Beck's shifting support for “Tough Love”

Under the heading “Tough Love” on page 43 of Broke, Glenn Beck writes:

If you want to really understand how Lincoln viewed our country's obligation to get out of debt, take a look at how he responded to his own stepbrother, who'd hit him up for eighty dollars. After you read Lincoln's letter, think to yourself how someone like George W. Bush or Barack Obama would've responded to the same request.

Beck then prints a letter from Lincoln rejecting his stepbrother's request for money and urging the stepbrother instead to “go to work, 'tooth and nail,' for somebody who will give you money for it.”

You can see where this is going, right?

From Glenn Beck's radio show from September 22 of this year (emphasis added):

GLENN: [Obama's] salvation depends on a collective salvation. He can't go to heaven unless we all go to heaven.

PAT: Mmm hmmm.

GLENN: That's why he's got to be his brother's keeper. He'll let his aunt starve on the streets but his brother he'll let live for 75 cents a day.

PAT: A month.

STU: A month.

PAT: Oh, he would be a wildly wealthy man if he made 75 cents a day. 75 cents a month.

GLENN: 75 cents a month?

PAT: Yeah, yeah.

GLENN: Has Sally Struthers called Barack Obama?

PAT: (Laughing).

STU: I don't know.

PAT: Barack, for less than the cost of the humpback whale in the tasty butter sauce I just ate, you could feed your brother George Onyango in Kenya. You know?

STU: That's persuasive.

PAT: It is. It is good. I'm not sure she got his name right, but

GLENN: Is there more Zeituni? Because I love her.

Yup, that's Beck and his cronies slamming President Obama for failing to provide for his Kenyan half-brother George (as we've noted, after conservatives used the initial reports of George Obama's living conditions to attack President Obama, George called the reports “exaggerated” in an interview with CNN, saying: “I was brought up well. I live well even now.”). So he hits Obama for not giving money to his real half brother, and he hits Obama for hypothetically giving money to his fictional stepbrother. Nice.

And that's not a one-shot deal - Beck, Inc. has been attacking Obama for not helping George for years.

Here's the GlennBeck.com “Argument Against Idiots” suggested response to “liberal whiners” claims that “Barack Obama is right, the United States is STILL not living up to the principles Jesus taught in Matthew”:

One thing seems pretty sure, Barack Obama doesn't seem to be living up to that Scripture. His own brother George Obama is living in Kenya in a HUT, on less than $1 a MONTH! Barack and his wife made over $4 million last year...couldn't they even send him a “C” note? I mean, even 10 bucks would change his life.

And from the GlennBeck.com show recap for October 31, 2008:

This video clip pretty much sums up everything Glenn has been saying for the past months in just a few seconds. An excited woman is interviewed after an Obama rally and says she will vote for Obama because 'I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car and I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage'. (Watch the woman get caught hook, line and sinker here.)

He's going to pay for your mortgage? Not likely


he won't even pay for his Uncle's mortgage (evicted) or his Aunt (living in a Boston slum) or his half brother (who makes $1 per month and lives in Kenya in a hut).Read the transcript.