Best of The Program | Guest: Bill Richmond | 2/2/21
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Listen and follow along
Transcript
This podcast is supported by Progressive, a leader in RV Insurance.
RVs are for sharing adventures with family, friends, and even your pets.
So, if you bring your cats and dogs along for the ride, you'll want Progressive RV Insurance.
They protect your cats and dogs like family by offering up to $1,000 in optional coverage for vet bills in case of an RV accident, making it a great companion for the responsible pet owner who loves to travel.
See Progressive's other benefits and more when you quote RV Insurance at Progressive.com today.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, pet injuries, and additional coverage and subject to policy terms.
Hey, great podcast today.
We start with a little look at heroes and where are we going from here?
Then we talk to the half-Asian attorney of
Steven Crowder, who's back off iATIS.
You can find him on Blaze TV.
Yeah, Bill Richmond talking about the lawsuit they're filing against Facebook, which is pretty interesting.
Yeah, really interesting stuff.
Then we talk about the snowstorm, Nazi monkeys, and trips to Mars with Elon Musk, all on today's podcast.
You're listening to the best of the Blenbeck program.
In a strange turn of events, Stephen Crowder hires
former Clintonista, Bill Richardson, to...
No.
Bill Richmond joining us now.
Definitely, definitely not the guy who was hanging out with Hillary Clinton.
No.
Bill, how are you?
Wonderful.
How are y'all?
Well, I'm really good.
So, good news.
Stephen is back.
He was on hiatus.
Must be nice.
You know what I'm saying?
He's been working hard, dealing with lots of stuff.
And yeah, one part of it
is getting everything together.
So
I'm wondering if you could represent me as well, maybe?
What kind of things you need?
Bill,
tell me about the lawsuit that you announced yesterday on the Steven Crowder show.
Absolutely.
We have announced our lawsuit that we'll be filing.
We'll be seeing that in the public court system here in a day or two against Facebook Inc.
And it really centers around something you and I have actually talked about before on the News and Why Matters about being pro-business but anti-fraud.
What we're saying is that these platforms, most specifically Facebook, need to just be honest with who they are.
And to date, they have not been.
They have lured customers, content creators, and advertising spenders like Steven and his company and other shows like that on all sides of the political spectrum under the guise of being politically neutral.
Unfortunately, that's not actually true.
And the evidence bears out that the conduct at all levels of Facebook has run counter to that.
And so as a consumer, a creator, an advertiser, something has to be done and we're doing it.
I mean,
we were there at the very beginning.
I mean, I remember talking about Facebook and Twitter when no one was talking about them and saying, you know, join us.
It's a new platform.
I mean, we put a lot of time and money into building.
Facebook, and then they're cutting us off from the people who say they want to join with us.
That's exactly the problem.
Everyone knows, and Facebook has never hid the fact.
Every SEC filing, every investor call, every promo they put out says the product is free because you're the product, the data, the data that's gotten from the user.
So they entice the customer and they entice the content creators.
Facebook doesn't create content.
It's you, it's Stephen, it's others on the platform to be able to bring their fans to the platform to provide more information, but doing it under the guise of false pretenses of saying that you're going to run a news feed or a trending topic solely algorithmically when you're not, or saying that you're not using political ideation or political orientation to decide what gets in front of certain eyeballs.
That's just being dishonest, and that's what we're targeting here.
You know, it's amazing.
I don't know if you have the story from the insider of Facebook that said that BLM was not trending at the very beginning.
And they got so much pushback that they changed the algorithm to make sure that BLM was trending.
That was complete, that whole movement
was bogus.
It was bogus.
It wasn't trending at the beginning.
And that's what we're looking for.
That's what we're trying to finally get these companies, specifically Facebook, to admit, is that this isn't a machine that's doing something.
It's people behind the machine, behind the algorithm, who are making inputs, who are changing levers, who are adjusting dials to go after the flavor of the week.
And when you hear stories like the recently leaked statements of Mark Zuckerberg saying that they've aligned with a lot of policies, executive orders, and a particular administration, it gives you pause about who's turning those dials.
And we're not saying here, this is a big difference.
We're not saying that the government needs to come in and run this
way.
Right, exactly.
We're saying just be honest about the products and services.
Be honest about how you're using us, the customer, and the content creator.
Look, I mean, I don't think this is unreasonable at all.
We never
know the rules.
We never know the rules.
I've done broadcasts now for 40-some years, 45 years, I think.
And I know the rules.
I know what I can and can't say.
I know what I can promote, not promote.
I know all those rules because they're consistent and clearly written down.
And so when it gets vague, maybe it's been vague twice in my career in 40-some years.
And that's only when it became political, honestly.
It's very clear.
Why can't Facebook make it very, very clear so we know I can't create content for a group that's constantly changing?
Can anyone?
No one can.
And what's pretty insidious about this is that there are a number of folks at various tech companies who simply want to provide an open product.
But given the nature of the employees that they have coming mostly out of California, the advertisers and media companies that wield a lot of pressure, because again, the entire model is based off of gathering data, tailoring it to advertisers, and then selling that experience to the advertisers.
There's a lot of pressure that comes to adjust those dials.
And when there is that gray area, when you're sitting on the fence looking, well, does it go this way or that way?
The one making the decision, unfortunately, is pushing those dials, pushing those decisions, turning those gray areas consistently against a certain political ideology.
And it runs a gamut of issues.
It's not just, you know, one topic or another.
It's a whole gamut of issues that have become the enemy of the woke.
And that's how these dials are being decided from the evidence that we've seen.
It is also
dangerously close to becoming...
totally corrupted with the government because it's a revolving door.
You know, they go in and out from Facebook and Google and then to the administration.
They come out of Congress.
I mean,
this is a public-private partnership
in every way except formalizing it.
Absolutely.
The ubiquitous nature of the media being now completely dominated in terms of eyeballs and ears by just a handful of tech companies, as opposed to having been widely covered by a number of, you know, let's radio, television, or print, or even at a time, online sources.
Now, this total domination has created a place where just a slight adjustment of the dial, just
a slight thumb on the scale is going to have massive implications for business owners, whether it's Lauder and Crowder and Stevens Show or other creators across the spectrum.
And this is the thing, these arguments are not arguments dedicated to just one side of the political spectrum.
These affect all Americans who are interested in dealing with a company on a fair level and have adequate disclosures.
We are talking to Bill Richmond.
Stephen calls him the half-Asian attorney.
And he is
filing suit this week.
You haven't filed it yet, but you're actually submitting the suit later this week against Facebook to push back on
this fraud that's going on.
Let me ⁇
you know, they came out, what was it, today or yesterday, and they said they just really want Biden's help to regulate this.
You've got CNN coming in, and I don't care what anybody says.
I think Brian Stelter and his little
dirt bag,
you know, I don't know, bat, you know, what is he, Robin in tights?
I'm not sure.
But anyway,
these two guys are leading the push to get people deplatformed from cable companies,
and that means you lose Fox News.
Can you answer to
the
statement that it's freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach?
There is without question being a pro-business advocate, and Steven and I have gone back and forth on this, and I know this is an issue close to your heart to support businesses of all sizes, folks who have worked and built something, and being able to tell them, hey, you can do business with the people that you want to.
And at a certain level,
that's very true.
But these tech companies and the media companies have created through their own desire to become as big as possible, have put themselves in the category of utilities, of common carriers, of other essentials in the modern age.
And that's where while you may not be able to guarantee the number of people that you're going to be having, it's about having a level playing field and really just knowing if the playing field isn't going to be level.
If you know, I mean, a lot of folks kind of know, hey, if you're going to be on Twitter, Jack Dorsey, a vowed anti-conservative, you kind of know what you're going to get.
Not that they should be able to do anything, not saying that, but they should be more open about what they're doing.
And when actually you referenced earlier that NYU Stern report that came out just a day or two ago saying there is no anti-conservative bias.
First of all, when you look at the data, actually, it does show a bias.
But nonetheless, their conclusions were the same.
It said Facebook and big tech need to have more clarity about their policies so that consumers, advertisers, and content creators, and even government officials taxed with regulating these businesses know exactly what's happening.
But looking into that black box is the last thing they want us to do.
And hey, we're going to pry it open.
What are your chances?
I mean, you're going after Facebook.
They clearly have endless amounts of money and attorneys.
No doubt.
No doubt.
And we know that it's going to be a long, hard slog.
We know that they're going to throw a lot of defenses, most especially and foremost, Section 230 and the way that it's been misinterpreted by certain courts.
We're prepared to be able to do that.
This is going to be a multi-year affair, without any doubt.
There are going to be battles won and lost, but we're going for the war and trying to win the whole thing and really benefit all Americans who are interested in fair dealing with big tech companies.
Bill Richmond, thank you very much.
Thank you.
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Well,
the turtle has poked his head out from his shell, Mitch McConnell.
He wants everybody to know that
the new congressman from Georgia
is
crazy,
just crazy.
This is Marjorie Taylor Greene.
She's nuts.
But not only did he say that, he said, what she says is a cancer.
Well, now, let me ask you something.
You go to a doctor, and he tells you you have cancer and says,
but we can live with it.
Do you go see another doctor?
Probably.
Yeah.
At least least get a second opinion.
Sure.
But we can.
Wait, you're not going to do anything?
Nah.
It's a cancer.
Oh, my gosh.
And cancers will kill you.
Well, is it a different kind of cancer?
No, it's the same kind of cancer.
It'll kill you dead.
It's crazy bad.
We can live with it.
Could we stop calling people cancers?
She might be on the lunatic fringe.
She believes some things that I don't believe.
I didn't vote for her.
Georgia did.
They also voted for Senator Warnock,
who believes in all kinds of crazy things that I don't believe.
I tried to alert the people of Georgia.
The people of Georgia didn't seem to care.
Or there were more people that thought, hey, communism's neat.
And so Warnock's in the Senate.
I don't know.
Warnock's not a cancer, but some of the ideas that he expresses certainly is.
Now,
do I think we should,
as a country, no, not even as a country, do I think our political parties should start targeting people who they don't agree with and say, we're going to put them in a little box.
They're in the timeout corner for the next two years.
Don't want it.
Nope.
Zip it.
Zip it, little girl.
Zip it.
No, the people of Georgia elected her.
If they don't like her, well, then they shouldn't have voted and they can vote again.
This is a representative republic.
People hire the people they want to send for their community.
And that's what that district decided that person represents me.
Just like the great state of Georgia picks Senator Warnock.
I mean, I, you know, I was sitting here and I was, I'm, I'm listening to this, and again,
I don't agree with a lot of stuff.
She's a deep Q person.
I haven't even gone down the,
I haven't even, I haven't even, somebody was like, rabbits, and I'm like, I'm not looking for them with you.
I'm not going down that hole because that is, that is, it's so clear that it is a way to explain things that are unexplainable
and so clearly, in my opinion, completely wrong.
So she's gone down that rabbit hole.
She believes it.
Okay.
All right.
Don't agree with that at all.
She's not coming over to my house most likely for dinner.
You know what I mean?
She definitely said some things that are way out there.
She seems to now be saying that she doesn't believe those things anymore.
Just yet.
Well, but she's also said that
Nancy Pelosi should be
resolved.
But did she say for treason?
Treason.
I believe so.
Everybody said, I mean, not everybody, but a lot of people in the mainstream media and a lot of people in Congress said that Donald Trump should be tried for treason.
Oh, yeah.
And I said at the time, hey, let's not throw the T-word around because that's the only one in the Constitution that has a specific penalty and it's death.
So everything else, you might, yeah, you get three to six.
This one is, he'll get three to six, bullets in the head.
This one, when you accuse somebody of treason, it's execution.
Okay?
So let's stop.
Just because she named the punishment that is directly tied to treason makes it, I guess, so much more worse.
But everybody was saying that about Donald Trump on the left.
I'm not excusing it.
I'm just telling you, I said don't do it then.
I'm saying don't do it now.
The larger point here, though, I think, first of all, Georgia gets to pick whoever the hell they want.
Yep.
You don't just get to remove them because you don't like what they said on Facebook five years ago.
We are a Republic.
Yeah, this is what representatives are.
They're not the representatives of what Nancy Pelosi wants.
It's what the people of Georgia want.
Nor is it the representative that Mitch McConnell wants.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Sorry.
And they can all be critical.
They can all say their things, but you don't remove people.
The way you remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress is to primary her in two years.
Dangerous.
That's how you do it if you want to do it.
But beyond that, like it's so clear what the media is doing.
You know, people always say, oh, you just want to talk about AOC because she's an idiot and you want her to define the Democrats.
Yes, that's exactly why I want to talk about AOC because she's an idiot and she's the one that blurts out all the things they say quietly behind the scenes.
That's why I like talking about AOC because she is a very easy way for people to understand what the left is trying to do.
And this is what they're trying to do here is say, well, this is the right's AOC.
We're going to talk about this person that no one had talked about and had talked about at all for the past.
I don't think anybody knew who she was.
And now they're just coming out and making a huge deal out of this one representative in Georgia because they're trying to define the entire conservative movement based on this one person who said a lot of bad things on this.
Do me me a favor, will you?
You remember the game, Red Rover, Red Rover?
Send, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene right over.
Okay.
Okay.
You play that side.
Go ahead.
Red Rover, Red Rover.
You know, we got everybody lined up.
Red Rover, Red Rover.
Who am I?
You're the Democrats.
Okay, I'm pulling Marjorie Taylor Greene over.
Okay.
Red Rover, Red Rover.
Gee, where do we start, guys?
Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, I mean, the list is ridiculous.
You could do this list all day.
You're going to do Red Rover, Red Rover.
You'll be out of crazy people.
Maybe four.
Maybe four.
I can't even think of four.
Maybe four.
You'd have more people who've like met with Fidel Castro
in the day.
Red Rover, Red Rover.
How many people come over?
Red Rover, Red Rover.
Send anyone who's hung out with Louis Farrakhan
and actually said that they supported those things,
but now, oh, no, I never said anything.
I don't believe we're just listening to all types of points of view.
Send those right over.
How many come?
It's easier to do with these names.
If I were to say, Red Rover, Red Rover, send all your QAnon believers over.
You send, what, one or two, probably from the house.
Yeah.
And then you say, send people who meet with Red Rover, Red Rover, send your
people that claim that
Israel is South Africa apartheid right over.
Right.
Hey, Red Rover, Red Rover.
The friggin' conference is coming over on that one.
Red Rover, Rover, Red Rover, send everyone who believes the ends justify the means and Sololinsky believers right over.
Yeah.
Red Rover, Red Rover, send everybody who believes that the Soviets were probably right.
I mean, you know,
it didn't work out so well, but it just wasn't done properly in the Soviet Union or in China or
in Cuba.
And people who happen to go to the Soviet Union on their honeymoons.
Send those people over.
I mean, again, you could get, there's just not a contest here.
That doesn't mean that we embrace every crazy person who's on the right.
I mean, but, you know, but still, like, it needs to be said that these things, these equivalent theories, things like, you know,
HIV was created by the government, right?
The new senator from Georgia, back to the guy who said that.
The guy who said that, he praised years after the controversy, said not only was he good but the the the the sermon where he said a lot of these controversial things was an excellent sermon yeah he said that he said that and he got elected by the state of Georgia Red Rover Red Rover send everyone who thought 9-11 was an inside job and George Bush was part of it right over you're now at one point two-thirds of all Democrats So, I mean, you would play this game all day.
It's silly.
So the point of this is, you want to play this game?
Oh, we'll play this game, but it's an un-American game because that's an elected representative.
I don't want you to get rid of Rashida Tlaib in Washington.
I think her district should, but it's not going to happen because her district represents her.
She represents the people living in that district.
So unless she's doing something illegal,
Minnesota.
Unless you're doing something illegal, you don't don't just take AOC out.
You don't do it.
She's an elected representative.
Red Rover, Red Rover, send anyone who's married their brother over.
Well, in that case, you do only get one.
There you go.
That we know of.
Let's not go crazy.
Yeah, you're right.
You're right.
So, you know,
who am I to judge?
There,
but by the grace of God.
Yeah, I don't think you're going to marry your brother anytime soon, so I think you're safe on that one.
Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, you're right.
This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Do you see that Elon Musk wants to go to the moon?
He wants to go to Mars.
You know that.
He says they're on track.
Might even push it up a bit.
But
he's looking for the people now that want to go to, you know, want to go to Mars.
And I've never really been one for Mars, you know, at this time of year.
Really?
Yeah.
Too cold.
To
fill in the blank.
You know what I mean?
But
I'm feeling a little fat and bloated on this planet.
And I'll be lighter.
Best way to lose 50 pounds, take your scale to Mars.
You know what I'm saying?
So that's...
I don't know if it's a fast way.
It takes quite a bit of time to get there.
So I'm not sure that it would be a quick way.
You know, if you lose weight quickly, you put it right back on.
You know, so I'm going to take my time losing losing weight.
But anyway,
the idea of going to Mars has always been fun, but then you're like, you could die.
You'd be away from your family for a long time.
These cats probably are not coming back.
I I don't think so.
I mean, once you've seen Mars, it's like the Grand Canyon.
Yep, seen it.
Now what?
You know what I mean?
Yeah, like the view's cool.
And
then you're fertilizing potatoes with your own excrements.
Yes, and you're like,
you know, I've seen it and it's beautiful.
It really is.
It's always a great view.
But once you live there for a while, you're like,
all of it is like this.
All of it.
There's no place, there's no cancun on Mars.
Where are you going?
Hey, I'm going to take a vacation.
Where?
Outside?
I don't think so.
To the other red flat place.
Right.
And you're not just going to go out and just like, I'm just, you know what?
We're just going out for a hike and pitching a tent.
No, you're not.
No, you're not.
No.
You're going to be here in this little teeny air box.
And congratulations.
I know at this point, you have either had sex with all of them
and/or or you now hate all of them.
But congratulations, for the rest of your life, you're in this crap hole with a bunch of red dirt outside.
Yeah, you need an odd combination of being very adventurous and also very depressed by life on this planet.
I'm there.
Are you?
I'm not very adventurous.
Well, I am kind of adventurous.
Not like, hey, let's go to Mars this weekend, but like, hey, let's go to Paris this weekend.
You know, that I could do.
Mars is a little bit of a stretch.
Right.
But
depressed on what's this going on?
Yeah.
And I think, you know, a good Skype call to the kids once in a while, I think it'd be okay.
Check in.
Yeah.
You're not saying you're never going to see them again.
You'll just only see them on a school.
Hey, how's school going?
I can't talk.
Hey,
kids, break it.
Turn it off.
I think that's fine.
Yeah.
It's more parenting than they need.
The kids really need a lot of, you know, parental.
Well, not as much as they need, but as much as they'll allow you to do at a certain point.
You know what I mean?
It does hit that point.
Yeah, it hits that point to where
I might have to choke you to death to get you to do it.
And so that would be kind of bad because you'd be dead and so you wouldn't learn the lesson.
But on the other hand, you'd be dead.
I actually saw a documentary where the dad was always strangling the kid called The Simpsons, and the kid lives through all of it.
All of it.
So you should be following it on that front.
And he's a great kid.
He turns out to be a great kid.
A great kid.
You had made a someone was talking about the secession of
conservatives should just secede, whichever own country.
And you said, no, I'm for secession.
I don't want them to secede.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
Well, why don't you just send your kids to Mars?
Whoa.
I mean, that way you get to still go to like Waffle House, you know, 12 to 15 times per week.
And then they also won't.
And I wouldn't care as much about the country if I knew knew my kids and all my grandkids would all be on Mars.
Right.
When you believe your
children are the future, but the cities are going to be burning to the ground every two days.
I can ride this baby out happily.
I'll just be like, hey, whatever.
Burn it to the ground.
Yeah.
I'll move to another place unless it's cold.
Then maybe I'll move there.
It'll be nice and warm by the fires of the Target and the AutoZone.
That's the best thing about Minneapolis.
You know, sure, it's cold, but you have the warmth of the town burning down all around you to kind of give you that cozy kind of
round the campfire kind of feeling.
Exactly.
Right.
I mean, I will say, I was in Minnesota, I guess, three years ago now.
It's changed.
Yeah.
It was really cold.
I would assume that problem's gone away.
Yeah.
You know,
because I remember it being like frigid to the point as if I wondered, why would someone choose to build a civilization here?
Yes.
Like, that's the feeling.
I have been there at that time of year.
Yeah.
And you're like, well, I've noticed what they've done here with the city is they've connected all the buildings like a giant hammer trail.
Yeah.
Like you're
one of those hamster cages.
Yeah.
And you are walking back and forth between the buildings.
What they've essentially done is converted the city into a mall where you're everywhere you go, you just walk inside, which is fine, except for the fact that you, there are places, there's lots of open room in like Texas where you could build a civilization in which you don't have to do such things.
I thought of that.
I don't know why they haven't thought of that.
I don't.
You know, and they all say, oh, no, I've lived here my whole life.
Okay.
All right.
So you've had a lot of time to think.
You've had a lot of time to think.
That's not working as a point in your favor.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you've used all this time.
Why are you here?
Oh, the summers are great.
Yeah, but the summer's 18 minutes long.
The summer
comes and goes.
It's riddled with mosquitoes.
And then you're right back to 14 feet of snow.
Again, how much time do you need to think this through?
You've spent most of your life doing this?
That's not a good idea.
No, and at least the residents there seem to be able to take it.
Like they're tough enough to be able to take it.
They've been there for a long time.
Well, I was there when there's lots of tourists and stuff there.
And every one of them looks like Jack Nicholson from The Shining at the end.
Like they're just outside with that look on their face.
No, I'm saying like the frozen one at the very end where he's just outside and there's no facial expressions because he's literally frozen to death.
That is basically, and no spoiler alert on the shining, sorry about that.
But I mean, this is.
It doesn't work out for the kids and the dads.
Actually, yeah.
I thought that book was going to really turn into something good.
Yeah, no, it was on its way.
There's a lot of typing,
a lot of similar lines, but not a great read.
But yeah, I think that that is, that's almost,
you walk into things, right?
Like people get born in a city that they they don't like and they stay there their whole lives because that's where they were born.
Right.
That happened to a bunch of cities in the north.
They popped them up there thinking, like, I don't know.
Is there a better place to live?
I'm not sure.
We don't have air conditioning yet, so I don't want to live down there.
Well, you should have known we were going to come up with air conditioning because now the south is a little bit more.
And now, you have no excuse.
It's been a long time since we've had air conditioning.
And by the way, for because I hear this all the time,
well, I live there because, you know, my folks, they're there there now and we can't, we don't want to move away from my folks.
Your parents, your parents sucked.
They had their whole life to figure it out.
And they were probably like, yeah, well, my folks are here.
And so,
you know, after they die, we might move.
And then they just lived there.
And then they had children there.
And that's you now.
And you're an adult.
And now you're saying the same thing they said.
Get out of the city.
To be fair, it is hard to sell your house on Gonoria Terrace.
So I think
it could be.
It is.
Part of the reason.
Again, it's just on the edge of that beautiful orange glow in the sky that you get from the fires at night so that's nice yeah that's nice yeah
all right back in just a second with more we'll try to come up with something that is meaningful
nah
Your sausage mcmuffin with egg didn't change.
Your receipt did.
The sausage mcmuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5.
Only at McDonald's for a limited time.
Prices and participation may vary.