Glenn Beck and John Stossel discuss Elizabeth Warren's comments about Elon Musk and the Mayor of San Francisco, Bill de Blasio's anti-union policies, and why a fact check is a protected opinion. Glenn and John also discuss why the Democratic Party is becoming more and more left wing, and whether or not this is a turning point.
00:00:56.760It's beginning to look a lot like Venezuela on the program today.
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00:01:06.880You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:01:21.640So Elon Musk yesterday, he was named Times the Time magazine's 21 person of the year.
00:01:30.260So Elizabeth Warren tweets, let's change the rig tax code so the person of the year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.
00:01:44.600Musk followed up saying, stop projecting.
00:01:48.940You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason.
00:03:14.440They realize their side is really dangerous now.
00:03:20.100So, in other words, are they like Republicans that join the Tea Party that realized I got to be out of this Republican Party because it doesn't they don't stand for anything.
00:03:44.440So I'm not sure if these guys have had a real awakening to our argument or they're now seeing the people they've been standing in the room with.
00:03:56.160And they're like, I don't want to be with these people.
00:04:11.640Yeah, I think that's I mean, the Overton window is is is hard in effect here.
00:04:16.260We talked about this with Bob Costas the other day, who, right, you know, he had this call with Jim Garrity, who who I criticized him for some of his monologues about guns and the Washington Redskins team name and said he was, you know, as we did as well, that he was Bob Costas seems like a crazy liberal.
00:04:32.320And Costas called up and said, hey, I'm not that guy.
00:04:38.080And just the fact that he would want to disagree with being outed as someone who is far left indicates he probably isn't far left because AOC never comes up and says, no, I'm really not socialist.
00:04:51.960That's not what these people do anymore.
00:08:08.200Now, so the question is, people are waking up, but what are they waking up to?
00:08:14.640Are they waking up and saying conservatives are right?
00:08:17.820Or are they just waking up to the things that we've always had in common, where conservatives, the people like us, have said, guys, we didn't change.
00:08:47.340Well, I hope that they are waking up, especially to the Democratic Party thing, because do you remember, it was racist to say anyone was a Marxist.
00:08:59.640It was crazy to say somebody in the Democratic Party is a communist.
00:09:04.500Well, tell me what you think of this story.
00:09:08.600Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut, one of the worst people in the world, spoke at an awards ceremony over the weekend hosted by a Communist Party affiliate whose leaders use the event to recruit potential members into the Communist Party.
00:09:27.780Now, he's one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, which let's put that aside, because actually it's it's his wife.
00:09:36.360I just love a man who never really even created wealth, but is living off of his wife.
00:09:42.700Blumenthal appeared even as Democratic leaders have downplayed allegations that many in the party support socialist or communist policies.
00:09:50.820So they are still saying, no, we don't support that.
00:09:55.100But then how do you explain Blumenthal going and speaking at the Communist Party event?
00:10:05.520Blumenthal was introduced at the event by Lisa Bergman, a Communist Party member who blamed corporations for the imperialism that exists in our world that is undermining the labor and environment movement.
00:10:19.160And she also had there was another communist emcee, Ben McManus, issued invitations at the ceremony to join the Communist Party.
00:10:29.320And I quote, if you're not already part of the Communist Party, we invite you to participate and contribute and join.
00:10:36.040There's more and more people talking about socialism in this country as it becomes more and more clear that capitalism is not going to work for our future.
00:10:53.720Can you imagine if somebody said, I am definitely not part of the Klan, but then you're invited to speak at a Klan awards ceremony and you speak.
00:11:07.520And when you're speaking, everybody's like, and by the way, make sure you join the Klan on the way out.
00:14:09.560They have John Stossel has sued because of a fact check from Facebook that he says defamed him because they said that his facts were false.
00:14:24.200And John says, no, I've been in the fact checking business, you know, most of my life.
00:14:32.200And I know the difference between fact and false.
00:15:00.740Fact check articles are not the labels affixed through Facebook platform.
00:15:05.980The labels themselves are nearly near neither false nor defamatory.
00:15:10.620To the contrary, they constitute protected opinion.
00:15:16.360Now, the way I read that is fact check doesn't have to be based in facts.
00:15:23.400They can if they have an opinion that says, no, that's not right, then they can claim that our facts are wrong trumped by their opinion, which is the case we have been making the whole time.
00:15:41.880Where is the line for your opinion and facts?
00:16:01.820As John points out, they can pretty much do what they want on their website.
00:16:07.380However, it's a terrible way of doing business, especially for somebody who claims they want to be the source of the public square conversation.
00:16:16.940I don't they don't seem to act that way.
00:16:19.600And, you know, they, you know, Twitter is doing something today where they are penalizing users who claim vaccinated people can spread COVID-19.
00:16:28.120Now, every every study, every study from the literal beginning has said that if you have if you are vaccinated, you have a chance, a lower chance, but a chance of spreading COVID-19.
00:16:40.340There's never been a study that has said it's going to prevent every single case of spread.
00:16:45.260So what so how are they so and they're saying that if you say, hey, you know what?
00:16:50.500I think, you know, you can spread it if you have if you are vaccinated, which is true by literally every scientific report, including the scientists who work at Pfizer.
00:17:01.420OK, that doesn't mean that they are they're terrible and they're the worst thing in the world doesn't mean anything like that.
00:17:06.380But it does mean that, of course, some facts, some people are the facts.
00:17:09.480You know, this is from the CDC website.
00:17:11.900If you are fully vaccinated and become infected with the Delta variant, you can spread the virus to others.
00:17:16.840Infections happen only in a small proportion of people who are fully vaccinated, even with a Delta variant as compared to people who are not vaccinated.
00:17:23.620But that does say both of those things say you can get it and you can spread it.
00:18:31.640Well, this is a topic that requires a short explanation.
00:18:36.000I guess I would personally say no, as the covid origin story and the vaccine origin story are the biggest topics in the world right now.
00:18:44.780It's not even close, but it kind of seems like this fact check agrees because they follow up in their little in short, no remark with this little tidbit.
00:18:54.560And I quote, but as the New York Times reported, November 9th, there is a long brewing disagreement between Moderna and the National Institute of Health over who developed a crucial part of the covid-19 vaccine known as the mRNA sequence.
00:19:13.560And that could have implications for ownership of important patents related to the vaccine.
00:19:21.500So, in other words, no, no, they don't co-own it.
00:19:26.540No, in fact, to prove it, there is a court battle right now going on between the government and Moderna and they're battling out in court to see who owns it or not.
00:19:38.500Right. Well, wait a minute. I showed you the document with the signature and said, what's this all about?
00:19:48.120Did you know? Did you know that they co-owned? Did you know this was happening?
00:19:52.900Don't you think? Because if they're getting money or anyone in the NIH is getting money, we should know about it because that might be an ulterior motive.
00:20:04.320And by the way, we had conversations before the special even aired off the air.
00:20:09.260Yes. Talking about all of the points they bring up here and making sure that we included the nuance that existed.
00:20:16.080And then they, instead of fact checking the special, they didn't fact check the special.
00:20:19.160They fact check TikTok. They fact checked what part of the special went viral on TikTok.
00:20:25.420Yeah. Which is pretty frustrating. I don't know how we're supposed to control that.
00:20:28.580Yeah. Pointer also points this out. Quote, a lot of money is at stake as well as a big say in the distribution of vaccines worldwide.
00:20:39.780If the NIH scientists were named as inventors on the sequence patent, that would enable the government to collect royalties on the patent and to license it as it sees fit, including some have noted to other vaccine manufacturers besides Moderna.
00:20:56.440The result could have long term consequences for global vaccine access.
00:21:01.700Well, now, maybe it's just me, but a lot of money is at stake at stake.
00:21:08.100Kind of sounds like maybe we should look for artillery motives.
00:21:12.840It's interesting how they point out royalties to be paid to the government, because if you go down to page 125 on the agreement that we showed you between Moderna and the government, you'll find an interesting appendix called royalties appendix.
00:21:31.100Now, if there's no co-ownership, why is there a royalties appendix?
00:21:35.980It says if any vaccine is produced based off their collaborative research, then Moderna would owe the government an initial sum 60 days after the signing of this agreement, October 2019.
00:21:49.140And then every year annually, if you scroll down to page 127, the government instructs how those royalties would be paid.
00:22:00.640Now, why would Moderna be paying the federal government?
00:22:05.780In fact, there's even an account number on page 127 that shows that the money should be directed to the Federal Reserve Bank.
00:22:14.760I don't know, that kind of sounds like money is changing hands or could change hands if they co-owned this, if they developed it and they said, no, we developed this all by ourselves, then no money changes hands.
00:22:32.360No, we have a co-ownership and we gave you the MRNA mechanics and you added this so we're partners on it.
00:22:48.740They found also no suspicion at all that Dr. Barak was included in the collaboration between Moderna and the NIH.
00:22:57.080Not even a little suspect that the government and Moderna were working on a coronavirus MRNA vaccine and that they were sending research back and forth with the man, Barak, who was working with Dr. Xi in Wuhan on coronavirus.
00:24:12.580You know, just the it's just the government trying to mandate a vaccine that they're currently fighting on how much of it they were involved with inventing.
00:24:20.220And then the contract that states in black and white, the royalties that should be paid to the federal bank, if anything, is produced based off of their collaboration.
00:24:44.000And if the government or government employees are going to benefit even a little off of a federal policy that contributes to that benefit, we should be asking these questions.
00:26:07.280In addition to the 12 original flavors, Built Bar just added cookies and cream, carrot cake, caramel brownie, lemon almond cheesecake, apple almond crisp.
00:27:39.400And, you know, these companies have been sued many times.
00:27:42.020I've sued various of these companies many times on different theories.
00:27:45.140And because of a law called Communications of Decency Act, Section 230, these companies have basically been allowed a government protection from the type of defamation that you or I would be liable for if we said false things about people in other forums.
00:28:02.600And so, in this case, as many of your viewers may know, when you're reading an article, maybe an article you like, and you go to share it, or even without going to share it, a label pops up that warns you that, you know, this article that you're reading and you're about to share is false, partly false, you know, fake news, basically.
00:28:25.460And then sometimes even getting into some details as to what's false about it.
00:28:29.320And that's what happened here with John Stossel, who's a respected journalist with decades of experience.
00:28:38.380And on his Facebook page, he posted a couple of videos about two different climate change topics.
00:28:44.500And one was about the forest fires that have consumed California over recent years in 2020 and what caused them.
00:28:52.420And he was interviewing experts on forest fires.
00:28:57.380And then in the other one, he's talking about a variety of claims by, you know, climate activists about everything being caused by climate change, you know, hurricanes, fires, you name it.
00:29:10.220And so how these companies try to get around them being called defamers, Facebook, and these other big companies is they hire and I imagine my air quotes here, they hire independent fact checkers, who are really activists themselves, of course, they, they let loose the hounds of independent fact checkers on helpless users of these platforms who are not allowed to fight back.
00:29:38.980And they rip them to shreds, and they rip them to shreds, as if it's some kind of a blood sport.
00:29:46.520And so, you know, this climate change group that was tasked with reviewing this one is some French outfit, very biased.
00:29:54.520A review of their reviews of people's posts shows that in the case of authors who are perceived as conservative, they routinely rate them as false or mostly false.
00:30:07.240Lacking context is another nice one that they like to use.
00:30:11.060But in this case, you know, they really got it wrong here.
00:30:51.000So, so that's the label on the more general video.
00:30:55.000Now, if you're a journalist who's devoted his whole career to getting it right and elucidating the truth to the public, labeling somebody's post as partly false contains factual inaccuracies is devastating.
00:31:11.000It would be like telling the world, fixing a label to lawsuits that I filed that they're, you know, that, that, that they're sanctioned, that, that they've been sanctioned when they haven't.
00:31:22.160Well, honestly, it is like, instead of taking the, all the news fit to print and changing the subtitle to, of the New York times to contains factual inaccuracies.