Watchdog: Lincoln Museum ‘Pimped Out’ Gettysburg Address to Glenn Beck

The state of Illinois has found that the Lincoln Museum offered Glenn Beck the use of the historic Gettysburg Address for an event display.

The museum’s copy of the Gettysburg Address is one of five handwritten copies in existence. Valued at approximately $20 million, it is protected by policies intended to protect it from the “wear and tear and increasingly worrisome security issues associated with travel” that make transport “too risky.”

Despite its safeguards, the state’s Office of the Inspector General found that the former head of the Lincoln Library and Museum, Alan Lowe, “pimped out” Lincoln’s immortal words to Beck for $50,000 in June 2018. The artifact was displayed for three days in Texas at a temporary exhibit hosted at Beck’s Mercury One non-profit office.

In September, Democrat Governor JB Pritzker dismissed Lowe without explanation. “The administration terminated Mr. Lowe’s employment today,” Pritzker spokesperson Emily Bittner said at the time. “We cannot comment on personnel matters.”

Now, that same spokesperson has released a statement confirming the reason for his termination. “The Governor took swift action to address the troubling findings in this report,” she said. “We look forward to working with newly installed board, along with the team of museum professionals, historians and librarians at the ALPLM to ensure that the institution is meeting our high standards.”

Glenn Beck is a nationally famous conservative pundit, known for his emotional outbursts as much as his shifting opinions. Once a devout “Never Trump” advocate, he has more recently changed his tune. Beck, who once called Trump “a danger to the republic,” has declared the “end of the country” if the POTUS is not reelected in 2020.