Best of The Program Guests: Rudy Atallah & Salena Zito | 8/11/20

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Welcome to the program today.

We go into a little bit on mail-in voting, what's going on with that situation, the big explosion in Lebanon.

We also talked to Ken Buck about what's going on in Washington, D.C.

and the constant corruption.

Selena Zito's on.

She's great.

She's talking about

what does it feel like being on the ground and actually being out traveling?

She's been reporting from all over the country, even in the middle of the pandemic.

The economy, how do we get that moving forward?

Are we running short on supplies for building and construction and things like that?

There's some real evidence of that.

And my ridiculous paper towel purchase from some shady Chinese website that did not go well.

We tell that story.

And a brand new business that it is going to be launching here in the future.

It all comes up on the podcast today.

Make sure to go to Blazetv.com slash Glenn.

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Here is the podcast for today.

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

I wanted to bring a good friend of mine on.

He's Lieutenant Colonel Rudy Atala, and he is a retired Air Force officer.

He's the chief operating officer of the Nazarene Fund and the

Chief Executive Officer of White Mountain Research.

He grew up in Lebanon, if I remember right.

He grew up, he was a native to Beirut.

He speaks, I don't know how many different languages.

He is a straight-up guy, worked at the White House for a while,

and it's an honor to call him my friend.

Rudy is with us now.

Hi, Rudy.

Hi, Glenn.

It's an honor to be with you.

I just wanted to check with you real quick on something.

What's happening in Lebanon?

My gut tells me this is the start of something really not good.

Am I wrong on that?

No, your gut is right spot on, actually.

It's a start of.

I'm afraid to say that if things continue trending this way, Lebanon is going to go back to civil war unless the international community really finds a solution to the issues right now.

Okay, so

tell me exactly what we know.

I know you have a team on the ground in Lebanon now.

Tell me what we do know about

this amodium nitrate.

Was it from Hezbollah, from Iran?

Why was it there?

And what happened yesterday with the riots?

Yeah, so Hezbollah has controlled, Hezbollah has slowly, slowly taken over and controlled the Lebanese government.

So the entire Lebanese government is

extremely corrupt and controlled by Iran through its proxies, Hezbollah, inside Lebanon.

Once they took control of the government,

they controlled the airport, and they also controlled the seaport where the explosion happened.

And with their control of the seaport, they were bringing in all types of weapons, missiles, missile propellants, and, of course, ammonium nitrate.

So the combination of all of that, and nothing entered or left the port without Hezbollah knowing about it.

In fact, after the explosion occurred, they cordoned off the entire

facility, the entire port itself, did not allow anybody near it.

And the sad thing about it is the explosion was so massive that it devastated a good chunk of the city and it impacted close to 85% of the Christian area in Beirut.

Oh my gosh.

So the bulk of the damage has occurred in the Christian areas.

Renault, as of today,

we have over 2,000 critically wounded, 6,000 total wounded, 200 dead with many, many more missing, and over 350,000 people are homeless.

My cousin lost his entire home, his entire business.

My father's house was damaged.

My closest friends, all their homes were destroyed.

So

it's been

an incredibly difficult time for everybody.

And yesterday with the riots, what was really crazy that was happening is you had

people in plain clothes from the Hezbollah side driving into the Christian areas where the damage occurred and basically offering up to buy homes from people, saying, oh, you lost everything.

We'll purchase your place from you.

It's something that they've done over the years.

They've slowly

basically entered and penetrated Christian areas by asking to purchase land from Christians and from people.

Now they're doing it with this damage, which is very, very alarming.

So the riots yesterday, the people are fed up because there's economic depression,

you know, the major devaluation of the Lebanese pound against the dollar.

A lot of the food that was entering the ports was being basically whisked away out of the country and moved across the border into Syria to continue propping up the Assad regime.

And Hezbollah was behind all of this.

So the people are starving.

The value value of their money is not there.

They can't purchase anything.

And what's made it worse is there are no jobs.

The Lebanese population is 4.5 million.

Now add on top of that 1.5 million Syrian refugees from the war in Syria.

And

you have an extremely volatile area now with no jobs and nothing.

So people yesterday had so, they were so fed up, they went into the streets and they were basically clashing with the police and yesterday uh we've had a total of over 728 wounded

and and uh right now the entire the entire government resigned uh so the the prime minister hasan diab resigned and uh but uh he's going to continue working with his people and hasan diab and the government lebanese government was all handpicked by Hezbollah and by Iran.

So the people are waiting to see what's going to happen right now.

The people are pushing for a guy named

Nuwab Salam to become the next prime minister because the constitution of Lebanon states that the prime minister must be Sunni.

And so the people are trying to select their prime minister, but we will see what happens.

This is where the rub is going to be is that nobody wants Iran or Hezbollah to be in control of the government anymore.

And Iran's not going to take that sitting down.

No, they can't lose Lebanon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There was something else that was really that's really interesting and I think your listeners need to know is

that, you know, it's funny,

the last week on Friday was when the Hague was going to come up with its final verdict in the long, long investigation, $600 million worth of investigations on the assassination of the former Prime Minister of Lebanon in 2005, Rafi Hariri.

And the verdict, the final verdict, has the finger pointing directly at Hezbollah and directly at Iran for killing the former prime minister whom everybody loved in Lebanon.

And so Hezbollah was not going to take that sitting down.

And it's funny that, you know, a couple of days before that final verdict came out, this whole explosion happened.

So it delayed everything.

Now the Hague is not going to come up with its final verdict until the 18th of August.

So now it's buying time for Hezbollah to do whatever it's now.

They dissolve the government.

So Hezbollah is probably going to say, well, look, there's no government.

So you can't come in here.

You can't do anything in here.

And it allows them time to shuffle around.

And Iran now has pledged full support to Lebanon

and basically the guise of humanitarian aid.

And we all know what that means.

It means full support on every other front, of course, bringing in weapons and missiles and all that stuff.

So this is how the game is played.

Wow, that's depressing.

Rudy, do you believe that this was intentional or a mistake?

And was there really a fireworks depot in there?

Or was this all stuff for rockets and bombs?

Yeah, I think, I personally think it was very deliberate.

The timing is kind of the big question.

And, you know, you look at who benefits from this whole thing.

Of course, Hezbollah benefits majorly from the whole thing.

There were no fireworks at the port.

I mean, the port is near the place where I used to live, Ashgafi.

So they maintained all their ammos, their weapons, and their ammonium nitrate.

And now the people are afraid also because they're saying that some of the experts are saying that 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, it wasn't all there.

There was a lot of it missing.

So now people are living in fear of a potentially second explosion.

And I think, you know, there, you know, the rumors start to rise and people start to talk, but Hezbollah controlled all of that.

And they are known, Hezbollah is known to sacrifice its own people for the cause.

In 2006,

during the Israeli incursion of Lebanon,

I was talking to my friends.

They would literally sacrifice their own kids and then send in people, reporters, take photos, and it would send them to Death and France and say, see, the Israelis are killing kids, and the Israelis weren't doing anything.

They were sacrificing their own people just for

their own cause.

So they will do anything to win the battle.

We have a team from the Nazarene Fund on the ground?

Yes, sir.

Or is it yours?

We do.

Yeah, it's the same team.

I have parts of Nazarene Fund and my nonprofit, the blessingprojects.org.

I have everybody there, several teams running around.

We're feeding people and we're helping the poorest of the poor.

I mean, yesterday, in addition to all the riots, it rained.

And many of the homes have no roofs or no windows, so the water's flooding.

People are starving.

Many people are afraid to go to hospitals because of COVID, because we do have a COVID outbreak in Lebanon as well.

So

in addition to no food, in addition to the explosion, in addition to the crisis, you have COVID, you have everything else on top of it.

So we're talking major, major disaster.

It's unprecedented.

You have 100,000 children that are homeless now.

What time of day did this happen?

Where was everybody?

Were they at home together?

Were the families separated?

Generally speaking, do you know?

Yeah,

it was in the afternoon and families were together, but what happened is because it started off as a slow burn with a lot of smoke, people congregated to their balconies, they congregated in the streets, and they were, you know, they were, everybody was using their phones to videotape.

That's why you have so many captures of the explosion.

And it was a slow burn, and it was about five to seven minutes later, and then you had the massive explosion.

the detonation was so big that they actually felt it in Lavnaca Cyprus a hundred miles away it registered 4.3 on the Richter scale it's considered the third largest non-nuclear explosion in history

I've never seen anything like it I mean I honestly thought it was a nuclear weapon when it went off you saw the explosion you saw the fire and then you saw that

I mean you just saw the air the air pressure just boom push out from that.

I've never seen that except for a massive, massive bomb or a nuclear hydrogen bomb.

Terrifying.

Thank you so much, Rudy.

Thank you for bringing us up to speed.

Anything you need from us or the listeners?

Just your support and prayers.

Anything you can do.

We're bringing in aid.

We're trying to bypass the corrupt government.

We're trying to make sure that none of the funds that we send out there goes to the government itself or to local politicians because they control everything.

We're trying to take it directly to the people.

Anything you can do to support us would be greatly appreciated because the need is great.

You can go to the nazarenefund.org, the nazarenefund.org, and help these Christians and the Christian community that took the brunt of all of this, which always seems to be the case in the Middle East.

The Nazarenefund.org.

The best of the Glenbeck program.

Really, one of the

most honest reporters I have ever met.

You know, back in the day,

I was skeptical of every reporter, not skeptical enough.

And I had seen all of the tricks.

And this reporter said she wanted to do an interview.

And I was like, uh-huh.

And we set for an interview, and she asked tough questions,

but she actually got the story right.

She was working in Pittsburgh at the time.

Now she's everywhere.

She's a national political reporter for the Washington Examiner.

She's a columnist for the New York Post, the author, a co-author of the book The Great Revolt, which kind of goes into why Donald Trump won in 2016.

If the press ever cared to read it, they would know why he won and they would stop doing what they're doing, quite honestly.

But Selena joins me now because I just read one of your columns, Selena, so much the same, but so much different in Pennsylvania this election year.

You got it right last time.

What are you feeling and seeing so far with what, 80 days away from the election?

Well, first of all, thanks for having me on.

I remember that first interview well.

It was in Columbus, Ohio.

And I could tell you were like, all right, who is this girl?

What's she up to?

Yeah, yeah.

I didn't trust anybody.

It was obvious, but it's like awesome.

Awesome.

Yeah, but what I love about you is you actually listen to people.

You did in that interview and you are, as a reporter, you're one of the only people that still go to the coffee shops and you talk to people in the supermarket.

You talk to real people.

And that's what gave you such an edge last time when you were the only one one saying uh guys he's gonna win he's gonna win

yeah yeah you know you hit on a key point Glenn and and it's not even as much as that I you know

get out of town if you will I'm always on the road I have done that continuously through COVID but responsibly I always have a mask on I always keep a distance from some from from people all people but still able to understand what's continuously going on.

I never take highway.

I never take like interstates and turnpikes.

I stick to the back roads because that's where you can understand and listen to people.

Who cares what I think?

I'm one person.

It's listening to people in their communities and in their hometowns and in their homes is where you understand where the election is going.

And so I just came back.

Yeah, go ahead.

So you were on the back roads in Pennsylvania, and what did you find the same, and what did you find different, and what does it mean?

Well, you know, I think all of us can say

if we drive past something pretty quickly, it'll look like it did every year, right?

Like, you know, people are in their yards, people are, you know, getting food to eat.

But then when you slow down and you really look, you can see how much things have changed.

And that goes from how we eat to where we eat and how we look when

we participate in things that are outside of our homes.

We have masks on, we keep a distance, we don't eat inside, we eat outside, and we are American, so we try to adapt as much as we can.

But there's been also so much taken away from us.

And,

you know, and a lot of that is just simple joys, like hugging your grandchildren, hugging your parents.

You know, if you're someone that has to be out of the public, you do that very reluctantly because there's so much unknown.

So, one of the things, besides, you know, watching people eat, one of the things that I noticed is, and this is one of the things I pointed out in 2016, and everyone sort of laughed at me, and that was the amount of Trump signs.

And people would say, rightly so, that signs don't vote.

They don't vote, but they tell the story or part of the story about enthusiasm.

And in 2016 in Pennsylvania, it was insane.

Well, it looks remarkably different from 2016 in that there are more Trump signs.

And people don't just have one, they have

or they have a flag.

And the most important sign you see is the one that's homemade, which you see hundreds of them.

That defines a

more

a more strident enthusiasm than just going down to the local

Republican committee.

Headquarters.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And pick it up.

Now, in 2016, you saw very few

Clinton signs.

Most of the Clinton signs you saw were Clinton for jail.

This year I have Biden signs.

So I've stopped to talk to people.

My assumption, and this is why you should listen to people, my assumption was, especially in particular in some of these rural places, where I've read numerous stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post about how these voters are turning on Trump.

So in my head, I'm thinking, well, they voted for Trump and they didn't, and they're not going to this time.

But when you listen, you find out that these are people that voted for Clinton.

You know, it wasn't like nobody in

Pennsylvania voted for Clinton.

Trump only won by 40,000 votes.

But what is in, and I think this is so fascinating, what they have told me to a person is, you know, we couldn't even get Clinton to, they didn't even know this county existed in Pennsylvania.

You know,

they didn't care if signed up.

They didn't think that was important.

Well, in rural, ex-urban, and suburban areas, sometimes that's incredibly important.

When people live further apart and

in particular now, you know, they want to place in a way to show how they feel about something,

but a sign is a good way to do that.

So, that's what I have seen that has changed.

There are more Biden signs out there than there were Clintons, but I would still say that Trump signs over Biden's signs are a hundred-fold more.

Now, what does that mean?

Well,

I wanted to ask you,

just based on a couple of headlines just today, Americans Americans are growing less willing to beg for permission to make a living.

Next one, faith leaders protest Governor Newsom's order barring in-person worship.

A poll reveals half of Democrats don't think Joe Biden will serve all four years if elected president.

Who is going to pay, do you think, and who is going to be blamed for the

riots on the streets, the

not being able to go to work?

Who's going to be blamed?

Is that going to be on Donald Trump, or is that, do you think, going to be on the Democratic Party?

Well, you know,

Donald Trump

certainly has plenty of faults.

But one of them is not that he's to blame for riots and that and he's to blame for these

cities that are having these massive protests.

I have a story coming up in the Wall Street Journal about how people are fleeing fleeing to move out of big cities in America

because of these protests and these riots, but also because of COVID.

But, you know, the places where it's the most restrictive, when there's the least liberty available, are the ones that are run by Democrats, whether it's a state or a city.

And, you know, people aren't dumb.

You know, they understand

who's impacting their lives.

And

while there might be some, there might be people out there, look, they could just never vote for Donald Trump.

They just won't show up to vote for Joe Biden.

And so I think that that is the thing we don't understand.

You know, in my book, The Great Revolt, which I wrote with Brad Todd, in the back,

we were really nerdy and we did a lot.

We did polling after I went out and did the anecdotal reporting.

We wanted to make sure we understood that the reporting matched up with the data.

This is the most important data in there.

34% of self-identified Trump voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Iowa did not tell a family member, a friend, or a pollster that they were going to vote for Donald Trump.

And to be honest, 2016 seems like a Disney movie compared to what we're experiencing right now.

Oh, yeah.

Oh yeah.

I think there's a lot of people that are out there that just won't put a yard.

I wouldn't put a yard sign on my yard.

I wouldn't put a bumper sticker on my car.

I'm going to have my car vandalized for a bumper sticker.

You know, and

I hear that from people all the time.

I hear that from people all the time.

They don't want to put signs in their yard.

In particular, the closer you get to a city.

They don't want to put a sign in their yard.

They don't want to put a bumper sticker.

They're worried for a number of reasons.

Not so much as how much it impacts them, but how does this impact my family?

How does this impact my teenage kids?

How does this impact my job?

If I own a business, are people going to just cancel my business because I support Donald Trump?

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Stu has found a new podcast that's not racist at all.

It just blames all the problems on white people.

And what a surprise, it comes from the New York Times.

And it is about how white mommy and daddy broke the school system.

Yep, it's all white people's fault.

Here's the promo from the New York Times.

This is Sarah Koenig, host of the serial podcast.

I want to tell you about our new show, Nice White Parents.

It's reported by Hannah Jaffe Walt, who's made some of the best, most thought-provoking, most emotional radio stories I've ever heard.

Back in 2015, Hannah wanted to find out what would happen inside this one public school in her neighborhood during a sudden influx of white students into a school that had barely had any white students before.

And then, not satisfied that she fully understood what she was seeing, she went all the way back to the founding of the school in the 1960s and then forward again up to the present day.

And eventually, Hannah realized she could put a name to the unspoken force that kept getting in the way of making the school better.

White Parents.

I've been waiting so long to tell people about this show, and now I can finally say it.

Go listen to Nice White Parents.

Nice White Parents is made by Cereal Productions, a New York Times company.

You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

Wow, I can't wait to dive into that one.

Yeah, sounds great.

Yeah, that's going to be great.

Now, that's a surprising outcome.

Yeah, I wouldn't have seen that coming.

I was shocked.

The problem with

schools

that have lots of minorities in them are when an influx of white kids come in and they ruin it, and you can blame white parents.

Think about this narrative at the opposite, Clint.

I mean, it would be literally written by some white nationalist who would say, you know what, we had these white schools, they were great, and then all of a sudden these black people came in and ruined them.

That's the exact story they're telling, except they're just blaming white people.

I want you to today assign to a producer that take that exact script, produce it exactly the same way with, I don't know, you Sarah or somebody, somebody's a woman's voice, and just reverse it.

And we're going to play them side by side tomorrow.

And you tell me,

is this racist?

Because one, I guarantee you, will sound horrifying, even if it's produced exactly the same way.

Just say black parents over white.

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