Best of The Program Guests: Rudy Atallah & Salena Zito | 8⧸11⧸20
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
166.3703
Summary
Glenn is joined by Lt Col. Urdy Atala to discuss the massive explosion that took place in the capital city of Bekaa, and the ongoing mess that is going on in the country.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
welcome to the program today we go into um a little bit on mail-in voting what's going on
00:00:05.100
with that situation the big explosion in lebanon uh we also talked to ken buck about what's going
00:00:11.520
on in washington dc and the constant corruption selena zito's on she's great she's talking about
00:00:16.940
what what does it feel like uh being on the ground and actually being out traveling she's
00:00:21.820
been reporting from all over the country even in the middle of the pandemic um the economy uh how
00:00:26.300
do we get that moving forward are we running short on supplies for building and construction and
00:00:30.760
things like that there's some real evidence of that and my ridiculous paper towel purchase from
00:00:35.960
some shady chinese website that did not go well we tell that story and a brand new business that
00:00:40.880
it is going to be launching here in the future it all comes up on the podcast today make sure to go
00:00:45.100
to blaze tv.com slash glenn use the promo code glenn you can save 10 bucks on your blaze tv subscription
00:00:49.720
and get not only the show but so many others including stew does america you can also get
00:00:54.160
the podcast of stew does america and this one of course free anywhere you get your podcasts to
00:00:58.460
subscribe and rate and review them if you don't mind taking a second it helps us get the show to a
00:01:03.160
lot more people and it helps us keep it free and you can also get the show for free on youtube as
00:01:07.760
well at youtube.com just search for stew for stew does america and glenn i guess is there too you
00:01:12.800
can probably check out a lot of his fantastic stuff as well it's all on youtube and podcasts
00:01:17.920
all across america here is the podcast for today
00:01:21.600
you're listening to the best of the glenn back program
00:01:32.300
i wanted to bring a good friend of mine on he's lieutenant colonel uh rudy atala and he is a
00:01:42.660
retired air force officer he's the chief operating officer of the nazarene fund and the executive
00:01:49.840
chief executive officer of white mountain research um he grew up in lebanon if i remember right he grew
00:01:57.980
up he was a native to beirut he speaks i don't know how many different languages he is a straight
00:02:04.220
up guy worked at the white house for a while uh and it's an honor to call him my friend rudy is with
00:02:10.360
us now hi rudy hi glenn it's an honor to be with you um i just wanted to check with you real quick
00:02:18.200
on something what's happening in lebanon my gut tells me this is the start of something really
00:02:24.820
not good am i am i wrong on that no your gut is right spot on actually it's uh it's a start of um i
00:02:35.920
i'm afraid to say that um if things continue trending this way lebanon is going to go back
00:02:40.920
to civil war uh unless the international community really finds a solution to uh to the issues right
00:02:47.000
now okay so tell me tell me exactly what we know uh i know you have a team on the ground in lebanon now
00:02:55.220
tell me what we do know about uh this imodium nitrate uh was it from hezbollah from iran
00:03:04.060
why was it there and what happened yesterday with the riots
00:03:08.940
yeah so hezbollah has controlled uh hezbollah has slowly slowly taken over and controlled the
00:03:18.160
lebanese government so the entire lebanese government is extremely extremely corrupt and
00:03:22.980
controlled by iran uh through its proxies hezbollah inside lebanon uh once they took control of of the
00:03:30.920
the government they they uh they control the airport and they also control the seaport where
00:03:36.100
the explosion happened and with their control of the seaport they were they were bringing in
00:03:41.320
all types of weapons missiles missile propellants and of course ammonium nitrate so the combination
00:03:48.320
of all of that and nothing entered or left the port without hezbollah knowing about it
00:03:53.340
in fact after the explosion occurred they cordoned off the entire um you know facility the entire
00:04:01.160
port itself did not allow anybody near it um and uh the sad thing about it is the explosion was so
00:04:08.860
massive that it devastated a good chunk of the city and it impacted close to 85 percent of the
00:04:16.000
christian area in beirut oh my gosh so so so the bulk of the damage has occurred in the in the
00:04:24.060
christian areas right now as of as of today we have um we have over 2 000 critically wounded uh 6 000
00:04:32.320
total wounded uh 200 dead with many many more missing and over 350 000 people are homeless my my cousin
00:04:41.260
lost his entire home his entire business my father's house was damaged my closest friends all their
00:04:47.700
homes were destroyed um so it's been it's been uh an incredibly difficult time for everybody
00:04:55.300
and and yesterday with riots what was what was really um crazy that was happening is you had
00:05:01.860
uh plain people in plain clothes from the from the hezbollah side driving into the christian areas
00:05:09.880
where the damage occurred and basically offering up to buy homes from people saying oh you lost
00:05:15.800
everything we'll purchase your place from you it's it's something that they've done over the years
00:05:21.100
they've slowly basically entered and penetrated christian areas by asking to purchase land from
00:05:27.620
christians and from people now they're doing it with this damage which is very very alarming so the
00:05:32.900
riots yesterday the people are fed up because there's economic depression um you know the the
00:05:39.640
major devaluation of the lebanese pound against the dollar um a lot of the food that was entering
00:05:46.060
the ports was being basically whisked away out of the country and moved across the border into syria
00:05:52.220
to continue propping up the asad regime and hezbollah was behind all of this so the people are starving
00:05:58.700
their the the value of their money is not is not there they can't purchase anything and and what's made
00:06:05.640
it worse is there's there are no jobs you the lebanese population is 4.5 million now add on top of
00:06:13.200
that 1.5 million syrian refugees from the war in syria and you have an extremely you have an extremely
00:06:21.120
volatile area now with no jobs and nothing so people yesterday had so they were so fed up they went into
00:06:28.500
the streets and they were basically clashing with the police and yesterday uh we've had a total of
00:06:34.560
over 728 wounded and and uh right now the entire the entire uh government resigned uh so the the prime
00:06:44.120
minister hassan diyab resigned and uh but uh he's going to continue working with his people hassan diyab
00:06:50.920
and the government lebanese government was all handpicked by hezbollah and by iran so um the people are
00:06:57.920
waiting to see what's going to happen right now they the people are pushing for a guy named uh
00:07:03.880
nwab salam to become the next prime minister because the constitution of lebanon states that
00:07:09.620
the prime minister must be sunni and uh and so the people are trying to to select their prime minister
00:07:16.060
but we will see what happens this is where the rub is going to be is that nobody wants iran or
00:07:21.360
hezbollah to be in control of government anymore and iran's not going to take that sitting down
00:07:27.160
no they can't lose lebanon yeah yeah yeah there was something else that was really that's really
00:07:35.600
interesting and i think your listeners need to know is that you know it's funny the the uh the last
00:07:42.280
week on friday uh was when the the hague was going to come up with its final verdict in uh in the long
00:07:50.500
long uh investigation of 600 million dollars worth of investigations on the assassination of the
00:07:58.620
former prime minister of lebanon in 2005 uh rafi hariri and the verdict the final verdict has the
00:08:05.500
finger pointing directly at hezbollah and directly at iran for killing the former prime minister whom
00:08:11.120
everybody loved in in lebanon and so hezbollah was not going to take that sitting down and it's funny
00:08:17.300
that you know a couple of days before that final verdict came out um this whole explosion happened
00:08:23.960
so it delayed everything now the hague is not going to come up with its final verdict until the 18th of
00:08:29.700
august so now it's buying time for hezbollah to do whatever it's now they dissolve the government so
00:08:35.720
hezbollah is probably going to say well look there's no government so you can't come in here you can't do
00:08:40.300
anything in here and it allows them time to shuffle around and iran now has pledged full support to
00:08:46.660
lebanon and this and basically the guise of humanitarian aid and we all know what that means
00:08:52.720
it means you know full support on every other front uh of course bringing in weapons and missiles and all
00:08:58.820
that stuff so this is how the game is played wow that's uh depressing what rudy do you believe that
00:09:06.720
this was intentional or a mistake and was there really a fireworks depot in there or was this all
00:09:14.740
stuff for rockets and uh bombs yeah i i think i personally think it was very deliberate uh the
00:09:24.120
timing is kind of uh the big question and you know you look at who benefits from this whole thing of
00:09:29.920
course uh hezbollah benefits majorly from the whole thing there were no fireworks at the port um i mean
00:09:36.240
the port is near the place where i used to live ashrafi so they they maintained all their ammos their
00:09:42.360
weapons and their ammonium nitrate and now the people are afraid um also because they're saying
00:09:48.920
that some of the experts are saying that 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate it wasn't all there there was a lot
00:09:56.580
of it missing so now people are living in fear of a potentially second explosion and i think you know
00:10:04.320
they're you know rumors start to rise and people start to talk but but hezbollah controlled all of
00:10:09.380
that and they are known hezbollah is known to sacrifice its own people for the cause i in 2006
00:10:17.180
when the during the israeli incursion uh of lebanon i you know i i used to i was talking to my friends
00:10:25.300
they would you know they would literally sacrifice their own kids and then send in people reporters
00:10:30.680
take photos and it would send them to death on france and say see the israelis are killing kids
00:10:35.560
and the israelis weren't doing anything they were sacrificing their own people just for for our their
00:10:40.860
own cause so they will do anything to win the battle
00:10:43.460
we have a team from the nazarene fund on the ground
00:10:48.620
yes sir or is it you have a team we do yeah yeah it's the same team i have parts of so nazarene fund
00:10:57.420
and my uh non-profit the blessing projects.org i i i have everybody there several teams running
00:11:05.140
around we're feeding people and we're helping the poorest of the poor i mean uh yesterday in addition
00:11:11.180
to all the riots it rained and many of the homes have no roofs or no windows so the water's flooding
00:11:17.340
people are are starving many people are afraid to go to hospitals because of covid because we do have
00:11:23.960
a covid outbreak as well so so in addition in addition to no food in addition to the explosion
00:11:31.540
in addition to the crisis you have covid you have everything else on top of it so
00:11:36.440
we're talking major major disaster um it's unprecedented
00:11:41.120
you have a hundred thousand children uh that are homeless now um what what time of day did this
00:11:49.960
happen where was everybody were they at home together uh were the families separated
00:11:58.920
yeah it it was it was in the afternoon and and families were together but what happened is because
00:12:07.140
it started off as a slow burn with a lot of smoke people congregated to their balconies they
00:12:14.120
congregated in the streets and they were you know they were everybody was using their phones to
00:12:18.540
videotape that's why you have uh you know so many captures of the explosion and it was a slow burn and
00:12:25.540
it was about you know five to seven minutes later and then you had the massive explosion the detonation
00:12:31.460
was so big that they actually felt it in ladnaka cyprus 100 miles away it registered 4.3 on the richter
00:12:39.160
scale it's considered the third largest non-nuclear explosion in history i've never seen anything like
00:12:46.340
it i mean i honestly thought it was a nuclear weapon when it went off you saw the explosion you saw the
00:12:51.880
fire and then you saw that i mean you just saw the air the air pressure just boom uh push out from that
00:13:00.760
i've never seen that except for a a massive massive bomb or a nuclear hydrogen bomb terrifying um thank
00:13:10.020
you so much rudy thank you for bringing us up to speed um anything you need anything you need from
00:13:15.120
us or the listeners just your support and prayers anything you can do we're bringing in aid we're trying
00:13:22.620
to bypass the corrupt government we're trying to make sure that none of the the funds that we send
00:13:27.960
out there goes to the government itself or to local politicians because they control everything
00:13:33.780
we're trying to take it directly to the people anything you can do to support us would be greatly
00:13:38.820
appreciated because the need is great you can go to the nazarenefund.org the nazarenefund.org and help
00:13:48.400
these christians and the christian community that took the brunt of all of this which always seems to be the
00:13:55.220
case uh in the middle east the nazarenefund.org the best of the glenbeck program
00:14:02.740
really one of the uh most honest reporters i have ever met uh you know back in the day
00:14:15.000
uh i was i was skeptical of every reporter not skeptical enough um and i'd seen all of the tricks
00:14:23.020
and this reporter said she wanted to do an interview and i was like uh-huh and we set for
00:14:28.840
an interview and she asked tough questions uh but she actually got the story right um she was working
00:14:36.360
in pittsburgh at the time now she's everywhere she's a national political reporter for the washington
00:14:42.120
examiner she's a columnist for the new york post the author or co-author of the book the great revolt
00:14:49.080
which kind of goes into why donald trump won in 2016 if the press ever cared to read it they would
00:14:56.700
know why uh he won and they would stop doing what they're doing quite honestly um but uh selena joins
00:15:03.100
me now because i just read one of your columns selena so much the same but so much different in
00:15:09.400
pennsylvania this election year you got it right last time what are you feeling and seeing so far
00:15:17.320
with what 80 days away from the election oh well first of all thanks for having me on i remember
00:15:23.500
that first interview well it was in columbus ohio and i could tell you like all right who is this girl
00:15:29.600
what's he up to yeah yeah yeah i didn't trust anybody uh it was obvious but awesome awesome yeah but
00:15:39.620
what i love about you is you actually listen to people um you did in that interview and you are
00:15:46.800
as a reporter you're one of the only people that still go to the coffee shops and you talk to people
00:15:52.660
in the supermarket you talk to real people and that's what gave you such an edge last time when
00:15:59.320
you were the only one saying uh guys he's gonna win he's gonna win yeah yeah you know you're hit on a
00:16:05.900
key point glenn and and it's not even as much as that i you know um get out of town if you will i'm
00:16:14.480
always on the road i have done that continuously through covid but responsibly i always have a mask
00:16:21.500
on i always keep a distance from some from from people all people um but still able to understand
00:16:28.800
what's continuously going on i never take highway i never take like interstates and turnpikes i stick
00:16:35.520
to the back roads because that's where you can understand and listen to people listen who cares
00:16:41.800
what i think i'm i'm one person it's listening to people in their communities in their hometowns and
00:16:50.480
in their homes is where you understand where the election is going and so i just came back yeah go ahead
00:16:57.440
from you were so you were on the back roads in pennsylvania and what did you find the same and what
00:17:02.620
did you find different and what does it mean well you know i think all of us can say if we first if
00:17:09.220
we if we drive past something pretty quickly it'll look like it did every year right like you know
00:17:15.980
people are in their yards people are you know getting food to eat but then when you slow down and you
00:17:22.940
really look you can see how much things are changed uh and that goes from how we eat to where we eat
00:17:30.120
and how we look when we um when we participate in things that are outside of our homes we have masks
00:17:36.980
on we keep a distance we don't eat inside we eat outside and we are american so we try to adapt as
00:17:44.900
much as we we can but there's been also so much taken away from us and and you know and a lot of that
00:17:53.760
is just simple joys like hugging your grandchildren hugging your parents you know if you if you're
00:18:00.820
someone that has to be out of the public you do that very reluctantly because there's so much unknown
00:18:06.980
so one of the things besides you know watching people eat one of the things that i noticed is
00:18:14.300
and this is one of the things i pointed out in 2016 and everyone sort of laughed at me and that was the
00:18:20.000
amount of trump signs and people would say rightly so that signs don't vote they don't vote but they
00:18:29.160
tell this story or part of the story about enthusiasm and in 2016 in pennsylvania it was insane well it looks
00:18:38.980
remarkably different from 2016 in that there are more trump signs and people don't just have one they
00:18:45.980
wow or they have a flag and the most important sign you see is the one that's homemade which you see
00:18:53.520
hundreds of them that defines a um a more um a more strident enthusiasm than just going down to the local
00:19:04.200
um you know the republican uh committee headquarters yeah yeah and pick it up now in 2016 you saw very
00:19:13.580
few clinton signs most clinton signs you saw were clinton for jail this year i have biden signs um
00:19:23.520
so uh i've stopped to talk to people my assumption and this is why you should listen to people
00:19:30.260
my assumption was especially in particular in some of these rural places where i've read numerous uh
00:19:37.740
stories in the new york times and the washington post about how these voters are turning on trump
00:19:42.800
so in my head i'm thinking well they voted for trump and they didn't uh and they're not going to this
00:19:48.700
time but when you listen you find out that these are people that voted for clinton you know it wasn't
00:19:54.800
like nobody in pennsylvania voted for clinton trump only won by 40 000 votes but what it then and i think
00:20:01.520
this is so fascinating what they have told me to a person is you know we couldn't even get clinton to
00:20:09.300
they didn't even know this county existed in pennsylvania you know they they didn't they didn't
00:20:14.880
care to put signs up they didn't think that was important well in rural ex-urban uh and suburban
00:20:21.420
areas sometimes that's incredibly important when people live further apart and and and in particular
00:20:28.320
now you know they want a place in a way to show their how they feel about something um but a sign is a good
00:20:36.520
way to do that so that's what i have seen that has changed there are about more biden signs out there
00:20:42.760
than there were clinton but i would still say the trump signs over biden signs are a hundred fold more
00:20:50.960
now what does that mean go ahead yeah well i wanted to i wanted to ask you um they're just based on a
00:20:58.180
couple of headlines just today americans are growing less willing to beg for permission to make a living
00:21:03.720
uh next one faith leaders protest governor newsom's order barring in-person worship uh poll reveals half
00:21:12.000
of democrats don't think joe biden will serve all four years if elected president right um who is going
00:21:18.840
to pay do you think and who is going to be blamed for the the riots on the streets the uh not being able
00:21:28.520
to go to work who's going to be blamed is that going to be on donald trump or is that do you think
00:21:33.980
going to be on the democratic party well you know donald trump has certainly has plenty of faults
00:21:42.760
but one of them is not that he's to blame for riots and that and he's to blame for these uh these cities
00:21:50.820
that are having these you know massive protests uh i have a story coming up in the wall street journal
00:21:57.660
about how people are fleeing to to move out of big cities in america um because of these protests
00:22:07.680
and these riots but also because of covid but um but you know the places where it's the most restrictive
00:22:14.840
when there's the least liberty available are the ones that are run by democrats whether it's a state
00:22:22.180
or a city and and you know people are dumb you know they understand who's impacting their lives
00:22:31.680
and and and while there might be some there might be people out there look they could just never vote
00:22:39.040
for donald trump they just won't show up to vote for joe biden until i think that that is the thing
00:22:47.080
we don't understand you know in my book the great revolt which i wrote with greg brad todd in the back
00:22:53.500
we get we're really nerdy and we did a lot we did polling after i went out and did the anecdotal
00:22:59.660
reporting we wanted to make sure we understood that the reporting matched up with the data one of this
00:23:05.400
is the most important data in there uh 34 percent of self-identified trump voters in michigan
00:23:12.640
wisconsin pennsylvania ohio and iowa did not tell a family member a friend or a pollster that they
00:23:20.520
were going to vote for donald trump and to be honest 2016 seems like a disney movie compared to what
00:23:25.660
we're experiencing right now oh yeah oh yeah i think there's a lot of people that are out there that
00:23:34.200
just won't put a yard i wouldn't put a yard sign on my yard uh i wouldn't put a bumper sticker on my car
00:23:41.200
i'm going to have my car vandalized for a bumper sticker um you know and i hear that from people
00:23:49.980
all the time i i hear that from people all the time they don't want to put signs in their yard
00:23:55.380
in particular the closer you get to a city they don't want to put a sign in their yard they don't
00:24:00.560
want to put a bumper sticker they're worried for a number of reasons how not so much as how much it
00:24:05.800
impacts them but how does this impact my family how does this impact my teenage kids how does this
00:24:10.940
impact my job if i own a business are people going to just cancel my business because i support
00:24:16.900
you're listening to the best of the glenbeck program
00:24:23.280
stew has found a new podcast that's not racist at all it just blames all the problems on white
00:24:44.720
people and what a surprise it comes from the new york times uh and uh it is about how white mommy and
00:24:54.080
daddy broke the school system yep it's all white people's fault here's the promo from the new york
00:24:58.480
times this is sarah koenig host of the serial podcast i want to tell you about our new show
00:25:03.580
nice white parents it's reported by hana jaffe walt who's made some of the best most thought-provoking
00:25:09.060
most emotional radio stories i've ever heard back in 2015 hana wanted to find out what would happen
00:25:14.700
inside this one public school in her neighborhood during a sudden influx of white students into a
00:25:19.340
school that had barely had any white students before and then not satisfied that she fully
00:25:23.560
understood what she was seeing she went all the way back to the founding of the school in the 1960s
00:25:28.520
and then forward again up to the present day what she found eventually hana realized she could put a
00:25:33.340
name to the unspoken force that kept getting in the way of making the school better white parents
00:25:38.640
i've been waiting so long to tell people about this show and now i can finally say it go listen
00:25:44.780
to nice white parents nice white parents is made by serial productions a new york times company you
00:25:49.800
can find it wherever you get your podcasts oh i can't wait to dive into that one yeah it sounds
00:25:54.760
great yeah that's gonna it's gonna be great now that's a surprising outcome yeah i wouldn't have seen
00:26:00.020
that coming i was shocked that the problem with uh with school with schools that are uh that have
00:26:05.520
lots of minorities in them are when an influx of white kids come in and they ruin it and you can
00:26:12.000
blame white parents think about this narrative at the opposite club i mean it's it was literally
00:26:16.740
written by some white nationalist uh who would say you know what we had these white schools they were
00:26:22.340
great and then all of a sudden these black people came in and ruined them that's the exact story
00:26:26.080
they're telling except they're just blaming white people i want you to today assign to a producer
00:26:31.020
that take that exact script produce it exactly the same way with i don't know you sarah or somebody
00:26:38.260
somebody's a woman's voice and just reverse it and we're gonna play them side by side tomorrow and you
00:26:45.720
tell me is this racist because one i guarantee you will sound horrifying even if it's produced
00:26:53.400
exactly the same way just say black parents over white