The Virginia Gun Rights Rally is happening Monday in Richmond, VA and there's a lot more to it than that. I talk to Cam Edwards about it, Bill O'Reilly on the show, John Solomon gives us an update on the Ukraine scandal, and a really cool podcast happening tomorrow on the Glenn Beck Podcast where we get the behind the scenes of the 20th anniversary of The Glenn Beck Radio Program.
00:00:00.000Hello, America. Mark. It's Friday, and we start our first Friday story about something that's happening Monday in Virginia, the upcoming Virginia gun rights rally. It's really much more than that. I talked to Cam Edwards about it. Also, Bill O'Reilly on the show. His his look at the news of the week. John Solomon was here to give us an update on the Ukraine scandal and a really cool podcast happening tomorrow.
00:00:28.680We played a couple of clips from it tomorrow on the Glenn Beck podcast. You're going to get the behind the scenes of the 20th anniversary of the Glenn Beck radio program from Stu being the promotions monkey to an intern to executive producer of the third most listened to show in America.
00:00:48.640It's it's quite remarkable that we've never taken the time in 20 years and sat down and just said, hey, you remember this? What were you thinking when this happened? And that's what we do on tomorrow's podcast. It's fascinating. If you're a fan of the show.
00:01:04.800Yeah, make sure you subscribe if you're subscribed here already. If you're not, make sure you do subscribe because you get all the podcasts every week when you have a new interview every single week. And while you're here on your podcast, hop over to Stu does America and please subscribe there as well. The show is coming up pretty soon and you get all the episodes for free right here. Right. So sign up for Stu's show and complete, complete your journey to the dark side. Here's today's podcast.
00:01:34.800All right. We have Cam Edwards on. He's the host of Bearing Arms, Cam and Company, and also the coast of 40 Acres and a Fool that you can find on Blaze TV. Cam, Virginia, I think, is a
00:02:04.800I don't know a proving ground of something and both the left and the right have something to prove. The right is looking for their constitutional rights to be protected by the government and they are being they're being disenfranchised.
00:02:22.800And everybody I've talked to in Virginia says the same thing. It's our fault. The Republicans didn't get out the vote and the Republicans screwed things up. And so this is our fault.
00:02:34.940However, there's a power grab going in and they've done three, done three things. The Electoral College. They're basically abolishing it.
00:02:45.760You know, once the Democrats got power, then they've changed the rules on impeachment for the governor. It used to be 10 percent of the population needed to sign, you know, sign a petition.
00:02:58.180And then they would go forward with an impeachment. But now, strangely, for some unknown reason, they move that number up to 25 percent of the population and they're going after guns in every way they can.
00:03:11.760This is shaking the constitutionalists in Virginia. Am I missing anything on this?
00:03:21.760No, I think you've you've hit it, Glenn. I mean, I think that one of the reasons why you're seeing this incredible outpouring on the part of gun owners in Virginia is because, you know, when Republicans were in charge of the state, I've heard a lot of people say, you know, we never did anything like this.
00:03:37.000And so there are a lot of Virginians who are I think they were perplexed. Now they're angry at how the Democrats want to fundamentally remake this state based on, you know, ultimately a fairly narrow victory in the November elections.
00:03:55.640A swing of, you know, 10,000 votes across the entire state and some of these legislative races would have completely changed the outcome of this election.
00:04:03.740But Democrats are acting as if they have this incredible mandate majority behind them.
00:04:08.740And and they are trying to turn Virginia into East California or South New York.
00:04:14.840And Virginia gun owners are speaking up and standing up in opposition.
00:04:18.900So, Kim, is it just gun owners or is it are there people there that are seeing this government in Virginia have a true power grab and they're looking at their constitutional rights of the Second Amendment?
00:04:37.860As you know, according to the Declaration of Independence, government is established by man to protect those rights.
00:04:46.620And when it starts to, you know, be the the main problem with those rights, the people have a right and a responsibility to alter or abolish it.
00:04:57.940And the only way you abolish it or alter it, there's two ways, election and God forbid, the last way to do it is with your Second Amendment right.
00:05:09.500So what is is is this is this just about the gun or is this about a power grab?
00:05:19.540I think it very much started out being about guns and and the the Second Amendment issue and the gun control agenda from Ralph Northam has sucked up a lot of the oxygen in the room.
00:05:29.980But now that the legislative session has started, you're right.
00:05:33.480There are more people who are waking up to some of the other really, truly awful bills that are being proposed here in Virginia.
00:05:39.460And they do see this, I think, as as a broader power grab.
00:05:43.400So I think that the spark were those Virginia gun owners, the Second Amendment sanctuary committees that you and I have talked about in the past.
00:05:52.120But but now it is, I think, becoming a broader opposition to the entire agenda of the Democrats that are now in control in Virginia.
00:06:01.420So I had a guest on yesterday that said to me that I think he said 90 out of 95 counties or 90 out of 95 cities, something along that have gone against and said we are going to be a sanctuary city.
00:06:24.400I believe it's 91 out of the 95 counties in Virginia.
00:06:29.300And then we have over 40 cities and towns that have also passed these resolutions.
00:06:35.720I think, you know, across the entire state, I think we're up to 136 communities, the vast majority of which are counties, but also include some of the state's biggest cities, Glenn.
00:06:46.960They've both passed the Second Amendment resolution.
00:06:49.180So this isn't even just a rural versus urban thing.
00:06:52.420This is, you know, the vast majority of the land area.
00:06:57.560And I believe now we're up to, like, you know, 60 percent of the population of Virginia now lives in a Second Amendment sanctuary community.
00:07:04.060So this is a much broader movement, I think, than most of the media is giving it credit for.
00:07:11.920What part of the population is giving it credit for, like, you know, 60 percent of the population of Virginia now lives in the United States in the United States in the United States?
00:07:29.060I don't remember when I said that in the United States in the United States in the United States in the United States in the United States in the United States?
00:08:03.840I mean, I'd say we're looking at close to a quarter, maybe a little bit more.
00:08:07.600Fairfax County, Virginia alone has nearly two million residents.
00:08:11.600Arlington County, Virginia, which is one county over closer to D.C., they've got nearly a million residents.
00:08:17.720Prince William County, which is just to the south, they've got about 800,000 residents.
00:08:21.820And so it is a really big chunk of the state's population.
00:08:24.960So if those numbers are true, you're talking about 30 percent of the population, and you said 60 percent of the population is now in a sanctuary county or city.
00:08:39.420And, you know, it's remarkable that 30 percent of the population is, you know, tyranny of the minority.
00:08:48.180Exactly. And so, you know, what's fascinating, Glenn, is that, you know, you talk about elections and using the ballot box, and I've never seen voters as engaged as they are right now.
00:09:00.560I think that this could have a huge impact in 2020.
00:09:02.520But I'm also seeing some really unique suggestions.
00:09:07.420There's actually a group of lawmakers in West Virginia that are proposing to allow counties in Virginia to be annexed by the state of West Virginia.
00:09:15.880And I talked with a delegate, Gary Howell, in West Virginia yesterday, and they're serious about this.
00:09:19.780They said, look, there's no reason why these counties in Virginia should be subjected to the whims of the minority in Northern Virginia.
00:09:26.020They have much more in common with West Virginia. Let's let them leave peacefully if they if they can, if the General Assembly will allow it.
00:09:33.680So you actually have other lawmakers in other states trying to, you know, diffuse the tensions here by by changing the borders of the state.
00:09:42.840That's insane. I mean, this this hasn't been talked about for, you know, since the Civil War, we haven't talked about these kinds of things.
00:09:51.440It's insane what's going on. And the left, you know, the left knows there there are two things that could lead to civil war.
00:10:01.020According to a study by the by the Democrats, there are two things that could lead to a violent civil war.
00:10:07.880One, the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump before the election to taking away the the Second Amendment
00:10:19.400and taking away people's right to bear arms. They're doing both of those and they're doing it full throttle.
00:10:28.200Well, I don't I mean, it's it's almost intentional.
00:10:33.040I I've had those same concerns and I've been so bitterly disappointed in our governor.
00:10:39.720But I got to tell you, you know, he came out and talked about the need for a civil conversation.
00:10:44.100And let's have this fact based discussion. I reached out to the governor's office on multiple occasions,
00:10:49.080asking him to sit down with me on Burying Arms Cannon Company for a civil discussion.
00:10:54.080Let's talk to gun owners, talk with gun owners instead of talking down to them.
00:10:58.060And I didn't even get a response back from the governor's press secretary.
00:11:01.320The governor has no interest in actually having a conversation with the people that he's trying to disarm.
00:11:07.800He wants us to sit down, to shut up, to be quiet. And it's just not going to happen.
00:11:12.220Well, here's what I'm concerned about, Cam. The way he has approached this whole thing has poured accelerant on.
00:11:21.520I mean, this isn't this is this is arson. And I want to talk to you about that.
00:11:26.340The way he has positioned the people of Virginia that are just they just want to stand up for the Constitution,
00:11:35.460how he's positioning them as radicals, revolutionaries and Nazis.
00:11:40.560And I want to get your opinion on what it feels like on the ground is if if that is an accurate view from halfway across the country.
00:11:49.680Back with Cam Edwards here in just a second.
00:11:53.160And by the way, you can follow him at Cam Edwards.
00:11:57.880You can find his Web site, BearingArms.com.
00:16:27.440From the very beginning of the founding fathers, the slaveholders, this has been an exploitative country run by rich white guys who have screwed everybody else.
00:16:40.480And because of that, now it's our time.
00:16:45.480And we have to change everything to punish the white guys, the patriarchy, take all of their assets and money, and this includes corporations and Wall Street,
00:16:57.680and give it to those people whose ancestors were exploited.
00:17:03.260If you understand that, and it is no doubt about it, if you understand that, everything you hear from Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and all the rest of them makes perfect sense.
00:17:17.340The income redistribution policies of Barack Obama make perfect sense.
00:17:23.260The problem with it is that, number one, most Americans don't believe that.
00:18:55.480So I see it's more of a Bloomberg play, that Bloomberg will be hovering around and will tell the Democratic power brokers, say you may not like me because I'm a rich white guy, but I can beat them.
00:19:10.800And since you don't have anybody else, let me be the nominee.
00:19:15.060So Bloomberg is playing the Rudy Giuliani strategy from a few years ago with the GOP and putting all of his eggs in Super Tuesday, hoping that – I think – that there is a different winner in every primary.
00:19:50.860Because I think the split-up convention thing does lead to some possibility for Bloomberg in this sort of fantasy world I'm sure he's living in.
00:20:01.080Because he's not really a consensus candidate for the left, Bloomberg.
00:20:05.300What he might be, though, is an alternative if Sanders sweeps the early primaries and Biden's campaign is in shambles.
00:20:14.340You have Bloomberg there as an alternative to a Bernie, which there is a good chunk of the Democrats who – they actually don't want him to be the nominee.
00:20:21.360They take almost anybody else, and he's got billions of dollars to spend.
00:20:24.960Is there a possibility there for Bloomberg?
00:20:26.680You know, it's a tough call for the Democratic Party because if they give it to Bloomberg, all the far-left progressives –
00:20:41.160But I know the progressives will not buy into it.
00:20:43.720And the media that props up the far-left doesn't want Bloomberg either, although the New York Times would probably, you know, reluctantly get behind him.
00:20:54.340So this is the latest from Des Moines from the Washington Examiner.
00:20:58.520Bernie Sanders supporters in Iowa are warning that a lack of enthusiasm for Joe Biden would bring the same result nomination of another milquetoast Democrat that did four years ago electing Donald Trump.
00:21:09.960They said that if they – if the Democrats go with a bland centrist, they will stay home.
00:21:19.680And the Sanders supporters are the ones with the most passion.
00:21:26.320Are you concerned at all, Bill, about some of the threats that we learned from Project Veritas this week from some of these people on the Sanders campaign that were talking about, you know, Chicago 68 in Milwaukee?
00:21:43.180No, I'm not concerned about civil unrest on the left.
00:21:47.000What I am perplexed about is how any American could support Bernie Sanders.
00:22:10.300He said very clearly from the very beginning of the campaign that he would withdraw all American troops from the Middle East.
00:22:19.780So when asked by the very astute Wolf Blitzer, hey, if you do that, ISIS will reconstitute and kill thousands of people as it did when Barack Obama did exactly the same thing in Iraq.
00:22:33.940Do you not remember that, and do you not fear that ISIS would reconstitute?
00:22:38.700Bernie, of course, didn't come anywhere near answering that question.
00:22:43.040Instead, went back to Vietnam for a little lecture and then to the Iraq War for another little lecture.
00:22:48.720But instead of following up, Mr. Blitzer didn't.
00:22:53.340Of course he didn't, because if he did follow up, he wouldn't have the slot in the debate.
00:22:59.560All right, all he had to say was, with all due respect, Senator, you didn't come close to answering my question.
00:23:05.080ISIS will reconstitute, they'll kill thousands of people, they'll try to attack the United States, what are you going to do about it?
00:23:13.040And Bernie would say, I'll get my allies, we'll get everybody together, we'll get the allies, you know, some stupid billish like that.
00:23:20.580The second thing, which is even more intense, is if Bernie Sanders was ever president of the United States and did manage to control the Democrats, the House and the Senate, there would be a depression in this country, not a recession.
00:23:35.700All right, there would be a massive flight of capital out of the United States because people and corporations that have assets are not going to let Bernie Sanders and the Democrats take those assets.
00:23:53.360We know this from the partially socialist government in France, that when they went for taxes, like Bernie Sanders is talking about, they had to repeal it within the first year because France was collapsing.
00:25:44.140As a matter of fact, just a few minutes ago, my friends at the Southeastern Legal Foundation and I filed a lawsuit seeking the records of contacts between Ukraine prosecutors and our embassy in Kiev, the U.S.
00:25:56.140embassy in Kiev, these are some of the contacts that are at the heart of this impeachment trial, and we're at really the focal point of my early reporting on this.
00:26:04.200There was a dysfunctional relationship between the front-line anti-corruption fighters in Ukraine and our embassy, and that's why I wrote the stories that I did.
00:26:12.100I put a FOIA in seeking open records requests for this information.
00:26:16.340It hasn't come, and so today, with the help of the Southeastern Legal Foundation and a great law firm here in D.C., I filed a lawsuit to try to compel the release of these documents.
00:26:26.700I think they'll give us tremendous insight into what was going on between Ukraine prosecutors and the embassy on all sorts of issues, from the Joe Biden burisma questions to other anti-corruption cases that were going on at the time.
00:26:39.800Okay, so what does your gut say that they will show or prove?
00:26:51.480Remember, there's a Ukraine prosecutor who says that they were – the United States government was pressuring Ukraine prosecutors not to pursue certain cases, including a case against a George Soros-funded non-government organization, a nonprofit.
00:27:04.660And State Department officials confirmed to me before I wrote that story that, yeah, that did go on, and then we had some of the testimony during the impeachment where they acknowledged that the State Department acknowledged it was pressuring Ukraine prosecutors not to pursue certain people.
00:27:20.020I think we're going to learn a lot more about what motivated those contacts, who those people were, and what sort of communications were going on between the prosecutor's office and the embassy.
00:27:32.020At the time, we had the Manafort case going on.
00:27:34.380We had the questions about burisma and Joe Biden, and there was an active investigation in 16.
00:27:40.380I'd like to know what was going on, what sort of function, what sort of communications, who was politically involved.
00:27:45.800And hopefully when we're done, we're going to learn a lot more than what we know now.
00:27:48.920So, John, what do you expect or hope will come out of this trial when Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz and the Trump team step to the plate in probably 10 days from now?
00:28:05.200Listen, it's been a one-sided story so far, just like the beginning of the Russia collusion story, right?
00:28:09.960And everybody was certain on January 9th of 2017 that the Christopher Steele dossier was gospel and, oh, my God, our president was an agent of Russia.
00:28:20.360And three years later, we learned out that all of that turned out to be bunt.
00:28:24.460The most important thing about politics and about investigations is that there's two sides to a story.
00:28:31.300And right now we've only seen one side of it, and I believe in the trial we'll begin to see a lot of different new pieces of evidence.
00:28:39.060For instance, if the president was interested or concerned about corruption, were there specific people around President Zelensky, the new Ukrainian president, that he might have been concerned about?
00:28:50.480Was there a specific cause or pause that caused the administration to hold off giving them money until they could be sure it was spent right?
00:28:59.160And those are the sort of things we haven't heard from, and I think we're going to learn a lot about what the intelligence community, what the economic and Treasury Department community was telling the president.
00:29:08.920And I bet the story is way more complicated than the narrative that Adam Schiff has woven so far.
00:29:13.860So we do know now that there is somebody around the president of Ukraine that Trump is worried about or was worried about.
00:29:24.920We have that evidence now because of the massive land sale that went to George Soros, and that came from somebody who pressured the president to make this move, who is in his, if you will, cabinet, who is very close to George Soros.
00:29:47.300So isn't that kind of proof that these people are still around him?
00:29:54.560Listen, there was an oligarch named Kolomoisky who, you know, used to run Privat Bank, the large bank in Ukraine.
00:30:00.180And you can go back in the timelines and look, and back in the summer of 2019 and the fall of 2019, the IMF, the Europeans, were raising their hands saying,
00:30:09.920we're really concerned about Kolomoisky's return to Ukraine around Zelensky.
00:30:13.400There are a series of figures of people who played in Ukraine that have big political and economic interests, the Soros, the Kolomoisky's, the Zolchevsky's, the guy who ran Burisma.
00:30:25.740And what we don't know and what we've been blinded to all this time was what was the CIA, what was the NSC, what were the diplomats, what were the European allies telling to the president?
00:30:36.020And I suspect there's a much more complicated paradigm that was influencing the president's decision than, oh, I want an investigation of Joe Biden.
00:30:44.020And, by the way, here's the most important part to remember about the Joe Biden investigation, the Burisma investigation.
00:30:49.860I know Rudy Giuliani was advocating for it.
00:30:52.120We see Lev Parnas was advocating for it.
00:30:55.080We know it came up as a matter of discussion in the call.
00:30:58.620But everybody misses this very important point.
00:31:01.700Before all that happened, the Ukrainians, on their own, in February of 2019 and in March of 2019, in Ukraine, announced that they were reopening the investigation of Burisma.
00:31:13.500It had already happened, so people didn't know.
00:31:15.720Maybe the NSC didn't tell the president.
00:31:18.540But the investigation, the president couldn't pressure for an investigation that had already been opened on its own organically because Ukrainians came up with new evidence against Mr. Zolchevsky and Burisma.
00:31:28.460And that investigation remains ongoing today.
00:31:32.680So it started in February and it's still going on today.
00:31:35.640Reuters reported in December that it had been expanded to even more serious issues than had been previously reported.
00:31:42.400That keeps getting lost in this impeachment drama.
00:31:46.560And I think one of the questions senators as jurors have to answer is if the NSC and the State Department knew the president was seeking an investigation,
00:31:53.840why didn't they just tell the president, sir, you don't need to worry about it, it already has begun?
00:31:58.720There was a real gap of information there, it appears, from what we know.
00:32:02.520We saw all these impeachment witnesses say we knew the president wanted this, and not a single one of them appears to have told the president,
00:32:08.380sir, back in February it already happened.
00:32:10.020And I think that's one of the issues that the tribe is going to have to try to resolve.
00:32:13.600What do you think of this Lev Parnas stuff?
00:32:19.040Well, you know, listen, I have a lot of knowledge of Lev Parnas.
00:32:22.120He was one of about 50, 55 people that I worked with as I spent over 18 months working on the Ukraine story.
00:32:30.060I met him through my attorneys, or one of my attorneys, Joe and Victoria Tenzing.
00:32:34.660At the time I had drafted up most of the stories that ultimately had been, you know, later were published in mid-March to mid-May.
00:32:43.200Most of them had been drafted already, but I had this one problem.
00:32:46.200I had all the documents, and I had a lot of people on background, but I didn't have any Ukrainians on the record.
00:32:51.220And so when I talked to Joe and Victoria about my concern, as you do when you're a journalist talking to your lawyer about libel review and things,
00:32:58.260they said, hey, we didn't know you were working on Ukraine stuff.
00:33:16.120He said, you know, I'd be glad to help you.
00:33:17.200Who do you know, or who do you want to know?
00:33:18.980And I said, well, I've been trying to reach the prosecutor general's office.
00:33:22.160I gave him a list of about seven or eight people.
00:33:23.940And very quickly, he proved that he didn't know who he knew, and he was able to arrange Mr.
00:33:30.300Lusenko, the prosecutor general, the attorney general of Ukraine, and several other figures that I was looking for to talk on the record, on camera,
00:33:37.800so that every American could look in their eyes and see what they were saying and hear them on the record.
00:35:20.260I know that I asked Rudy Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago about left because he's a shady guy.
00:35:29.080And he said, look, Len, when you're in a foreign country and especially a country like Ukraine, and you're looking to find out the details of the underworld, you're not going to meet all of the finest people.
00:35:41.380And he said, this guy, just like you said, I used him to, you know, line up conversations and help me connect, blah, blah, blah.
00:35:52.780What is the what is the the text messages that were that have been shared this week?
00:37:10.640We name another prosecutor and corruption never gets fought.
00:37:13.640And right now in my country, my home country in Ukraine, I see a real dysfunction between the embassy, the prosecutors and the what we would call the FBI, NABU.
00:37:27.300And I want to help you bring that to light, because at some point we got to fix it or every time we spend money in Ukraine, we're putting it down the toilet.
00:37:33.720And so he had a very impassioned view, and his view was very identical to what I had been hearing for six or eight months from Ukrainians on the ground.
00:37:42.040And when I did the epic interviews with, you know, the attorney general and some of his top deputies in Ukraine, they said the same thing, which is, our relationship is so bad with the embassy right now, I'm not sure we know how to fight corruption.
00:37:52.840And that appeared to be what motivated him in helping me.
00:37:56.920These other things that were going on, what he and Rudy were doing, you know, I had a general idea that Rudy was doing his own investigation in Ukraine.
00:38:03.720Eventually, after my stories ran, he shared his findings with me, and I was grateful that he did.
00:38:09.380But I think a lot, you know, everybody in Ukraine has an angle.
00:38:28.020When I got these prosecutors on record, I went to the State Department.
00:38:31.480I took 10 days and waited for the State Department to give me an answer.
00:38:34.640So, you know, I think the reporting wasn't influenced by it.
00:38:37.960But, you know, was he doing some things?
00:38:40.180I think we have to figure out what exactly he was doing.
00:38:42.340It didn't affect my reporting, but it's certainly intriguing in the middle of this impeachment that it suddenly surfaces as the Democrats begin.
00:38:50.100As a journalist, how do you deal, if this is, you're now just coming across him, how do you deal with the, you know, the note that he wrote in the hotel and his new, you know, testimony now on television, at least,
00:39:09.660that Donald Trump was up to, you know, I guess, no good, and he knew it.