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Glenn's Show Prep

'Christmas Jars' with author Jason Wright

December 18, 2015
Ted Tuttle

Editor

Looking for a way to make Christmas more meaningful?

You might consider trying out what author Jason Wright suggests in his book, Christmas Jars. It's pretty simple. Just contribute all your loose change over time to a jar and surprise someone with it as a gift for Christmas.

Wright joined Glenn on radio Friday to share what prompted him to write the book and what has happened in the decade since he wrote it. Based on anecdotes that have come in, he calculated somewhere between $8 and $10 million has been given away in change.

"And I frankly think that that could be a conservative number," Wright said.

He added, "It's not just something you do during the holidays. It's something you do all year long."

Listen to the segment or read the transcript below.

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

GLENN: Jason Wright wrote a book years ago that has really, truly changed so many people's traditions in families. It is called The Christmas Jars. And Jason is joining us now.

Hey, Jason, how are you, sir?

JASON: I am so well. How are you, my friend?

GLENN: I'm very good. So you wrote this book. And I want you to explain it for anyone who hasn't read this book because I think that this is a tradition that, A, you should read to your family and a tradition that you can so easily do -- I know so many people that do this now, and it really has changed their holiday. So explain the book.

JASON: Yes, it's remarkable, Glenn. I have you to thank for so much of this.

I found myself 11 years ago, the most selfish person I knew. I sat down with my wife, she agreed. We came up with this idea of a Christmas jar. We put our change in a little purple jar on the counter, and we would fill it up and we'd give it away at Christmastime. And we didn't even know who would get it or how that first delivery would go. We just knew that every day, as we dropped our change in that jar, no matter the temperature outside or the date on the calendar, we would think about the needs of someone else and the real meaning of Christmas and the life of the savior and that daily sacrifice for us. And we gave that first jar away. And it really, truly changed our lives.

And the next year, I decided to write this little book. The publisher fired it off to some people, kind of on a whim to see if anyone would talk about it. And this guy named Glenn Beck who had a pretty big radio show said, "You know what, I'm going to take this thing home and read it over the weekend." And as I recall, you came back Monday morning and just gushed and gushed, and it launched a career.

GLENN: Yeah. I don't know if that is entirely true. But it did really well. New York Times best-seller. So tell me the actual story for anybody who doesn't know.

JASON: So the story is about a fictional story, of course. It's sparked by our experience as a family, but it's not based on our experience. But it's about a young reporter who stumbled upon this tradition of the Christmas jar in her small little town and decides she wants to uncover who gave the first jar, where did it come from. And it turns out that the origin is really personal for her. And it goes back to a little baby being abandoned by a single mom in a greasy chicken diner -- chicken and biscuits diner and being adopted and raised by a single mom. It all comes full circle at the end of the book. And you discover where the movement began, why it began, and how one little jar changed not just one family's lives, but many, many lives around the country.

GLENN: So this is a book now that has been out for, how many years? Ten years?

JASON: This is the ten-year anniversary.

GLENN: That's unbelievable. I got at it the first year, Jason?

JASON: You did. And that part of the story is true. I remember you telling me that you took it home over the weekend because it was the smallest little advanced copy that anyone had sent you. And you felt you could plow through it over the weekend.

GLENN: I do remember that. I get books sent to me all the time. And I got piles of them next to my bed. And I read what I can. Very few really interest me. Especially fiction. And I saw this big pile and this really teeny book. And I thought, "Man, I can read that in the bathroom." And I read it over the weekend and I came in. And now I hear it's sold a million copies.

JASON: Yeah, it crossed about a million copies over ten years. And it's just -- it's hard to believe. It's now become about more than the book. You know, I would love for your listeners that haven't discovered the book yet to go out and read it. But it's not about the book anymore. It's about a movement. It's about millions and millions of dollars being given away in spare change around the country.

GLENN: How are you estimating -- I've heard the estimate of $8 million and change has been given away?

JASON: Yeah, it's based on the anecdotes that have come in and the dollar amount. We get about $220, the average amount, per jar is what we've heard the decade. So we did a little math based on the number of books sold, the number of people that actually don't just stick the book on a shelf but decide to pass the book on with the jar, we come up with a figure somewhere between eight and $10 million and change. And I frankly think that that could be a conservative number.

PAT: So, Jason, how does it exactly work? You just -- you put a jar out, right? And then every time you get spare change. Put it in that charge.

GLENN: Can I ask you a question, does it hurt anyone anymore? Because I rarely have change in my pockets because I use debit cards everywhere I go.

JASON: Absolutely. That's a great point. And, you know, the best thing to do is just to cheat a little bit. It's not just something you do during the holidays. It's something you do all year long. So maybe change doesn't go in the jar every day or even every week. It does in my household.

But from time to time, when I'm thinking about it and I'm in 7-Eleven or the grocery store or the Post Office, you know, I get a couple dollars back in change intentionally and it goes home, it goes in the jar. You know, the kids are digging through couch cushions and the washer and dryer and the cup holders in the car. You can still find plenty of change. And, you know, if it's $10 you give away, if it's 50 bucks you give away, if it's $100, to the right family at the right time, it can be a significant blessing in their lives.

PAT: Yeah, and after you've accumulated that money in the jar during the course of the year, you choose someone to give it to. How do you make that determination? Because you've been doing this for a long time now. So what kind of system do you have to decide who gets the money?

JASON: Well, you know, I would encourage people -- there's a new e-book out this year. It's called Christmas Jars Journey. That's exactly the true story of our -- the Wright family's very first jar. And I go into detail about how we came up with this, sitting around the kitchen table. I mean, it's like an old movie. We took a sheet of paper. We made a list of six or eight people that we thought could benefit from it, neighbors, friends from church, teachers, et cetera. We selected a young man that was getting ready to leave the country to Mexico to do some volunteer church work. And it was at the family -- you know, they did okay. But the money would be a blessing. It was about $80 that first year in our jar because it was only a couple of months.

And then we set out in the minivan. And, again, I encourage people to check out Christmas Jars Journey for the kind of behind scenes of this. Because this moment, this night in 2004, it changed our lives. It changed the whole trajectory, not just of our family, but of me personally to really understand that Christmas is not a 24-hour holiday. You don't flip on and off a switch, think about the Savior, and then put him away until the next year. It becomes a part of you all year long. And the Christmas Jar helps that in a really small away.

GLENN: I just got an email, a text saying that I'm in this book several times.

JASON: You are. Several times. And I just can't overstate, Glenn, that you having me on your show back then, radio and TV, talking about the book, you read -- you know, it's been a long time. You've interviewed a million guests since then, but you read most of that first chapter on the air. And it just gave life to this book. We were struggling to really find any traction and to get anybody to talk -- in fact, I had a hard time getting the darn thing published. I had publishers and agents both tell me. This thing will never, ever end up in a bookstore ever. I had one agent tell me -- this is in the e-book, I had one agent tell me in a rejection letter: I like the idea, I just wish someone else had written it.

GLENN: Holy cow.

PAT: Wow.

JASON: I have that on my desk. I look at it almost every day. And then Glenn Beck comes along and gives it a breath of life and a career was born.

GLENN: Wow, that's amazing. Well, I'm happy for you, Jason. You know how I feel about you and what a great writer -- I mean, we were just talking about you just the other day in and around the office about what a great writer you are and a great storyteller you are. I mean, I've enjoyed many of your books. The -- what was the Charles one? Finding Charles?

JASON: Recovering Charles. Based down in New Orleans, yeah.

GLENN: That was a great one. And there was another one that you wrote --

STU: It was "50 Shades of Gray" you're thinking of.

JASON: No, I wrote The Wednesday Letters, which is one that you and I talked about. That's the one where I gave out my cellphone number, and I almost shut down AT&T with phonecalls over about three days. That was wonderful.

GLENN: Yeah, The Wednesday's Letters was another one. And there -- I hate to say it this way, but people understand, almost Nicholas Sparks in a way.

JASON: Yeah, Nicholas Sparks with a little more touch of faith because faith is so very important to me. I would give everything I'm doing up for my faith.

PAT: And without the cheese. You know.

JASON: Yeah. Yeah.

GLENN: There's nobody standing out in a rainstorm making out.

PAT: No.

GLENN: And it's not just a coincidence, it's a God thing in Jason's books.

JASON: Amen. God is at the center of everything. So true.

GLENN: Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much, Jason. I appreciate it. You can buy The Christmas Jars Journey: The Behind the Scenes True Story of the Very First Christmas Jar. It's an e-book available from Amazon.com. And while you're there, if you've not read the Christmas Jars, read the Christmas Jars. Buy it. You'll so enjoy it. It's, what, 200 pages. Something like that. It really is -- it's 100 pages. It's an easy one-night read and one that your whole family will enjoy and could actually change the way your family does Christmas. It's really, truly tremendous. Jason Wright is the author's name. Christmas jars and the Christmas jars reunion and journey. Find it at Amazon. Thanks, Jason, I appreciate it. God bless.

JASON: Thank you, sir.

The great switch: Gates trades climate control for digital dominion

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.

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.