Glenn Beck torches Fox News as source of spiritual evil: 'Dangerously intoxicating'
'Fame and fortune is battery acid to the soul'
Former Fox News host Glenn Beck suggested during a conversation with Tucker Carlson in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Saturday that his former employer is a source of spiritual evil from which he is glad to be free.
During an hour-long discussion at the fourth stop in Carlson's month-long national tour, Beck, who is Mormon and not a Christian, also alleged that Fox News combed through his garbage when he worked there, and that he ultimately learned the importance of renouncing the vain glory of the world to retain one's spiritual integrity.
Tucker Carlson Live Tour in Salt Lake City, UT
Glenn Beck.
Includes paid partnerships. pic.twitter.com/HfxOJnMWfw— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) September 8, 2024 Get Our Latest News for FREE
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At the start of their conversation, Beck extended his hand to congratulate Carlson on being one of "the only two survivors of Fox News."
Beck later confessed that the fame and power he accumulated at the company threatened to spiritually destroy him, for which reason he willingly gave it up.
"When I was at Fox, it was like you could feel the White House move," Beck said. "I could feel the impact, and that's pretty intoxicating. It's so dangerously intoxicating, and I could feel it, and I didn't like it and I left."
"I should say, I didn't like it because part of me really liked it," he added, to which Carlson replied, "Exactly."
Beck alleged that Fox News hired someone to sift through his garbage in an attempt to find dirt on him, and that Roger Ailes had personally threatened him by implying that they had information that he had somehow hurt his own wife, which he adamantly denied.
Beck also claimed that he was told to stop talking about God so much on the air, and that his bosses were keeping count of how many times he mentioned Him.
Claiming an unidentified PR woman at Fox News who refused to look him in the eye ensured him at one point that he would "be amazed at what we can make go away," Beck said, "If you're successful, and you'll play ball, they'll give you everything, everything you want."
"All this can be yours," Carlson cut in, apparently referencing Satan offering Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory in exchange for worship, as recounted in Matthew 4.
"I think fame and fortune is battery acid to the soul," Beck said, to which Carlson readily agreed.
Despite admitting to becoming enamored with the fame, fortune and influence that Fox News offered, Beck noted that he came to realize that he had to give it up if he wanted to keep his soul, even though he deeply desired to be at "the cool kid's table."
Beck remembered that on the same night he was given the chance to meet U2 lead vocalist Bono, he returned to his sumptuous New York City apartment and realized the spiritual battle he was facing as he pressed his head against a window that overlooked the skyline.
"I walk to the window — and I can still feel the cold glass on my forehead — and I leaned against the window, and I put my head there, and I'm looking down at the city, which is just intoxicating — if you like that kind of stuff, it's intoxicating," he said. "And I looked down, and I'm like, 'How can this be your plan?' And I heard internally, I heard, 'If you don't leave now, you will not leave with your soul.'"
"The next day, I went in and tendered my resignation," he added.
Beck, who has been open about humbling himself before God to overcome his alcoholism, said that he learned the importance of walking away while he was at the pinnacle of his success at Fox News. He also admitted that he has never learned anything except through suffering and failure.
"If it wasn't for my alcoholism and, quite honestly, my baptism and redemption, there's no way that I would have survived Fox," he said.
Beck, whose top-rated Fox News show ended in 2011, went on to note that he has regretted giving up his platform at Fox News "every day," especially when the company he founded was struggling to get off the ground, though he maintained that he knows he made the right decision because he is now free from worrying about losing the power he began to covet.
"I don't want that," he told Carlson.
Carlson and Beck's conversation came a year after Beck's Blaze Media reported that whistleblowers inside Fox News revealed that the company was willing to match employee donations of up to $1,000 to far-left charities, including The Satanic Temple, though the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was ineligible despite evangelist Franklin Graham's daily advertisements on the channel.
????BREAKING UPDATE????
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) July 24, 2023
Fox News is no longer matching potential employee donations to the Satanic Temple following our exclusive story exposing their support for far-left charities. #DumpFoxpic.twitter.com/Z7PpuTCjlH
Fox News never responded to The Blaze's repeated requests for comment on their findings, though The Satanic Temple was pulled from the company's charity matching portal days after Beck exposed it.
According to a Vanity Fair article published days after Carlson's ouster in April 2023, former Fox Corporation co-chair Rupert Murdoch had grown displeased with the increasingly religious overtones of Carlson's rhetoric.
A source with knowledge of Murdoch's decision-making told the outlet that the media mogul was especially upset by Carlson's speech at the Heritage Foundation's 50th anniversary gala just three days before he was fired, during which he presented the nation's political battles in spiritual terms of good versus evil.
Murdoch, who reportedly broke off his engagement with his fiancé shortly after she called Carlson "a messenger from God," found Carlson's speech "too extreme," according to the source.
