Glenn Beck Is Confused By Donald Trump

Glenn Beck doesn't understand Donald Trump — and he's not sure if you do either. In a Facebook post on Thursday, uber-conservative former Fox host Beck admitted that he was confused by Trump and the billionaire business mogul's appeal, questioning whether or not pundits and prominent talking heads alike really understood what they were doing in throwing their weight behind him. But rather than disparaging the loudmouthed Trump for being unkind to Mexican immigrants or making nasty, misogynistic remarks about Beck's former colleague, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, Beck is more concerned about the fact that The Donald just isn't far right enough.

It's alright. Take a second to get there with me. In recent months, Trump has boastfully declared that he'd build a giant wall along the southern U.S. border, and earlier this week hawkishly called for boots on the ground to bar ISIS' access to oil by "[putting] a ring around" them and "[taking] the oil for" the United States in order to defeat the militant terrorist group (yes, Trump actually said that in order to beat ISIS, we need to put a ring on it). In most people's minds, Trump is pretty fundamentally conservative, if not an all-out right winger.

Not so, said Beck.

"He is part of the problem when he by his own admission, buys politicians," wrote Beck. "He said he identifies his 'policies more as a democrat.'"

Beck added that while Trump seemed to be flying high in the polls, it didn't make sense that big names had taken such a liking to him, especially given that a mid-July ABC/Washington Post poll showed that around half of Republicans wouldn't actually vote for him.

"Perhaps you are angry and you just want to make someone pay or just want something done and you don't care how it gets done," wrote Beck, "but what PRINCIPLES does he have that they are attracted to?" The conservative radio host wasn't afraid to toss around names, either, citing Fox host Sean Hannity, conservative commentator and author Ann Coulter, and notorious blowhard radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Beck continued:

These are smart people. What am I missing? Just based on his favorability ratings he could never win in a general. Research shows that he may be near his ceiling now. Are they just trying to hold on to those disenfranchised republicans and keep them in the fold? (Maybe I am wrong for not holding my tongue) I think that is a good goal, but that doesn't seem to ring true to me as they are actually fighting for him....

I understand Bernie Sanders 30-50% of democrats are really die hard (sic) socialists. The question remains: is 25% of the GOP trump style 'conservatives'[?]

Beck's not wrong there. In late July, Coulter took to the airwaves to defend Trump after the braggart billionaire came under fire for roasting a fellow Republican, Arizona Sen. John McCain. (Trump denied that McCain was a war hero because he had been a POW, saying, "I like people who weren't captured.")

"It was a flip remark, it was a mistake, and he's taken it back 20 times since then," said Coulter, during a visit with Fox News' Hannity, classifying the fallout that followed Trump's remarks as simple "hysteria," and growing visibly upset with the overall media coverage.

"All the elites are trying to destroy Donald Trump because he's injected into the campaign now," said Coulter. "The other Republicans have said things that are far worse."

In June as well, Hannity himself took on the Trump issue, arguing that Trump's commentary on Mexican immigrants (in which he claimed they were mostly drug users and rapists) was not "racially tinged." Rather, he argued, Trump was just being brutally honest.

"Floor-to-ceiling drugs confiscated by people crossing our southern border," said Hannity in a taping of his radio show, recounting a personal story in which he claimed he had seen a "gang member" crossing into the country with his own eyes. (And speaking of eyes, feel free to roll yours hard right now.)

Of course, none of that is what Beck is most concerned about. Instead, Beck argued, Trump's stances were contrived to garner votes in order to win the presidency, not change the country. He added,

[Trump] was very pro abortion until very recently; he still says "don't defund planned parenthood" (sic); he is pro "assault weapon ban"; he is in favor of a wealth tax that would just "take money out of people's bank accounts" ... he says single payer health care works; he said he would give people more than just Obama care; the First Lady would be the first to have posed nude in lesbian porno shots; he said that he keeps all the bibles he is given in a "special place" out side the city - and he only goes to church on Christmas and Easter.

Even as the most fundamentalist version of himself, Trump just isn't sincere enough to make Real Americans™ such as Glenn Beck like him — or at least, that's what Beck wants to believe. Given Trump's most recent CNN/ORC poll numbers, which put him at the top of the list with 22 percent of the prospective vote, the rest of Beck's party has already hammered down a hearty glass of the Kool-Aid.