GLENN: Hello, America. I'm glad you're -- I'm glad you're here today. We're going to go back over the -- the news out of North Korea. Some will say I'm big far too generous. And I will tell you this: I don't think I am for the moment. It may turn out that this is a false peace. I'm not sure. But let's root for peace.
Now, let talk about the peace that we're seemingly losing on the streets in America. Do not believe it. Do not believe the things that the media is trying to tell you right now.
First of all, understand this: The media is in full-fledged collapse. It is in collapse. I don't think anybody -- how can I explain this?
Six years ago, I got the disruptor of the year award, which killed Tribeca to give me. For what?
For breaking the back of the media and going out on our own. Six years ago, when I told Bill O'Reilly this, he said, "Beck, what are you doing? Nobody's going to watch -- nobody's going to watch your show and watch TV on their desktop." And he's right.
We're all watching television now on our phones. I designed a company around trying to convince people to watch television on the internet. That happened quickly.
And the world moved in that direction quickly. Not that I was leading it. I'm just the first guy walking out into the darkness going, "Okay. Hello. Is this mic on? Is anybody listening?"
Today, I'm already out of date. We're already dinosaurs. Now, imagine if you are a network and you have all the global resources. Most of that is worthless.
The numbers all across-the-board in advertising and ratings, they're all down, on both sides. They're all down. So what do you do?
Well, the media has decided, what they're going to do is they're just going to feed you more anger, more hate, more division. Because after all, that's what drives the clicks. That's what people are watching. If it bleeds, it leads.
And nobody is working on another theory. It's binary. You either shout hatred from the rooftops, or you're out of business. That is not going to last. But it's deeper than that.
Before I left Fox, and only my close staff knows this, but every single day, towards the end, every day, multiple times a day, what did I say, Stu, to our staff about leaving Fox and getting out of that? You don't remember? Do you remember?
PAT: You thought it was all going to burn down.
GLENN: It was all going to burn down. We got to get out of here before this whole thing burns down. The media --
PAT: Yep.
GLENN: -- got to get out of here before -- it's burning down. And it's burning down from the sins of the past. But it's all burning down because of technology. Everything's changed.
And it needs to. It's good. But you, yourself, also have to say, "Am I in a new world, or am I fighting to hold on to the old world?"
And I'm not talking about principles. Well, actually I am. Are you going to go into the new world with your principles, or are you going to leave them in the past? Are you going to abandon all of your principles to be able to hold on to something that is going to slip through your fingers?
Everybody, the high and mighty, CNN, fair and balanced. They're not fair and balanced. We're fair and balanced. We're journalists. No, you're not. You're giving your opinion from dawn until dusk. I'm trying to remember what I -- what I read on a -- on a chyron or the lower -- what do you call those?
The typing on the -- so the audience knows.
STU: Words on bottom of the screen.
GLENN: Yes. The words on the bottom of the screen.
And I was watching -- I don't remember which network it was. MSNBC or CNN. And at the bottom of the screen, Donald Trump was talking. And it was from his speech earlier in the day. And it said something like, "Donald Trump's divisive speech." Well, there's no news in that. There's no news. That's all his opinion.
His divisive speech. Now, we could all think that it was very divisive. Except, if we all thought it was divisive, it wouldn't be divisive now, would it? It would be Donald Trump's most agreeable speech, or the speech Donald Trump gave that everyone disagrees with.
It's opinion. The night before Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, he gave a speech. That speech, part of that speech has been turned into song. That speech is so worth your time reading. You want to talk about courage.
There was -- there was one line that jumped out at me reading it again over the last couple of days. Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.
Now, this is going to sound harsh because nobody likes to hear it about themselves, but America is very selfish. We all are very selfish right now. All of us. Facebook. Whose face? YouTube.
Everything is about us. We are increasingly inward focused on and isolated. Our kids are on the internet. Our kids are not looking up or out. It's all in.
We don't know our neighbors. We're increasingly turning against church. Forget church. We're isolating ourselves in little teeny communities, where even our friend and -- our closest friends and our family is being kicked out of that community if they disagree with us.
Technology is pouring gasoline on this. Information, entertainment has become our teacher and our god. The more inward focused a person becomes, the more susceptible he is to slip into the darkness. "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it?"
When a person is too inward-focused and slipping into darkness, technology and the media is there with the gasoline and the matches. Everything we're talking about right now is selfish. It's all about my problems, my pain, my needs, my cause, my rights, my vengeance.
Now more than ever, we need to develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. We need to stop asking what our country can do for me.
It's interesting to me that Derek Weimar, James Field Jr.'s former high school history teacher in Kentucky, has already admitted he feels like he failed in not doing more about the warning signs he saw in last weekend's killer.
Weimar said Fields was a very bright kid, but very misguide and disillusioned. I'm quoting, "A lot of boys get interested in the Germans and the Nazis because they're interested in World War II. But James took it to a whole 'nother level."
He said Fields wrote a deeply researched paper about the Nazi during World War II. "It was obvious that he had this fascination with Naziism and the idolatry of Adolf Hitler. He had white supremacist views. He really believed in that stuff. And when you're a teacher and you see one of your former students do this, it's a nightmare scenario. This is something that was growing in him. And I admit it, I failed. I tried my best. This is a teachable moment and something we need to be vigilant about, because this stuff is tearing our country apart."
I have to tell you, I don't blame the teacher. In fact, I commend him for being honest. Honest about his influence on Fields. How many people want to stand up? How many people have stood up and said, "You know what, I played a role in this?" Nobody says that after a tragedy. Nobody stands up and says, "Yep. Yep. I saw it, and I failed to do anything about it." People often say, "Oh, I -- you know, I saw -- my dog knew. Oh, man, every time I walked by his apartment door, my dog knew. But I should have listened to my dog, but I didn't."
No. This is saying, I saw it. Not my dog. And I didn't do enough.
You know the great thing about life -- you know, I had a guy in my office -- you know, let me take a break. Because I saw something this weekend in somebody that was such an amazing moment. He -- he looked at God as this kind, gentle -- and I think God is. But because he's also our Dad, our father, he also, excuse the expression -- is the biggest ass kicker in the world. Daddy loves us so much, he'll kick our ass, for our sake. For our benefit. Not because he's angry. Not because he's vengeful. But because the system he designed allows you to do the things that you want to do.
But he also says, "By the way, you know, snowblowers should not be used on the roof." But when he tells you that and you decide to do it anyway and you fall and you break your neck and your arm is sucked into the snowblower and torn off, there's no -- you don't sue God. He told you.
He's mad at me. Nope. Nope. He told you that was a stupid idea. Now you pay the price. We have to be dangerously unselfish and reach beyond ourselves. Reach out to the youth, the neighbors, the people who are obviously hurting and trying to shift their focus and ours outward.
Evil is real. And sometimes it takes over a person. And they can't be rescued. But that doesn't relieve us from our responsibility of trying to rescue and noticing the pain around us.
