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Mason Wells Survived 3 Terrorist Attacks. He Credits God’s Protection.

December 22, 2017
Staff

WRITER

At just 19 years old, Mason Wells survived a terrorist attack … for the third time. Wells recently joined Glenn to talk about his incredible survivor story and his faith, as detailed in his new book, “Left Standing: The Miraculous Story of How Mason Wells’s Faith Survived the Boston, Paris, and Brussels Terror Attacks.”

A Mormon missionary, Wells was injured in the bombing at the Brussels airport in 2016, sustaining a ruptured Achilles tendon, injuries from shrapnel and second- and third-degree burns. He also survived the Boston Marathon bombing, waiting with his dad just a block away from the explosion, and was in France at the time of the Paris attacks.

“I actually thought I had died when the first bomb went off,” Wells said of the Brussels attack. “You’re standing there for a moment, and then suddenly, everything explodes.”

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: I want to introduce you to a guy named Mason Wells. Mason was an Eagle Scout and awarded a trip to Paris, France. He served as a missionary over in -- in France.

He's now in the United States Naval Academy. But I'm not talking to him about those things. That's not what got our attention. What got our attention is Mason Wells is a guy that happened to be at the Boston bombing, the Paris terrorist attack, and was significantly injured in the Brussels attack.

I don't know if of anybody else -- I mean, besides people who might have been involved, were at all three locations. And I can't imagine what it must feel like and how many times you must say, why me? There's a new book out. Authored by Mason and a good friend of the program, Billy Hallowell, called left standing. And it's about his faith and what he's gone through. Mason, welcome to the program.

MASON: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Glenn.

GLENN: So, you know, we were talking about this. And, you know, it's one of the reasons why we wanted to have you on the phone and not here at the studio.

(laughter)

You have really bad luck. Tell me about -- tell me about being in three terrorist attacks.

MASON: Oh, I think I actually have pretty good luck, that I'm still here.

My first experience with terrorism would be the 2013 Boston Marathon. And my mom was running the marathon. Me and my dad were there to support her. And me and my dad were actually 50 meters away when the first bomb went off at the finish line. So being young at the time, that was scary for me.

Fast forward, now I'm now serving as an ecclesiastical missionary in France. And I was actually in the city of Rouen at the time of the Charlie Hebdo shootings and then in the city of Calais at the time of the Paris attacks. And to have those things go on, in, you know, the headquarters of our mission. A place that we always were on the streets that we proselyted. It left me with a lot of questions and a lot of reflections.

And I was ten feet away when the first bomb went off in the Brussels Airport. And that -- that one there put me in the hospital for a good two months.

GLENN: Yeah, we saw you -- we saw pictures of you all wrapped up. You had third degree burns to your face.

Your leg had some contraption, you know, trying to piece it back together. You were seriously injured there.

What was going through your head?

MASON: Well, when I was first injured in Brussels, I actually thought I had died when the first bomb went off. If you can imagine standing there for a moment and suddenly everything explodes. That's what happened to me. And I didn't know what was going on.

When I opened up my eyes, a couple seconds after the blast and looked around, there was no one standing but me. Everyone else had been knocked down to the floor. My friends had been knocked out. And I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me.

So I made my way out of that airport, one step after another, on a ruptured Achilles' tendon, completely severed, with shrapnel in my legs, burns in my hands and my face. When I got out of the airport, my leg collapsed. I was kind of faced with, you know, these two roads in front of me. I could either embrace bitterness, embrace anger, embrace frustration, or make the best of what was going on and choose to have hope that I would come out of this all right, and I chose the latter. So I was faced with a very bleak future. You know, quite literally laying in a pool of my own blood on that sidewalk, but through the grace of God and through some mental decisions I made, I'm still here.

GLENN: So what was the -- what was the darkest moment here? Did you have a -- did you have a real struggle in faith, or were you -- were you prepared spiritually to meet some of these things?

MASON: Well, I think God prepares all of us for things in our life. I was blessed that day to be comforted when I was injured. But I did experience a lot of things afterwards, that led me to questions about my faith. And led me to develop a deeper faith. It prompts me to ask, you know, why do bad things happen to good people? Where is justice in all of this? What is God's plan for me? And those sorts of questions, those questions of the soul, they're things that take time.

And some of my reflections, of course, are in the book. But a lot of what I've learned about adversity and getting through trials came during my darkest moments. And there definitely were those dark moments.

GLENN: So what did you come to -- you know, what was the conclusion? You know, why is this happening? Why does God -- you know, where is God? I mean, you're serving a mission. You're blown up. And if I'm not mistaken, weren't you going home? Weren't you on your way home?

MASON: I was about four months away. So I was pretty close.

GLENN: So what was the conclusion? Why does God let this happen?

MASON: Well, you know, I've asked myself many times why God allows this to happen to me and why I'm alive when other people that were farther away from the bomb were killed. But ultimately, I've come to find out for myself that God allows adversity to happen in our lives, knowing that it will make us stronger. Knowing that we have a chance to come out on top, to allow these things to change for the better or for the worse. One thing I've learned for sure is that God is there when we're willing to -- to look for him and ask for his help. And ultimately, choosing to have hope amid the challenges in our lives, is the difference between finding peace and being bitter on what is going on. Honestly, I think just having a positive attitude. Making every single day a new day and realizing that every single chance is a chance for me to change. That mindset is what carried me through to my recovery. And I can positively say the line that divides success from failure is attitude, much more than it is outcome.

GLENN: So I just told the story yesterday about Corrie ten Boom who had a hard time forgiving and extending love to the people that, you know -- in particular, one of the guys who was a guard in the showers.

And she really, really had a hard time after the war forgiving him and loving him.

Did you -- did you have -- how do you feel about the people that, you know, have brought so much death and destruction?

MASON: You know, that's -- that's a deep question. That's a good question. Ultimately, I have forgiven people who did this to me. But it doesn't make what they did permissible. I actually prayed to God for them, that God would have mercy on them. But I know very well that God is a God of mercy and a God of justice. And I hope they can go on living in the next life, the best they can, given the guilt that they will undoubtedly bear. But, you know, that just being said, just because I forgive them, it doesn't make what they did okay. It's not permissible to do these things. It's the epitome of evil. What they did was evil. And I think that you can embrace forgiveness and also draw a hard line between good and bad.

STU: Mason, if you were to win an all expenses paid vacation, would anyone go with you?

GLENN: Besides Tom Hanks.

MASON: You know, as crazy as it sounds, I'm not scared to travel the world. I'm not scared to take public transportation.

GLENN: That wasn't the question. The question is: Is anyone else comfortable with you being around?

(laughter)

MASON: I mean, you know, if you were to give me an all expenses paid trip to Indonesia, I don't know if I would go there right now.

GLENN: All right.

MASON: You know, we can't let these things hold us back. We can't let these moments and these acts define our lives.

GLENN: Did you at any time have a moment where you're like, I'm -- I'm cursed or I'm -- there's something wrong, or what am I doing wrong? Or I'm afraid to go places? Was there any time that that started to happen to you?

MASON: Well, I have to admit, there was a time, I think it was about three days after I was injured in Brussels. But I was sitting in bed, and I just looked up and I just asked, you know, really, again? Like, I guess I didn't learn what I needed to the first time.

GLENN: Right. Okay. You're clearly telling me something. What is it?

MASON: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know -- obviously, you know, I thought about -- I choose to focus less on the path as to why these things happen, and focus more on the future. Just making every single day a great day and making every single day a day I want it to be. Because you know I'm still here, and I'm grateful to be alive.

GLENN: Mason Wells. Author of Left Standing. Thank you so much. Best of luck.

MASON: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Glenn.

GLENN: Alert me, if you're ever on a flight and you see me -- alert me, I need to get off.

MASON: Will do. Will do.

GLENN: Thanks a lot, Mason. Merry Christmas.

STU: The book is Left Standing. The miraculous story of how Mason Wells' faith survived the Boston, Paris, and Brussels terror attacks.

It's an amazing story.

GLENN: What? Osama bin Laden survived all of them.

STU: Well, no, he didn't. He didn't actually.

GLENN: You're right.

STU: But, yeah. That's an amazing story. The Brussels -- there's been so many of these attacks by largely Islamic extremists around the world. But the 2016 Brussels bombings, 32 killed. Over 300 injured. You'll remember the -- the security camera tape. The guys walking through the airport.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: But, I mean, there's been so many of these, particularly in Europe. And it's amazing that this --

GLENN: 10 feet away from the bomb.

STU: Yeah. And ISIS did claim responsibility for that. Afterwards, to be able to muster the strength of will to -- to forgive ISIS, while obviously acknowledging what they do is not right. It's an amazing story. It's Left Standing.

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.