Success! State Department Gives In to Pressure to Declare Christian Genocide

Mark Burnett delivered an impassioned plea on Glenn's radio program last week for Americans to demand the State Department declare what ISIS is doing to Christians in the Middle East a genocide.

Burnett joined Glenn again on Friday to share the results.

The House of Representatives voted 393-0 to approve the measure, and with the added pressure of the petition at StopTheChristianGenocide.org, the State Department gave in and made the declaration on Thursday.

Watch the clip of Glenn's conversation with Burnett or read the transcript below.

Positive Pressure

GLENN: We have really, really good news. Secretary of State John Kerry and the US State Department has declared that what's happening to the Christians in the Middle East is indeed genocide. Mark Burnett who is a leader on this, him and his wife Roma Downey have been working on this and dedicating their life to saving the Christians. And Roma and Mark are leaders on this front, and we are thrilled to have Mark on the phone to share this good news.

Hi, Mark, how are you?

MARK: Hi, Glenn. And I want to thank you and your subscribers, your listeners, because you guys made a huge difference in the last week.

It was so much pressure that there was a historic 393 votes to zero affirmation in the House, which really -- yesterday, in fact, John Kerry made that decision that the United States of America would declare it genocide. So I'm so grateful to you and everybody who follows you.

Language Matters

GLENN: So, Mark, here is the thing: In the old days, like, I don't know, five years ago even, language mattered. Tell me why this matters now that the United States has declared this genocide and it's going to change something.

MARK: Well, a couple of things. Well, several things. One thing is, it now means, if you are a member of ISIS or any such group and even 20 years from now, we find you, you are going to trial for genocide.

GLENN: For war crimes.

MARK: Another thing is that now there needs to be a place at the bargaining table for the Christian community. You know this Glenn. You've dealt with it.

For centuries, these Christian communities have been in towns and villages and have been in entire towns, entire regions, and because of ISIS, they've all fled or been killed and kicked out of their rightful Christian homeland.

The new borders are about to be drawn in the next few years. These Christian communities deserve and rightfully now will get a place at the bargaining table.

GLENN: So what you're saying is kind of -- I mean, I don't expect you to be this dramatic, but you have a shot of kind of what happened with Israel and the Jews after World War II. You have the chance of actually having their own control over their own lands.

MARK: Absolutely. And you should know that David Saperstein, who is the head of -- in United States, he's the head of religious freedom in the United States. Obviously, he's -- we all know that his last name is Jewish, and he stepped up in this and was a big voice to help the Christian community. And obviously, any Jew would know what "genocide" means to a great people.

And I think the biggest -- such a historic day, and I know from working so hard from the behind the scenes, this was touch-and-go. And you and your listeners made a huge difference.

Thank you, Glenn. I'm going to tell you something that's going to annoy you a little bit, which is, in the statement though -- this is so Glenn Beck going to get angry now.

It had a sentence, which said, "But this doesn't mean we're going to take any action."

GLENN: Yeah. So here's -- so, Mark, are so here's the question I have. And that's really my first question. Words don't really seem to matter.

But let me ask you this. You know because we've been working side by side to get these Christians out to any country that will take them. Will this help us negotiate with other countries to get these Christians a place to go?

MARK: Yes. It has to. Also, even though the State Department has added a sentence to the declaration, yes, we agree, this is genocide against Christians. However, it doesn't mean the US will do anything about it.

Well, the next thing we're pushing is, when you declare genocide against any group, and now it's been specifically about the Christians. You have to do something. The world knows what that word means. That's why the Department of State was so nervous about declaring genocide. But they've done it now. They cannot put the genie back in the bottle.

The Importance of Declaration

GLENN: I will tell you that in doing research on the genocide that happened in the 1940s with, you know, the Hungarians and the Jews and the homosexuals and the gypsies and you name it, the United States would not declare that genocide. Up until 1944, they wouldn't even look at it. They had all the information. This is a huge step for the United States at this point to say, "Yes. We've looked at it. And it is genocide."

MARK: Yes. It's amazing. And I'm so grateful. Listen, I've been friends of yours -- Roma and I friends of yours for a long time. And we love you. And we love what you stand for. And thank you. Because, yes, it has made -- it is historic. And I have to tell you, I didn't even know the last minute what was going to happen. I was so grateful when -- it passed 393-0.

And Thursday, for -- you know, on St. Patrick's Day, yesterday, for the Secretary of State to agree with that. Now we need to gather -- as a community, the Christian community, a powerful community, if we want to be, we need to take that designation and make sure something now happens to give our Christian brothers and sisters in Syria and Iraq a way they can live their lives without being forced to deny Jesus.

The Power of Transformation and the Spirit of God

GLENN: Can I ask you a question? You're a guy who up until recently has just been kind of -- you know, you were the guy who made reality television. What is it that changed in you that made you -- because I know, everything that you do now is dedicated to doing good and doing right. What happened?

MARK: Yes. It really shifted on making the Bible serious. I think it would be hard for anybody who is smart to be spending years taking the risk of bringing the Bible to prime time television, which means reading it every day, thinking about it, being part of the church community, to not be affected. It's supernatural. There's a natural world and a supernatural world. And I believe the Holy Spirit is a supernatural part of faith and Christianity. And it affected me.

And the good news is, that's a good question. But in the end, that's what it must be. And I'm just glad that it happened because it's given me more of a genuine purpose. Yeah, I'm making a lot of hit shows. But the Boy, Survivor, Shark Tank, all our shows, they're doing great. And I still love doing that. But in my rest of my time, I'm focused on more important things like this. And I'm just grateful for my relationship with you and that you've stepped up so quickly and that your listeners, your subscribers have made such an impact

GLENN: I will tell you, Mark, there have been a lot of TV greats in your position. You will not only be remembered for changing television, but you in the end will be remembered as a great humanitarian, somebody who actually did something because you believed it. And it is good to see a guy like a -- I don't know. A Jimmy Stewart or an Audrey Hepburn or a -- you know, somebody like that, Frank Capra, that is back in Hollywood and can be a real positive for good values.

Thanks, Mark, I appreciate it. God bless.

MARK: Thank you. God bless you. Thank you.

Featured Image: United States Secretary of State John Kerry attends the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict at ExCel on June 13, 2014 in London, England. The four-day conference on sexual violence in war is hosted by Foreign Secretary William Hague and UN Special Envoy and actress Angelina Jolie (Photo by Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images)

Counting cookies? Here are the CRAZIEST ways people predict the election.

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Every four years, America faces the same question: who will win the presidential election?

Top political scientists and media companies devise elaborate polls, complex formulas, and sophisticated projections to calculate who will win the election at any given moment. Even Stu has thrown his hat in the ring with Plusecast, a one-stop shop for all your polling questions. But these methods aren't the only ways to predict who will be the next commander-in-chief.

From cookies to football, here are some unorthodox ways to predict the next president:

The Cookie Poll

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Can cookies really predict the next president? According to Busken Bakery, they are more accurate than you might think.

Busken Bakery, has been using cookies to predict the winner of presidential elections since Regan beat Mondale in 1984, and has only been wrong once. Their method is simple: they sell cookies with the faces of both candidates and tally the sales of each. Whoever sells the most cookies is predicted to win. The simplicity of this method is its strength, and the only time it was wrong was the 2020 election. Currently, President Trump is far outstripping VP Harris, selling 23,477 cookies compared to her 8,781 cookies (as of 8/15). Busken posts daily updates on their Instagram, here.

Busken isn't the only bakery to make presidential predictions. Lochel's Bakery in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania has gained popularity recently. Lochel's has correctly predicted three of the last four elections by selling red and blue cookies printed with the names of the candidates. The current count for Lochel's is 28,212 for Trump and 2,097 for Harris. Again, Lochel's posts daily updates on their Instagram, here.

According to the cookies, this election is looking pretty sweet for President Trump!

Vegas Odds

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It's time to put your money where your mouth is.

It's not just political scientists who cook up election predictions. Casinos and sports betting services get in on the action. What could be a better way to predict an election than by asking people to put their hard-earned dollars on the line?

The big casinos and sports betting sites all have odds on the election, and Trump tends to be the favored candidate. If you are unfamiliar with betting odds in the U.S., the simple explanation of how they work is the smaller the number the better the odds. Here is the spread for three of the big betting sites:

bet365- Trump: -138, Harris: +110

BetMGM- Trump: -137, Harris: +110

Caesars- Trump: -145, Harris: +120

While you shouldn't take this as a sign to put all your money (or any) on President Trump, it is an optimistic sign!

The Redskins Rule

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The Redskins Rule is a well-documented correlation between the outcome of the presidential election and the performance of the Washington D.C. football team, the Redskins (now The Commanders). The rule is that if the Redskins win their last home game before the election, the incumbent party will win the election. If the Redskins lose, the challenging party will win the election. This rule is surprisingly accurate and held true for every election between 1940 and 2000.

If this rule is to be believed, the determining game is on Sunday, October 27th when the Redskins/Commanders play the Chicago Bears in Washington D.C. If the Bears win, that should mean Trump will win the election. If the Redskins win, then Harris will win.

But there is the fact that the rule has been broken several times since 2000. Has the charm worn off? And does it even count anymore if the team is no longer called the Redskins? Only time will tell!

Glenn joined Trump for an eventful weekend in the Southwest

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We are mere weeks away from the election, and President Trump has been making every day count.

This last weekend, Trump held two rallies back to back in the southwestern corner of our country—one just outside Coachella, California, and the other in Prescott Valley, Arizona. Glenn joined Trump in Arizona, along with thousands of other Americans, to support the former president in his final push towards election day. The polls still show a very tight race. Every vote matters, and with so much at stake, Trump has to finish strong.

Catch up with Trump and Glenn's busy weekend below:

Coachella

On Saturday the 12th, thousands of Donald Trump supporters flocked to Calhoun Ranch, an area not far from the famous Coachella fairgrounds, and braved the heat, drawn by Trump's promise to "Make America Great Again."

The headlining event of the rally was the alleged third assassination attempt on President Trump, although the Trump campaign doesn't see it that way. The action started when the alleged assassin, Vem Miller, was arrested while trying to enter the rally using allegedly fake press credentials and was charged with illegal possession of a handgun, a shotgun, and a high-capacity magazine. Miller has not admitted to an attempted assassination, and in fact, claims to have been a strong Trump supporter since 2018. Miller claims the firearms were purchased as a defensive measure after he received death threats linked to his work in the media. He also claims that the press credentials are not fake, and the mix-up was caused by the fact that he uses a different name on his press credentials as a safety precaution.

The Trump campaign, Secret Service, and FBI do not believe this was an assassination attempt, but in this heated political climate, one can never be too safe.

Prescott Valley

As soon as his rally in Cali was over, Trump hit the road to prepare for his next rally. On Sunday the 13th Trump held a rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona, where both Glenn and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake gave opening remarks.

In Glenn's short, yet powerful speech, he emphasized the importance of this election and highlighted all that was at stake— this is a battle of good and evil. He brought up the Left's attempt to erase women through transgender ideology and how that ideology encourages the predation of children. Glenn furthered the case of good versus evil by citing the Left's obsession with abortion. Glenn called abortion the sacrifice of a child's body for the convenience of the parents, a perversion of Christ's sacrifice of His body for us. Glenn called for God's Army to stand up and fight back against evil, using our voices and most importantly, our vote.

Glenn also lambasted Kamala for a recent interview where she admitted she wouldn't have changed anything if she had a chance to do her term as VP over again. He laid into her for marketing herself as an agent of change, while simultaneously defending the status quo. Glenn pointed out that if anyone wants to change the country for the better, Trump is the man to do it: Trump is the candidate for change, not Kamala.

Glenn: What I saw on the ground in Asheville gave me hope

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The government can’t save us. Washington is too slow and too bureaucratic, and quite frankly, the government doesn’t care.

I’ve seen a lot of destruction in my life. I’ve walked through war zones and cities torn apart by riots, and I've stood at the sites of natural disasters that leave communities devastated. But what I saw in Asheville, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene was unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed.

Houses were washed down rivers, upside down and crushed. Train tracks, strong enough to support locomotives, were left suspended in midair after the earth beneath them was eroded away. Semi-trucks, rolled by the force of the floodwaters, now lie like children’s toys, tossed and overturned hundreds of feet from the road. Whole towns have been uprooted and scattered — debris from homes miles away, stacking up like dominoes, bridges that stood for decades washed out by water so high that it flowed six feet over their tops.

'You tell everybody you know — even if they don’t care — we’ll take care of our own damn selves if nobody shows up.'

I stood there, looking at this idyllic small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I thought, “This will take years to rebuild. Maybe even decades.” But I didn’t just see destruction. I saw something far more powerful than nature’s wrath: the resilience of the American spirit.

My expectations for the government’s assistance were low before I arrived in Asheville, given its failing track record in previous natural disasters, but its response to Hurricane Helene victims — or lack thereof — was a new category of negligence. But the people in Asheville weren’t waiting on FEMA or the federal government to swoop in. They knew no one was coming.

The bridges were out, roads were destroyed, and the mountains had isolated them from outside help. But instead of despair, I saw hope. Instead of panic, I saw action. People were taking care of each other, and that is the America I remember, like in the days after 9/11 when we came together regardless of political party, race, or background. We didn’t care about who voted for whom. We just saw our neighbors hurting, and we asked, “Are you OK? What can I do to help?”

I saw that again in North Carolina. I saw it in the man who turned his Harley-Davidson dealership into a helicopter landing zone, shoveling mud out of his showroom just so rescue teams could land. I saw it in the volunteers flying missions across treacherous terrain, getting the elderly and the injured out of danger. They weren’t asking for government permission. They were doing what needed to be done.

Adam Smith, a retired Special Forces veteran who is coordinating the landing of helicopters in Asheville, told me that the FAA is trying to shut down the operation because it isn’t federally regulated. He told the feds that they’re going to leave because he has a helicopter landing in a few minutes that will actually help people while they are barking orders from Washington.

One story stood out to me. We landed to help evacuate an elderly woman with a broken hip and a severe infection. She just had surgery, but because her family didn’t have insurance, the hospital pushed her out as fast as it could. Her wound became infected, and her leg was on fire. We helped airlift her to get her desperately needed antibiotics and treatment. There were no government resources to help her to an emergency room.

As we loaded the woman into the helicopter, her grandson turned to me and said, “You tell everybody you know — even if they don’t care — we’ll take care of our own damn selves if nobody shows up.” That hit me hard because it’s the truth. It’s the way America used to be, and it’s the way we need to be again.

As I flew through those mountains in the helicopter, I couldn’t help but think of Billy Graham. I’d visited Asheville about 10 years ago to see him, and I remember thinking how beautiful and peaceful the town was. Today, it’s unrecognizable. The destruction is overwhelming. But the people are stronger than ever.

The government can’t save us. Washington is too slow and too bureaucratic, and quite frankly, the government doesn’t care. I saw it firsthand. We found a FEMA truck parked under a tree, its workers sitting at a card table in the shade. They weren’t doing anything to help.

But we’re Americans. We can take care of ourselves. We don’t need Washington to save us. We need each other. This is the America that Billy Graham spoke to me about — the America that will rise again in times of trouble. And while the government might fail us, we will not fail each other. And that’s exactly what I saw in North Carolina — Americans stepping up, taking care of their neighbors, and rebuilding their communities.

This is what I told the people of Asheville: You are not forgotten. There are millions of Americans who love you, who are praying for you, and who are ready to help. Because that’s what we do. We don’t wait for permission. We roll up our sleeves and take care of our own.

And to the rest of America, I say this: It’s time to remember who we are. It’s time to stop looking to Washington for solutions and start looking at each other. Because when the chips are down, it’s not the government that’s going to save us. It’s you and me, and if we stand together, nothing — no hurricane, no flood, no disaster — can break us.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

UPDATE: Will Florida survive Hurricane Milton?

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For the second time in two weeks, Florida is in the path of a major hurricane.

Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall sometime tonight, Wednesday, October 9th, somewhere near Tampa Bay. This will mark the first time in a hundred years the city has been hit directly by a hurricane, raising concerns about the preparedness of the city's infrastructure. Milton, which was rated a category five hurricane earlier this week, has been reduced to a category four as it approaches land and is expected to make landfall as a powerful category three.

The Sunshine State has already begun to feel the effects of the historic storm, with strong winds and heavy rains battering Tampa Bay this morning. Many are still trying to evacuate or prepare for the storm as conditions worsen. Highways have slowed down, and gas has run short. Residents are preparing for the worst.

The federally recognized "Waffle House Index" is in red, meaning that several Waffle House locations in the Tampa Bay area will be shut down. Waffle House prides itself on being open 24/7, no matter the conditions, so for them to shut down, if only for a brief time, indicates that severe damage to the area is anticipated.

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In short, Milton is anticipated to be a disaster, and as we have learned, FEMA is unlikely to be much help. Fortunately, Floridians have Ron DeSantis, who has continued to prove himself a capable governor, and the aid of good-hearted Americans from across the country. If you want to lend a hand to your fellow Americans you can donate at Mercury One and rest assured that your money will be used to step in to help hurricane victims where the government is failing.