Glenn Beck’s very public psychological disintegration is reaching new levels. On Tuesday, he made an unsubstantiated claim on his nationally syndicated radio program about the character of Tea Party activists who support Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“The media is making this look like they are Tea Party people that are following him [Trump],” Beck said.
“Some of them may be. If you were a Tea Party person, then you were lying. You were lying. It was about Barack Obama being black. It was about him being a Democrat,” (emphasis added) Beck said.
A Quinnipiac Poll released on August 27 showed Trump leading the race overall with 28 percent to Ben Carson’s 12 percent. Among those Republican primary voters who self identified as Tea Party supporters, Trump was the top choice with 25 percent of the vote.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was closely behind with 21 percent of the vote from Tea Party supporters, followed by Ben Carson and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) at 8 percent each.
Breitbart News and Western Journalism characterized Beck’s statements as calling Tea Party supporters of Trump “racists.”
“As part of his ongoing personal war with the real estate mogul running for the Republican presidential nomination, Beck slammed Trump supporters during his Tuesday radio show as a bunch of racists,” Western Journalism reported.
“On Tuesday, talk radio host Glenn Beck accused the Tea Party supporters of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump of being racists,” Breitbart News reported.
Many Tea Partiers are sadly concluding that Glenn Beck is now well on his way to becoming the next David Brock — the left wing Media Matters propagandist who once claimed to be conservative.
“Glenn Beck was not a part of the Tea Party movement. He took advantage of it, as many did, to catapult his career,” Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, tells Breitbart News.
“The Tea Party movement stands for liberty and the most fundamental aspect of liberty is the right to make up your own mind. His attacks on people who disagree with him are the exact same attacks a liberal would use,” he says.
“Those are the same attacks that supporters of Chris McDaniel would recognize because they were used against them last year in the Mississippi Senate race,” Phillips adds.
“Glenn Beck’s apoplectic, nearly incoherent remarks about Tea Party people’s motives for supporting Donald Trump, was a bizarre, disjointed series of personal attacks. He dismissed out-of-hand the very real fury Tea Party people – and Americans in general – have, generally thanks to the candidates we are supposed to support, according to Beck,” Christina Botteri, a long time Tea Party activist in California, tells Breitbart News
“When Glenn Beck says that Tea Party people who support Donald Trump ‘were lying,’ and their opposition to President Obama was ‘because he was black,’ Beck is saying Tea Party people are racists,” Botteri adds.
“One of the things Andrew Breitbart discussed was that calling someone a racist is the worst thing you can do to a person, rhetorically. It is so vile, so repulsive, and so disgusting a term, that to be branded by it is a move meant to kill the debate now and into the future, and to expel the unfortunate soul from the realm of respectable society forever,” Botteri adds.
“This is some of the most bizarre commentary to ever come out of Beck,” Mark Skoda, a long time Tea Party activist in Tennessee, tells Breitbart News.
“Frankly, I think this is beyond the pale and demonstrates his almost messianic view of himself. Palin, the D.C. rally, Birmingham and now this,” he notes.
Jason B. Bour, a Tea Party supporter and founder of Rutherford County, Tennessee conservatives tells Breitbart News, “I was surprised to see Beck use this line after Obama has used it so much to tear this nation apart.”
“While I am not a Trump supporter, I know many who are, none of whom I know to be racist. Many people I have talked to supports Trump because what the Democrats have done to the nation,” Bour says.
Mark Kevin Lloyd, a long time Tea Party activist in Virginia, tells Breitbart News that, “Glenn’s just wrong.”
“Although I’m not one, I do understand Trump supporters, and calling them racist misses the mark. Washington and the Vichy GOP created Trump. His supporters are furious and fed up. They are not looking at his past, or even his present positions. They are simply speaking vicariously through him,” Lloyd adds.
“Beck is Beck,” Eric Olsen, a leader of the Montana Tea Party, tells Breitbart News.
“He is an elitist pundit in his own manner. Trump is Trump in his own manner,” Olsen adds.
“What the Tea Party likes about Trump is his Trumpisms and his message….Make America Great Again,” Olsen says.
“This message resonates with the Tea Party overall as the same message we have been barking about since 2009. We were against Obama and Democratic issues not personalities back then. Obama’s message of Fundamentally Changing America scared a lot of hard working over taxed citizens,” Olsen notes.
“Trump has the Voice that was taken from the Tea Party by Barack Obama after we took the House away from him. Trump is our voice now. Loud and clear,” Olsen concludes.
“Donald Trump, however imperfect, is a public and internationally known example of how someone’s life experience can lead them to conservatism. It makes it OK for other Americans to do the same,” Dr. Gina Loudon, an early Tea Party organizer and currently host of America Trends with Dr. Gina, tells Breitbart News.
“I thought the whole idea of the Tea Party was to get people to come into conservatism? That’s what Trump says he did. With his resonance has come a mass migration into the conservative movement,” Loudon, who has yet to endorse a Presidential candidate, says.
“You don’t have to want Trump to be president to see that he swung the doors of conversation wide open for the voiceless, and they hit the establishment and political correctness right in the face! I thought that was the goal of the Tea Party from Day One,” she notes.
“We begged for someone to rise up and take it to the establishment. I haven’t endorsed, and if I did, it wouldn’t be Trump. Yet,” Loudon adds.
“Whether he becomes the voice of those who were silenced, or the President of the United States, I find it hard to overlook what he has done for conservatism, and how he has buffered our known conservatives in the race, like Cruz, Carson, and others the establishment would have vilified by now,” Loudon concludes.
At least one leading Tea Party activist thinks Beck is going to walk back his comments about Tea Partiers who support Trump.
“I think Tea Partiers who support Trump are succumbing to their basest instincts and playing into horrible stereotypes, but that doesn’t make them racists,” Bill Hennessy, co-founder of the St. Louis Tea Party, tells Breitbart News.
“I believe most conservatives in America want a president who represents the best of our culture: strength, leadership, humility, and wisdom. Personally, Donald Trump fails that four-part test on at least three measures. But reasonable people could disagree,” Hennessy says.
“I expect Glenn to walk that back in coming days. I am so glad that Dr. Ben Carson pulls a close second to Trump because Carson hits all four of those measures out of the park,” Hennessy concludes.
Another long time Tea Party activist, Ken Emanuelson, co-founder of the Dallas Tea Party, has some advice for Beck.
“I love Glenn,” Emanuelson tells Breitbart News, “but I would encourage him to prayerfully reconsider his position, here. Whatever else you may say about Donald Trump, he is a patriotic, unapologetic American. Those are not words that spring to mind when you see Barack Obama.”
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