Best of the Program | Guests: Cam Edwards, Bill O'Reilly & John Solomon | 1/17/20

Hello, America, Mark.

It's Friday, and we start our first Friday story about something that's happening Monday in Virginia, the upcoming Virginia gun rights rally.

It's really much more than that.

I talked to Cam Edwards about it, also Bill O'Reilly on the show.

His look at the news of the week.

John Solomon was here to give us an update on the Ukraine scandal.

And a really cool podcast happening tomorrow.

We played a couple of clips from it.

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What were you thinking when this happened?

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Here's today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the blend back program.

All right, we have Cam Edwards on.

He's the host of Bearing Arms, Cam and Company, and also the co-host of 40 Acres and a Fool that you can find on Blaze TV.

Cam,

Virginia, I think,

is a

I don't know a proving ground of something and both the left and the right have something to prove.

The right

is looking for their constitutional rights to be protected by the government and they are being

disenfranchised.

And everybody I've talked to in Virginia says the same thing.

It's our fault.

The Republicans didn't get out the vote, and the Republicans screwed things up.

And so this is our fault.

However, there's a power grab going in, and they've

done three things.

The Electoral College, they're basically abolishing it

once the Democrats got power.

Then they've changed the rules on impeachment for the governor.

It used to be 10% of the population needed to

sign a petition, and then they would go forward with an impeachment.

But now, strangely, for some unknown reason, they moved that number up to 25% of the population, and they're going after guns in every way they can.

This is shaking

the constitutionalists in Virginia.

Am I missing anything on this?

No, I think you've hit it, Glenn.

I mean, I think that one of the reasons why you're seeing this incredible outpouring on the part of gun owners in Virginia is because, you know, when Republicans were in charge of the state, I've heard a lot of people say, you know, we never did anything like this.

And so there are a lot of Virginians who are, I think they were perplexed.

Now they're angry at how

the Democrats want to fundamentally remake this state based on, you know, ultimately a fairly narrow victory in the November elections.

A swing of 10,000 votes across the entire state in some of these legislative races would have completely changed the outcome of this election.

But Democrats are acting as if they have this incredible

majority behind them, and they are trying to turn Virginia into East California or South New York.

And Virginia gun owners are speaking up and standing up in opposition.

So, Cam, is it just gun owners, or is it

people there that are seeing this government in Virginia have a true power grab, and they're looking at their constitutional rights of the Second Amendment as, you know, according to the Declaration of Independence, government is established by man to protect those rights, and when it starts to, you know, be the main problem with those rights, the people have a right and a responsibility to alter or abolish it.

And the only way you abolish it or alter alter it, there's two ways, election,

and God forbid, the last way to do it is with your Second Amendment right.

So what is

is this is this just about

the gun or is this about a power grab?

I think it very much started out being about guns.

And the Second Amendment issue and the gun control agenda from Ralph Northam has sucked up a lot of the oxygen in the room.

But now that the legislative session has started, you're right.

There are more people who are waking up to some of the other really, truly awful bills that are being proposed here in Virginia.

And they do see this, I think, as a broader power grab.

So I think that the spark

were those Virginia gun owners, the Second Amendment Sanctuary Committees that you and I have talked about in the past.

But now it is, I think, becoming a broader opposition to the entire agenda of the Democrats that are now in control in Virginia.

So I had a guest on yesterday that said to me that I think he said 90 out of 95 counties or 90 out of 95 cities, something along that,

have gone

against and said we're going to be a sanctuary city.

Is that number accurate?

I mean, how big is this movement?

Yeah, it is accurate.

I believe it's 91 out of the 95 counties in Virginia.

And then we we have over 40 cities and towns that have also passed these resolutions.

I think, you know, across the entire state, I think we're up to 136 communities, the vast majority of which are counties, but also includes some of the state's biggest cities, Glenn.

Chesapeake, Virginia, Virginia Beach, they've both passed pro-Second Amendment resolutions.

So this isn't even just a rural versus urban thing.

This is, you know,

the vast majority of the land area.

And I believe now we're up to like, you know, 60% of the population of Virginia now lives in a second sanctuary community.

So this is a much broader movement, I think, than most of the media is giving it credit for.

What part of the population lives

on EC and then Shall Visitor Scott and the Burmese City?

I under my memory.

It's an affront to everything this country stood for.

There's no reason for all of these companies and everything else to base their operations except for lobbying in the nation's capital.

But so what is the percentage of population of Virginia that is actually just a suburb suburb of Washington, D.C.

It's a pretty good chunk.

I mean, I'd say we're looking at close to a quarter, maybe a little bit more.

Fairfax County, Virginia alone has nearly 2 million residents.

Arlington County, Virginia, which is one county over closer to D.C., they've got nearly a million residents.

Prince William County, which is just to the south, they've got about 800,000 residents.

So it is a really big chunk of the state's population.

So if those numbers are true, you're talking about 30% of the population,

and you said 60% of the population is now in a sanctuary, county, or city.

That only leaves 10%.

And,

you know,

it's remarkable that 30% of the population is,

you know, tyranny of the minority.

Exactly.

And so, you know, what's fascinating, Dan, is that, you know, you talk about elections and using the ballot box.

And I've never seen voters as engaged as they are right now.

I think that this could have a huge impact in 2020.

But I'm also seeing some really unique suggestions.

There's actually a group of lawmakers in West Virginia that are proposing to allow counties in Virginia to be annexed by the state of West Virginia.

And I talked with a delegate, Gary Howell, in West Virginia yesterday, and they're serious about this.

They say, look, there's no reason.

why these counties in Virginia should be subjected to the whims of the minority in Northern Virginia.

They have much more in common with West Virginia.

Let's let them leave peacefully

if they can, if the General Assembly will allow it.

So you actually have other lawmakers in other states trying to

defuse the tensions here by changing the borders of the state.

It's insane.

I mean, this hasn't been talked about for, you know, since the Civil War, we haven't talked about these kinds of things.

It's insane what's going on.

And the left, you know, the left knows there are two things that could lead to civil war.

According to a study

by the Democrats, there are two things that could lead to a violent civil war.

One, the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump before the election.

Two,

taking away

the Second Amendment and taking away people's right to bear arms.

They're doing both of those and they're doing it full throttle.

I don't, I mean, it's almost intentional.

I've had those same concerns.

And I've been so bitterly disappointed in our governor, Glenn.

I got to tell you, you know, he came out and talked about the need for a civil conversation.

And let's have this fact-based discussion.

I reached out to the governor's office on multiple occasions, asking him to sit down with me on Bearing Arms Cannon Company.

for a civil discussion.

Let's talk to gun owners, talk with gun owners instead of talking down to them.

And I didn't even get a response back from the governor's press secretary.

The governor has no interest in actually having a conversation with the people that he's trying to disarm.

He wants us to sit down, to shut up, to be quiet, and it's just not going to happen.

Well, here's what I'm concerned about, Cam.

The way he has approached this whole thing has poured accelerant.

I mean,

this is arson.

And I want to talk to you about that.

The way he has

positioned the people of Virginia that are just, they just want to stand up for the Constitution, how he's positioning them as radicals, revolutionaries, and Nazis.

And I want to get your opinion on what it feels like on the ground, if...

if that is an accurate view from halfway across the country.

Back with Cam Edwards here in just a second.

And by the way, you can follow him

at Cam Edwards.

You can find his website, bearingarms.com.

The best of the Glen Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn, and you're listening to the Glen Beck program.

If you like what you're hearing on this show, make sure you check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

It's available wherever you download your favorite podcasts.

Mr.

Bill O'Reilly, an Emmy Award-winning journalist,

blah, blah, blah.

He's got lots of books, blah, blah, blah.

And he's now on

his own website where he does his show at billorilly.com.

BillO'Reilly.com.

Mr.

Bill O'Reilly, what a week it has been.

Before we get to that, I'm really happy to hear you're going to have Jackie Gleason on the program later.

I'm a huge Jackie Gleason fan, so don't mess with him.

I like Jackie Gleason.

And what people don't know is he never rehearsed.

He rehearsed.

Almost like you, Beck.

Yeah.

He had no idea what he was doing until he got on the air.

And even then, it was questionable.

Yeah,

he was fantastic.

All right, Bill,

where do you want to start?

You want to start with impeachment?

You want to start with the debate?

You want to start with maybe predictions on

why Barack Obama is doing this and moderating himself?

All right, let's start there.

Let's start with President Obama because that leads to the impeachment and the debates.

So we'll do a very logical thing here, unlike most weeks.

Barack Obama

knows

or thinks he knows that Armageddon may happen in November for the Democratic Party.

That's where you start.

And he's not alone.

All his guys

are very nervous.

You hear it on CNN because that's where his guys live.

That's where they work.

Ben Jones.

Ben Jones.

Yeah, and what's his name?

The guy with the mustache who ran Obama's campaign was in the White House.

But anyway.

Black Bart.

I don't.

Anyway, they feel.

Axelrod.

Yeah.

Axel Rod.

Axel Rodrock.

All I could think of is a guy in a black top hat with a curly mustache.

Well, he could play that part, actually.

Yeah, he could.

Yeah.

I actually like him.

You know, I've known him for years, but

he's the smartest of the crew, him and Podesta.

You don't hear much from Podesta.

He's Hillary Clinton's guy.

They know that this is not looking good at this point, even with impeachment, even with the media, all of that.

So Barack Obama goes, I don't really want to be tied into this radical left movement.

And I think you're making a mistake assessing him.

He is all about economics.

He's not about social.

In fact, Barack Obama, if you look at him, outside of the drug use,

a pretty standardized guy.

He's not a hippie.

He's not

that kind of a person.

He's not a socialist.

I think he is an income redistributor.

Socialist.

Okay, yeah.

And his wife is even more so.

Yes.

She's much more socially liberal than Barack Obama.

Yeah, I don't mean about social.

I don't mean necessarily about society.

I do mean about changing the culture of the country and fundamentally transforming it.

Those are his words and her words.

But

they are for American standards, they used to be, radicals.

They are socialists.

But

they're now looking like, you're right, Sean Hannity.

Yeah, look, they don't want to be tied in.

The Obamas don't want to be tied in with a drastic defeat.

That's where you're starting.

Number two, all right,

their philosophy links into the far left.

There is a link there.

I don't like labeling people unless there's beyond a reasonable doubt, but their philosophy, Obama's philosophy.

I was two years on Fox News, but you were busy.

Uh-huh.

The

prevailing wisdom of the far left, and this is why they do what they do and say what they say, that America is an evil country.

Yes.

All right.

From the very beginning of of the founding fathers, the slaveholders, this has been an exploitative country run by rich white guys who have screwed everybody else.

And because of that, now it's our time.

And we have to change everything to punish the white guys, the patriarchy.

take all of their assets and money, and this includes corporations in Wall Street, and give it to those

whose ancestors were exploited.

If you understand that,

and it is no doubt about it, if you understand that, everything you hear from Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and all the rest of them makes perfect sense.

The income redistribution policies of Barack Obama make perfect sense.

The problem with it is that, number one, most Americans don't believe that.

All right.

And number two,

wherever the socialist

policies have been implemented have turned into totalitarian disasters.

Correct.

Okay.

So those are the two problems.

That's where you start with the far left.

Now, may I ask you this question?

I mean, Bernie Sanders now in the latest poll is, I think, one point ahead of Joe Biden.

This thing is a free-for-all.

I think you could head to a fractured.

Well, you're talking about Iowa that he and

in a national real clear politics average, Biden still is a comfortable lead.

Yeah, well, national polls don't really mean much when you're talking about the primaries.

But let me just hear me out for a second.

If they go to a fractured convention and they need to broker, yeah, they need to broker a new deal,

the one to obviously call on is Michelle Obama, and the Obamas are positioning themselves

back into the center and looking like they're not part of all of this.

Do you think that plays a role in any of this?

Possible, but the people who know Michelle Obama, who I know, say that she sincerely does not want to do that, does not want to run for president.

I believe that.

Okay.

So I see it's more of a Bloomberg play.

Bloomberg will be hovering around

and

will tell the Democratic power brokers, say you may not like me because I'm a rich white guy, but I can beat him.

And since you don't have anybody else, let me be the nominee.

So Bloomberg is playing the Rudy Giuliani strategy from a few years ago with the GOP and putting all of his eggs in Super Tuesday,

hoping that I think there is a different winner in every primary.

Yeah.

No one goes in with a commanding lead.

But Bloomberg knows he doesn't really have a chance to get enough delegates to win.

He's doing two things.

If there is a brokered convention, there he is.

And even if there is a nominee, it'll probably be Biden.

And Biden will give me Secretary of State or Secretary of Treasury.

That's what Bloomberg wants.

Because I think the split-up convention thing does lead to some possibility for Bloomberg in this sort of fantasy world I'm sure he's living in.

And so is Hillary.

However, I think think

he's not really a consensus candidate for the left, Bloomberg.

What he might be, though, is an alternative if Sanders sweeps the early

primaries and Biden's campaign is in shambles.

You know, you have Bloomberg there as an alternative to a Bernie, which there is a good chunk of the Democrats who they actually don't want him to be the nominee.

They take almost anybody else, and he's got billions of dollars to spend.

Is there a possibility there for Bloomberg?

You know, it's a tough call for the Democratic Party Party because if they give it to Bloomberg, all the far-left progressives.

That's crazy.

And I don't think black Americans are going to vote for Bloomberg either.

All right.

I could be wrong on that last one, but I know the progressives will not buy into it.

So the media that props up the far-left doesn't want Bloomberg either, although the New York Times would probably, you know,

reluctantly get behind him.

So this is the latest from Des Moines from the Washington Examiner.

Bernie Sanders supporters in Iowa are warning that a lack of enthusiasm for Joe Biden would bring the same result nomination of another milquetoast Democrat that it did four years ago, electing Donald Trump.

They said that

if the Democrats go with

a bland centrist, they will stay home.

And the Sanders supporters

are the ones with the most passion.

They're also the furthest left.

Are you concerned at all, Bill, about some of the threats that we learned from Project Veritas this week, from

some of these people on the Sanders campaign that were talking about

Chicago 68 in Milwaukee?

I'm not concerned about civil unrest on the left.

What I am perplexed about is how any American could support Bernie Sanders.

I just can't imagine.

I don't know anyone personally, and I know thousands of people, most of whom won't talk to me, but I know them.

I don't know how anyone can support him.

Two reasons.

He said very clearly from the very beginning of the campaign that he would withdraw all American troops from the Middle East.

So when asked by the very astute Wolf Blitzer, hey,

If you do that,

ISIS will reconstitute and kill thousands of people as it did when Barack Obama did exactly the same thing in Iraq.

Do you not remember that?

And do you not fear that ISIS would reconstitute?

Bernie, of course, didn't come anywhere near answering that question.

Instead, went back to Vietnam for a little lecture and then to the Iraq war for another little lecture.

But instead of following up, Mr.

Blitzer didn't.

Of course he didn't, because if he did follow up, he wouldn't have the slot in the debate.

CNN would remove him.

All he had to say was, with all due respect, Senator, you didn't come close to answering my question.

ISIS will reconstitute.

They'll kill thousands of people.

They'll try to attack the United States.

What are you going to do about it?

And Bernie was, I'll get my allies.

We'll get everybody together.

We'll get the allies.

You know, some stupid billish like that.

The second thing, which is even more intense, is if Bernie Sanders was ever president of the United States and did manage to control the Democrats, the House, and the Senate, there would be a depression in this country, not a recession.

Depression.

All right?

There would be a massive flight of capital out of the United States

because people and corporations that have assets are not going to let Bernie Sanders and the Democrats take those assets.

We know this from the

partially socialist government in France that when they went for taxes like Bernie Sanders is talking about, they had to repeal it within the first year because France was collapsing.

People just left.

They moved their money out.

And

that would make France look like a Boy Scout meeting.

It would.

Here.

It would, yeah.

And we owe $22 trillion.

Well, what would people holding that debt do?

I want to give you one other reason that you might vote for Bernie Sanders, and that is you're a fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

You just don't know that's not Larry David.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn.

And if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

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Hi, it's Glenn.

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Thanks.

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist.

He has worked for the Washington Post, The Washington Times, I think the New York Times, AP,

and The Hill.

He now has a new website called justthenews.com.

Justthenews.com.

Investigative journalist John Solomon, who is at the center of much of

this

scandal in Ukraine.

Welcome to the program.

Good to be with you, Glenn.

Thank you.

You want to start with any breaking news, any new news?

I do.

As a matter of fact, just a few minutes ago, my friends at the Southeastern Legal Foundation and I filed a lawsuit.

seeking the records of contacts between Ukraine prosecutors and our embassy in Kiev, the U.S.

Embassy in Kiev.

These are some of the contacts that are at the heart of this impeachment trial, and we're at really the focal point of my early reporting on this.

There was a dysfunctional relationship between the frontline anti-corruption fighters in Ukraine and our embassy, and that's why I wrote the stories that I did.

I put a FOIA in seeking open records requests for this information.

It hasn't come, and so today, with the help of the Southeastern Legal Foundation and a great law firm here in D.C., I filed lawsuit to try to compel the release of these documents.

I think they'll give us tremendous insight into what was going on between Ukraine prosecutors and the embassy on all sorts of issues, from the Joe Biden burisma questions to other anti-corruption cases that were going on at the time.

Okay, so

what does your gut say that

they will show or prove?

Well, my reporting shows from the past.

Remember, there's a Ukraine prosecutor who says that they were...

The United States government was pressuring Ukraine prosecutors not to pursue certain cases, including a case against a George Soros-funded non-government organization, a nonprofit.

And State Department officials confirmed to me before I wrote that story that, yeah, that did go on.

And then we had some of the testimony during the impeachment where they acknowledged that the State Department acknowledged it was pressuring Ukraine prosecutors not to pursue certain people.

I think we're going to learn a lot more about what motivated those contacts, who who those people were, and what sort of communications were going on between the prosecutor's office and the

embassy.

At the time, we had the Manafort case going on.

We had the questions about Burisma and Joe Biden.

There was an active investigation in 16.

I'd like to know what was going on, what sort of function, what sort of communications, who was politically involved.

And hopefully, when we're done, we're going to learn a lot more than what we know now.

So, John, what do you expect or hope will come out of this trial

when

Ken Starr and Alan Dershwitz and the Trump team step to the plate in probably 10 days from now.

Yeah.

Listen, it's been a one-sided story so far, just like the beginning of the Russia collusion story, right?

And everybody was certain on January 9th of 2017 that the Christopher Steele dossier was gospel and, oh, my God, our president was an agent of Russia.

And three years later, we learned out that all of that turned out to be bunt.

The most important thing about politics and about investigations is that there's two sides to a story.

There's two pieces of evidence and right now we've only seen one side of it and I believe in the trial we'll begin to see a lot of different new pieces of evidence.

For instance, if the president

was interested or concerned about corruption, were there specific people around President Zelensky, the new Ukrainian president, that he might have been concerned about?

Was there a specific cause or pause that caused the administration to hold off giving the money until they could be sure it was sold, spent right?

And And those are the sort of things we haven't heard from.

And I think we're going to learn a lot about what the intelligence community, what the economic and treasury department community was telling the president.

And I bet the story is way more complicated than the narrative that Adam Schiff has woven so far.

So, um, we do know now that there is somebody around

the president of Ukraine that Trump is worried about or was worried about.

We have that evidence now because of the

massive land sale that went to George Soros.

And that came from somebody who pressured the president to make this move,

who is in his, if you will, cabinet, who is very close to George Soros.

So isn't that kind of proof that these people are still around him?

Well,

there's a lot.

Listen, there was an oligarch named Kolomoyski who used to run Privat Bank, the large bank in Ukraine.

And you can go back in the timelines and look, and back in the summer of 2019 and the fall of 2019, the IMF, the Europeans, were raising their hands saying we're really concerned about Kolomoyski's return to Ukraine around Zelensky.

There are a series of figures of people who played in Ukraine that have big political and economic interests.

The Soros, the Kolomoyskis, the Zolchevskys, the guy who ran Burisma.

These are legitimate issues.

And what we don't know, and what we've been blinded to all this time, was what was the CIA, what was the NSC, what were the diplomats, what were the European allies telling to the president?

I suspect there's a much more complicated paradigm that was influencing the president's decision than, oh, I want an investigation of Joe Biden.

And by the way, here's the most important part to remember about the Joe Biden investigation, the Breesman investigation.

I know Rudy Giuliani was advocating for it.

We see Lev Parnas was advocating for it.

We know it came up as a matter of discussion in the call, but everybody misses this very important point.

Before all that happened, the Ukrainians on their own in February of 2019 and in March of 2019 in Ukraine announced that they were reopening the investigation of Burisma.

It had already happened, so people didn't know.

Maybe the NSC didn't tell the president.

But the investigation, the president couldn't pressure for an investigation that had already been opened on its own organically because Ukrainians came up with new evidence against Mr.

Zelchevsky and Burisma.

And that investigation remains ongoing today.

So it started in February and it's still going on today.

Reuters reported in December that it had been expanded to even more serious issues than had been previously reported.

That keeps getting lost in this impeachment drama.

And I think one of the questions senators as jurors have to answer is, if the NSC and the State Department knew the president was seeking an investigation, Why didn't they just tell the president, sir, you don't need to worry about it.

It already has begun.

There was a real gap of information there, it appears, from what we know.

We saw all these impeachment witnesses say we knew the president wanted this, and not a single one of them appears to have told the president, sir, back in February, it already happened.

And I think that's one of the issues that the trial is going to have to try to resolve.

What do you think of this Lev Parnas stuff?

Well, you know, listen, I have a lot of knowledge of Lev Parnas.

He was one of about 50, 55 people that I worked with as I spent over 18 months working on the Ukraine story.

I met him through my attorneys, or one of my attorneys, Joe and Victoria Tensing.

At the time, I had drafted up most of the stories that ultimately had been, well, you know, later were published in mid-March to mid-May.

Most of them had been drafted already, but I had this one problem.

I had all the documents, and I had a lot of people on background, but I didn't have any Ukrainians on the record.

And so when I talked to Joe and Victoria about my concern, as you do when you're a journalist talking to your lawyer about libel review and things,

they say, hey, we didn't know you were working on Ukraine stuff.

We have some business there.

We have a guy, a fixer, a facilitator,

an

interpreter named Lev Parnas.

And how about we introduce you?

I bet you he could get you the sort of interviews that you're still lacking.

So they set up a meeting.

I reached out.

He said, you know, I'd be glad to help you.

Who do you know?

Or who do you want to know?

And I said, well, I've been trying to reach the prosecutor general's office.

I gave him a list of about seven or eight people.

And very quickly, he proved that he did know who he knew.

And he was able to arrange Mr.

Lucenko, the prosecutor general, the attorney general of Ukraine, and several other figures that I was looking for to talk on the record, on camera, so that every American could look in their eyes and see what they were saying and hear them on the record.

No anonymity, no anonymous stuff.

And so, you know, in that respect, he was helpful.

He had his own motives, his own interests.

He had business interests.

I knew he worked for Rudy Giuliani.

I knew he worked for lots of other people.

He told me he worked with lots of other reporters.

Doesn't surprise me.

But this is what reporters do on a daily basis, particularly when you're working working in a foreign country.

You have what we call fixers or facilitators on the ground because you're not in Ukraine full-time.

And so you have people that have contacts.

And hey, could you get this person to talk to me?

And when that happens, one of the things that hopefully will become public.

Every time Lev Parnas arranged an interview, I always went through the press office of the official government agency after that.

So if he opened the door, I still went through the official channels to make sure there were no side deals, no unusual behavior.

And in all those cases, I put those interviews out.

The videos are public.

Everybody can see what happened.

Beyond that, that's what Lev did for me.

And

obviously, he had some issues in his background.

When you're dealing in Ukraine, you meet lots of colorful characters.

He was one of them.

Yeah.

All right.

I want to talk to you.

I'll tell you what Rudy Giuliani told me about him.

And then I'd like to get

your

best guess on

what's happening with him and the president and him with the left in Congress.

John Solomon investigative reporter

you can you can now find his work.

He's gone and done his his own thing.

It's a new media outlet just the news.com just the news.com

so we're back with John Solomon

and and John I

I know that I asked Rudy Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago about left because he's a shady guy.

And he said, Look, Len, when you're in a foreign country and especially a country like Ukraine, and you're looking to find out the details of the underworld, you're not going to meet all of the finest people.

And he said, this guy, just like you said, I used him to,

you know,

line up conversations and help me connect, blah, blah, blah.

What is the

text messages

have been shared this week?

Any idea what that was about?

I don't.

I mean, I mean, listen, there's a lot of text messages.

Some of them involve my efforts to report and

to see if he could open up doors for me to talk to people.

That's the normal reporting that goes on every day, and I don't think there's anything untoward about them.

There's a lot of things he was involved in that I wasn't aware of at the time.

I never heard about this monitoring effort of

the ambassador or who this guy was, this congressional candidate.

You know, it was was clear to me early on, Lev Parnas and I, when I talked, I said, you know, what motivates you to

work on this with me?

And he said,

and it's a very profound statement.

And I will say this, too.

When I dealt with him, I found him to be professional.

He didn't do anything untoward.

He didn't suggest anything untoward.

He was a character,

funny, garrulous, but I never had any idea that he was involved in any criminality or anything like that.

He seemed a pretty straightforward guy.

And I asked him, why would you want to help me on this?

And he said, I've watched Ukraine for 20 years say they're fighting corruption, and we go through the same cycle.

Every two years, a prosecutor's name, two years later, he's deemed corrupt.

We name another prosecutor, and corruption never gets fought.

And right now, in my country, my home country in Ukraine, I see...

a real dysfunction between the embassy, the prosecutors, and what we would call the FBI, NABU.

And I want to help you bring that to light because at some point we've got to fix it or every time we spend money in Ukraine, we're putting it down a toilet.

And so he had a very impassioned view and his view was very identical to what I had been hearing for six or eight months from Ukrainians on the ground.

And when I did the epic interviews with the Attorney General and some of his top deputies in Ukraine, they said the same thing, which is, our relationship is so bad with the embassy right now, I'm not sure we know how to fight corruption.

And that appeared to be what motivated him in helping me.

These other things that were going on, what he and Rudy were doing, you know, know, I had a general idea that Rudy was doing his own investigation in Ukraine.

Eventually, after my stories ran, he shared his findings with me, and I was grateful that he did.

But I think a lot, you know,

everybody in Ukraine has an angle.

Everybody in Ukraine has a motive.

It's a country where people are endemically corrupt.

And I was aware of that.

I said so in all my stories.

And I tried my hardest to make sure no one motive, no one angle would influence the story.

I stuck to the facts.

When I got these prosecutors on record, I went to the State Department.

I took 10 days and waited for the State Department to give me an answer.

So, you know, I think the reporting wasn't influenced by it.

But,

you know, was he doing some things?

I think we have to figure out what exactly he was doing.

It didn't affect my reporting, but it's certainly intriguing in the middle of this impeachment that it suddenly surfaces as the Democrats begin to make their case.

As a journalist, how do you deal if this is you're now just coming across him?

How do you deal with the, you know, the note that he wrote in the hotel

and

his new

testimony now on television, at least, that Donald Trump was up to, you know, I guess, no good and he knew it.

How do you deal with that?

You know,

every person has to answer for the content.

What I have to answer for are my stories.

Were the stories that I wrote in March and April and May accurate?

No, no, no.

So

what I'm asking you is, as a respected, in my opinion, a respected journalist,

how do you handle this now?

Would you be reporting this the way the press is reporting this now?

Are they being responsible?

Well, here's the funny thing.

A lot of people, Lev Parnas has said a lot of things about me in the last 24, 48 hours.

Not a single news outlet that's reported on those things, even called to get my side of the story or to see if it's true.

That tells you something about the nature of reporting today.

And it's why we got, when I say we, the news industry got Russia wrong and why they probably have a lot of the Ukraine story wrong now.

The way you deal with these things is you listen to Lev and you write his side story, but you also go talk to the other people, the Victoria Tensings and the Joe DeGenovas and the Rudy Giulianis and I.

For months, I kept watching that.

People say,

I just took Rudy's stuff and wrote it.

It's the other way around.

I wrote my stuff and then Rudy gave me his stuff afterwards.

You can confirm that with Rudy.

But no one in the press even cares about timetables, facts.

There's a hysterical, breathless, crazy part of the media today.

And we don't get things right, and we let our American public down every time we do so.

I've got about a minute, so I need to phrase this quickly.

The Hill said they're going to do an investigation on all of your stuff.

And it was widely reported that you were under investigation by The Hill.

Then we hear nothing about it.

Did they investigate?

Did they do anything?

I don't know.

I haven't heard from them.

I will say this.

It was my idea.

I encouraged them to do so because I think when people look at the facts of my story, everything's going to be fine.

But so far, I don't know anything more than what's in the public.

I remain confident that what I reported was accurate, that it was balanced, that it had the right context.

It had the warnings about Ukraine being corrupt.

And I think anyone who went and took a look at my response to Colonel Lieutenant Colonel Vindman when he attacked my reporting, I just put all the facts out.

John Solomon

from justthenews.com.

That's justthenews.com.

John Solomon, we'll talk to you again.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

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Stu announced earlier this week that he is putting on a new show.

And the new show is Stu Does America.

It is a, it's like, it's like the daily show with Trevor Oliver, except funny.

John Oliver, I believe, and he's also

the daily show.

And also, I would yeah, Trevor, I mean, I meant Trevor Noah.

Trevor Noah.

Trevor Noah.

You're combining the two names.

Yeah.

I've blocked Trevor Noah's name and everything.

Wow, is that an unfunny show?

But it will air on Blaze TV and YouTube.

You just have to go subscribe to Stu's YouTube page, which is Stu DoesAmerica.

If you go go to StuDoesAmerica.com, you'll get all the links there.

Okay, so just subscribe and you can watch it.

Also, podcasts.

You can get it if you listen to podcasts at all.

If you're listening to this as a podcast, please subscribe as well.

Okay.

And so tomorrow on my podcast, I'm doing something that we've never even considered and we've never even done

personally with each other.

And I took the podcast in 90 minutes, and I just interviewed Stu about

what his journey journey over the last 20 years with me.

This is the 20th anniversary of the radio show this week, basically.

And yeah, we go over a lot of the big news stories.

If you remember, the big stories that the show has been involved in, how the show kind of came together initially,

basically all the behind the scenes that you can think of.

Yeah, and we got to about half of it.

And it was an interesting conversation because I found myself really curious about what Stu had to say because I had no idea.

We've done so many things like we were just talking about it off the air.

I have no idea what he was thinking or where he was or

anything outside of a decision-making meeting when we decided to go to Fox.

And we were talking about when we went to CNN.

None of us wanted to go.

We didn't want to do it.

We thought that was a bad deal at first.

I went kind of against my will.

And Stu was really like, I don't want the cable news it's not where we want to be.

Let's just be funny and yada, yada, yada.

And I don't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that we went to cable news, but we did.

We did.

Here's a clip from the podcast that you'll be able to hear tomorrow anywhere you get your podcast.

But if you're a Blaze TV subscriber, you can get it right now.

It's a fascinating 90-minute look at the behind the scenes.

Here's what I asked Stu:

What did we learn?

What did you learn from CNN and that experience?

Listen to his answer.

What was the biggest thing you learned first from CNN?

Well, you know, it was interesting that we even got hired there.

I mean, I remember thinking there was no chance that was going to actually happen.

And they put us on, and I was, you know, they were.

I bought a house, if I'm not mistaken, before they made the offer.

Yes, I believe that's true.

We were happy about that, by the way.

That was really exciting for us.

That's the way every move happens.

Glenn makes, goes and buys a house before we lock it in.

And then we're like, oh, well, now I guess we have to go.

But he owns a home there.

Yeah, I mean, it was because there was some conflict internally, I think, at that point as to whether a cable news show was the right thing.

You know, I mean, the show was doing really well on radio.

We were growing quickly.

You were pretty well known.

And I remember thinking, like, gosh, really, like, cable news?

Like, we're going to go on there and do this thing that everybody, you know, that's what you're supposed to do.

We all hated it.

Yeah, none of us really liked the idea.

And I think, you know, looking back in retrospect, incorrectly, because it was, it was a way to, it really did change the level of your profile.

But we changed it.

Yeah, no, because we did something different.

And we knew we were going to do something different, and we weren't going to do it unless we could.

I didn't want to go in there and do the same old blah, blah, blah, talking heads type of thing.

So when we went into CNN, I mean, I remember doing

things that were,

it helped shape my understanding of the media in a way I don't know that like the audience necessarily always connects with.

And that like we would do things on the air that were really basic knowledge for the average talk radio listener.

You know, things that were like, okay, remember this quote from this guy, and you'd bring that up in passing.

And especially when we first started, we would get hit from standards and practices, which is like the branch of CNN.

This is interesting to me.

Most people

may not even know this or believe this, but I was on the floor and sometimes it would take us two or three hours to cut an hour-long show.

Yeah.

You should be able to cut an hour-long show in about 50 minutes.

Yeah, right.

It sometimes took us three hours to cut.

And I was never privy to the stalls.

Yeah.

I would just be told, break down the computer, or you know, break down in the control room.

This is happening.

This is happening.

Don't worry, we'll catch it.

But you were actually in the control room with standards standards and practices, along with all the others on my staff

that worked for Mercury.

That was the smartest thing we did.

That

were having to have these battles.

Yeah, and they would be like on really basic things.

Like, you know, because on talk radio, like

there, there's a these certain things will become part of the conversation and everyone sort of understands them.

You don't need to explain them every single time.

And we'd make points and they would push back on them.

And I'm like, do you not know this?

Do you not know this person said this?

And that really, that enlightened me into the way the media actually works because

a lot of times they don't know it.

I would, you know, I really think we should do a like a doc series

on just some of the things we've learned in the media because none of us have ever talked about it.

And I didn't realize it until this podcast.

Yeah.

And

what we all learned and what we all saw, I think is, you know, it led me to the place where I said at the end of Fox, this whole place, meaning New York media, it's all going to burn down.

It's all going to burn down.

It's not real.

It's going to burn itself to the ground.

And that was one of my real feelings: we've got to get out of New York media.

But

we all learn so much that if the American people knew really what we have seen, each of us,

I think their understanding of

why you can't trust the people to repair themselves.

The media will never, ever repair itself.

It will never heal.

It won't turn the other direction and suddenly go, oh,

my gosh, I get it.

We're out of step with the American people.

It will never happen.

And I'm thinking about one

extensive, long

trial at CNN that involved one individual who was very, you know, very vocal in the building about how much they hated me.

You know who I'm talking about?

Yeah, I'm sorry about that.

I disted it a couple of times.

I was at a couple meetings.

Well,

and he's still here, and he's never going to change.

No, but I'm thinking of that.

And once you know that piece of information,

it starts to unlock

how they're always going to behave.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, I don't know that anything I saw there at the time

would have led me to believe they would go as far as they've gone in the last couple of years.

No, especially the way they fought against me.

Yeah.

You know,

they were fighting against me because I was irrational and I wasn't based in fact and I didn't have.

When we were, we talk about in this special how much better CNN made us because they made us prove everything.

So when we got to Fox, we didn't need CNN practitioners.

It was so easy for us.

And we were self-policing ourselves, which was a great, great advantage.

One of the weird things about going through that process and working at a CNN,

there are people that I absolutely loved that we worked with there and still do.

And it's amazing that you kind of see how this goes on, and it's easy to kind of think of these, you know, of an organization like that as this this like monolithic.

There's a lot of people there, I guarantee it.

And some of them that I actually know for sure feel this way that CNN has gone off their rocker recently, and

they don't look at it the same way.

And that is like, it is a weird thing because you think about this.

A lot of times you see this with conservatives, and there's some like liberal who's saying, who leaves the organization and gets promoted by the media.

Those things don't necessarily happen the other way, but those people exist.

They're there and they're looking at this, even if they're not conservatives.

They're just like, this is crazy.

Like, what happened to us trying to actually bring the news and not bring an agenda?

You know, we went over this, the CNN app one day.

I went on there, and the first like 28 stories on their list were all things negative about Trump.

It's like, look, you might not like the guy.

You might think he's a bad president, but there's not another news story to cover in the entire world other than Donald Trump and things you think he did the wrong way.

And that can't be the way that this has to be.

And that's not just us feeling that.

Those are people in those buildings feeling that way.

All right.

If you are a subscriber to Blaze TV, just go there now.

You can find tomorrow's released podcast today if you're a subscriber.

Otherwise, tomorrow, just wherever you get podcasts, subscribe to the Glenn Beck podcast.

You'll be able to download it for free.

And it is well, well worth your time.

Behind the scenes, 20 years of talk radio and my career with Stu.

All exposed.

All exposed.

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On demand.