The Glenn Beck Program - February 18, 2019


Best of the Program | Guests: John Ziegler & Gad Saad | 2⧸18⧸19


Episode Stats


Length

48 minutes

Words per minute

164.70491

Word count

7,990

Sentence count

602

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

19

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Jussie Smollett was the victim of a vicious, racist, and homophobic attack in Chicago, and now police are investigating it as a possible hate crime. What will his punishment be? John Ziegler joins the show to talk about that and much more.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey, welcome to Monday. It is, well, as you'll find out, it's Wieners Out Day, and we took that
00:00:07.740 every place you could imagine. So Wieners Out, we'll talk about that.
00:00:12.840 You're welcome for that, by the way.
00:00:13.860 Yeah, and Cosby. We actually get into Cosby and Blackface and the little dog weather advisory that 0.99
00:00:20.520 is going on. That's kind of a confusing show, but that's not where we start. Where we start,
00:00:25.320 actually, is Smollett. Yes, Smollett and his story falling apart, of course, which will remind you
00:00:32.240 that tonight on television, Glenn will be going through all of the cases, not only Smollett,
00:00:36.040 but the dozens of cases of people claiming to have racial attacks perpetrated against them,
00:00:43.220 mostly inspired by Donald Trump, that turn out to be, you know, totally fake.
00:00:47.840 We have John Ziegler is joining us for the podcast today, and what will his punishment be?
00:00:56.200 Stu had a really good idea.
00:00:58.660 Thank you. I appreciate that.
00:00:59.700 And we'll be getting into on today's podcast.
00:01:08.940 You're listening to The Best of the Glenn Beck Program.
00:01:17.840 So here it is. This is the way the media works now. They find a story that confirms their bias,
00:01:23.940 confirms their narrative, and then they run it constantly, relentlessly. Then when the real
00:01:30.300 story comes out, they minimize the exposure of the correction, and then they repeat.
00:01:36.500 Look at the major stories that have broken recently that have been so very wrong, that have occupied
00:01:43.860 so much of our time. Kavanaugh. Was that true? Nope. Turns out, nope.
00:01:52.560 Then you had the Covington story. Was that true? Nope.
00:01:59.160 Look at how they corrected both of those. Just barely. Just barely. And I say,
00:02:06.940 well, both of them, would you even say barely, Stu? Because they were still saying they were guilty of something.
00:02:14.820 Yeah, I mean, certainly haven't corrected the Kavanaugh thing. I mean, they just say that it was,
00:02:21.780 I mean, I think they would still say that one's true.
00:02:24.020 Well, I mean, do you remember the FBI stories that came out afterwards and what the FBI had uncovered?
00:02:30.460 That it was bogus? That the people that were, you can't, you don't know for sure, because,
00:02:36.560 you know, we're still going off of people's memories, but it was her beach friends that kind of
00:02:41.480 helped shape this story? Yeah. I mean, I think all of these stories are stories that they would
00:02:47.100 still hang on to. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So they're not really corrected. They're not really corrected.
00:02:52.940 Let me give you the knee jerk reactions that the media had on this Jussie Smollett hoax.
00:03:01.840 This is from Insider Edition, CNN, E! News, Headline News, CNBC, TMZ, just to name a few. Listen.
00:03:08.600 Beaten with a noose around his neck and hospitalized. Empire star Jussie Smollett was the victim of a
00:03:15.460 vicious, racist, and homophobic attack. His attackers hurled racial and homophobic slurs.
00:03:21.620 Two people yelled racist and homophobic slurs. Racial and homophobic slurs.
00:03:26.780 Not only homophobia, we're talking about racism. We're talking about hate with steroids.
00:03:32.340 They are looking for two suspects who are apparently wearing Make America Great Again hats.
00:03:37.120 The offenders uttered, this is MAGA country. The hate crime went down early this morning in
00:03:42.400 Chicago. Officials are investigating the alleged assault as a hate crime. And now police say
00:03:46.700 they're investigating this as a possible hate crime. Anyone attacked in a hate crime like this
00:03:51.580 is an outrage. This is, this is stomach turning, mind boggling information. It's out of control.
00:03:59.880 It is out of control, isn't it? Isn't it out of control? Now these are just the reactions on TV.
00:04:06.480 It's just as bad, if not worse, in some cases in print and online. I'll give you one example.
00:04:14.120 You know, the situation is bad when TMZ is connecting the dots and seeing through a guy's
00:04:19.060 story. It's TMZ. Listen to this quote. The sources say there were red flags from the get go.
00:04:24.880 Cops were extremely suspicious when Jussie took them out to the area where they said he was attacked
00:04:30.060 and pointed to an obscure camera saying how happy that the attack was, that the attack was on video.
00:04:37.500 Well, it turns out the camera was pointing in the wrong direction.
00:04:42.080 Cops thought it was weird. He knew the location of that camera. And then there's this.
00:04:48.200 We're told investigators didn't believe the two alleged attackers screamed,
00:04:53.120 this is MAGA country, because not a single Trump supporter watches Empire, end quote.
00:04:59.520 Now, I'm sure there is one. Somewhere, maybe, probably not.
00:05:07.400 Here's the man himself in an interview just days after the alleged beating.
00:05:11.900 I'm sorry, the alleged modern day lynching.
00:05:15.060 Here he is in an interview with ABC News complaining about people making stuff up.
00:05:20.540 That I had said that they were wearing MAGA hats. I never said that. I didn't need to add
00:05:25.720 anything like that. They called me a ****. They called me a ****. There's no which way you cut it.
00:05:34.240 I don't need some MAGA hat as the cherry on top of some racist sundae. I've heard that 0.75
00:05:40.980 it was a date gone bad, which I so resent that narrative. I'm not going to go out and get a
00:05:50.660 tuna sandwich and a salad to meet somebody. That's ridiculous. And it's offensive. Yes,
00:05:57.640 there's Grindr. Yes, there's Jack. Yes, there's all of these things, which I have not been on in
00:06:01.900 years. I can admit that I was on that back in the day. I was single. You know what I'm saying?
00:06:07.000 But I have not been on that in years. But aside from that, it's offensive. And I absolutely resent
00:06:16.380 that narrative because it's bull. It's bull. It's bull. And he knows bull, apparently.
00:06:25.600 Now, he starts out. Play the first 10 seconds of that for me again, please.
00:06:30.340 That I had said that they were wearing MAGA hats. I never said that. I didn't need to add
00:06:36.960 anything like that. Stop. Huh. Here's a story from USA Today. The headline, Empire star Jussie Smollett
00:06:45.600 attackers yelled, this is MAGA country during the beating. Chicago police, blah, blah, blah. You get
00:06:51.260 down to about eight paragraphs down. And it says, Sergeant Cindy Guerra confirmed to USA Today that
00:06:59.680 small yet said in a follow up interview the next day that his alleged tackers yelled, this
00:07:06.120 is MAGA country. So apparently there was some confusion on whether or not he said it. Now
00:07:13.080 he seems to be confused yet. And the Chicago police said, no, no, no, he didn't say that.
00:07:20.820 Then USA Today called and said, could you check on that? They checked on it, said, oh, yep.
00:07:27.280 You know what? The next day he did say that. So I guess he does need a little cherry on a
00:07:34.360 racist Sunday. The problem is, is he's the racist. Let me give you, let me give you a story
00:07:44.420 from, let me give you two stories from the press just this weekend. There is a story from the
00:07:54.080 Washington Post where the, the writer. Now this is a, this is an editorial writer, a, a writer
00:08:05.000 from the Washington Post, an editor said, she really needs this to be true. She needs this
00:08:14.480 to be true. What do you mean you need this to be true? I want this to be true. I need it
00:08:23.180 to be true. Does anybody remember after 9-11 when we started having copycats? Remember
00:08:32.340 when we started getting all kinds of powder sent to us and we were hoping, hoping, praying
00:08:38.740 that this was not an American copycat, that this was somebody that was doing this, that
00:08:45.160 we wanted to trust each other. Do we remember that feeling? Maybe it was just me who wanted
00:08:52.340 that, but I don't think so. You want to live in a country where this is true? I want to
00:08:58.460 live in a country where this is not true. Now she went on to say, because just think of
00:09:05.240 the damage that will be done. Which brings me to the second story. This one from the New
00:09:11.940 York Times. Republicans are already demonizing Democrats as socialists and baby killers.
00:09:17.980 Now this isn't related to the Smollett case, but yet it is. We don't believe the Smollett
00:09:29.220 case, so apparently we just all group all of it together. We don't believe this guy, so
00:09:36.040 we're not going to believe any racism exists. Well, that is a danger of crying wolf. However,
00:09:43.020 I don't think that's who the American people are. And look at how the New York Times story,
00:09:49.420 this is not an editorial, this is a story. Republicans are already demonizing Democrats
00:09:54.880 as socialists and baby killers. Well, I got news for you. If the baby is born and then you
00:10:02.580 kill it, what else would you be called? If you believe capitalism is a thing of the past
00:10:13.100 and you believe that the government can run things better, that's a socialist. What else
00:10:21.920 would you be called? Jussie Smollett wanted so badly to believe that Americans were just
00:10:37.400 homophobic racists, that he had to hire two Kenyans to perpetrate this hoax on us. I guess
00:10:51.840 there are jobs that Americans still won't do. Now, I don't, I don't know how he could
00:11:01.840 have possibly thought that one of them was named Cletus because they don't look like a Cletus
00:11:08.300 to me. He orchestrated this. I want to take a break and come back with just a list of all
00:11:20.660 of the stories where people have been orchestrating these things. Because that's exactly what's
00:11:27.060 happening. And the press doesn't get it. And it gets worse and worse and worse. And if the
00:11:35.960 press doesn't wake up, we're screwed. We're screwed. How's this going to fix any, how's this going to be
00:11:44.920 fixed? How are we going to come together if the press doesn't see their involvement? But again,
00:11:55.080 they don't want to see their involvement. Again, it's just confirmation bias. Others are doing this.
00:12:02.320 We're not involved at all. Yes, you are.
00:12:09.560 I'll give you the list of just the things that are directly correlated with this.
00:12:16.960 Donald Trump is to blame because this racist thing happened and it turned out to be a hoax.
00:12:23.160 Okay. Cyber stalking, making hoax bomb threats. Ann Arbor woman reported a hate crime.
00:12:36.620 She was suffering from depression and she said that she had been prompted. She had been attacked and
00:12:46.780 she told the, I don't know why they, they, they picked on me. She said, maybe it was a safety pin
00:12:55.960 that she was wearing. What does the safety pin represent? Do you have any idea? Okay. Well,
00:13:01.580 somebody out there apparently knew what a safety pin meant and didn't like that. And so it's a hate
00:13:07.400 crime. Well, it turns out, no, nope. She was just crazy. Uh, she had made a superficial scratch on her
00:13:13.640 face. Uh, and she was embarrassed about it. Um, and so she said a, uh, a stranger had done it to her
00:13:21.380 while she was walking and her friend said, you should report it to the police. And I made a big
00:13:26.660 mistake by doing that. Yep. Kansas state. Second time in two years, racist slurs at Kansas state was a
00:13:35.580 hoax. Officers received a report of a note using a racial slur posted on a door in an apartment
00:13:43.860 complex. Upon questioning the person who reported the incident admitted to creating and posting the
00:13:49.000 note to their own door. The matter will be addressed. They said, uh, but this was the one that
00:13:54.760 had the, uh, note beware and words live here. Remember that story? Yeah, that was, um,
00:14:03.300 that was a hoax. Uh, how about this one? Villanova, Villanova had a report of a black female student 1.00
00:14:11.660 allegedly knocked down by young white males yelling, Trump, Trump, Trump. But the student
00:14:18.340 doesn't want to pursue the matter, but wanted to make sure that it's hard to move forward.
00:14:24.580 It's hard to move forward. Well, yeah. And it was hard for the university to move forward,
00:14:32.640 uh, because, uh, it was fake. So they couldn't find anybody, uh, that had done that. New Jersey
00:14:41.000 man arrested 58 years old. He was, uh, arrested in connection with racist and politically charged
00:14:49.340 messages that appeared spray painted on a property in South Philadelphia on the day after the Trump
00:14:55.540 election. He was, um, uh, he was arrested, um, because he wrote Trump rules and Trump rules,
00:15:03.900 black, uh, B words, uh, and the letter T. I guess that's just, I have no, I, uh, uh, uh, no idea.
00:15:13.440 Could have been a tea party. Uh, could have been, there's a lot of things that could be good.
00:15:18.140 Yeah. Low, low, low T. Yeah. Low testosterone issue. Uh, a report of a racist note on a black
00:15:24.900 student's windshield. This happened in, uh, Minnesota, a racist threat against, uh, St. Olaf
00:15:31.480 student that touched off campus wide protest and forced the college to cancel classes earlier this
00:15:37.060 month was a fake. According to this story, a threat, an anonymous typewritten note was fabricated.
00:15:44.480 It was, uh, it was, uh, a strategy to draw attention to concerns about the climate, the
00:15:51.380 campus climate. Uh, it was not a genuine threat. It was, the note was tucked into the windshield of a
00:15:58.680 black student's car. Uh, and, uh, it, uh, it, it apparently, uh, you know, well, they were just trying
00:16:05.700 to show that, you know, this is something, something good has got to come out of such a bad thing. Uh, but it
00:16:12.140 was, uh, full of, uh, racial epithets and, uh, and, uh, and of course, Trump woman told police she was 0.98
00:16:20.740 driving home when four teens confronted her yelled Trump 2016 and told her she didn't belong here to
00:16:27.100 go home. The woman who told the police she had a hateful note on her car after a group of teens did 1.00
00:16:33.600 this to her said, uh, yeah. Okay. I made the entire story up. Muslim woman. She reported a hate crime 0.58
00:16:44.680 on the subway. 18 year old Muslim woman claimed that three men attacked her on a Manhattan subway.
00:16:51.500 She, they tried to pull off her hijab and, uh, turned out to be completely fake. She was making that up. 0.97
00:16:58.700 Long Island man, Nassau community college said he couldn't sleep at night because somebody had drawn
00:17:08.920 swastikas several different times at various different locations on the campus. Three swastikas
00:17:16.080 were found inside of a man's bathroom and he couldn't, uh, sleep at night. I don't know how people sleep
00:17:24.660 at night when they're the ones who do it. Uh, police found out he was the perpetrator. I'm,
00:17:30.040 I'm not even a third of the way through these stories that have come out in the last year.
00:17:35.220 And the Washington post has the guts to say that we're going to use this one to say that people
00:17:41.540 are making things up. No, no. Do you not yet get it? This is why we don't believe the news.
00:17:49.940 John Ziegler is, uh, with us. He is, uh, an independent, uh, voice and writes for
00:18:07.280 Mediate and he is one of the guys, uh, and I think the first to really take this, uh, Jussie
00:18:14.160 Smollett case on, uh, and, and say, wait a minute, something's not right here. We talked to him
00:18:19.800 on Friday as this was starting to fall apart. Uh, and he laid the case out that John, I'd like
00:18:25.840 you just to lay the case out again, real quick, just in case somebody doesn't, isn't familiar
00:18:30.680 with the case. Sure. Uh, a couple of weeks ago, uh, empire actor, Jesse Smollett, uh, claimed
00:18:36.740 that at 2 AM in Chicago, in the middle of a polar vortex that he had been attacked by two, uh,
00:18:43.900 Trump loving goons, uh, who, uh, yelled among other things, uh, at him, uh, racial epithets,
00:18:49.980 uh, insulted his sexuality and declared Chicago to be MAGA country, uh, sprayed him with bleach,
00:18:56.820 uh, tied a rope around his neck, I guess, which was supposed to be a noose. He was the victim of
00:19:02.760 a horrible hate crime. Uh, and the media, of course, uh, shockingly, uh, lapped this up,
00:19:09.200 uh, as, as if, uh, this was, uh, obviously true and that there was no other scenario that could
00:19:15.240 possibly be the case because after all, uh, in their minds, no one ever, uh, lies or exaggerates
00:19:20.620 about any of this kind of thing, even though the, the end result, as you well know, Glenn,
00:19:25.440 and many of your listeners know, is that many of these stories end up being false. And, uh,
00:19:31.220 this one never made any sense. And the way that it fell apart over a couple of period of time to me
00:19:37.640 is fascinating. And, you know, I appreciate you giving me the credit because I, you know,
00:19:41.740 I don't get credit for any of these types of stories. I haven't, I have made literally hundreds
00:19:45.580 of dollars over the years, uh, going after these stories. Let's not, let's not stretch it.
00:19:54.120 It's not fun because by the way, even when you're right, you still end up taking more grief than you
00:19:59.220 get, uh, credit in most cases, but I feel like all I was, was the, the kid in the emperor with
00:20:04.440 no clothes. You just go, wait a minute. The emperor has no clothes here. This is an obvious
00:20:09.860 story. So what was fascinating about this real quick was fascinating to me was I did a series
00:20:15.220 of interviews in Chicago very early on in this story where, you know, I'm being used by Chicago
00:20:20.940 radio hosts, radio hosts who are not supposed to be afraid of anything. Right. Because they,
00:20:25.760 they don't want to be the ones to say this is false. So they bring me on because I've written
00:20:29.580 for media and say, uh, and tell them what they already are thinking, but no one wants to say.
00:20:35.140 And that's, that's really what happened here. It's really frightening. Uh, so John,
00:20:39.060 I think one of the reasons why the average person may have been caught up on this and just accepted it
00:20:44.780 is because, um, uh, at first he had gone to the hospital and you got the impression that he had to
00:20:54.060 stay there for a day or two. And so he was really hurt. That all, that's all bogus too.
00:21:00.220 Well, yeah. I mean, you look now who, who it was, these two Nigerian brothers who are bodybuilders,
00:21:06.460 who were the ones who were involved in this, uh, if they were going to beat, uh, Jesse Smollett up,
00:21:12.220 uh, he would have had more than a scratch underneath his eye and he would not have been able to, uh, go to
00:21:17.600 Los Angeles almost immediately to, uh, to do, uh, I guess you would call it a concert where he was
00:21:22.980 dancing, uh, within a couple of days. I mean, that part didn't make a lot of sense. There were a lot
00:21:29.160 of things that didn't make a lot of sense. Well, the fact that he held onto his subway.
00:21:33.040 Well, I mean, that's a love, that's a love of a sandwich, man. You're like, I'm fighting off two
00:21:38.320 guys who are trying to beat me up, pour bleach on me, but I am not letting go of this sandwich.
00:21:43.600 Well, I have to say, and I, I, I was, and, and by the way, the police were, uh, both of us were,
00:21:50.480 were essentially wrong in our original theory about what happened, because I'm told from my
00:21:56.720 sources, which have been very good on this story from the beginning, that originally the police,
00:22:00.480 and I thought this made sense because I'm not a conspiracy guy. I despise conspiracies. I believe
00:22:04.880 in incompetence, but even the police were, were convinced that this couldn't have been a total hoax at
00:22:11.200 first because it was so poorly done. So incompetently done. Apparently they even re they even
00:22:18.000 rehearsed it. Uh, and, and so I presumed, and again, the police thought this too, that this was
00:22:24.960 some sort of a domestic dispute, a relationship he had had with one of these two actors that went
00:22:30.480 wrong. And then he created the hate crime allegation afterwards. I am told that their state police still
00:22:36.400 believe that there was a relationship between Smollett and one of the two of them, but they
00:22:41.360 now believe that it, that what happened here was that Smollett paid them to be part of this. One of
00:22:47.520 the more interesting things I'm looking forward to as this goes along, which I'm sure is not going to
00:22:52.000 happen is, is Smollett going to get, uh, the me too treatment? Because if the police are right,
00:22:57.200 that he had a relationship with one of these two guys, he forced them, right? Using his power as an
00:23:02.400 actor in a romantic relationship to engage in a crime. Now that's a me too violation.
00:23:09.280 This thing, this thing is, is absolutely fascinating. I saw it this morning that the
00:23:13.360 police said one of the, one of the things that immediately said, wait a minute, this may not be
00:23:18.640 right. Is he took him to the scene where it happened and he immediately pointed out the video
00:23:25.200 camera and said, I am so glad that that camera is up there. Cause you caught all of it on video.
00:23:32.080 And, and it was so obviously pointed in the wrong direction. And they were like,
00:23:37.760 Hey, we've never heard that from a victim. Who's like, and I saw right away that there's a video
00:23:43.920 camera right here. And it was so obvious that it was not going to pick this up. They went,
00:23:49.440 uh, Oh, something's wrong. Well, Glenn, you make a really great point, which, uh, I, uh,
00:23:54.960 underestimated the police at the beginning of this. Uh, you know, I think the police played possum
00:24:00.240 here. I think, I think that they made it seem as if they had no idea what was going on. They
00:24:05.280 released the photograph of those two blurbs, those blobs that they were the persons of interest.
00:24:10.160 And at that time I perceived, and I think Smollett perceived that was a sign of weakness that
00:24:15.280 the police had nothing. They had no idea what was happening here. It is now,
00:24:19.280 very clear. They knew immediately what was going on. They, they had been able to chart
00:24:24.640 those two blobs, which turned out to be the Nigerians all the way from the scene of the, 0.94
00:24:30.000 of the alleged hate crime into an Uber. They identified them. Apparently they have video
00:24:35.440 of them buying the rope. So they knew their identity from very early on. And of course,
00:24:39.440 they immediately know they're Nigerian. They're black. One of the works on empire. This story is 1.00
00:24:44.640 clearly false. And, you know, to use what, what I'm sure the left will think is a bad metaphor.
00:24:49.280 They essentially gave Smollett enough real rope to hang himself because he identified and ends up
00:24:55.200 identifying them on good morning America, which of course was ridiculous to me. You couldn't identify
00:25:00.480 the people when you were being attacked, but you're identifying two blobs in a grainy photograph.
00:25:05.360 So, and that's the incredible thing is he went on good morning America to say he doesn't appreciate
00:25:12.000 how this is just, uh, you know, how he's being treated and called a liar by some. It's just like
00:25:16.880 those Trump people. Uh, and they put up the two blobs and it's really like the back of two guys,
00:25:23.120 isn't it? I can't even tell again. I don't know. I just, because I, I, the, the faces were so dark.
00:25:29.440 I just thought that they were, I don't know, wearing a hoodie or something and walking the
00:25:32.880 other direction. There's no way you can tell anything about these two guys, except it's two
00:25:37.760 big people walking or standing up. Uh, and, uh, and he got, he gets on and says,
00:25:44.160 I know these are the guys. Well, how do you know? I was there. I saw it. I know these are the guys.
00:25:49.600 Right. Which to me felt like desperation. Like he's just latching onto anything that will
00:25:54.480 substantiate his story. Also under the belief that the police will never be able to identify
00:25:59.840 these guys when they already had. And of course it's a couple hours after the, the good morning
00:26:05.200 America interview finally airs when they apprehend them, they questioned them, they get them to flip 0.62
00:26:09.920 on Smollett. They don't charge them. And now of course we're waiting for Smollett. I'm told the
00:26:15.440 police are hoping that Smollett will turn himself in. Uh, the, I'm, I, I, I'm still very skeptical,
00:26:22.400 Glenn, whether Smollett is going to suffer any severe legal consequences over this.
00:26:27.600 The state's attorney in Cook County, I'm told is very corrupt. Uh, they're going to be under a
00:26:31.840 lot of political pressure to give him a sweetheart deal and let this just go under the rug. Uh,
00:26:36.960 I told you on Friday, which I think was a key part of this, that Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago,
00:26:40.960 was pissed off and that may have, he may have unleashed the dogs on Smollett when he went on
00:26:45.040 Good Morning America, but he's not in charge of this anymore. This is a state's attorney's issue.
00:26:49.360 And so I'm still skeptical whether the left will ever really be forced to eat the crow that they
00:26:55.600 should on this. And I also think this is important for your audience. I hope that we don't just look
00:27:00.880 at this as the left wants us to as an isolated incident. This is somehow unique. This is an
00:27:06.400 epidemic. This is an epidemic, especially in the, in the realm of, uh, hate crime, uh, situations.
00:27:12.240 And it's also, I think, and maybe I'm sure people, I know I've already driven people on the left
00:27:17.280 crazy for, for raising this issue, but, but let's go back to Kavanaugh for a second,
00:27:21.200 Brett Kavanaugh, because we were told, we remember we were told that even though Christine
00:27:25.600 Ford story had no corroboration, by the way, Jesse Smollett story at least had a time and a place
00:27:31.280 and a picture of two blobs, two blobs and a contemporaneous report. I mean, but in comparison,
00:27:36.800 Jesse Smollett story was fantastically corroborated in comparison to, to cut Christine
00:27:42.160 Ford. But we were told the reason we believe Christine Ford is that a prominent person would
00:27:48.320 never tell an untruth about an allegation like this. That would never happen. What do they possibly
00:27:53.840 have to gain? No one would ever do this and put themselves through this. Well, now we know that's
00:28:00.080 bull crap because Jesse Smollett has done that for whatever reason he did. I don't fully understand
00:28:05.360 why he did it. Uh, I mean, we may never know, but people do very strange things. And the other thing
00:28:10.160 that's related to this is the number one misconception, especially the left has is we
00:28:15.440 now live in a world where being the right kind of victim is the American dream. It is. That's the,
00:28:22.000 the biggest false premise of the whole thing. People presume we're still living in 19, whatever
00:28:26.880 it was when being a victim was, was somehow, uh, uh, an item of shame. It's not an item of shame
00:28:33.520 anymore. And by the way, maybe it never should have been, but the pendulum has swung so far in the
00:28:37.760 other direction. People want to be a victim. You get adulation, you get attention, you get money in
00:28:44.080 certain search situations. Uh, I believe Colin Kaepernick figured this out and, and, and did it
00:28:50.160 more beautifully than anyone has ever done and creating himself into being a victim. And now,
00:28:54.320 you know, he's made millions and millions of dollars out of it, uh, what his football career
00:28:58.160 should have been over by now. Uh, so I mean, that's the number one premise being the right kind
00:29:03.200 of victim is the American dream today. When I come back, I want you, because you work for media,
00:29:08.160 I would like to talk about the media and what the media should pull from all of these stories that
00:29:15.520 they've done. What's the real problem here. Part of it is us. The free market is like, who's buying
00:29:22.400 stories about victims? Everybody. I've got a victim story. That's, that's part one. But the other part
00:29:29.440 is journalism and, and media today. And quite honestly, you touched on the beginning fear,
00:29:38.400 John Ziegler. So what does the, what is the media, uh, going to pull out of this or should
00:29:45.760 pull out of this? And what, what role do they play in all of this? Great question, Glenn. Uh,
00:29:53.040 those are two very different things, what they, they shouldn't likely will. Uh, first of all,
00:29:57.360 I think that they, they, they're an unindicted co-conspirator and the Jussie Smollett story.
00:30:01.920 Uh, and I mean, without them, uh, I don't think Smollett would have ever thought,
00:30:05.840 one, that he could get away with this or that he would get adulation for it. Uh, that's,
00:30:10.800 that's number one. Number, number two, what they should take away from this is let's not be so damn
00:30:15.760 gullible. Let's not take everything at face value. Uh, and I, you know, I, I mentioned on Friday,
00:30:22.320 I have an equation that's really pretty simple. You just take the, uh, the, how implausible a story
00:30:27.520 is, how little corroboration it has. And then you divide it by, uh, how hesitant the media or
00:30:33.520 the authorities would be to this, to debunk it because of political correctness concerns. And
00:30:37.360 if you get a number less than one, the story's probably not true. And that formula has worked
00:30:42.080 for me on many, many occasions. And on this, on this occasion, it was as clear as day that the
00:30:48.080 story's probably not true. But the problem here is the business model of the media is broken.
00:30:54.080 It is badly broken. Every single element of the media is broken, which means the two things,
00:30:59.760 everyone has to lunge after every story that looks like it might get, uh, clicks or traffic
00:31:05.680 or, or trend on Twitter immediately, which means that of course, there's no time for introspection.
00:31:11.840 There's no time for research or investigation. Uh, and then of course,
00:31:16.400 the other part of the broken business model is that the people within the business have no job
00:31:21.440 security. And when you have no job security, you can't do real journalism because real journalism
00:31:26.960 requires saying things often that are unpopular or dangerous. Well, in this day and age, if you
00:31:32.720 say something that's unpopular or dangerous, when you have no job security, guess what's going to
00:31:37.200 happen to you? Especially if you have to be a white male, you're, you're in a story like this,
00:31:42.480 you're done. You're it's over. And there's no place to get another job. So that's where the fear
00:31:47.520 comes in that you already referenced. So there's way too much fear. And by the way, no one ever gets
00:31:53.200 fired for jumping on these types of stories. You only, you only get in trouble if you, if you
00:32:00.480 contradict them and don't get vindicated immediately because you're pissed off the wrong people.
00:32:05.760 So, so John, here's the, here's the thing about this is, is as we're looking at this story, nobody's
00:32:12.800 buying a story. Nobody wants to run a story that the narrative is counter to this one. Um, and so
00:32:21.600 you're, you're, you're not incentivized in any way. Everybody wants to be first or wants to be in the
00:32:28.400 stream. Nobody is actually, uh, trying to be right over first. And the last thing is there isn't
00:32:36.800 anybody in the media that really doesn't want to believe this story. This is what they believe
00:32:44.320 anyway. So it's, it's massive confirmation bias. A hundred percent, especially that's, and that's why
00:32:51.040 the liberal media gets these things wrong so often. But I think your point about incentivization is so
00:32:56.720 incredibly important because there's still a lot of people who believe that true truth is the coin
00:33:01.840 of the realm of the media and journalism. I don't know if that was ever the case, but it's definitely
00:33:06.400 not the case now. It's popularity. That's what that is, what matters. And oftentimes the popular
00:33:12.480 narrative is inherently faulty because of what you mentioned about confirmation bias. And of course,
00:33:18.080 you and I have talked many times about the Penn State, Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky case. To me,
00:33:22.320 this is the patron saint of all of these cases where the, what the, what the truth is, and I've
00:33:26.960 investigated for six years, I know with every fiber of my being to be 180 degrees different
00:33:33.600 than what the popular narrative was. But the narrative that was popular was so overwhelming
00:33:38.160 that it was a tidal wave over the truth. And the truth is never going to win in that case. And it's not
00:33:43.760 close. And this, and this is not an isolated situation. That's just the most dramatic one I've seen.
00:33:48.560 Okay. John Ziegler, you can find him at Zygman Freud, Zygman Freud, and also with the media.
00:33:55.440 I thank you so much, John.
00:33:59.520 This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:34:12.560 Hi, it's Glenn. If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do us a favor and rate us on
00:34:17.280 iTunes? If you're not a subscriber, become one today and listen on your own time. You can subscribe
00:34:22.880 on iTunes. Thanks.
00:34:24.160 There has been a time in the past where that was not the way people thought about it. I mean,
00:34:30.320 certainly some did, right? Like we know that there have been really bad examples of, uh,
00:34:34.480 of this over the past, but I thought myself, Soul Man was a movie released by a major studio
00:34:42.960 in which the plot of the movie is a white guy goes into blackface to get into Harvard.
00:34:50.400 And it's a hilarious comedy about a white guy who puts on blackface to go into Harvard. Now, 0.75
00:34:56.640 we would all say now that would not be something that would be released and no one would act in it
00:35:02.960 if offered. However, in this period, was it that crazy? Again, it was before Soul Man came out,
00:35:09.120 like what, six years previous to this, he supposedly wore blackface, okay? And in 1986,
00:35:15.040 the movie Soul Man came out. And I thought to myself, self, what was the New York Times saying
00:35:23.360 about Soul Man in 1986? Because were they out there saying like, this is a relic from 1884?
00:35:32.480 They said, now they're saying it's a party like in 1884. Here's their review of Soul Man,
00:35:38.160 the in the New York Times from 1986. I love you, Stu. I just love you.
00:35:43.680 There's nothing, again, I want you to understand this, Glenn. There's nothing automatically funny
00:35:48.560 about the story of a rich white college boy who masquerades as a black. There's nothing, 0.51
00:35:53.840 it's not automatically. Automatically. It's not automatically. You gotta work into this one a
00:35:58.480 little bit. We're gonna make you work for that laugh. It's more than just putting the blackface on, 1.00
00:36:02.880 which, of course, funny, but not automatically. Not automatically. That's not automatically a hit
00:36:08.000 comedy, okay? Right, okay. You guys gotta go deeper. There's nothing automatically funny about
00:36:12.000 the story of a rich white college boy who masquerades as black in order to collect a
00:36:15.600 scholarship to Harvard Law School. That's putting it mildly. But Soul Man, which opens today at Lowe's
00:36:20.960 State and other theaters, has a breezy, unapologetic manner. And it also happens to be funny,
00:36:27.120 which goes a long way towards making up for any of the underlying obtuseness or insensitivity.
00:36:34.080 The director has arrived at this cheerful frat house version of Tootsie. A cheerful frat house
00:36:43.120 version of Tootsie. Yeah, hang on just a second. Hang on just a second. Could Tootsie even be made today?
00:36:50.800 I don't think. Probably not. Probably not. Because wouldn't that be a...
00:36:55.760 Because it was a... Cross-dresser. A cross-dresser. And he was pretending to be a woman 0.97
00:37:01.360 to be near his children. I probably not. Well, I know that. You're confusing that
00:37:06.720 with Mrs. Doubtfire. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's right, I am. This is another one you couldn't make.
00:37:12.720 I don't think you could make that one either. You're right. So wait, what's Tootsie about?
00:37:15.600 Tootsie is the actor that couldn't get a job. He was a great actor. Yes. Couldn't get a job.
00:37:21.200 He needed to be a strong woman is what they were looking for. And everybody's saying he was a bad
00:37:27.860 actor. And he's like, okay, I'll show you. It's a brilliant, funny, funny movie. Funny movie.
00:37:33.780 I mean, not automatically funny. Sure. But funny. It's a good point. It's not automatically funny.
00:37:42.080 It's important to point out. Just a guy in a dress isn't automatically funny.
00:37:45.620 Mm-hmm. Now, I will say, I will ask this question, Glenn. Is it, as the New York Times
00:37:50.600 called Soul Man in 1986, a blithe, silly, good-natured movie? And of its kind, quite an
00:37:57.980 enjoyable one. Now, hang on just a second. The governor of Virginia is in trouble. Now,
00:38:04.900 if he was the one, well, if he's either one in the picture with the Klan, okay, he's in
00:38:11.320 trouble. But he denies that that's him, either the Klan or the blackface guy.
00:38:16.900 Right. And, you know, again, this is not something you want to push back on. But, I mean,
00:38:21.640 what's the point of the Klan black guy photo? Like, the only thing I can think of is why this
00:38:27.880 photo would exist is the odd pairing, right? Like, it's an odd couple, like, two people going
00:38:32.660 to a party. One's a Klan member and one's a black guy, right? Yeah. 0.83
00:38:36.140 That's probably the quote-unquote joke. Again, not that I'm defending it. Right. But, I don't
00:38:42.160 know. Is that any more or less offensive than being Michael Jackson in blackface previously?
00:38:49.160 I don't know. Yeah, I think it actually is. It may be. It's kind of like, you know, a Jew 1.00
00:38:54.280 in, you know, prison guard going with Hitler. Right. Yeah, that's not a good look. Not a good
00:39:00.100 look. Not funny. However, Michael Jackson, I bet that was a breezy performance.
00:39:06.140 It goes back to what Megyn Kelly was saying. Yeah. Is this so bad? Yeah, I think the, you
00:39:13.100 know, I'm not going to shun anybody, you know, from business 30 years after their life because
00:39:18.420 they did that. However, when you are, when you are doing a tribute to someone like he was
00:39:28.200 doing with Michael Jackson, is that so bad? Right. The theory being that if you're trying
00:39:34.160 to compliment someone as dressing up with them, like, you know, it's the same controversy you see
00:39:37.540 every Halloween now, where if you dress up as a Native American, right, you're taking their culture 1.00
00:39:43.120 and it's offensive. But if the person is saying, well, I'm not doing it to be offensive. I'm doing
00:39:47.640 it because I like that culture. Is that a problem? And today, absolutely it is. In 1980, was it?
00:39:54.100 I don't know. In 1986, the New York Times was praising a major studio release about blackface.
00:40:00.900 You had, for the first time in American history, you had a bunch of white kids wanting to be black 0.57
00:40:07.880 like Michael Jackson and your star who was black changing his face to try to be white. 0.52
00:40:14.960 Or a woman. Or had a very rare disease. Not sure what that was about. Of course. The New York
00:40:22.980 Times goes on to talk about his phony looking afro in the movie. And this is what actually
00:40:27.980 reminded me of this when you said Cosby. This is one of the quotes from the movie. This is from
00:40:33.200 the white guy in blackface saying, these are the 80s. This is the Cosby decade. America loves black 0.99
00:40:39.000 people. This is the hilarious joke they quote in the movie. They're praising. Mark's manner remains
00:40:45.240 unchanged after his physical transformation. His attitudes could not help but be affected. In
00:40:49.740 the end, a Tootsie-like learning experience emerges from this adventure. He finds, for example,
00:40:54.980 that he can no longer stand listening to the Beach Boys. That's your learning experience?
00:41:00.300 This is your learning experience. If this seems speedy and superficial course in conscious
00:41:04.960 raising. And it comes relatively late in the film. It's better than nothing. And the pretty
00:41:09.940 actress named Meloda Hardin does what little she can with the role of a white girl who wants 1.00
00:41:14.660 to sleep with Mark simply because he's black. Quote, something about 400 years of oppression
00:41:20.660 and anger as she explains it. This isn't a positive review. So is that still available? Do you
00:41:27.840 know? What? Is that, is that, can you still rent that? Can you still find that? Because you
00:41:32.820 can't get Song of the South, which is one of the most endearing stories of all time. You
00:41:38.440 cannot get Song of the South. It's not available on YouTube. The zippity-doo-dah. No, no. Cannot
00:41:44.600 get it. But you can get this one? I don't know. That's a good question.
00:41:53.380 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:42:02.820 We had Gad Sad on. Now, Gad is a guy who is a university professor from Canada.
00:42:14.940 He is a guy who just loves the truth and is very concerned about what's happening to the truth in
00:42:22.300 universities and all throughout society. And we talked about everything.
00:42:26.720 One of the first people, Jordan Peterson, reached out to when he was having his troubles initially.
00:42:31.560 Yeah, because he's like the godfather of telling truth, you know, and always getting in trouble
00:42:35.760 for it. And he doesn't care. And I just, I love this guy. You're going to fall in love with him
00:42:40.780 when you listen to him. But check it out. Here he is talking about, you know, we say it's Trump
00:42:48.700 derangement syndrome. He calls it something else. Listen to this.
00:42:53.000 So Munchausen syndrome is where someone feigns a medical condition so they can garner empathy
00:42:58.440 and sympathy. Oh, poor me. Look at me. I'm sick. Munchausen syndrome by proxy is where you take
00:43:03.940 someone who's under your care, your biological child, your pet, your elderly parent, and you
00:43:08.980 harm them so that you can get and garner the sympathy and empathy by proxy because they're
00:43:14.800 damaged, right? So this is called Munchausen syndrome by proxy. And by the way, the ones who
00:43:18.700 suffer most from that are usually women who harm their biological children to garner the 1.00
00:43:23.340 sympathy. So I had written a paper, you know, talking about the psychiatric disorder. And
00:43:28.120 then when I started seeing the full victimhood, the screaming, the fake hysteria associated
00:43:34.060 with Trump, that's when I coined the term collective Munchausen because it was a way for people to
00:43:39.880 seek attention in grotesque ways and truly what seemed to me in false sounding ways, right?
00:43:45.960 I mean, I would see on my Facebook page, people sort of testifying to their looming
00:43:51.040 victimhood. I am a woman of color. I attend the University of Maine. Will it still be safe
00:43:57.260 for me to go to college now that Trump? Well, what do you think? There's going to be roadblocks
00:44:02.440 and the Trump storm patrols are going to be ushering you to gang rape centers? I mean, what
00:44:09.120 can justify this level of idiotic hysteria? And so that's why I called it collective Munchausen
00:44:14.220 because it truly was a confabulation of faux hysteria. What upsets me is that it's one thing
00:44:21.180 for this idiot on my Facebook page to write this stuff. It's another thing when many of 0.81
00:44:25.280 my supposedly sophisticated intellectual friends were succumbing to the same hysteria. That's
00:44:32.980 what upsets me is when you, so I won't mention any names, but one of my good friends whom you
00:44:37.760 probably know is one of the type who will say things like, you know, there's going to be
00:44:42.100 food shortages now that Trump, there's going to be, to be a nuclear Holocaust. He's the worst
00:44:46.320 thing since Hitler. And this is a guy who otherwise you would have thought is a terribly sophisticated
00:44:50.920 and dispassionate thinker. And so it's a real mystery to me why they are.
00:44:55.980 What causes that? What caused that in him? I think I know who you're talking about. Very
00:45:00.840 smart guy, very reasoned.
00:45:02.900 Very. I mean, he's sort of the model of the very dispassionate, right? So I, I pitched an idea on the
00:45:11.720 Rubin report as to why I think this is happening. I think that the intellectual class views Trump
00:45:18.120 as a, what I call an aesthetic injury, right? He lived, I mean, you know how this, this beautiful
00:45:24.840 place that you're in, I mean, it's gorgeous aesthetics, right? You have a, you have a nice
00:45:27.960 aesthetic sense. Well, academics and intellectual types have a sense of the types of aesthetics
00:45:33.040 that they seek in their leader. Barack Obama exemplar fit that he's tall. He's got a beautiful
00:45:40.020 smile. He speaks with a certain cadence of a Southern Baptist preacher. He seems noble and
00:45:45.300 majestic. So it doesn't matter what he says that most of it is complete, but he, my God,
00:45:50.600 he sounds noble and intellectual. Donald Trump is an ogre. He speaks in an ugly way. He's
00:45:57.880 grotesque. He's a brawler. He's a New Yorker. He's swearing. He's grabbed this, right? So
00:46:03.380 on every possible aesthetic metric, he offends my sense of aesthetics. And so I think they
00:46:10.940 are disgusted by him. They are repulsed. It's visceral.
00:46:14.460 He is a remarkable man. His name is Gad Saad. Uh, and, uh, he's just remarkable the way he thinks
00:46:22.600 we cover all kinds of topics, really almost everything. Uh, and he, at one point we started
00:46:30.680 talking about freedom of speech. Listen to this. So much has a syndrome is where someone feigns
00:46:36.240 a medical conditions. Free speech absolutist. Yeah. I believe that anything short of a direct
00:46:45.160 exhortation to violence, libel and defamation, everything goes. And the way that I demonstrate
00:46:52.420 my commitment to those principles is I picked the most grotesque possible instance, which
00:46:58.260 is Holocaust deniers to a Jewish person, right? What could be more offensive than taking the
00:47:04.260 historical event that is probably the most documented in history where people were systematically,
00:47:09.480 you know, exterminated and allow someone to say, no, it never happened. But if you are
00:47:16.640 a free speech absolutist in a free society, then you have to tolerate the most grotesque.
00:47:21.620 So I tell people, I am a Jewish person and I support the right of Holocaust deniers to reject
00:47:27.120 that the Holocaust ever happened. So I walk the walk, talk the talk. So your hurt feelings,
00:47:32.080 frankly, I don't give a blank about life is anti-fragile to use the term of Nassim Talib, right?
00:47:39.220 You grow by being, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, correct?
00:47:45.520 Therefore, postmodernists say that which doesn't, uh, that way, how, how is this the turn of the
00:47:51.540 phrase on this? Um, uh, that this part out of this for the love of me, I've never heard
00:47:59.960 the postmodern. Okay. Yeah. There's a, they've, they've twisted and turned it, turned it around.
00:48:03.960 So, so it really, I find it very frustrating because it is a perfect way to stifle discussions,
00:48:09.420 right? Don't criticize Islam because that's my religious faith. That hurts me. What do you mean?
00:48:15.700 In a free society, you, you can go on Twitter and say what a bunch of crock Judaism is. 1.00
00:48:20.780 If I'm strong in my beliefs, I shouldn't worry about what Glenn Beck thinks.
00:48:24.920 The blaze radio network on demand.