SiriusXM Suspends Beck: Is This The End Of ‘The Glenn Beck Program’?

Brad Thor makes incendiary comments, then SiriusXM suspends Glenn Beck — while he is on vacation. The fallout from Beck and Thor’s interview shows no sign of letting up. If anything, it’s just getting started. As reported by CNN, the conflict is over extreme anti-Trump statements made by Thor — a science fiction writer and conservative commentator, who let his dislike for Donald Trump overflow on Beck’s program last Wednesday.

“With the feckless, spineless Congress we have, who will stand in the way of Donald Trump overstepping his constitutional authority as President? If Congress won’t remove him from office, what patriot will step up and do that if, if, he oversteps his mandate as president, his constitutional-granted authority, I should say, as president. If he oversteps that, how do we get him out of office? And I don’t think there is a legal means available. I think it will be a terrible, terrible position the American people will be in to get Trump out of office because you won’t be able to do it through Congress.”

Sure, Brad Thor prefaced his thoughts with a “very bad” hypothetical disclaimer spoken from a thriller writer’s perspective, but as even he predicted, it got a lot of heat. While some took Thor’s comments hypothetically, others saw it as inciting anti-Trump supporters to assassinate the Republican candidate – and Beck’s response and failure to denounce Thor’s comments as supportive of his views.

“I would agree with you on that and I don’t think you actually have the voices we’ve been talking about and we’ve been talking about this off-air for a while. I think the voices like ours go away. I don’t think we are allowed – especially if things, and I believe the economy is going to go to crap, even if Jesus was in office. It’s going to naturally reset. It has to.”

The consequences of that 15-minute interview came almost a week later when SiriusXM announced the suspension of The Glenn Beck Program for the rest of the week. SiriusXM hosts Stephen K. Bannon and David Webb broke the news on Breitbart News Daily, and Webb, a contributor to Fox News and Breitbart will take over Beck’s time slot.

“SiriusXM encourages a diversity of discourse and opinion on our talk programs. However, comments recently made by a guest on the independently produced Glenn Beck Program, in our judgement, may be reasonably construed by some to have been advocating harm against an individual currently running for office, which we cannot and will not condone. For that reason, we have suspended The Glenn Beck Program from our Patriot channel for the coming week and are evaluating its place in our lineup going forward. SiriusXM is committed to a spirited, robust, yet responsible political conversation and believes this action reflects those values.”

SiriusXM’s suspension during a scheduled vacation feels more like a slap on the wrist, but the clearly unhappy conservative radio host shared his thoughts via a reblogged post from The Resurgent, which considers the timing of the suspension cowardly. He also went on to say that Breitbart is in bed with Matt Drudge and Trump, and he believes his suspension is the result of a viral hatchet job.

“Now, again, this show is an opinion show. That’s what we do. We tell you the news, and then we give you our opinion on the news. That’s not what Matt Drudge is. Matt Drudge is a website that links to the news. But his news — his news sources have become Breitbart, who, Breitbart is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Trump industries.”

So where does that leave one of the most popular conservative radio shows in the country? According to a statement on GlennBeck.com, via his General Manager Dom Theodore, it’s complicated. It’s clear that he is feeling betrayed and frustrated about being misinterpreted, citing his historically non-violent nature as more in line with Dr. Martin Luther King, and less like Malcolm X.

“This viral hatchet job is based on 49 seconds out of a 15-minute interview that gives no context of the hypothetical posited from by Brad Thor, a thriller writer.”

The statement goes on to say that he saw this coming and has been preparing for what is currently happening to him: a move to silence him and anyone that thinks like him. He’s leaving the future of his show in the hands of Premiere Networks and SiriusXM. To a certain degree, the post sounds like a goodbye letter, because while Beck’s team is expecting to be on Monday, there is a hint of doubt in the response.

Listen to the interview in its entirety, then decide for yourself whether SiriusXM was right to suspend Glenn Beck for the comments made during the Brad Troy interview. Sound off in the comment section.

[Photo by Timothy D. Easley/AP Images]