The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Blake J. Harris & Matthew Charles ｜ 4⧸10⧸19

00:00:00.000 I have to tell you, today's podcast, Stu and I are both exhausted.

00:00:04.840 It is a whirlwind of a podcast. 0.98

00:00:08.400 I recommend you listen to the whole darn thing. 0.96

00:00:10.900 We start with the border, George Soros, Chicago, what it's really all about. 0.98

00:00:15.820 That's amazing.

00:00:16.660 Then we roll into Blake Harris.

00:00:18.520 This guy is a liberal, a journalist, a really respected writer.

00:00:24.260 Wrote one of the books of the year a few years ago.

00:00:27.460 Now can't get arrested.

00:00:29.040 Now no one will talk to him because he exposes this amazing story about Facebook, Zuckerberg and the guy who invented Oculus Rift.

00:00:40.400 It's an amazing rags to riches, American dream story that is crushed.

00:00:46.320 Why?

00:00:47.420 Because the guy liked Donald Trump.

00:00:50.380 Unbelievable story and pulling the covers back on Facebook and the mainstream media like crazy.

00:01:00.260 Let me give you a couple quick other things.

00:01:02.440 We have the Bidenbracket.com situation.

00:01:05.620 We're in the Eerie 8 right now.

00:01:07.600 We may, by the time you hear this, be in the frightening four.

00:01:09.940 The bottom line is go vote for the most creepy Joe Biden photo possible.

00:01:14.100 Do that today.

00:01:15.360 Tomorrow night is the big Joe Biden show.

00:01:17.680 You've got to sign up at blazetv.com slash Glenn.

00:01:20.220 Use the promo code Glenn to get access to that.

00:01:22.140 Actually, we're not sure exactly how it's going to happen, but there's two parts to it now.

00:01:25.600 It's been growing in size because there's just so much meat on this bone when it comes to Joe Biden's corruption.

00:01:31.100 We're going to get to that tomorrow.

00:01:32.840 And if you want to see the background of the border with all of it laid out with magnets on the chalkboard, go to glennbeck.com.

00:01:40.360 There's a free YouTube link to the entire show from last night.

00:01:43.240 You really need to see it.

00:01:44.200 Yeah, and please pass it on to your friends.

00:01:46.540 We end the podcast with Matthew Charles.

00:01:49.000 He was the guy the president introduced at the State of the Union, the guy who had been in prison for 21 years.

00:01:54.900 They release, and then two years later, they're like, oh, whoops, that was a mistake.

00:01:59.380 You've got to go back to prison for 10 years.

00:02:01.400 That's an amazing story and a really good guy.

00:02:05.860 That and all the rest of it on today's podcast.

00:02:16.240 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

00:02:24.760 This is crazy.

00:02:26.700 You know, the house that I sold in Connecticut, I bought when I sold it.

00:02:32.820 We had made some bit of a profit on it.

00:02:35.620 We sold it after the crash.

00:02:37.940 It's now worth less than half.

00:02:40.200 Well, I mean, you know, the easier way to get homes at cheap prices is just steal a title.

00:02:44.560 That's the best way to do it.

00:02:45.980 If you just kind of go in there, you steal the title.

00:02:48.160 I mean, 25 bathrooms, $2.5 million.

00:02:50.340 Yeah, but you could have got that.

00:02:51.100 You don't need $2.5 million.

00:02:52.360 You could do it for like $20.

00:02:53.980 You get a fake notary, stamp that thing on there.

00:02:56.500 You transfer the title.

00:02:57.560 It's really easy to do.

00:02:58.740 You can do it in like, you know, a couple hours.

00:03:00.560 And then you own the home.

00:03:01.380 You just borrow against the equity or whatever, and you're living a high life.

00:03:04.560 That's the way to do it.

00:03:05.060 Okay.

00:03:05.400 All right.

00:03:05.980 All right.

00:03:06.560 I mean, as long as it's legal.

00:03:09.420 Oh, I didn't say it was legal.

00:03:11.620 Home Title Lock will stop people from doing this to your house. 0.70

00:03:15.240 Home Title Lock.

00:03:16.020 They're the only people that are standing in the way from stealing your title.

00:03:19.620 It's incredibly easy.

00:03:20.740 I don't think it's $20.

00:03:22.080 I do think it's $40.

00:03:23.540 Oh, wow.

00:03:23.780 I mean, like that makes a difference.

00:03:25.920 Get the $100 search for free.

00:03:27.640 Make sure this hasn't happened already.

00:03:29.000 And sign up now.

00:03:30.040 Get protection for your home title with Home Title Lock.

00:03:33.620 Hey, I want to talk to you a little bit about SimpliSafe.

00:03:35.660 You know, homes are burglarized all the time.

00:03:38.880 So last night on TV, and we're going to try to make this episode available on YouTube sometime during the show today, because I want everybody to see it.

00:03:51.980 Because you have to understand what's happening.

00:03:54.040 And I would so appreciate if you would alert the people in Congress that you trust, have them send them this episode so they can watch it, and alert them to what's really going on.

00:04:10.780 Last night, I was talking about the president.

00:04:13.880 He is getting to a point now where he's willing to do whatever it takes to secure the border.

00:04:20.060 But we're looking at the wrong place.

00:04:22.700 We're looking at the border as the problem.

00:04:25.280 That is not the problem.

00:04:27.800 And let me explain.

00:04:30.420 There were two chalkboards that I have done when I was at Fox, and they were both very, very important, and they still stand the test of time.

00:04:39.200 Because one of them has just finished being true.

00:04:44.840 Everything that I put on there was a prediction, and it's all now complete.

00:04:52.120 And it's a really important chalkboard.

00:04:54.140 So let me go through two of them.

00:04:56.040 Here's what I said 10 years ago, that George Soros was building a shadow government.

00:05:04.080 Now, George Soros, we have done episode after episode after episode.

00:05:09.360 And there's a really good episode by this guy named Mr. Reagan that you should watch.

00:05:14.360 He has gone and he has updated some of the George Soros stuff.

00:05:18.680 And it's very, very complete and really, really well done.

00:05:22.800 And just Google Mr. Reagan or YouTube and follow him.

00:05:27.880 He's really good at laying things out.

00:05:31.640 What I said at the time was, George Soros has this pattern.

00:05:36.260 And this is the way he overthrows countries.

00:05:40.200 One, he forms a shadow government.

00:05:43.540 And a shadow government is for the top-down, bottom-up, inside-out theory.

00:05:48.560 That you need enough people at the top in government that are working coordinating with the grassroots level.

00:05:58.260 When you have those two, you can apply pressure on everybody in the middle.

00:06:04.140 And that's you, the forgotten man.

00:06:06.540 So form a shadow government.

00:06:08.640 Then control the airwaves.

00:06:11.000 Then the third step he always takes is to stabilize the state with a crisis.

00:06:16.320 Now, that crisis can be an economic crisis.

00:06:19.100 It can be an already happening crisis that you just exploit.

00:06:22.700 Fourth step, provoke an election crisis.

00:06:27.660 Fifth step, begin protests and accuse fraud.

00:06:32.400 Those are the five steps that George Soros always follows when he's trying to overthrow a country.

00:06:39.320 And I contend he's trying to overthrow the United States of America.

00:06:43.640 He is an open borders guy.

00:06:46.120 This is important for you to understand because when you talk about open borders,

00:06:50.980 what does that mean?

00:06:52.200 People will say, open borders, well, we can all just, you know, go on and be free.

00:06:58.280 Libertarians mean it one way, open borders, that we should be able to work and do whatever we want

00:07:04.100 without the government interference.

00:07:06.460 Okay, that's one way to look at it.

00:07:08.220 But that is not the way George Soros looks at it.

00:07:11.420 George Soros is not a libertarian.

00:07:14.880 George Soros loves big government.

00:07:17.420 So when you hear people talk about open borders and they like big government,

00:07:23.340 it can be, and in most cases, a sign that they are Marxist-Leninists.

00:07:30.860 Because, remember, the difference between the Nazis and the commies was not socialism. 0.85

00:07:40.060 It was nationalism.

00:07:44.080 Russia and the communists, the Marxist-Leninists, wanted to have socialism on an international scale.

00:07:55.700 So workers of the world unite.

00:07:59.360 There are no borders.

00:08:00.880 It's one world and one world government.

00:08:05.660 The national socialists said, I don't want to fight for another country.

00:08:10.300 If I fight for my country, my country will be strong because my workers will fight for the other workers in my country.

00:08:18.820 But they're not going to fight for somebody in a far-off distant land.

00:08:21.800 So it's not international workers.

00:08:24.040 It's national workers.

00:08:25.680 So when you hear about no borders, it can be a sign that this is a Marxist-Leninist movement.

00:08:35.240 All right.

00:08:37.420 Let's go over whether George Soros has done what he said he would do.

00:08:44.960 Form a shadow government.

00:08:46.900 I contend that is the new Democratic Party.

00:08:50.560 I contend that it is all of the radicals that are in there right now.

00:08:55.280 In fact, Stu, why was Jessie Smollett let off or who let him off?

00:09:02.280 Who let him off?

00:09:03.120 I mean, Fox you're talking about?

00:09:05.540 Yeah.

00:09:05.860 Okay.

00:09:06.140 Yeah.

00:09:06.260 What's her name?

00:09:07.340 Nikki Fox?

00:09:08.700 Her last name is Fox.

00:09:09.480 I don't remember her first name.

00:09:10.980 Do you know how she was elected?

00:09:13.460 I mean, she was brought into as like a kind of a radical opposition to the status quo.

00:09:19.480 You know who funded her?

00:09:21.140 Was it George Soros?

00:09:22.840 Yeah.

00:09:23.060 I mean, because he has projects, and he did this with secretaries of state.

00:09:27.000 Yep.

00:09:27.380 Save our SOS.

00:09:27.720 He did it with district attorneys.

00:09:29.420 Yes.

00:09:29.840 Yeah.

00:09:30.320 Yeah.

00:09:30.500 He concentrated on local government.

00:09:33.200 First, he did the national, then local, and all of those people all the way along.

00:09:37.580 And he has formed a government, a shadow government, that thinks like he does, and they're radicals.

00:09:45.540 They're mainly Marxists.

00:09:48.180 Okay?

00:09:48.380 So I contend if you look at the new Democratic Party, you'll see that that is, that's a shadow government.

00:09:56.860 They are not looking to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

00:10:01.740 They are looking to overthrow the free market system.

00:10:06.700 Two, control the airwaves.

00:10:08.760 I don't think we even need to address that.

00:10:10.660 But let me just say this.

00:10:12.080 Have you noticed how if you speak out against George Soros, the media goes absolutely apoplectic?

00:10:20.100 You are immediately deemed an anti-Semite.

00:10:24.620 I have nothing, I've won the Defender of Israel award from ZOA, and it was presented by Benjamin Netanyahu.

00:10:36.880 So I don't think I'm an anti-Semite.

00:10:41.840 With that being said, because I talked to you about George Soros, I'm an anti-Semite.

00:10:49.180 No.

00:10:50.440 And I don't believe he was a Nazi.

00:10:52.560 I've never condemned him for what he did in World War II.

00:10:58.280 He, some people will claim he collaborated.

00:11:01.800 I don't think so.

00:11:03.220 I think he was just doing what he had to do to survive.

00:11:06.880 And I do not blame him for any of that, nor do I condemn him for that.

00:11:12.620 What I question is the fact that he never has dealt with it.

00:11:17.720 He never felt it was a problem at all.

00:11:20.640 I'm sorry, but you can't take land away from your fellow Jews while working with the Nazis and not feel something. 0.72

00:11:31.420 I'm not saying that you feel guilt or something, but you have to feel something.

00:11:35.440 He didn't.

00:11:36.180 That disturbs me greatly because it says something about him being able to bury feelings and deep, deep feelings.

00:11:45.340 So, control the airwaves.

00:11:49.720 He absolutely has a handle on that through the New Democratic Party.

00:11:55.620 Destabilize the state with a crisis.

00:11:58.380 Well, he helped fund Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street. 0.91

00:12:02.800 He has funded the riots in Berkeley.

00:12:06.260 I mean, look at what he's done.

00:12:08.580 And he is now funding the caravans.

00:12:11.320 That's really important to remember.

00:12:13.920 So, is he destabling the state with a crisis?

00:12:16.640 Yes, little by little.

00:12:18.780 Then, provoke an election crisis.

00:12:23.420 We were so close to an election crisis in the last three years or two years.

00:12:28.520 We have been told that this election was stolen, that this election wasn't legit, that this election was hacked by the Russians, and Donald Trump was part and parcel of that.

00:12:47.000 They wanted this election crisis so badly, that when it has been proven that Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians, they're disappointed.

00:12:59.720 They want it.

00:13:00.900 They need it to be true.

00:13:03.980 That's critical.

00:13:05.760 They need it to be true.

00:13:08.520 Why?

00:13:09.880 Because of number five.

00:13:11.700 Begin protests, have the streets start themselves on fire, and accuse fraud.

00:13:20.460 Now, look at what's happening.

00:13:22.280 Who gave the Russian dossier?

00:13:25.100 It was the Clinton people.

00:13:28.200 Hmm.

00:13:29.880 Who started Media Matters with George Soros?

00:13:35.460 Oh, that's right.

00:13:36.260 It was the Clintons.

00:13:37.420 Now, we're starting to see this big move about the Electoral College.

00:13:41.700 I have not checked into this, but I will bet you that big money is coming from George Soros on that front as well.

00:13:47.840 And when we talk about accuse fraud and begin protests, do I need to say anything more than the women's march that happened the weekend of inauguration?

00:14:00.200 What were they doing?

00:14:01.600 He wasn't a legitimate president.

00:14:03.520 So, George Soros has done what he said he would do.

00:14:09.720 This plays a role into what is happening on our border, and you have to understand it.

00:14:15.480 Now, let me give you one more chalkboard quick.

00:14:18.300 This is the one that I said every day the last year of Fox.

00:14:23.020 Every day.

00:14:24.300 There was a chalkboard that I said anarchists, Islamists, communists, and socialists would all work together.

00:14:30.940 Last night on the TV show, I pointed out the main problem with this.

00:14:37.160 There were two problems.

00:14:37.980 People said there would never be a caliphate.

00:14:39.800 That was a pipe dream or some sort of whiskey nightmare.

00:14:44.880 And they also said Islamists and socialists would never work together.

00:14:49.080 Well, I kind of took that apart last night.

00:14:53.280 Because what would you call AOC?

00:14:55.980 A socialist.

00:14:57.840 What is Alain Omar?

00:15:00.300 An Islamist. 0.99

00:15:01.860 They seem to be working together, don't they?

00:15:04.740 And what are those goals?

00:15:06.300 Work together against Israel. 0.73

00:15:09.220 Yeah, that's done.

00:15:11.020 Work together against capitalism.

00:15:13.540 That's done.

00:15:14.960 Work together to overturn stability.

00:15:17.840 That's done.

00:15:20.420 I said, this is at the time, that the protests that these guys were working together on in the Middle East would become contagious.

00:15:29.060 They would cascade.

00:15:30.360 They would sweep the Middle East and it would lead to a caliphate. 0.98

00:15:33.660 All of those things happen.

00:15:35.680 But here's what they miss.

00:15:38.420 It would then, the last part was, it would begin to destabilize Europe and the rest of the world.

00:15:43.660 Has Europe been destabilized?

00:15:48.440 Yes.

00:15:50.080 How has it been destabilized?

00:15:52.560 Because of the protests that became contagious, that cascaded, that swept the Middle East, that caused the caliphate. 0.87

00:16:00.220 All of those displaced people went someplace and they were all aided by people like George Soros and Hillary Clinton.

00:16:08.740 You've got to take them, Europe. 0.53

00:16:10.900 Without the caliphate, without the Middle East on fire, you wouldn't have had the mass migration, which would later then, as we now know, set the entire European continent on fire and lead to things like Brexit. 0.90

00:16:30.240 The last part of that is, it would then spread to the rest of the world.

00:16:38.640 That brings me to the border.

00:16:41.200 And I have information that is, you can look it up yourself.

00:16:46.540 Who is doing the caravan?

00:16:50.080 What is the real goal?

00:16:52.260 Is this spontaneous?

00:16:53.480 No, this is directly from what I said would happen.

00:17:00.100 It is happening.

00:17:01.420 And my research department has buttoned it up.

00:17:04.740 And I will give you those facts in one minute.

00:17:07.400 Okay, it is really important to understand that top-down, bottom-up, inside-out is a movement that must have people in the government coordinating with the people on the ground to turn a country inside-out.

00:17:28.900 Now, to tear it apart, it can be torn apart by accident, but to turn it inside-out, it has to have carefully laid plans.

00:17:37.520 So, last year, it was almost exactly a year ago that we started talking about the caravans.

00:17:43.440 At the time, I said, these caravans are what is coming.

00:17:49.720 Now, this is something that I have not told you, I think, until this week.

00:17:55.020 I've never said this on the air before.

00:17:57.440 But I believe there is a time that is coming, and Stu will tell you I've talked about this for probably 10 years, but I've never said it on the air.

00:18:06.100 I believe there is a time that is coming that our borders are going to be so overwhelmed, and people are going to be coming into our country, and it is going to change and become very ugly, and people are going to demand their land back. 1.00

00:18:20.820 People from Central and South America and Mexico are going to demand their land back, and they will kill farmers, and they will take that land. 1.00

00:18:35.260 Now, I hope to God that that never happens.

00:18:39.620 I haven't said that.

00:18:41.120 I've believed that for 10 years plus, but I've not said that because there was no indication that that kind of stuff would happen, except you have to extrapolate so much.

00:18:53.200 But you are now getting real anger, you're getting desperation, and a volatile situation to where you're starting to, you have people feeding people hatred.

00:19:06.960 Our open borders policy, the sanctuary cities, the migrant caravans, they are all designed to overload the system almost in a cloward and piven way. 1.00

00:19:19.220 And the president needs to understand and needs to fight this a different way.

00:19:24.540 His instincts are right.

00:19:26.140 He's fired everybody.

00:19:28.000 His instincts are right.

00:19:30.280 But I don't think he has anybody around him that can tell him what the root of the problem is.

00:19:36.920 You will never fix a broken arm with painkillers.

00:19:41.220 You have to fix the root of the problem.

00:19:44.780 The best of the Glenn Beck program.

00:19:55.320 Hey, it's Glenn, and I want to tell you about something that you should either end your day with or start your morning with, and that is the news and why it matters.

00:20:05.160 If you like this show, you're going to love the news and why it matters.

00:20:08.420 It's a bunch of us that all get together at the end of the day and just talk about the stories that matter to you and your life.

00:20:14.880 The news and why it matters.

00:20:16.020 Look for it now wherever you download your favorite podcasts.

00:20:18.520 Blake Harris, he's an author of a book, The History of the Future, Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution that Swept Virtual Reality.

00:20:27.580 You know, I am so fascinated by virtual reality because it is once you really experience great virtual reality, you see how powerful this is going to be.

00:20:42.020 I mean, I don't see people really leaving their house very much after virtual reality, quite honestly.

00:20:47.200 But the story of the guy who came up with Oculus has really been lost.

00:20:53.780 I didn't even know this, and it is a fascinating story.

00:20:57.280 Blake is here with us now.

00:20:58.380 Hi, Blake.

00:20:58.760 How are you?

00:20:59.940 Hey, I'm great.

00:21:00.880 Thank you so much for having me on, and I'm glad that you've tried good virtual reality and seen that it's going to change the future.

00:21:06.720 Oh, my gosh.

00:21:07.140 And I'm not sure, I mean, it's going to change it in good ways, and I also see us kind of ending up like, what was that Pixar movie where they're all big fat on a spaceship?

00:21:20.500 Oh, and WALL-E.

00:21:21.640 Yeah, WALL-E.

00:21:22.700 I mean, I can see us all kind of turning into that as well.

00:21:26.680 And we'll get into that here in a second.

00:21:28.180 Can you just tell us the story of Oculus and what happened and who first invented that and the story of this kid?

00:21:39.040 Sure.

00:21:39.820 So this all happened back in 2012, so seven years ago.

00:21:45.100 And, you know, for however much your listeners know about virtual reality now, back then, even less people knew or cared about it.

00:21:53.060 You know, essentially, back in 2012, virtual reality was a technological punchline along the lines of, you know, flying cars or jetpacks.

00:22:00.720 Correct.

00:22:01.160 The thing that was like, you know, a sci-fi trope that was maybe going to happen but never did, and it was simply that we ever thought it would.

00:22:07.480 And most people had just given up caring about it, thinking it would happen, except there was a young man out there, a guy named Palmer Luckey, which is a real name, even though it sounds kind of like a fictional character name that's perfect for my book.

00:22:20.620 And so this kid, this 19-year-old kid, Palmer Luckey, he was living in a trailer in Long Beach, California, and he was just obsessed with virtual reality.

00:22:31.040 He once described his trailer to me, and I said, Palmer, that basically sounds like the meth fan on Breaking Bad, except your trailer has been retrofitted to build virtual reality.

00:22:42.340 And so he said, yeah, that's pretty much exactly what it looked like.

00:22:44.460 And so imagine this little 19-year-old mad scientist building virtual reality headsets, and he basically, like, cracked the code that had eluded so many scientists and tech people and sci-fi lovers for years, and built this virtual reality headset called the Oculus Rift.

00:23:04.440 And, you know, I would say the rest is history, but the rest is a book, and the rest is this company, Oculus, that less than two years later, he sold the Facebook for over $2 billion.

00:23:16.220 And, you know, we're still in the early phases of virtual reality and where it's headed.

00:23:20.880 But, you know, you really got to admire the young man for having this ambition and this passion for this thing that we all thought was kind of silly back then.

00:23:27.940 Okay, so I was at Facebook right after they purchased this, and they were all excited.

00:23:34.340 It's coming, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming.

00:23:36.020 And then you don't hear anything about it, and we're still waiting for real good virtual reality.

00:23:42.700 What the hell happened?

00:23:45.700 Well, the Facebook, if at all, had a really big impact.

00:23:48.860 So back then, you know, a large part of Palmer's motivation was that he is and he was a gamer.

00:23:55.700 And so for him, he wanted to just step through the computer screen and actually enter a game and feel like it was all around him.

00:24:03.340 And so gaming was the initial focus.

00:24:05.960 You know, they did a Kickstarter campaign.

00:24:07.900 They raised, they thought they were going to try to raise $400,000.

00:24:10.960 They raised $3 million.

00:24:12.380 And, you know, their slogan was step into the game.

00:24:16.580 So it was all about gaming.

00:24:17.940 And then once they sold to Facebook, you know, Facebook's interest was not so much the gaming.

00:24:21.920 It was insert, whatever you want to describe, you know, social engineering or, you know, communication, whatever the case may be.

00:24:31.700 And so that's a big part of why it's stalled out for the past few years.

00:24:35.480 But they actually are releasing a headset called the Oculus Quest, which is going to be the most affordable and most technologically sophisticated headset that will cost $400.

00:24:45.980 And that comes out next month.

00:24:49.380 And then you have the big question that I keep getting asked by people is this is by far the best, most affordable headset.

00:24:55.400 But Facebook owns it.

00:24:56.640 And I don't trust them.

00:24:57.640 What should I do?

00:24:58.260 Should I buy it?

00:24:58.940 And I don't have a very good answer for that right now.

00:25:01.660 It's amazing how Facebook has just blown their trust.

00:25:07.120 Let me ask you something off topic and then I'll get back to the story.

00:25:09.620 Mark Zuckerberg keeps saying things like, you know what, we're going to come out with this product.

00:25:19.120 We're going to do this product.

00:25:20.220 And then that doesn't happen.

00:25:22.020 Is he even in control of his own company anymore?

00:25:26.620 I would say that he actually is absolutely in control of his own company.

00:25:30.360 Really? Okay.

00:25:30.740 More than any other CEO.

00:25:32.000 So, you know, Mark announced about a year and a half ago that he was doing, that he was going to give 99% of his money away to charity, which sounds a lot nicer and simpler than it actually is.

00:25:45.040 Not to say there's a nefarious plot behind it, but basically he still has the majority voting share because of how he structured the stock.

00:25:52.700 And I would say that Facebook is more like a dictatorship than any other Silicon Valley company that I've ever researched.

00:25:59.760 And I'm sure we'll get to it in terms of why Palmer ended up leaving Facebook against his will and the politics of it all.

00:26:08.700 But that was really all driven by Mark directly.

00:26:11.220 Yeah, because the politics of it are really interesting.

00:26:13.320 There's a Trump tie to the story and it's a fascinating one.

00:26:16.840 It's one we've heard many times in other industries.

00:26:20.160 It's fascinating that it is this level and you've never heard it.

00:26:26.460 We'll get to that.

00:26:27.360 Blake, we're going to take a one minute break and then we'll come back.

00:26:29.580 The name of the book that is laying this out is The History of the Future by Blake Harris.

00:26:34.660 We'll continue our conversation with him in just a second.

00:26:37.700 First.

00:26:50.300 Talking to Blake Harris, the book is The History of the Future.

00:26:52.900 I would also highly recommend his book Console Wars.

00:26:55.900 I mean, he's a great author.

00:26:57.160 Blake is with us.

00:26:58.380 And so far, Blake, really what you have here is a great American entrepreneurial story, right?

00:27:03.100 This kid who is in a trailer, he brings virtual reality from nothing to a $2 billion sale at Facebook.

00:27:10.740 You know, the technology is questionable about where it's going at this point with Facebook.

00:27:14.940 But the exit of the inventor of this is a fascinating story.

00:27:21.660 Yeah.

00:27:22.340 I mean, to me, I don't know how familiar you are with my writing, but everything I write, I always try to write with my grandmother in mind.

00:27:28.780 You know, how could I get her interested in this tech story?

00:27:30.700 How could I get her interested in Sega Nintendo?

00:27:32.280 And so to me, this was always just a story of the American dream in 2012, 2016, 2019, more so than it was about virtual reality.

00:27:40.980 And then the final third of the book becomes this other monstrosity, which I guess might actually be, you know, a good lens into the perversion of the American dream, just with how politics weighs into everything.

00:27:55.800 But I also just want to say, you know, you mentioned right before the break that it's sort of astonishing how much Facebook has burned our trust over the past few years.

00:28:06.440 And that's true for me.

00:28:08.580 You know, they gave me unprecedented, almost unlimited access.

00:28:12.660 So I had a pretty high opinion of them just for my own selfish reasons.

00:28:17.060 But what I came to discover during my research, before my access was eventually cut off because of what I discovered, was just really, really immoral and terrible.

00:28:29.080 And I should mention that, you know, I'm a lifelong liberal, not a fan at all of Trump.

00:28:35.100 So, you know, as we'll get into now, like what I found, you know, I certainly wasn't looking for a sympathetic Trump supporter story, but that's what I found.

00:28:46.300 Wow. OK, so tell us the story.

00:28:50.920 Sure. So in September of 2016, so this was like six weeks before the presidential election, there was an article that came out about Palmer Luckey, about the inventor of Oculus.

00:29:02.460 And the headline was Facebook billionaire secretly funding Trump's meme machine.

00:29:07.920 And the insinuation explicitly and implicitly was that, you know, every terrible meme that you've seen online for the past election season, everything misogynistic, anti-Semitic, hateful, etc., that Palmer was like running a troll factory and that he was the person behind it all.

00:29:25.040 And that just wasn't true at all.

00:29:28.580 The truth was that he made a slightly less than $10,000 donation to a political organization that was pro-Trump, that was planning to put up billboards across the country.

00:29:39.240 And that, you know, I always kind of wonder how people would react if they just had known the truth, because in Silicon Valley, they might have reacted just as badly.

00:29:47.980 But anyway, he's so unpopular in such a short amount of time, to the extent that, you know, one of my favorite publications, at least previously, Wired, you know, you'd think sort of an even-headed publication, non-intentionalistic.

00:30:03.620 Their headline in the midst of this was that Palmer Luckey is the worst.

00:30:09.000 That's it. Palmer Luckey is the worst.

00:30:10.920 And so there was this, you know, PR crisis, and naturally, you know, Palmer wanted to write a statement to set out what was true and what was not true about the media reports and to say that he was a Trump supporter, but that, you know, this trolling thing and all these other aspects were not true.

00:30:31.200 So he wrote a statement. This happened on a Thursday night. He was not allowed to post it. He was not allowed to say that he was a Trump supporter as it went up the flagpole at Facebook to the executive level, which I found, you know, initially hard to believe that that was actually the case.

00:30:47.220 But then I certainly believed it was the case because I was able to finally obtain the email records of it, and I learned that the reason that it took so long for him to post his eventual statement was that Mark Zuckerberg weighed in.

00:31:03.980 Mark Zuckerberg personally drafted the statement that Palmer had to post, and the statement that he drafted said that Palmer would be voting for Gary Johnson, so not Trump.

00:31:14.540 That was too unacceptable to say he was a Trump supporter, and so he had to post a statement saying that he supported Gary Johnson, written by Mark himself, and, you know, he did that in order to save his job.

00:31:26.760 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, but he wasn't voting for Gary Johnson.

00:31:31.820 Correct. That makes it illegal and unethical that he would be directed by the head of one of the most powerful organizations to say that he was supporting a politician that he wasn't.

00:31:43.440 Wow.

00:31:46.180 Yeah.

00:31:47.160 I couldn't believe it myself.

00:31:49.340 So, wait a minute.

00:31:50.420 So, how is it that a guy with $2 billion from Facebook doesn't sue Facebook for this?

00:32:00.740 Doesn't press charges?

00:32:01.960 Well, part of it was at the time, you know, I interviewed over 200 people for the book, and so I talked to some of the people that he confided to and asked for advice from about should he post a statement that was illegal and that he didn't agree with?

00:32:17.120 And their response was basically, yes, you know, you could sue Facebook and potentially win, but you wouldn't be at the company anymore, and it would take years.

00:32:25.800 And more than anything, Palmer wanted to remain at the company.

00:32:28.820 You know, it was his baby.

00:32:30.100 It was what he had done with most of his adult life.

00:32:33.000 Granted, it was a short adult life at that time.

00:32:35.180 You know, he was only 24.

00:32:36.340 But, yeah, I mean, he has a very strong case if he ever wants to pursue legal action.

00:32:44.760 I assume that he signed an NDA of some kind that prevents that when he was eventually fired.

00:32:52.600 But, yeah, he was eventually fired.

00:32:55.340 He basically, after he posted that statement, he was put on permanent vacation.

00:33:02.820 Facebook employees were told that Palmer wanted to take time off of work.

00:33:07.900 It was framed as Palmer's decision.

00:33:10.480 One of my favorite and saddest moments is Palmer's waiting to come back a couple weeks later, and he's, you know, participating in a town hall call by a conference, or actually not participating because he was not allowed to interact with anyone.

00:33:23.960 And he was listening, and he found out during this meeting that he had asked for six more weeks of vacation.

00:33:30.320 Okay, hang on, hang on, hang on.

00:33:33.340 I've got to take a break.

00:33:34.320 We'll come back.

00:33:35.820 This is nuts.

00:33:38.400 Behind the scenes, inside of Facebook and Palmer Luckey, the guy who invented Oculus and how he was forced out because he was a Trump supporter.

00:33:50.400 The name of the book is History of the Future.

00:33:53.620 We're talking to Blake Harris, who's really fascinating.

00:33:56.720 He's written a book called The History of the Future, Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution that Swept Virtual Reality.

00:34:05.040 But it is interesting to me that he is a liberal, doesn't necessarily like Donald Trump, and really liked Facebook going in, had unprecedented access.

00:34:16.560 And then when the inventor of Oculus, this entrepreneur, this, you know, 20-some-year-old kid, sells to Facebook and the election heats up, all of a sudden he is in trouble with Facebook.

00:34:37.480 And they force him to put out a deal that says he's not voting for Trump, he's voting libertarian, when that wasn't the truth.

00:34:45.440 He plays ball.

00:34:46.840 He's told to go take a vacation.

00:34:50.320 They frame it as he's decided to.

00:34:53.660 He's on a conference call, and he finds out that he had asked for even more vacation.

00:35:00.280 And you know what's coming at the end of this.

00:35:03.580 We pick it back up with Blake Harris, who, Blake, I have to tell you, I love people who, you know, I may disagree with, sometimes vehemently on things, but are open-minded enough to go, well, yeah, but this part is true, or this part is true.

00:35:21.680 And just let the chips fall where they may.

00:35:23.800 You're a very rare species.

00:35:26.180 I don't know if you know that.

00:35:28.460 No, thank you.

00:35:29.140 And unfortunately, I've come to realize that, or to believe that that is the case.

00:35:33.360 You know, my book was originally due to HarperCollins.

00:35:36.300 The manuscript was due in September of 2016, the same month that this all went down.

00:35:39.760 And I ended up spending an extra two years, you know, for no pay working on this thing, because this is a crazy story.

00:35:46.400 And you mentioned earlier that, you know, you hadn't really heard about this.

00:35:50.380 And it sounds kind of bonkers, because, you know, every other Facebook scandal to date, Mark Zuckerberg is not directly involved in.

00:35:58.380 He could always sort of throw up his arms and say, oh, I didn't know, or, you know, that was some other person's fault.

00:36:03.400 But he is the one who personally wrote this statement, which was just bad for him to even put that in email.

00:36:10.720 And, you know, you're like, how is this not national news?

00:36:16.260 How is this not breaking news?

00:36:17.440 But then I talked to other journalists, and I understand why, you know, these are journalists I know under the context of they read my first book about Sega Nintendo and loved it.

00:36:28.740 So, you know, I think they have a somewhat positive opinion of me.

00:36:31.700 And I reached out to a lot of them to tell them that they had the story wrong.

00:36:35.940 And, you know, I offered to send them evidence.

00:36:38.880 I told them I was the only person who actually interviewed all the participants in this and had all the archival information.

00:36:43.460 And they basically said, yeah, but who cares?

00:36:46.080 He's a Trump supporter.

00:36:46.960 So maybe it's inaccurate.

00:36:49.240 Jeez.

00:36:50.920 And, you know, if I had told that to my mom and she said that, I still would be kind of bummed that she didn't care about what was true and what was not.

00:36:58.700 But these are journalists.

00:37:00.080 This is their job.

00:37:01.220 And then when I told them, you know, not only was the reporting about Palmer wrong, but the reason he was fired was for political discrimination, they almost left my faith to say, yeah, but that's not the kind of discrimination I care about.

00:37:15.640 And, yeah, political discrimination is perhaps probably, you know, less of a persistent issue than other forms of discrimination.

00:37:23.500 But when it happens, it's still bad.

00:37:25.420 We can all agree upon that, I thought.

00:37:28.220 No, apparently not.

00:37:29.260 So are you finding anyone starting to wake up, Blake?

00:37:34.660 Is there anyone?

00:37:35.420 Because, I mean, I know on the right, I have found a few people that are, in fact, several, that are like, I'm out.

00:37:46.700 I'm done with this.

00:37:47.640 I'll call balls and strikes and, you know, my side screws up.

00:37:51.860 I don't care. 0.97

00:37:52.800 I will say that they're screwed up here because this is insane. 0.96

00:37:56.620 Are you finding anybody that is starting to open their eyes to what is being created? 0.96

00:38:02.880 Unfortunately, less than you'd expect.

00:38:07.080 You know, being a liberal and existing in probably some sort of, you know, liberal bubble, election day was a wake-up call for me.

00:38:15.460 You know, I was very upset, but my thought was, okay, you know, the voice of half the country, the majority, the electoral college has spoken.

00:38:23.960 I should actually listen to them because I find Trump repugnant, but they don't, and they are my fellow citizens.

00:38:31.680 Let me figure out what I'm missing, and I tried to do that.

00:38:34.920 And I feel like for the 24 hours after the election, a lot of other liberals were in a similar boat of, you know, we've got to talk to the other side. 0.99

00:38:41.360 And then they instead decided to just double down and say, no, no, no, these people are just stupid or they don't understand that they're voting against their self-interest or whatever. 0.96

00:38:51.380 And so you would have thought that more people would be waking up and just want to call balls and strikes and say, all right, I don't like Trump or I don't agree with his approach on this, but I actually think a strategy here was a good one. 0.98

00:39:03.740 And that's not the case.

00:39:06.140 Like, you know, you mentioned right before you had me on that your show from last night was now on YouTube talking about the border in a nonpolitical way.

00:39:14.780 And I found myself almost laughing because on the left, there's no such thing as nonpolitical.

00:39:20.500 Specifically in Silicon Valley, you know, there was a story last week that two weeks ago, Google had put together an ethics board for artificial intelligence.

00:39:28.460 This is crazy.

00:39:29.180 That sounds like a pretty good idea.

00:39:30.380 Yeah, really good.

00:39:31.340 Within less than a week later, it was disbanded because there was so much outrage internally at Google because one of the participants was a conservative.

00:39:39.720 Yeah, the Heritage Foundation, which is not the Heritage Foundation.

00:39:44.840 You've got to be kidding me.

00:39:46.100 That's a radical group to them?

00:39:49.640 Exactly.

00:39:50.260 And that's really what I found in so many ways.

00:39:53.200 And it seeps into so much of what Facebook does as a company internally and also externally in the product.

00:39:58.300 It's like this idea that, yeah, all opinions, all political opinions are equal, but then there's animals aren't best ways.

00:40:04.540 It's like, yeah, but some are more equal than others.

00:40:06.080 And, you know, every conservative perspective is, it's not just another opinion.

00:40:13.560 It's not a different way of looking at things.

00:40:15.060 It's not, they might be right, I might be right.

00:40:17.120 It's just a value judgment.

00:40:19.100 You know, if you do it one by one, it's all wrong.

00:40:21.560 It's all harmful.

00:40:22.560 It's all, it needs to be fought against, which is kind of crazy.

00:40:26.060 Does it concern you that the people like this, or Zuckerberg, a guy who you went in admiring, the power that they have, and now the growing collusion or partnering with the United States government, does that keep you up at night?

00:40:49.160 It does.

00:40:51.600 I haven't slept very well, Glenn.

00:40:52.900 I haven't slept very well.

00:40:54.040 No, it does.

00:40:55.060 Yeah, I mean, I think you see now that people, you know, Facebook is no longer the tech darlings, you know, maybe connecting in the world didn't turn out to be the best idea.

00:41:04.380 Now people are starting to look into Facebook and discover these scandals.

00:41:08.180 A lot of times there's things that happened years ago.

00:41:10.120 So, and it's not surprising that these things happen.

00:41:14.560 It's such a sloppy company, and they don't, like, I guess one of the first ways that I really realized that what I was uncovering actually fit with the culture there was, you know, one of their top executives who had been there since the beginning, he would routinely share stories during the election season, like, there's no such thing as a good Trump supporter.

00:41:38.420 Well, I mean, there's Trump supporters of Facebook, and they learned pretty quickly not to talk about it.

00:41:45.240 In fact, you know, the Palmer one is kind of interesting because four months before, you know, he was outed as a Trump supporter, as the worst person, you know, part of the issue was that he made his donation for $10,000 anonymously.

00:41:59.440 And four months earlier, he had been at a Trump rally and been willing to appear on camera at a Trump rally.

00:42:07.560 You know, like, he seemed to have no issue with being associated with Trump.

00:42:09.860 But then in between what happened was Peter Thiel was revealed to be a Trump supporter.

00:42:15.700 Everyone at Facebook, not everyone, a lot of people at Facebook tried to get him fired off the board for that reason alone.

00:42:21.020 And not just employees, but Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, who was also a board member, believed that that demonstrated enough bad judgment that Peter should not be on the board.

00:42:30.560 And so Palmer realized, oh, I should probably not be vocal about my support.

00:42:35.840 And that was probably wise, because when it was revealed that he was a Trump supporter, he didn't end up at the company anymore.

00:42:42.000 Blake, two more for me.

00:42:44.800 First of all, you know, the idea that every there's no such thing as a good Trump supporter was pretty widespread at this time, particularly in the media and through a lot of these tech companies.

00:42:54.340 And obviously, that's, you know, a completely unfair thing.

00:42:58.240 However, at that time, there was a lot of really bad stuff on the Internet that was associated with Trump supporters.

00:43:04.000 Was there any evidence that Palmer Luckey participated in anything really bad when it comes to, you know, some of the darkest sides of that election?

00:43:15.020 Absolutely not.

00:43:16.040 And I have essentially staked my career on this.

00:43:19.480 So, you know, like I said, I spent an extra two years on this.

00:43:22.760 I didn't just willy nilly decide, oh, no, he's a good guy or he didn't do anything wrong.

00:43:26.800 Like, I looked very deeply into his online activities and spent, I think, 20 hours interviewing the founder of the organization that he donated to because, you know, it was alleged that these were white supremacists.

00:43:39.700 And I didn't want to just have one phone call because, you know, who knows, maybe he was lying to me to try to protect his image.

00:43:46.360 But, like, I've spoken to Palmer almost every day for the past three years.

00:43:51.740 I've spent years looking into all this stuff.

00:43:55.680 There is no evidence of any wrongdoing.

00:43:58.500 And I would bet my life that he did not do anything, like, that we would consider beyond the pale or, you know, unacceptable.

00:44:07.520 Wow.

00:44:08.060 And the last one, Blake, is you mentioned it about your career.

00:44:12.020 Do you have one after this book?

00:44:14.340 Because not only are you fighting for a Trump supporter, which is not something you're supposed to be doing,

00:44:19.320 but also, you know, you got access to Facebook.

00:44:23.100 You were able to get an incredibly detailed account because of that access.

00:44:26.900 And now you've, you know, because you're being honest here, you know, they are no longer going to be fans of yours.

00:44:32.500 People in the future are going to be hesitant to give you access to the next thing.

00:44:37.140 Yep.

00:44:39.420 That's pretty much what I expect to happen.

00:44:41.820 But, you know, the only thing I published while I was sort of undercover in Facebook for these past couple of years was an article called This Is How Fake News Happens.

00:44:53.000 And it was all publicly available information.

00:44:55.100 I wanted everyone to just be able to see here's what we – here's what actually happened, and here's how it was reported,

00:45:00.940 and here's how this crazy game of telephone happened to make it even worse.

00:45:04.860 And the response to that, you know, was like 50% of people saying, oh, thank you for pointing out that the media messed up here with Palmer.

00:45:11.920 And then 50% of people calling me a Nazi, even though I was happily bar mitzvahed. 0.88

00:45:17.140 I think that's weird I'd be a Nazi.

00:45:18.840 It's a strange choice.

00:45:20.520 I got the Defender of Israel award from Benjamin Netanyahu, and I also am anti-Semitic somehow or another.

00:45:25.900 Yeah, exactly.

00:45:27.140 And so, you know, people call me Nazi, white supremacist, whatever, complicit, blah, blah, blah.

00:45:32.380 And that was the reaction I kind of expected, but instead what happened is that it's been almost 100% positive.

00:45:39.040 And then there's just been silence from, like, you know, my first book won, like, gaming awards,

00:45:45.340 and I was named, like, a gaming personality of the year.

00:45:48.420 And as of now, the book's been out for a month or so, and there has been zero coverage of it on any tech or gaming mainstream website.

00:45:57.380 Wow.

00:45:57.740 Wow.

00:45:58.300 Are you kidding me?

00:45:59.280 That is incredible.

00:46:00.580 Yeah, well, I'm surprised there's not more pickup, too, from conservative media on it because, I mean,

00:46:04.840 Here's the thing.

00:46:05.480 That was not your goal, but, I mean, it's a really big story.

00:46:08.340 Here is the thing.

00:46:09.080 This is an amazing book.

00:46:10.200 I already own a book.

00:46:11.500 I'm holding a copy of it, but this I got from the publisher.

00:46:17.360 Let me just show this so you know that I'm telling you the truth.

00:46:19.920 I just ordered another copy on Amazon because I want to support you.

00:46:25.740 You and I probably disagree politically on, I don't know, 90% of stuff.

00:46:31.500 It doesn't matter.

00:46:33.140 We have to have people who are willing to open their eyes and see the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

00:46:40.460 I ask every member of this audience, if you have Kindle, it'll cost you $14.

00:46:45.540 I don't know how much it is as a hardbound, but buy this book.

00:46:51.760 A, it's a great book.

00:46:53.020 You're going to really enjoy it.

00:46:54.240 It's an unbelievable story.

00:46:55.840 But you're also supporting somebody who needs the support, somebody who doesn't agree with you but is willing to tell the truth.

00:47:04.900 We have to reward those people on both sides that are trying to do their best.

00:47:11.280 Blake, I really admire you, and I hope that we can meet.

00:47:16.180 I'd love to have you on for a podcast, but I really admire you, and congratulations.

00:47:22.220 Thank you, and let us know any way we can help you.

00:47:24.200 Thank you so much.

00:47:25.860 I really appreciate it.

00:47:26.880 You bet.

00:47:27.900 Take care.

00:47:28.780 You bet.

00:47:29.420 Blake Harris, the history of the future, the history of the future.

00:47:34.140 That is a crazy story.

00:47:36.860 How is that not a bigger deal?

00:47:37.980 And on conservative media, for example, how is that?

00:47:42.140 I mean, the guy invented something that's game-changing.

00:47:45.620 Facebook buys it for $2 billion, and he gets forced out because he went to a Trump rally, and that is not everywhere?

00:47:51.700 How am I not seeing that on Twitter?

00:47:53.180 I'm seeing this about people.

00:47:54.200 I saw four stories today about people harassing people in a Trump hat.

00:47:57.940 Yeah.

00:47:58.140 This is a guy.

00:47:59.020 This is way bigger than.

00:47:59.760 This is gigantic.

00:48:02.300 This is illegal, as Blake said.

00:48:04.340 Yeah.

00:48:04.480 This is illegal, what they did.

00:48:07.860 And nothing?

00:48:10.360 Nothing?

00:48:11.040 Wow.

00:48:11.660 This book, if you are a fan of other shows on the right, urge them to have Blake on to tell this story.

00:48:20.300 This is a very important story.

00:48:22.620 This tells you everything you need to know about Silicon Valley.

00:48:26.060 Listen to this guy.

00:48:26.900 He's not on our side.

00:48:29.360 He's a liberal.

00:48:31.420 But he was disgusted by what he saw.

00:48:35.180 And he's telling the truth.

00:48:37.560 We have to help him get the word out.

00:48:39.860 Please buy this book, The History of the Future.

00:48:43.000 I'd love to see this go up.

00:48:46.580 I don't even know where it is on the charts.

00:48:48.680 It's probably nowhere on the charts.

00:48:51.460 Let's help him.

00:48:53.380 The History of the Future by Blake Harris.

00:48:56.280 This is the best of the Glenn Beck Program.

00:49:12.160 During the State of the Union, Donald Trump introduced a guy named Matthew Charles.

00:49:16.680 He was one of the first people released under the First Step Act.

00:49:19.180 And he has an amazing story.

00:49:21.300 He was arrested for selling crack cocaine, and he spent 21 years in prison on a 35-year prison sentence.

00:49:29.720 He was released in 2016.

00:49:32.300 He walks out of prison with nothing, but he changes his life.

00:49:37.140 And he had never had any infractions, any write-ups at all in prison.

00:49:41.240 He was a model citizen.

00:49:42.840 He had turned his life over to Christ.

00:49:44.780 He goes out, and he starts immediately getting involved in his community, in his church.

00:49:51.300 Then he finds out, in May of 2018, two years later, that was a mistake.

00:49:58.220 You have to go back and serve the remaining decade back in prison.

00:50:03.640 He doesn't throw a fit.

00:50:05.860 He goes back.

00:50:07.960 He goes back.

00:50:09.920 He was one of the first released on the new criminal justice reform, and we're thrilled to have him.

00:50:17.560 Matthew, welcome to the program.

00:50:19.160 How are you, sir?

00:50:19.700 Is Matthew there?

00:50:24.100 Yes, I am.

00:50:24.880 Hi.

00:50:25.220 How are you, sir?

00:50:26.500 How are you doing, sir?

00:50:27.460 I'm doing okay.

00:50:28.500 I'm great.

00:50:29.740 It is great to talk to you.

00:50:32.560 I remember when they sent you back, and I read that story, and I thought, how is this happening?

00:50:39.220 First of all, the guy's turned into a model citizen, and how is he dealing with that?

00:50:44.120 When you heard you had to go back and serve 10 years, what was that like?

00:50:50.160 I was disappointed, a little bit discouraged, because at the time I had already served nearly 22 years and had been out for two years, and because the government had appealed it and successfully won, I was being sent back.

00:51:06.240 And the fact that they couldn't take into account any rehabilitation that had taken place within me during that period caused me to be very disappointed and discouraged.

00:51:16.420 Now, why couldn't they take into account anything that you had done and anything that you had become?

00:51:21.360 Because at the time, there was no actually incentives for rehabilitation.

00:51:27.960 It was just about incapacitation, where you take a person out of society for a particular period of time, and then when that time is up, whether they're changed or not, you release them.

00:51:38.260 And because I was released, based on the changes made to the 2010 sentencing guidelines, they had not been made retroactive to me, so therefore I was still required to serve 85% of my sentence.

00:51:49.720 Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. So, Matthew, you got back into prison, and how long were you in prison before this prison justice reform happened?

00:52:02.680 It took seven months. I went back May 14th and was released January 3rd.

00:52:08.320 And how did you find out about, you know, when you were released? Where were you? What happened?

00:52:12.820 I was in Kentucky at a holding facility waiting to go back to federal prison to serve that remaining 10 years.

00:52:21.520 And during the time that I was rearrested, I was being held in Kentucky.

00:52:26.560 And at the time, the inmates there were speaking about the First Step Act, and they were talking about the different incentives that it had,

00:52:35.060 as well as the discretion that the judges had in their own courtrooms to go below the mandatory minimums.

00:52:40.900 But I didn't know that it was going to actually affect me until late November, early December,

00:52:46.900 when I seen that one of the provisions was that it made retroactive the changes to the 2010 sentencing guidelines.

00:52:54.860 And so did you apply for it? Did somebody else apply?

00:52:58.380 The Public Defender's Office in Nashville, Tennessee, Mr. Michael Holley and Ms. Mariah Wooten,

00:53:05.500 because they were already appealing my reincarceration, they had already had petitions before the court.

00:53:13.020 So once President Donald Trump signed it December the 21st and it became applicable after his signature,

00:53:20.260 they just went on to file the motion to the district court since they were already doing filings on my behalf,

00:53:25.980 asking them to release me based on the First Step Act.

00:53:29.820 So, Matthew, I mean, I'd like to hear you talk about the—I was sitting in the chamber during the State of the Union.

00:53:39.760 First of all, how did you get there? Did the president call you? How did you end up at the State of the Union?

00:53:46.900 It would have been nice to get a call directly from the president, but I had actually been invited by his staff via email.

00:53:55.300 I was invited twice. I was invited to the first one, but it didn't take place because there was a government shutdown.

00:54:00.340 And the second time, they re-invited me. And once I went there, I was able to go to the White House and meet him

00:54:07.820 prior to going over to the State of the Union at Congress. So it was an experience,

00:54:14.460 but I had actually got the invite from his staff on his wife, Melania Trump's behalf.

00:54:19.740 So now you are—you're sitting there. The president speaks about you. We all stand up and give you a standing ovation.

00:54:30.800 What was that moment like to a guy who had spent 21 years in prison, nobody was thinking of?

00:54:40.880 You are—you're released, then you're pulled back, and the system is just grinding you down.

00:54:46.600 What was that moment like to have the president tell your story, have you stand up, and every—you know,

00:54:56.400 the members of Congress and the Senate and the White House, the justices, everybody standing up, giving you a round of applause?

00:55:08.140 It was a moment that would never be forgotten by me. It was like I was in awe.

00:55:12.840 The only thing, as you was expressing those words, the picture that came to my mind was like a cartoon character

00:55:19.340 where the roof of the head of the character just takes off and shoots toward the sky because it was, like, unbelievable.

00:55:26.720 So for me, it just felt like that. It was pleasantly overwhelming. I was like, wow, just completely amazed.

00:55:33.380 Never thought in a million years that I would be at the State of the Union,

00:55:36.880 let alone having President Trump to actually speak about that and state welcome home to me.

00:55:42.860 I will tell you that what it said to me as I was watching you stand there and in the same room with you.

00:55:53.320 As I'm watching that, I thought, this is what the American justice system should be.

00:55:59.820 The guy, you know, committed a crime.

00:56:04.240 He not only paid for it, but he went and he was reformed and he found redemption and he found his way.

00:56:12.240 And he's now welcomed back into society with open arms with the President of the United States saying,

00:56:23.140 welcome back. Welcome back home.

00:56:25.360 Yes, sir.

00:56:25.780 Tell me about the pastor. Tell me about your conversion from, you know,

00:56:33.940 guy that belonged in prison to guy that didn't belong in prison.

00:56:39.360 What it took place was I got arrested in December of 1995 for selling crack cocaine.

00:56:46.440 And once I was arrested and taken to the county jail, I was just there awaiting pretrial and sentencing.

00:56:53.580 But there was a guy there named Jesus Duran who actually had got his sentence and was being transported out.

00:57:00.740 So he had left me some hygiene items, you know, soap, deodorant, toothpaste.

00:57:06.120 And he also left me a Bible and it was a Brown Gideon's King James Bible. 0.77

00:57:11.340 So I didn't even know he had it because we spoke about religion or anything of that nature.

00:57:15.360 So I accepted the gifts that he gave me and he left, but I started reading the Bible.

00:57:20.760 And through reading the Bible, it started coming, I guess, to reality and awakened my spiritual side of me.

00:57:28.080 And I started attending Bible study classes at the county jail.

00:57:32.260 And the preacher would come in and do the Bible study and they often left tracks on how to receive salvation.

00:57:37.820 So I took one of the tracks and I continued to read that Bible in my own time because, you know, in the county jail, you got a lot of time on your hands.

00:57:45.100 So therefore, that led me to stating the words that were on the track, then going to the Bible study classes and openly profess my faith before them as well.

00:57:56.680 And that decision that I made in February of 1996, I want to say two months after I was arrested and placed in the county jail, changed my life forever.

00:58:06.400 But you still had you still had 21 years before you would see the light of day.

00:58:13.200 And when you get out, it's hard for somebody like you to get a job and to acclimate.

00:58:19.580 How did you stay the path?

00:58:22.820 It was because of my faith in Christ.

00:58:24.780 Once I made that decision to surrender my life and heart over to the Lord Jesus Christ, I had, I would say, all of God's help as all of God's children knew.

00:58:33.220 So therefore, with God's help, I was able to make the right decisions.

00:58:38.280 I was able to be guided and protected by God during that time of my incarceration, because at that time, I didn't know I was going to serve 21 or 22 years.

00:58:47.820 I was expected to serve 31 or 32 years because I had a 35-year sentence.

00:58:52.400 Matthew, you know, this is such an amazing story.

00:58:58.200 And, you know, in the middle of kind of this, you know, somewhat divisive time that we're in, and it's hard to find the path forward.

00:59:04.760 Glenn, you've been talking about this forever.

00:59:06.300 There's only really one solution to this.

00:59:09.460 Yeah.

00:59:09.640 I mean, you look at the world what it was in 1995.

00:59:13.180 It's a different America, isn't it, Matthew?

00:59:16.380 Oh, yes, it is.

00:59:17.280 Very much so.

00:59:17.980 And we've been looking for solutions.

00:59:21.680 We keep going back and forth, and the only thing I can think of is that we've got to turn back to God.

00:59:26.400 And it seems so trite.

00:59:28.840 It seems so simple.

00:59:30.420 It's so simple people will dismiss it, but it's the only answer that will save us, because we have to return to the principles of just be decent to each other.

00:59:43.840 Just be good to each other.

00:59:45.280 Just let's not lie.

00:59:46.880 Let's not cheat.

00:59:47.780 Let's not steal.

00:59:50.740 And that's correct, because through, like I said, through the Bible, through being a Christian and the experience itself, it shows us how to love one another as well as respect one another.

01:00:00.940 And as you stated, there is a difference aside than 1995.

01:00:05.440 There's a lot of divisiveness and things of that nature.

01:00:08.460 So I would say that the only thing that's really going to bring true harmony and peace is once everyone or someone surrenders themselves over to the Lord.

01:00:18.640 Matthew, you were the beneficiary of a very rare bipartisan moment as you were able to get out because of what President Trump and Jared Kushner in particular fought very hard for as long as Van Jones.

01:00:29.680 I mean, it's really an amazing story.

01:00:32.440 What do you think the next step?

01:00:33.660 Is there more that needs to be done in this area of criminal justice reform?

01:00:36.620 Oh, yes, sir.

01:00:38.220 There's a lot more that needs to be done because there are still those that are incarcerated that the First Step Act won't even affect because they've already done served the same amount of time I have or a little bit less than that.

01:00:49.780 But they still have the extensive sentence that they receive under the harsher penal system, whereas the sentence or the punishment is not equivalent or in proportion to the crime they actually committed.

01:01:01.480 So there's the things that we need to do to be able to reach forth and help those people who have also changed and want a second chance.

01:01:08.260 And then also those that are now coming into getting in trouble and going through the court system and in the prison, we need to see what type of treatments are divergent to incarceration.

01:01:20.800 Maybe they may have a mental illness or a drug addiction where they need treatment and medicine for as opposed to just incarcerating them.

01:01:29.220 What do you think the percentage is of people that are in the prison system that are just mentally unwell?

01:01:35.940 They're just this is this is a mental illness.

01:01:39.140 I would say anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of those because. 0.69

01:01:43.340 Oh, my God.

01:01:44.000 Yeah.

01:01:44.880 And it's sad to see them there because it's like they're in a completely different world, but yet they're placed in the same, sometimes violent atmosphere like the violent inmates are or the regular inmates are.

01:01:58.520 And then because they have those mental problems, they really are not able to cope and they either get they either get hurt or hurt somebody.

01:02:08.300 And at the time, there was no separate place to put these people.

01:02:12.180 They committed a crime.

01:02:13.760 They need to pay for the crime they committed.

01:02:16.080 So the only thing that was available at the time was giving them a sentence and putting them in prison with everybody else.

01:02:21.820 Wow.

01:02:22.500 Wow.

01:02:23.080 Matthew, thank you so much.

01:02:24.560 God bless you.

01:02:25.340 And I'm glad you're out.

01:02:27.500 And as the president said, welcome home.

01:02:31.200 OK, thank you.

01:02:32.120 And I appreciate it.

01:02:33.160 And God bless you as well.

01:02:34.680 God bless you.

01:02:35.500 Matthew Charles.

01:02:38.860 It's a good way to add some lightness to your day.

01:02:43.300 The Blaze Radio Network.

01:02:47.880 On demand.

The Glenn Beck Program - April 10, 2019

Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Blake J. Harris & Matthew Charles ｜ 4⧸10⧸19

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