Glenn Beck Questions Donald Trump’s Conservative Bonafides, Trump Calls Him ‘Dopey’
Former FOX News host and conservative personality Glenn Beck made a conservative case against Donald Trump during an appearance Friday night on The O’Reilly Factor. In the interview, Beck accused Trump of voting for Barack Obama in 2008, a claim which appears to be based on a fake tweet from the website faketrumptweet.com, according to Real Clear Politics.
Beck owned up to and apologized for the mistake in a statement, but not before Trump unleashed his own tirade against the radio host. At a campaign event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Trump referred to Beck as “dopey” and said he “looks like hell.”
“You know, I’ve watched him cry on television all the time… he’s doing very badly, his thing is falling apart… I actually called Bill O’Reilly, I said, ‘Bill, why do you have a guy like that on television?”
Trump further maintained that the reason Beck doesn’t like him is because Trump refused to do his show. Trump called Beck a “failed guy” and denied the accusation that he voted for Obama adamantly, saying – in typical Trump fashion – that he “raised a tremendous amount of money for John McCain.”
“I was on John McCain’s committee,” Trump said, “had dinner with John McCain right before the election, and I’ve got to listen to this idiot Glenn Beck say I was for Obama.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvzo13TbAus
After being fired from FOX News in 2011, Beck formed a conservative media company, The Blaze, where his tendency toward conspiracy theories and pseudo-preaching blossomed with even greater fervor. Beck has seemingly been opposed to Donald Trump as a political figure for a long time, calling Trump a progressive in a September 2015 appearance on The O’Reilly Factor.
Even the Facebook post where Beck admitted to being deceived into thinking Trump voted for Obama concluded with, “There is enough on Donald Trump to not have to make things up. (See the earlier post of him defending abortion and the New York voting difference)”
It isn’t just Beck, either. Trump has struggled to secure support from certain groups of so-called values-based Republicans on the deep right. Speaking on the issue of rival Ted Cruz’s failure to report a million dollars in bank loans during his Senate campaign, Trump was booed at a recent Tea Party event.
“You give a campaign contribution to Ted Cruz, you get whatever the heck you want,” Trump said. “Say whatever you want. He’s got bank loans from Goldman Sachs, he’s got bank loans from Citibank, and then he acts like Robin Hood.”
https://www.facebook.com/GlennBeck/photos/a.10150664590658188.416007.36400348187/10153890008063188/?type=3&theater
According to The New York Times, many of those in attendance were wearing shirts bearing Ted Cruz’s campaign logo. Trump drew further jeers for questioning Cruz’s eligibility to be president, an ongoing controversy due to Cruz’s Canadian birth. A chosen son of the Tea Party, Cruz is also Beck’s choice in the GOP primary.
The revelation about Cruz’s big bank loans came out shortly after Cruz criticized Trump for having “New York values,” a phrase which is taken by some on the right to refer to social liberalism on issues like gender, sexuality and abortion. At Thursday’s GOP debate, Trump responded to the New York values accusation by referring to the unity and strength the city displayed on 9/11.
On his radio program the day after the debate, Beck talked about the New York values exchange and criticized Trump for invoking 9/11, saying it had nothing to do with what Cruz meant when he made the insinuation about New York values.
“The guy they elected as mayor of New York is a communist, and everybody knows it,” Becks aid. “And for Donald Trump to play that card was a despicable slap in the face to 9/11… That the media is coming out and saying, ‘Donald Trump is exactly right on it’… It’s because they’re all liberal.”
[Photo by Susan Walsh/AP]
