Glenn Beck plays Santa at North Richland Hills Walmart, to the tune of $27,000
North Texas-based radio host Glenn Beck joined a growing trend of celebrities playing surprise Santa this season, paying off $27,000 worth of layaways for customers at a North Richland Hills Walmart, according to a post on radio/music-industry website AllAccess.com that cites a report by the Dallas Morning News.
Google lists two Walmarts in North Richland Hills, according to the DMN, Beck’s random act of charity took place at the one at 9101 North Tarrant Parkway, which is in an area near parts of Colleyville, Southlake and Keller.
According to www.glennbeck.com, Beck was inspired by actor-director Tyler Perry, who recently paid of more than $400,000 in Christmas layaways at a Walmart near his Atlanta home and challenged others to take the “Tyler Perry Challenge” during the Christmas season.
“I took it as a challenge,” Beck said on his show Monday. “And I challenged others. I challenged every Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro and Bill O’Reilly. ... You don’t have to spend the money that Tyler Perry or I spent, you could just go in an do $100 or $50 or $10. And you are not going to believe the difference it makes.”
This wasn’t just one bill, but all the existing layaway accounts at this Walmart, according to Beck’s website. “I thought we were going to just go in and pay just one big lump sum, and they couldn’t do that,” Beck said on his show. “I don’t know how Tyler did it, but I had to go and stand there and keep putting my credit card [in] and pay them off one by one.”
Beck said that the bills ranged from $24 to about $500. Beck said that he didn’t know exactly what the grand total was, but the DMN said a Walmart spokeswoman said it was about $27.000.
USA Today reported that Tyler Perry’s initial act happened Dec. 6, citing an Associated Press report that said that the grand total was $434,000. A day later, Kid Rock took up the challenge and paid off the layaway at his local Walmart in Nashville, with a total of about $81,000, according to USA Today.
According to a recent Forbes report on the World’s Highest-Paid Radio Hosts of 2018, Beck’s earnings were $8.5 million in 2018, down from $10 million in 2017, “due to the struggles of his conservative media company TheBlaze,” although Beck recently told the Hollywood Reporter that his company had been profitable during the past 12 months. (The top-paid host, SiriusXM’s Howard Stern, earned $90 million in the same period, according to Forbes.)
Beck’s show airs in DFW from 8 to 11 a.m. weekdays on KLIF/570 AM. He can also be heard on The Blaze.
This story was originally published December 11, 2018 at 12:43 PM.
