Ep 71 | ‘I’m Done Apologizing for Living in a Sea of Red’ | Lara Logan | The Glenn Beck Podcast
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 32 minutes
Words per minute
158.87634
Harmful content
Misogyny
10
sentences flagged
Hate speech
18
sentences flagged
Summary
Laura Logan is one of the most impressive war correspondents in the profession, and she s fought a war here in America as well. She takes it to a whole new level. She was a war correspondent in Afghanistan while eight and a half months pregnant. She s worked some of the best networks in the world: Reuters, Fox, Sky, CBS News, ABC News, NBC, CBS Evening News, The Early Show, Face the Nation. And then something happened along the way.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey, I want to talk to you. If you're somebody who's losing your hair, I think everybody hates
00:00:04.340
their own hair. I hate my hair and mainly because I don't know if you can see it, but it gets a
00:00:09.480
little thin. And when your hair starts to thin, that's all you think about. I don't think women
1.00
00:00:13.960
understand it. And I don't think guys understand what women go through when they're starting to
00:00:17.540
lose their hair. 66% of us will experience hair regrowth. If you go to keeps losing your hair
00:00:25.260
sucks. So do something about it. Go to keeps.com slash save keeps offers the generic versions of
00:00:32.700
the only two FDA approved hair loss products out there. They're the generic versions that are going
00:00:37.780
to save you a bundle of money. So what are you waiting for? Just go to keeps.com right now.
00:00:42.860
You can save your hair without ever leaving your couch. You just answer a few questions,
00:00:47.580
take a few pictures of your hair. A licensed doctor is going to review your information,
00:00:51.200
recommend the right treatment for you. And then it's shipped discreetly to your door,
00:00:54.540
like discreetly, like you're like you're ashamed. Oh, the shame of hair loss. It's the happy new
00:01:01.140
hair deal. Go to keeps.com slash save and get your first order of keeps hair loss treatment for 50%
00:01:11.080
off. But you have to go to that web address keeps.com slash save. Do it now.
00:01:24.540
It takes a mixture of bravado and luck and cunning to be a war correspondent. Most people are not
00:01:46.900
suited for the job. Most people could never do it. Me, I'm out for good reason. There are people who are
00:01:53.760
hardwired to be able to short circuit what we are wired to do, and that is stay alive.
00:02:00.960
We naturally run away from explosions and gunfire. Trekking into a war zone requires a human to deny
00:02:07.080
their most basic fundamental instincts. To do it for news is even harder to imagine. I don't know if
00:02:14.420
you remember James Foley. He was the journalist who was captured and beheaded by ISIS. But the merit
00:02:19.540
and the importance of that reporting is immeasurable. Today's guest is not just a war
00:02:26.660
correspondent. She's one of the most impressive war correspondents in the profession. And she's fought
00:02:31.860
a war here in America as well. She takes it to a whole new level. She was a war correspondent in
00:02:37.860
Afghanistan while she was eight and a half months pregnant. Give you another example. Following the
00:02:43.040
9-11 attacks, her instincts were to go to Afghanistan. She got there, and she was there
00:02:49.280
when I think 95% of the country was still under occupation of the Taliban. Her accolades are
0.94
00:02:55.560
impressive. She's worked some of the best networks in the world. Reuters, Fox, Sky, CBS News, ABC News in
00:03:03.260
London, NBC, CNN, 60 Minutes, CBS Evening News, The Early Show, Face the Nation. She was chief foreign
00:03:09.860
affairs correspondent for CBS News. And then something happened along the way. The most important or
00:03:15.340
impressive thing about our guest is her personal accomplishments. She has overcome things that I
00:03:21.260
don't think any of us would dare to even imagine. Nothing short of nightmare one after another. And yet
00:03:28.660
she persevered. She found tremendous meaning in the darkness and emerged a much better person. Today,
00:03:35.200
Laura Logan. You have had a powerfully interesting life, to put it mildly. My mother would love
00:03:59.420
that. Yeah. I think I want to just start with where you came from, how you got, what your foundation
00:04:10.600
was, to try to understand you. Because I really, I admire you, but I don't understand you. I think
00:04:20.120
you are one of the braver people on the planet. So tell me about your upbringing.
00:04:26.480
I would say my foundation really has two pillars. One is love, and the other is respect. And I learned
00:04:35.980
both of those from my family, from where I was born. You know, it begins in the home, but also in the
00:04:47.320
country where I was born. I learned it from the people in South Africa. I learned it from Nelson Mandela.
00:04:53.700
I learned it from my mother. And those are the two things I've carried with me. I think that I've
00:05:00.080
been the strongest. I was born knowing who I was.
00:05:08.160
It means, it doesn't mean you don't learn. It doesn't mean you don't change. It doesn't mean any
00:05:12.520
of those things. It just means that when people say I'm brave because I, you know, I do this or I do
00:05:19.220
that. I feel like a fraud. I feel a little guilty because I don't know any other way to be. That's
00:05:31.460
My son was really afraid to do something. At one point, 10, he was afraid of doing his taekwondo
00:05:42.560
class in front of people and getting his belt. And he wouldn't do it. And I brought him home. And in
00:05:49.240
my office, I have all of these heroes, all these people that, um, from history that are just heroic.
00:05:56.520
And, uh, I sat him down and I said, why do I have all these pictures? And he thought I was going to
00:06:04.400
say, cause they were all heroes. They were all strong. They all did it. And I said, and that's
00:06:07.800
what he said. And I said, no, because I think most of them were terrified, but they did it. They did it.
00:06:18.180
Do you have that other side where you're like, this is crazy. I'm sitting here in a very vulnerable
00:06:26.040
place or do you just, does that not even occur to you? No, it always occurs to me where I am
00:06:33.460
always matters because you don't do this kind of work and go to those places and make it to the
00:06:40.420
other side. If you don't think about that, you have to take it into account. You have to factor it
00:06:46.120
in. But so I think you probably share some of this DNA, right? When you're, when you're trying to
00:06:52.420
think about sitting down, talking to me, uh, nothing could be easier for you. And yet you're
00:06:58.600
still stressed about it because you want it to be the best it can be of you. And you, uh,
00:07:07.320
and you take that extremely seriously. And, uh, it's not easy and casual, right? In a sense,
00:07:14.720
right? It's that part of me. And when I'm out there, I want to do the best that I can do.
00:07:20.620
I can never know enough. I can never, uh, learn enough. I mean, I'm, I, I literally don't stop
00:07:28.520
talking to people and engaging with people and, um, and taking everything in, uh, from the time I'm
00:07:35.340
even, it starts even on the flight on the way in, you can always meet interesting people heading
00:07:39.240
into, I love talking to if there's a flight, by the way. Um, and so for me, that's my, that's my focus.
00:07:48.380
I have to, I have to make smart decisions. I have a lot of things to consider and I have to do my job.
00:07:56.240
And, uh, and, and that's an, an eternally obsessive, uh, process. And it doesn't really
00:08:02.840
allow time for you to be scared, but it doesn't mean that I don't get scared. It doesn't, I'm not
00:08:08.040
immune to those things. I'm not, you know, I know I'm not bulletproof. I learned that
00:08:12.280
the hard way, but, um, it just means that I don't allow the fear to guide me or define me.
00:08:26.380
So I want to come back to this. I don't want to dwell on the article itself at this point,
00:08:30.760
because I do want to hear you talk about it, but the article, um, Benghazi and the bombshell, which
00:08:38.300
the headlines, not insulting at all. Um, if I read that alone, there's no way I'd hire you.
00:08:48.180
No, you were, that was the point, right? You were made to look, um, as somebody who's just
00:08:57.820
really power hungry or, or star hungry, and you'll do anything for your career. Um, and
00:09:04.400
everybody was worried that you were going to get everybody killed, reckless, reckless. That's
00:09:15.800
Oh, I, I, I'm, there is the reason why I say that here is because if you were a man,
00:09:25.260
what you just said would have been fine. You know, you're going into a war zone. You're a,
00:09:32.400
you know, you're a guy and you go in and I'm doing this, but is there a, uh, was there a problem
00:09:41.740
that you were who you were being aggressive, going in and doing these things? And it's a,
00:09:52.400
No, it's not because I'm a woman. It's because I'm a feminine woman. It's because I'm a sexy woman.
00:09:58.200
That's the problem. Not just being a woman. There are, um, there, look at the, at the history of
0.88
00:10:06.140
this. I mean, when I started out, yes, I was told by the CNN bureau chief in London, no one with hair
00:10:11.360
like that is ever going to be taken seriously as a, as a war correspondent. I was told my accent didn't
00:10:17.540
work. I was told all kinds of things. Right. And I, um, I never let any of that stand in my way.
00:10:24.000
And I did of course run into it, you know, when I was in Iraq for during the last, um, months and
00:10:32.680
then moments of Saddam Hussein. And I remember, I remember the, the men on the, on the crew who
00:10:40.140
wanted to leave and I wanted to stay saying, you know, you just want to get your face on TV. You
00:10:44.560
just want to be famous. And of course, you know, I, I'd spent years, um, in Angola, in the civil war,
00:10:50.660
in, uh, in the South African townships when they were on fire and people were being necklaced.
00:10:56.500
I'd been in Mozambique in the civil war there. I'd, I'd gone to places where that made the Afghan
1.00
00:11:02.600
war look luxurious. Okay. Cause they have supply lines from Pakistan. And I was, you know, and I
00:11:09.220
was treated as if I was this silly little girl who only cared about her ego and, uh, her fame.
00:11:15.040
And I never worried about those things because they weren't true. And, uh, and I know exactly
00:11:21.420
who I am and what I'm doing and why I'm here. And also because there were other men in who didn't
00:11:28.700
see it that way and who recognized, uh, and saw me for who I was and respected that. So I've never
00:11:35.960
been one of those women that's, that likes to complain about, you know, how I was treated as a
1.00
00:11:40.880
woman because I never, I, it never bothered me that I had to work harder. It never bothered.
00:11:45.580
I would have probably done it anyway. I liked it as a conservative working like that as a
00:11:50.680
conservative. I mean, I came from nothing. I'm the first one to go to college and I never finished
00:11:56.320
college in, in, you know, my family, um, had nothing built it all from scratch. Of course,
00:12:04.320
as a conservative have had roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. Yeah, sure. I don't
00:12:11.040
really care. I mean, I only say, you know, being a conservative sucked only because they keep saying
00:12:18.520
there's no, you know, we can't make it oppression, oppression. Are you kidding me? Try to do what we
00:12:24.500
do. No lifetime achievement awards for you, Glenn. Yeah. No, nothing. Right. Nothing. No,
00:12:29.720
no DuPonts or Peabody's or anything else. Right. And I don't, and I don't care. I don't,
00:12:34.340
Emmys. Right. I don't live for that. I don't really care about that. Um, so I appreciate the
00:12:41.540
fact that you're, that you don't, um, focus on, yeah, that's what was going on. You're just trying
00:12:50.460
to get the story. And also, um, I just, one thing that I think is important to point out that
00:12:56.380
article, Benghazi and the Bombshell, that wasn't about, um, my being a woman. That was about,
00:13:02.560
um, that was a hit piece. It was an assassination piece designed to destroy me and my career.
00:13:08.440
That was the purpose. I read it as somebody who's, I, you know, have run the blaze for years,
00:13:16.340
mainly into the ground, but run it, run it for years. And if I, if I didn't know better,
00:13:24.260
I would have read that and said, Oh, no way. Now, if I'm a, if I'm running an organization
00:13:31.740
in New York, absolutely not. You're the last person I would have. I at least can recognize
00:13:38.980
the bias. I don't think they see it. I don't think they. Well, you know, you don't have to
00:13:44.400
look any further than the line, uh, in that article, uh, about what happened to me in Egypt
00:13:50.480
where Joe Hagan, the writer describes it, um, as being groped and, uh, that, you know,
00:13:56.700
with all the things that they, that with all the dishonest things, um, that he put in there
00:14:01.460
to smear me, all the lies that he told all the, the nasty, snocky, anonymous comments and
00:14:07.480
everything else. Um, none of that mattered to me. What I cared about, um, was I felt like
00:14:16.120
the moment I came out of that square and they put, uh, that black traditional
1.00
00:14:22.040
Shador, the rope on me and I disappeared. That's what it felt like when you're, um, when
00:14:27.980
you've been raped and in my case, gang raped and, uh, sodomized and 25 minutes, it was more
0.80
00:14:35.700
than that actually. But, um, uh, it was more like it was closer to 40 minutes. But when that,
00:14:41.740
when you've lived through that, the one thing that you have, any rape victim knows, any sexual
00:14:46.900
assault victim knows what you have is your word because you can't show all of your injuries.
00:14:52.660
Right. And, uh, and in that moment, that man and that magazine, they knew it wasn't in dispute
00:15:00.580
what happened to me in Egypt. Um, there was a record of it. There were witnesses that our
00:15:05.780
security person, Ray had written an eyewitness account, you know, for the parts that he saw
00:15:10.580
and he wasn't even there for all of it because they tore him off me after 20 minutes. So,
00:15:15.060
um, that just to, for that magazine, uh, to stand there and to be loaded by the establishment
00:15:23.220
as truth tellers and, you know, and warriors for what's right and just in our society and
00:15:28.860
the fourth estate and everything else is, uh, is to me absolutely unconscionable that they
00:15:34.540
can write, that they can turn gang rape and sodomy into groping and nobody has a problem
00:15:47.540
Can we just, can we spend a minute there in the square or just right after? I, I don't need
00:15:56.460
the details. I got it. Um, but there are a couple of things that stood out. You said
00:16:05.240
you held on to your cameraman as long as you could because you felt if you let go, you
00:16:15.440
Well, the week before when we'd been there, um, and we'd been up in Alexandria on our way
00:16:21.360
into Cairo, um, we were detained and, um, we ended up, um, being held in a, um, Egyptian
00:16:29.500
intelligence, uh, facility and, um, you know, cuffed and hooded and interrogated and that
00:16:38.100
kind of stuff. And I, and I had gotten very sick and, um, passed out unconscious when they
00:16:44.720
stabbed me with a needle and threw me on a filthy couch in someone's office. Um, but we'd
00:16:50.360
we'd come home from that and, um, and gone back a week later again.
00:16:58.500
Why? Well, well, well, because I knew that Mubarak was about to fall and, uh, that would
00:17:06.000
change everything in the Middle East. And it was such a, um, a big event. And I, I wanted
1.00
00:17:11.960
to be, you know, I, I have like a homing device and I'm like, I'm a homing pigeon. And when
00:17:18.120
there's something like that, that's, you know, sort of at the center of, um, of many significant
00:17:24.340
things, I just, I mean, that's where I go. You know, when a bomb goes off, I'm typically
00:17:28.780
not running away from it. I'm running towards that scene, you know, and you see all the people
00:17:33.460
passing you. It was happened when I went into Baghdad during the, the Iraq war. I remember
00:17:38.780
seeing, you know, lots of people leaving and people on the march out of Baghdad and the Iraqi
00:17:43.960
army on the march with their artillery pieces. I don't even know if any other journalists
00:17:47.940
ever saw that because it was quite extraordinary. And we were heading into Baghdad, you know,
00:17:52.600
the oil fires burning and, um, and the planes, you know, the bombers flying. And it was just,
00:17:58.280
it was quite unbelievable, but I knew that I was going the direction I was meant to go.
00:18:02.860
And so, um, for me, uh, when I went back to Egypt, it was for specifically for the fall
00:18:12.960
of Hosni Mubarak. And he quit, uh, about 10 minutes after we landed in Cairo. So, uh, we
00:18:20.340
rushed to the square and, um, we only brought a security person with us, um, because we'd
00:18:27.460
been arrested the week before. And we wanted to show CBS that we were being responsible and
00:18:33.140
that we were taking our security seriously, you know? And, um, and in the end, actually,
00:18:39.260
Ray really did save my life because I thought when, when we were separated from the crowd
00:18:45.920
and I thought at first that people were trying to help us. And then it turned out actually
00:18:50.160
that wasn't the case at all. They were among the people who raped me, but, um, Ray was the
00:18:56.760
only one that managed, that I managed to hold onto. And he was the one, I mean, he was, you
00:19:03.000
know, I was holding onto his shirt. So that's how far he was from me. And, um, he kept saying
00:19:08.240
to me, Laura, don't let go. Just don't let go. If you let go, you're going to die. Laura,
00:19:13.860
get up, get up. If you don't get up, you're going to die. If you can't stay down, stay
00:19:18.200
on your feet, stay on your feet. And, um, and then he would tell me, okay, they're, they're
00:19:24.360
beating us with sticks and they're taking our passports and they're doing this and they're
00:19:28.940
doing that. And of course, at a certain point, you know, I mean, he didn't want to say
00:19:33.420
what he saw. Um, and when I lost him, I, I thought this is it. This is the moment. Now
00:19:41.600
it's over. I knew that I, on my own, that I had no chance of surviving. And, um, and
00:19:49.440
actually it took me a few years to realize that that was really the moment. Instead of
00:19:53.700
the moment I died, that was the moment that, um, I lived because Ray fought his way through
00:20:00.180
the mob to, once they discarded him, cause that was all, you know, it was about what
00:20:04.300
they wanted to do to me. He, uh, he found some Egyptian soldiers and he forced them to
0.62
00:20:12.220
come and find me. And that really is what I believe saved my life. More than anything,
00:20:19.180
there were, it were also the women that I fell onto in the square where I was dragged. And,
00:20:24.100
you know, at that point I didn't have, um, the strength to get up anymore. So I was down
00:20:29.840
for the last time then. And so it, it, um, that was fortunate, but the, the young men
00:20:37.080
that jumped up to stand between the mob and the women, I think, you know, they did it in
1.00
00:20:42.300
part for me, but in part also to protect their own women from what was happening. And all
00:20:47.460
of those things sort of came together, um, in a, you know, in a moment that where I had
00:20:54.000
a chance to live, um, instead of die. And, and that, that changed everything.
00:20:59.000
I worked at CNN. I know how the Middle East desk works at CNN. And, um, um, and it's,
00:21:28.000
and it's, I think obscene. Um, and I, nowhere did I hear the real outcry, um, on that. At first
00:21:46.120
they were crying, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew. Um, and the, the, just the misogynistic, um, culture
00:21:59.560
that is supposedly just as nice as ours. It's not, it's not. And I don't, I don't understand
00:22:09.080
why the media is, it will kind of just dismiss this kind of just move past this, allow somebody
00:22:23.200
say you were just groped and not at least stop and say somebody that we've all watched
00:22:30.660
for a long time. Just had this happen. What does that say about this culture? And what
00:22:40.200
does that say about the radicals that are there? That's not all Egyptians. We know that
0.93
00:22:48.220
the radicals that are there and the radicals that are in our own country on the left that
00:22:54.680
are okay with this. They're, they're excusing a lot of this. There's, there's never any reflection
00:23:04.520
You know, well, you covered, um, about a thousand different things there.
00:23:11.000
So, so I have to pick, uh, I have to pick which one is perhaps the, the most important. I think
00:23:19.400
you're not wrong when you, um, when you, when you put radicals, um, on the left and radicals in
00:23:27.240
the Islamic culture together, in a sense, especially when you look at, at how the propaganda of not
00:23:34.540
just radicals in the U S but of mainstream politicians has served the interests of, um,
00:23:43.720
you know, of the, of radicals in the Islamic world. And, um, and, and I want to be clear,
00:23:48.760
I'm not saying everybody's radical. I know that. Uh, I mean, I know that myself, I lived in Iraq for
00:23:53.940
five years. I lived in Afghanistan for years and I loved being there. I loved living there. And I
00:23:59.100
loved the people that, um, that, you know, the many people that I was close to and shared those years
00:24:05.380
with. Um, but the perfect example of what you're talking about actually took place today. Um, so this
00:24:14.240
is February, what 21st, cause I don't want to date this, go to the New York times and read
00:24:20.700
the editorial written by Siraj Haqqani, because if there was ever a radical terrorist leader, one of
00:24:31.800
the most lethal of our time, it's Siraj Haqqani, who is the leader of the Haqqani network in
00:24:40.360
Afghanistan, as I'm sure, you know, and the Haqqani network has really functioned as the Afghan
00:24:46.660
Al Qaeda. This man was given the platform by the New York times to write an op-ed that costs him
0.50
00:24:57.360
as some kind of dove of peace. I mean, that to me, if you want to talk about not just radicals
00:25:06.500
in this country, but if you want to talk about why liberals, uh, liberal people, the left, whatever
00:25:13.500
you want to call them, I hate those words because they make them, they make it, they sound so
00:25:17.080
judgmental and I don't mean it in that way, but how else do you explain why a newspaper like the New
00:25:23.240
York times gives a voice to someone like Siraj Haqqani? Are they that desperate to get out of
00:25:29.640
Afghanistan that they really don't care what happens in their wake, that they, that they're
1.00
00:25:35.140
going to legitimize a terrorist leader? I guess they are because this is the same publication that
00:25:41.900
tweeted on the 10th anniversary of 9-11, that this is the day planes attacked the world trade center,
00:25:46.640
right? We're just going to remove the people who flew those planes and plotted that and financed it
00:25:53.000
and et cetera, et cetera. I could go on forever. So I guess, um, the important thing there for me is
00:26:00.780
that I didn't understand how this could happen. And all I did was reporting from the ground up
00:26:07.000
through the bush years. I wrongly assumed, I wrongly assumed that all the problems happened
00:26:12.720
because Rumsfeld was bad and, you know, and Cheney was evil and, you know, and et cetera, et cetera,
00:26:20.000
et cetera. And if we could just get the good guys back again, oh, you know, then all those problems
00:26:26.120
would go away and people would stop lying and people would, um, you know, stop serving their
00:26:31.380
political interests before, you know, the truth and et cetera, et cetera. And boy, was I wrong.
00:26:36.140
You know, I, I stayed the same. I kept doing my job the same way. And under Bush, I was, uh, you know,
00:26:42.360
heroic figure, um, of the, of the, of the media. And, uh, when I continued to do it under Obama,
00:26:49.360
I quickly found out, uh, yeah, that I wasn't the golden girl anymore.
00:26:56.740
I said the same things about George W. Bush. I had real problems with him. At one point I talked to,
00:27:03.920
well, I was at CNN talked about, uh, you want something impeachable. Here's what you look at.
00:27:12.360
You know, uh, cause everybody was talking about impeaching him and I had real problems with the
00:27:16.740
way he was running the war, et cetera, et cetera. And I was a supporter at the beginning, less so
00:27:21.460
towards the end, because I thought we really screwed up, you know, um, look, war is about
00:27:27.620
killing people, kill them quickly and end it and end it. Take the objective. Yes, please. Um, but then I
00:27:35.900
went to Fox and I said the same things, except it was about another guy, Barack Obama. And I was the
00:27:41.540
Antichrist. It's, uh, that's how it works. Yeah, it is. And it, it's refreshing to see
00:27:48.980
journalists and there are very few of them that will actually look at the facts. I, I came into,
00:27:56.520
I'm not a journalist and I came into that world, um, from doing radio for years and years and years.
00:28:02.700
And, um, um, and then I come into television and I don't want to do television. I hate television.
00:28:09.680
And I walk into it naively thinking, Oh, well, as long as I have the facts, as long as I can prove
00:28:19.280
it, as long as I can show you, Hey, look, don't you think putting this and this and this and this
00:28:24.360
together shows a picture that we should all be concerned about or talking about we're talking
00:28:29.740
about? No, there was no curiosity. There was no, there was no one that was really willing to go.
00:28:43.360
You mean kind of like, uh, with the whole, uh, Russia collusion thing, nobody, there's nobody
00:28:49.760
that's going to say, Oh, by the way, by the way, wow. If you're, if you're using the criminal
00:28:55.380
justice system as a political weapon, that's bad for all of us, all of us. And now it is so ironic,
00:29:02.800
of course, because now you hear that with everything happening with, with Bill Barr and Trump and Roger
00:29:08.600
Stone. And you hear, you literally hear the very people, the very people that have been doing this
00:29:14.600
for years saying, Oh, this president has to go because he's weaponizing the criminal justice
00:29:21.360
system. I love how the word weaponize suddenly became part of our lexicon. When nobody asks when,
00:29:28.140
when did we all start hearing people and using the word weaponize? That is a strategic tactical
00:29:35.440
term used in disinformation campaigns. It comes, it comes from the programs this country developed
00:29:48.200
to use against its enemies. And it's become part of our lexicon because that's what you call
00:29:55.440
shaping and normalizing, right? Normalizing. What that word, I wish people would take a look at, uh,
00:30:03.000
the strategic document put out by, uh, by the propagandists from media matters for America,
00:30:10.200
right after Trump's election, that they would resist the normalization of this president.
00:30:15.700
New York times can normalize Siraj Akhani, but, uh, but no one, no journalist is allowed to
00:30:22.240
normalize Donald Trump. And if they do, they'll be punished is the word they use punished. And they've
00:30:27.700
got millions and millions and millions of dollars. They've targeted me. They targeted you.
00:30:33.000
Um, and they, and they call themselves a watchdog and the media, the New York times and others
00:30:38.000
calls them a watchdog, liberal media watchdog. They get the email. I've seen it happen. They get the
00:30:45.460
email, read it. It must be true. Let's do a story on that. That's like taking a story from Alex Jones
00:30:53.100
and Alex Jones at times may be more accurate than media matters. It's far worse. I tell you why,
00:30:59.380
because what's the difference? What's the difference? Media matters has an information
00:31:03.500
infrastructure. They have a propaganda infrastructure and, uh, they have a research arm.
00:31:08.360
They have, um, a news media arm. They call it the American independent. It was share blue.
00:31:13.060
They have, uh, media matters, which is their propaganda arm. And, and it goes on from there.
00:31:18.680
They produce books. They produce data. They have artificial intelligence, algorithms, and apps.
00:31:23.920
They search everything that you've ever said. They, um, and then beyond that, they partner
00:31:29.200
with groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center. So they have Google. Oh yeah. YouTube.
00:31:34.880
It's not just, well, they allow them to help them write the algorithms that determine what's
00:31:39.920
hate speech and what's not. So, and when you add into that, so now all of these, uh, civil society
00:31:47.260
organizations, um, groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have such, you know,
00:31:52.340
enormous history in this country that, that appear to represent one thing, how can they be working
00:31:58.640
with a propaganda organization? How can that happen? And they, they give themselves titles
00:32:03.580
like senior research fellow. I'm a senior research fellow at media matters for America, which is what
00:32:10.140
a propaganda assassination organization, right? Where all they want to do is assassinate, not just
00:32:16.900
journalists, but according to them, right? I'm using their words to go after any politician that
00:32:22.700
normalizes Trump, whether they're on the left or the right. And by the way, if they're on the left,
00:32:27.120
they're taking them out too. They want to make sure that no one on the left, no democratic politician
00:32:31.800
dares to normalize this president or vote with him or work with him or anything, because that's a threat
00:32:37.660
to them as well. Meanwhile, they say nothing about Antifa, the Bernie bros. Bernie in the debate,
00:32:47.660
the last debate said, you know, these people that are threatening people online, those are Russian
1.00
00:32:54.680
assets that Russia is, right? That's crazy talk, crazy talk. It was one of his supporters
00:33:03.920
that went and tried to shoot all of the members of the Republican Congress in Virginia. The guys,
00:33:12.560
two of them on his staff currently that hold that same position, same position. They both are on tape
00:33:21.300
saying they pretty much like to do the same thing. One wants to burn Milwaukee down to the ground.
00:33:27.160
Uh, the other one, uh, says it's time to get your rifle, learn how to use it and start taking people
00:33:34.180
out. The campaign issued a memo that said, just keep your head down. This will blow over.
00:33:43.440
How is, how, where is, where is the press? Where?
00:33:48.220
It's really interesting because it's reminiscent, um, for anyone who knows a little bit of Nazi history
00:33:55.640
of the brown shirts, right? That's what it reminds you of those kinds of tactics. Nobody can have
00:34:01.560
guns except our guys. And I actually saw, um, someone online, I was researching the other night
00:34:07.340
was actually calling for, we need Antifa at our rallies. Where, where are the, where is Antifa
00:34:12.340
to protect us? It's really interesting to see that, that, um, kind of, um, attitude really coming
00:34:19.040
from, from the left, which is supposed to be anti-gun and anti-violence, right? Um, and
00:34:24.960
of course the media narrative on this fueled by people like media matters is that Antifa
00:34:31.280
are the anti-fascists and they're fighting the fascists. Therefore they are good and their
00:34:36.800
use of violence is good because they're going after the bad people. But as someone much smarter
00:34:42.800
than me, actually on this subject pointed out to me, take a look at their platform. Look at their
00:34:47.840
manifesto. Look at what they actually believe in. It's not, um, a democratic liberal philosophy.
00:34:54.640
No. It's not, it's actually, is it, are they in favor of freedom of speech? No. Uh, freedom, uh,
00:35:01.360
of association? No. No. Free markets? No. In fact, they're against all of those things. So in fact,
00:35:08.400
um, aside from immigration, their, uh, their platform was pretty fascist.
00:35:14.080
They're the, they, if you look at the Nazi, the American Nazis and you look at their platform,
0.62
00:35:20.960
talk to what's his name, Richard Spencer, I think is his name, the head of it.
00:35:24.480
Oh, you're really getting me in trouble now. You really, thanks. I didn't have enough targets
00:35:31.360
on my back. Just add alt-right neo-Nazi. Thank you so much. You listen to him. He doesn't believe
00:35:38.640
in the constitution. He doesn't believe in freedom of property. He doesn't believe in any of these
00:35:43.600
things. He believes in universal health care. He believes in all of the, they're socialists.
00:35:48.480
Oh, so they agree. They agree. They agree. They actually have more in common than, than they want
00:35:54.080
to admit. Right. They're an alternate to the right. They're an alternative to the right.
00:35:58.800
Oh, I see. That's what it means. It's crazy. Wow. Isn't it? Wow. So let me ask you.
00:36:05.360
We're not allowed to have those conversations, by the way. I know. Just the fact that you had that
00:36:08.880
conversation makes you a neo-Nazi. You know that, right? Yeah, I do. Yeah. I do. You know,
00:36:15.120
and I, um, I have a daughter who has cerebral palsy and, um, back in the late eighties, early nineties,
00:36:24.960
I became very sensitive to what people would say and how people would react. And, and, um, I did a lot
00:36:35.120
of volunteer work for special Olympics and, and everything. And, and I became, uh,
00:36:43.360
dangerously soft because my heart was leading me. And I think this is an American trait. I hope it's
0.79
00:36:52.480
a human trait, but Americans generally, they don't care. Just live your life the way you live. You know
00:37:00.400
what I mean? I don't want to hurt you. Don't hurt me live and let live. Okay. Yeah. So when you say,
00:37:08.080
you know, Hey, handicap, that kind of really hurts. And people are like, I, I'm sorry. I didn't,
00:37:14.880
but it's gone so far now to where I think of the words of Hitler, where he says, Oh, and the bigger,
0.57
00:37:22.160
the lie, the better we are now to a place to where society has beat people up and bullied
00:37:29.840
people so much that you will actually say, not you, not me, but a lot of people will either say
00:37:37.760
or just remain silent on a man can have a baby too. Man can have a menstrual cycle. No, they can't.
00:37:44.880
And if you're buying into something that big and that you will stay silent, all the rest of it is
00:37:51.360
nothing. It's so interesting because society doesn't beat us up. People beat us up. Right. And, um,
00:38:00.720
and there are people hiding behind things like society or it was a mistake or it was an accident.
00:38:07.920
And, um, um, and that's the frustrating part for me is that, um, the, the, the real bad guys,
00:38:16.080
the people behind all of this driving this, they know how to exploit what is already there,
00:38:22.960
right? They know that most journalists are liberal. It doesn't mean all journalists are bad and nobody
00:38:29.640
reports the truth. What it means is there's a sympathy there. There's a natural, uh, shared common
00:38:35.880
ground that can be exploited. And that's exactly what they're doing. And so human nature is nobody
00:38:42.760
wants to be alone on the 50 yard line at the Superbowl, right? Oh, that's uncomfortable. There's
00:38:48.200
only a few people that are really built for that. And, and so what does everybody know? It's easier to
00:38:55.080
go with the crowd than not. And so they count on that and they use that and they don't need,
00:39:01.720
they don't need to have an army of, you know, 10 million people. They just need to have enough
00:39:09.080
to trigger that behavior. And the most effective weapon they have is when we police and censor
00:39:15.880
ourselves. We do it for them. That's the silence you hear, right? That's what it is. That's us policing
00:39:24.200
and silencing and censoring ourselves so that we don't pay the price that we see others pay.
00:39:31.240
So you, nobody's paid more of a price than you. Well, there's always someone you can always find
00:39:40.000
someone. Everybody gets there. We all, everyone pays the price. My mother used to say, we all pay
00:39:47.240
a price, especially if you're willing to stand up against the other side or your own side. Just say,
00:39:55.640
look, I, I'm just trying to tell you the truth. You pay a heavy price. I've never been a cool kid
00:40:02.760
ever. I was never a cool kid at school. I was never cool. And I always wanted to be cool, but I never was
00:40:10.360
cool. Um, and you, it's a natural drive to be accepted, to want to accept an Emmy, to have somebody
00:40:22.920
go, good job. Oh yeah. I mean, how does the average person, I asked a woman who's one of the righteous
0.56
00:40:30.760
among the nations, sea of righteousness is in all of us. That courage is in all of us. How do you water
00:40:38.040
it? And she said, you misunderstand the righteous didn't suddenly become righteous. They just didn't
00:40:45.900
go over the cliff like everybody else. So how do you, how do you water, or are you just unique? Are
00:40:55.220
we just freaks of nature? They're always going to be just a few people that are willing to do it.
00:41:01.020
How do you get people to say, it doesn't matter what they say about you. It doesn't,
00:41:06.220
your job is not as worth as worth as much as your word. Nobody, nobody wants to be alone.
00:41:16.220
It's, it's terrifying in a sense. So what we have, what we, we all need that in some way,
00:41:23.360
in some form or another, we can say we don't, but we're not being completely honest with ourselves,
00:41:28.420
right? Because a little part of us does want that or need it. So what you do, you know,
00:41:33.960
that when you stand up, you're letting everyone else out there know you're not alone. I can do it. If
00:41:42.440
I can do it, you can do it. That's what all of these people have done. Look how Nelson Mandela was
00:41:48.020
a little kid in the middle of rural Transcon, the wild coast of South Africa, mostly dirt roads and
00:41:55.400
cattle. And, and that man changed the world. He didn't start out thinking, I'm going to go change
00:42:03.460
the world. He just followed what he knew in his heart. He knew the difference between right and
00:42:09.640
wrong. And he was never going to run from that. It was always going to be worth it to them. That man
00:42:15.460
at his trial for terrorism, do you remember that? The Rivonia trial all the way back in the late sixties,
00:42:20.500
his friends, his family, the leadership of the ANC, his party, they begged him not to give the speech
00:42:27.200
that he gave. And I go back to it because it's burned into my soul and into my memory. But also it
00:42:36.180
still leads me. That's the thing about principles. They, they, they enjoy everything. They enjoy through
00:42:42.300
time. Why is Shakespeare relevant today? Because the principles. And Nelson Mandela wrote
00:42:48.580
these words, he said, among many other things, but the ones that stuck with me, he said, freedom
00:42:55.580
is an ideal for which I would like to live. But it is also an ideal for which I am quite prepared
00:43:05.840
to die. And everyone thought, everyone close to him thought that would be perceived by the South African
00:43:13.460
government as a challenge and that he would extinguish any chance he had of not being executed.
00:43:20.460
And he said it anyway. He didn't know when he said it, that he would have the next 27 years behind bars.
00:43:29.460
He didn't know that he was quite prepared to die. So that is, that's the spirit that guides me. You know,
00:43:41.400
that's all I know. So you're from, you're from South Africa. You grew up with that. You saw things
00:43:48.100
that Americans have never seen. We have not seen these. I mean, oh my gosh, the poor here. The poor
00:43:55.140
here go anywhere else in the world. We are poorest are still one of the richest 10% globally. So we don't
00:44:05.740
have that experience. It's just, it's like times you just want to shake America and say,
00:44:12.280
would you just open your eyes and look what you have? Yes. How do we, and I don't mean stuff. I mean,
00:44:19.920
the freedom, the ability, somebody can come here from Afghanistan or from, from, you know,
00:44:26.340
the occupied territories, if you care to call it that anywhere. And if you apply yourself,
00:44:33.640
if you are good, if you're sharp, you can succeed where other nations, other societies
00:44:39.660
will squash you down. It may not be utopia, but it's still the best in the world. And we are
00:44:49.800
If the American dream were not so powerful, would it really be something that people talk
00:44:55.760
about all across the world? Would it really be something that people chase? They come from
00:45:02.380
So being from South Africa, seeing us from what you've probably thought of us when you lived
00:45:09.920
there to what you felt, what did you, what did you think then? What did you think when you
00:45:15.660
first came here? And where are we now compared?
00:45:21.760
Well, for me, I think one of the things that many Americans don't understand is that this country
00:45:31.240
is defined by the coasts, the media and publishers, books, all of that. Where is all, where does most
00:45:41.240
of it, the vast majority of it, and the centers of power, where do they reside? On the East
00:45:46.560
Coast, New York City. And the West Coast, Hollywood, defines America in the entertainment world and
00:45:55.740
music, right? So, and look at, so those two things, that's our view and our vision of America
00:46:01.700
America from the outside. Nobody has any concept of the middle, the flyover states, right? The place
00:46:11.740
that- That's the heart. When you're here, that's the heart.
00:46:19.420
Not according to Hollywood and the media. And so one of the things that for me, I think,
00:46:26.680
is left out of the narrative that most people don't understand is that the American dream is
00:46:33.740
built on hard work. It's extraordinary how hard people actually do work. There are a lot of people
00:46:41.080
who don't, but rarely the average American works very, very hard and often more, you know, more than
00:46:48.180
a couple of jobs. I live in flyover country, okay? I live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in
00:46:54.740
the hill country in Texas. And I'm done apologizing to all the people that I know and my friends and
00:47:02.120
people that I meet on the East Coast for living in a sea of red, as people have said to me. And I'm
00:47:08.900
done pointing out, which is not honest because I'm pointing it out now, that every-
00:47:17.500
Every city in Texas went Democrat in the last election. You know, every big city. So I have
00:47:27.020
learned that visiting those places, glimpsing them is not the same as actually living there. I have
00:47:33.480
learned so much about what it's really like to be in rural America where there's, you can't just call and
00:47:40.400
get your washing machine repaired. I mean, sometimes, you know, my bosses or colleagues
00:47:44.840
will say with exasperated, well, how can you not, you know, have done this or have done that? And
00:47:51.400
I'm like, well, because it's taken two months to get someone to come here who thinks they might be
00:47:57.900
able to repair the dryer. You don't know what, you know? I mean, we put salt in our water. We pull it
00:48:03.280
out of the ground. I mean, I can't begin. I will come home at three in the morning from
00:48:07.680
interviewing a world leader and I'll be doing laundry and on my hands and knees cleaning the
00:48:13.560
floor because I cannot bear the thought of waking up without it being done. And there's nobody else
00:48:17.780
to do it. Okay. Besides us, we're doing it. And so I've learned about that, but I think also living
00:48:25.720
in the U S as opposed to when I was living in Iraq for years and working in the, you know, working for
00:48:31.480
an American company, living in London, working for an American company, visiting, being married to an
00:48:36.420
American, that was not the same as coming to understand the principles of this country,
0.79
00:48:43.300
that, that, uh, that democracy here works because of equal representation. You don't have, I've seen
00:48:50.280
democracy fail. I've seen it, you know, succeed and I've seen it fail in all kinds of places.
00:48:55.940
Democracy will always fail. True democracy, a representative Republic.
00:49:00.840
That's right. And that's missing from the conversation. I didn't understand that. So I'm
00:49:05.680
mystified why nobody has asked Pete Buttigieg about, uh, eliminating the electoral college.
00:49:11.780
Does it, does it not register that? Well, does it not register that you're from Indiana?
00:49:16.720
Right. Why would anyone from Indiana ever vote again? If you get rid of the electoral college,
00:49:22.220
it won't matter. None of your votes will matter. And all of these places, you know, even South Africa,
00:49:27.940
even Nelson Mandela made a deal for the first South African election, the first democratic election
00:49:33.820
in South Africa, he traded away votes of his own party. So this majority wasn't too big. And he gave
00:49:39.740
them to his, his main rival, uh, opposition, you know, um, on the black political front. And because
00:49:49.540
he, he knew that if they were humiliated by the election result, that he wouldn't be able to deliver
00:49:54.920
anything, he wouldn't be able to build the country. Wouldn't be able to bring people together.
00:49:58.740
If anybody is willing, I don't know if anybody wants that. I think there's, there comes a point
00:50:05.040
to where people have been shoved up against a wall in their corners for so long and belittled. And
00:50:12.200
that I fear that there is, and maybe hopefully we're moving past this, but I fear there's a point to
00:50:21.900
where I just want to win. I want to shut you up. You know what I mean? That's, that's deadly.
00:50:28.840
That's what's happening on the left. Just shut them up.
00:50:32.720
Well, that's not just happening. That's orchestrated. That's deliberate.
00:50:39.280
You sound like the biggest conspiracy theorist ever. Who are they that are orchestrating?
00:50:45.820
I'm only playing. No, I know. I know. Well, this is, it's easy to see the patterns. And when these
00:50:53.180
patterns emerge, um, they lead you to strategies and to tactics. And, uh, none of those things just
00:51:02.240
happen on their own. That's not how real life works. So yes, conspiracy is a conspiracy theorist
00:51:08.560
is a label that is used to silence people and shut people up. And you're only a conspiracy theorist,
00:51:14.600
by the way, if you're a conservative or you're on the right or what you're saying is something
00:51:18.760
that echoes on the right or that people on the right agree with. It hurts the left. It hurts
00:51:24.460
the left. Well, and you know, particularly hurts the progressive movement because, um, because
00:51:30.280
I think there are, you know, there are a lot of people in the middle. There are a lot of people
00:51:33.820
on the left, on the right who would want to have these conversations, be willing to have them
00:51:38.280
if they could. We should define, I, I look at the left as the, the, the scary group of people that
00:51:44.880
don't, that are not looking for, uh, uh, a new American, uh, you know, chapter. They're looking,
00:51:53.100
America is bad. Shut it down. I say that's left. Then from that is the progressive autocratic kind of
00:52:00.320
left, then the liberal. I see medium. So that's to me, that's my spectrum. That's why I use that.
00:52:07.200
So, um, what I find when I go to different places in this country, they can be cities,
00:52:16.460
they can be towns, they can be big, small, it can be, you know, it can be in California,
00:52:22.080
it can be in Nebraska, it can literally be anywhere. I find that actually, if you're civil
00:52:28.060
and you're honest, most of the time you can get past just about anything. There are, you know,
00:52:35.140
I do have my red lines and my red lines are real. Right. Um, but, and, but when the, when the
00:52:42.800
conversation just, uh, disintegrates into, uh, emotion, that's when you know that you're not
00:52:50.660
dealing. Yes, it's over. You're not dealing in the realm where someone wants to have a conversation
00:52:54.280
of substance. And look at that, look at that as in the context of a smear campaign and pressure
00:53:00.640
tactics and propaganda, right? Look how that happens all the time. I, you know, go back and
00:53:06.460
read the document produced in nine in, uh, uh, I think it was 2012 about, uh, gun control and how to
00:53:13.280
guide people through, um, that, that movement, um, to make your case. It literally says in there,
00:53:20.180
don't take on this argument, don't take on the second amendment argument, don't take on this
00:53:25.980
because that doesn't work. Um, use the emotional argument. It's, you know, and there's, and that's
00:53:31.740
the playbook and it's the playbook across all different kinds of platforms. And, and you know
00:53:37.660
how I can prove this isn't a conspiracy because those documents exist, exist, read, um, the,
00:53:44.220
the strategic plan for media matters for America in the wake of Donald Trump's election.
00:53:48.460
Look at their editorial priorities. Well, thank you for reading that.
00:53:53.920
Well, and I wish, I don't understand how so many people affected by this, haven't, um, read it and
00:54:00.300
familiarized themselves with it because look at the editorial priorities. They line up with every
00:54:04.620
single thing that the, that has dominated, uh, the news media since Trump's election. There is,
00:54:11.380
um, his conflicts of interests, his collusion with Russia. He's not, he's got the legal mandate,
00:54:17.280
but not, uh, the popular mandate. Um, the popular, he won the popular vote. He's not,
00:54:23.580
uh, the legitimate president. He's the least popular president in history. I mean,
00:54:27.900
one after another, after another, you can see, um, all of these stories, you can see where they
00:54:33.140
originated. This happened before any of these actions were taken. The Supreme court is in there.
00:54:39.740
Supreme court nominees opposing everything this administration does in the court.
00:54:43.120
Look at what's happening in the courts. Why is it? Why isn't that being talked about?
00:54:48.500
So, um, you know, you, you look, you look at these things and, um, to me, it's becoming more and
00:54:58.460
more obvious to me. I'm now going, Oh, come on dummies. You're not this stupid America. You're
00:55:06.800
Democrats. I know you, I live next door to you. Uh, you're not a stupid person. You love the
00:55:13.700
country. I'm seeing people like Bernie Sanders and I'm seeing the audience in the debates,
00:55:20.220
boo capitalism, uh, stand against all of the things that are fundamentally American that I
00:55:28.820
know you as a Democrat, you're not a communist. You're not a socialist. You don't want to get rid
00:55:34.740
of wall street. You, you want some reforms. You want to clean things up, but that's not who you
00:55:39.180
are. When are they waking up or do they, or are they, do you see anybody waking up?
00:55:46.740
You know what I see from, from my experience? I mean, the yes, capitalism offers many opportunities,
00:55:54.140
but what was I just saying? It's also about hard work, right? And anyone living the American dream
00:56:00.360
knows what a struggle it can be. Right. And it's exhausting. And, um, and for me, you know, I'm,
00:56:07.980
I at least have a lot of, uh, great things in my life that make up for that struggle that make it
00:56:12.380
worthwhile. Not everybody does. Right. I can see light at the end of the tunnel. I get to do amazing
00:56:18.220
things. Um, not everybody does. So what I see is that, um, these ideas, they're incredible ideas.
00:56:26.480
Who wants, um, anyone to, to, to die because they can't afford medical care. Who wants any child to
00:56:33.960
go to school hungry? Who wants, um, who believes that being saddled with, you know, extraordinary
00:56:39.140
amounts of debt and, um, an education that makes you unemployable, that renders you almost useless
00:56:45.280
and, and no ability to pay. Who thinks that's a good idea? Who wouldn't give free healthcare,
00:56:50.120
free, uh, college tuition? Wouldn't you want all of that? Yes. As ideas, of course, they catch fire,
00:56:57.420
especially with the youth because they're great ideas. And, um, and I, I believe in all of those
00:57:04.120
things, but there's a moment when reality comes up against ideas, right? And that's what you're
00:57:11.240
talking about. And, um, that's not what many people who escape into that world want to address.
00:57:20.120
Because it's just hard. What's the other thing that those ideas really do? They take responsibility
00:57:27.640
away from the individual and personal responsibility is one of the most exhausting and important and
00:57:34.800
powerful things ever. In fact, if anything defines this country and, and, and Western civilization,
00:57:41.560
in a sense, it's personal responsibility. Taxes, not, not a big thing, not popular across the
00:57:47.900
Middle East and, you know, and Afghanistan and places like that. Right. And in many parts of Africa,
00:57:53.980
I mean, people just look at you like, you know, of course, uh, of course, you know, anything we can
00:57:58.820
do to not pay taxes. I don't, nobody likes paying taxes, but you know, in, in this country, you accept
00:58:04.760
that, you know, paying your taxes is a critical part of, you know, of funding, um, the country and the,
00:58:13.060
and the lifestyle and, you know, the values that you believe in. Right. Hmm. Not so much. Right. You
00:58:18.340
try, uh, in Afghanistan, it's a badge of honor to get out of paying any possible tax of any
00:58:23.980
description. So, so it's easy to see how people, it's not that, that people are standing up saying,
00:58:29.840
I reject everything that America is. It's more, it's more that this idea is like a lifeline in a way.
00:58:36.400
I, um, I think, oh, we homeschooled our children. Oh, good. Oh, mighty. That's a lot of work. Yeah.
00:58:47.780
Can you cut me some slack? And I had very little to do with this, mainly my wife, but good heavens.
00:58:54.380
I think when people say I can't homeschool, there are some who can't, they really can't,
00:59:00.480
but I think there's a lot of parents that don't, they don't want to, and they don't, and they,
00:59:07.520
they'd rather just this idea of having your kids, having them taken, uh, and they're,
00:59:14.500
they're in school for a few hours, you know, eight hours a day. I can do my thing. Somebody else is
00:59:19.480
teaching. They don't, they think there's a partnership there. They don't see that as a possible
00:59:28.060
adversarial role. Uh, the school is playing, you know what I mean? And they're kind of,
00:59:33.360
and it's, it's a relief. I, I don't, I don't have time to do it. I don't know if I'm qualified to do
00:59:40.300
it. So just take them, educate them and bring them back. And we have this naive trust that, well,
00:59:48.140
we're all on the same page. We all believe the same thing. They're not going to teach them anything
00:59:52.220
harmful and we're sending them into the lion's den now. Well, it's very interesting point. And,
00:59:58.960
you know, the way you put it like that, I mean, I will say we homeschooled my son. I say homeschooled,
01:00:04.860
that's so dishonest in a way, because actually I found a fabulous woman to teach my child for a year,
01:00:10.860
um, until she said, okay, I've reached the end of what they, they talked and they agreed it was time.
01:00:16.620
He wanted to go back to school because he wanted that social part of it. And my son is, is, um,
01:00:21.460
incredibly smart, um, off the charts, but also severely dyslexic. So he's always been in that
01:00:29.640
difficult place where he's, um, so far beyond his, uh, peers in many respects, but also so far behind
01:00:37.700
and he's painfully aware of it. So he was, you know, we were very, um, worried about him, uh, and doing
01:00:44.520
the right things for him, not, not, you know, messing it up from the start. But I can honestly
01:00:49.260
tell you that if I was the one homeschooling him or my husband, I mean, that child would not be
01:00:54.180
reading right now because it's just, I mean, we're just not built to be able to do it. However, I agree,
01:01:01.280
um, completely with you that this idea of a partnership is misplaced in many respects.
01:01:08.340
And I see it under the system that we have now. It's better with private schools because private,
01:01:13.760
many private schools are forcing the parents to come in. No, no, no, we're not here to babysit.
01:01:19.960
You got to come in. You have to volunteer. You have to be part of it. You know, there's that
01:01:24.740
partnership, but public school is. I fail on all of those counts. I just want to say, but I do my best,
01:01:31.400
but, um, but well, the thing that, um, I find so staggering is, you know, to have my, my children
01:01:37.420
at age six talking about, um, sexuality and gender. And I'm like, wow. I mean, I haven't even
01:01:44.760
had a chance to talk to them about, about that, you know, it's sort of, and then you start to
01:01:48.780
realize, um, uh, that that partnership is really not, uh, just a partnership. It's something else.
01:01:56.620
You're, you, but you know, the world that they live in, that's also the world that they live in.
01:02:01.620
So I try really hard, you know, with my children just to be, um, as, as brutally, um, honest as I
01:02:08.940
can and not hide away from things. And, and we get into it sometimes. I mean, even though they're
01:02:13.660
nine and 11 and 15. No, I think kids now are much more wise, uh, much more, uh, aware of things,
01:02:26.980
not necessarily wise, worldwide. My son rescued a, um, a baby bird and you know, we did all the
01:02:34.800
things with it and then he wanted to give it a name. And he said to me, uh, I said, what are you
01:02:40.660
going to call it? And he said, well, I don't know mom, but it'd have to be a transgender name because
0.93
01:02:45.860
we don't know if it's a boy or a girl. And I said, for crying in a bucket child, this bird is either a
01:02:52.780
boy or a girl, pick it, pick one. Um, can we go back to politics and Ukraine? What was that all
01:03:03.720
about? Sure. Well, we, there's still a lot we don't know. And so I hesitate. I don't want to
01:03:12.500
sound like I'm stating things definitively. The signs, uh, are all there though. Um, one of the
01:03:19.080
big indicators that I've learned to recognize from experience is that the, the, the louder the
01:03:27.380
protest, uh, the stronger, the cry, the bigger, the crime, you really, um, you really have to wonder
01:03:40.060
why, why it's so important that we don't have a conversation about this, that we don't talk about
01:03:47.360
this. Um, and that we look somewhere else. There's two, it's, it's, if you have, if you take the
01:03:53.740
politics out of it, and I know that a lot of people, you know, just don't, won't see it that
01:03:58.680
way. But for me, what are the principles that you're looking at here? You know, and there's, um,
01:04:04.840
there's a very, there, there's a, an overwhelming amount of evidence and indicators, um,
01:04:12.940
that what was happening there was, was worth looking at.
01:04:20.280
Um, you said at one point, I don't remember which podcast you were on, but you were on a
01:04:24.660
podcast, a conservative, and, uh, I think you took on Barack Obama and you, you questioned
01:04:33.040
Afghanistan, I think his policies are the Taliban, I think. And, uh, you stated, well, this is,
01:04:40.860
you know, this is the end of my career being. Yes, this is, uh, this is professional suicide.
01:04:45.640
That wasn't, that wasn't just, um, taking on that. That was where I, where I talked about
01:04:50.640
journalists, journalists, most journalists being, you know, liberal or Democrat. Um,
01:04:58.160
maybe kind of just gotten past that now. Are you, I mean, you talk about, you should a journalist
01:05:05.480
talk about politics? I mean, if I asked you what you think about Donald Trump, should you answer that?
01:05:11.980
Well, my answer to that has always been, when I'm, uh, when I'm reporting and I'm in my role as a
01:05:18.820
journalist, I, um, I have a responsibility to make sure that I separate opinion from facts. And, and
01:05:27.940
because there's only one truth, there's only really one set of facts. We either sat here and had this
01:05:33.480
conversation or we didn't. Right. And people like to say, no, the truth depends on where you come
01:05:38.620
from or, you know, what the color of your skin and whatever. No, actually it really doesn't your
01:05:42.860
perception of it. You know, how you feel about it. Right. That's is affected by those things,
01:05:48.160
but the actual, the truth itself, there's only one. Right. Right. And so, um, it's a, it's a
01:05:53.780
misunderstanding of the advertising, um, the advertising, uh, idea of reality. Um, what is
01:06:02.840
it? Um, perception is reality. No, it's not, it's not in advertising. It might be, but in truth,
01:06:10.400
it's not, you can make it feel real, right, but it's still not real. Yes. And that's our refuge as
01:06:16.140
journalists, right? That's what protects us from our own bias is that that's the thing that we're
01:06:20.980
working to find. And if you stick with that and just go wherever that thing called the truth,
01:06:26.340
wherever it takes you, that's what to me defines us at our core. I mean, the best of us, right?
01:06:33.400
That's what a journalist at your best, that's what you aspire to be. And, um, and, and so that's how I
01:06:40.120
got into trouble because I'm not a political operative and I'm not a political activist.
01:06:44.720
And in fact, I'm not an activist. I'm a journalist and I'm not a lawyer in a court of law trying to prove
01:06:49.900
something is true or not true. And, um, and I'm, you know, I'm not a strategist. I am a journalist.
01:06:56.520
That's what I do. So, um, and that's so, it's so important because
01:07:02.160
I've always said that everything I've done in my career, no matter who I've worked for,
01:07:09.540
whether it was at a newspaper in South Africa or at 60 minutes, I do my job the same way. I'm still
01:07:15.520
looking for the same thing. It's called the truth. And, um, and I have enormous respect and I'm so,
01:07:22.080
I'm very grateful to have worked where I have worked, have been at 60 minutes, but at the end
01:07:26.760
of the day, I never really worked for 60 minutes or CBS. What I worked for was that thing that I was
01:07:32.280
pursuing that every journalist who's looking for that and cares about that wants to find. And what
01:07:37.900
people want us to believe is that there's two separate sets of facts. There really aren't two
01:07:43.360
separate sets of facts. There's only one truth. And if you separate your opinion from what you know
01:07:48.300
to be true, then I think that that's fair enough. As a journalist, we do it all the time at 60 minutes,
01:07:54.380
what we would say, we'd do things like, um, we'd say, you know, um, over the week we spent with so
01:08:00.520
and so, um, what we noticed was, or in all the time we've been covering the war in Afghanistan,
01:08:06.640
19 years now, um, we'd never encountered anything like this, right? So, so you're the audience can
01:08:14.980
tell the viewer knows you're giving your opinion, your observation. I love how people say journalists
01:08:20.820
are not supposed to ever give their opinion. I was savaged for it when I, um, made a speech in
01:08:26.380
Chicago at the Better Government Association. And the speech, actually, I spent an hour and a half
01:08:30.800
talking about the return of Al Qaeda to Afghanistan, which is a story I'd just done on 60 minutes.
01:08:35.340
I made, um, a passing reference, uh, to Benghazi. That was brief. I said, you know, that, that I,
01:08:43.280
I think I said something like, I hope we're doing more about Benghazi than, than we say we are.
01:08:48.740
There's some hope there's something we don't know about, because if you're not, you're sending a
01:08:51.700
message of weakness to your enemies, not one of strength. And considering that that was the first
01:08:56.320
U.S. ambassador murdered in over half a century, um, that was the basis on which I was saying that
01:09:03.020
and the basis, the context was that the administration at the time was saying Al Qaeda
01:09:08.240
was finished and done and diminished and over created this false thing called, where is it
01:09:12.660
core Al Qaeda? As if the core of Al Qaeda, you know, was only in Afghanistan. And that's the only
01:09:18.260
thing that mattered, except there was no core. And the number three in Al Qaeda was in Yemen
01:09:22.460
and had never been in Afghanistan, never been based there. So, I mean, it was all just a pack of,
1.00
01:09:27.060
of, of, of political, uh, dishonesty and deceit. And they focused on that comment about Benghazi
01:09:34.700
and use that to, to smear and target me later when I covered Benghazi and say, you see, she
01:09:41.480
was biased and right wing and a conspiracy theorist from the start. And she should never
01:09:45.740
have been able, she should never have reported on that story. Well, good Lord, if that's the
01:09:50.240
standard, what about all these journalists being asked for their analysis? We call it analysis
01:09:54.740
and we check the box and say, okay, we're still objective journalists, not giving our
01:09:58.860
opinion. We're just giving our analysis. And that is, you can give analysis based on your
01:10:04.000
reporting and that can be separate from fact, but that's a real gray area there. And, uh,
01:10:10.820
to say those are mutually exclusive concepts is, uh, is that's giving yourself a free pass
01:10:16.860
to me. Right. And if you look at newspapers, they have opinion pages. In fact, the Washington
01:10:22.020
Post's opinion pages have exploded, right? They've expanded the number of them. There's,
01:10:27.180
um, there's just about as much opinion in the Washington Post today as there is news. And
01:10:31.800
in fact, and then if you add the fact that the, uh, the news reporting is infused with
01:10:36.240
opinion that's presented as fact, then, uh, you know, you're getting into crazy numbers.
01:10:41.460
It's almost all opinion. And what could be more dishonest than to present your opinion as
01:10:46.980
a fact? Correct. Cars today are computers on wheels from electronically controlled transmissions
01:10:52.960
to touch screen displays to dozens of sensors. But all of this tech is really expensive to fix
01:10:59.120
when it breaks. And that's why I am covered with car shield. I have a couple of old trucks that are
01:11:04.720
not covered by warranty anymore. And I have car shield because it's affordable protection that
01:11:09.880
have saved me literally probably $13,000 between the two trucks for covered repairs, computers,
01:11:16.060
GPS, electronics, all of it. You can choose your favorite mechanic. I take it to the dealership
01:11:21.140
when something goes wrong. Car shield takes care of all of it. They get you back on track in no
01:11:26.080
time. They have 24 seven roadside assistance, a rental car while yours is being fixed. They've
01:11:31.220
helped so far over a million customers drive with confidence, knowing that you have coverage from
01:11:36.620
America's number one auto protection provider. So whether you have 5,000 miles or 150,000 miles on
01:11:42.800
your vehicle, it's going to break. Don't wait until your check engine light comes on. Get covered
01:11:47.320
today by car shield. 1-800-CAR-6000. 800-CAR-6000. Mention the promo code Saturday or visit carshield.com
01:11:58.220
and use that promo code Saturday. You'll save 10%. That's carshield.com promo code Saturday.
01:12:05.160
Okay. Deductible may apply. What's the future of the media?
01:12:09.380
I always say I'm not a prophet when I get asked questions like that. What's the future? What's
01:12:13.620
going to happen in the war? I don't know. I'm going to look at my crystal ball. What should I know, Glenn?
01:12:19.940
I don't know. I'm not a prophet. I mean, when I say that too, I'm also not a visionary. I don't,
01:12:24.940
I, I'm, I'm the guy you send in when you want to know what the hell's going on.
01:12:29.540
Yeah. That's me. So let's approach it that way. Um, back in 2005, I started seeing real signs of,
01:12:40.000
of division and trouble coming in the country. And I started doing my homework and I, I read up and
01:12:45.560
studied as much as I could on revolutions in countries and how they start and how they're
01:12:50.700
fomented and what, you know, what things do you need to control to be able to do it? And I just
01:12:57.260
been checking the list and I can tell you where we are, you know, based on that, that doesn't mean
01:13:02.340
I know what's going to happen. It's just, I can see this progression. And by watching it,
01:13:08.300
if I were in the belly of the beast, I would know even more. You're in the belly of the beast.
01:13:14.020
Is there, is there a sense that, because what has to happen is a great humbling for all of us,
01:13:22.440
a great humbling. Is there a sense of, gosh, I mean, are we part of the problem? Is there any
01:13:31.280
sense of, do you see it? I don't, I'm asking you, you, but do you see it? I mean, if it was there,
01:13:37.380
you would see it. If it was there, then, uh, everyone who published false accounts of what
01:13:45.600
happened at the Lincoln Memorial with Nick Sandman and Nathan Phillips, they would have,
01:13:49.860
they would not have revised their stories and doubled down and then looked at other
01:13:55.640
ways to criticize, you know, privileged kids and Catholic kids at Catholic schools and this and
01:14:01.680
that. And, Oh, and don't, never, don't even, you know, don't even go to the, the, the red hat.
01:14:06.400
Right. So where you would see that accountability, you would see news organizations that took that,
01:14:13.640
that were awarded Pulitzer prizes for their reporting on Russia, Russian collusion,
01:14:20.900
the non-existent collusion. You would see news organizations standing up and saying, you know
01:14:25.260
what? Uh, we're not okay with this. We're not okay with this anymore. You would not see John
01:14:31.980
Brennan and Clapper being paid to comment on the things that they have a vested interest in shaping
01:14:40.120
and steering and lying about. You would not see, you would not see the same thing happening with
01:14:47.440
Ukraine that you saw happening with Russian collusion. You would not see Adam Schiff be given a platform
01:14:55.600
across the media space without being challenged. How, how can you not challenge him when he says
01:15:04.460
things that you now know to not be true? How can you allow Maxine Waters to go on and still talk
01:15:11.700
about Trump as if he is a, a Russian agent for Vladimir Putin and as if the entire Mueller
01:15:19.380
investigation never happened and Horowitz's report never happened and still see people cite Carter Page
01:15:26.420
as if he's a Russian spy when he was actually an American spy, right? How can that be happening?
01:15:34.960
Now I'm just, oh, I'm burying myself once again, as I think about the, the story I'm doing on, um,
01:15:43.100
that is about the way people who believe and feel that they've been left out of the media conversation
01:15:49.500
in this country for the longest time because their views, um, don't fit with the liberal worldview that
01:15:56.380
most journalists have. I'm doing a story looking at the media from their point of view. It's their
01:16:02.440
story. The media's point of view or the people who've been left out. So I mean, I hit just about
01:16:09.880
every, I hit every possible nuclear issue that you can think about. I mean, from, from anti-abortion
01:16:20.920
or pro-life, however you, whatever you want to call it to, uh, Russia, to Ukraine, to, uh, Antifa. Um,
01:16:30.620
I mean, if, if I, I know, I know the attack is coming and this one has to be bigger and it has to be,
01:16:38.540
um, worse and it has to be more effective. And, and they, they don't, when they come for you,
01:16:44.120
they don't just want you to lose your job. They want you to lose everything, everything, everything,
01:16:49.560
your, your reputation, your future, your ability to feed your children, to keep a roof over your head.
01:16:58.040
They want to annihilate you. I think they call it cancel culture. So I know, I know it's coming and
01:17:03.560
this is treacherous ground and it's hard. I am very uncomfortable reporting on, um, my own profession.
01:17:11.560
And as you know, especially my opinions out there on this, I've said a lot about it. And so, um, I have
01:17:18.340
to take that into account and it's fraught with conflicts of interest and the new smear, right?
01:17:22.220
Have you seen it? They're using it on John Solomon. He didn't properly disclose his conflicts of
01:17:27.200
interest. So it's not enough to disclose it. Someone is going to make a subjective judgment about whether
01:17:32.380
it's properly disclosed or not. And he wasn't, and, and he did some journalistic things like
01:17:39.940
calling for calling sources and. No, but that doesn't count. No, no, no, no. That doesn't
01:17:45.260
count. No, no, no, no. What document? No, I don't know. Don't look at the document. Right.
01:17:50.560
Solomon is compromised and he's, uh, and he's not disclosed his conflicts of interest and he's
01:17:55.380
toxic and you don't want to touch him. Right. I'm doing to you what you did to me. I know. But the,
01:17:59.620
but the Hill is actually saying that because he did that, because he actually was stepping
01:18:07.620
into the circle of a journalist and saying, this is not just my opinion. I reached out and I talked
01:18:13.940
to this person and this person and this person, and here's what they said. That was a compromise.
01:18:19.500
Oh, wait. So what they're saying is if you don't do any journalism and you just write whatever you
01:18:25.220
want. That's okay. Apparently that's, that's you're good to go. Right. But because Connie giving
0.96
01:18:31.120
your opinion in the New York times, uh, on their editorial page. Wow. I mean, that's like,
01:18:38.260
well, you see, it's that I always say, this is one of my rules. When one plus one doesn't equal
01:18:45.660
to something's up because if it conflicts with the way, you know, it works in the natural world,
01:18:53.640
it's not natural. You said something at the beginning of the interview that
01:19:00.620
stuck with me. I'm an alcoholic. Uh, and I remembered when my whole life burned down
01:19:07.440
and I had nothing. And, uh, the only thing besides my family, the only thing that I wanted back
01:19:16.680
was my name, my, my word to be able to look somebody in the eye and go, this is true. This
01:19:25.520
is what I believe. Alcoholics lie themselves into everything. And so you find yourself and
01:19:33.520
you realize you could take everything away, everything. But if I lose my word, I have nothing.
01:19:43.580
Hmm. You said at the beginning of the interview that you, um, I don't remember exactly how you
01:19:51.040
phrased it, but you felt in the square that you didn't die. You, you won, you, you, you lived
01:20:01.420
that day and you spoke about in a way your word that you have. That's, that's all you have. And
01:20:10.880
that's, that's all you have. And when somebody tries to take that from you, you know, especially,
01:20:15.740
I mean, everybody knows, um, that with sexual violence and sexual crimes and rape, that that's
01:20:23.500
what it's about. Everybody knows that it's, it's the basis of the entire Me Too movement.
01:20:28.260
But isn't that also what, what is happening when you said they don't want to just destroy
01:20:36.620
you. They want to take everything you have. That's right. The fastest way is to betray
01:20:42.120
yourself. Oh, they want you to betray yourself. Oh, cause that's the biggest prize of all.
01:20:46.980
If they can bury you with your own words and your own actions, that's the Olympic gold.
01:20:53.600
Or get you to come along, just get you to come along and say, you know what? I thought
01:21:00.500
this, I think this play along. Isn't that take you, doesn't that, doesn't that crush your
01:21:05.600
soul and who you are? If you just, if you know.
01:21:08.760
Oh no, you know what it's called. There's a tactic. It's a, it's, I'll tell you exactly
01:21:12.420
what it is. When they have you on the ground, in the dirt, on your back with nothing and their
01:21:19.100
foot is on your throat. They reach forward with one hand and they see if you take it.
01:21:26.840
And if you take it, you're theirs forever. You can have it all back. You can have the,
01:21:33.100
the glory, the recognition. You can be, you know, wined and dined in Washington. You can
01:21:39.040
get every award that your industry has to offer. You can have it all if you take the hand. And
01:21:46.000
if you don't take it, they never stop coming. That's the story of Jesus in the desert with
01:21:51.640
the devil, with Satan, where I'll give you everything at his most broken place. I'll
01:21:58.740
give you everything. You can have it all. Just do this one thing. Just say this one thing.
01:22:05.920
Mike Flynn didn't take the hand. You can see who did. Just name him among his peers. Who
01:22:16.500
did? Who took the hand? There's a few of them, right? And I will say full disclosure here,
01:22:24.700
Mike Flynn, I've known Mike Flynn for a long time and I love him and respect him and his family.
01:22:31.840
He is a great man. And I, I, without ever knowing any of the details I knew from the very first moment
01:22:41.740
that Mike Flynn never lied. That man has, uh, doesn't, doesn't have that DNA. He has that most
01:22:51.840
underrated quality of consistency. He is always the same. And he must have been the greatest threat
01:23:03.080
outside of Donald Trump because they went for him first.
01:23:20.140
I mean, as a, you don't have to give me the name, you know, just tell me.
01:23:23.500
It's so funny that you ask about him because, um, because, uh, the Daily Beast just tried to smear him
01:23:30.400
and, and target him and it's, uh, and there was a celebration on Twitter. This article is ridiculous.
01:23:37.660
How do you handle that? My wife, if somebody came after my wife, I would go out of my mind.
1.00
01:23:43.760
Oh, well, there's, there's not a single thing in there about my husband, uh, besides his name.
01:23:49.260
That's actually accurate. Not, not a single thing. It's just, uh, a joke. And, um, they,
01:23:55.600
they've been going after my husband for a while, but you know, he's a big boy.
01:23:59.380
He can take care of, he can take care of himself.
01:24:02.880
No. He was, um, in the, in the army for 23 years and, uh, and he's retired and all he does is get on my nerves.
01:24:18.600
Oh, no, I'm just kidding. Of course, you know that, um, uh, my, my husband, uh, has been at my side through
01:24:26.940
thick and thin through everything. He picked up the pieces of the, you know, the, out of the dirt
01:24:33.360
of Tahrir Square and through breast cancer and through, uh, my father is very ill and he's, you know,
01:24:41.400
my husband and through all the, through all the children and he's committed, uh, to his family.
01:24:46.520
And he is, he is, uh, a decorated, uh, veteran actually who, um, spent many, many years deployed.
01:24:56.360
Um, I met him in Afghanistan and we didn't, uh, you know, we didn't fall in love until
01:25:02.900
my last few months of being in Iraq. They tried to say that my husband, they tried to discredit
01:25:08.780
at my work by saying that my, you know, suggesting that my husband was feeding me stories in Iraq.
01:25:13.840
And of course, you know, I lived there five years and he was there for about the last eight
01:25:17.600
months and I hadn't seen him for years or even talk to him. You know, it's just such a joke
01:25:22.780
the way they do this. But, um, but my husband is the recipient. He'll hate this, that I'm talking
01:25:28.560
about this. He's the recipient of the soldier's medal, which I don't know if you're familiar
01:25:32.540
with it, but it is the highest award for valor, um, in peacetime. Wow. And it's the least awarded
01:25:39.380
medal of all. And you have to have, um, put your own life at such significant risk of dying
01:25:46.940
in order to save someone else's life. And that other person has to be, um, inescapably on the,
01:25:54.600
in peril, in peril that were it not for your action, that person would be dead. Um, that's the sort
01:26:01.640
of the standard for it. You know, it's funny. I once, uh, he was asked that once by a group
01:26:06.040
of Sergeant majors when he was, um, when he was being interviewed for a position in their
01:26:11.440
unit. And, um, what he said was, well, you know, uh, I don't remember a whole lot. And
01:26:19.540
so they were like, well, you know, tell us what you remember. And he said, well, I, I,
01:26:23.080
he was in a subway in DC at the time he was working in, uh, at Fort Belvoir and, uh, he was
01:26:29.660
in uniform because he was on his way home and a woman, uh, fell onto the tracks and,
01:26:35.060
um, cut her head open. And as the train was coming and, um, he said, basically, I don't
01:26:40.280
remember anything after that. And obviously what people witnessed him do was to get down
01:26:45.480
in front of that train and nobody knew, nobody understood how he survived. He, she was, I
01:26:51.240
think, not able to, you know, she couldn't move. And so he picked her up and gave it to
01:26:55.860
the people, black passengers on the platform and, and made it barely made it, um, out of
0.98
01:27:01.020
there. But actually people in the subway, um, reported that to the Pentagon and they spent
01:27:08.020
a few weeks tracking him down. And his mother was his mother. My mother and all fellow Sam
01:27:13.480
was at home in, I think, Kerrville, Texas, when she got a phone call saying, you know, is
01:27:18.080
this, is this person, your son? And was he, you know, in this place? And she was, she had
01:27:23.640
no idea. I don't know. They had to find him, to let him know.
01:27:32.240
No. You know, people act these days as if, um, as if there's no such thing as any respect
01:27:40.500
or regard for, uh, secrecy or classified information. And, and that's something that people like my
01:27:48.180
husband take very, very, very, very seriously. I don't know most of what he did in his career.
01:28:01.060
Uh, Roger Ailes was interviewing me for Fox and, uh, I had had dinner with him a couple
01:28:09.300
of times, but no, we never talked about business. And, um, and he says, uh, I want to meet with
01:28:16.600
you. I want to talk to you about a job. So I went and had dinner. I think I lost 15 pounds
01:28:23.560
It was the craziest damn interview ever. He, the first question he asked me was, what do
01:28:29.740
you think of the 1972 peace of courts with, uh, Nixon in China? And I'm like, I don't know.
01:28:36.500
And I said, not up to speed on that. And then he said, tell me, tell me, uh, what you think
01:28:49.640
the greatest achievement of the Eisenhower administration was. And I looked at him, I
01:28:54.900
sat there and I thought, and I said, Roger, I could play this one of two ways. I could bluff
01:29:02.240
and talk about his farewell speech. Uh, but I know you'd know I'm bluffing. I could do
01:29:09.220
that and roll the dice or I could just say, I don't know.
01:29:14.280
Never thought about it and probably destroy the interview. And he said, what are you going
01:29:20.100
to choose? And I said, well, I've already chosen at that point for option number two.
01:29:24.760
And, uh, he sat there and he said nothing to me for 10 minutes, dead silence for 10 minutes.
01:29:30.860
Wow. He pushed me up against the wall on everything. I mean, just, and I thought I'll
01:29:39.240
never see this man again. And he got up and he said, what I would like to say to you,
01:29:45.160
it is really, truly rare to sit down with someone who knows what they believe, knows who they are,
01:29:56.760
willing to admit what they don't know. It's a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you.
01:30:06.200
That was very classy. It's true. Thank you. It's, it's, uh, it is rare. Shouldn't be.
01:30:14.580
But it is, it is only people who are truly comfortable in their skin are willing to do
01:30:21.600
that. You only get one skin. You only got one. So, you know, there's a few things that change.
01:30:29.860
Always used to say, I want to be taller. Now I'm, you know, older and fatter and I can't
01:30:35.120
see anything unless I've got a spotlight on it. My children tell me I'm not fat. You're not fat,
01:30:42.060
mom. My children tell me I am. I pay mine. I bribe them relentlessly.
01:30:49.480
I keep telling them they're only going to get my best regards and my will. So,
01:30:53.420
you know, you'll love this. My son says to me a couple of days ago, Hey mom, mom, who's this guy?
01:31:00.920
Mike, Mike, what's his name? Bloomberg or something. He said, that guy gets shit done, mom.
01:31:07.520
I said, what? He said, Oh no, I, I get his ads all the time. Let me tell you, Mike gets shit done.
01:31:16.480
I was like, you're 11. And my 15 year old's like, who? Mike, who?
01:31:26.620
Just a reminder. I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it