Ep 90 ｜ Why Corrupt Media Chose Joe Biden ｜ Sharyl Attkisson ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 11 minutes
Words per Minute
167.26619
Summary
Cheryl Atkinson is a media warhorse, a veteran reporter, when being a reporter actually meant something. She's kind of turning into the Chuck Norris of journalism. She started at a PBS station back in 1982. Then in the early 1990s she landed a job as a news anchor for CNN. Then she went to CBS News, her home for about 21 years. She was the investigative correspondent in the D.C. bureau. She then was a CBS News regular substitute anchor for the CBS Evening News. She eventually went to 60 Minutes. She has covered a number of major events. Epidemics, pandemics, war, global politics, natural disasters, corruption, all three branches of government over the course of four presidents, no, five presidents, and multiple Edward R. Murrow awards. She s on advisory boards, achievement awards, and has literally written textbooks on journalism. People don t realize it, but for years behind the success, she was the canary in the coal mine.
Transcript
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Today's guest is a media warhorse, a veteran reporter, when being a reporter actually meant
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something. She's kind of turning into the Chuck Norris of journalism. She started at a PBS station
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back in 1982. Then in the early 1990s, she went and landed a job as a news anchor for CNN. Then
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she went to CBS, her home for about 21 years, where she was doing all kinds of things. She was
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the investigative correspondent in the D.C. Bureau. She then was a CBS News regular substitute anchor
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for the CBS Evening News, and she eventually went to 60 Minutes. A number of major events she has
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covered in her work. It is remarkable. Epidemics, pandemics, war, global politics, natural disasters,
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corruption, all three branches of government over the course of four presidents, no, five presidents,
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and multiple Emmys and multiple Edward R. Murrow awards. She's on advisory boards, achievement
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awards. She's literally written textbooks on journalism. People don't realize it, but for
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years behind the success, she was the canary in the coal mine, and she details it in her latest book
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called Slanted, how the news media taught us to love censorship and hate journalism. Today,
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somebody who eventually should get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, I think, Cheryl Atkinson.
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Cheryl, I think I want to start with the frustration that I think most people feel.
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They don't understand how a group of people can either be this blind or this corrupt and
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why there's just you and maybe a handful of others that have come out from the belly of
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the beast with real credibility that is saying, wait, this is insanity. How is this happening?
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Well, I think it's a good question, but I think it's a transition that's happened over a period
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of years, maybe accelerated starting in 2016. But I started writing about this in 2014 and
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noticing it, I would say, back around 2005, 2006, this trend that was coming. And our industry,
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Glenn, has been transformed into one that many journalists no longer see themselves as
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recorders of fact and reporters of truth, but as those missionaries who are out there to put forth
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certain narratives and convince people to think a certain way. And that's the transition that's
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happened, thanks to political and corporate interests that you and I have talked about before,
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figuring out how to co-opt almost every information source we have, including the news.
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Sure. Can I ask you a question? And this is an honest one on on the role that maybe I have played
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in this because I went into TV news. I didn't want to do TV news and I'm not a journalist. I'm an opinion
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guy and I'm an entertainer. I know how to package things. And it was so successful when I was doing it.
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And then I started seeing the media. There was a time when journalists were journalists and you
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didn't know their opinion. And then right around the same time that I was doing stuff,
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these journalists started just blowing out through their opinion. And some of them starting to do,
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you know, some stick at times for a while. Did we accelerate that? Did I? I mean,
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is this just in my head? Well, no, I think you've noticed that as alternative forms of information
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arose, meaning Glenn Beck or whoever it may be, then the political and corporate interests that
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were able to fairly well control the news narrative saw that they had to do something else. And that
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something else included targeting and controversializing those who were not subjected to or not subject to
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this co-opting or this takeover. And so they use their partners in the media where they had already
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made inroads to attack those who are not on the narrative or who are off narrative. And that gave
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rise to this whole other thing that I write about in Slanted, which is media reporting on itself and
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each other, kind of talking to each other in a way that doesn't inform the general public. But we're now
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largely reporting because one narrative media outlet is trying to attack somebody who's off the
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narrative and we're just sort of fighting amongst each other in some cases. And that's replaced the
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news. So I want to come back to this because I think people would like to hear an informed decision on
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who can be trusted and where do you go to get just some semblance of truth. But I want to start with
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Hunter Biden. This Hunter Biden story is absolutely incredible. If we go back in the time tunnel,
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you had Facebook announcing that it would be suppressing the story because of its third party
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fact checker saying that it was misinformation. Twitter shut down all the links. They said that it
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was a story. The story was dangerous and might be hacked materials. Washington Post said it was Russian
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disinformation. Wikipedia said that the New York Post is an unreliable source and it was just Russian
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interference. CBS News said the laptop allegedly full of Hunter Biden's old emails is just trying
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to sow confusion in the final weeks of the election. Fox News did the story, but they said that Rudy
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Giuliani can't be trusted. MSNBC treated the laptop story as disinformation said it was false. New York
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Times, same thing. They they doubted the authenticity of the story. They said the staff at the New York
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Post did, but they never bothered to dispute any of the facts. Politico, Axios, CNN, National Public Radio,
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all of them on and on and on. Now this week, they've discovered that maybe there's something going on.
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Well, I think the tell with a lot of these stories and narratives like the Hunter Biden story
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is when someone is trying to tell you, a member of the public, not to read it, not to believe it,
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not to watch it, instead of putting it out there and letting you decide or quoting other people on
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different giving different viewpoints. But another tell with Hunter Biden story is there was a very
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similar story about the Biden family's alleged conflicts of interest that was unearthed about
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a year ago this time by the left-leaning press, probably at the time when some of them were
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infighting and didn't want Joe Biden to be the nominee. So therefore, it was Politico and other,
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again, left-leaning press that did some very good investigations that were not called fake news and
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that were not censored on social media. And then all of a sudden, when Biden became the nominee,
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it's as if that was thrown down the memory hole. And when conservatives started bringing it up or
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neutral parties started looking into this, then that was now characterized very similar to the
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reporting that had been done and not considered controversial months before. And now this was all
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called debunked conspiracy theory and it had to be censored on social media. And, you know, people like
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us, we watch it, not just you and me, but a lot of people, and it doesn't make sense.
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We know there's something amiss when we see trends like this.
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So we are sitting again at a week where they are finding this to be true now. Is there an honest
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one among the bunch? I mean, do they realize what they're doing? Is there any self-awareness at all
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that? Oh, yeah, it looks like that's true. And, you know, we just hid that, you know, because we
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wanted Biden. Is there any reality that enters their minds? Well, there are honest people, of course,
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at all of these places. And when I worked at CBS, as I saw things kind of going down the tubes in the
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industry, I fretted a lot about stories that weren't mine, but I knew were not being covered honestly or
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appropriately. And it caused a lot of heartache. I tried to step in internally in an appropriate way
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in some instances. But there's not a lot you can do. And if you think of them, meaning the ones who
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are on the narrative and trying to convince the public of a certain thing and willing to do this
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dishonest coverage, they're almost like a defendant in a criminal case. When you poke a hole or you've
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proved something that they've done that's inappropriate or wrong, they go into defense mode. They don't go into
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self-reflection mode. They don't say, oh, why did we get the facts wrong? What should we do
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differently? They simply try to poke holes in what you're doing or defend themselves by deflecting in
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a different direction. They're not. These people are not honest journalists that are concerned with
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reporting the facts accurately. They're concerned with getting out the narrative and then trying to
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protect themselves if they're accused of, you know, getting the facts wrong.
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So you're made president of CBS News tomorrow. And you want to fix it.
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Define journalism and what would have to be fixed? How do you fix this if you wanted to fix it?
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Well, I would reestablish the semblance of a firewall that was pretty good for a lot of years in
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journalism, at least, you know, there were flaws in it, but we tried to pretend or we were pretty good at
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keeping facts separate from opinions. So the first thing I would do is say, let's make sure
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that in our hard news stories, we don't put the reporter's opinions in there and that we attribute
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things that are said by other people and that we reach out and be sure to establish both sides in a
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story, represent them fairly, and not draw conclusions on our own. Usually they're drawing
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conclusions over things they can't possibly know. And get in mind that your goal is not to leave people
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with the idea of what they must think. But your goal is to represent the facts on the ground and
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different viewpoints, not to censor, not to shape, but get your own head outside of that. Like this is
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not about you trying to further a narrative. So you would have to establish, I think, a new set of
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tenants that are kind of like tenants used to be, although unwritten in journalism, objectivity,
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neutrality, completion when you're reporting on a story. And you'd have to just really try to sever
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all of the things that have been happening, particularly in the last four years with
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journalism and reestablish the ethics. And so I don't think there's any there's any there's any
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hunger for that inside the industry. In fact, they're going the other way. YouTube issued a
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statement yesterday. This is remarkable to me. The safe harbor deadline for the U.S. presidential election
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and enough states have certified the election results to determine a president elect. Given that,
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we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today or any time after that misleads
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people by alleging that there was widespread fraud or errors that changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S.
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presidential election in line with our approach towards historical U.S. presidential elections.
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For example, we will remove videos claiming that a presidential candidate won the election
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due to widespread software glitches or counting errors. We will begin enforcing this policy today.
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And ramp up in the weeks to come. Cheryl, Cheryl, I mean, this is Chinese. This this is what China does.
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Well, I would never have guessed, you know, and I was looking pretty far ahead some years ago at
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these trends, and I would never have guessed that we would have seen such blatant censorship
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and just open about it. Contrary to really everything I think most of the American public wants
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and expects in terms of information being able to make up your own mind, not wanting conflicted third
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parties to pretend to know the truth about things they can't possibly know, and therefore keeping us
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from seeing things. It's, I wouldn't have believed it. It's 1984. I don't know if people read that book
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anymore. But if you read 1984, it's just, you know, very similar to what we're, we're experiencing
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today. I, the other day, I did a TV show, I'm a collector of, of old historic objects. And I have
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a radio that was built in 1939 by the German government, you couldn't go out and buy just a radio anymore in
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Germany. And it only picked up the radio stations that were approved by the Nazi party. So you
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couldn't, you couldn't scan it, you could turn the dial, but it would never pick up anything other than the
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government voice. And I looked at that radio the other day, and I thought, what is the difference? Except it's not
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the government doing it. It's a giant corporation that's doing it. They're just deleting anything they don't want
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you to hear. And remember, it's not just, I posit, big tech that got this idea to step in suddenly
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starting around 2016. They had little interest in doing this sort of censorship prior to that, to that,
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they were convinced by the same political and corporate interests that controlled the news,
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in my view. They saw that in 2016, particularly with the rise of popularity of Donald Trump,
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that people were still able to get unfettered access to information online. And they had
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to stop that. So to do so in 2016, these propagandas started to create very cleverly
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the impression that there was a market for curating and censoring our news, that there was so much fake
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news out there, and that it's so dangerous that we couldn't really, we shouldn't see all this
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information. We shouldn't access it ourselves. We might not make the right decisions if we see it.
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So they spent most of the past four years creating this impression that there's a market for these
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curators so that they could step in as they have now, kind of in an invited way, using social media
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and big tech companies and make sure that they shape what we see, what we don't see, what we can access,
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much as they successfully did on the news the first decade and a half of this century.
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Have you seen this? Let me just give you a quick highlights. It's coming from the German Marshall Fund,
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which started out as an economic thing, and then it's just gone awry here.
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They are proposing a Digital New Deal to create an internet that supports democracy,
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and they will tackle the Trojan horse outlets masquerading as journalism, extremist and conspiracy
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peddling groups and channels. That includes Fox, Daily Wire, Breitbart. They say that this poses a
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threat to informed democratic discourse and oppositional to mainstream media, the so-called elite or
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conventional wisdom. They want a PBS of the internet to fill the vacuum left by the decimation of journalism.
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Well, what's most interesting, I think, about these trends is every time we recognize something bad is happening,
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the same people step in with a plan to supposedly make it better, and all they're doing is getting a stronger grip
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on the information. And unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there, I've been interviewed by some of them
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in the past few weeks, who say, well, you know, there is a lot of bad information online, and people really
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says who? You know, in this country, you're allowed to pick up the National Enquirer in the grocery store
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without the manager stepping in front of you as you check out,
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without him saying, I don't want you reading the National Enquirer.
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You might believe some of it, and some of it's not true. That's none of his business.
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In this country, you're free to make up your own mind. You're free to believe fake news,
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by the way, if you want to. But more importantly, a lot of that labeled fake news is actually,
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turns out to be true and factual, because you have the propagandists mislabeling things as
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conspiracy theories and fake news and fake studies, when in fact, they're accurate, but they're off the
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narrative of these powerful interests. That's what's so important about being able to access
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information yourself, so you can make up your own mind.
00:18:18.260
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10 bucks off of your first order. You've been on this for a long time. I've been seeing this. That's
00:19:25.740
why I created The Blaze in 2012 for a time when we would be, we would have corporate interests. We would
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have sponsors and everything else taken from us, and we would have to be able to stand on
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our own and have a relationship one-on-one with the individual. But even as I am watching
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this now, as you just said, it's happening bigger, faster, more boldly than even I thought.
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And as I'm looking at just how much movement has happened from Election Day to, what, four weeks,
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five weeks from Inauguration Day, good God, what is coming our way in 2021?
00:20:14.260
Well, I think the same thing when there's a generation that doesn't know that prior to around
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me first noticing this censorship trend around 2005 or so, that the news didn't used to be about
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shaping and censoring. I mean, maybe they shaped in subtle ways. I'm not saying we were perfect.
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But the first time I actually heard someone argue a story should not air, that people shouldn't even
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hear that this allegation was being made or that this study had been done was around that 2005 time
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period. It was in relationship to a story the pharmaceutical industry didn't want out. And I
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remember when I heard they wanted the story dropped entirely, not just their side to be heard, but the
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story just not to be told. It was such a new thing. Now we've all grown numb and used to the notion that,
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hey, that's what the news does. They tell us what you're not supposed to hear. They censor people they
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don't like, that they think or that they accuse of peddling conspiracy theories. They won't have
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them on. They won't quote them. This is a new reality that didn't exist 15 years ago. And yes,
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you're right. In the past four years, it's moved faster. And since the election, once Twitter started
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just taking down accounts overtly, not just messing with the algorithms, but doing it in a way everybody
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saw right before the election, it's sort of like, you know, Katie, bar the door as everybody's going
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at it. Similarly, not even trying to hide it. So who runs this? I mean, who's who is Big Brother
00:21:43.020
today? Well, I think Big Brother is a conglomerate. I don't think there's necessarily one guy at the
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top of all of this pulling every string. But I described in my last book, The Smear, there's a
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propaganda industry, a smear industry, a multi-billion dollar industry, very well connected,
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effective global law firms, PR firms, crisis management firms, LLCs, nonprofits, with people
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who know how this works. And they can get their nose under the tent of news organizations. They
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understand how to influence social media, who to go to, to make sure that Adam Schiff, a congressman who
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no one elected to do this, but to make sure that he calls or contacts Google, or some other company
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to make sure that certain things are excluded from their searches, because he says, and probably I
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assume because of a donor connection, that this scientific study shouldn't be seen, or this group
00:22:41.020
should be marginalized online. There are all kinds of ways they're able to step in and impact what we
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see. And that whole effort, you know, in 2016, for big tech to suddenly start stepping in and doing
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what I call the fake fact checks, as you may know, Glenn, David Brock of Media Matters took credit
00:22:58.420
for that among a group of donors that this notion had never been discussed before or done. But when
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Facebook started it, Brock said his, you know, propaganda group had been able to convince Facebook
00:23:09.520
to do it. So they're being convinced in different ways. And perhaps sometimes through politicians with
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the implicit threat of regulation, if they don't do these things, which is why I call it true
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censorship. If the government is intervening, a lot of people say it's not censorship because
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it's private companies. I think there's a new definition of censorship when there's a connection
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or tie to government figures. And when they're being coerced to do something under implicit threat
00:23:36.160
of potential regulation or other things, or and they're contributing to the politicians, meaning big
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tech companies, there's a symbiotic relationship that connects them in a way that leads to the things
00:23:47.900
that we're seeing today, I think. I think the biggest donation to the Biden campaign came from
00:23:53.380
the media and came from big tech by suppressing stories. Studies have already shown that people
00:24:01.740
who voted for Biden, after they found out about Hunter Biden, they said they would have changed their
00:24:07.220
vote. I think it's 10 or 18 percent, somewhere in that, enough to change the outcome. Isn't that an
00:24:15.580
in-kind contribution? It would seem. And you also look at in 2016, the biggest donor among the biggest
00:24:24.820
donors to Hillary Clinton was Google Alphabet, Eric Schmidt, so on. Same thing with Sanders and same thing with
00:24:33.280
Joe Biden. Yes, they're they're all in for the one political party.
00:24:37.760
So as we travel down this road, you said that the corporate interests and the political interests
00:24:49.040
behind the news media. Can you explain that a little bit?
00:24:54.640
Well, I'm talking about me observing the fact that first the pharmaceutical industry,
00:25:01.500
industry, but then I saw the auto industry, the defense industry, they have intermediaries that
00:25:09.920
they pay very well, whether they're the PR firms and crisis management firms and so on,
00:25:14.800
that understand how to contact somebody at news organizations to slant and shape and censor stories
00:25:22.220
that are not to their benefit. The same way they lobby members of Congress and give them donations
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to make sure hearings are not held or hearings go a certain way when it comes to topics they care
00:25:32.360
about. And then I noticed that political interests started using the same tactics. Maybe they always
00:25:38.000
had. But once I started seeing the heavy handed, successful tactics of corporations, I saw that,
00:25:43.600
you know, various political interests were doing similar things. And so that's why when I say political
00:25:48.720
and corporate interests have understood how to use it, these intermediaries, the smear industry,
00:25:53.560
they'll work for anybody. And it's not always divided along strict party lines, some of these
00:25:58.340
issues, because maybe a corporation has an interest that leans left or leans right or crosses party lines.
00:26:04.880
So it's not always so easy to say this is a liberal bias or a conservative bias.
00:26:14.880
letting the chips fall where they may. Make the case to people who now think that freedom of speech
00:26:29.280
You know, you can easily look at I can look at the mainstream media and say, look at the bullcrap
00:26:35.360
they're peddling. And if I wasn't a constitutionalist, I would say they should be shut down.
00:26:40.320
I don't think so. Explain to the person who does think that freedom of speech has limits.
00:26:48.280
What are the effects of where we're headed? Why should they change their mind?
00:26:53.920
I would say read Orwell's 1984, but understand the term slippery slope. It's not always about what
00:27:01.380
you see today. Maybe people like what's being censored today, or they like the fact that it's
00:27:05.680
being censored. But once you open the door to say somebody should come in or can come in and play
00:27:12.100
that role in a country where this was never meant to be, at least according to our constitution,
00:27:17.880
then you're inviting that to happen in ways you don't like down the road. And I'll give one example.
00:27:23.480
When we have directed search results by Google to certain places, for example, during the world,
00:27:29.800
during the coronavirus start of this pandemic, they announced a partnership, at least they announced it
00:27:35.560
so we knew it, to direct our searches on coronavirus to the World Health Organization, make it harder to
00:27:40.960
find other material. When we now know the World Health Organization, by its own admission, was wrong
00:27:45.460
about a lot of important things, but we would have been sent there. So let's go back to the 1950s.
00:27:52.160
Let's go back to cigarette smoking. At the time when studies were first emerging in the 40s and 50s that
00:27:58.480
showed smoking could be linked to lung cancer. If that were today, we would never know,
00:28:03.280
I posit, because the mainstream establishment in medicine said it wasn't true, because the powerful
00:28:09.980
interest in the tobacco industry didn't want us to hear that information. So any studies that would
00:28:15.120
have said that would have been debunked and taken off of search results on Google. We wouldn't have
00:28:19.700
been able to read them. We would have been told either they don't exist or they're not true or it's junk
00:28:24.180
science. And in that environment, we would never know that cigarettes can cause lung cancer. So
00:28:30.220
extrapolate that to almost any issue, that if you can't find out the truth because someone has locked
00:28:35.640
in, the truth is they say they know it at a moment in time and it'll never be changed and it serves a
00:28:40.960
powerful interest. If that's what you want to be spoon fed on every topic in your life, I think you
00:28:46.640
can see how damaging that could be. How do you define truth?
00:28:50.800
Well, I don't use that word too much just because in journalism, you know, it's hard to arrive at
00:29:00.000
truth. It's a different definition than facts. But sometimes there is a truth, you know, there's
00:29:07.080
a truth of something that is either one way or not. But I guess more often than not, I would say there
00:29:13.000
are facts and fact patterns that are often contradictory or in dispute or various sides
00:29:20.580
on. And one side may look right today, but as time goes on, the other side may have points or
00:29:25.600
emerge to be the side that was correct. And that's why I think in journalism, it's so important to
00:29:30.600
approach a story with an open and flexible mind. What you think you learn, be sure that you represent
00:29:36.860
the other side of the other viewpoint. How many things turn out to be different? You know,
00:29:41.000
almost everything turns out to be different when you learn more about it, or it turns out to be
00:29:47.100
something that changes. If you as a journalist get so locked into the thought that you know the
00:29:52.080
ultimate truth, and you've got to convince people of it, and you become vested in it, you're going to
00:29:56.580
miss the accurate facts and perhaps the real truth because you've dug in. But couple that with the
00:30:02.800
notion that that's perfectly fine with a brand of journalists that are working in some organizations
00:30:07.360
today because they're narrative pushers. They're not out for truth or accuracy. They want to get across
00:30:13.180
a storyline on behalf of whatever interest is pulling strings. And that's, I think, by and large,
00:30:21.920
Okay, this has been an absolutely crazy year. And I think we're all sitting at a time where we don't
00:30:29.120
know what's going to happen next. And we've experienced things we've never imagined. And after this
00:30:33.520
election, I don't know. I mean, I think I would find it reasonable if vampire space bunnies, you know,
00:30:40.780
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00:30:47.300
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I hate to say a conspiratorial thing, but I think by silencing people and by immediately discrediting
00:32:43.660
things and never putting any thought into it, it's just knee jerk, bad, good. It, it, it makes things
00:32:53.020
worse. It makes people go down a rabbit hole. When you start to see somebody acting weird and there's,
00:33:01.820
they have a pattern of it. You immediately begin to think wild things. You, you do it in your own life
00:33:08.960
with a friend and it might be coming from you, but if they start to act weird, then you're like,
00:33:14.720
no, it's not me. It's them. The press is making, go ahead. When your cognitive dissonance, as you call
00:33:22.320
it, is going off. And that happens every day with people when they watch the news or read stuff on
00:33:26.720
social media, you're right. And that's why I think there's a huge, um, lack of confidence in all of our
00:33:34.040
institutions where they talk about media, public health officials, Congress, you name it. And,
00:33:39.060
and we've caused it. And then we look at the people who are feeling that way and say, you're crazy.
00:33:44.140
You know, like the government, let's just use the simple example. They say, you know, don't wear
00:33:48.660
masks. Masks absolutely don't work. You'll never know how to wear them correctly. And then, you know,
00:33:53.340
within one day, everybody wear masks. You're crazy. If you don't masks work. And then they look at the
00:33:58.720
public and go, what's wrong with you that you're questioning us. Right. And we're just trying to figure out
00:34:03.480
which was the lie. Right. No, and it's not causing that. It's not a problem to say, you know what,
00:34:09.620
we have new information, but they just deny that any of that stuff happened. And so you are left with,
00:34:17.160
are you lying to me now? Are you lying to me then? What? There's no, there's no process that you're
00:34:26.720
allowed to go through. And then they just become more draconian. If you question, uh, it's, it's,
00:34:36.240
I've never seen anything like it, at least in America. Well, I blame, so I blame the media
00:34:42.400
because I work in the media for a lot of it because when public health officials do that
00:34:46.360
instead of us, and this is what we do now for whatever reason saying, you know, don't ever wear
00:34:52.380
a mask. Masks are bad, that you can't wear them correctly. We should be looking at that rationally
00:34:57.260
and providing counterpoints. If there are counterpoints and saying, this is what they say,
00:35:03.480
here's what we don't know. And then when the information changes, it's not such, such a radical
00:35:08.580
turn where you're then left going, well, what, what happened? And then again, like you said,
00:35:15.820
then they start calling names of the people that are using just rational, logical thinking skills.
00:35:21.040
When this happens, you're, you're saying, okay, a plus B equals C. And then they're going,
00:35:25.920
what's wrong with you? You're a conspiracy theorist. You're anti-science when they've
00:35:29.300
caused the problem. Correct. The same thing can be said about the way the media covers stories.
00:35:33.400
The same thing can be said about all kinds of things when it comes to our information.
00:35:38.240
And they're not, I mean, if you look at the mask coverage in America, in all of the cities where
00:35:46.960
there's real problems, it's 95, 96 is highest. 97% of people are wearing masks. The lowest I saw
00:35:56.260
in a major city was I think 91%. Well, no, wait a minute. If that's true, why do you keep telling us
00:36:05.300
that people aren't wearing masks? And that's why I think, you know, that's why the numbers are going
00:36:10.460
up because you told us that if 80%, just 80% would wear masks, they would do, it would have a bigger
00:36:19.660
impact than shutting everybody inside of their home. So, so which is it and who's the problem?
00:36:25.440
And why do you say that, uh, you know, conservatives, half the country don't get it. If 90% plus are
00:36:33.300
wearing masks. Well, I hearken back to something governor Cuomo said toward the end of their first
00:36:42.040
big, big, horrible, you know, bout with coronavirus in New York. And he said, almost all of the people
00:36:49.640
in the hospital now with coronavirus, and it was some huge percentage reported having been in isolation
00:36:56.580
or self-isolation prior to this. And he said, we got to figure out why that is meaning why are the people
00:37:02.680
that are doing exactly as we told them to do the sickest ones that we're finding in the hospital?
00:37:07.900
And then poof, you never heard anything else about it. And I'll tell you that I've interviewed, um,
00:37:12.940
virologists on camera and off camera and government experts who are working on this problem for the
00:37:18.440
government now and academic experts who don't believe in or have different recommendations than
00:37:24.460
what the government is saying or has said, but won't speak of it because off camera, and they've said
00:37:30.160
this not in the same room with each other, they're worried about either being portrayed as a coronavirus
00:37:34.700
doubter, a narrative that was put out there in a very concerted way, or they're, uh, for fear of
00:37:41.140
appearing to contradict Dr. Fauci. And I've said to them, well, what a sad place we're at where scientists
00:37:46.840
who are working on this problem have viewpoints that are, that differs to some degree, um, from some
00:37:53.660
recommendations that they're afraid to talk about. Now they're following their own recommendations in
00:37:58.080
their households and in their workplaces and not telling us about it because we're supposed to
00:38:02.340
only hear about the ones, you know, from certain people. And this is again, what happens when our
00:38:08.160
information is controlled and you don't have access to a broader range and you can make up your own
00:38:12.760
mind and we can figure out what's really going on. We had Chris Cuomo, the doctor he went to,
00:38:19.560
uh, is, uh, somebody that wanted to treat his astral body, um, because a lot of sickness comes from our
00:38:27.900
astral body. Uh, fine. If that's what you wanted to create, I, uh, you know, I haven't had my astral
00:38:35.160
body checked in quite a while. So who am I to say, but that person was fine as should be. If that's the
00:38:42.840
doctor you want, go follow that doctor. But the doctor in, uh, Oregon that said this mask stuff is not
00:38:52.180
good, lost his license. What happens to a country that, uh, if you have a differing opinion from the
00:39:03.260
authoritative source, you lose everything. What happens to that country?
00:39:10.060
Well, you become, I think, and I've thought a lot about this, like the countries we tried to not be
00:39:17.440
like when this country was started. We wanted things not to be that way where these things were
00:39:23.440
dictated by some power and where dissenting language and viewpoints and opinions and science
00:39:29.360
were not allowed. But do we end up in the same place as these other countries? And it just takes
00:39:34.900
200 something odd years to get there. I don't know. Um, I don't believe in star chambers. I don't
00:39:43.220
believe in, you know, I don't believe in puppet masters. I do believe in interests and power and money
00:39:52.760
influencing those interests, uh, especially over a long period of time. Uh, you know, I've been talking a
00:40:00.180
lot about the great reset and it's coronavirus is not a conspiracy. It's real. Then there are people
00:40:07.700
that take advantage of those things. And as I see the, the plan from the world economic forum on their
00:40:13.940
own website, which I guess they say is a conspiracy. You should talk to them about it. Um, of these group
00:40:22.620
of people that want to change capitalism, want to change the way we relate to each other, want to
00:40:29.940
change, uh, the, the media. I begin to understand that perhaps Donald Trump wasn't just hated because
00:40:39.960
he was outspoken. He was hated because he could stand in the way of this global movement towards
00:40:50.160
the best you could describe it. I think is, is, uh, Chinese capitalism where the very wealthy are
00:40:59.900
kind of in charge and the, those who are connected to have all the strings, um, and they, and they pull
00:41:07.940
them and we're kind of left out in the dark, like the regular Chinese person. Is that too far out?
00:41:16.300
No, I don't think so. I mean, I think if Donald Trump had positions that were more establishment,
00:41:24.960
party establishment, whether Democrat or Republican, that not only would the globalist people you're
00:41:30.920
speaking of not have objected to his brash ways, nobody else would have objected to them so much
00:41:37.300
either. The only reason in my view that they've raised this fear about Donald Trump isn't really, that's just
00:41:43.040
sort of a deflection. Isn't really because of the things he tweets and the things he says, it's
00:41:47.300
because they have to find a way to controversialize and destroy him because of the things he will do
00:41:53.300
because he's not part of the establishment, the money structure. He's not on board with these
00:41:58.280
well-established power structures that have been in play for decades in this country with the same
00:42:03.160
people granting access and making sure that certain laws do or don't get passed, that certain things
00:42:09.220
do or don't get addressed. He came in and threw all of that up in the air and everybody who was
00:42:14.380
part of that system didn't like it and felt the need to try to stop it. So if he can't do it, who
00:42:21.740
could? There's the question. I mean, I think he's the closest to being able to make inroads in this
00:42:27.800
establishment if you're someone who thinks that the establishment is too strong and entrenched.
00:42:32.900
And I think it's proven to be. And our intelligence community, for example, has too much
00:42:37.540
power and corruption that persists from administration to administration. He was going
00:42:43.820
to tackle that on the front end with Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, which is why Flynn was
00:42:48.240
targeted, that they couldn't let that happen. So if Donald Trump can't do it, I don't see anybody else
00:42:54.360
on the horizon that has the ability and the wherewithal and the tin ear to this criticism. I mean,
00:43:00.080
Donald Trump didn't bend a lot of what he thought he should do based on this criticism that was
00:43:05.960
coming. But most politicians do. They don't have the stomach or the heart or they're too beholden to
00:43:11.720
the interests that want them to act a certain way to to do anything different. Do you believe
00:43:17.880
there's, um, a good possibility, uh, that he didn't lose the election? I have, I have not been able to
00:43:30.720
find anything that rules out that he won the election and that it was somehow taken from him.
00:43:40.400
I have seen a lot of evidence that shows that might've happened. And certainly there've been a lot of
00:43:46.280
experts who've said it didn't happen. And I have not been able to be convinced, uh, one way or the
00:43:51.780
other. So yes, I think it's a possibility, particularly if you look at, let's look at what
00:43:56.700
we were told starting in 2016, that the Chinese and the Russians had tried to interfere, had
00:44:02.640
interfered in our election and would do so again. And that we already knew there were domestic bad
00:44:07.280
actors that had done bad things involving politics, including some in our own government
00:44:12.200
and intelligence community, including some who never got punished and including an FBI lawyer
00:44:16.900
who allegedly doctored a document to get a wiretap against a former Trump campaign associate,
00:44:22.300
et cetera. So going into 2020, we as rational thinking people would have every reason to believe
00:44:29.040
there'd be mischief. And we should have been the reporters who cover politics and elections
00:44:33.460
on the ground in these swing States looking for any anomaly or anything suspicious, whether it was
00:44:39.880
on the part of perhaps foreign actors or the Biden camp or Trump supporters. And instead, I find it
00:44:46.580
very odd that at the conclusion of this election, very quickly, we were just told there's nothing to
00:44:52.840
see, accept it. And I will also say I'm a bit skeptical because this was the oddest election perhaps
00:45:00.000
we've ever had, at least the oddest one in our lifetime. I say even more so than the Bush-Gore
00:45:05.320
Florida debate. Oh yeah, much, much more. And we were conditioned by a propaganda campaign that
00:45:11.360
makes me wonder to see this as normal. If we had not been conditioned by people that six,
00:45:18.020
seven months before the election started telling us, Trump will appear to be winning on election day,
00:45:24.900
but that will be a red mirage. They had a name for it. And they started putting all that out on talk
00:45:29.840
shows and analysts started putting this out. And then in the coming days, it will be clear,
00:45:34.900
you know, maybe it'll take weeks or months, but in the coming days, it'll be clear that Biden
00:45:37.960
actually wins. And I remember thinking at the time, because I'm just a rational thinking person,
00:45:43.860
how do they know that before the first vote has been cast? They already know how this is going to
00:45:48.040
be played out. I thought that was odd, but nobody else on the news was saying, well, that's weird that
00:45:52.280
you know that in advance. So when the oddest thing in the world happened, which was Trump appeared to be
00:45:58.260
winning by a landslide on election night. And then with all of these mail-in votes and with
00:46:03.040
Republican observers blocked and huge dumps, everything turns in the next day or two, next
00:46:08.740
couple of days, instead of us saying, well, that's really odd. We better be sure to look at this
00:46:13.660
rationally and skeptically and check everything out. We say, we knew that was going to happen.
00:46:19.320
We were told there was going to be a red mirage as if it's all normal. So I think that was brilliant
00:46:23.780
on the part of whoever put out those talking points and understood. It starts to look like
00:46:28.820
a plan to me, but understood that this was where we would be. Yeah, it was a plan. It came from the
00:46:33.780
Transition Integrity Project, which we're still following that plan. I mean, if you look at it
00:46:40.600
now, you can still see everything's right on schedule. Any doubt in your mind that if things
00:46:46.780
were reversed, the media would be screaming for their day in court and this isn't over?
00:46:54.960
Absolutely. I mean, I've said if in 2016, Hillary Clinton had appeared to be winning by a landslide
00:47:00.380
on election night, and then over the course of the next couple of days, Donald Trump pulled into the
00:47:05.520
lead on almost landslide status himself, including in places that seemed very improbable, the press would
00:47:12.280
never have let that go easily and shouldn't have. You know, that should be something that would be
00:47:16.200
looked at. It's an anomaly. And I even say that if this were being covered differently, and you know
00:47:21.620
the press has, I'll use the word conspired, because we've seen them talk about not giving much air or
00:47:28.600
oxygen to the Trump side of things post the election. If the press were covering it differently and
00:47:34.920
neutrally, there'd be an entire different impression, I believe, among the viewing public as to what's going
00:47:40.360
on right now and what had happened, because some of these state legislative hearings would be taken live
00:47:45.540
on the news, you know, not just some channels that some people watch on the news. President Trump,
00:47:51.620
when he called into a state legislative hearing, I can't believe that I had a hunt for that. That
00:47:57.240
should have been live on television, on the cable channels, but even perhaps on the regular news,
00:48:01.860
that's never happened before. And I had to really hunt to listen to that. They're suppressing the
00:48:07.240
coverage of what's happening in a way that makes it, you know, be a closed case and over and a
00:48:13.560
debunked conspiracy theory. But if the press simply covered it honestly, I'm not saying there
00:48:18.080
was enough fraud to overturn the election. I'm not on the ground covering these things,
00:48:22.000
and neither are the reporters who are claiming to know. But if the press were covering it differently,
00:48:26.400
I think we'd have a more accurate picture of what's going on, and it wouldn't look like what
00:48:30.220
it looks like today. Right. It's made it worse. It's put me in a position to where I don't know what
00:48:37.360
happened. But I don't think we're ever going to know what happened. And I find myself becoming
00:48:42.920
stronger and stronger of I just don't believe he lost it, but I can't prove it. And it's I had a
00:48:50.760
phone call today from a listener who said, Glenn, the Texas court case. Now we have all these states
00:48:59.860
joining in. If the Supreme Court doesn't even hear it. Or if they go against it, they're going against
00:49:09.680
Bush v. Gore. Then what? Then what? And I don't have an answer for that. Because I think some people
00:49:19.040
are thinking, look, we can tolerate a lot of things. But if we can't trust the ballot box,
00:49:26.200
and no one will honestly look into these things and at least explore them. What do we have?
00:49:37.300
Well, I'm very concerned. Let's take this election aside, since you and I don't know exactly what
00:49:42.860
happened. But let's look at 2024. And let's say there is some semblance of widespread fraud.
00:49:50.280
I think what we've learned now is there would be no way to prove it unless the right interests in
00:49:56.780
the media got interested. There would be no way to do anything about it in the time frame expected.
00:50:02.080
And one example I'll give that explains that is normally if there is voter fraud or a voter fraud
00:50:08.540
accusation, a criminal law enforcement body would step in and investigate. And this would take weeks,
00:50:15.240
months, or sometimes years. One of the Trump campaign lawyers made this point in court to gather
00:50:20.740
evidence. But with the help of a law enforcement body, you could at least get access to forensic
00:50:26.000
evidence, you could confiscate machines, you could go on private business property, you could compel
00:50:30.880
depositions under oath. With no law enforcement bodies expressing any interest that we know of in any
00:50:37.620
significant way, the Trump camp has been left to pursue this civilly without any of those tools,
00:50:44.180
really, and a truncated timeline that makes it virtually impossible to turn the kind of proof that
00:50:49.020
the courts would expect, or that they're saying they expect. So it's sort of a, how can you do it? And
00:50:55.600
that's why the press was, I think, very ill-informed or dishonest when early on, they kept saying, where's
00:51:00.520
the evidence? That's not how it works. You know, if there's evidence to be gathered, it doesn't knock on your
00:51:05.440
door and present itself to the people claiming it. And it's almost like asking a murder victim's family,
00:51:11.800
without the help of law enforcement, to say, where's your fiber evidence? Prove your forensics the day after
00:51:18.080
the crime. They don't have the ability and the access to that. That's something that law enforcement can do.
00:51:22.680
You can't do that by yourself. So I think we've seen that even, let's take this year aside, if there's fraud
00:51:29.920
in the future or foreign interference, how are you going to prove it?
00:51:33.040
So then what do we have? We don't have, we don't have a belief in our justice system. The DOJ
00:51:39.540
looks pretty darn dirty to me. That's new for me. We don't have faith in our State Department. They
00:51:49.200
appear to be very dirty and involved in things they should not be involved in. Our intelligence
00:51:56.180
community. Good God. I mean, how corrupt is that? I don't know, but I don't trust them.
00:52:05.000
You don't trust anything anymore. You don't see anyone standing up and saying, that's wrong.
00:52:15.040
They're going to pay for that. They're going to go to jail because that's wrong. There is no justice.
00:52:20.620
When you can't trust the ability to throw the bums out, what does the person, what does the American
00:52:29.980
public, what do they do? Who do they run to? I think it's a great question. I mean, the media was
00:52:38.140
supposed to be the great equalizer if stuff like that happened, but we're, we're part of the same
00:52:42.940
problem. Congress, there's, you can name any institution we have today. And I feel like there's a
00:52:47.540
similar lack of trust and confidence. And when that happens, people start to, as you said,
00:52:54.080
believe very little of what they see, even that which is true. You know, even if public health
00:52:58.320
officials are giving good advice, or the media is telling the truth, or the Department of Justice
00:53:02.520
is doing something properly, or Congress is making decisions in the best interest of the public,
00:53:07.100
even when that happens, because of this dynamic we're talking about, people don't believe it.
00:53:12.100
So they've created this, they, we, have created this lack of trust in ourselves and the institutions.
00:53:18.680
I don't know how you dial that back. I don't know who does it or how you can turn it back. This is
00:53:24.140
something that's been taking hold over a period, a long period of time.
00:53:28.580
Nobody, nobody really treated your case seriously, except the fringe media. Nobody really took that
00:53:37.320
seriously. That was terrifying what happened to you. Um, and now we're seeing that that kind of stuff
00:53:46.560
has happened to the most powerful man on the planet. Um, you know, I, I, I, I look at this and I was
00:53:56.700
talking to a farmer friend of mine and he said, you know what, we just got to shut the whole thing
00:54:02.200
down and reboot it up. Everybody should be fired and we should just shut the whole thing down.
00:54:07.180
It's so far gone now. And I, and I, I hate saying this because I really didn't like the language that
00:54:16.480
he used when he used it, but the press has become an enemy of the people because they were the defender.
00:54:24.580
They were supposed to not be sleeping with the politicians. They were supposed to be holding them
00:54:31.360
accountable. They were the last line of defense. Otherwise it's pitchforks and torches.
00:54:38.900
Well, I don't disagree with you. And I feel like even I've played this out in my mind. Let's say
00:54:44.120
you fire everybody in government. Let's say you start over with the media somehow, which isn't
00:54:49.220
going to happen, but just for the sake of fantasy, let's play that out. The interests that we're talking
00:54:53.820
about that are so good at controlling the narrative and our information, I don't have any confidence
00:54:59.900
that they wouldn't be able to repopulate with whoever you replace these other people with.
00:55:05.580
Correct. Let's talk a little bit about, about what's happening, what's happening to our country
00:55:14.620
that the press is not covering. You don't seem to hear anything about the average business owner
00:55:25.020
that we are putting out of business. I mean, the press I grew up with would have, it would
00:55:34.320
have, it would have been teeming with stories of here's Joe Schmo, here's Sally Muckenfutch and
00:55:41.520
here's what's happening in their life. They would have personalized these stories. You don't see any of
00:55:47.920
that. And the, the entrepreneur, the average working man is being decimated by these shutdowns
00:55:57.880
and nobody saying anything. What's happening there?
00:56:04.320
Well, it's the same dynamic where that's off the narrative. It fights what, whoever the powerful
00:56:11.360
interests that are pulling strings, fights what they want us to think and believe. So you're not
00:56:16.240
going to see that, but I will tell you a couple of things. Local news, which people trust slightly more
00:56:22.780
than national news, according to polls, local news is covering stories like that. They are not quite
00:56:28.520
as co-opted or controlled by the same people that we're talking about. But another example of that,
00:56:34.140
Glenn, do you know, there are protests all over the world, tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds
00:56:40.920
of thousands of people protesting the lockdowns and the mask mandates, and perhaps the idea of
00:56:47.540
mandatory vaccines. I haven't seen that covered anywhere on the news. And I've had to hunt to find the
00:56:54.040
information, the news stories and the videos. There's a blackout, I'm convinced, of those videos
00:56:59.360
and of that, because if we see that, we, the public understand that we're not alone. I mean, that's,
00:57:05.160
that's part of controlling this information landscape. You're supposed to think you're an
00:57:09.140
outlier or you're alone if you have certain viewpoints or thoughts or opinions, or you believe
00:57:13.820
a certain study. But if we saw what's happening in many other countries where people are taking to
00:57:19.220
the streets and protesting these things that we're talking about, there's a blackout of that news
00:57:24.640
here in this country, as far as I can tell. That's just another way that this is being controlled.
00:57:29.240
I talked about it on radio that that that is the goal, make you feel alone. If they can shut down,
00:57:36.180
I mean, think of this, you could go on Twitter and you could get where these protests were going to
00:57:41.500
happen from Antifa. They would tell you, and by the way, bring a brick. It was all there. So you knew
00:57:50.700
what was going on. If they shut down the people who are standing up for basic God-given rights,
00:58:00.880
you're going to feel totally alone. You're going to feel like it's just me because there's no way to
00:58:06.580
organize except, what, through pamphlets? I mean, there's just, you will feel isolated and alone.
00:58:18.600
I spoke of this, I think I did a TEDx talk maybe three years ago, and I spoke of this in the last
00:58:25.680
book, The Smear, almost exactly what you said, that the point of controlling, particularly media,
00:58:32.000
is a very controlled environment. Don't believe, you know, you can use that for entertainment and
00:58:36.300
sharing information if you want to, but what you see in there is a very carefully managed
00:58:40.080
environment. It's not real. With the goal of what these powerful interests have done,
00:58:45.340
as I say, making you feel like an outlier when you're not. Making you feel like you're the weirdo
00:58:50.880
if you still think a certain way or you hold an opinion or you believe a study, you're supposed to
00:58:55.940
feel isolated, bullied, in the minority, somebody that shouldn't speak, somebody that shouldn't be
00:59:00.940
heard. And it's pretty effective, I think, to a lot of people. But we have to remember all the people
00:59:06.980
that have joined the alternative Twitter, I guess I'll call it parlor, and all the people that voted for
00:59:13.940
Donald Trump, whether you like, support him or not, the idea that tens of millions of people voted for
00:59:19.680
Donald Trump when all of these forces we're talking about, and virtually all of the media and internet
00:59:24.700
told you not to, because he's uniquely dangerous. And he got, what, 11 million more votes than he did
00:59:30.720
last time? I think that's a good sign that shows people recognize this, and they know they're not
00:59:35.860
alone, and they know they're getting spoon-fed narratives, and they're not buying it.
00:59:40.640
I had a person write to me last week, their subscriber to The Blaze, and they said,
00:59:46.680
I'm too afraid I'm going to be destroyed, my business is going to be destroyed, and I'm on a list
00:59:52.640
because I'm a subscriber to you, and I just can't take that risk. Somebody told me on the air today
01:00:02.220
that the majority of people never stand up because they're too afraid. How do we, how do you break that
01:00:11.580
cycle? How do you teach people like Martin Luther King did? Stand up.
01:00:17.220
I think in an incremental way, there's help on the way. And I know this because I get called every
01:00:26.800
maybe couple of weeks by someone in one of three groups of people that's working on a solution.
01:00:33.640
There are investors who are looking not to make money, but looking because they have money and they
01:00:40.080
believe in the things you're talking about. They're saying, where can I spend my money that will help
01:00:45.340
the free flow of information and help people not be deplatformed for sharing viewpoints or factual
01:00:51.940
studies that someone doesn't like or whatnot. The second group is the people of technical note
01:00:58.520
who are looking to solve this problem online where they're trying to create solutions with
01:01:02.620
blockchain technology and other things for platforms that if you tell the truth or the facts or give
01:01:09.280
accurate information, or even if you want to give out inaccurate information, quite frankly,
01:01:13.180
as long as it's not illegal, how can you not be deplatformed? They're working on the technical
01:01:17.960
aspect of it. And then there are journalists. And by the way, one of the technical people is Larry
01:01:22.920
Sanger, former co-founder of Wikipedia, who parted with that project because he understands it's been
01:01:28.040
taken over by corporate interests and agenda editors. He's working on this problem. He's thinking
01:01:33.560
about it. And then there are journalists who call me and people kind of like me who are saying,
01:01:39.280
how can I have a forum that will not be deplatformed or we can report honestly. So I think those groups
01:01:46.140
are getting together and we'll come up with something in the next four years that will have
01:01:50.220
that will be alternatives for people for thinking people and hopefully break this log jam. I just don't
01:01:55.900
know exactly what it will look like. Does it get much worse before it gets better?
01:02:02.020
I think so. I don't think we're quite yet at the breaking point. I think we're getting there,
01:02:10.640
particularly with that YouTube announcement that you read. You know, Congress keeps holding hearings
01:02:14.920
with the big tech companies and making threats and doing nothing. You know, the big tech companies,
01:02:19.640
they're giving to Republicans as well as Democrats. They may give more to the Biden camp, but they're
01:02:23.820
giving to both. And sometimes I wonder, are these just dog and pony shows? Because if you talk to
01:02:28.120
staffers on the Hill, they'll tell you that much like the media, they're now very shaped and
01:02:34.400
manipulated as to what they're allowed to do by both political parties, not allowed to do certain
01:02:39.260
oversight hearings, not allowed to do oversight hearings on certain interests that give them a
01:02:44.120
lot of money, or they have to come out a certain way, or they can do, this is the third option, a show
01:02:48.980
hearing with no follow-up. They're allowed to do a hearing that makes it sound like they're getting
01:02:53.280
tough, but then they're supposed to kind of let it go away. So I don't think we've reached the point
01:02:59.080
where, I don't even know that Congress can do anything, by the way, that changes the course of
01:03:03.320
this. I don't know that I trust them to do that, quite frankly, trust the government to intervene.
01:03:07.680
So I think we're just going to see some more of the same, but I think something else will be born
01:03:12.320
of it down the road. I hope so. Has capitalism failed? Has the constitution failed? Or have we
01:03:23.400
failed it? I'm a little out of my depth when you're speaking about that sort of thing, but I have
01:03:31.680
thought to myself, for what it's worth, that is this just an experiment that ends up like everybody
01:03:39.860
else. Maybe it takes a while, but ultimately, you know, the whole, the adage, power corrupts,
01:03:45.800
absolute power corrupts, absolutely. Do corporate and political interests figure out no matter what
01:03:51.660
the intentions are, what your constitution says, or what laws you try to make to avoid it, do they end
01:03:56.380
up understanding ultimately how to get control of pretty much any system, or in this case, we're talking
01:04:02.180
today, control of any information landscape so that they have the power? I don't know. I wonder if
01:04:09.360
that's, if that's the case. I've been wondering it myself, and I've wondered, but I feel like it's
01:04:18.640
happening. I've, I've, I've often thought you can't put the freedom genie back into the bottle. Once man
01:04:26.220
understands he can rule himself, but this is an, this is a flash in time, and we're still very unique
01:04:37.440
for the rest of the world. We, we, freedom of speech does not exist elsewhere like it does in
01:04:44.580
America. Um, but I, I feel like they're just trying to, I feel like the news media had their three
01:04:52.560
networks and PBS, and they liked it, and they could control everything. Then the internet happened,
01:04:58.320
and it was about to destroy them. So they've, they've repositioned themselves and grabbed all
01:05:04.140
that back. And they're trying to stuff that back into the bottle. I don't know if it works. And I feel
01:05:10.520
like that's, what's happening, that America had freedom and those who like to rule over serfs,
01:05:18.240
they're, they're trying their best to grab it all back and jam that back into the bottle. Can they?
01:05:27.280
Well, here's what worries me. I think there are plenty of people out there that, like you say,
01:05:32.920
would be hard pressed to allow freedom to be put back in the bottle, that you need to be put back
01:05:37.240
in the bottle. But look at still more people, perhaps, that are saying, I don't think all speech
01:05:43.640
should be allowed. You know, um, I interviewed someone from the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties
01:05:48.260
Union about two years ago, who confessed that she herself was shocked that she was regularly having
01:05:55.080
conversations with students who thought hate speech either is illegal in this country, or should
01:06:01.000
be illegal in this country. And that she was finding herself with the ACLU having to explain why all
01:06:07.300
speech, virtually all speech in this country is protected. There were people that don't view things that
01:06:12.140
way anymore, because of what they're being taught, or what they're being inundated with, and popular
01:06:16.640
media and online. And as we've discussed, there are people now inviting censorship into their lives,
01:06:23.180
they're happy to let curators in big tech come between them and the free flow of information,
01:06:29.400
they're inviting it. And that's what concerns me, the notion that there are people not having this forced
01:06:35.280
and hoisted upon them in some cases, but welcoming it and defending it.
01:06:39.260
That brings me back to the, um, the, uh, digital new deal. Listen to this. Uh, they want big tech to
01:06:48.400
adopt a new code of contact that would show, and I'm quoting deference to expert bodies. For instance,
01:06:55.760
civil and human rights groups should define hate groups and behavior and scientific and public health
01:07:03.840
bodies, such as the world health organization should guide the definition of sound science end quote.
01:07:12.120
Well, that's basically what they're already doing with their fake fact checks on Facebook. If you look
01:07:17.040
at the board of appellate experts that they've convened to make decisions, almost all of them aren't expert
01:07:23.200
in anything that they're litigating. They're human rights advocates and activists. Yep. Nothing wrong with
01:07:30.600
that, but certainly they come from a particular viewpoint that doesn't necessarily get you to
01:07:35.180
the accurate facts or as, as we would say, truth. And I think that's super harmful to decide that these
01:07:42.540
are the experts that get to determine where things go and what we see and how we view them.
01:07:47.640
Um, let me ask you this last question. Put yourself a year from now.
01:08:01.580
Gosh, I, I can't say, I don't even know what's going to happen, you know, in a couple of weeks, but I love
01:08:08.620
these people who say, I can't wait for 2020 to be over. And I'm like, you think 2021 is going to be better?
01:08:17.680
I feel like what we're going to see pitched battles continue to play out. Um, particularly if Donald
01:08:25.180
Trump does not win his election battle. And I would say if I had to put money on it with no
01:08:29.440
inside information, he's not going to win. Um, so you're going to have a strong contingent of
01:08:35.040
tens of millions of Americans who feel like they didn't get a fair shot or that something went wrong,
01:08:40.480
or at least the media didn't cover it fairly and the government's, you know, on the take.
01:08:44.360
And I think that bubbles up and we'll have to see if a new movement starts either with Donald Trump
01:08:49.200
outside of the government or with some other figure. And at the same time, we will see these
01:08:54.240
efforts I mentioned, trying to make information flow more freely and more like we envision it in
01:09:00.820
this country, there will be technical solutions. But those will be fought out with people being
01:09:05.580
deplatformed and controversialized and attacked. You know, I think, I think it'll get worse,
01:09:13.100
like you said before it gets better, but I do hope it gets better.
01:09:16.160
Do you think the Senate is held by the Republicans in Georgia or not?
01:09:22.680
Well, I'm not a political expert. I really, I have no idea.
01:09:26.340
I'm shocked at how, I'm shocked at how close that race is. I mean, I just, I can't believe I live in
01:09:32.540
a country where, as you said, just a few minutes ago, so many people are cool with it. They're like,
01:09:37.620
oh yeah, Marxism, you know, fewer freedoms. I'm good with that.
01:09:42.380
Well, as an outsider that, as I said, I'm not a political expert, it looks strange to me. It's
01:09:48.300
something that if I were covering elections and politics, I would want to dig deeply into
01:09:52.100
if there were allegedly election mischief. And Georgia has quite a bit, some of it proven,
01:09:59.180
some of it not, some of it alleged. But is it enough that that could have impacted,
01:10:03.160
what a coincidence. The only two Senate races in this whole country that are still at play like
01:10:08.000
that are two in the state of Georgia, where they had all these other alleged anomalies.
01:10:12.980
I mean, everybody's just accepted that those races, the outcome of those initial votes, I guess,
01:10:18.720
were accurate and true. I don't know that that's been thoroughly vetted. I don't know that it matters
01:10:22.760
at this point, but I think that's a little strange.
01:10:27.740
Cheryl, I hope someday you receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
01:10:32.300
because I think you deserve it. You're very brave and I'm a big fan. Thank you so much for being on
01:10:39.160
with us. Well, Glenn, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. You bet.
01:10:47.280
Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it