GLENN BECK PROGRAM
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

GLENN: Let's go to Mary Matalin. Hi, Mary, how are you?

MATALIN: Oh, my God.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh, it's you.

MATALIN: Has anyone ever broken records as quickly as beautifully and as creatively as you have?

GLENN: Yeah, I think a lot.

MATALIN: No, I don't think so. Congratulations!

GLENN: Thank you so much.

Mary Matalin, visit her website here...

MATALIN: I was singing around the house and my kids are like, why are you singing that song? This is number one, baby, debut, number one baby.

GLENN: By the way, Mary Matalin is my publisher and she has been -- I wrote you just the other night and I said, Mary -- did you get my e-mail?

MATALIN: Uh-uh.

GLENN: Really? Oh, crap. Mare merry left messages for you during the holidays. Do you have my right e-mail address?

MATALIN: I don't know. I am so glad -- we'll touch base on it. I have to tell you that I am so glad for you because I can't even imagine what it's like to be you walking around the halls of, you know, a publishing house.

MATALIN: Well, you know, there's two other people there and they both whisper. Louise Burke, who is the person of publishing anyway is the only conservative person I've ever met in that business.

GLENN: It's amazing.

MATALIN: It's like when I was working at CNN. People would come up.

GLENN: When I first started. Now they are pretty open about it. But, you know, I think -- because we always have these pride weeks at the Time-Warner Center. I think we should have one where we put pictures of conservatives up and then just have those positive statements. "I'm conservative and I'm proud."

MATALIN: You know what, Glenn, that is so a great idea because you know where else there's a lot of conservatives and they whisper, is in Hollywood? And they do a lot of the work and a lot of them are in the creative process and a lot of them are on screen and they always whisper, too, and they are like, take you to the back and then tell me those stories. I'm like, this is ridiculous. We ought to have a bicoastal conservative pride day.

GLENN: I have to tell you, it would be fantastic. I have -- and I can't say his name because I don't have permission to say his name but I had dinner a couple of weeks ago with an Oscar winner and he's a conservative and he said, you don't know. He said, there are three of us right now that are trying to pull people out of the closets in Hollywood, that are trying to get people, you know, and we're having these dinners with each other and we're putting, you know, names down on lists and we're like, okay, we've got to get them to come out and admit it because we've got to be able to unite. These conservatives in Hollywood, they understand what real McCarthyism really is. I mean, it's -- blacklists actually happen.

MATALIN: It really does. And this is important seriously because the way in which you've changed the landscape, Hollywood creators can be very important to our global public diplomacy. You know, the way we have public diplomacy to talk about America in the beginning of, you know, to help us take down communism and that doesn't exist anymore because so much of that was done through Hollywood. They do the opposite now. Look what they're putting on there. Of course, it's crashing and trashing here at home but it would be very important to have that community pushing in a positive American image around the world.

GLENN: You know, redacted is going to -- well, it made, I think $26,000 in its opening weekend here. That movie is going to cost American lives overseas. It's going to make millions overseas and I think it's treasonous, quite frankly.

MATALIN: Well, I'm with you, Buddy. Well, you've done your bit for America. This book is incredible, I can't believe, flying off the shelf. I was so jealous when they told me, they sent a picture of your book. I'm like, when is the bust coming here? I want to get on the bus.

GLENN: Well, I tell you what, if you can promise your husband isn't home, I'll drive it to your house myself. It will drive you nuts.

You know, before I get into this, because I want to ask you about Hillary Clinton and some substance going on, but let me ask you this: Do you remember one of the first questions I asked you when we first had lunch? It was a very honest question and I'm sure you hear it all the time and that is, how do you do it? How do you -- I mean, what are you thinking? What did you say?

MATALIN: You know what, he is a liberal and I was in denial for many years. I decided if I didn't talk about it, it would go away. But now I don't talk about it because I don't want to fight and I think every marriage has those places where they don't go.

GLENN: But it's so bizarre because you both believe it to the core, and I don't know how you -- I don't know. I mean, there are some things that you've got to, I mean, that are values that just are values, that are important. You know?

MATALIN: Well, let me take a place that we couldn't disagree more and that's the war. His value is unlike some of his treasonous friends, I agree with you it's treason. He is not anti-American. He loves this country. He's an altar boy Catholic. He has traditional values. He's a patriot. He was in the Marines. So he just thinks -- and initially he wasn't against the war but he thinks it's badly executed.

GLENN: Oh, yeah. Well, I agree with that.

MATALIN: Okay. Well, I can't -- to which I say to both of you guys, show me a war that, you know, got off the ground and went --

GLENN: Oh, no, no, I agree with you as well. We did, we really botched it. We did it really well at the beginning. Then we blew it in the middle and we're doing it right now. I mean, you're right. I mean, that's the wars are. But I don't want to get into the James thing. I wanted to ask you my next, you know, insane question that I wanted to ask you. Do you ever call restaurants and say, hi, I'm Mary Matalin, I'd just like to get to the table. And then when they come, they are disappointed that you are not the deaf Oscar winner?

MATALIN: Yeah, that happens a lot because -- and the older I get, the worse it is.

GLENN: Really? Mare merry do get e-mail, my public e-mail for her: Oh, I love you and such-and-such.

GLENN: Oh, that's great.

MATALIN: And the other thing I get where they are really disappointed, though, is they think I'm the, one of Jesus Christ's apostles. I get more of the Mary Magdalene than the Matalin. I actually look, although she is a gazillion times prettier slightly like Mary Matalin because she has dark hair and dark eyes but she's obviously prettier. The Jesus thing is even worse.

GLENN: Let me switch to politics here real quick. Hillary Clinton, I have been amazed that her numbers have been so high I keep thinking to myself, I mean, have you forgotten, America, what -- even if you agree with her politically, I as an American am so sick of the Bush/Clinton, Bush/Clinton things. I'm so sick of the same argument. The last thing I want is a rerun of the 1990s just of the conversation in America and I don't want a rerun of the last eight years of the conversation. Do you think she is going to implode because people are now starting to say, ooh, wait a minute, I remember now?

MATALIN: I think that's why that little incident with her, to be a political junkie like you and I, was so noticed, was so damaging when her husband said, I was against, I was always against the war from the beginning. It just reminded people of the war that joined our lexicon. Clintonian, they are both Clintonian. As you know, this is the election era of authenticity. I completely agree with you. Very prominent people want to turn the page. But the Democrats and liberals think they want to turn the page away from conservativism. They do not. They want regular old-fashioned traditional predictable principle conservativism. That's what a country is, including the independents who left the Republican party because it wasn't behaving conservatively, which is a conversation you and I have had ad nauseam. So I think her numbers are -- her numbers aren't that high. They are just higher relative to her field but not for long. I think Obama, if he is not ahead of her, he will be ahead of her in Iowa. This is still very fluid. They know they got problems in Iowa. And if she tanks in Iowa, I don't know if the party's going to -- her party is as tenuous in not wanting to be with her, much more so than you would think.

GLENN: Yeah. Obama having breakfast with Michael Bloomberg, which would be -- I mean, if you are a strategist, it seems to me -- well, you are a strategist. I'm just a thinker. It would seem to me to be a smart move.

CALLER: And a big debut number one best selling thinker.

GLENN: I love you. It would be a good move because he would be able to say, look, this guy is a Republican and I'm reaching across the aisles even though Michael Bloomberg is the furthest thing from a Republican, or at least from a conservative. Good move or a bad move on his part?

MATALIN: Well, I think there's so much ado about Michael Bloomberg, who is a great guy who I met when I was working in the White House and has done a great job in the city, and my New York friends think he is a terrific mayor. I don't think he's philosophically, certainly not a conservative. So that would be Obama, who's positioning himself as sort of center left. Another center left guy, he wants to prove that he can reach across the aisle, get a Joe Lieberman. That would be perfect for him. Jewish, defense, you know, morals, concerned on the moral stuff.

GLENN: But Joe Lieberman is like, I mean he's like, he's leprosy in shoes.

MATALIN: Well, Obama, he's a changed candidate, he is going to do it a different way. Well, first they are going to change the tone in their own house before they can change the tone in Washington, across the aisle.

GLENN: That's exactly why I say Joe Lieberman is leprosy in shoes. I mean, try to get anybody to pay attention to him on the left. Joe Lieberman, they don't want anything to do with Joe Lieberman. And they are making the same mistake. They ran him. They said, no, got to be Annie war. Once they ran Joe Lieberman against the guy on the left, and Joe's pretty left on some things. Once they ran somebody on this platform that they think everybody is hungry for, Joe Lieberman stamped stomped him into the ground.

MATALIN: Lieberman, here's why Joe Lieberman would be a good move for him. Before he was with Al Gore, he was for, originally he was against it. But he's been for school choice, he's been for updating in a serious way or eliminating in the destructive way, affirmative action and he has good, solid flea market values. He's informed by that. And yet he has this very intense moral code and he's great on defense. He is likely, he is what the country wants. I don't know why I'm on this Joe Lieberman binge but --

GLENN: Are you still on the Fred Thompson bandwagon.

MATALIN: Yeah, but I like them all but I loved Fred for being so supportive of Scooter when nobody else would step up to the plate. But I'm a federalist, I'm a Burkian federalist and he is the most philosophically and consistently philosophical and thinking conservative in the field by far. Not even close. So I hope that he's in the race and every time we have these debates, you know, he substantively and philosophically the best. How his campaigns play out is anybody's guess but he's a good man.

GLENN: Do you think the -- I've talked to so many people who are Republicans, you know, and play the game in the beltway and they dismiss the border. They say, yeah, people say that, but they don't vote on that issue. Do you think that's true?

MATALIN: The boardroom?

GLENN: The border. Mare marrow, the border. Oh, my God, no. I don't think that's true at all and that was one of the -- the first policy on that was Social Security because that's what got them all lathered up in the first place, that we're keeping all this on our kids.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

MATALIN: So it's a moral issue for him. But immigration, do they vote on it? Yes, they vote on it. We sit around and talk about it.

GLENN: I know we do. I'm not kidding you.

MATALIN: In restaurants or in the campaign, we talk about, this is so problematic. You know, people think this is a border issue. It's not just a border issue. In Iowa it's a meth problem. In Missouri it's a mess problem. It's a crime problem, it's an interior problem. You know, talk about all the time. We know the system's on it but we don't typically associate it with the biggest, latest drug scores, meth, and it is. In rural America. It is just a horrible problem.

GLENN: We've got 21 people that are still missing that have been kidnapped, 21 Americans that have been kidnapped at the border down in Laredo and still nobody's talking about it, not a single politician is really standing up and ringing the bell on this and it's all drug cartel stuff. It is bad, bad news.

MATALIN: Do you ever have on -- I'd watch you when I'm home but I'm not always home. These border sheriffs in Texas?

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

MATALIN: Aren't they amazing?

GLENN: Oh, let me tell you something. I just said this a couple of weeks ago. America needs to support their local sheriffs, they need to support their local police. It is the local guys that get it, and they are on the frontline and they are the ones ringing the bell the hardest and saying, good God in heaven, will somebody help us because they are the ones that are running into the meth problem. They are the ones that are having to shoot at these guys and sweep up, you know, all of the blood afterwards, and it is bad news. They are heroes.

MATALIN: And they are completely ill equipped. They are like Barney 5. They got little cars and one bullet and these guys come in tanks and they have Uzis or whatever, I don't know my guns, but they are armored up, man.

GLENN: Mary, I've got to run but thank you so much for everything and we'll talk again soon.

MATALIN: Buy this book, he's already number one. Let's keep gas, big gas in that gas guzzling book, "An Inconvenient Book."

GLENN: Thanks a lot, Mary.

END TRANSCRIPT