Biden wants the media to debunk the Ukraine conspiracy theory, and the media is fine with it. Also, a ground invasion in the United States? Also, why Bernie Sanders will not win in Iowa, but what the Democrats are looking for in a presidential candidate.
00:00:35.420Also, I'll tell you why Bernie Sanders will not win in Iowa, but what the Democrats are actually searching for.
00:00:43.300And nobody is breaking this down the way they should.
00:00:46.960We have that. Also, the media having to remove Trump for the sake of the 2020 election.
00:00:54.540Charlie Kirk joins us for a few minutes and the China virus.
00:01:06.040You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:01:10.240Joe Biden's presidential campaign has issued a warning to reporters and editors in a memo demanding that they debunk the claims of corruption against him.
00:01:25.340The memo titled The Imperative for Honest Coverage of Trump's Ukraine Conspiracy Theory deals specifically with a charge that then-Vice President Joe Biden, as the Obama administration's point man in Ukraine, pushed for a Ukrainian prosecutor to be fired by threatening to withhold aid to the country.
00:01:44.000Wait, wait, wait, wait, the fired prosecutor, Victor Shokin, was reportedly removed at the same time he was investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company.
00:01:57.580According to the memo, quote, Trump's objective was to pressure the Ukrainian government into spreading a malicious and conclusively debunked conspiracy theory.
00:02:19.580That vice president Biden engaged in wrongdoing when he executed when he executed official United States policy to remove a corrupt prosecutor from office.
00:02:57.960They've never told him why he was fired other than the vice president asked for it.
00:03:04.520In the memo, they cite numerous mainstream news outlets that agree with Biden's version of the story and that discredit the theory that Biden pushed for the firing of the prosecutor to cover up corruption.
00:03:18.820Accordingly, the memo goes on to instruct the media to state clearly and unambiguously that such claims of corruption have been discredited and debunked.
00:03:33.540Otherwise, it is journalistic malpractice, according to the Trump.
00:03:39.520I mean, sorry, according to the Biden campaign.
00:03:41.880It is sufficient to say the allegations are uns I'm sorry, it is not sufficient to say the allegations are unsubstantiated or that no evidence has emerged to support them.
00:04:00.000Not only is there no evidence for the Republicans main argument against the vice president, there is a mountain of evidence that actively debunks it.
00:04:08.780And it is malpractice to ignore the truth.
00:10:00.760No one in the State Department, no one in the embassy, no one on the vice presidential staff or president's staff was briefed that the vice president's son and his company was going under investigation by the prosecutor, the one that we helped appoint.
00:10:22.440Nobody notified the vice president of that.
00:10:25.120And then he just coincidentally said, we're not doing any aid if you go into any of this on Burisma.
00:10:32.660That is fact, verifiable fact with documents.
00:18:01.480Hillary Clinton, why do you think she's going after Bernie?
00:18:05.520Why do you think that they're attacking each other right now?
00:18:14.180Why do you think AOC was out this last week saying, you know what, I got to tell you, I mean, we don't really have a left party here in America.
00:21:02.160They are people like Bernie Sanders that have never really had a home.
00:21:07.800Now, those socialist revolutionaries were brought into the party beginning back in the 1980s when they decided they really needed a coalition.
00:21:18.580They started bringing them in, but they were always kept at arm's length.
00:21:23.120Back in the early 2000s, they started bringing these real revolutionaries in to fight against George W. Bush.
00:21:31.620The people that did not necessarily vote for Democrats ever, but they were communists.
00:23:43.300And they don't want to really upset the apple cart.
00:23:46.020But they'd like enough of a revolution to where it's not so hard trying to keep electing, you know, keep electing the same people over and over again.
00:25:02.920But when Barack Obama offered it, a lot of people just heard that and they thought, yeah, he's saying what I believe.
00:25:09.360That's why I've always said you have to really understand who you're standing next to, who you're supporting, because they might say all the right things.
00:25:18.180Barack Obama capitalized on hope and change.
00:25:20.980But his hope and change required fundamental transformation of the United States of America.
00:25:28.400Now, there's a difference between revolution and restoration.
00:25:36.500I want a restoration of what was right with America while getting rid of those things that are wrong with America.
00:26:34.900They really believe they can fix it because they can fix it in their own town, in their own life.
00:26:39.420So what they're looking for is somebody that's not insane, somebody that doesn't want the fundamental transformation of America, and somebody that's an outsider.
00:26:57.560They're looking for Donald Trump, which is why 18% of those who voted for Donald Trump were Democrats.
00:27:06.540Democrats, they're looking for someone who just, you know who Donald Trump is.
00:33:14.500Um, anyway, what struck me is that, you know, there, so the mainstream media has attracted a lot of well-deserved criticism for reporting this story and getting it wrong.
00:33:24.980Outlets like Washington Post, CNN, et cetera, that have subsequently been sued by Nicholas Sandman, et cetera.
00:33:31.120Um, but what I, what I was struck by looking back on this again is those outlets, so certainly deserve blame.
00:33:40.640Um, they did reverse course when it was called out.
00:33:43.860Um, there were so many, uh, more ideological writers, pundits, et cetera, who, who not only did not apologize, they continue to defiantly assist, uh, insist, and probably do to this day, that the initial media coverage was correct.
00:34:00.200There were people who went looking for facts that had nothing to do with all of this, um, you know, oh, well, years ago at a Covington basketball game, is this someone in blackface?
00:34:11.880And it wasn't, but even if it was, it would have had nothing to do with whether Nicholas Sandman had harassed, uh, this Native American man.
00:34:20.160Um, so I was more, I almost feel like we've forgotten that side of it a little bit in the focus on, um, how irresponsible the kind of more mainstream coverage was.
00:34:31.000So, first of all, let's talk about the mainstream coverage for just a second and what's happening to them.
00:34:35.620Any idea, any guess what CNN settled for?
00:34:57.160I would be surprised if it was not in double digits or I mean in, in, in eight digits.
00:35:03.140Um, I just, well, I just, my frame of reference here is the role is Rolling Stone, uh, the lawsuits from the University of Virginia gang rape that years ago.
00:35:40.820You know, it was, it was my pleasure to really get to the truth of these things.
00:35:43.960And I don't, you know, I'm not, it wasn't like I was so ideologically invested in these, either of these stories.
00:35:48.760I just sat down to write something and then you start looking at the other information available.
00:35:53.500And, and both times I started thinking, oh, wow, there's a lot more to this that people haven't really picked up on yet.
00:35:58.980So, Robbie, I mean, just look, let's just look at today where Joe Biden came out and issued a memo yesterday to the news media that said, fall in line.
00:36:10.260It's, uh, worse than a journalistic malpractice.
00:36:13.900If you say that there's anything at all to these, uh, conspiracy theories on any wrongdoing by me or my son in Ukraine.
00:36:24.020And they're taking it, they're taking it, they're, they're, the media is not outraged by that.
00:36:32.060How, how do we, how do we even have hope for the truth in a, with a media like this?
00:36:40.720The problem is, uh, we have divided, I think, into two tribes quite neatly.
00:36:45.780There's, there's Trump tribe and there's media tribe.
00:36:49.320And so the media are not, uh, the, the illusion, I think to some degree, this always was an illusion, right?
00:36:55.300That they're objective gatekeepers and just kind of call, you know, calling it like they see it and they're not taking sides and they're fair and down the middle.
00:37:28.520So that's not surprising to see candidates who represent the media party explicitly calling for them to, you know, to kind of serve on the front lines of, of a war on Trump.
00:37:40.040Because that is, that is the role, uh, they are suggesting that they are going to play.
00:37:44.620Not, not everyone, not all of them, but, but a lot more than it used to be.
00:37:48.540So 2024, I think, is when historically the pendulum should start shifting back, uh, towards, um, sanity.
00:37:57.200Um, do you see an appetite at all for the truth where the chips fall?
00:38:03.600I mean, I don't, I present, I try to present the truth, but I am also an opinion guy.
00:38:09.820I don't know of, uh, of anybody who is, uh, who is huge mainstream that would even consider taking on, no, let the chips fall where they may.
00:38:40.340And then there's an ideological component, right?
00:38:42.280That we live in, in like a more racist and more sexist and more homophobic, et cetera, et cetera, society.
00:38:47.880So then, of course, when something like Covington happens, that confirms your thinking, because you're looking for it, because you're thinking these are, this is the worst of all times, and we've degraded as a society, et cetera.
00:38:58.400Or, uh, uh, you know, I see all the time, again, outlets like CNN, Washington Post, reporting things like hate crimes are higher than ever.
00:39:05.940So if you actually dig into the statistics, and I really have, they don't, they don't even begin to prove that that's true.
00:39:11.480And it actually seems quite ridiculous if you think of how far we've come as a country on many of these fronts.
00:39:17.280Uh, but they're, they're scaring you with these headlines all the time to, to worry you into thinking the world is such a bad place.
00:39:23.340But I remember I had, and Stu, let's see if you remember this.
00:39:26.040I think it was the, the editor of the San Francisco Examiner, very left.
00:39:33.000And I had him on the show because he said, uh, Glenn Beck is a journalist, blah, blah, blah.
00:39:38.320Uh, and, uh, and in some way, in a weird way, he was kind of almost endorsing that, you know, journalistic credibility.
00:39:45.620And I had him on the air and I said, I'm an opinion maker.
00:39:49.480I try to take the facts and do my own homework.
00:39:53.860But then what I present is an opinion.
00:41:03.140I think social media has made, has eroded this distinction because you have people, um, who are supposedly straight news, objective reporters who don't have opinions.
00:41:22.920You're getting their knee jerk unedited reaction to news, to things like Covington or whatever, or like just Jussie Smollett.
00:41:29.580And they're, you know, they're, they're, they're falling over themselves about how horrible this is.
00:41:32.860And, you know, smearing anyone who even is slightly skeptical of it, not in the news story that they're going to write for their paper, but on their social media feed.
00:41:40.660So then you're seeing, you know, what they really think, what has not been, what has not been, uh, worked on by an editor and almost that's clarifying.
00:41:48.780And it's like, it's like a good thing that was allowed to happen because now there's, there can be no more delusions about this.
00:41:54.460Yeah. And you go into a lot of this, the great examples in your story.
00:41:57.080I mean, some people who are saying how punchable Nick Sandman's face is, um, you go through a ton of them.
00:42:03.660One in particular, who I believe referred to you as a professional contrarian, which is quite the title.
00:42:08.520Um, but they went on to say, even after all of this footage came out, not only was it, uh, was it, uh, wrong to change your mind on the story and think that, you know, these kids didn't really do anything.
00:42:31.480They were shaming people who said they're sorry.
00:42:33.780And that was really the point of my most recent piece is to say, it's, you know, it's better to be wrong and apologize than to be wrong.
00:42:40.360And, and, and, but insist you weren't wrong and cling to that wrongness and then try to attack people, uh, for having a shred of integrity or more integrity than you do.
00:42:49.340That was a piece of dead spin that was just utterly vile.
00:42:53.020And, and dead spin is a, is a really kind of mean spirited place anyway, but I was surprised.
00:42:57.840Dead spin is or was, or was, or was, yeah, well, that was, that was one of the things I wanted to, I was interested in, uh, Rob, because when I read, I was reading your piece and I hadn't, I had missed the initial dead pit dead spin piece when it came out.
00:43:11.040And I thought to myself, gosh, you know, you make a mistake like that.
00:43:13.840Then you double down on it in the nasty way that you cover in the piece.
00:43:17.080I went back and read her piece and thought to myself, gosh, she must've paid a price for this, right?
00:43:23.220Like journalistically, like in your, in your job, you probably have a tougher time getting a job.
00:43:28.680No, she's gone to a more mainstream outlet and has a better job than she did when she wrote the piece.
00:44:09.900I mean, it doesn't surprise me, but I mean, it's a, it is remarkable that someone goes through that, you know, Deadspin, obviously, uh, you know, they were, it was a big attitude place.
00:44:20.300And then, you know, obviously went through all of its troubles and is basically, you know, gone now, but to go over to now device, which again is not, I'm not saying is a mainstream site.
00:44:28.460And it certainly has some of the same characteristics as Deadspin, but again, it has shows on HBO and it has these big relationships with advertisers and all this.
00:44:40.380I think for people to take the media seriously when sometimes they do need to take it seriously because this stuff continues to happen over and over again.
00:44:54.280I mean, I wish we could have some, uh, some faith in the media.
00:44:59.300I wish they were more responsible and could earn back the public trust in some cases, because a lot of, you know, I'm, I'm a journalist.
00:45:06.300I know a lot of people who do good work.
00:45:07.980Um, and it, it, it, some, I think sometimes it all gets written off because of these high profile total disasters.
00:45:14.820So there needs to be some kind of, um, settling down or taking a breath or stepping back.
00:45:21.660Or I just wish people, uh, the journalists themselves would, would refrain from, from having this need to like, um, tell crazy viral stories without any additional information.
00:45:35.200Like, I mean, the, the, the, the, the fundamental fact of the Covington story is that it wasn't even a story.
00:45:39.980It was a trivial incident between people who were not, who had no social significance.
00:45:44.220So there was no reason to write about it in the first place.
00:45:46.600So that kind of news judgment that privacy matters a little bit, that we should not use all the technology we have today to like watch people all the time and, and call them out for wrong.