Best of the Program | Guests: Peter Schweizer, Senator Tom Cotton & Dave Isay | 1/30/20

Hey, welcome to another great show.

This one is really jam-packed.

We have Brexit out with a bang tomorrow.

Nigel Farage was giving a speech yesterday at the EU, and it is-I mean, it's the American Revolution without any guns.

It is the speech that will be heard around the world and all the way through the European Union, and you have to listen to it all the way to the end.

It's amazing.

Also,

we have Peter Schweizer on.

Now, Peter is just a great journalist.

He's a researcher.

He's got a new book out, Why the GOP Should Call Hunter Biden as a Witness.

I asked him, you know, what questions should we ask?

What facts do we have on this?

Great interview.

Tom Cotton talks about the coronavirus

in a segment that you cannot miss.

Also, our guest, Dave Issei, we talk about the country coming together and how hard it is.

And he shares with us a story from Julio Diaz.

It is

completely inspirational.

You want to feel good?

Make sure you grab that segment all on today's podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Balenbec program.

I can't wait.

I saw this this morning and I'm like, I love,

love the British.

They have become more American than us.

They have just done to the EU what we did, except they did it without a war.

And they did it with all kinds of pressure and all kinds of doomsday stuff.

Well, Brexit happens tomorrow at I think 11 p.m.

And Nigel Farage, who has been fighting this battle since the day he got into the EU, gave one of the best speeches I've ever heard.

I want to play the whole speech.

And you got to make it to the end because

it's, I mean, you couldn't write it.

You couldn't write it.

What the EU does at the very end is

incredible.

It makes the point.

And this is the shot heard around the world.

I want you to listen to this speech.

So this is it, the final chapter, the end of the road.

A 47-year political experiment that the British, frankly, have never been very happy with.

My mother and father signed up to a common market, not to a political union, not to flags, anthems, presidents, and now you even want your own army.

For me, it's been 27 years of campaigning and over 20 years here in this Parliament.

I'm not particularly happy with the agreement we're being asked to vote on tonight, but

Boris has been remarkably bold in the last few months.

And Ms von der Leyen, he's made it clear, he's promised us there'll be no level playing field.

And on that basis, I wish him every success in the next round of negotiations.

I really do.

But the most significant point is this.

What happens at 11 p.m.

this Friday, the 31st of January 2020, marks the point of no return.

Once we've left, we are never coming back.

And the rest, frankly, is detail.

We're going, we will be gone.

And that should be the summit of my own political ambitions.

I walked in here, as I've said before.

You all thought it was terribly funny.

You stopped laughing in 2016.

But my view has changed of Europe since I joined.

In 2005, I saw the Constitution that had been drafted by Giscard and others.

I saw it rejected by the French in a referendum.

I saw it rejected by the Dutch in a referendum.

And I saw you in these institutions ignore them, bring it back as a Lisbon Treaty and boast you could ram it through without there being referendums.

Well, the Irish did have a vote and did say no and were forced to vote again.

You're very good at making people vote again, but what we've proved is the British are too big to bully, thank goodness.

I became an outright opponent of the entire European project.

I want Brexit to start a debate across the rest of Europe.

What do we want from Europe?

If we want trade, friendship, cooperation, reciprocity, we don't need a European Commission, we don't need a European Court, we don't need these institutions and all of this power.

And I can promise you, both in UKIP and indeed in the Brexit Party, we love Europe.

We just hate the European Union.

It's as simple as that.

So

I'm hoping this begins the end of this project.

It's a bad project.

It isn't just undemocratic, it's anti-democratic, and it puts in that front row, it gives people power without accountability, people who cannot be held to account by the electorate.

And that is an unacceptable structure.

Indeed, there's an historic battle going on now across the West in Europe, America and elsewhere.

It is globalism against populism.

And you may loathe populism, but I I tell you a funny thing, it's becoming very popular.

And it has great benefits.

No more financial contributions, no more European Court of Justice, no more common fisheries policy, no more being talked down to, no more being bullied, no more gee Verhofstadt.

I mean,

I mean, what's not to like?

I know you're going to miss us.

I know you want to ban our national flags, but we're going to wave you goodbye

and we'll look forward in the future to working with you as sovereign.

They cut his mic.

Ellison.

If you disobey the rules, you get cut off.

Could we please remove the flags?

Mr.

Farage,

could we remove the flags, please?

That session's all over.

Finish.

He's gone.

Could I please ask the quiet.

please sit down, resume your seats, put your flags away, you're leaving, and take them with you if you are leaving now.

Is that not crazy?

Can I just say

if I may say, just in a slight reference, the word hate was used in the last contribution.

And I really think, given what we listened to prior to this, that we should not hate anyone or any nation or any people.

Oh, isn't that great?

Except the loathing in your voice.

And he said, you know,

he hates the European Union, the body, the government.

He doesn't hate the countries.

He's standing up for the countries.

And for him to say, we're sovereign again, and we wave you goodbye with the flags, And for that union to then say, their response is,

remove the flags.

We're shutting you down.

You don't have a voice until you remove that flag.

Oh, my gosh, they made every point for him.

The microcosm of the entire arrangement.

Yeah, and it's a microcosm.

Everything he said, that's...

That is the American founding.

That is the American revolution breaking away from the corrupt mothership.

They did it without a shot, but I'm telling you, that speech is the shot that will be heard all around the world.

That speech will be the shot that will be heard all over Europe, and people will be emboldened to leave.

It is I saw this great political cartoon this morning that had

the EU, that woman, standing behind a podium, and she was on a like a wood plank over a cliff, and she had the EU podium and the EU flag behind her, and she was standing there lecturing, and you saw all the EU members on the opposite end of the plank, but they were on the cliff.

They were on the ground.

She was the one teetering on the cliff, and it showed Britain walking off that board and onto ground.

What it was saying was,

you start losing, and that thing just teeters off the cliff.

And

they're going to start seeing members doing this, and it's going to be a power grab.

I mean, look at what they've said was going to happen if the EU

is lost in Great Britain.

Do you hear any panic in the markets at all about this?

No.

Nothing.

Nothing.

No, I mean, we'll see, obviously.

But, I mean, they were all promising it.

They said it was going to be cataclysmic immediately.

And this is what happens with a lot of these big issues.

They become these big political back and forth where everything is going to be the end of the world.

And then the thing comes and it happens, and it's not the end of the world.

But the people who warned you last time never pay the price for that.

They never lose credibility.

You know, every global warming deadline that we pass without the thing that they said was going to happen.

They never lose credibility.

The next time they predict doom, it's always just as credible and just as urgent as last time.

Let me give you this: it's not just global warming.

Look at how, like Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, all of these people that told us they were going to fix health care with Obamacare.

This was the fix.

And we told you at the time, this will make things worse.

It will make things worse.

And that's what they want because they will have one president in between, and then they will all start campaigning saying, this healthcare system has got to go.

It's the worst.

We've got to fix it.

They said they fixed fixed it last time.

They had all the power to fix it.

They said they fixed it.

Now they're saying it's the worst ever.

And they have to fix it again.

Why don't these people ever lose credibility?

When do people wake up and say, wait a minute, you're the people who said fix it by doing this.

We did this.

And now, what?

You're saying this is the worst healthcare system ever?

And now we have to fix it again?

Yeah, it used to take a long time.

Now we're the next president, the next term.

These things were happening.

They were all saying it was wonderful and had to be protected at any cost.

And now they're all saying it's terrible, talking about Obamacare.

One term later, now they need a whole new plan.

And half the country's like, yes, they should get another chance at that because they only destroyed it last time.

That's insane.

It is insane.

It's insane.

And that's what people are waking up to now.

They're seeing that we don't need you.

Just like Brexit and the European Union, England will become stronger.

England will show it can stand on its own two feet.

And that's what the American people need to do again.

They need to show the federal government, every state, every community, every household, we can stand on our own.

We're not, I don't care what you say about the flag.

I don't care what you say about men can have babies.

No.

That's not why our forefathers founded this country.

That's not the Constitution that we signed up for.

No is the answer.

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Thanks.

I'm kind of excited.

Tulsi Gabbard, I think, is joining us on Monday, on Monday show while I'm in Washington.

And I'm...

I'm anxious to talk to her about a couple of things.

You know that she has 8%.

Look this up.

Okay.

new um in uh

in new hampshire i think she's running around eight percent in at least one poll

she's had a couple of polls up there that are really good

yeah and she's not allowed on the debate stage they're not gonna let her debate the democratic party are just like no no

eight percent no that's not enough you got yeah they have all sorts of rules although the last one she had a chance to make and she said no i'm not going

like i'm not going to show up even if i do make it

So that's an, I mean, obviously, like, the party hates her.

Hates her.

This goes back to 2016 where she became a big proponent of Bernie instead of Hillary, which you're not supposed to do.

So now Hillary hates, of course, Bernie and Tulsi.

Right.

You know, Tulsi has been talked about as potentially a cabinet-level person, a couple of these administrations as well.

But she's not loved by the party at the moment.

And she keeps going on, you know, she keeps talking to people like you.

That's not going to help her.

That doesn't help anybody get liked.

Talking to you, just hold it just as anyone can get it.

Wait a minute.

So hopefully she'll be on because I want to talk to her about that.

And I also want to talk to her, you know, Clinton has now refused

to be served twice in the lawsuit.

She's having the Secret Service do her dirty work, but the servers will come to serve her with a summons for, you know, for this lawsuit, litigation.

And every time the Secret Service steps in the way, and they're like, I'm sorry, I can't accept this, and she's not available right now.

Really?

Wow, that's you feel like the role of the Secret Service, right?

No, it really doesn't.

They hate doing it for her.

Oh, I'm sure.

I'm sure.

They probably hate doing anything for her.

I think so.

I think so.

I mean, can you imagine having to deal with that every day?

You know, she is so

privileged, you know, so

sure she should have more than she has, including the White House, right?

I mean, she's obviously convinced it was stolen from her twice.

So can you imagine how entitled a person like that is?

So can I switch the subject still on the Democratic Party and the next president?

But I, you know, I...

I can make up my mind on Joe Biden.

Does he want the job or not want the job?

It's hard to tell.

Right?

Because yesterday we were talking about this and he had come out and said, and do we happen to have the audio?

I know we played it yesterday on the news and why it matters, but do we have the audio of him where he's like, look, I'm old.

I'm old.

We had this video yesterday and he's talking to, you know, constituents in Iowa.

And it's one thing to make a joke about, hey, you know, I got to get the right vice president because I'm old.

But then

people laugh and he's like no no no i'm serious when you hear this you're like i think he's really trying to say something here you know i don't know what it is but i think he's trying to say something listen to this listen to this audio i can think of at least

eight women at least four or five people of color no white women i think are totally qualified to be vice president of the United States, but for me, it has to be demonstrated that whoever I pick

is two things.

One, it's capable of needing to be impressed because I'm an old guy.

Laughing.

No, no, I'm serious.

No, no, no.

Thank God.

I'm in great health.

I work out.

No, I'm serious.

No, no, don't laugh.

I mean,

he just keeps trying to convince them not to laugh at his funny moment.

It gets to the point to where you're like, he's just serious.

Look, no, it's serious.

In fact, I got to show you this CAT scan I just had.

Okay, I mean, let me hold it up to the light here.

If you look, that shadow, very disturbing.

Very disturbing.

We don't know what it is right now.

No, no, no.

Don't laugh.

No, don't laugh.

It could be a tumor.

It could be cancer.

It could be tuberculosis.

We don't know.

So I really, no, no, no, don't laugh.

I need a vice president that could replace me at the drop of a hat.

He's like, what are you doing, man?

What are you doing?

Well,

yesterday, he apparently really wanted the job because he said he's thinking about making Michelle Obama his vice president and appointing Barack Obama to the Supreme Court.

So today you want the job, Joe.

Is that what's happening?

You're putting together some literal dream team that you think everybody will race to you under?

I mean,

which is it?

Tuberculosis or tuberculosis for the Constitution?

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

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Peter Schweitzer is, or Schweizer, you always add a T to his name.

Peter Schweizer is the author of Profiles in Corruption.

He also wrote another book about corruption called Secret Empires.

And we wanted to talk to him

about witnesses in this trial.

Peter, who should be called as a witness for the defense of Donald Trump?

Well, I think if you're interested in corruption, you need to call Hunter Biden.

You need to call his business partner, Devin Archer, and I think you need to call Joe Biden because the nexus of the question here is, was Donald Trump's request of the Ukrainian leader Zelensky legitimate?

And I think it was.

Democrats want to poo-poo it.

They want to pretend nothing happened.

But if the request is real and genuine, and I think the evidence indicates that it is,

he was actually doing his responsibility, which was looking after, you know, billions of dollars in taxpayer money that disappeared, disappeared by people

who were paying the son of the vice president of the United States.

So, Peter,

how reliable of a

do you watch the show?

What is it?

It's not billions.

What is the show Stew with that's like basically the succession?

Have you seen

Succession?

I have not.

I have not, Glenn.

Okay, so it's an HBO show, and it's basically the Murdoch family.

And, you know, it's fictionalized.

And the Murdochs are,

what's the name of them in the

Roy.

Yeah, the Roy family.

The Roy family, totally corrupt.

You know, they'll have people off, et cetera, et cetera.

The son is just like Hunter Biden.

He is a drug addict.

He has all kinds of issues.

He's always in

trouble.

But

when he pulls his stuff together, he can put on a good show and become very believable and very credible.

How sure are you that Hunter Biden is a guy that would crack and just wouldn't put on a sympathetic sort of performance and be able to shift everything the other way?

Well, look, I mean, you don't know, but what we know this is what we have on paper.

And what we have on paper is very, very simple.

And I think the questions you need to ask Hunter Biden are, what exactly were you being paid for?

Why was it that you were hired by the Ukrainians literally within three weeks of your father being appointed point person

for Ukraine policy?

We have your bank statement here.

We have it.

We got it from a court trial involving Hunter Biden's business partner, Devin Archer, who was charged with fraud in New York.

We had a researcher actually attend that court case, talk to the prosecutors, got access to a 400-page J.P.

Morgan financial document upon which it shows Hunter Biden taking out large amounts of cash out of this account.

Flowing into that account, Glenn, you not only have $83,333 a month, which works out to $1 million a year, you also have money from Kazakh oligarchs.

You have money from anonymous Swiss bank accounts.

There's $1.2 million from an anonymous Swiss bank account.

Where's that money coming from?

Who's paying you?

Why are they paying you?

You know, he can certainly try to create a sympathetic feel.

But at the end of the day, you have to answer those questions.

Those are deals that he got while his father was vice president, not before and not since.

And I think if you walk the American people through that, it becomes very, very obvious about what's going on.

So tell me about the other oligarch, the money that is showing up, this mysterious money.

Where is this oligarch?

Who is he?

Any idea on the Swiss bank account?

What does that tie to?

Yeah, so

there's oligarchs galore when it relates to Hunter Biden.

In Ukraine, you have two of them.

Zlachevsky, who is widely known to be connected with Burizma,

and he's a former oil and gas minister in Ukraine who literally deeded himself and his company, Burizma, all these plots that made the company so wealthy.

And highly corrupt.

He's from the old Yanukovych government, the pro-Russian government.

The other oligarch involved in Burizma, and a lot of Ukrainian anti-fraud groups believe that he is intimately involved in this as well, is a oligarch named Kolomoyski.

Kolomoyski, here's the interesting part, the wrinkle.

Put this in context, Glenn, of the phone conversation that Donald Trump had with Zelensky.

Kolomoyski was the chief financial backer of Zelensky.

Now, Zelensky claims that he is an anti-corruption candidate, and

some of the witnesses in the House trial from the State Department and the embassy said, Yeah, you know, we think this guy's going to be a good anti-corruption guy.

The problem is, his chief financial backer, Kolomoyski, is neck deep in corruption.

He was the head of Prevot Bank, the largest bank in Ukraine, through which more than a billion dollars, that's with a B, more than a billion dollars in USAID just literally disappeared.

I mean, it melted through the ground of the bank and disappeared.

So, those are the individuals that are working with Hunter Biden and Burisma in Ukraine.

Then you go to Kazakhstan.

You've got a Kazakh oligarch who sends $145,000, puts it into this account.

Again, it's all there on paper.

And then

that's money that

Hunter Biden is is taking out.

This guy is named Rakashev, and he is the son of the, sorry, the son-in-law of the former defense minister of Kazakhstan, a highly corrupt individual involved in all sorts of crony behavior in Kazakhstan elsewhere.

And we actually have a picture, Glenn, which I'm glad to share with you, a picture of Hunter Biden with

Rakashev, this oligarch, also in the picture, Vice President Joe Biden.

Clear evidence that these oligarchs were getting access to the Vice President of the United States and paying his son.

Okay, so wait a minute.

He is the defense minister.

The son-in-law.

The son-in-law of the defense minister, yes.

The son-in-law of the defense minister.

Okay.

Yes.

And how is he making his money?

Well, he is, as in Kazakhstan, a lot of it has to do with natural resources.

It has to do with real estate.

But Kazakhstan, again, when you look at groups like Transparency International, Ukraine and Kazakhstan are right down there at the bottom for corruption with countries like Nigeria.

And he's been implicated in all kinds of issues related to human rights and abuse of power.

The point is, Glenn, that I made over and over again is that, you know, Hunter Biden's not doing deals in the United Kingdom.

He's not flying to Japan and saying, oh, I want to work with a high-tech startup.

He's working with oligarchs that are connected politically in these countries, these highly corrupt countries, and he's getting paid ostensibly for things that he has absolutely zero expertise in.

So that's not illegal.

Correct.

It's not illegal.

It is

unethical, and the vice president had been warned about this by the State Department,

that it is unethical on what he is doing.

In my opinion, it should be illegal, but it's not.

So, when you get Hunter Biden up on the stand and you say, so you are taking money from these people and you don't really have any, you know, you don't have any knowledge of, you can't even speak the language.

What is it you're doing for a million dollars a year?

Why can't he just say,

well, because they wanted to show that this company showed that they were

had American

power behind them, American elites behind them, and I'm sure they did just hire me because of my name, but I didn't do anything with my dad.

Well, and that's why you want to have Devin Archer, his business partner, and also Vice President Joe Biden testify as well.

And here's the key thing: I mean, we can say completely, based on the facts and the evidence at hand, that Joe Biden has lied about his knowledge of what his son was doing.

He has made a blanket statement that's been often repeated, that he has had no conversations with his sons or any family members on their commercial business activities.

And that's flat out a lie.

You know, Hunter Biden himself says he talked to his father about it.

Two days before it was announced that Hunter Biden was joining the board of Burisma, we know based on White House visitors logs that his business partner, Devin Archer, was meeting with the vice president in the White House.

It's the only meeting he had the entire time, according to White House visitors records.

So, this notion that

he didn't know anything about it, he had no involvement, is a flat-out lie.

So, I think you begin with that premise.

Why are you lying, or why are you not being honest about the fact that you were aware of what your son was doing?

But this is why you also need to get into, I think, getting access to documents like transcripts of phone calls.

I mean, we have the Trump-Zelensky transcript of their phone call.

We should have access to phone call conversations of Joe Biden's conversations with Ukrainian officials.

Because look, this is all kind of

a stew.

Remember, Joe Biden gets appointed in February, sorry, in March of 2014 to be point person on Ukraine.

Within three weeks, within three weeks, his son is suddenly on the Ukrainian payroll.

Barisma is looking to participate in USAID and other aid programs, energy infrastructure projects with the United States.

The officials involved with Burisma have other business interests that are involved.

And Joe Biden is

the one vote that matters in determining where aid dollars are going to flow.

And that's what I think you have to focus on.

The challenge is, is right now, we have access to Donald Trump's telephone call with Zelensky and what they talked talked about.

We don't have access to emails, telephone conversations, any correspondence that Joe Biden had either with his son or with Ukrainian officials.

And I think that is important and essential if we're going to have a balanced discussion about this issue.

But we do know that we have money

and we have transcripts

and

actual letters from members of the State Department

to

the the hierarchy of

the Anti-Corruption Bureau, if you will, saying there's no reason to look into Hunter Biden.

There's no reason to look into this

501c3 or this

NGO.

We know there's missing money.

We're perfectly comfortable where that money, what happened to that money.

Yeah,

it is so bizarre to me as to why there is a lack of curiosity by some people as to where all this money has gone.

And it's a common thing you get in the developing world, whether it's Ukraine or other developing world countries.

We get very comfortable in dealing with them and accepting the fact that money is disappearing.

And part of the reason, you know, may be that, like, look, this person's corrupt, but they're at least our ally.

But you have an added layer when you've got family members on the payroll payroll of the American official, in this case, Joe Biden, who is supposed to be looking into that.

And I think anywhere outside of Washington, D.C., people look at this and say, this does not pass the smell test.

And it is entirely legitimate in Donald Trump's phone call with Zelensky to say, look, I'm just asking you to cooperate with my attorney general and share with us information you have.

He's not asking him to make up information, he's asking him to share information.

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

So I'm confused by this coronavirus because

I'm not panicked.

I don't feel like, you know, this is it.

But this has all of the earmarks of this is it.

This has everything everything that they've ever said.

You know, you know, one of these days we're going to have a pandemic.

It's going to sweep.

It'll come from an animal.

It'll be something that'll jump over to humans.

It'll be like the flu.

We'll have no vaccine for it.

We've never seen it before.

And it'll infect people quickly.

And it'll have a high death rate.

Oh, yeah.

Well, that seems to be, I don't know, this.

And yet everybody's like, no, nothing to worry about.

You know, and China's just, you know, they just cordoned off 70 million people.

people so no big deal wait they did what

so what is it that's really happening and what state what what uh uh

what steps should we be taking

and what should we be looking for as a relief or the next sign that maybe this might be a bad uh flu senator tom cotton is with us senator how are you sir hey glenn good to be on with you this morning Thank you.

Good.

Hey,

how

you still having the

Jones in a little bit if I say, I'm going to take your cell phone away?

You get a little shaky?

Well, Glenn, we've been in the impeachment trial now for a little over a week, and I can tell you that that is obsessing people in Washington.

Yeah.

But at home in Arkansas and really anywhere outside of Washington and around the world, the biggest and the most important news story today

and for many, many days to come, will be the coronavirus.

China is facing a catastrophe on the scale of Chernobyl

when communist Russia covered up the nuclear meltdown at the plant Chernobyl.

But in some ways, it's worse because communist China covered up a viral outbreak that can become a global pandemic.

Okay, so we have localized effects the way Chernobyl did.

So, Tom, everybody is saying, all everybody.

I mean, I talked to somebody from the WHO yesterday, and they're like, no, you know, China's really been transparent.

I mean, we can't know for sure, but they've been pretty transparent.

That seems like a new thing for

the communist Chinese.

Glenn, China is lying, and they have been lying from the very beginning.

And WHO officials or any other so-called expert that says China has been transparent and open is simply grading them on a curve.

compared to what they did with SARS in 2003 and handling them kid gloves, hoping that they can maintain access to Wuhan and working with China.

But there is no doubt, Gwen, that China is lying.

Let me just give you a short timeline.

We now know the earliest case of the coronavirus happened on December 1, a full month before China bested up to the WHO.

It may have been earlier than that.

We also know that even once they told the WHO on December 31st, they continued to lie to their own citizens.

They said until just last week, week it was contained within the city of Wuhan, a central Chinese city of 11 million people.

Today, it is in every single province in China.

We also know by their actions, Glenn, you don't even have to look at their history.

Just look at the actions they have taken.

They now have quarantined 60 million of their own people, more than the combined population of our entire West Coast.

They have canceled school indefinitely.

So school children are not going to school anywhere in China for the foreseeable future.

And Hong Kong, which is under Beijing's thumb, has instituted a near-total travel ban.

Those are not the actions of a confident government that has control over this growing catastrophe.

So, Tom,

what are we doing?

Why is the United States, why is the British Airways the only one that has said, you know what, we're not flying in or out?

What are we doing as a nation?

So, Glenn, it is much more than British Airways, which announced yesterday, as did Lufthansa, National Carrier of Germany.

Just overnight, Glenn, Russia closed its entire border with China, the sixth-longest border in the world, more than one-third larger than the U.S.-Mexico border.

Yeah, but that's only because the Russians hate people who are different than them.

Well, Glenn,

El Al announced that they would stop all travel between Israel and China.

Air France announced that they would stop flights between China and the United States.

So what are we doing?

This is why I have been urging senior administration officials with whom I've consulted repeatedly over the last week, we need to shut down all commercial travel immediately between the United States and China.

So, Tom, hang on just a second.

I know,

I know because we're having you on, I know what you were going to say on that.

You've already said it.

You've been urging.

But I also know that Donald Trump is going to get exactly the same treatment that you are.

Right now, people are that this is the most irresponsible thing I've ever heard.

You're only doing that because, well, you don't like people who are from China.

You don't like immigrants.

Oh, my gosh.

So when you propose this, you know this is going to be turned into a political nightmare.

How do you break through all of that crap to get us to move quickly?

Glenn,

the left or politically correct so-called experts can hurl every epithet they want at me or at Donald Trump.

I am trying to protect American lives, and we need an immediate stop to commercial travel.

Now, there are some exceptions, of course, to that.

For instance, we should allow any American and their immediate family members in China the option to evacuate from China

back to U.S.

territory under appropriate and elevated monitoring.

That's exactly what happened yesterday in California.

We should continue to allow that.

We should also allow medical experts from the CDC or HHS or our other laboratories to go into China as part of the WHO delegation to try to get to the bottom of what happened in Wuhan so hopefully we can find a vaccine.

And we can allow continued trade.

I understand that many people are worried about the breakdown of global supply chains.

Well, that's fine.

We can have shipping containers coming into the Long Beach port.

We can have FedEx flights coming into Memphis.

But when those crews land, they don't get to go into the hotel and the nightclub.

They stay in a quarantine position.

That should mitigate the economic impact to our country.

But frankly, Glenn, supply chains may start to break down soon anyway because Chinese workers are not going to be able to go to their factories as this contagion continues to grow throughout China.

Right now, what we have to focus on is the immediate safety of the American people.

And given the number of unknowns about this virus, the time is now to act.

Frankly, it's past time to act.

So, Tom,

I just read a story from an American who is stuck in Wuhan.

He was teaching at the university there.

He said it is like stepping into a Twilight Zone episode.

11 million people in this usually bustling 3,500-year-old city is silent.

He said, there is no one anywhere.

No one's working.

No one's going anywhere.

No one's on campus.

People are afraid.

They don't know what's going to happen next.

People are getting a sore throat, and they think, is this the beginning of the end?

It's a battle constantly inside of your own head.

We know that I saw a report earlier this week that the Chinese have shut down their steel industry.

There's two things that are going on right now.

People in China can't go to work.

If you can't make steel, we can't make cars.

If you can't make parts for cars, we can't fix cars.

If you can't make Apple products, Apple doesn't have a supply chain.

Costco, all of these things

are really important to all of us.

Just if China goes down and struggles for six months, this is going to make a major impact economically.

And I don't mean to sound callous.

This is below all of the human toll.

But if it spreads here,

we are looking at

just in the fear of staying home or being quarantined and having to stay, you know, quarantine, we're looking at devastating effects.

Are we not?

Unfortunately, that could be the case, Glenn, especially in China.

As I said,

one of the most common reasons

not to close commercial travel between two nations is the economic impact.

We can mitigate that impact by allowing a central trade to continue to flow because there's no evidence that the coronavirus can sustain itself on, say, a shipping container or a

shipping package on an airplane.

However, even if we take those steps, Glenn, the economic impact may be already too severe to mitigate in the first place.

Because if those factories are shut down in China, because China has been so incompetent and deceitful in addressing this outbreak, it doesn't matter to begin with.

That's why we should take the actions now to protect the health health of our people.

And Glenn, I just want to say, because I know you've got a lot of listeners around the world to include the 75,000 to 110,000 Americans who are in China today.

If you are in China, especially if you are in Wuhan, contact

our consulate.

Tell them what your position is and see if they can help you get out of the country.

In fact, there's a new email address I just saw on the news wire, coronavirusemergencyusc at state.gov.

If you are in China and you are an American citizen with a passport and you want help getting out, coronavirus emergency USC at state.gov.

If you're an American who's thinking about traveling to China, do not go.

Do not go to China.

What about anywhere else in the world?

We are okay so far?

I mean,

I'm afraid, Glenn, that in the days ahead, we will see confirmed cases

pretty much all around the world.

You know, know, we already have seen confirmed cases in most of China's neighboring nations.

And I think that's only going to continue, again, because China lied to its own people and lied to the world for so long.

If they had simply fessed up at the beginning and said, this is a novel virus, we need help containing it, then we might have stopped this outbreak for the benefit of the Chinese people as well as our people.

Communism.

Communism.

This is why I say

communist Russia had a catastrophe with Chernobyl because of its own incompetence and deceitfulness.

Communist China now has a Chernobyl-level catastrophe on its hands, although it's worse than Chernobyl because a nuclear meltdown is localized, whereas a pandemic spreads around the world.

Are you talking to

scientists, epidemiologists,

getting counsel from them on this that's different than what we're necessarily hearing in the press, which isn't really a lot.

I have, Glenn.

I can't say there's all that much difference, in part because we're still at the beginning stages of understanding the virus.

We could have been at this stage eight weeks ago, but here's some of the things we do know, Glenn.

We do know that it could have a very long incubation period, as long as 14 days, which was much longer than SARS.

We do know that individuals who are asymptomatic could be contagious, unlike SARS.

That combination is deadly because you can screen as many people you want on an airplane and in many ways as you want.

But if they are asymptomatic and they don't have a fever and they don't have a cough and they're not ingested, but they are contagious, you have no idea.

The only way to stop it is to stop them from coming in the first place.

Okay, Senator, I've got to go here and let you go back to work, but real quick, is there anything people can do?

Practice good hygiene like you always do.

No, no, no, I mean to help you to help you get the air travel to stop.

Email, call your senator and congressman, ask them to advocate with the administration that we need to take a temporary targeted pause in all commercial travel between the United States and China.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Senator Tom Cobbin, you bet.

All right.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Like listening to this podcast?

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Dave Issay is a good friend of the program.

I would hope, Dave, I could call you a friend of mine.

We've gotten to know each other over the last couple of years.

He is the founder and president of StoryCorps, which is this great,

a great thing that really only liberals know about because it's on NPR and it's available for everybody.

And we've been asking Dave to come and share some of these stories, and he's doing such a great service to the country on trying to bring people together.

And if you don't mind me asking, before we get into the story, you're doing something, I think it's in Birmingham, that I've been trying to go to.

It's happening next week.

And can you explain what that is, Dave?

Sure.

Hi, Glenn.

It's great to be on again.

And yeah, you've been a great friend to StoryCorps and to One Small Step.

So

StoryCorps is this massive project where people interview their grandparents or their parents, and all the interviews go to the Library of Congress.

We've done 600,000 participants across America, really just celebrating the wisdom of humanity.

And I came to you a couple of years ago when we came up with this crazy idea to kind of change StoryCorps a little bit for the times and put strangers together across the political divides into Storycore booths just to look each other in the face, not to talk about politics, just to remember that that person is a human being because of this kind of culture of contempt that we live in.

And you've been an incredible supporter and friend as we've tested this thing because our Hippocratic oath, you know, is that we're not going to do any harm to anybody who comes to Storycore.

We're a nonprofit public service.

We're here to help people.

We're here to help the country.

And in fact, what happens in the booth is pretty remarkable.

As you know, it's hard to hate up close.

So

we have an event

next Friday night, February 7th, in Birmingham.

And I know that Birmingham is a strong town for

your show, for Len Beck fans.

It's at the Alice Stevens Center.

And

it's going to be

a night of just everyday people coming together and

a night of hope and reconciliation and starting to chart a path forward for the country where it's liberals and conservatives together, not to talk about politics, but just to remember our shared humanity.

I will tell you, Dave, I'm still trying to get there.

I know my office just keeps saying, but I'm still trying to get there because I so believe in what you're doing.

You know, there's a lot of people that on both sides that say, you know, I want to bring people, but they don't.

They really don't.

They still want their agenda.

And the one thing I've learned about you, Dave, that

impresses me from the first day until today, I have never seen you do anything that would violate the spirit of what you've talked about with me privately, and that is, Glenn, we really don't care.

I mean,

it doesn't matter our political backgrounds.

We have got to come back together.

And I think there's a lot of people that feel that way.

I think there are two.

And I mean, when we first met, and it was just a couple of years ago, things weren't better than they are now, which is hard to imagine.

And I think that we're looking at an extinction-level threat to our country.

And I know you feel that way as well, if we can't begin to see the humanity in people we disagree with.

I mean, no one has ever changed someone's mind by calling them a moron or an idiot or what, or a Nazi or whatever it is.

We just drive ourselves further into our corners.

And that's not what this country is.

And I think, I mean, it's just time to say enough.

It's enough.

You know, and so we're offering

Because you were one of the first partners on this project, we're offering,

it's going to be an amazing night.

We're going to have people actually from some of the stories that we're playing today

on the show.

But the first 50 Glenn Beck listeners who go, who write to One Small Step at StoryCorps, which is S-T-O-R-Y-C-O-R-P-S.org, will get complimentary tickets to the event.

Again, it's at the Alice Stevens Center.

Jimmy Hall and the Southern Cultural Revival will be playing.

It's going to be, it's just going to be

a missionary work kind of night.

It's going to be an amazing night.

And

there's no politics involved, right?

That's right.

Okay.

And

if you want to make a difference and you're not the kind of person that's like, I'm going to go to this and I'm going to wear my Trump hat,

please don't do that.

And the left is being told the same thing.

And it's not the left.

It's just Americans, both left and right, you know, Democrat, Republican, independent, independent.

Everybody is trying to come together.

This is a room full of people, and it's a, you know, kind of, as Dave says, one small step,

one night where everybody's just going to celebrate

what we really are supposed to be and find roads to each other.

And Birmingham is one of the first places to do it.

I'm trying to be there.

I can't make any promises, but I really want to be there.

And I would love for you to join.

If you are anywhere in that area, please just write to onesmall step at storycore

uh dot com or is it dot org org

okay and again this is there this is a charged event but uh glenbeck listeners uh the first 50 can come in complimentary you know as you're talking it was reminding me of um the story about about lincoln which i don't think is all that well known but in the civil war um lincoln was giving a speech and he started talking about southerners as fellow human beings who are dead wrong uh and somebody in the audience a woman in the audience said, you know,

how can you just call them human beings?

They're animals.

They have to be destroyed.

And Lincoln said, don't I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends, right?

So,

I mean,

every bit of knowledge, everything we know about how humans

have evolved and interacted with each other speak to the danger of seeing people as less than human, which is what we're doing.

I mean, when we start using, you know, terms, when we start thinking of our fellow Americans as somehow less than human,

you know what happened in Rwanda.

You know what happened in Nazi Germany.

You know what happened in slavery.

We cannot do this.

So it's time, and I'm very grateful to you for being at the forefront of this.

So we have only about two minutes.

I don't even know if we have time.

Can we play the Julio Diaz

segment?

How long is that, Sarah?

Do we have time?

Okay, so we have time.

It's a couple of minutes.

Listen to this.

This is Storycore.

So I get off the train.

you know i'm walking towards the stairs and this young teenager uh pulls out a knife he wants my money so i just gave him my wallet and told him here you go he starts to leave and as he's walking away i'm like hey wait a minute you forgot something if you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night you might as well take my coat to keep you warm so you know he's looking at me like what's going on here you know and he asked me well why are you doing this and i'm like well i don't know man if you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars then i guess you must really need the money I mean all I wanted to do was go get dinner and if you really want to join me hey you're more than welcome but I'm like look you can follow me if you want you know I just felt maybe he really needs help

so you know we go into the diner where I normally we sit down in the booth and the manager comes by the dishwashers come by the waiters come by to say hi you know so the kid was like man but you know everybody here do you own this place i'm like no i just eat here a lot he's like but you're even nice to the dishwasher.

I'm like, well, haven't you been taught you should be nice to everybody?

So he's like, yeah, but I didn't think people actually behave that way.

So I just asked him in the end, I'm like, you know, what is it that you want out of life?

He just had almost a sad face.

Either he couldn't answer me or he didn't want to.

The bill came and I look at him and I'm like, look,

I guess you're going to have to pay for this bill because you have my money and I can't pay for this.

So if you give me my wallet back, I'll gladly treat you.

He didn't even think about it.

He's like, yeah, okay, here you go.

So I got my wallet back.

And I gave him $20 for it.

I figure

maybe it'll help him.

I don't know.

And when I gave him the $20,

I asked him to give me something in return, which was his knife.

And he gave it to me.

You know, it's funny because when I told my mom about what happened, you know, no mom wants to hear this, but with her, she was like, well, you know, you're the type of kid that always, someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.

I figure, you know, you treat people right.

You can only hope that they treat you right.

It's as simple as it gets in this complicated world.

What

a great story.

What a great story.

I mean,

it's true.

Yeah.

It's true.

This guy's a social worker of the Bronx.

This is who we are.

This is America.

It is.

And it goes back to our basic principles.

I don't care if you learned it from, you know, Gandhi or Jesus or whoever, it doesn't matter.

I mean, him actually get that's what Jesus said: somebody wants this, give them your coat, give them your give them your shirt, and that's what happens when we behave the way we're supposed to behave.

Thank you so much, Dave.

Thanks, Glenn.

Take care.

Talk to you soon.

You bet, the Blaze Radio Network

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