Best of the Program | Guests: Sharyl Attkisson & Steve Friend | 8/12/24

41m
Glenn and Stu discuss the news that Stu missed while on vacation, including Tim Walz and the attacks on JD Vance. The guys also react to JD Vance’s interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, where he critiqued Tim Walz for his childish attacks and questionable military service. Author of “Follow the Science” Sharyl Attkisson joins to discuss the perils of some medicines the "experts" approve. FBI whistleblower Steve Friend joins to discuss the Secret Service breaking into the salon, the ongoing investigation into Trump’s almost-assassin, and possible FBI grooming.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen and follow along

Transcript

Martha listens to her favorite band all the time.

In the car,

gym,

even sleeping.

So when they finally went on tour, Martha bundled her flight and hotel on Expedia to see them live.

She saved so much, she got a seat close enough to actually see and hear them.

Sort of.

You were made to scream from the front row.

We were made to quietly save you more.

Expedia, made to travel.

Savings vary and subject to availability, flight inclusive packages are at all protected.

Hey, we welcome Stu back to the program today.

What a program it is.

We start with,

well, I think Stu had about a week's worth pent up inside of him.

He had a lot to say.

So we started there.

We have Cheryl Atkinson on, who is talking about the

government pharmaceutical insurance

nastiness that is destroying all of us, health-wise and as a country.

And we have Steve Friend on to talk about the assassination attempt.

Still no news.

And

a news story of the Secret Service who picked a lock and broke into a hair salon because they needed a bathroom.

Is that legal now?

That and more on Harris walls.

That nightmare on today's podcast.

First, if you...

I mean, I don't know if I can explain everything to you.

I mean, if you don't know your money is at issue, I don't know if

I can help you at all.

Your money is at stake right now.

We end up getting another four years of this, and we are not going to be able to stand as a country because our dollar will be wiped out.

I hope we get a better president and Trump.

I hope we get a better Congress that we have.

But the progressive left is destroying the dollar.

And the only way to preserve that is to have something in its stead.

Have something of true value.

Something that you can barter with, spend if you have to,

and that's gold or silver.

It is a

storehouse of value because as your dollar goes down, that price goes up.

And if they weren't manipulating in not just the United States, but the central banks in Europe and the central bank in China, they're all manipulating the price of gold because they're buying it.

Don't wait until it's too expensive.

Please, gold or silver, please put some of your money in that right now.

I recommend you call Lear Capital.

Uh, they're gonna give you uh $250 off when you open up an account, they'll give you $250 in starting money.

Uh, all you have to do is call 800-957-GOLD, 800-957-GOLD.

Call them today, 800-957-GOLD.

You're listening to

the best of the Glen Beck program.

Well, hello, Stu.

Glenn.

Happy to be back.

We've got a stretch run here of three months or so, and it's going to be

what an adventure is ahead.

Oh, my gosh.

Nothing happened last week.

Nothing.

Had she had named Walls as her running mate yet?

No, that happened last week.

That definitely happened last week.

Yeah.

What do you think about that?

What?

You know, Glenn, you know what I've heard?

I've heard he can fish and hunt.

I've heard

this is what I've learned about Tim Walls watching this coverage very closely.

He's trying to carry out some sort of fish genocide because all the guy does is fish.

I have seen more pictures of him with fish than

the Seattle market they show every single time a football game is played in Seattle.

Every single time.

This guy just fishes and hunts.

That's the only thing he does.

That's because he's so moderate.

He's just such a moderate guy, such a moderate candidate.

I mean, sure, he happens to be the choice of every insane leftist on social media, but this guy, they did it because they thought he was so moderate.

They just loved his moderate policies, and that's why he was named.

What

another incredible rollout from the Democrats.

There's not a lot of Marxists that like to fish.

Right.

You know, so he's out there fishing.

Yeah, he's Marxist, but he's out there fishing and hunting.

Did you know, Glenn?

He was the one who said weird.

He was the one.

He was the guy who came up with it.

Yeah, that incredible tactic that's worked so well.

He said weird, and that is why he's now going to be the vice president of the United States.

I can't wait.

And then, you know what he's going to do while in office, Glenn?

I'll tell you what he's going to do.

Fish.

That's it.

All he's going to do is fish and hunt because that is all we've learned about Tim Walls.

Not the fact that he has

that he completely botched.

the response to the George Floyd riots.

That hasn't been covered at all by anybody.

No one's asked him one question about that because you know what, Glenn?

No one's asked him one question about anything.

We know.

Not even his fishing.

They haven't even gotten mad at him because he's killing too many fish yet.

It's just been non-stop praise about how he said weird once and he's a big hunter.

Well, they asked J.D.

Vance about the weirdness.

Over and over again, they've asked him that.

Yes.

Yeah, well, they asked him this weekend.

Here's what he said on CNN.

This is fundamentally schoolyard bully stuff.

They can accuse me of whatever they want to accuse me of.

As Harry S.

Truman once said, if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

And I'm doing this because I think that me being vice president will help improve people's lives.

So

I accept their attacks but I think that it is a little bit of projection, Dana.

If you think about, you know, just take a couple of days ago.

Tim Waltz gives this big speech.

He's been announced as the VP nominee and I remember when I had just been announced as the VP nominee, I gave my big speech and I saw my wife and I gave her a big hug and a kiss because I love my wife and I think that's what a normal person does.

Tim Waltz gave his wife a nice firm Midwestern handshake and then tried to sort of awkwardly correct for it.

So I think that what it is is two people, Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz, who aren't comfortable in their own skin because they'ren't comfortable with their policy positions for the American people.

And so, they're name-calling instead of actually telling the American people how they're going to make their lives better.

I think that's weird, Dana, but look, they can call me whatever they want to.

Excellent.

Excellent.

He was on all of the shows yesterday.

Here he is

with Dana Bash, schooling her just

a little bit.

Cut six.

And on the question of when he left the National Guard, he filed his election paperwork February 10th, 2005.

That was a month before the National Guard even announced that it was possible that they would deploy to Iraq.

And it ended up being two months.

He retired two months before they actually got the paperwork.

But on CNN last night, Dana, one of the people who was actually in charge of him said they knew they were going to deploy to Iraq in February of 2004.

So, or excuse me, fall of 2004.

So he knew he was going to Iraq.

He decided to quit, to retire, whatever word you want to use.

Retire.

Because whatever.

Because he wanted to run for Congress.

He lied about that.

He said that when he decided to retire, he did not know that he was going to Iraq.

That is another untruth, as even his senior military officer said.

So again, I'm not criticizing the service.

I'm criticizing the dishonesty, dishonesty spoken in favor and for the purpose of political benefit.

And I think that the most important thing here, Dana, is it goes to Kamala Harris's judgment.

Tim Waltz is ultimately going to be the vice president.

Kamala Harris is in great health.

I'm sure she's going to be president if she wins for four or maybe even eight years.

Why did Kamala Harris choose a person who has lied about their military service?

I think that is a serious lapse in judgment.

And I don't want to hear from a campaign spokesperson of Kamala Harris.

I don't want to hear Kamala Harris herself address what I just said.

You know, I've seen a lot of statements from veterans, including those you served with, saying it's just untoward to be criticizing somebody who served for 24 years.

Dana, I'm not interested in the ad hominem.

I've heard from a lot of veterans groups who criticize Tim Waltz.

The question is, he said he served in war and he didn't.

That is a dishonesty.

I really, I couldn't care less what one or the other person says about it.

I care about what the truth is.

The truth is that Tim Waltz didn't tell the truth.

And importantly, Dana, this is about Kamala Harris's judgment.

They went on to.

He's doing a really good job.

Yeah, he was good on these shows.

And this is a smart use of JD fans.

Put him in these situations.

Put him in these situations where he's going to be attacked constantly because the tone of every one of these interviews this weekend was that.

Constant attack.

Constant attack.

Now, again, neither the presidential candidate nor the vice presidential candidate have had one question asked to them on the other side of this.

Not one.

Not one.

He's showing up to interview after interview after interview as the vice presidential candidate.

At least they have somebody to ask questions to.

Well, they do on their side.

They do.

The guy who is too incompetent to run.

Joe Biden is being asked all kinds of questions.

Yeah, incredible.

They're really bad questions, but yes.

Well, he's giving the same answers to cut one.

Mark my words.

If he wins this nomination, I mean, excuse me, this election, watch what happens.

it's a danger he's a genuine danger to american security

now i don't know what the setup question was to that most of the setup that i saw from that interview was

so your grandkids were hugging you the other day how did that make you feel it was like the lightest touch interview i've ever seen in my life but to biden's credit at least he's actually out there speaking to reporters I mean, I don't know that that counts.

It was more of a, you know, like the type of interview you do with your grandpa with like a, you know, a memory service, like where like they're like, oh, well,

before he completely fades away, you should get him on camera telling you about him being a grandpa to you.

So you have that to always cherish.

It was more of that style of interview.

I don't know.

I think it's more of those, have you ever seen where they bring those old-timey pictures back to life?

I thought it was kind of like that.

Yeah.

Where he's just

moving slowly.

Yeah.

And then it goes back to the picture.

I think was it a Disney production?

It pretty much was.

Yeah.

Also, he has now confirmed the Democrats pushed him out of the race.

Listen to this, Cutu.

You're at your home, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, late July with your family, and you make this historic decision.

Listen to this.

Tell me the story.

What the title is.

Tell me the story.

What?

Polls we had showed showed that it was a neck-and-neck race.

It would have been down of the wire.

But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races.

And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic.

You'd be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say why did someone...

And

I thought it would be a real distraction, number one.

Okay.

I have a hundred different things on this, but let me start with a question.

You're in Rehoboth Beach.

Your family's there.

You make this historic announcement.

Tell me the story.

That's how you would ask him.

If he made an announcement that he cured cancer, which, by the way, I will remind you, he promised he would do if he was elected and has not done.

Wait a minute.

You missed an update, Stu.

Last week, the president came out and said he has healed the the economy and the environment.

Well, that again,

maybe he's done those two things, but I can tell you right now, I'm on hasjoebidencuredcancer.com.

And it still says no, cancer still exists.

It might have been the third on the list.

It's coming.

It's coming.

So, but if he said, he made an announcement.

from the Rose Garden, hey, I just, we just cured cancer.

Here are the doctors who did it.

What an amazing.

That's the question you would ask.

You made a historic announcement.

What was it like being there with your family?

Tell me the story.

That's how you the man was so embarrassed by his defeat at a debate and was so incoherent that everyone thinks he has Alzheimer's.

That was the announcement.

This is not a history.

Wow.

Tell me the story.

How could he possibly remember the story?

The whole tale is about how he can't remember anything.

He doesn't know what the story was because he's

incompetent and incoherent.

So that's just that part.

And then his answer is so revealing and I will say actually truthful.

This is a Nancy Pelosi coup.

People kept saying, well, this is Barack Obama.

And we went back and forth about this on the air as well.

This is Pelosi.

Pelosi was the one who actually won this.

Walls was Pelosi's pick, not Obama's.

Obama's pick, as we talked about, were Kelly and Shapiro.

That's who Obama wanted.

And probably either one of them would have been a better pick.

Pelosi won.

Pelosi wanted walls.

The hardcore left wanted walls.

And she won.

She won every part of this.

And what's laughable about this entire thing is that he's like, well, a lot of them said they wanted me to leave because it would hurt their races.

And what's so stupid is if he would have just held out for a couple more weeks, we would already be at the point of this story in which they decided that actually he was sharp as attack again.

And maybe it was just that cold.

And actually, he's doing much, much better.

They would have completely reversed this already because the convention is here and they got locked into him.

If he would have just held out, they would have all reversed themselves and said how wonderful he was by now.

And yet here he is, this sad, pathetic old man who was trying to get himself through this race, even though he's completely incoherent, and they manipulated him into believing all of this nonsense, and he cost himself the nomination.

A listener wrote me a note, and let me read it to you.

With the rising prices in meats and the questionable quality of meats at the supermarket, my family decided to check out Good Ranchers.

The chicken is always tender with no gristle.

The beef has amazing flavor.

When we have people over for a barbecue, my family and friends always comment that they can't find chicken or beef like this in their store.

It's true, you can't.

It's still summer and not too late for you to have a barbecue featuring Good Ranchers protein.

Whether it's steak, hamburgers, pork chops, chicken, fish, whatever, they have you covered.

Go to goodranchers.com today, use the promo code Glenn and unlock $25 off and a free add-on for the next year.

Choose from chicken, premium ground beef, applewoods, smoked bacon, or salmon.

It's all great stuff.

25 pounds of free meat in your first year.

Remember goodranchers.com promo code Glenn.

Check it out today.

Goodranchers.com promo code Glenn.

American meat delivered.

Now back to the podcast.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Welcome to my good friend Cheryl Atkinson.

Hello, Cheryl.

How are you?

Hi, Glenn.

Thank you for having me.

I wish I was in studio with you.

I'm sorry I'm up at the ranch, but

Wolf, I don't even know where to begin with you, but let's start.

You have a new book coming out on the 3rd of September, so it's a couple of weeks away,

and it is Follow the Science, which I love.

What is the book and where did it take you?

Well, it's Follow the Science, How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails.

And HarperCollins actually asked me to write it.

First, I think they envisioned a book picking apart the COVID missteps and the COVID vaccine vaccine issues, but we agreed that that's been pretty well done by the time this book would come out.

And there's some in here.

But I said, what about a bigger look at why exactly we're spending more than we've ever spent on insurance and health care and medicine, but we're sicker, we're just growing sicker and sicker as a society with chronic disorders that our medical establishment seems not to notice.

You know, they're so busy getting us to the doctor to take pills.

The idea that they're looking for the root root causes and the things that are perhaps destroying us as a society has kind of gone by the wayside.

It's like they can't see the obvious.

So this examines the conflicts of interest that exist between news media, government, political figures, big pharma, your doctor, medical schools, medical journals, in ways that actually lead to the destruction of our health.

You know, I saw something on cholesterol medicine, and they said, you know, Alzheimer's is a new thing, and

cholesterol is brain food.

And as we started to lower our cholesterol in our bodies, Alzheimer's started.

I don't know.

I didn't look into it.

I just was listening to this doctor talk.

I mean, I do think, and I'm not about, don't know about that, but I do think

we are made sick.

Some of our medicines medicines and our cures are causing all kinds of problems, and we don't recognize them.

We just go try to find another cure for that one.

And the doctors and the government aren't doing their due diligence.

It wouldn't be hard to build databases and to find out what side effects are happening and what's, you know, on a population level going on, but they, I think, willfully turn a blind eye.

I know something of the statin problem.

I covered that at CBS News years ago.

And one of the things I uncovered, besides the fact that, as you said, every cell in our body needs cholesterol, and they're not sure at what level a particular person's cholesterol is too low.

Your eyes need cholesterol, your brain needs cholesterol, and you can go too far.

There have been books written on this.

But even more interesting to me was the conflicts of interest when it comes to the studies that are relied upon, and the book does talk about this sort of thing.

The studies that are relied upon that doctors look at as if they're solid and gold.

And I couldn't find any of them that were conducted outside of the makers of statins.

So I don't know if people understand, even when it's drug, even when it looks like it's coming from a university, these studies are paid for and controlled under contract by companies that don't allow the publication of negative material or can tweak the data and do certain things.

And I found one independent researcher in California, a woman, who had crunched data from the studies in ways that were not done in the studies, because the studies funded by the drug companies, you know, certainly they want to analyze the data a certain way to become positive.

And she found all kinds of frightening things about what

too many cholesterol drugs can do to the brain.

They're very effective.

They do lower your cholesterol, but that can be a bad thing for some people.

And also, there's a link to cancer.

Fewer people in some studies were shown to be dying of high cholesterol, and yet she said more were dying of cancer.

And that was not included in the study findings that were published because, you know, that was not a positive outcome.

So all the time when our doctors are relying on these gold standard studies they read in the medical journals, I think they're naive to not understand how manipulated they are, even by the medical journal editors' own admissions.

They've said things such as half or more of the science in their journals can't be believed.

That's shocking.

I just did a podcast on Edward Bernays,

who, as you know, was instrumental in, well, it was called propaganda at the time until the Nazis kind of took that.

And so he changed it to advertising.

But the only reason why we have eggs and bacon and toast and hash browns for breakfast is because of an advertising campaign.

And he was representing, I think it was the ham.

industry and they needed to sell more ham and more bacon.

And so he had the idea that, you know,

Americans are just having toast and coffee for breakfast.

I wonder about ham and eggs and hash browns.

That kind of sounds good.

He sent that around to all of the doctors in the country.

And that's why we have that, because he said, do you think this would be good?

And they would say, well, I guess, yeah, that sounds good.

And so they would start recommending eggs and bacon and hash browns.

It was an advertising campaign for a bacon company.

And you'd think.

Nobody ever knew it.

Yeah, you'd think doctors would be more careful.

And I'm not here to knock doctors for no reason.

My dad's a doctor.

My brother's a doctor.

There are some very great doctors.

But as a profession, they've become wholly controlled by industries.

Starting in med school, and I do talk about this some, for example, I think people should be shocked to learn that the most popular or referred to textbook in med school, according to many students, is the Merck Manuals.

The Merck Manuals published by the drug company Merck.

And as part of my research for the book, I looked up to see what Merck teaches doctors in this popular manual about its own drugs and scandals.

And there's virtually nothing, as you can imagine, although they claim there's a firewall between their textbook editorial people and their corporation that sells the drugs.

Sure.

I mean, it's really shocking.

It starts in med school.

It continues because the medical associations that give licenses and make determinations, those are co-opted by special interests.

And drug, you you know, doctors are not doing their,

too often they're not doing their independent original thinking.

They should be calling this stuff out.

Did you find that, like everything else,

it's a handful of

people at the top or controlling interest or controlling money at the top, and it just keeps getting repackaged?

Well, absolutely.

And, you know, it's funny that I'm on here with you talking about follow the science and some of the the money trails because years ago when you were on Fox News, my husband introduced me to the Glenn Beck show.

And you were on TV with charts and graphs.

And I wasn't, at CBS News, I was not covering politics or follow the money stories about this sort of thing.

So it looked like, you know, like, wow, this can't be true because you were following the money with Soros and you had all these

crazy diagrams.

My daughter calls them, you know, because I have them too now.

Like, there's like ropes and pins and, you know, markers.

Right, yeah.

And, you know, that stuff, as I ended up diving into that as part of my investigative reporting years later, it is true.

I mean, you knew that.

But I confirmed through my own reporting as well that the same players are funding a lot of initiatives that dominate media.

and medicine.

And also particularly when it comes to the science groups that do the health fact checks, which as we know, typically dispense with factual information and call it untrue, and then push out their own misinformation under the guise of, hey, we're the fact checkers.

So there's a lot of, you want me to read you like a little bit of the

connections?

It's the same thing.

I tell you, I had a friend, Richard Mellon Scafe, he started the Heritage Foundation, and he called me when I was at Fox and he said, oh my gosh, I thought we had beaten these guys.

He said, the same people and the same organizations that I fought against in the 60s are doing it again.

And

it's the same story.

There's only a handful of these radicals that have so much power and money that are just controlling so much of our life.

Well, I'll skip around.

Pointer Institute used to be this well-reputed journalism organization, you know, years and years ago, but it's been taken over.

Like Duke Reporters Lab, Pointer's funded by Google, Facebook, Craig Craig Newmark, which is Craigslist.

In 2015, Porter got $1.38 million from Newmark and the vaccine-promoting Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to influence news coverage of global health initiatives.

Millions and millions more over the years from Google, George Soros, Open Society Foundations.

Then you go to Columbia Journalism Review, which again used to conduct important watchdog reporting, very well respected once upon a time, but it's turned into a, gosh, it leads like a typical left-leaning misinformation rag sometimes now.

Well, in 2019, Columbia Journalism School accepted a $10 million gift from the Craig Newmark Philanthropies.

And Newmark, Craig's List, also sits on the board of Columbia Journalism Review.

They have all these big initiatives to, you know, these people want to be resources for journalists.

They sound independent, and journalists like doctors too often don't scratch beneath the surface, and they refer to them as if they're an official resource on news and information.

But all they are are propaganda funded by these big groups.

And then I'll just mention one more, but there's dozens and dozens.

Health Policy Watch touts itself as a nonprofit open access journal, but that's not what it does.

It's an activist website for issues like climate change and pro-pharma positions on vaccines.

I don't know why those go hand in hand, but they always do.

And they partner with journalists to spread propaganda about these issues that they want, and they're funded generously with Welcome Trust, left-leaning Wellcome Trust, which frequently partners with the vaccine promoting Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Wellcome Trust is a bad organization.

The head of

Health Policy Watch is a woman who's a left-leaning climate change activist who wrote for the World Health Organization.

I mean, this goes on and on, but like you say, you come up with the same names and groups over and over again.

billions upon billions of dollars around the globe, not just in the U.S.

They're touching every small group that could influence our thought on these in these areas.

You know, you asked why, I don't know how climate change and

what did you say, the other one was

vaccines or something.

Vaccines at any cost promotion.

Yeah.

I think these people that are really driven by climate change,

they're very anti, they're Malthusian

and very anti-human.

They're very population control.

You know, we've got to get birth control in.

We've got to get the rate of birth way, way, way down.

And

it's just a bad mix

of ideology when it comes to medicine.

This is the best of the Glenbeck podcast.

To hear more of this interview, check out the full episode, Anywhere Podcasts are found.

A very brave man and a good friend of the program, Steve Friend, is joining us.

He is from the Center Center of Renewing America fellow.

He's a fellow at the, sorry, at the Center for Renewing America.

He's also the FBI whistleblower that objected to being put on to duty to investigate grandmothers as domestic terrorists.

He blew the whistle, and the rest of it is history.

Welcome to the program, Steve.

How are you?

I'm doing well, Graham.

Thanks for having me on today.

You bet.

So you were with the FBI

and I know it's not the same, but I think you probably could comment on this.

I'm not hearing anything satisfying coming from the FBI or the Secret Service on the assassination attempt.

There's three things.

Assassination attempt of Donald Trump.

The guy that they just let in, they knew he was on the terror list and they just let him in anyway, who was coordinating an assassination on Donald Trump.

And then the third comes out of Massachusetts this weekend, where Kamala Harris was on stage someplace at an event, and the Secret Service and local police needed a bathroom.

So they covered up somebody's private security on their business and then picked the lock, went in, used their bathrooms, occupied the space for hours, and then closed back the shop, didn't lock it back up, but closed it.

The lady came on Monday and she's like, what the hell happened here?

That's against the law, isn't it?

Oh, absolutely it is.

And I think if you or I were to engage in any sort of activity, there would be criminal charges against us at the very least for some sort of trespass.

But I think what these three elements that you're talking about expose more than anything else is what I'd like to dub the myth of competence that we all sort of have in our federal law enforcement agencies, because in pop culture, TVs and movies, shows that you consume,

the characters in those shows and movies, they're really sophisticated and really great at their job.

And they're hunting down the criminals, and they're chasing them down the back alleys and slapping the handcuffs on, and then they just fade to black.

But in reality,

these agencies have now devolved into essentially DMVs with guns and badges.

And that's why when it comes to the Trump assassination attempt, you know there's all these theories that are out there and you know you can count me sort of in the in the Klan of people that believe that incompetence was heavily involved in it and I think that there's one sort of presupposition that has gone into that that so many people have their questions about and rightfully so but we are presupposing that the Secret Service is always great at its job and these failures

are explained.

And yes, I think that these failures are happening at every single event.

And it's just because of the providential nature of us as a country, and then also because of the myth of confidence that nobody's really tried and tested them, which is why going forward, I think there's probably a heightened risk to Donald Trump for any of these

events that he's going to hold.

But to pivot to the second issue with the FBI and investigating this

assassination attempt, I think one of the most disturbing elements that hasn't been picked up on was when the deputy director of the FBI, Paula Bate, said that they were going to investigate it as domestic terrorism.

And that to me is, to the layperson, seems reasonable.

You don't want to have blinders on.

But being a subject matter expert here, the FBI is now going to slap a classified label on this investigation.

And they're not going to be able to be transparent because you don't have a need to know.

You don't have a security plan.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, Congressman.

Can't comment on an ongoing investigation.

So that's tremendously disturbing.

And then the last thing that I definitely want to get to is this Pakistani national.

Now, this is what I like to call the playbook that the FBI has been running the last two and a half decades, particularly since 9-11, where essentially what they do to justify their existence as a bureaucracy is a self-looking ice cream cone.

They will identify a vulnerable person, an emotionally disturbed, maybe someone with radical intentions, but not capable of carrying forward an actual attack without the involvement of the FBI.

They'll identify them, use confidential human sources, use undercovers, and then groom them for as long as it takes to engage or at at least agree to engage in an activity that can be labeled as terrorism and then they will arrest them.

And the added wrinkle here was that they imported this Pakistani through the border.

They sponsored him arriving.

The FBI Dallas office actually was the signee on him arriving and it wasn't just to slap the cuffs on him.

They followed him and orchestrated this plot that could never have happened without the involvement of the government for three months and then justified their existence with this big dismantlement stat, which is also tied to their quotas.

This is just

the FBI version of Fast and Furious, but with the exception of being guns with the ATF, we are now running terrorists so that we can justify our existence as an agency.

So he was supposed to leave right after he had set something up, before the assassination.

So did they

because I don't even know if I've read

what they had busted other than him.

Did they actually bust something up?

The plot is completely absurd, Glenn.

I've read through the affidavit.

This is an individual who was essentially indigent, didn't have the finances.

And we're led to believe from the FBI that he arrived here and then just happened.

The first person that he had a conversation with was an informant for the government about soliciting hitmen to carry forward not only assassinations, but he wanted dozens of people to have protests that were going to be cover while they did reconnaissance.

He wanted to get people that were going to steal documents and thumb drives from government figures and all for the low, low price of $5,000, which he didn't actually have.

And he was doing things like asking the informant to put his phone in a drawer while they had conversations.

I mean, that's not a Faraday bag.

It's not really operational security.

These illusions of grandeur that he had to me indicate that he was a prime person that the FBI likes to target, the people who are vulnerable.

And enough for nothing.

Let's just say he's a bad guy.

What's to say that they don't import him here?

And he just says, you know, this plot that I have doesn't sound like it's going to be achievable.

I'll just grab a butcher knife and stab the next infidel that I see.

And then the FBI should be on the hook for that.

So this is them believing in their own competence that certainly nothing bad will happen while we have them on the hook for three months.

And they've been lucky, we've been lucky, that nothing worse has happened.

But I think the bottom line is that the FBI is inventing these cases so that they can go to Congress and say, Look, all the good work we have done here.

Why don't you give us enhanced funding?

Why don't you give us enhanced tools?

Think of all the good work we could do, like Lindsey Graham wants to do now, and that is giving the FBI backdoor access to encrypted communications

because that way the FBI can circumvent the Fourth Amendment.

Oh, my gosh, Lindsey Graham, Lindsey Graham, Lindsey Graham.

So let me see if I have this right.

Was this

guy that they picked up or

finally arrested and told us all about it, was this just a distraction from the assassination?

I think the timetable works out to be that he was arrested on July 12th.

And the assassination attempt happened on the 13th, which to me certainly explains

the messaging that we got about this Iranian threat, because the FBI was really super concerned about someone who they groomed to engage in a terrorism, which never was going to happen, and really didn't have their eye on the ball.

And then we can get into the speculation about a character like Crooks, who, not for nothing, kind of strikes me as sitting squarely within the profile of someone who would be recruited and targeted for grooming to engage in something that he was not predisposed to do.

And then maybe did the thing that I just talked about, but instead of grabbing the butcher knife and stabbing an infidel, he grabbed his dad's AR and said, I'm going to take a shot at a candidate for office.

So who is,

I mean, who should

pay for this?

I saw that the, I think it was the fire chief of Butler County just resigned over this because of staging and everything else.

I don't, I could be wrong.

I don't think it's the local law enforcement's place.

I mean, you know, when the Secret Service come in, they usually just come in and just say, here's what you're doing.

And you do that and don't ask any questions.

You know, whose fault really was this?

Who should pay for this?

There's going to be a lot of accountability, hot potato, as it comes to this assassination attempt because you could see Kimberly Cheeto get up there and say, the buck stopped with me, but it was really local law enforcement's job.

And just having been at both levels, you could easily see that roof being something where the locals said, hey, that should be covered.

And the Secret Service said, okay, we'll cover it.

And then it didn't get covered.

And then they're just looking back and forth at each other saying, hey, that's your job.

No, that's your job.

And then meanwhile, it doesn't get covered at all.

But I think ultimately, because the Secret Service is supposed to be the chief agency there who's calling the shots, it needs to be them who falls on this.

And there needs to be an independent investigation because I don't trust the FBI, and it's not just a personal animus.

The FBI has a track record for investigating assassination attempts like the twenty seventeen congressional baseball shooting, where the shooter was a Bernie Sander supporter, showed up at the ball field and asked where the Republicans were and then proceeded to shoot Steve Scalise.

And the FBI said that's not an assassination attempt, that's suicide by cop.

So there needs to be an independent investigation, maybe funded here, could be used in the congressional leverage here for the upcoming budget.

It could also be a request from the Pennsylvania State Police, because I know there's a federal nexus here, but it was in their backyard, and I don't see any reason why they couldn't conduct a thorough investigation.

I would trust them far more than the FBI, which is going to say this was domestic terrorism, perhaps, or perhaps we already had a domestic terrorism case open on Crooks.

Either way, we can't talk about sources and methods.

This is an ongoing investigation.

Maybe we'll give you something here in a decade when nobody's really paying attention.

So,

one last thought.

The woman in Massachusetts that had her business just taken over

without her permission, without her even being there and knowing it, they covered the camera, they broke in, picked the lock, and went in and spent hours in there just because I guess they could.

She's not pressing charges.

She says, you know, I'm really angry.

I feel violated, but I, you know, I don't, you know, they have a job to do.

No,

if people don't stand up,

I think that's a violation of the

Third Amendment.

I mean, that never gets any attention.

I think that's the violation of the Third Amendment, but it's certainly breaking and entering.

And if people don't push back and say, no, I'm sorry, if that were anyone else, you'd be in jail today.

So I'm sorry.

I might like you guys.

I understand your situation, but you cannot do that because it'll never stop.

This is the natural downstream consequences of what we experienced in 2020 when we were said you had to stay home and stay safe and shut down your non-essential business that you use to feed your family and pay your mortgage.

And this is the chilling effect that it has.

And I share your sentiment about the Third Amendment.

It would be interesting to see an energetic attorney take that up.

But the government does not respect your civil liberties, does not respect the Bill of Rights.

And this is just another example of the fact that they are willing to impede on those just for their own convenience.

I mean, how hard is it to find a bathroom?

Steve, thank you so much.

Thanks for everything you do.

Stay safe.

Steve, friend,

former and current whistleblower on the FBI.

No, no, no, no.

Only murders in the buildings.

He's in five.

The Hit Hulu original is back.

Nightbuster died.

He was talking with this mobster.

Was he killed in the hit?

We need to go face to face with the mob.

Get ready for a season.

This is how I die.

You can't refuse.

You're going to save the day, like you always do, by being smart, sharp, and almost always find mistakes.

The Hulu Original series: Only Murders in the Building, premieres September 9th, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.

Terms apply.

New episodes Tuesdays.