Culture

Glenn Beck Concern-Trolls Sarah Palin: ‘Has She Had a Brain Aneurysm?’

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

Once conservative allies, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin have split irrevocably over President-elect Donald Trump.

articles/2016/12/06/glenn-beck-concern-trolls-sarah-palin-has-she-had-a-brain-aneurysm/161206-wilstein-palin-beck-tease_ecjrmq
via Reuters

“Let me go back, real quick, Sarah Palin. Sincerely, has she had a brain aneurysm?” Glenn Beck asked during his weekly televised staff meeting on his TheBlaze network Monday night. “Because I don’t know what has happened to her.”

Such animus goes back to nearly a year ago, when Beck mocked Palin’s overly giddy endorsement of Donald Trump, joking that she said, “I can see him from my kitchen window,” adding, “She was crazy when she endorsed.” Beck then said he thought she would be “great” as Trump’s Veterans Affairs chief, a position that was dangled out for her over the past week, before suggesting she may have just blown her chance by criticizing Trump’s sketchy jobs deal with Carrier.

In an op-ed for the website Young Conservatives, Palin described Trump’s move to give Carrier $7 million in tax breaks to save fewer than 1,000 jobs from moving to Mexico as “crony capitalism” and “socialism.”

In a rare break from the man she stumped for in the final days of the campaign, she wrote, “fundamentally, political intrusion using a stick or carrot to bribe or force one individual business to do what politicians insist, versus establishing policy incentivizing our ENTIRE ethical economic engine to roar back to life, isn’t the answer.” But at the same time, she added, “Gotta’ have faith the Trump team knows all this.”

“You own it, Sarah!” Beck responded. “You brought it to the table. He said he would do that. I don’t get it.”

Beck’s staffers posited that perhaps Palin, who previously took credit for helping Trump land the GOP nomination, is just trying to prove that she didn’t “drink the Kool-Aid,” so that when she does get the VA gig, she will be able to say she’s capable of standing up to the president. Or, as another employee put it, she might just be “butt-hurt.”

As recently as last September, Beck and Palin shared the stage with Trump at a rally against the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal in Washington. But after Palin used that platform to rail against the Black Lives Matter movement, even referring to the protesters as “dogs” at one point, Beck decided he had had enough of his one-time ally.

“I don’t care what Sarah Palin says any more. Sarah Palin has become a clown,” Beck told his radio listeners the following day. “I’m embarrassed that I was once for Sarah Palin. Honestly, I’m embarrassed.” He later expressed some regret for using the word “clown,” but stood by the rest of the his comments, singling out her support of Trump, someone he called both a “progressive” and a “bully,” as beyond the pale.

Since then, Palin drifted further into Trump’s universe while Beck ran as fast as he could the other way, demonstrating actual regret for his years as a conservative firebrand. Beck remained #NeverTrump throughout the election, and unlike his preferred candidate Ted Cruz, did not jump on the Trump train when it became politically expedient.

You would think Beck might welcome Palin’s newfound critique of Trump. But apparently, the damage has been done.