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Super Pac Insider Sheds Light on Bribery, Delegate Math

April 15, 2016
Jon Boldt

Writer

Glenn's open opposition to Donald Trump’s candidacy has him taking shots from critics on every side. Breitbart, Drudge Report and Alex Jones --- to name a few --- have relentlessly attacked Glenn's character and intelligence with twisted facts and false allegations, making their true colors known.

The latest conspiracy theory now circulating is that Glenn has received millions of dollars from a pro-Ted Cruz super PAC in exchange for his endorsement and stumping on the Texas Senator's behalf.

Drew Ryun, political director for Trusted Leadership PAC (the super PAC in question) joined The Glenn Beck Program on Friday to shed light on the “bribery” and to talk money and math as the campaign heads towards a contested convention

Listen to this segment or read the transcript below.

The "Evil" Super PAC

GLENN: Drew Ryan is the political director for the Trusted Leadership PAC, which is one of those evil super PACs. Why are you so evil?

DREW: Well, you know, it's just one of those things.

But really what it is, is a super PAC is --- we run as, in a sense, a parallel PAC to a political campaign. And usually super PACs are filled with trusted operatives that the campaign knows and is comfortable with. And there's a high wall between us, according to the Federal Election Commission, that we can't communicate with the campaign. So we look to see where the campaign is, what the message is from the candidate, in our case, Senator Ted Cruz. And where they are playing. And we will look at financial reports and see what ad buys they've made, the message that they're driving. And we will, in a sense, serve to drive that message home.

Now, a super PAC is not constrained in the way that a campaign is. A campaign is locked in at a certain rate for maximum donors that can only give $2,700. A super PAC, the donations are unlimited. So we deal a lot with the major donors that help fund TV, radio -- in our case, a lot of highly targeted voter ID and grassroots rallies.

GLENN: Do they know that you have given me -- you've funneled through my charity $8 million right directly --

DREW: See, I would love to know where that money is.

GLENN: I've already spent it.

DREW: Oh, you have? Well, if you could actually find a way to get it back, that would be great too.

GLENN: Right.

DREW: But, you know, unlike, say, the Jeb Bush super PAC that blew through $100 million or Rubio's PAC that went through $70 million, we have raised and spent right at $30 million. So for us, it's one of those things where every dollar matters and how we spend it matters.

GLENN: Yeah. Because it's -- you really have a problem -- everybody has a problem right now that the money is staying off -- you know, a lot of people came in early. And a lot of the money has stayed off and said, "You know what, I don't know who is going to win it." Is that true or not?

DREW: No. We're actually seeing some movement in our direction, as it becomes clear that we're going to a contested convention. And there is a delegate path where Senator Cruz could win this on the second ballot at the convention. So we're starting to see a lot more movement from some of the traditional, what we could call establishment donors inside the Republican Party.

Delegate Math

GLENN: Can you go through the delegate math? Because this is -- this, I think, is going to be really confusing for Americans, that this isn't stealing the election. This is the way it's done. It was done this way in 1976. It was done this way in the 1950s. Abraham Lincoln won the presidency this way. This is the way it works.

DREW: So what happens in a lot of these presidential elections is you have pools of delegates to the national convention sometimes that are picked a year in advance. So what you're seeing is when you have, say, a Donald Trump win South Carolina and take all 50 delegates, unfortunately for Donald Trump, he found out that those delegates had been picked a year in advance, and he would not have a say in who these delegates would be. These are not Trump delegates, per se, that will be going to represent South Carolina at the national convention.

GLENN: If he had the 1237, they would have to be Trump delegates.

DREW: They would have to be -- in fact, they are bound on the first ballot. So when you look at how a Republican Convention works and obviously a Democrat as well, you have delegates that are bound through certain number of ballots. So a lot of states, if a candidate wins, again, going back to South Carolina, Donald Trump wins all 50, those delegates are bound by the by-laws of the party to vote for him on the first ballot. But if he doesn't get to 1237 -- and there's an increasing likelihood that he won't -- then all of a sudden those delegates become unbound for the second potentially third ballot of voting on the convention floor. And that is danger for Donald Trump.

STU: They can do whatever they want at that point, right?

DREW: They can do whatever they want to at that point.

Voting Their Conscience

STU: Does Donald Trump have any sway over them? If he says, "Look, I want you guys to continue to vote for me."

GLENN: Because we've heard that you can bribe these people. You know, you can give them golf memberships, let's say you own beautiful golf courses all around the world.

DREW: Let's just say that the law regarding bribery and delegates at a national convention is murky at best. There's always the possibility there may be some things going on like that, particularly from a Trump campaign. But, yeah, once the first ballot is over, a lot of state delegates are released to vote their conscience in the second or third ballots.

GLENN: So let me ask you about the delegates. Because you've done this before. So the delegates -- who are these people generally? Because I would think -- let me tell you why I'm asking this question. And then you can take it where you want to go.

One, bribery. Are they believers enough to be offended by that? And two, how are they going to react to somebody threatening to give out their address, their phone number, their hotel room?

DREW: Well, let's start from that second question and work our way back. I think you'll have a very vociferous reaction to being threatened. A lot of these folks are party loyalists. When you look at who usually goes to the conventions, it's usually a party. We don't have contested conventions. As you referenced, 1976 was the last time we had a contested convention inside the Republican Party.

These are also conservative grassroots organizers. These are not traditionally on either camp Trump-type people. So when you look at the Trump loyalists --

GLENN: Why do you say that? Why do you say that?

DREW: Trump, when you look at his natural base is -- and he actually does have a base.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

DREW: 50 percent of these people, we've never seen before. They're independents. They're Democrats crossing over in these open primaries, which why the next six to seven weeks look tenuous. After we get out of the northeast and head towards Indiana and West Virginia and Nebraska, these are all closed primaries. It looks like a tough road for Donald Trump over the last five to six weeks in this primary. He's not going to have independents and Democrats crossing over and voting in the Republican primaries. When you look at the delegate pool, as I referenced earlier, a lot of these people have been picked by the party hierarchy, sometimes as much as a year before these primaries actually took place. These are not people that are naturally going to be going towards Donald Trump.

Devil’s Advocate

GLENN: Let me play devil's advocate, if they're establishment people, they're not likely to go to Ted Cruz either.

DREW: I think that all depends on Rule 40B. And there's been a lot of conversation about the impact that the rules committee will have on the 2016 convention.

GLENN: What's Rule 40B?

DREW: Let me roll this back a little bit. So you have a rules committee that meets a week before the convention. Each state or territory has two delegates per...

(ringing)

GLENN: Okay.

DREW: And you will have 112 members on the rules committee that will actually meet and decide what the rules will be for the convention in 2016. Rule 40B right now states that you have to win the majority of --

(ringing)

GLENN: Sorry. My phone is seemingly going off here. And I'm sorry for that. Go ahead.

DREW: It's totally fine.

GLENN: Go ahead.

STU: Do you have any idea how to turn the thing off?

GLENN: No, because I never carry my phone. I don't ever use it. Somebody else uses it. I don't carry.

DREW: I love this show already. This is fantastic.

STU: For a guy that just got $8 million.

GLENN: I know. But I hire somebody to --

STU: Okay.

GLENN: They tell me.

DREW: You hire a phone Sherpa? You could hire two phone Sherpas.

GLENN: That's right. Yeah. So I'm sorry. I lost you at hello.

DREW: Yes, well, that's fine. Because I'm coming back to you.

All right. So when you talk about the rules committee, and I think that's a story that's going to become bigger and bigger as we go towards the convention. The rules committee always meets the week before the actual convention. Each state or territory gets two delegates a piece on this rules committee. So you'll have 112 delegates that will decide what the rules for the convention will be.

Currently, the party states that Rule 40B, you have to win the majority of delegates in eight states.

GLENN: Okay.

DREW: There will be only two candidates that will have the opportunity to be considered on the floor of the convention right now. Obviously, the rules can change the week before. And I'll talk about that later.

GLENN: How many states did Marco Rubio win?

PAT: One. He won one state. And a territory.

DREW: One. He won Minnesota. And a territory, Puerto Rico. John Kasich has won Ohio.

Playing Around With the Rules

GLENN: So there's only those two -- even if they're suspended, there's only those two.

DREW: Potentially. I mean, John Kasich may win Pennsylvania, but there are no other states that he can win. So at best, he'll win two states going in.

Right now, I think Ted Cruz is going to win 13 to 14 states when you look at the remainder of the states on the calendar. He's already won seven. And obviously Donald Trump will clear the threshold of Rule 40B. Something for your listeners and your viewers, however, if you start to see Republican National Committee men and women start appointed to the rules committee, there is a good chance that Rule 40B will change, and we potentially will go from a contested convention to an open convention. And that's when things potentially get crazy.

But if the Trump and Cruz campaigns are doing their job, you will see a rules committee stacked with their people and Rule 40B will stay in place.

GLENN: Is Donald Trump --

DREW: Paying attention? I don't know.

GLENN: Yeah, I mean, is he -- it's crazy. It's really crazy.

STU: From a guy who has pitched his campaign as I'm the guy who can get all these things done. I'm going to understand the rules more than everybody.

GLENN: Right. And I'm the guy who can hire really smart people. The people around him are dummies.

DREW: You know, he's running around saying, I'll hire the best people, how is it then if you hire the best people, you're hiring the guy that drove Scott Walker's campaign into the ground?

STU: He's a good candidate. I liked Scott Walker.

DREW: I liked Scott Walker. Literally he was my second choice in this election season, and Rick Riley drove his campaign into the ground in seven to eight weeks and blew through millions of dollars and yet he gets hired by Donald Trump's campaign yesterday.

PAT: Wow.

STU: They were saying, you need to define someone who has some ability. Which obviously Scott Walker saw something in Riley, but also, someone who was so down on their luck and had performed poorly that they would take the job with Donald Trump. And he's kind of the sweet spot of those two things, right? I don't want to put words in your mouth. That's kind of why they went to this guy. Because, I mean, he's not completely without ability. But he's in a tough spot because of the Walker campaign. Walker was one of the frontrunners. A good candidate. A guy who could really connect with both sides, sort of an establishment and conservative side. And his campaign ended before Jim Gilmore's did.

DREW: So what Stu is saying is he's taking the best available tier-three talent. You're right, he is.

JEFFY: He'll always have Lewandowski to consult with.

DREW: Well, of course. And Paul Manafort. And Roger Stone.

GLENN: Have you ever seen anything like this before?

DREW: No. And here's what I think is going on is, I don't think Trump expected to be in this long, to be honest.

GLENN: I don't think so either.

DREW: I think this was something of a protest campaign. He said a few things that resonated with the grassroots, with the disaffected. And all of a sudden, it's like he's taking off. And he doesn't have the infrastructure or the talent to see this thing to the end. Now, I think he's the least serious serious contender for nomination that we've ever seen.

Featured Image: Attendees to a Republican fund-raiser walk by protesters and activists outside of a midtown hotel which is hosting a black-tie event for the state Republican Party on April 14, 2016 in New York City. Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are all scheduled to appear at the event which comes days before New York will hold its primary. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

  • for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
  • for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
  • for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
  • for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
  • and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

How America’s elites fell for the same lie that fueled Auschwitz

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.