Glenn Beck: 'Obama made me a better man'

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last updated 7 November 2016

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck says he's a changed man. In an interview with The New Yorker, Beck railed on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and sang the praises of President Obama, a man Beck once accused of having a "deep-seated hatred for white people":

"I did a lot of freaking out about Barack Obama." But, he said, "Obama made me a better man." He regrets calling the president a racist and counts himself a Black Lives Matter supporter. "There are things unique to the African-American experience that I cannot relate to," he said. "I had to listen to them."Beck's interactions with Donald Trump helped, too. He told a story of Trump summoning him to a guest room at Mar-a-Lago; Trump then telephoned him from an adjacent room. "We had this weird, almost Howard Hughes-like conversation," Beck said. He left convinced that Trump was nuts. "This guy is dangerously unhinged," he said. "And, for all the things people have said about me over the years, I should be able to spot Dangerously Unhinged." [The New Yorker]

Beck was willing to admit he'd played a role in enabling the rise of a candidate like Trump. He said that he and his associates "made everything into a game show," and now they are "reaping the consequences of it." "What's most tragic about this is us. We have, as a culture, embraced the bad guys. I love Tony Soprano. But, when a Tony Soprano shows up in your life, you don't love him so much," Beck said.

Head over to The New Yorker to read the rest of the interview, including why Beck thinks first lady Michelle Obama's speech about Trump last month was "the most effective political speech" he has "heard since Ronald Reagan."