Fox News has settled with Tucker Carlson for $787 million. What does that mean for the future of the network? And what does it tell us about the culture of corporate media? Plus, why is it so important to be in the "cool kids club"?
00:00:00.000We talk about the whole Fox News settlement thing today, and we didn't get into this, but Jim Gary wrote a piece, and he said three things to learn from this, from a big media company perspective.
00:00:12.620One, there can be catastrophic financial consequences for adopting or repeating the lies of the former president.
00:00:19.940Two, the network's responsible journalism is not a useful legal defense against the network's irresponsible and defamatory journalism.
00:00:28.220And three, this one I think is interesting, because I think this one is probably really going to happen, which is, it is unlikely that networks like Fox News can afford to keep loose canon hosts anymore.
00:00:40.780And I think this is going to be the lesson from a lot of these, especially on the right, corporate media types that are going to say, we can't take chances with people who say things that are risky, because we might lose $787 million.
00:01:05.100It's not going to be, you know, of course, you do have a responsibility as a broadcasting company to keep a legitimate loose canon off the air.
00:01:17.540Maybe Tucker's big enough because he's so popular that he can avoid, and again, I think the way he handled that particular case, I mean, he was outwardly skeptical of wild claims.
00:01:28.060I don't think they have any case against him here.
00:01:29.760But every time blah, blah, blah, media matters releases a report, there's going to be the sphincters of the executives are going to clench thinking about these types of settlements.
00:01:43.600And it's just another way for the left to control speech.
00:04:57.560Never even thought of it until recently, maybe two years ago.
00:05:03.780And, you know, usually things go quickly.
00:05:07.440But no, because there's a couple of people that disagree with me politically.
00:05:12.180And so, I jumped through extra hoops and had extra meals with extra people and asked, you know, they questioned my integrity and everything else.
00:05:20.240And I just about lost my mind during that.
00:06:02.760Not have security and everything else.
00:06:05.620So, when they rejected me, what, a couple of weeks ago, I found myself caring all of a sudden.
00:06:14.220Because now, I wasn't in the cool kids club.
00:06:18.220Now, I've been rejected from the cool kids club.
00:06:21.320That only made me, you know, want to build a 500-foot flagpole in the property that I happened to own right on the other side of the fence of that club and fly the biggest frickin' pirate flag you've ever seen.
00:06:35.740But, you know, my better angels occasionally, you know, help me out a bit.
00:06:57.420That's what's happening with our kids.
00:06:59.780Culture is being jammed down their throat, not only in the school by the school teachers, you know, and all of the stuff that's going on in their schools, but also all throughout social media.
00:12:44.640Because they had already been infiltrated.
00:12:47.340They had already played along, gotten along, didn't stand up for anything, didn't stand up against what was going on.
00:12:55.740You know, it's like one guy, he was an archbishop, I think.
00:13:01.060This one guy was the guy who stood up and said, you know, we shouldn't probably be killing our kids and calling them undesirables and killing out of mercy.
00:13:52.840We were born at a time where we don't get that privilege.
00:13:57.020We instead get the privilege of standing up for what is right and true.
00:14:04.460That's much better than any stupid club.
00:14:10.020This is the best of the Glenn Beck Program.
00:14:13.120Charlie Serafin, the station manager, former station manager at KRLD Newsradio here in Dallas during the Waco tragedy, which happened 30 years ago this week.
00:14:39.360I know that we wanted to do a special on Waco and the Branch Davidians said they'll do it as long as we run an hour from their perspective.
00:14:54.440And we started looking into some of the details on what they wanted, and it just wasn't acceptable to us.
00:18:48.380But what I have to share with you, Glenn, is just kind of bizarre.
00:18:53.220When you lived through a traumatic experience, and it was a traumatic experience for me.
00:18:58.840I had, you know, I had interviewed some FBI agents, and I'd seen them at the scene of crimes, and I covered a lot of stories and stuff like that.
00:19:07.000But I never had FBI agents calling me at my house in the middle of the night, and I never had to code words with ATF so we could make sure it was really them.
00:19:16.420And I had never been involved, and I'd never been attacked by the journalism community, which the, you know, American Society of Professional Journalists and the Columbia Journalism Review and all these people.
00:19:27.840And they're all going like, oh, these terrible people, they inserted themselves into the story.
00:19:32.380How could the government, you know, how could the media work with the government?
00:19:36.360Now, in today's world, isn't that a laugh?
00:19:40.400It's incredible to me, especially at that time, because I know your record.
00:19:44.720You started at KFRC, worked at K101, KCBS, KNX.
00:19:51.980I mean, you're a news guy when news guys were news guys.
00:19:58.000Yeah, it's almost an embarrassment to have that affiliation now, because if you tell somebody, you know, you're a news guy, they just, you know, they run.
00:20:06.940And I don't blame them, because I have the same feeling.
00:20:09.000It's like, how did I have a, we could do a whole program on how it happened, because I have a really good theory on journalism school and the concept of objectivity.
00:21:10.220And I realized how the world, the outside world, and from all over the country and foreign countries, people sent us stuff because they had an idea.
00:21:19.780Here's a, here's a tape of my past, my favorite sermon from my pastor.
00:21:24.380Just play this for him and he'll come out.
00:21:30.160Have you, can we get some of that off the air conversation from, from you?
00:21:35.540I'd love to be able to play some of that on the air.
00:21:37.860Well, I have some of the on the air conversation, but the off the air conversation, the tape is, it may be one of the cassettes in the box.
00:21:45.340I don't know, because there's some that are not labeled, but I have a transcript of it.
00:21:50.000And then I found, I just found a lot of, a lot of real, there's a lot of stuff that I would say is funny because it probably wasn't funny at the time that people were sincere in trying to solve the problem.
00:22:01.680Um, I found a letter from a guy from New Jersey who wrote to the president of NBC News on my behalf.
00:22:10.580I didn't, you know, I had no relationship and he told them that, uh, the guy was name was Michael Gartner at the time.
00:22:17.460And I did two days of interviews with Brian Gumbel on live and that was difficult because he kept asking me about his, you know, David's state of mind.
00:22:26.580And I didn't want to say the guy's a nutcase and he's suicidal because I, I was afraid he would be listening and that would be enough to set him off.
00:22:34.840And the next thing you know, we'd see flames coming out the windows, which we saw eventually.
00:22:38.740And when you saw how it ended, um, what were your thoughts about ATF and FBI?
00:22:49.180Well, my thoughts about ATF were consistent from the beginning, just because of my personal exchange interchanges with them.
00:22:55.160I had an ATF agent come into my office and say, give me a tape, a copy of the tape of the interview you guys did a couple of nights ago.
00:23:03.140There were fugitives that were on the run and they were outside, uh, Davidians that were outside the compound and they were all scattered.
00:23:09.760They were running as fast as they could, but they would stop at pay phones or at friends' phones or whatever and call into the overnight show at the radio station.
00:23:17.640And when they, and when, and then we would run tape on it and I had those tapes and I knew that eventually somebody would come for him.
00:23:23.800So this ATF guy comes in and says, give me a copy of the tape of so-and-so.
00:23:27.480And I said, Hey, I got it right here on my desk.
00:23:59.340And here's a, here's a, here's a government agent sitting in my office telling me that he's confessing to a crime.
00:24:06.980And I, and at the time, even I knew that.
00:24:09.400And I went like, man, you guys are some dumb, you know what?
00:24:13.100And so it's like, okay, the other thing that was funny, and this is a sidebar that's not part of any Netflix documentary that no one ever heard.
00:24:21.720When the ATF first started calling in again, I was real concerned about pranks and about false information and everything.
00:24:27.300Cause we, you don't get in that situation very often where you're a participant in the actual story.
00:24:32.760So I told the first ATF guy that I talked to, the agent in charge, I said, look, here's the deal.
00:24:39.520So when your agents call in that, I know they're illegitimate.
00:24:42.020You may need something quick, like, Hey, say this or do this or whatever, because we got, you know, somebody in the crosshairs or we're about to do this.
00:24:56.880So the ATF, the ATF agents would call the radio station and say, this is agent Smith, social security, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
00:25:07.960So when the FBI came in and took over, and this is one of the reasons my son probably went into the FBI is that there's so much more buttoned up than the ATF.
00:25:16.000The FBI guy, so the agent in charge, I think it was Jeff Jamar.
00:25:20.740He calls and I go, look, you know, we're doing this deal with the ATF and we got to have your social security numbers.
00:25:26.520We should have your agents identify themselves.
00:25:36.180So he said, we'll give you our birthdays.
00:25:38.140So he started rattling, you know, the agent would say, this is the agent, uh, Sarah, and then my birthday is, uh, 11, eight, 49, blah, blah, blah.
00:25:46.520So Charlie, as you, as your son, uh, grew up, he heard you talking about all of this.
00:25:54.220And I, I think, uh, that he probably looked at his dad who had a lot of integrity and also, uh, this instance that, uh, you, you know, had to have shared with him, uh, many times.
00:26:06.620And your, your reason, uh, on ATF, FBI, now the FBI, um, cause I've always felt that about the FBI until now.
00:26:19.060Uh, and now I just don't know who to trust.
00:26:22.480I think it's rotten from the, uh, from the, you know, core in Washington.
00:26:39.420Well, um, you know, he's my son and we're proud of our children and all that, but, um, I have five sons and, and, uh, Kyle, Kyle is among the best and the brightest in our country.
00:26:54.400I'm just, I'm going to say that and not just as his father, as an observer of, of people, he's a, an exceptional human being.
00:27:02.420His, uh, his grasp of facts, his cognitive ability, his intellect, his vocabulary, his, he's been a voracious reader his entire life.
00:27:16.740And so when he told me that this was something he's going to do, I was very proud.
00:27:21.100And when I went to Quantico and went to the graduation, listen to the speeches, and especially when I met his, uh, the agents who graduated at the same time with him, man, oh man, if you wanted to put together, you know, the all American team, they were, that's what they were.
00:27:38.640These are awesome people, former, um, military, former police officers, physically fit, uh, weapons, experts, sharp as tacks, really adjusted, uh, and, uh, an incredible group of coworkers.
00:27:54.400And then he, uh, he, it wasn't very long and he, and I could tell in our conversations, he was going like, man, there's stuff going on here.
00:28:45.020They don't pick them up and blah, blah, blah.
00:28:46.700And then he got out of that and then he got into the surveillance unit where they would travel around the country and go out to Portland and be in DC at the riots there, you know, all this stuff.
00:28:58.280He said, we know, you know, we know who the bad guys are.
00:29:01.720Um, he, his first assignment, which I don't, he doesn't talk about one.
00:29:05.200His first assignment was for the, one of them was for the Trump inauguration.
00:29:09.700And there was a young guy that was shining lasers at a helicopter pilot's eyes, trying to blind them to make a helicopter crash into the, you know, into the celebration.
00:29:21.580And, and Kyle was teamed with a secret service agent and they went out and they, they found the guy they watched and they saw the thing going up through the trees, the laser.
00:29:31.080And they went over and they, the guys went into a restaurant, there were five of them and they went into the restaurant, Kyle and his partner went in, they arrested the individual with the laser.
00:29:40.980Kyle stayed there and told the others, it'd probably be a good idea for them not to get out of their seats.
00:29:44.940And at the time when he told me, I thought, wow, that, you know, he said, they're probably just students, dad.
00:29:51.960They were probably just kids from, you know, doing something stupid, but as time went on and we learned about Antifa, which we didn't know about, you know, it wasn't publicized back then.
00:30:01.840He says, no, those are definitely Antifa.
00:30:07.560I can't thank you enough for coming on and sharing all of this information and being the dad to Kyle, that you have been a American patriot.
00:30:37.560Um, this story has bothered me and some of my, uh, friends who have been in the military, uh, and have, and have had, you know, top secret clearance.
00:30:48.160They say what the media is reporting is just not possible.
00:30:58.820Yeah, I wrote an extensive piece on it.
00:31:01.260Um, just that, and I think it was published in Breitbart and then the New York Post picked it up, but a former deputy director of national intelligence.
00:31:07.060And the guy who did the presidential daily briefing for the commander in chief, um, have an idea of how this types of access works and used and covered it.
00:31:17.260And even if you have a top secret SCI clearance doesn't mean you have a need to know.
00:31:21.820He certainly did not have a need to know to access under the law, this type of intelligence about war planning, operations, military movement, and the Saudi intelligence.
00:31:31.500It's some of our most closely kept and guarded secrets as it should be.
00:31:36.160Um, so he did not, and I don't believe for one second he has acted alone.
00:31:40.700And I think the fact that the New York times and the Washington post were the first ones to break the story and investigation for the FBI, the same guys that did Russiagate.
00:31:49.680And I'm maybe biased because I was the guy that ran the Russiagate investigation and exposed it all.
00:31:53.960But this doesn't happen by coincidence.
00:31:57.080Somebody is covering up their tracks and somebody is looking for a scapegoat because the underlying crux of information shows that the current commander in chief, Joe Biden, and his administration have been lying to the world about the failure of our $115 billion in the Ukraine.
00:32:11.640Okay. So there, there's two subjects here. Uh, I want to talk about the leaks and what they tell you, but I want to, I want to stay first on how did this information, I want to make sure I understand.
00:32:22.960And the audience understands you can have a top secret clearance and you can log on to whatever that internet thing is, is called. Um, what is it called?
00:32:36.800Yeah. JWIC system. You can log on to JWIC, but you have to specifically know what you're, it's not like it's just piles of documents sitting there.
00:32:45.820You have to know what you're looking for and you have to go through other portals to be able to get this stuff. Correct?
00:32:53.200Yeah. Think of it this way. Think of it as a giant mansion that has multiple bedrooms that are locked with the goods and households products of whoever lives there.
00:33:03.900Just because you have the key to the front gate with your top secret SCI clearance, doesn't mean you have the keys and the codes to every single room and bank vault in that glorious mansion.
00:33:13.180Classified information works the same way. There are literally millions of federal employees who have a top secret SCI clearance, but there are less than 0.5% of those employees who have the need to know compartmented code access to grant themselves access to this information.
00:33:30.080Because it's structured that way on purpose, whether you can log into a system or walk into the vault room with all the paper documents, you are not by law permitted in the entry room, um, in the foyer, even unless you have been granted that need to know.
00:33:44.300And a 21 year old international gardener doesn't have a need to know of this kind of information.
00:33:48.040So my researchers said that their gut said to them, somebody else that has access to these documents, either sent them to him or whatever, got them to him. And he's just a front guy.
00:34:03.260Yeah, that's what I wrote. That's what I specifically came out and said before the, as soon as the story was breaking and people were screaming at me. And I said, listen, it's not about politics, Democrat, Republican.
00:34:14.080This guy has had this documentation and putting it out for six months. That's a campaign. That's not one page printed off and stolen off a printer and said, Oh, here you go. Here's one piece of intelligence. There's hundreds of documents.
00:34:27.240We don't even know the extent of it. And you can't access over that over a continued period of time as a 21 year old air national guardsman in Cape Cod. It just doesn't work that way.
00:34:38.520Somebody either a DOD or the intelligence community either wanted this information out, or he found someone who was wanted the information out like he did and helped him with that process and access.
00:34:49.580Look, if I'm wrong, I kind of actually hope I'm wrong, Glenn, and here's why. Because if I'm wrong, the other truth is even scarier, that our classification system is so broken and so destroyed that a rookie can walk in and go harness our nuclear secrets.
00:35:06.040That's what happens if I'm wrong. And it's not about me being right or wrong. It's the alternative. It's so much worse.
00:35:12.100Well, that's what, you know, that's one of the things I keep coming back to. We should be talking about this because this guy either had somebody on the inside or you're right.
00:35:24.680It's so porous that any of the millions of you, as you say, that have that top secret clearance can go in and get anything.
00:35:34.200And Americans need to know not not Republicans, not Democrats. This is all of us.
00:35:40.660Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And that's what's so striking about this. And it's why it's riddled with analogies to Julian Assange and whatever your political orientation is, you can't.
00:35:51.620I might be in the minority of this, but I don't justify this kind of behavior because it exposes waste, fraud and corruption.
00:35:57.520There's a way to go about it. And this is not it. And so for those politically or cheering this action because of the end result, that's not how the United States of America works, because there's going to be 100 guys behind them that do this.
00:36:09.840If you permit this sort of justified disclosure of intelligence. And I disagree with that wholeheartedly.
00:36:14.980OK, so now let's try to figure out, is there a pattern in the leaks? Because they seem to be kind of all over the board.
00:36:25.020Some of them seem to be something that could have helped us with some of our, you know, frenemies.
00:36:31.240You know, there was only really the only one that I saw that I thought was really damaging was the one that we have a spy at the, you know, in the Kremlin.
00:36:42.040That's that's not good for the health of that spy.
00:36:44.640Who did this help? What side did this help?
00:36:51.780I think it was a combination of things.
00:36:56.040And what I mean by that is that you saw sort of a shotgun disclosure because the ultimate goal of what they wanted to disclose, in my opinion, based on what's out there, is the information regarding the Ukraine conflict.
00:37:06.720And the other disclosures were put out there to sort of have lines of effort to say, wait, let's throw some people off our tracks.
00:37:13.920That's another reason why I don't think this was done alone.
00:37:16.280This wasn't just some kid who's like, I'm just going to throw up a bunch of pieces of paper in the air.
00:37:21.000Whatever you guys grab in this chat room, we can talk about.
00:38:44.420He has, one, broken the law by entering the operational chain of command.
00:38:47.620Two, the thing he wanted to achieve was a relationship with the incoming Biden administration because he wanted to keep his job.
00:38:53.940I think you're going to see down the road people in senior DOD positions like that say, because it's going to come to a head, either Joe Biden lied to the world about the Ukraine and its status, or he was lied to about the intelligence about the Ukraine and said we were succeeding.
00:39:09.780The other piece is members of Congress, where the gang of eight informed about the underlying intelligence.
00:39:14.760If that's accurate, then Congress also lied to America while saying the Ukrainian effort was a win, or we were winning.
00:39:21.400And I think when you enter that fray and sort of have government officials target each other, somebody's trying to cover their own rear end, and we're going to find out when it shakes out.
00:39:32.920And remember, Chairman Milley's leadership role is up in three months.
00:39:38.380And he's been no stranger to talk to media while in that seat, and especially when he leaves that seat.
00:39:44.920So I would say stay tuned, but it's a very suspicious line of effort.
00:39:51.400When you look at the information about the Ukraine, the war in Ukraine, describe it in relatable terms of people who are not really following it.
00:40:06.200They just know, you know, we're there, we're doing stuff.
00:40:28.640We don't have, quote, unquote, conventional American soldiers on the ground.
00:40:31.520That may be mostly true, but we have contractors, former United States military operatives on the ground, training them on tanks, training them on weapon systems, training them how to shoot, training them how to defend their positions, etc.
00:40:47.340But the problem with Ukraine is it's going to be the modern gay Afghanistan.
00:40:51.000They don't have an international banking system to access.
00:40:54.180So we have to give them literally pallets of cash, and we know how that's gone in the past.
00:40:58.160And we have no idea of where this money is going.
00:41:01.660And this is problematic for many reasons, but the most is the following.
00:41:04.660In a year, we are going to have conventional American forces on the ground in the Ukraine, and we're going to be back into Afghanistan situation because everyone in Congress, or most of them, is bending the knee to the defense industrial complex, which is the most corrupt organization in Washington, D.C.