is touched on in the film. This is a nonprofit controlled by the two-party cartel that shockingly decides that they don't want other parties involved in their debates," Kibbe said.

View the trailer for Rigged below. The full documentary can be seen for free until October 30 at Rigged2016.com or on TheBlaze TV November 2, 5 and 6.

Read below or listen to the full segment for answers to these thought-provoking questions:

• Is Gary Johnson running the campaign Kibbe expected?

• Would Gary have won the millennial vote against a meteor strike?

• Do Hillary's pantsuits come from the Chairman Mao collection?

• What was Kibbe's Donald Trump moment?

• How did we miss the boat in 2016?

• Does Donald Trump own the word "rigged?"

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:

GLENN: Welcome to our dope smoking hippie friend, Matt Kibbe, who is -- who is a Libertarian. And are you working for the campaign?

MATT: I run a Gary Johnson super PAC.

GLENN: Okay.

MATT: So we're not allowed to coordinate. As you know these rules, and it's very complicated.

GLENN: Yeah. I know.

so is he running the campaign you expected him to run?

MATT: Honestly, I didn't have any deeply held expectations about how he'd run a campaign. Libertarians are famously disorganized.

GLENN: That's a problem, when you're trying to win a presidency.

MATT: I think there's something going on there. But I think he's -- I love the fact that I'm supporting Gary Johnson right now because he's a sane alternative. I don't want to actually die by meteor, so I'm going with Gary Johnson's side.

GLENN: Really?

MATT: Yeah, those two choices --

GLENN: Yeah, I guess, I mean, if it was meteor or Gary Johnson, I probably would go for Gary Johnson.

STU: Yeah, to be fair to Gary Johnson, he was not included in that particular poll.

GLENN: Yeah, he wasn't.

STU: It was either just the two main parties and the meteor, which I think we'd all choose meteor.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: If it was those two and just a meteor, and those are your only choices --

GLENN: Well, is the meteor, is it going to drag out? Are we going to know about it? Are we going to see it coming? Are we going to have to panic? And then like, oh, which child do I have to, you know, say goodbye to, because I don't have time to say goodbye to all of them? Or it's a strike and it's over? Because if it's just a strike and it's over, I think I'm for the meteor.

MATT: I think Gary could have beat the meteor.

STU: I think so too.

MATT: This is just another example of media bias. They didn't include Gary against the meteor. The corruption --

(laughter)

GLENN: It actually is. This was for millennials. This was taken for millennials. Why they wouldn't include the Libertarian candidate is --

MATT: And, by the way, the most vicious attacks against Gary are coming from Hillary Clinton apparatchiks because Gary is drawing a significant portion of the millennial vote, and Hillary is just not -- the kids aren't cool with Hillary. They don't like here that much.

GLENN: No! I really liked that pantsuit that she was wearing the other day. That was nice.

STU: Shocking!

PAT: It's from the Chairman Mao collection.

GLENN: It really is.

PAT: It was adorable.

JEFFY: That was the excuse that they used bringing in Al Gore, right? To bring in some of the millennials.

JEFFY: Yeah. Which was like, he's --

GLENN: No, he's -- no, the kids love Al Gore. Kids love him.

JEFFY: Right.

MATT: But like Bernie can't get the kids to switch because he missed the point of his own revolution.

GLENN: Yes.

MATT: It wasn't about Bernie. It was about an authentic system of values outside of the political machine. And I think one of the things that Gary is doing is he's talking to young progressives. And it upsets you guys sometimes with some of his language, but I think --

GLENN: Yeah.

MATT: I think the new liberty coalition is going to be young progressives and young conservatives who don't want to shop in the two-party --

GLENN: So here's the thing -- here's the thing because I think that's great in theory, but a progressive by nature -- like, I have no problem with a liberal.

MATT: Right.

GLENN: I could live next to the grateful dead. I don't care. I don't care. I mean, as long as they're not doing it on the lawn when the kids are out.

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: But a progressive by nature believes in big government.

MATT: Right.

GLENN: So how does a Libertarian and a progressive get along?

MATT: Well, I think, you look at young Democratic socialists, and they don't -- they don't know what the word "progressive" means the way you and I think about it. It's a very authoritarian philosophy. It's very racist. We know that history, but they think it means progress. And they think socialism means people working together to solve problems.

PAT: Uh-huh.

MATT: And I'm thinking, "That's really what a Libertarian's about. We believe in voluntary cooperation and people coming together to do things that they can't do alone, and we believe in a robust community. We don't want the government involved in that stuff because it really corrupts really important institutions." And so I think -- I think if you get past the labels of progressive, liberal Democrat --

GLENN: Okay. So I'm totally -- Matt, I am totally willing to go down that road. Do you have any research that backs that up?

MATT: Yes.

GLENN: Okay. Good. Don't even have to tell me about it, I'm on board.

(chuckling)

Here's the problem though, with Gary is --

STU: That was a good fact-check there.

GLENN: No. I'm -- meteor. Okay?

STU: Yeah, okay.

MATT: It was my Donald Trump moment. Yes!

GLENN: Right.

STU: Believe me.

GLENN: Believe me.

(laughter)

It's the most beautiful research you've seen.

The problem we have with Gary is not that he's reaching out to people at all, it's the fact that he -- he doesn't seem to have any time to try to reach out to people like us.

PAT: Us. Yeah.

GLENN: And when Weld was in this week, I mean, we all walked away -- now, he said afterward, "That's not what I said." But we all heard him say, "I want to repeal and replace Obamacare and, you know, we're going to -- we're going to make it better." Well, no.

PAT: Yeah, he said -- they wanted to fix it. They wanted to fix Obamacare. His problem wasn't the big government program of Obamacare. His problem was that it's not working the way a big government program should.

Since when is that a Libertarian position? That's what we can't figure out.

GLENN: Now, is this a wink, wink kind of thing, that we're all supposed to know? Because it's not working for the conservative.

MATT: You're not going to make me defend Bill Weld, are you?

GLENN: Okay. Good. I'm in. I'm in again.

(laughter)

MATT: No, I think it's -- I have no idea what he said, and I don't want to defend that. The Libertarian position doesn't think that government-run health care is good for people and that it shouldn't be in the health care business. That's it. That's it.

GLENN: Right. Right.

MATT: Now, I do think that there's always interesting questions about -- and the reason we fought Obamacare so much is that we knew, once it was in place, it would be virtually impossible to dismantle a new entitlement --

GLENN: Look at it now. It's collapsing. They knew it would collapse.

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: Remember, we said, "This is designed to collapse. It is going to collapse. There's no way this math works for the next ten years."

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: And now it's collapsing. And everybody's talking about, "Oh, well, but we're going to fix it." Now that they got it in, now they're going to just soup it up.

MATT: Now, all the pollsters tell Republicans that you have to talk about fixing it. You can't talk about repealing it.

So maybe it's just political rhetoric. But I do think it's an interesting question for Libertarians and constitutional conservatives: How do you get out of this horrible entitlement state that is making poor people poorer, that's screwing young people? How do you do that in a way that's politically conceivable?

GLENN: Yes.

MATT: And I think somebody in politics needs to explain how to do that. But it's probably not what you would get from a typical Libertarian at a Libertarian convention, where they say, "If I had a button, I would abolish the entitlement state today." It doesn't mean anything. Right? Yeah.

GLENN: No, it's got to be reverse progressivism. Yeah, it's got to be reverse progressivism. You have to go slowly. Penn and I have talked about this at length. He said, "Glenn, 30 years down the road, when we're in a nursing home, that's when we'll be talking about, you know, the really big stuff that you and I aren't going to agree on."

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: But it's going to take you 30 years to get there, to slowly reverse this, and to do the common sense -- you know, the things that we agree on. That's the kind of stuff to me that we can make real progress on.

MATT: Yeah. And the answer to all this stuff is more choice, more freedom, particularly for young people. Not -- not creating a new big redesign of health care, but actually giving them the choice as to whether or not they want to be part of that system. And I think you will see new free market solutions that we can't even conceive of emerge in health care and retirement and everything else, if people are just given a choice.

GLENN: Well, I know -- we've been talking this week a lot about millennials. And how that -- that's the hero generation. That's the greatest American generation, the next one. The one to come now.

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: And it's people our age. I don't even know how old you are. How old are you?

MATT: Fifty-three.

GLENN: Ooh, old man. So it's people our age --

MATT: I just hope I never get as old as you.

GLENN: Fifty-one, buddy.

MATT: I know.

GLENN: Our job is to reach out to the -- the generation that went before us, this -- the older generation, the Trump generation, and say, "Okay. Stop. Stop. That doesn't work, and you need to let it go." And we have to now reach to the young generation and say, "You need to step up, and you need to know what did work, and don't throw the entire system out. Find out what did work, and pick it up and now design and move forward."

We're supposed to -- I think, we're supposed to be the ones -- we're the latchkey generation. We're always the one that didn't -- we were left at home, we were the ones that were forgotten. We were the middle kid. And we'll be the middle kid again. We're just -- the hippies are doing their thing now. And the millennials are coming up. We're the middle kid that is just going, "Can we make -- we got to make peace here. You got to take less up at the top. You got to stop doing all these things."

And the millennials, it's time for you to stand up and be who you are. Be the hero generation that you are.

MATT: Do you remember when George W. Bush was trying to reform Social Security, the Democrats critique -- he had this tiny little retirement account that would give people more choices.

GLENN: Yes.

MATT: I think there were three choices in that system. And the Democrats' response was, "You can't give people that many choices. They can't handle it."

GLENN: Three.

MATT: Three. And a young person --

GLENN: Because I know when it was television, ABC, NBC, CBS, it was too many choices.

MATT: Right. Yeah.

GLENN: It was like, I don't know what to watch. There's too many things to watch on those three networks.

MATT: And as it turns out, they're all the same anyway.

GLENN: Yes, exactly right.

MATT: It didn't matter. But, you know, young people, they carry everything, and they live in this wild Libertarian world where they choose their friends, they choose their music, and they're never overwhelmed by too many choices. They're only turned off when somebody dictates their choices for them. And I think that -- that has to be like the biggest opportunity we've ever had.

GLENN: I have to tell you, Matt, I watched the debate. I don't know if you felt the same way. But I watched the debate the other night, and it -- I was overwhelmed with, "This is the biggest lost opportunity in possibly our nation's history, political speaking, where someone that could actually explain to two boobs on television common sense and constitutional principles and simple economics would have rode into a brand-new dawn of America."

MATT: Yeah. Well, we saw the linked DNC memo where they talked about Pied Piper candidates like Donald Trump, people that would lead the party right over the cliff. And I was reminded -- they listed Rand Paul and Scott Walker and Marco Rubio as candidates that they were scared to death of.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

MATT: Because they knew that those candidates could beat Hillary Clinton. And so, yes, we missed it.

GLENN: I know.

So when we come back, I want to ask you about one missed opportunity that the Libertarians had and just get your thoughts on that. We'll do it here in a second. By the way, Rigged is a new movie about the third party candidate. Rigged2016.com. We're airing it on Wednesday, November 2nd, at 8:00 p.m. Then again, an encore presentation on Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 p.m.

It's Rigged 2016. I'm in it. A lot of other big Libertarians are in it. And it's worth seeing. Behind the scenes on the campaign trail as well. Rigged 2016. You can find out more information at Rigged2016.com.

[break]

GLENN: Matt Kibbe is with us. He runs a super PAC for Gary Johnson. He's also involved with the movie Rigged 2016. You can find that at Rigged2016.com.

Do you think that if Rand Paul would have let go of his Republican suit and said, "I want to run as a Libertarian," do you believe he would have won?

MATT: Yes, I do. And I wish he or someone like Justin Amash --

STU: Yes!

MATT: -- would have taken that leap.

PAT: Yes. Yes.

GLENN: Why didn't, why didn't either one of them?

MATT: I don't know. And as someone who was also involved in a Rand Paul super PAC, I wasn't allowed to encourage him to do that. There was a window there. And I think the potential was huge.

GLENN: Hmm. I think this was biggest missed opportunity.

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: You look at it and you think, "Nobody -- nobody likes -- I've never seen any election like this in my lifetime."

MATT: Yeah.

PAT: Well, that's for sure. And I know he's your guy, Matt. But he is terrible with conservatives. I mean, absolutely terrible. He's -- he has, it almost feels like contempt for conservatives.

GLENN: Well, for Christians.

When he was on with us -- it was interesting. It was almost as if he had more trust in the government than he did for Christians.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: And it was bizarre. It was really bizarre.

PAT: Well, it was that whole thing, would you make a Nazi cake? And I think his answer was yes, right?

GLENN: Yes. And he said, "You have to do it."

PAT: Yeah. So the government --

GLENN: And Bill Weld came in --

PAT: -- is going to force a private business owner to do something against their faith. How is that Libertarian? I've never understood it. His policy on the border is really difficult to get your head around too. But I know Libertarians are not as border sensitive as --

GLENN: You know what, it's weird because Libertarians are all over the map.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: The point is -- that's what I was saying about the -- but not on the cake thing. And really, the border, as long as -- if he gives it to the states, then it's up to the states. But the Libertarian -- and this is the one thing that I like about it, is that you don't have to be in a cookie-cutter. You don't have to believe same thing as the party does, except on control.

PAT: Yeah.

MATT: Yep. You know, I think the question of the border and explaining a lot of Libertarian things is -- is something that we need to figure out how to do better. And Gary obviously is not the ultimate explainer of things.

PAT: No, he's not.

(laughter)

MATT: On anything.

PAT: Not the ultimate explainer on Aleppo and the Syrian situation either.

GLENN: No, he's had a bad run.

MATT: No. But he has a way of talking about things that sometimes you think you heard the opposite of what he was trying to say.

GLENN: He is the --

(laughter)

PAT: Which is problematic.

GLENN: That's a problem. That's a problem.

We were talking about we think he's one of the most painfully honest guys we've seen in politics, when it comes to critiquing himself.

MATT: Right.

PAT: Almost to a fault.

GLENN: You know, that Aleppo thing -- we were on the air going, "Stop apologizing, man. Stop it. Stop."

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: He was just so -- look, I should have known it. No, you should have. But, no, no, no. Shh.

MATT: No, he feels that way. And I think one of the most compelling things about him -- I mean, first of all, he is a successful business guy. He's a successful governor from a blue state. That alone makes him really attractive in this cycle to me.

GLENN: Yes.

MATT: But his honesty and his -- he's got this goofy honest persona.

PAT: He does.

MATT: And I don't think this guy would lie to you. And this election again is a really refreshing thing, given the binary choice that we have. If I could go back and re-create it, I would love for Rand Paul or Justin Amash to be up there. But that didn't happen. And they didn't take that leap.

GLENN: So why should somebody who doesn't necessarily think they agree with Gary Johnson but they don't want to vote for the other two, why should they vote for Gary Johnson? Because somebody said -- now, the music is starting, so we're going to have to come back for the answer. But Stu, I think, said yesterday that he wants to send a message to the Libertarians and make sure that they have a space. But I think it was Pat who said, "I don't want to send the message to the Libertarians that that's the kind of guy that we want."

PAT: That we're looking for.

GLENN: So will you answer that when we come back? Rigged2016.com. Movie. You should check it out. It's happening next Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.

[break]

GLENN: We're with Matt Kibbe. And he's with a super PAC that's with Johnson and Weld. Johnson and Weld.

Why should somebody who doesn't agree with Gary Johnson vote for him? Can you make a compelling case for that?

MATT: Yeah, so one of the challenges for the Libertarian Party, any third party, is that all the rules are stacked against -- there are barriers to entry that keep third parties out. If the Libertarian candidate breaks 5 percent in the polls, the Libertarian Party will be on a more equal footing, going into the next presidential cycle. The two-party duopoly keeps changing the rules for ballot access. It's harder to raise money, as an outsider. And it shouldn't be shocking to anybody that the two parties in charge make it impossible for anybody else to get in. But I think the only way to fix where we're at is competition.

GLENN: Yeah, it is.

MATT: Maybe it's the Libertarian Party, but there's so many barriers to entry to a fourth party. And, you know, let's call it the constitutional conservative party. I would rather they were both in there to be honest with you. I want people to see who they really are.

GLENN: Choices, yeah.

STU: Isn't this a -- a good sell for this too is that if you're in a state that's not competitive -- I mean, if you're in New York or you're in Connecticut voting, where the state is going to be a 30, 40-point margin for Hillary Clinton, you can vote for Donald Trump if you want. But, I mean, probably -- because this -- if I understand the rules correctly, it's a popular vote measure.

MATT: Yeah.

STU: So your vote, where you can't possibly win an electoral vote, necessarily, in that state, it goes towards that 5 percent. And that's a nationwide popular vote measure. Correct?

MATT: Yeah, yeah, very much so. But, again, I'm choosing Gary Johnson. I'm just fully in for Gary Johnson based on the other two choices I have, not on choices that I would like to have. And that's really what presidential politics is. You're stuck with these three choices. And Gary is the only person I believe running that actually represents a Constitution, who also happens to be on at 50 state ballots. There may be other candidates that are attractive on issues to you guys, but the reality is, there's only one candidate that's on all the ballots, who is actually polling quite well in some Western states, who actually believes the president is not a king.

And to me, that's pretty compelling.

GLENN: Tell me -- tell me why you made Rigged 2016.

MATT: So I didn't make Rigged 2016.

GLENN: It's part of your --

MATT: I got involved pretty late. And Patrick Byrne from overstock.com actually financed it. And the producer and the director really wanted to tap into that anxiety and frustration that people have with the two-party cartel.

GLENN: You've obviously seen it. You've seen the finished product.

MATT: Yes. Yes.

GLENN: It's really compelling. There's a story of a guy -- they tell many different stories of people that were in the system. They tell a story of a guy -- I don't even know what his job was. But he was -- he was like a campaign manager or something.

MATT: He was a political consultant. Yeah.

GLENN: Political consultant. And he -- a guy came to him and said, "Hey, I want to run for Congress or Senate or something." And he said, "Okay. Well, tell me about your family." And he's like, "I don't have any family." And he's like, "What do you mean? You have to have a family story and everything else." The guy came back to him and put down on the table a bunch of people. And he said, "Okay. Here's my family." And a bunch of pictures and stuff. And he said, "Oh, okay. I thought you said you didn't have any family." Well, these are from friends. Like this grandfather, this is not my grandfather. This is my friend's grandfather. This is my neighbor's, you know, cousin. Right?

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: It was crazy. And he said, "For some reason, I said, okay. I'll represent you." And he went and represented -- and the guy won. And he said, "I just realized, what am I doing?" And he was just in the system. And he's like, "It's so corrupt, and it's so full of lies." And he said, "His child was born, and that's what changed him. He had his first child, and his child was born. And looked at his child and was like, 'Oh, my gosh, your father is a very bad man, and I'm building really bad stuff in Washington.'" And got out.

I mean, it's -- it's compelling. The movie is really compelling.

STU: Are you concerned that -- my understanding is that Donald Trump owns the word "rigged." So he could sue you at any moment.

MATT: Well, he's corrupted the word "rigged" --

STU: He has.

MATT: Because he's actually a product of the rigged political system and was propped up by the media cartel. But the rigging of the system is far more fundamental than the fact that Donald Trump thinks he's losing at the moment.

The rigging of the system goes to the presidential commission alone, which is touched on in the film. This is a nonprofit controlled by the two-party cartel that shockingly decides that they don't want other parties involved in their debates.

STU: That's a really --

MATT: It's a perfect way to strangle third parties, but it's the clash between people are all these choices and all this power, when it comes to every aspect of their life, except when it comes to politics. And when you get to the political marketplace and particularly presidential, you feel like you're shopping in a mall in Caracas, right? There's nothing there. And that's the clash. It's a class between people that are more free and more educated and more able to decide things for themselves, versus this old backfilled room, two-party cartel that's propped up the most -- the two most unpopular candidates in the history of the universe.

GLENN: What do you think 2020 looks like? Because Hillary Clinton -- another four years of these -- this kind of corruption and lies, the millennials -- you know, that's a 30-year-old today.

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: So somebody 35 years old going in to vote next time and everybody underneath, they're not buying into this. Another four years of just the death rate of the Baby Boomers --

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: -- the demographics are shifting. And the Republicans don't have anything. The -- but they're in better shape -- well, they were until Donald Trump. The Democrats, you look at Hillary Clinton, and there's just -- there's no millennial I know that would relate to either one of the parties right now.

So what happens in four years?

MATT: Well, the upside of this train wreck is that it breaks something in a way that you're not going to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. And I think young people are the solution to this. Because they see it for the fraud that it is. The rest of us grew up in this system where we only had two choices. We might not recognize it that way. But that to me is the liberty opportunity. You know, can you find common language? Can you find a candidate that sort of represents those broader values? Someone like a Justin Amash be the entrepreneur and bet everything on that. Maybe there's somebody that we don't yet. But I think it needs to be somebody that can credibly say, "I've run a campaign." Somebody that can credibly say, "I've done something with my life."

And, you know, the problem with some of our young candidates is that they haven't sort of past that qualification threshold yet. And I don't know if that's going to be a Libertarian Party candidate. Is it going to be a fourth candidate? Remember that the Tea Party kept breaking all of the rules, right? There's no way that Mike Lee was going to win. It couldn't happen. And then it did. There's no way that Rand Paul could win. And then it did. And they were using the social media and technology to raise money outside the system to organize outside the system to break the rules of politics. Eventually, a presidential candidate can do that.

GLENN: Yeah.

MATT: And I think we could have done it this time, but it didn't come together. So...

GLENN: Me too. Who do you think wins?

MATT: I mean, I think Hillary is going to win. But I say that with great humility from being wrong so many times in this cycle.

GLENN: Donald Trump, yeah.

MATT: And also understanding that, you know, all of these races that we won for liberty Republicans, the experts told us we couldn't win. And then we did. So something was going on. So I think it's going to be closer than people think. And I think Trump could win. But my bet today is Hillary.

GLENN: What happens to Donald Trump's constituents?

MATT: We should talk to them. Because I think it's a mistake to lump some of the -- I can't stand Donald Trump. I disliked him even before you did, I think.

GLENN: I've not liked him for a long, long time.

(chuckling)

STU: Don't challenge us on this one.

JEFFY: We disliked him first, Matt.

MATT: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: We were mocking him as he came down the escalator. Because we had not liked him for years before that.

MATT: Okay. You might have beat me then. Because I wasn't even paying attention at that point.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

MATT: But I would -- I view Donald Trump supporters the same way that I view Bernie Sanders supporters, and there's a lot of similarities there. There's economic anxiety.

GLENN: Yes.

MATT: There's belief that the system is screwing them. And I agree with them on those things. And I think we need -- I think we need to talk to people --

GLENN: I agree with you. There's maybe 10 percent -- and a lot of them are the -- and probably -- yeah, probably just 10 percent that were there at the beginning. And out of those who were there at the beginning, maybe 10 percent of those were there from the beginning because they were hearing what they perceived to be dog whistles of neo-Nazi kind of scary stuff.

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: You know what I mean? But that's 10 percent that have that authoritarian lean. I saw a poll of Donald Trump supporters. 48 percent, it said, believed that Putin is a friend of the United States. Does that number surprise you?

MATT: No. No. And there was a new poll by the Heritage Foundation, saying that -- that showed that a lot of young people didn't know who Mao Zedong was.

GLENN: Yeah. They thought Bush killed more people than Mao.

MATT: So I think people don't know a lot of history, and they don't spend a lot of time focusing on politics. And I wouldn't call that ignorance. I would call that normal life where your families and your jobs matter more than -- like, do you even know who Putin is?

GLENN: Yeah.

MATT: And I suspect that most Americans, until Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton started talking about him, didn't even know who he was.

GLENN: Well, I always thought war was just God's way of teaching us geography.

MATT: Right.

GLENN: Who knew where Vietnam was until we went to Vietnam? Who knew where Iraq really was until we invaded Iraq?

PAT: Grenada. Come on. We thought it was a car from Ford.

GLENN: That's right. Exactly.

MATT: And if we had a more humble Libertarian foreign policy, we wouldn't need to know where Aleppo is.

STU: That's a great answer.

GLENN: Very good. How can people get involved with you? Do you have anything to push or not?

MATT: My new organization is Free the People. And I want to talk to young people. And I'm trying to get out of politics and into popular culture. Check out freethepeople.org. And check out some of the videos we're doing on socialism. We're trying to --

GLENN: Your series on socialism is fantastic. It really is.

MATT: And it does well. Like the heavy stuff, the stuff that is really asking people to get into history and philosophy and economics.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

MATT: It does better than the click-bait of the day stuff.

GLENN: People are -- I think people are hungry. We saw it when we were at Fox. We see it now. When you have something to teach that they don't know, they're hungry for it. They really are. People treat people like morons. There are morons, Jeffy. But, you know, not everybody is a moron.

STU: Jeffy.

GLENN: And, by the way, you can check out Rigged 2016. Go to Rigged2016.com. You can watch the film there. All you have to do is just -- you know, just sign in. Or you can watch it on TheBlaze, Wednesday, November 2nd, at 8:00 p.m. Saturday the 5th, and Sunday the 6th at 8:00 p.m. only on TheBlaze TV.

Matt, thank you so much.

MATT: Good to be here.

GLENN: Good to see you.

Featured Image: Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton shakes hands with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as Moderator Lester Holt looks on during the Presidential Debate at Hofstra University on September 26, 2016 in Hempstead, New York. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

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Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

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Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

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A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.