Right-wing commentator Glenn Beck quoted Martin Luther King Jr. on Sunday while preaching about the need for Americans to listen to one another in a hyperpartisan political milieu.
“The best way to do it is to read Martin Luther King,” Beck told CNN when asked what people should do to become less politically siloed and “heal” the country.
“He talked about reconciliation and not winning. And both sides are just trying to win. I tried to win for a long time,” the founder of The Blaze, a conservative news network, continued. “Winners create losers and with everybody trying to just win and be right, we stop listening to each other.”
Beck said he was “very different” now from the political pundit who rose to national prominence on CNN’s Headline News and Fox News, adding that current political polarization in the U.S. was akin to 1920s Germany, where people accept conspiracy theories “about the other guy because we don’t like him.”
He also accused CNN of exacerbating partisan politics surrounding the gun control debate with its televised town hall last week in the wake of the high school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
“You made things worse,” Beck said. “If you wanted to have that conversation, then let’s have that conversation in a calm way. But adding it — adding the crowd, it became the Christians and the lions. It was despicable and grotesque.”
Beck left Fox News in 2011 to establish The Blaze, which continues to broadcast his TV and radio talk shows.
