Asked if he regrets calling President Obama a racist and invoking violent imagery, Glenn Beck says he doesn't regret any of the "jokes" he's told in the past.
The Fox News host appeared for the first time on NBC's "Today," promoting his new self-help book "Seven Wonders." Host Meredith Vieira pressed him on whether he's "added to this dialogue of hatred" in America.
She listed some of his past remarks — "that the president was a racist, you said at one point, joking around, that you wanted to poison Nancy Pelosi, you wanted to beat Congressman Charlie Rangel to death with a shovel" — and asked if he now considered them "dumb."
"Anything that I said in jokes, no. Ask Jon Stewart. Ask 'The Simpsons,'" he said. "Comedy is comedy."
But he also said he realized he had gone too far at times, without citing examples.
The book describes how he turned his life around after his mother's suicide when he was a teenager and his own suicidal thoughts, drug and alcohol abuse, and trouble holding down a job.
"You sounded like kind of a nasty guy," host Meredith Vieira said.
"Oh, I was a guy that I would have hated," Beck said. "I don't know why anybody stuck around me and most of them didn't. I was a very bad man."
Beck said he had also learned to let go of anger. "It takes a lot to let go," he said.
Watch the interview:
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