The families of Sandy Hook are calling for NBC to cancel an interview with Alex Jones because it legitimizes him and takes him out of context. Alex Jones is a fringe character, but NBC should have run the interview anyway.
00:37:19.600And the board just decided they wanted to do something different in the future.
00:37:26.000And frankly, I feel like Lord knows what he's doing.
00:37:30.200And where I am right now, I realize that I'm in a place where I can make a much bigger difference.
00:37:36.520There's some great people at Heritage.
00:37:37.840But I'm ready to leave that chapter behind and get back to work on two fronts.
00:37:44.100I realize, and I'm sure you see it from where you said, that we can't just work in one area.
00:37:49.620It's not enough just to be a senator or elect a senator.
00:37:53.060We have to do a lot of things if we're going to stop this out-of-control federal government.
00:37:58.380And the two things, I'm going to continue to work with conservatives on the Hill and try to equip them and support them.
00:38:06.300Because, as you mentioned, when you started the show just a minute ago, a lot of times it's just one or two people working to try to do the right thing.
00:38:15.300And the system tries to take them apart.
00:38:17.640But I've also realized that no matter what happens, no matter who we elect, Congress is never going to stop spending.
00:38:26.100That they're going to keep spending and creating debt until we have some kind of crisis or meltdown.
00:38:32.220And our founders knew that that was a possibility.
00:38:35.220They gave us a fire alarm on the wall where it had to break the glass and pull the lever.
00:38:39.900And that's in Article 5 of the Constitution where they said the states could come together and propose amendments to the Constitution.
00:38:47.320In this case, we have to get the states to force the federal government to have fiscal restraint, to limit its jurisdiction,
00:38:56.140and hopefully even to turn limit members of Congress and maybe even the judiciary.
00:39:01.740Okay, so you are now going to the Convention of States.
00:39:04.700What role of Convention of States project are you going to play there?
00:39:11.060I'll be working with Tom Coburn and a good team around the country to work with state legislators.
00:39:17.320Because the secret here is to get 34 states to pass essentially the same call to convention.
00:39:25.400This is not a constitutional convention.
00:39:27.620It's nothing about a free-for-all, the rewrite of the Constitution.
00:39:31.260Article 5 is clear that states can propose amendments.
00:39:35.340And we want to propose particular amendments that will help force the federal government to not only balance its budget but limit taxes but also limit what it can do.
00:39:48.460Because the Tenth Amendment is clear that whatever is not prescribed to the federal government and the Constitution should be left to the states and the people.
00:39:57.760And the federal government has just run all over that.
00:40:00.360And so I look at my fight as I'm just fighting on two fronts.
00:40:04.700I'm not going to give up on helping conservatives and we've started a new nonprofit to do that.
00:40:09.640But I'm working with the Convention of the States hoping that the states will call a convention to propose amendments to limit the power and the spending of the federal government.
00:40:20.220So, Jim, the Convention of the States, I think, has new life to it.
00:40:27.240And a lot of it is coming from places like California, of all places, to where liberals are saying, you know, the government's out of control.
00:40:35.260Yeah, because now your guy isn't in control.
00:40:39.080And California had a real movement to actually secede from the union.
00:40:47.280I think this is a real opportunity, but it also could be used to exploit the framework of Article 5.
00:40:58.280Are you reaching out to the people on the left who are more libertarian-minded?
00:41:06.120And are you concerned at all about a hijacking from the traditional left?
00:41:13.040Glenn, that is one of the arguments that opponents of this use.
00:41:18.080But, frankly, there is literally no chance that you're going to have a convention that proposes some kind of crazy amendment that 38 states ratify.
00:41:28.480I feel much more comfortable in that check and balance than I do with what the courts could do in Washington or even what Congress can do.
00:41:37.220But you mentioned something that's very insightful, actually, because liberals, once they understand this concept, like it, at least a lot of them do,
00:41:46.620because they understand that what we're trying to do is not tell people what to do or to tell California they have to do something and South Carolina does something else.
00:41:56.320What we're talking about is where things are decided.
00:42:01.360The thing that creates disunity all over the country now is you've got so many things being decided in Washington about what we should do and how we should live our lives.
00:42:12.260And what we need to do is let states and local communities and people themselves make more of their own decisions.
00:42:19.400As long as power keeps gravitating to Washington, the more, I think, disunity we're going to have in America.
00:42:40.360No, I don't think so, because I think I believe most of what President Trump is trying to do are things that we agree with.
00:42:48.400But we see that ever since he was elected, they have made this big deal of Russia.
00:42:54.380If Russia did anything, that's on Obama.
00:42:56.740I mean, Obama was supposed to be watching our country and our security systems and stuff like that.
00:43:03.140But I think what we've seen is despite the strong personality of Trump and he's put some good people in the agencies, they're still making it almost impossible for him to get anything done.
00:43:15.820And even with Republican majorities, we see in the budgets they pass that we're going to keep spending and keep growing the government.
00:43:23.100Hopefully we can have some small successes.
00:43:25.280But I don't think the country has fallen asleep.
00:43:28.380And I see this as a mission that the grassroots, that folks who are involved with the Tea Party, who are discouraged now, that people can see this is a very focused idea.
00:43:39.000If we come together, this is maybe the only way we can restrain an out-of-control federal government.
00:43:45.140Jim, who are you more disappointed with, Congress or the presidency?
00:43:52.880Because I have to tell you, Congress is, in my opinion, absolutely shameful.
00:44:03.240Shameful, the way they're acting and spending and the way they dealt with Obamacare is just mind-boggling.
00:44:51.400Every time you try to do something right, they try to throw you off a committee or get you back home with your constituents.
00:44:58.340We can do a lot better uniting and equipping conservatives once they're elected.
00:45:03.700And that's what I'm going to try to do, along with a small team, is to get them to work more closely together and try to protect those who are trying to do the right thing.
00:45:13.340More with Jim DeMint, who's now one of the senior advisors of the Convention of States project.
00:45:18.540Former Senator Jim DeMint is with us now.
00:52:10.460And the thing that interests me most about how we're doing it with the Convention of the State project is we're not proposing the specific amendments.
00:52:19.380Because we found, for instance, if you're working on term limits, then everybody who wants term limits is going to disagree whether it's 6, 8, or 12 years.
00:52:30.060That we will pass amendments that restrict fiscally what the federal government can do to borrow money.
00:52:36.700Generally, it will deal with a balanced budget, but also tax and spending restrictions.
00:52:43.160The other is jurisdiction and authorization.
00:52:45.860It will respect what the federal government can do on the regulatory front, on what it can do, for instance, controlling education, health care, give states much more latitude there.
00:52:57.760The third subject area is to put term limits on federal officials, congressmen, senators, and perhaps even federal judges.
00:53:05.220What do you say to people who say, and I've got about 30 seconds for this answer, what do you say to people who say, you know, you put term limits on, then it's going to be the bureaucrats that are running everything?
00:54:04.320Bill O'Reilly is going to be joining us at the top of the hour.
00:54:08.480We also have some commentary on this Megyn Kelly stuff with Alex Jones.
00:54:17.520She has just been disinvited to be the host of a Sandy Hook charity gala.
00:54:25.140That's supposed to happen next Wednesday because she was exposing the logic of this because she's exposing the guy, just like the New York Times has, just like New York Magazine has, just like we have.
00:54:41.900Exposing Alex Jones to be the lunatic that he is that says he's, by the way, asking for this not to play on NBC because he said he was taken out of context on Sandy Hook.
00:54:57.540Look, I want to play the context of what he said on Sandy Hook.
00:55:01.540They have staged events before, but then you learn the school had been closed and reopened, and you got video of the kids going in circles in and out of the building, and they don't call the rescue choppers for two hours.
00:55:14.620And then they tear the building down and seal it, and they get caught using blue screens, and an email by Bloomberg comes out in a lawsuit where he's telling his people, get ready in the next 24 hours to capitalize on a shooting.
00:55:56.520For Time magazine, putting Adolf Hitler on the cover and saying he was the man of the year in 1938.
00:56:04.180Yes, he was the man of the year in 1938.
00:56:06.460To be able to have a logical, rational discussion with the irrational is important, not when he's a nobody, but when the President of the United States has given him press credentials and made him into a legitimate guy.
00:56:24.540I don't have White House press credentials.
00:56:52.420Why on earth would you want to move your advertising out of this when clearly, and in her statement, she's released a statement about this.
00:56:58.780This is her statement from being disinvited.
00:57:00.660We're going to get to the Russia stuff here in a second.
00:57:03.000I understand and respect the decision of the event organizers, but of course I'm disappointed that I won't be there to support them on Wednesday night.
00:57:09.940I find Alex Jones' suggestion that Sandy Hooks was a hoax as personally revolting as every other rational person does.
00:57:20.700It left me and many other Americans asking the very question that prompted this interview, which is a completely reasonable question.
00:57:27.400How does Jones, who traffics in these outrageous conspiracy theories, have the respect of the President of the United States and a growing audience of millions?
00:57:34.720President Trump, by praising and citing him, appearing on his show, and giving him White House press credentials, has helped elevate Jones to the alarm of many.
00:57:42.640Our goal in sitting down with him was to shine a light, as journalists are supposed to do, on this influential figure, and yes, to discuss the considerable falsehoods he has promoted with near impunity.
00:57:54.100How could you possibly pull out of an interview with a person who's taking that approach to Alex Jones?
00:57:59.620I mean, unless you're an Alex Jones fan, I mean, is JPMorgan Chase, are they just huge fans of Alex Jones?
00:58:05.880And they're just like, well, I don't like that they're attacking his Sandy Hook conspiracy that we really believe?
00:58:11.440Because that's the only reason you'd want to pull out of that interview.
00:58:13.880No, the only reason, that's the logical reason.
00:58:16.540The emotional reason is the families are against this interview, and nobody wants to stand against the families.
00:58:24.340But the families, it's the reason why we have a jury of our peers, and the reason why we have a judge give the sentencing to the criminal, and not the victim.
00:58:39.600In other countries, the victim gets the sentence.
00:59:41.820Russia's cyber attack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump's election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported.
00:59:57.040Now, understand, this story goes on to say it made no impact in the election.
01:00:03.380So, this is not a, well, the Russians got him elected.
01:00:06.600They weren't even, according to this, they're not even trying to do that.
01:00:10.100According to this, they were only trying to cause, what a surprise, chaos.
01:00:15.100In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data.
01:00:22.560The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and at least one state accessed a campaign finance database.
01:00:31.100Details of the wave of attacks in the summer and fall of 2016 were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter.
01:00:38.740In all, Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states.
01:00:46.320The scope and sophistication so concerned the Obama administration that they took an unprecedented step, complaining directly to Moscow over our modern-day red phone in October.
01:00:57.620The White House contacted the Kremlin on a back channel to offer detailed documents of what it said was Russia's role in election meddling and to warn that the attacks risked setting off a broader conflict.
01:01:10.620New details buttressed by classified National Security Agency documents recently disclosed by The Intercept show the scope of alleged hacking that federal investigators are scrutinizing as they look into whether Trump campaign officials may have colluded in the efforts.
01:01:24.240But they also paint a worrisome picture for future elections.
01:01:29.300The newest portrayal of potentially deep vulnerabilities in the U.S. patchwork of voting technologies comes less than a week after former FBI Director James Comey warned Congress that Moscow isn't done meddling.
01:01:43.320Quote, they're coming after America and they will be back.
01:01:47.760So, what this article is saying is they did spear phishing campaigns and they went in and they tried to see if they could hack into first like the DNC and RNC.
01:02:43.540All these little towns with all their different voting systems.
01:02:45.800And what happens is in these states, the localities feed the information up to the states.
01:02:51.820So, if they were able to delete all the voting rolls in the states, it wouldn't have necessarily made a difference because it's the localities that actually house the information.
01:04:35.360Also, a contractor who works for two or three days a week at a state board of elections detected unauthorized data leaving the network.
01:04:42.020According to the counsel for the general board of elections,
01:04:46.040the hackers gained access to the state voter database, which contained information such as names, dates of birth, genders, driver's license, social security numbers, on 15 million people.
01:05:33.060They would have blamed that on Russia and Donald Trump trying to get the people of Illinois.
01:05:38.440Illinois, and imagine the riots we would have had in Chicago.
01:05:43.260And it's worth saying, there's no evidence in this article that at all points to Donald Trump not being responsible for any of this.
01:05:48.240That's not even the accusation of the article.
01:05:50.840But, I mean, think about this from the political perspective for a second.
01:05:53.860If you're a Hillary Clinton fan, in the article, it goes to great lengths to describe that Barack Obama had this information during the election.
01:06:06.700He knew that this was going on and chose not to make a big deal about it to the public.
01:06:12.900Now, his excuse and the insider's excuse on that is, well, we didn't want to make chaos in the election.
01:06:17.860We didn't want to give them what they wanted, which may be part of it.
01:06:21.180The other part of it is, of course, they thought they were winning.
01:06:23.440So, I mean, they probably didn't want to necessarily change the focus on a massive breach of security that happened under his watch, right?
01:06:32.960I mean, that's not going to help Hillary Clinton.
01:07:36.760Now, if you want to make a difference, you stay on course and you make sure that you talk about the Russian hacking scandal that has nothing...
01:07:52.040Let me see if I can say this more clearly.
01:15:15.280The second thing was he called Trump a liar, straight out.
01:15:18.400And he did that because he was truly insulted, Comey, that Trump said the FBI is chaos, said that it was mismanaged.
01:15:27.660So, look, I understand the emotion there.
01:15:31.220But, you know, that was a pretty big thing for an FBI chief to do.
01:15:37.120So, again, you didn't pull what I pulled out.
01:15:41.540But, and this is the biggest thing of all, especially with the news that's coming from Bloomberg today, and that is the Russians are coming.
01:15:50.680We spent all last week with everybody talking about Comey and Trump and Hillary Clinton when we should have been talking about the Russian hack.
01:16:00.600I don't know if you saw the report that came out today from Bloomberg.
01:30:01.940We're going to tweet live as Sessions gets out there and his southern drawl.
01:30:06.920And I think he'll I think Sessions, the canny guy that he is, he's, you know, he's been around forever.
01:30:15.300He's going to he's going to do very well today.
01:30:18.220I would be very surprised if they get him off his game.
01:30:20.820Bill, first of all, when you're calling your phone a machine, you do have a book out called Old School.
01:30:27.720We should probably point out that so it actually ties it very well to your book.
01:30:32.120Can I follow up on the this is Stu, by the way, I want to follow up on the on the on the Alex Jones thing for one more second with Megyn Kelly.
01:30:38.060Because your point on don't give this guy a form is completely valid.
01:30:41.540In fact, we had the same conversation about this guy a couple of years ago because we find him very entertaining and funny in a weird way.
01:30:48.100And so we would he's accidentally funny.
01:31:10.600Well, the conditions on the ground have evolved.
01:31:12.820So let me is there value because as you pointed out, even you, someone who follows the news like crazy, one of the hardest working men in the news, didn't know that much about this guy.
01:31:24.860OK, you didn't know that much about him.
01:31:26.160Is there value in exposing who this man is, if for no other reason than to try to stop Donald Trump and the people around him from retweeting his articles, from going on these shows, from giving this guy the expanding sort of universe he's getting from the credibility from the White House?
01:31:46.860Because that is what is the president.
01:32:02.260But then you learn the school had been closed and reopened.
01:32:04.980And you got video of the kids going in circles in and out of the building.
01:32:08.320And they don't call the rescue choppers for two hours.
01:32:11.240And then they tear the building down and seal it.
01:32:13.560And they get caught using blue screens and an email by Bloomberg comes out in a lawsuit where he's telling his people, get ready in the next 24 hours to capitalize on a shooting.
01:33:53.800And that's why they're tweaking, you know, whoever made this decision to credential the guy is, did it to go, look, if you can play that game, we can play it too.
01:34:05.300And look at this, we're going to make the theater of absurd and credential him.
01:34:09.120But, again, it comes down to the families for me, the pain that any parent experiences when their child is killed overrides any political thing or any journalistic thing.
01:34:24.280And so I would not put him on my program.
01:34:28.940And, you know, why do you think they're doing this, Beck?
01:34:32.060Why do you think they're putting him on?