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Glenn Beck
Choice hotels get you more of what you value. Comfort Inn. It's calling your name. Save on the stain. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Book direct@ChoiceHotels.com wow. We had a lot on today's podcast. We start before the Supreme Court made its ruling today. We started with the Bible. The Bible is in schools in Texas and it's a theocracy. No, it's not. There's no Western culture without the Judeo Christian scripture. And I prove that point and I show you what's actually happening in Texas. It's not what the freakouts are saying in the media. The left versus the Declaration of Independence as well. If you listen to the full broadcast today, you'll get part one of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That's an hour or two. But the left versus the Declaration, that is about something else SCOTUS did and that is dismantling the deep state. That's kind of an important thing that happened. Now some bad news with Supreme Court. They did overturn birthright citizenship or actually left it in play. They overturned the president's executive order. I expect the president is going to be coming out with a statement because he's not going to sit in place for that. And we have Franklin Carmago. He is a guy from Venezuela. He is working now at Prageru. He is fantastic. He's not a citizen. He's here under protection because they were actually calling him a terrorist and putting all of his friends in jail. He had to get out of Venezuela because he was speaking up for freedom. What does immigration mean to somebody like that? What does assimilation mean? All of this? Getting ready for our big special, which is tomorrow night only on Torch. It's called the Golden Door and it's the complete history and perspective of what immigration actually is supposed to be. It's a great special that's tomorrow. If you're a Torch member, you'll find it on the app or wherever you get your Torch product. But if you're not a member, join us us now@torch250.com that's torch250.com. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Alrighty then. Oh, my gosh, there is so much to go over today. Let me, let me start with what's happening in Texas because we then we got to get into the scotus and it is a wild ride for the rest of the show because the SCOTUS case is going to be announced in an hour. One of them is going to be announced in an hour and then probably in 90 minutes from now will the second case will be announced. And these are big ones. Big ones. But let me start here. If you turn on CNN or the BBC or the Guardian or pbs, NBC, any of them, honestly, you'd think Tex had just crowned Jesus king of Texas and ordered every public school child to genuflect before a Bible on their teacher's desk. The headlines scream texas State Board of Education votes to require millions of students to study Bible stories. Oh, my. Lions and tigers and bears. Bible stories become required reading for Texas schools, sparking a row about separation of church and state, which doesn't exist. But I digress. Texas makes Bible passages required reading for millions of public school students. Oh, wow. Maybe they'll spend less time on what part. You're not supposed to put your part into the backside of somebody else's part. You know what I'm talking about. Maybe they'll spend less time on that. Anyway, critics call it unconstitutional. Inappropriate. I love that one. Inappropriate. You know, I think you've lost the license on the word inappropriate. I do, I do. When it comes to school, you've got the dancing drag queens. I don't think you know what inappropriate means. Religious favoritism and part of a dark conservative plot to infuse, and I'm quoting, infuse Christian teachings into American classrooms. The hysteria. Oh, my gosh. Now let me tell you the truth, because the truth is not that. Okay? The Texas State Board of Education, Republican controlled. Yes, nine to five vote. That's one of the perks of living in Texas, I guess. Approved a required reading list for English and literature classes across K through 12. And yes, they do include specific Bible passages and stories as literature, right alongside with Charles Dickens, Great Expectations and other classics. Example, there's a picture book version of David and Goliath for younger kids, sections from the Book of Exodus for fifth graders, the Shepherd's Psalm for seventh graders, the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Beatitudes. Not the Beatitudes, where we're taught to love one another. Lock your children up. Now, this list doesn't take effect until the 2030. 2031 school year, by the way. I just want to say, because I know some of the things that are going on with the school board in 2030 and Texas. You're going to be a very, very great place to educate your school in 2030. But more on that much later. Now, there is no mandate to put a physical Bible in every classroom. There's no statewide requirement for devotional prayer or force religious exercises. Most districts have already declined those opt ins anyway. What is mandatory are the ten commandments posters in classrooms. But that is a separate policy entirely. This one is just academic. It's literally literacy and historic study. Now let me ask you, how do you understand anything without understanding the Bible? I mean, at least knowing it exists. The supreme court back in 1963, in a very. In the very case that banned devotional Bible reading in school sponsored prayer, said that objective study of the Bible for its literary and historic qualities is perfectly constitutional when presented as part of a secular education program. So this doesn't violate the Supreme Court. It doesn't violate the, the, the constitution at all. Justice Clark wrote plainly, quote, it certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. What historic and literary qualities? Oh, don't, don't tempt me because I got a list. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or religion when presented objectively as a part of secular program of education, may not be effectively affected consistently with the first amendment. End quote. Okay, so Texas is not becoming a theocracy. They are walking through a door the supreme court left wide open and that our founders walk through with conviction. Let me take you back to 1782. This is something that is currently on tour from my collection and the collection of American journey experience with the White House. They've put together a truck with Prager University aje and currently on the road is my Aiken Bible. There are only, I think, seven of these left and our library happens to have three of them because they are very important. Revolutionary war is still raging. Importing Bibles from Britain is the only way. We cannot print a Bible while we're under the crown and it's nearly impossible to get them. So a Philadelphia printer named Robert Aiken, he's a devout man. He's been working on the first complete English Bible and ever printed in America. He petitions the continental Congress because he wants to produce it, quote, for the use of schools. Congress appoints a committee including the founding fathers. They have the congressional chaplains examine it for accuracy. Everything else. Then on September 12, 1870, or sorry, 1782, the Congress of the United States passes this resolution quoting resolved that the United States in Congress assemble highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Akin as subservient to the interest of religion as well as an instance of the progress of arts in this country, and being satisfied from the above report of care and accuracy in the execution of the work, they recommend this edition of the Bible to inhabitants of the United States. That Bible is the Aiken Bible. It is the only Bible printed with a congressional endorsement in it on page one. And they did it because they needed it for religious study and, dare I say it again, schools. So one of the very first things that our representatives did, they violated the Constitution. They were the ones who wrote it. While they're fighting for their lives and their liberty was to put the Bible in the hands of American families and schools. That's not Christian nationalism. That's the actual founding character of our republic, okay? For most of American history, the Bible was not controversial in schools. It was central. Go look up the McGuffey readers. I'm so I right now. Homeschooling moms are like, he's going to talk about the McGuffy. Oh, talk sexy to me, man. The McGuffey Readers. These are the textbooks that educated generations were saturated with scripture and biblical morality. Okay? Children lead learn to read from the Bible. They learn character from the Bible. That was normal. What happened in the 1960s, that was the radical break, not Texas 2026. All right, so why does any of this matter? Because Texas is right. You cannot understand Western civilization without the Bible, period. Try to read Shakespeare without it. You won't understand it. He weaves in over a thousand biblical allusions. Salt of the earth, apple of my eye, feet of clay, a thorn in the flesh, out of the mouths of babes, the powers that be. All of these come from the Bible. Macbeth is drenched in the language of the Fall and guilty Conscience. Merchant of Venice is a meditation on mercy versus strict justice. The Tempest is a story of forgiveness and redemption. Remove the Bible and half of Shakespeare goes dark. Try reading Milton's Paradise Loss. What the hell is that? Oh, just Genesis retold in an epic poem, that's what it is. Try to understand Dante's Divine Comedy. It's the architecture of hell. What's hell? Purgatory? Paradise? Oh, I don't know. I didn't me read Bible. You cannot understand Pilgrim's Progress, Moby Dick, the Scarlet Letter, Dostoevsky's novels of sin and redemption. Any of this. Any of it. You can't understand it. You can't understand the art that defines the West. Michelangelo. Who's that guy in the middle? I don't know. Who's he reaching out to touch? I don't know. The Creation to the Last Judgment. Leonardo's Last Supper. What does that mean? The cathedrals, the stained glass, the piazz. You can't Understand Handel's Messiah or Bach, Beethoven, none of it. You can't understand the laws that shaped us. The Ten Commandments are woven into the Western legal codes. The idea that every human being has inherent dignity because they're made in the image of God. That's not a secular invention. It's biblical. You don't understand the Declaration of Independence if you don't understand the Bible. You don't understand the abolition movement in Britain and America. It was driven by men and women who read their Bibles and could not reconcile slavery with love thy neighbor as yourself. Lincoln, the second Nautilus address. What is that? Other than one giant biblical meditation on sin and judgment and mercy. Martin Luther King, was he talking about? I don't know. Let justice roll down like the waters that comes from Amos. His whole dream is rooted in Scripture. Trying to understand Western civilization. The art, the literature, the music, its laws, its ethics. The very language. Without the Bible is trying to understand the Middle east without the Koran. It is the foundational text. Remove it and the culture becomes incoherent. The morals drift. The art loses meaning, the law loses anchor. And most importantly, and don't the progressives know it? The people lose their story. That's what's been happening for 60 years in American education. We have raised generations who are strangers in their own civilization. They don't know the book that built the house they live in. And we wonder why everything feels so untethered, why our culture is fracturing. Young people are anxious and adrift because they don't know where we came from. They don't know why any of us or how any of this was built. Texas is not forcing anyone to believe they are doing what they must do, simply refusing to continue the lie that the Bible is irrelevant to who we are. You don't have to like it, but that's the truth. They are giving children back a piece of their inheritance so you can actually understand the world that they inherited. Media's in full panic because they know what happens when people rediscover the source and rediscover their story. All their work is gone. The same people who lecture us about diversity and inclusion lose their minds when the most influential book in the history of the world is treated with just basic cultural respect. But let me leave you this. The Good News Bible is outlasted. Every empire, every ideology, every attempt to bury it. It survived Hitler. It survived far worse than a few hysterical headlines. And the American people, especially parents, are waking up. You don't need to turn our churches into schools. And I mean our schools into churches, and I don't want to do that. We just need to stop pretending our civilization sprang from nowhere. Wait a minute. I was a tadpole, then a monkey, and now me. Our civilization just appeared from nowhere, from pure secular reason alone. No, none of that is true. Give your children the tools to read their own story. Texas just took one careful, legal, long overdue step in the right direction, and the hysteria will fade, but the truth will remain. Back in a minute. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Okay, let me take you to a room in Philadelphia. I want you just to. It's Independence Week, and it is imperative that we learn what actually happening happened in the summer of 1776. So I want to take you back there, and I want you to. I want you to leave everything you think you know about our founders at the door. Leave the parade, Leave the fireworks. Leave the fat, comfortable, settled feeling of a thing that already happened and turned out fine because none of those men in that room knew it was going to turn out fine. What happened in that room was not a celebration. It was the most frightened, most courageous act grown men will ever make. You'll never read about something like this ever again. And we've buried it under 150 years of bunting until we can't feel it anymore. We understood it maybe for the first hundred years, and then it just started to go away. And I want you to feel it again. So start with this. The war was already a year old. Did you know that? The war was already a year old? A year. Blood had been spilled in Lexington and Concord back in April of 1775. Men had already died on Bunker Hill that June. Washington had taken command of the army and chased the British out of Boston. There had already been a year of killing. And because we have not changed at all, even though we were already engaged in it, Americans wanted to stop the war. They were like, no, no, it's going to cost us too many people. We don't want independence if it's going to cost us our kids. Okay? Nothing changes. A year after their sons coming home in boxes. The majority of colonists still wanted to patch it up, still wanted to be Englishmen. And I understand they still walked across the ocean at a king and thought, surely he's going to come to his senses. He's going to protect us from his own corrupt ministers. Right? People think that now when our gut. When our government goes truly corrupt, we still think, well, we used to. They're going to fix this. Somebody's going to Go to jail for this. It's not really what's happening that's common. That's what humans do. And that's how badly they wanted to stay and stay out of war. And the king knew it, and he spat on it. The year before we wrote the Declaration of Independence, this Congress had sent him what they called the Olive Branch petition. Have you ever heard of that? I need you to understand the tone of that document because it shatters the cartoon of the angry rebel. Okay? It was not a list of demands. It was not I want reparations. It wasn't that. It wasn't a threat. It was a plea. On their knees, please. We are still your loyal subjects. We love you. Stop the bloodshed and we're yours. And they sent it across the ocean with a man named Richard Penn. He was a descendant of the founder of Pennsylvania, and that name meant something. And George III wouldn't even take the document into his hands. He refused to touch it. And before he'd even technically rejected it, he stood up in front of Parliament and declared the whole of the colonies in open and avowed rebellion. Every man in that room in Philadelphia, he declared a traitor officially by the name of the Crown. And then he kept going. Because In December of 1775, Parliament passed and the King approved the thing that just slammed the door and threw the bolt. It was a prohibitory act. This is what it actually did. Listen to this. It banned all trade with the colonies. He was going to strangle us. Us to death. It declared that every American ship on the open sea forfeit fair game. You can take it. Belong to any open enemy. And in the language of nations, a blockade like this is not a policy. It's an act of war. With one signature. The King of England took 3 million of his own people and threw them outside of his protection and said, rape them. Take them. He stopped being their king. And then he started being their hunter. Because he went shopping right after this. He went to Germany and he looked for soldiers, Hessian soldiers. He was looking for mercenaries. They'd never set foot in America. They had. They had never a problem with America. They'd never been here. They were paid in gold to cross an ocean and kill his own subjects out in their own fields. When John Adams heard about this, he didn't rage. He almost relaxed. He said, well, now the die is cast. Because the question had been answered by the king. And right in the middle of this, In January of 1776, a pamphlet hits the streets. It was 47 pages. If you've never Read it. You should. It's amazing. It was made by a failed corset maker from England who had been in America for barely a year and kind of been adopted almost as a son by Benjamin Franklin. His name was Tom Thomas Paine, and he called this pamphlet Common Sense. And it was common sense because he said, I'm saying the things out loud that everyone has been too frightened to say, but the pulpits had not been too frightened to say it. All of these things had been said from the pulpits over and over and over again for the last couple of decades. And he just comes out and he says, it's absurd. How is. How is this continent being ruled by an island? There's something rotten in the very idea of a king. And the time for asking about it is over. And he sold 100,000 copies in just a couple of months. Now, imagine that. That's 3 million people total. Man, woman, child, everybody. Do the math on that. It was read aloud in taverns around campfires to men who couldn't read it themselves. And it was pain that put the match to the kindling. And by the spring of 1776, the ground under that Congress had moved. So understand what the question actually was when the men actually sat down. It was never, should we rebel? The king had already declared war. They had already named them traitors. He had already hired men to kill them. The only question in that room was whether 13 really jealous, squabbling, distrustful colonies would have the nerve to stand up and say out loud that which was already true. To say it was to die. You know the word treason? I don't know. It's like a debate club term now. Treason. What does it even mean? Treason against the Crown was punishment by death and not a clean death. You know how they killed William Wallace, right? They tied a rope around his arms and his legs and then tied a horse to each end of those ropes and they drew and quartered him, tore him apart in the. In the square. Because he was a traitor. The traditional sense of sentence was create horror. So every man who signed his name to that declaration, that was it. He was a traitor. He's signing his own death warrant, betting that an army of farmers could win before the king's men got to him. And here's what we forget. These were not men who had nothing to lose. That's the lie that makes them safe and small. John Hancock was the wealthiest man in New England. There was already a bounty on his head. The British wanted him personally to be drawn and quartered. Benjamin Franklin was 70. The most famous American on Earth. That man could have lived out his days in comfort and glory anywhere. He could have gone over to France easily. They loved him in France. And his own son, Benjamin Franklin's son, William, was the royal governor of New Jersey, loyal to the crown, about to be arrested and never truly speak to his father ever again. Imagine that. A revolution that ran a fault line straight through the most famous family in America. These men had farms and fortunes and businesses and libraries and wives and children and grandchildren. Every single one of them was about to wager all of it, the entire inheritance, on the longest odds on earth. So let me take you to June 7th, because June 7th it begins. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program. Hello, America. You know we've been fighting every single day. We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you. We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it. But to keep this fight going, we need you right now. Would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast? Give us five stars and leave a comment. Because every single review helps us break through Big Tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth. This isn't a podcast. This is a movement. And you're part of it, a big part of it. So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up, help us push this podcast to the top rate, review, share together, we'll make a difference. And thanks for standing with us. Now, let's get to work. You're listening to the Best of Glenn Beck. Need a little more? Check out the full show podcasts anywhere you download podcasts. Let me start with a sneak peek into this live documentary that is going to air tomorrow on torch250.com listen. Now, on the base of the Statue of Liberty is a poem, and it's called the New Colossus. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe. Break free the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless tempest toss to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door. For more than a century, Americans heard those lines as an invitation to the world's dreamers, the fighters, the people who looked at tyranny and said, I'm going to go to a place where a man can rise, where I can be who I was born. It was never intended to be a suicide pact. And that's why I say this with zero apology, zero new Immigration until we can get this right. Because you can't understand immigration if you first don't understand its purpose. Well, we're gonna correct that. From New York City, where it all started, we'll take a tour through history, from some of the historic sites that wrote the immigration story in our country. And speaking of stories, I'm gonna tell you of a young woman who stepped off a boat from Scotland. One generation later, her child achieved something I can guarantee you she could have never dreamt of. You think this kind of success happens in Somalia? A true political refugee. Franklin, you're from Venezuela. You left Venezuela because your family was under attack. What does immigration to the United States mean to you?
- [27:39]
Franklin Carmago
Oh, immigration is everything. It saved my life. But I also understand that for immigration to work, it needs to serve America. It needs to serve the American people. The comment I always get from the left when I criticize illegal immigration, the current system, is that just because I'm an immigrant, I'm supposed to support open borders. But the thing about immigration and what makes immigration and has made immigration for so many years, for so many decades, good for America. Not anymore. Right now, of course, is that immigrants would assimilate to America and would put America first. What does this mean? That your concern is America. So if my concern is America, when I look at the immigration system right now, where it's no longer necessarily a beacon of freedom or. Or opportunity, but a beacon of free stuff and welfare state, I'm concerned, and I understand that we need to change this.
- [28:35]
Glenn Beck
So, first of all, you have family back in Venezuela, I'm sure. Is everybody okay after the big earthquake?
- [28:41]
Franklin Carmago
Yes, I have family. I have friends. Thankfully, they're okay. They were impacted by it. I mean, they witness it. We're talking about the worst natural disaster in Venezuela in over a century. Two earthquakes, one minute away from each other. 7.2, 7.5. Very strong. A spokesperson from the United nations said that we could be talking about at least 10,000 dead people. Is a real tragedy. The government is not the one to blame for a natural disaster disaster. But when Venezuela right now is the poorest country in Latin America. It's a story of mismanagement, is a story of corruption. The buildings have no infrastructure. The rescue teams. Glenn, the rescue teams do not even have flashlights. When you look at that, of course you need to blame the government for this, because the worst natural disaster in Venezuela is not just the earthquakes, is being socialism.
- [29:37]
Glenn Beck
So you know, Venezuela people don't know this. Venezuela, back even as early as the 90s, Venezuela was the richest country in the hemisphere, I think, outside of us. You guys have more oil than Saudi Arabia. It was really a great country. And then the socialists took over. And you know, we've been debating, I've been watching this since the 90s. I've been on the air saying, don't go socialist, don't go socialist. This is what's going to happen next. This is what's going to happen next. And then it would all happen. And now you've had people eating zoo animals. Can you explain to people who think socialism is neat why they should pay attention to Venezuela?
- [30:20]
Franklin Carmago
Venezuela is a great example. Not just because it's actually close to the United States and you know, we can find some similarities, but is also because Venezuela is a story of a country that used to be wealthy. And it's also the story of a country with a lot of natural resources. And it's also a story where Venezuelans, before I was born, because when Chavez took power, I was only one year old, really. Venezuelan said, you know what? We are a rich country. We have a lot of oil. We are a successful nation. We have our democracy. So we can try something different. Maybe the role of the government is not to protect our individual rights. Maybe the role of government is to make our life better. In economic terms. Free stuff, free education, maybe wealthy people, business people, they are too greedy to reach. We need to go after them. And people were warning, hey, look at Cuba. Cuba right now is a poor government. They tried socialism and they're escaping to Miami on rafts. And Venezuelan said, nah, that is not going to happen to us. Well, it happened. And now when I talk to young Americans, you find two type of leftist UN Americans. One type of socialist would say that the reason why Venezuela is poor is because the United States, the sanctions, they have that anti American sentiment that they have learned in schools. But you also find another type of socialists and they would tell you, no, no, no, no, we don't, we don't want to be like Venezuela. We don't want to implement their policies. We want to be more like Norway. We want to be more like Sweden. What you find is that they are not promoting free markets with some type of welfare state. No, they are promoting socialist policies that were implemented in Venezuela. How did a country like Venezuela that was, that had the fourth largest GDP per capita in the 1950s? How did that country go from that to be a country where 90% of its population is poor or extremely poor? Socialism, the government taking control of businesses, expansion of the welfare state, government spending so much Money, because they promised that your life was going to be great, the government was going to give you everything. And the results are there, they are clear. And that type of leftism exists in America. I wish my disagreements with Democrats were just maybe slightly on immigration or some other topics. No, when we look at Mamdani, we're talking about a Venezuelan type of leftism, a Cuban type of leftism, someone who is quoting Marx on Twitter, someone who is promising grocery stores, which by the way, when you meet a Cuban, when you meet a Venezuelan, ask him what was the, the most astonishing part of coming to the US And I guarantee you that one of the things they're going to mention are grocery stores. Because when the government takes control of grocery stores, you only see empty shelves.
- [33:22]
Glenn Beck
So tell me about the story of the Oreo cookie with your family.
- [33:26]
Franklin Carmago
Yes. So the first time I came to the US was on a family vacation. Venezuela was already doing bad. My dad had some small businesses, they worked really hard. And we were able to come to the US on a family vacation. We were the exception, not the norm in Venezuela, not because we're working for the government, but because we're working really hard. And I was six years old, I came to the United States on a family vacation again, we went to Orlando, Florida. And that trip changed my life entirely. I'm pretty sure that I'm talking to you right now. And I introduced myself into politics because of this trip. And again, I'm a six year old kid. I didn't know anything about politics. I didn't understand economics, I didn't know the difference between capitalism and socialism. I haven't read Milton Friedman, but I went to a grocery store. And why would that be impressive for a kid? Because I saw the variety of cookies and I couldn't believe it. And you know, this story is funny, but it's also to me is very impactful because now that I'm of course older, I understand that the difference between a free society in an oppressed country, the difference between communism, socialism and capitalism is so big that a kid can even witness that. Again, I didn't know what GDP was. I just saw the variety of areas and I was like, okay, they're doing something different here. I don't know what they're doing, but they're doing something different and I like it.
- [34:52]
Glenn Beck
So you were accused actually of terrorism. You're going to medical school and you were accused of terrorism and that's why you had to leave. They kicked you out of medical school and you had to get out because the Government's starting to come after you. What. What were they accusing you of?
- [35:06]
Franklin Carmago
Yes, correct. So this is the price for free education. When they tell you it's free, it's not actually free. We pay through that with our taxes, with inflation, and also with a totalitarian regime. If the government has the power to educate you, what do you think they're going to try to teach you? And what ideas and opinions are they going to tolerate? That's the question we always need to ask. In Venezuela, if you want to go to med school, you only have one option. You have to go to the public system. You need to be taught and indoctrinated by the state, by the government. So I had a debate with a professor. And by the way, long before that, I did a lot of political activism in Venezuela. I led peaceful protests. I gave speeches in different colleges campuses about capitalism, socialism, individualism versus collectivism. And I had a debate with a professor, you know, something normal, that it should happen at a university. That's the place to debate ideas, to explain, exchange opinions, ideologies. And of course, the professor didn't like it. They expelled me from college. My case went viral. It was even discussed in the Inter American Commission of Human Rights. And when the government held a press conference about my case, they said, yes, of course we expelled Franklin. But the reason why we did it is because he wanted to set our classrooms on fire. He wanted to attack our students. Students. He wanted to attack our professors. He's a criminal that is being funded by foreign countries and foreign organizations, and he's a threat to our schools. So I have a cousin who went to prison for more than two years. Most of my friends that did political activism with me went to prison as well for political reasons. And I knew that was most likely my future and I could escape. And I made it to the United States legally. And that is why I love this country so much. Glenn, you are lucky that you were born here. But I'm even luckier that even though I wasn't born here, I had the opportunity to come to this country and be free and speak out and not being in prison or tortured. So that is why we really need to preserve the values that make this country great. And we need to make sure that those who come here love this country as well.
- [37:30]
Glenn Beck
So Prager University, you know, Prageru and Donald Trump and the administration are in trouble because of what they're trying to do to preserve the country with legal immigrants. So, Franklin, you came in the right way. You applied for asylum. You were heard and you have actual asylum because you were actually being persecuted in Venezuela and they were chasing you, accusing you of crimes that you didn't commit. Right now, the New York Times has just criticized Donald Trump for providing refugees and new arrivals with educational materials about America. And part of those educational materials come from Prageru, but it's all about American history, our values, our civic culture, et cetera, et cetera. Did you get anything when you came in to teach you about America? Was there any kind of, hey, do you know about our culture or anything?
- [38:30]
Franklin Carmago
No, I didn't, I didn't. I had to do it on my own. And we should expect immigrants to of course try to do it individually. But of course the government also needs to make sure that those immigrants who are coming into the country are going to embrace American values. So otherwise it would be a self destructive act. And organizations like Prageru are providing something very simple. An American flag, a Nikon, an icon and symbol of freedom, a beautiful flag, a flag that they must respect, an Android tablet, a copy of the Constitution, and a copy of what I think is the best political document ever written, the Declaration of Independence. For immigration to work, America has to choose its immigrants. And those immigrants need to embrace American values. They need to understand what made this country great, why they chose America and not other country.
- [39:25]
Glenn Beck
Well, why is that important? Why is that necessary? 60.
- [39:29]
Franklin Carmago
If you want to preserve America, great country. If you invite people who do not believe in the right to life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness, if you invite people who are not, who do not believe in the idea of individualism or self government, the America is no longer going to exist. So of course America has been a generous country, but you need to be generous to those who are going to embrace the values that made America great. If we want to help people, if we want to be generous, if we want to provide freedom to those who do not have it, you also need to make sure that those are going to be people who are going to be grateful and people who are going to put America first, whose allegiance is going to be to this new country. That is the way to do it. Otherwise you are committing suicide.
- [40:17]
Glenn Beck
Thank you so much. Thank you for everything you do. I really enjoy watching you. I've enjoyed every time we've met Franklin Carmago. He is with Prageru, a political commentator and a refugee from Venezuela and American citizen soon.
- [40:35]
Franklin Carmago
Yes. Correct. I'm about to apply for my citizenship. It's going to be the biggest privilege of my, of my life. Yeah.
- [40:42]
Glenn Beck
God bless you. Thank you, Franklin. I appreciate it. By the way, don't miss our special. That's tomorrow night, eight, the Golden Door, only on torch.