Last week, Mike Rowe stopped by TheBlaze’s New York office to talk to Glenn about a myriad of things – chief among them being the controversy that has abounded after Mike lent his vocal chops to a Walmart ad that coincided with Walmart’s initiative to purchase $250 billion of American-made products over the next 10 years. Weeks after the commercial first aired, Mike is still facing a tremendous amount of criticism from those who believed he “sold out” by supporting a giant corporation like Walmart. Mike joined Glenn on radio this morning to discuss the never-ending criticism.
“Mike Rowe is a good friend of the program, a good friend of hard work, a good friend of everybody,” Glenn said. “You know, I've never seen anybody work harder to say the right thing but to say it in a peaceful way, in a nice way, not take sides, just not be partisan at all. You're not. You've never said, ‘You know, that Glenn Beck, I agree with him on almost everything.’ Never. Never. And I wouldn't want you to because I like you kind of being that guy who just says the common sense things. And yet you're being hammered, hammered.”
Mike attributed at least a fraction of the controversy to some form of ‘cognitive dissonance’ – the idea that when people really, really like something or someone and that something or someone disappoints them, it’s heartbreaking.
“When people you've been trained to sort of despise – who are corporations in this case – suddenly do something that you actually really agree with, you're put in a state of confusion,” Mike explained. “In this case we're talking about Walmart pledging to put in $250 billion of U.S. manufacturing, basically promising to buy a quarter of a trillion dollars worth of U.S. products over the next 10 years. It's a very simple promise, but it's very counterintuitive in a lot of people's minds to what Walmart has become.”
“So when you're confronted with that simple set of facts, which you can really reduce to one sentence on a piece of paper, your options are simple,” he continued. “You can affirmatively say that you want to encourage more of that behavior from other big companies, you can look for the fact that you don't believe in it, and you can work very hard to cynically find the flaw or the conspiracy in the pledge, or you can shoot the messenger. And so these are the choices people are working through and there's a fair amount of gunplay going on.”
During his appearance on last week’s show, Mike also shared that he and Ford would be parting ways. That has since been interpreted as Ford fired Mike. Since his job prospects are clearly bleak, Glenn offered to do Mike a favor.
“Here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to offer that we'll post your resume because I know you're so desperate for work. You can't find a job. Nobody will hire you. Nobody wants you to do anything,” Glenn joked. “Here's how ridiculous this is: I can't afford to hire Mike Rowe. I'd love to hire Mike. I couldn't afford to get him to read one line for TheBlaze. But I'll put your resume out on the page. I can't make any promises, Mike, but I want you to hold onto hope.”
Ultimately, the fact that this kind of attack is happening to someone like Mike Rowe should be a cause of concern for any freedom-minded American.
“This is really bad. This is freedom of speech, and every American needs to understand Here's a guy, he's never said anything about the President, his policies, or anything else. He's talking common sense,” Glenn concluded. “They take somebody like Mike who's highly intelligent, very successful, very unique, and very, very public. And if you can crucify him, you scare everybody else down the line. It's what bullies do.”
Watch the entire interview below:
