Best of the Program | Guest: Tiller Russell | 3/23/23
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Transcript
Honey punches of votes, the format perfectly
accounted familiar.
Cono ju las crucientes and
the most delicious trosos de grandola, nues y fruta que todos vana dis frutar.
Honey punches devotes para todos.
Today alban para saber más.
So, how would you describe today's podcast?
What would you say?
Some would say it was a bit of a downer.
However, I think, you know, we talk about this sort of later in the podcast: that, you know, there's certain days where really important things happen.
You need to know there's a sense of urgency to make sure you get this information.
And certain days we get to screw off.
Today was not one of those days.
Tomorrow's screw off.
But today, you know, I want to ask you,
when you first walked in, I said, Stu, I've never seen a newsday with so many stories.
that tell you exactly what's coming.
That's terrifying.
I mean, you've been doing this for a very long time.
Right.
Like, did I overstate that to you?
I mean, I think, no, I think it's the construction of it, right?
Right.
You know, it's all these things that kind of fit together and paint a picture that, you know, it's definitely scary, but also something you should be prepared for.
You have to be prepared for it.
Because if you're prepared for it, then you don't have to worry about it.
You can just, you can just go on.
You know, I described today's podcast as
Our daily podcasts will look at
an ailment.
You know, you come into the doctor and you're like, oh, my foot hurts.
And so we'll do x-rays and then we'll talk about that.
And then you come in and you're like, man, my leg really hurts.
Okay,
my neck is really bad.
At some point, you got to put all of the information together of all of the symptoms and then say, no, it's actually not your foot, your leg, or your neck.
It is your spinal column.
Whatever it is, you have to look at all of it together.
And usually we'll just show you one x-ray.
Today, I'm going to show you all the x-rays, and you'll be able to pinpoint exactly where we are and what is coming so you can be better prepared.
That is today's podcast, really important one.
By the way, we talk about we have a 30% shortage of medicine right now.
There was testimony given, a new study done, testimony given to the Senate yesterday that
it is to national security proportions.
30%
of inexpensive medicine
shortage.
Okay, what does that mean?
Well, that means if we continue down this path, you know, you're talking about real problems with medicine.
We're not making anything here.
We're having all kinds of problems with the supply chains.
Look, may I suggest our sponsor can help you with this.
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Make sure you use the promo code BECK and save.
You're listening to
the best of the Blend Beck program.
All right,
I ask you, if you cannot listen to the entire radio program today,
do your best and go and get the podcast today after the show.
It'll be posted.
And listen to the podcast.
Also,
today
is a day that you really should have my morning show prep.
It goes out every morning.
If you sign up for it now, I will ask the team to make sure that they maybe resend this show prep today,
again tomorrow, because it's already in people's email boxes.
It is,
it is so critical.
Today's show prep really, if I spent about 90 minutes, I just did a video that I think they're putting up on Twitter and everything.
I don't think I've ever done that either,
where I come in and everything is dark in the studio and it's just me and the computer.
And I see the show prep and I arrange it.
And I got on and recorded something saying, look, if you get the show prep, this is the way you need to read it.
It is clear where we are headed.
Make no mistake.
Do not be deceived.
Do not be distracted.
Let me start
here.
Hunter Biden.
The Hunter Biden story, it is critical now that we do not play games of he said, she said, or it doesn't matter, or any of this.
Listen to this because if this is allowed to go on,
we do not survive as a nation.
We become Russia.
I don't know any Democrat that wants us to become like Russia.
I don't know anybody.
Well, maybe George Soros.
I'm not sure.
Listen to this.
Hunter Biden had an FBI mole named OneEye who tipped off his Chinese business partners that they were under investigation according to an Israeli energy expert arrested in Cyprus last month on gun running charges.
Why should we listen to him?
The story goes on.
The House Oversight Committee is investigating the explosive claims by Dr.
Gal Luft, a former Israel Defense Forces lieutenant colonel with deep intelligence ties to Washington and Beijing, who says he was arrested to stop him from revealing what he knows about the Biden family and FBI corruption.
Details he told the Department of Justice in 2019,
which he says were ignored.
Luft, 56, made the claims February 18th on Twitter after being detained at a Cyprus airport as he prepared to board a plane to Israel.
He said, quote, I've been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the US.
The US is claiming that I'm an arms dealer.
It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.
I've never been an arms dealer.
DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim, and Hunter Biden.
Shall I name names?
All right.
So he is waiting extradition.
He is in jail.
He says,
I'm not a drug, I mean, a gun trafficker.
Through his American lawyer, Robert Hennock,
Luff said he tried four years ago to inform the DOJ that Chinese State Control Energy Company, CEFC, had paid $100,000 a month to President Biden's son, Hunter, and $65,000 to
Joe's brother, Jim, in exchange for their FBI connections and the use of the Biden name to promote China's Belt and Road initiative all around the world.
This fits with exactly the other information we gave you last night.
By the way, if you sign up for the newsletter tonight, you'll get all of the transcript.
You'll get all of the show prep for last night's program where we were showing you
what the left is really afraid of and what Biden is doing to distract you.
This, Bill O'Reilly said, and he'll say it tomorrow, I'm sure, on the radio program, this Trump thing is never going to trial.
It'll never have a jury.
It will never go there.
It's ridiculous, ridiculous.
Hillary Clinton paid a fine for the same thing she did, except what she did was the crossfire hurricane dossier,
which caused us to spend millions of dollars, three years or four years of lies on the media.
It's probably the most impactful thing any politician has ever done to thwart the truth.
She paid a fine.
It was a misdemeanor.
And you're going to go after Trump?
No, they want you to not see this.
And by the way, if they do arrest him, then they'll turn this whole thing around and say, this Hunter Biden thing is only about us arresting Donald Trump.
We knew that guy was dirty.
We arrested him.
And now they're bringing this up and trying us as revenge.
Mark my words.
Okay.
So his American lawyer, back to the guy, the Israeli guy,
his his lawyer said he tried four years ago to inform the DOJ that Chinese state-controlled energy company, CEFC, had paid $100,000 a month to President Biden's son, Hunter65,
for his FBI connections.
Luff learned about the scheme through his own relationship with Hunter's Chinese business partners, Patrick Ho and Yi Jiang Ming, the chairman of CEFC.
Any of those...
Patrick Ho, does that name ring a bell?
Do you remember why?
I don't remember why, but it does ring a bell.
You'll remember it in a second.
From 2015, 2018, Luff organized international energy conferences in partnership with Ho's think tank, the non-profit China Energy Fund Committee, a front organization for Yi's CEFC, which is the Communist Party Energy.
Yi confided to Luff that Hunter had an informant in the FBI, quote, or formerly of the Bureau, extremely well placed, who they had paid lots of money to to provide sealed law enforcement information, end quote.
The FBI mole was called One Eye.
Now I'm a little uncomfortable.
With the nickname One-Eye when we are discussing anything with Hunter Biden, but I digress.
I don't know if that's necessary.
One eye told Ye, you'll never be able to hear this again with a straight face.
One Eye told Ye that the Southern District of New York was investigating him and or Ho in late 2017.
And Ho is part of the story, too.
Yes, it is.
Okay, now I can't.
Now I've lost all focus.
I know.
I know.
The Southern District of New York, this one-Eye told, that an Asian, an African, and a Jewish guy were named on a sealed indictment.
Soon after the tip-off, Ye offered Hunter a million dollars to be his private counsel.
Do you remember what happened?
Isn't he the guy that
met
in, I think, a lobby in a hotel maybe in Florida, remember?
And there was an exchange of things and he was like, hey, I just want you to, do you have lawyer friends that can represent me?
remember?
Okay, and then he was busted.
Okay, so he offered Hunter a million dollars to be his private counsel and flew to China, leaving his wife, daughter, son, mother, and nanny in his $50 million penthouse at 15 Central Park West.
He was detained in Shanghai for three months.
Then he disappeared.
Before he left New York, Yi told Ho that the coast was clear for him to come come back to the U.S.
on November 18th.
Ho flew into JFK where he was arrested, remember, by FBI agents on bribery and money laundering charges.
Ho was a Patsy, says the Israeli guy.
He was the fall guy.
Ho was convicted in December 2018 without calling a single witness.
He served three years in jail and was deported.
Prosecutors placed the spotlight in his case on China's China's use of the foreign bribery to win contracts for its Belt and Road initiative.
Hunter was paid $1 million by CEFC to represent Ho,
which entailed contacting his FBI sources on Ho's behalf and engaging another attorney to do all the legal work, according to emails, on Hunter Biden's laptop.
CEFC paid a further $4.9 million to Hunter and Jim Biden in monthly installments for 14 months from August 2017 government records show, government records show.
The House Oversight Committee released bank statements last week.
Additional
$1.1 million funneled from Chinese company affiliated with CEFC, went to Hunter, Jim Haley,
and another Biden that we don't know who it is.
Anyway, Luff claims he contacted the DOJ after Ho was jailed and federal investigators flew to Brussels to interview him for more than 18 hours, but he never heard from them again.
And less than four weeks later, Joe Biden announced he was running for president.
The DOJ had this information March 2019 and did nothing.
Congress has the Biden bank records, but it doesn't know the reason for the payments.
Now it does.
Okay.
The corruption around the Bidens.
This isn't.
This isn't just bribery.
So you know, CEFC, this is an energy company.
They are not only doing the Belt and Road Initiative, which is bad enough in itself.
The Belt and Road Initiative is
basically the Chinese plan to take over the world and all of its technology.
Okay, that's why we banned
Huawei, because it was part of their Belt and Road Initiative, and Huawei Technology was gathering information.
So we are dead set against the Belt and Road Initiative.
So, CFC, they're paying them to help the Belt and Road Initiative.
But also, their cover, and maybe this is true as well,
their cover is
that the subsidiary of this that was paying them the million or actually total of $3 million,
that was for green energy.
Now,
let me ask you, Has there been a president that is more green energy than this guy?
Have you seen that all car companies are discontinuing gasoline engines?
All of them.
Where are all the charging stations?
Where is all of the wiring to be able to carry that amount of electricity to all our new kind of gas stations?
They don't exist.
Where is the new energy that is going to replace all of the gasoline?
It doesn't exist.
We are intentionally being crippled and they're kicking the door behind us.
They're closing it.
There's no way out of that.
We now know in our Inflation Reduction Act, they are paying billions of dollars.
To energy companies who have coal-fire plants to close them down now.
They will pay them 100% of their profit for the next 10 years if they will close down their coal fire plant and they only get the money when they either sell it for scrap dismantle it or get rid of it
then you get your money why would you do that
Why would you do that?
Now, is it possible?
I don't think
this is it
but you already have a family the president of the united states getting money from our enemy
the chinese communist party
for what is it information from the fbi or is it hey we get you some kickbacks here on green energy you're going to be really really good on green energy right
or
or what
What is all this money going for?
This is important,
America.
This is not just, hey, so I, you know, gave a guy a favor for the local golf course to be built.
That's not what this is.
This is dealing with our enemies.
Joe Biden is also sending our hundred billion dollars, our hundred and twenty-five billion dollars to a guy in Ukraine named Kolomoyski.
If you watch my program or you follow me on radio and you remember what we did on Ukraine three years ago, who's Kolomoyski?
Kolomoyski is the guy who had Pravat Bank
and Burisma.
He's the guy that Joe Biden handed $8 billion
of our money
to put it in Pravat Bank.
What happened to it?
No one knows.
It just disappeared.
So Joe Biden goes back to that guy and makes him the guy that is overseeing $125 billion.
America, this is just...
This is just the first story.
I've got about 20 of them.
I don't think I'm going to be able to get to all of them today.
You've got to, you've got to get the show prep and read it in order.
This is extraordinarily dangerous, just this one.
But there is so much more.
This is the best of the Glenbeck program.
Welcome to the Glenbeck program.
I know you mentioned potentially sending out today's prep tomorrow, tomorrow, and I don't think people are going to want to wait that long after hearing all of this.
They probably want to read it all earlier than that.
Or I guess we could send like a link to tomorrow morning.
Why don't we do both?
Producers, if you're listening, I want to do both.
I want you to sign up for the free email newsletter today.
This is critical information, and I'll explain it in just a second.
And
I want you to read it and see how I've stacked it.
And you can see that online right now.
But I want to send this out.
Maybe we'll send this out like tonight.
We'll send it out this evening, okay, around dinner time.
And that way you can look at all of them and share them with your family or anybody that wants to read them.
But read them all tonight.
And then we'll also put in a link in tomorrow's show prep.
So you can get it.
Okay.
And how do people sign up for the future?
You just go to Glennbeck.com.
Glennbeck.com.
Sign up for the free email newsletter.
You get all of the information, by the way, as well at Glennbeck.com on last night's episode, which outlined the Hunter Biden case and what they're really afraid of.
But there's new information in today's show prep that just came out, and we missed it last night because it hadn't been released yet.
That is
staggering, staggering.
Okay, so we've told you now about what the government is actually doing with the Justice Department, you know, FBI, what all of these things are pushing us toward.
We told you a little bit today about all the cars that are coming out.
Last
of the line, meaning no more gasoline engines.
That is going, that's kicking the door behind us closed.
There's no going back from this.
And yet we don't have the energy.
We don't have the transmission lines for the energy that it will need, we'll need to have very soon.
Okay, we told you a little bit about that.
I told you what's coming in censoring you and monitoring you.
I want to explain today's show as most
days we will, and most hosts will do this.
They are, they're a doctor, and you're seeing a symptom in the society.
And so you'll take, as the doctor, in my role, I take and I show you that x-ray and I say, look at this symptom.
Look at what's happening in our body.
This is really bad.
Okay.
And then I put that x-ray down.
And I say, wow,
look at this infection.
This is horrible.
And we diagnose that symptom and we put it down.
Today, I'm showing you all of the facts of all of these symptoms so you could diagnose
what's happening.
Forget about all of the symptoms.
Let's look at all of them together.
Is there a clear case?
for what is happening to the body of our country.
Yes, there is.
And unfortunately, I don't give it a long life.
You have six to twelve months to live as a republic.
And it's going to take one
bad cold
to bring it down.
I just told you about the financial situation.
Let me give you two other stories.
This one you won't hear anywhere else.
But tie this to all of the financial stories of what China and and Russia is doing with gold and what they're doing to replace the dollar.
Listen to this one.
As part of a new payment system launched last year, Indonesian President Joko Widodo
called on Wednesday for his countrymen to abandon the use of foreign payment networks like MasterCard and Visa and to adopt credit cards from domestic banks.
He said everyone in Indonesia should be able to use Indonesian manufactured credit cards so we can be independent in case of a geopolitical disruption that could economically affect our country.
So you want to talk about a run on the banks.
Now you have Indonesia.
Hmm, I think, I mean, it's not a great country, but I think it was an ally just a few years ago.
Indonesia now saying, don't do anything with American credit cards because there might be a disruption and we don't want to catch contagion.
So they are isolating themselves from our banking system.
Be very careful, he said.
We must remember the sanctions imposed by the U.S.
on Russia.
Visa and MasterCard could soon become a problem.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Ted Cruz, yesterday.
full support, Ted.
What do you need?
Ted Cruz introduces a bill blocking the Fed from adopting central bank digital currency.
This
is critical.
This is the door to the cage, the key, the locks, the razor wire around that
jail cell.
Okay?
If they get digital currency that is run by the Fed,
your security, your freedom is over.
That is not hyperbole.
It will control what you can buy, where you can buy it.
It tracks every single dime.
And it's programmable.
So it can be different for different people.
You might be able to buy gas, but I'm not deemed somebody that needs gas, so I can't buy gas.
It's extraordinarily dangerous.
The Senate and the House need to pass a bill with a veto override that stops the Federal Reserve from doing this.
Now,
how hard is that going to be?
Let me give you two more stories.
Securities and Exchange Commission issued Crypto Exchange Coinbase a Wells notice.
What's a Wells notice?
Well, I believe somebody that was just being confirmed for our federal court system couldn't identify what a Wells notice was.
Probably something important.
It's a warning that companies get that identify potential violations of U.S.
securities law.
Coinbase shares fell nearly 12% in extended trading after the news broke on Wednesday, adding an 8.16% drop during regular trading hours.
Based on discussions with the staff, the company believes these potential enforcement actions would relate to aspects of the company's spot market, staking service, Coinbase, Earn, Coinbase Prime, and Coinbase Wallet.
Coinbase said in a regulatory filing, the potential civil action may seek injunction relief, disgorgement, and civil penalties.
Now, here's the problem:
What have they done wrong?
This is the question that Coinbase has been asking the SEC
for months.
Here's their response.
Today, we're disappointed to share that the
SEC gave us a Wells notice regarding an unspecified portion of our listed digital assets, our staking service, Coinbase Earn, Coinbase Prime, and Coinbase Wallet, after a cursory investigation.
A Wells notice is a way the FCC F, sorry, SEC staff tells a company that they are recommending that the SEC take enforcement action for possible violations.
It is not a formal charge or lawsuit, but it can lead to one.
Rest assured, Coinbase products and services continue to operate as usual.
Today's news do not require any changes to our current products or services.
What are they doing?
They're saying, please
don't run on us.
Today's Wells notice does not provide a lot of information enough for us to respond to.
The SEC staff told us they had identified potential violations of security laws, but little more.
We asked the SEC specifically to identify which assets on our platform they believe may be securities, but they declined to do so.
Today's Wells notice also comes after Cornbase provided multiple proposals to the SEC about registration over the course of months, all of which the SEC ultimately refused to respond to.
Although we don't take this development lightly, we're confident in the way we run our business, the same business we presented to the SEC in order for us to become a public company in 2021.
Look, here's what the government is doing.
They just last week shut down the two biggest
digital currency banks,
both of which, both of which, the first one they shut down, said
they're talking to us about regulation and everything else.
We can't do business under the kind of onerous regulation.
So they regulated one bank out of business.
Then the next one, they said, no, we're fine.
And the government stepped in and said, you're not fine.
We're taking over.
and shut it down.
Now today, they're coming after Coinbase.
And Coinbase, you have to read this letter from Coinbase.
Coinbase is saying, we have asked them.
They have been in our offices and we're like, let us fix anything that you want.
Just tell us
how we're supposed to operate and we will.
And they won't.
The law is not being enforced here because you don't know what the law is because they can make it up.
But worse than that, worse than that,
they can smear you
and send you a Wells notice.
You're saying, I don't know what am I doing wrong.
And that smear will let that people know, oh, the federal government is going to shut them down.
And so everybody vacates.
They're closing your exits up.
And they're not doing it
legally.
They're not doing it in the American way.
By the way, I want to just give you one more piece of information.
I gave it to you last hour, but in case you don't get back to the podcast today,
please do try to get the podcast.
But listen to this.
There is a 30% shortage right now.
It is being called a national security threat.
You're not hearing about it anywhere because they're all too damn busy with the distraction of, is Donald Trump, well, is he guilty or not guilty?
Are you kidding me?
This is a misdemeanor.
Why is this out?
Because they don't want you looking at all.
I lived in New York.
They start closing bridges.
You better get the hell out of there.
Well, they're closing all the bridges, gang.
And they're telling you to look at Times Square at this outrageous billboard.
30%,
30% shortages at hospitals now of really important and inexpensive drugs.
We don't make them here anymore.
There's already a 30% shortage on drugs.
We are turning into Cuba or Venezuela.
Now, you know what happened when Hugo Chavez died and the bus driver takes over and it becomes a klepocracy where you just have villains running it who are just gorging themselves on the wealth of the nation and screw everybody else.
They ate the zoo animals.
They had no medicine.
They're begging us to send band-aids.
If you have a family member in Venezuela, you know you sent them the basic of basics.
Don't think it can't happen here because that's exactly where we're headed.
And
the only thing that will save us
is God.
The only thing that will save us is turning back to God
and asking for his forgiveness and asking him to grant you peace and serenity and take your anger from you.
Humble yourself and focus on kindness
because we're going to need to hold each other up.
And I don't care what you've done in your life.
I don't care how smeared you are.
All hands on deck, there is something called forgiveness and redemption.
Grab on to it
because we need you in a lifeboat.
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Tiller Russell is with us.
He is the director of Waco American Apocalypse.
Hey, Tiller, how are you, man?
Good morning, Glenn.
Thank you so much for having me.
I appreciate it.
You bet.
You know, are you concerned at all?
I guess just got to start with this.
Are you concerned at all that in today's environment, an anniversary of Waco
is
could be used politically a hundred different ways, and I don't think any of them real good?
You know, it is a it's a it's a big consideration and it's something that we thought about while making it.
And at this at the I think at the end of the day, what we felt like is this story's been told for sort of political purposes so much, beginning on day one, as it was breaking on national television and on the newspapers every day.
And we wanted to approach it from more of a, I guess, a humanist perspective, where you talk to the people and you find out what it's really like to live through something like this.
So tell me about the young girl.
She, I think, was nine years old, and
she was in there when
the whole thing was set on fire, a nightmare.
Tell me her story.
Yeah, her story is pretty amazing.
She was born and raised into the Branch Davidian
sect, and her parents were both members of it.
Hang on, can you wait, wait, can you just, what is the Branch Davidian?
What is it that they believed?
Well, basically, what it is, is it's an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist religion that David Koresh ended up coming in and kind of, you know, taking power of.
And he had this prophecy that the end of the world was coming and that he was going to lead his flock through this, you know, Armageddon-like battle with the powers of Babylon, also known as the federal government, and that he would kind of lead them on to the afterlife.
And so that was this vision that he conjured and told the people that followed him.
Okay.
All right.
So her parents were involved.
She's born into it.
What happened?
Born into it.
And at a young age, you know,
David Koresh's prophecy kind of continued to evolve.
And what he said at a certain point was that he was going to dissolve all the marriages of the members
that were following him.
And that then he would be able to take as spiritual wives, essentially, have sex with all the women and be the only one who was able to do so.
And when that happened, this young woman's mother, her name's Heather Jones, and her mother said, I'm out, I'm not doing this, and left.
And her father stayed, and she stayed.
And so.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Mom left the daughter behind?
Yeah, you know, I think it was incredibly challenging circumstances, and I think she was kind of intimidated and,
you know brokenhearted you know right okay
but you know her daughter ended up you know stuck there in that and so
you know and David Koresh was her uncle actually
and so
She it grew up in this scenario and she was actually the last child to make it out of the compound alive.
And it was an incredibly powerful and emotional experience hearing her tell her story.
I just
collect uh american history and um i just bought a a piece from the titanic it is uh from a 16-year-old girl she was on the titanic and she tells this harrowing story in fact you see it in the movie titanic but she said um i didn't speak for three months after this she lost her dad she was the only survivor um in her family and uh it just devastated her to the point she couldn't speak for three three months.
How is she doing now?
How is the survivor of David Koresh and Waco?
Well, it was, you know, I think anybody that lives through something like this, whether it's the Titanic or whether it's, you know, Waco or whether it's the depredations of the Night Stalker in Los Angeles, you know, which that story we told before.
And it's always one of these things where you have to, I think, very sensitively talk to the people because you're asking them to talk about the most traumatic, intense moments of their lives.
And they need to feel like they're in a place where they can really tell the truth about it for the first time and tell it to the world.
I hear this took 10 hours to do an interview with her.
Yeah, I do these exhaustive interviews.
I think it wears down everybody around me, but it takes a long time to get to the point where people feel comfortable enough to really tell you about
the intensity of that experience and what it's like to live through it.
And for this young woman,
it was burned into her consciousness.
She could literally remember every moment.
And so it was like almost hearing somebody playing the movie in their mind of their life.
It was really a powerful experience.
So, by the way, she's what 39 now?
30th anniversary.
She was nine.
That's exactly right.
You know, you look at
Waco
and
it's
you know it's it's hard to talk about because you know I don't I don't know except for maybe the innocent children and some of the some of the people in there, you know, there wasn't really a good guy on either side.
Um and I think some of the people involved with the Branch Davidians were good guys and didn't want it to go that way.
And I think some of the FBI agents were like, what are we doing?
This is not
But it just was something that just seemed to spiral out of control.
Waco is one of those stories where everybody lost, and everybody is haunted by it.
And what was so surprising to me when you actually have a chance to sit down with everybody is they're all just human beings.
I mean, we think of the FBI or we think of the ATF as these big institutions that are, you know, monolithic and
know exactly what they're doing or, you know, know don't know exactly what they're doing, as the case may be.
But really, it's composed of individuals, right?
It's individual human beings in impossible circumstances trying to make the best call that they can.
And in this case, it was an absolute national disaster.
And I think all of us are haunted by the specter of Waco.
And as you started, Glenn, like, it's really important to have this reckoning with these iconic moments in American history on the anniversaries so that you don't have the same tragedies again.
So what is it we're supposed to learn?
I think that it's that it is human beings at the center of it.
At the end of the day, it's easy to sit there and point fingers and say, okay, the ATF screwed this up.
Okay, the FBI screwed this up.
And unquestionably, there were all sorts of missteps and failures.
But at the end of the day, really, it is human beings who are trying to do the best that they can.
So for me, it's an exploration of the human condition, what it's like to be alive, what it's like like to die, what it's like to have to make these vital decisions when there's tanks surrounding a compound, all the
movie camera, TV cameras are there, and what do you do?
It was uncharted territory for everybody.
It is seem, in my memory at least, it seems like
kind of what we're doing right now with Russia.
The American people are going, this isn't good.
And I don't agree with Russia, but I think the people should be free, but they're not all the good people over there.
And it just keeps going and getting escalated by either Russia or by us and keeps getting bigger and bigger.
And we're all kind of sitting there going, well, there's got to be an exit here.
Can somebody take an exit?
And then nobody does.
But I remember watching it going,
what's the problem?
Why aren't we just sitting down and talking about this?
Why is this getting so far out of control?
I mean, it went for, what, 50 days?
51 days.
It's like watching a slow-motion car crash where you can see, you know, everybody's about to go flying through the windows, and there's about to be blood in the streets.
And nobody knew what to do because nobody had ever been in a situation before, just like we are seeing with Russia today.
So it's, and I think history is at its most relevant.
You know, you're a huge history buff.
And I think history is at its most relevant and resonant when, in some way, it speaks about what's happening happening in the world today.
And I think this Waco story really does.
You know, it's a story about God and guns in America and what that does to our children.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Explain that.
What does that mean?
Well, I mean, these are questions that have been with us from the founding of this country, right?
The right to worship God the way you want, the right to, you know, the constitutional right to bear arms.
But at the center of Waco, what you have is all of these children whose lives are literally in the hands of all of the adults around them, and there's a complete failure to communicate by all of the adults.
And I think that's really the burning lesson at the heart of Waco is you have to speak to each other.
And at Waco, nobody could hear anybody else.
The FBI, you know, members of the FBI or different factions are fighting with each other, and the Branch Davidians can't communicate with the press.
The press doesn't understand what the hell is going on.
And it's this failure to communicate, which I think is a vital thing that's happening in the world today, too.
Everybody's kind of screaming and nobody's listening.
Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know if it's a communication problem as much as it is a listening problem.
Yeah, I mean, I see
the press or even me at times, whatever.
But I see people approach something and they think they know what's going on.
And if you're not humble enough to be willing to change your opinion when you find different facts, and a lot of people aren't on all sides of every issue,
you're not listening, and there's no way out if you're not listening.
I think that's absolutely beautifully put.
You know, it does require this humility where all of us have strongly held opinions, whatever your politics are, whatever your background is.
And the ability for one human being to listen to another is what gives us a functioning civil society.
And I think that's what we need to remember because everybody's temperature is running really hot these days.
So we're telling a story
for Waco as well, not nearly as well as you're doing it with American Apocalypse.
By the way, you can see it at Netflix.
Really good.
I haven't watched it yet, but my staff has.
Really good.
I'm watching it this weekend.
But,
you know, we talked to somebody somebody in the branch, Davidians, and they said, well, we won't really talk to you unless you will, you know, let us say our piece unedited.
And we listened to their piece, and it doesn't seem any healthier.
It's funny because my experience of this story, I had all of these preconceived notions about what I was going to contend with.
And really, I kept being surprised.
You know, there's this sniper from the hostage rescue team, this guy guy Chris Whitcomb, who tells the story of what it's like to roll into Waco, you know, armed for bear.
And at some point in there, he's got David Koresh literally in his crosshairs.
And he realizes, okay, if I pull the trigger right now, I'm going to go to prison for the rest of my life for an unauthorized murder, but this will end the standoff.
And what was so interesting about this guy was I kind of expected this, you know, door kicking, knuckle-sacking, you know, whatever.
And instead, here was this really deeply thoughtful guy who was a writer and he was a poet.
And he had actually deeply engaged with David Koresh's theology during the siege to say, is there anything there?
Is this real or is this just a hustle?
And so, again, and again, and again, these people were much more complicated than I thought they would be.
And that's to me what made it a fascinating exploration of the human condition.
Tiller, thank you so much.
You are
quite the director.
We've been watching you for a while and you're really a great director.
Thank you so much for telling the story in a sensitive and
balanced and honest way.
Appreciate it.
Thank you for having me, Glenn.
You bet.
Tiller Russell, you can find Waco, the American Apocalypse, netflix.com.
Netflix.com.
It was released yesterday.
He's also one of the executive producers of the program.
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