Glenn: Mitch McConnell and John McCain involved in "shameless grab of power" in Patriot Act battle

Below is a transcript of Glenn's opening monologue from Monday's TV show

I want to tell you about the dog-and-pony show that is continuing now in Washington DC as the progressives, make no mistake, progressives in both parties, are fighting to make sure they can continue to collect as much of your own personal data as possible all in the name of security, of course, the Republicans, John McCain, a progressive himself, fighting for extensions of the sections in the Patriot Act that expired last night.

Three sections are done for, temporarily anyway: Section 215, the lone wolf provision, and the roving wiretap provision. Each part is important, but section 215 is the most critical because it is what the government has used to justify the bulk data collection on millions of innocent citizens.

The wording in that section is vague. It gives the government power to use all relevant information to stop terrorist attacks, and the government has interpreted relevant to mean anything and everything on anybody. Rand Paul has set himself apart from the progressive Republicans giving voice to the cause of liberty on this. He is receiving the usual flak for it. I asked him about it on radio earlier today, and here’s what he said:

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Glenn: Do you actually believe they’ve actually stopped collecting information today?

Sen. Paul: You’ve got to be careful how they parse their words. They might have stopped one program, but they’ve probably got ten others doing the same thing. They have an executive order called 12333. Under that executive order, we really don’t know everything they’re doing, but they’re doing bulk collection under that. They may well be doing more bulk collection of data under that then they are doing under the phone collection program.

They also told us and informed us that in the previous Patriot Act there’s a provision in there saying that they can continue any investigation that was already ongoing. So, my guess is that since the bulk collection investigation, so-called investigation, was collecting everyone’s records, they could simply say well, we started doing that before, so that’s an ongoing investigation.

So, are they stopping it? I don’t know. I mean, that’s the whole problem with trust here on this. The president’s number one man over there, Clapper, lied to us and told us the program didn’t even exist, and now we’re supposed to accept that they’re telling us the world will end and the sky will fall if it ends. We’re doing it now. We’re shutting it down. I don’t know. There’s a certain lack of trust I have for this administration.

I have a lack of trust for any administration. The establishment Republicans who first claimed they had nothing to do with the Patriot Act are now clamoring to defend it, and they’re defending it to the teeth and warning that we are going to open ourselves up to attack if we don’t pass this. Mitch McConnell accused Senator Paul of demagoguery and disinformation.

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Sen. McConnell: We shouldn’t be disarming unilaterally as our enemies grow more sophisticated and aggressive. And we certainly should not be doing so based on a campaign of demagoguery and disinformation launched in the wake of the unlawful actions of Edward Snowden, who was last seen in Russia.

Oh my goodness. Now, McCain told reporters that Senator Paul places “a higher priority on his fundraising and his ambitions than on the security of the nation.” But does the fight even matter? The Second Court of Appeals recently ruled that the vaguely worded section 215 doesn’t authorize the government to unleash mass data collection in the first place. But they’re doing it.

So, here’s Congress arguing for a new bill. This one’s called the USA Freedom Act. Now, the passage may or may not be directed at the NSA bulk collection, the data collection, but may I first start with the names of the ultra-PC bills, the Patriot Act, the USA Freedom Act? I personally think we should give names to these bills ourselves that probably have more accurate names, like the Trading Freedom for Despotism Act or Take Your Freedom and Shove it up Your Act Act.

Despite some opposition, it is expected to pass in a day or two. Proponents will claim it will end bulk data collection but keep other key security provisions in place. But remember, section 215 led to the NSA’s bulk collection thanks to a few vaguely worded sentences and dirtbags in Washington.

Does anybody believe that a bill that keeps almost every government data collection tool in place is going to change anything? They’ve just built a massive million-square-foot facility in Utah solely dedicated for mass data collection. The government will not give up this much power easily. This is going to be a long, drawn-out battle over probably several sessions of Congress and the next president.

But DC politics has reduced this to a ridiculous fight about security. Of course they want to make it about your security because if you’re afraid of an imminent terrorist attack or something happening in your security, all the dummies around you will hand their freedom much more readily. History has proven this time and time again.

When America entered World War I, Woodrow Wilson immediately labeled German-Americans enemy aliens, and the progressives rounded them all up. FDR did the same thing with the Japanese-Americans. The progressives rounded them all up in World War II. One month after 9/11, with a nation still reeling, the Patriot Act was rushed into being. No politician would dare stand against something called the Patriot Act just a couple of weeks after 9/11.

By the way, does anybody know where the Patriot Act—how did they have such an amazing bill, huge bill, all ready to go just a couple of weeks after 9/11? They must’ve been very sleepy. No, the Patriot Act was written prior to 9/11. It was on the shelf waiting to be dusted off. That is what led to the hyper-surveillance state that we’re now living under, not 9/11, politicians writing it in advance. We cannot afford to make the same mistakes because gee, what else do you think they have just waiting on the shelf? It’s not an elf, I bet.

We cannot afford to keep electing the same spineless politicians who trade bits of freedoms in the name of our perceived comforts.

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Sen. McConnell: We’re left with option two, the House-passed bill. It’s certainly not ideal, but along with votes on some modest amendments that attempt to ensure the program can actually work as promised, it’s now the only realistic way forward.

Which pretty much puts me against it. This is a premise we cannot accept blindly. The only realistic way forward is to go back to our principles. We had this debate over 200 years ago. Everybody knows the phrase taxation without representation is tyranny, but do you know where that came from?

Do you know the man behind the phrase? His name is James Otis, Jr. He was born in Massachusetts, a colonial. He went to Harvard. He became a lawyer, and at the time, the colonists, our Founding Fathers, were subject to the whims of what the king called writs of assistance. What writs of assistance, they were kind of like our warrants, except anybody could write them.

Basically the British authorities had power to go into anybody’s house at any time for any reason. There wasn’t such a thing as probable cause. For nearly five hours, Otis argued against these writs in court on behalf of dozens of colonists who were baselessly accused of smuggling. They would have their homes searched and ravaged, and even if nothing was found, the government wasn’t responsible for any of the damage.

Otis lost the case, but his challenge to authority inspired some young men, including a guy named John Adams. Adams later said of Otis’s speech, “The child independence was then and there born.” Otis ignited what eventually became the American Revolution. It was his battle against these writs, these warrantless searches, that laid the foundation not only for the Fourth Amendment which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, but arguably for the entire revolution.

Our right of privacy is a cornerstone of the American foundation. Why on earth would a people so easily give this up? For security? Mitch McConnell said that if the Patriot Act lapsed even one day, we’ll be in danger from ISIS and other terrors. I for one am really tired of this argument because I know if the John McCains and the Mitch McConnells of the world, if they actually believed that we were in danger from terrorists and they believed it was their job to stop it, they would’ve done simple things like secured our borders first.

This is nothing more than a shameless grab of power. Yes, we are in danger, but they are only orchestrating more power for themselves. My question for Washington is if the Patriot Act makes us so secure, why did the Boston bombing happen? We should have been able to hear those phone calls. Hey, why do we worry about what Hillary Clinton did in her 501(c)(3)? Why do we care? She erased her hard drive. Don’t we have all of that data collection?

Why did Benghazi happen? Why don’t we know about the phone calls and the emails that happened the day after? Shouldn’t those have been stopped? How am I supposed to feel safe when the very government claiming they’re using all of the necessary tools to keep us safe will not look into a single radical mosque but will monitor Aunt Judy’s phone call discussing important deviled egg recipes?

How am I supposed to feel safe when the director of the National Intelligence Agency says the Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular—Muslim Brotherhood? How could I trust our CIA Director, John Brennan, who says ISIS is not Islamic when Islamic is the first “I” in ISIS?

What is comforting in any way about our administration running guns through Benghazi to Syrian rebels or how our own government, John McCain included, met and posed for pictures with the free Syrian Army who we later found out was working with the radical groups called ISIS? And the same people that told us yesterday that we can’t live a day without this were exactly the same people who lied to us just a couple of years ago and said this technology doesn’t exist, and it’s outrageous that you would even ask us if we would use technology like that. Of course, we don’t use that.

Our government is incompetent. Our government is corrupt. Our government, on a charitable day, is misguided. By the way, a story we reported on radio today, the government just ran an internal investigation to see if they could get weapons onto airplanes now. You know, they’re frisking everybody. We’ve used all of this great technology. We’ve got the best people on the job, so they tried to smuggle 70 knives, fake bombs, and items like that on board. They only managed to get through 67 out of 70 times.

So thanks, federal government, for your offer to have me trade my freedom for some of your yummy security, but I think we’ll pass. No thanks.

A new Monroe Doctrine? Trump quietly redraws the Western map

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.

Antifa isn’t “leaderless” — It’s an organized machine of violence

Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

URGENT: Supreme Court case could redefine religious liberty

Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images

The state is effectively silencing professionals who dare speak truths about gender and sexuality, redefining faith-guided speech as illegal.

This week, free speech is once again on the line before the U.S. Supreme Court. At stake is whether Americans still have the right to talk about faith, morality, and truth in their private practice without the government’s permission.

The case comes out of Colorado, where lawmakers in 2019 passed a ban on what they call “conversion therapy.” The law prohibits licensed counselors from trying to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation, including their behaviors or gender expression. The law specifically targets Christian counselors who serve clients attempting to overcome gender dysphoria and not fall prey to the transgender ideology.

The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The law does include one convenient exception. Counselors are free to “assist” a person who wants to transition genders but not someone who wants to affirm their biological sex. In other words, you can help a child move in one direction — one that is in line with the state’s progressive ideology — but not the other.

Think about that for a moment. The state is saying that a counselor can’t even discuss changing behavior with a client. Isn’t that the whole point of counseling?

One‑sided freedom

Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, has been one of the victims of this blatant attack on the First Amendment. Chiles has dedicated her practice to helping clients dealing with addiction, trauma, sexuality struggles, and gender dysphoria. She’s also a Christian who serves patients seeking guidance rooted in biblical teaching.

Before 2019, she could counsel minors according to her faith. She could talk about biblical morality, identity, and the path to wholeness. When the state outlawed that speech, she stopped. She followed the law — and then she sued.

Her case, Chiles v. Salazar, is now before the Supreme Court. Justices heard oral arguments on Tuesday. The question: Is counseling a form of speech or merely a government‑regulated service?

If the court rules the wrong way, it won’t just silence therapists. It could muzzle pastors, teachers, parents — anyone who believes in truth grounded in something higher than the state.

Censored belief

I believe marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God. I believe that family — mother, father, child — is central to His design for humanity.

I believe that men and women are created in God’s image, with divine purpose and eternal worth. Gender isn’t an accessory; it’s part of who we are.

I believe the command to “be fruitful and multiply” still stands, that the power to create life is sacred, and that it belongs within marriage between a man and a woman.

And I believe that when we abandon these principles — when we treat sex as recreation, when we dissolve families, when we forget our vows — society fractures.

Are those statements controversial now? Maybe. But if this case goes against Chiles, those statements and others could soon be illegal to say aloud in public.

Faith on trial

In Colorado today, a counselor cannot sit down with a 15‑year‑old who’s struggling with gender identity and say, “You were made in God’s image, and He does not make mistakes.” That is now considered hate speech.

That’s the “freedom” the modern left is offering — freedom to affirm, but never to question. Freedom to comply, but never to dissent. The same movement that claims to champion tolerance now demands silence from anyone who disagrees. The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The real test

No matter what happens at the Supreme Court, we cannot stop speaking the truth. These beliefs aren’t political slogans. For me, they are the product of years of wrestling, searching, and learning through pain and grace what actually leads to peace. For us, they are the fundamental principles that lead to a flourishing life. We cannot balk at standing for truth.

Maybe that’s why God allows these moments — moments when believers are pushed to the wall. They force us to ask hard questions: What is true? What is worth standing for? What is worth dying for — and living for?

If we answer those questions honestly, we’ll find not just truth, but freedom.

The state doesn’t grant real freedom — and it certainly isn’t defined by Colorado legislators. Real freedom comes from God. And the day we forget that, the First Amendment will mean nothing at all.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Get ready for sparks to fly. For the first time in years, Glenn will come face-to-face with Megyn Kelly — and this time, he’s the one in the hot seat. On October 25, 2025, at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, Glenn joins Megyn on her “Megyn Kelly Live Tour” for a no-holds-barred conversation that promises laughs, surprises, and maybe even a few uncomfortable questions.

What will happen when two of America’s sharpest voices collide under the spotlight? Will Glenn finally reveal the major announcement he’s been teasing on the radio for weeks? You’ll have to be there to find out.

This promises to be more than just an interview — it’s a live showdown packed with wit, honesty, and the kind of energy you can only feel if you are in the room. Tickets are selling fast, so don’t miss your chance to see Glenn like you’ve never seen him before.

Get your tickets NOW at www.MegynKelly.com before they’re gone!