Best of the Program | Guests: Douglas MacKinnon, Stephen Kent & Lauren Chen | 12/17/19

So the impeachment goes to the House tomorrow.

The committee has had its last hearing on that.

And so now they're going to vote supposedly tomorrow.

They're going to start debating, so it might take a day or so.

But they're supposed to vote tomorrow, and then it'll go to the Senate.

McConnell

told

Chuck Schumer and told the rest of the country that they're not going to call any witnesses.

So none of the information that we have talked about is going to come out.

I disagree with that, but I understand the political calculation.

Also, we're going to give you a little more information on Hunter Biden and why Hunter felt it was okay to do this.

You will not believe the latest excuse.

Maxine Water, she's got a new conspiracy theory.

Also, Douglas McKennon said he's afraid that maybe Trump is being set up

by the Republicans, the ones who claim to be loyal, who aren't.

Also, CNN, a reporter from CNN back in the 90s, has finally apologized to Richard Jewell.

It's a fascinating apology letter that I think everyone should hear, especially those in CNN, because

are they doing the same thing over again now with Donald Trump?

We talk porn wars with Lauren Chen, Star Wars with Stephen Kent, all on today's podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the blended program.

Could we just go through just a little bit of Maxine Waters?

Because she brought up a very good point last night.

Really?

Yeah, on CNN.

We play the Maxine Waters on CNN from last night.

Because I believe, even though I don't have the facts to prove it, it, I believe that

Putin wanted to lift the sanctions.

He's always wanted to lift these sanctions that were placed on him because of his interfering with an incursion into Crimea.

And so I believe that they wanted to elect President Trump.

And Trump, I believe, agreed, I will always believe this, that he agreed that if he got elected, he would lift those sanctions.

He would like to do it.

He's not been able to do it.

You know, you notice there's no interruption at all from the CNN anchor.

Like, wait, you started this with you don't have any evidence of this.

This is called a conspiracy theory.

This is a conspiracy theory.

And they are constantly saying conspiracy theory from the left, or from the right, conspiracy theory from the right.

All of the theories about Russia, everything we now know.

If you watched last night's TV show, it's insane.

When I broke down what the IG actually said

and showed you the origins of the Russia investigation, it's all based on a democratic conspiracy theory.

All of it.

There was no reason to start this investigation.

It was all based on people like Maxine Waters going, I have no evidence of this, but I know this is what happened.

It's amazing they let that go.

I mean, one of the things, the standard operating procedure now with cable news networks is to use the phrase without evidence when it comes to things that Donald Trump says.

So let's say, you know, Donald Trump, without evidence, said that the media is opposed to him or whatever it is.

And they just throw it out there like it's just this thing that he basically made up, rather than the fact that he didn't maybe go through and list all the evidence, but don't we all kind of see that the media is kind of against him?

Right.

The only ones who can't see that, the media.

And I think they do see it, by the way uh they just don't like to say it uh but you know that is uh that's something they point out all the time yeah against donald trump but maxine waters can come in and tell you that she has no evidence

absolutely no evidence uh of this whatsoever but i will always believe stew is a mass murderer it was on this program yesterday and he still has not answered and he it is not proven to be untrue yet i kind of wanted the i like the little dangerous mysterious vibe, so I'm going to stick with it.

People like the serial killers.

They get all sorts of letters in jail.

Oh, I know.

The women love them.

You'll get a series.

Oh, you'll be famous.

Oh, I got to get the Netflix true crime series.

I've got all sorts of stuff.

I can make appearances.

Huge, huge.

I'm more, you know, because I'm fascinated at the explanations of these things.

Because we've brought up a lot of...

evidence about, for example, Hunter Biden and all the things that happened with him in Ukraine.

And we're told that that's a conspiracy theory when we bring up evidence.

But when we bring up the evidence,

there are actually wire transfer records of money going to offshore accounts for Hunter Biden.

There's actual records of that.

Nah, don't worry about it.

Yeah, this story from the New Yorker, which made some news yesterday,

largely because of one quote from Rudy Giuliani, who said when he wanted to get these investigations of Burizma going going in Ukraine, the former ambassador, Yovanovich,

was in the way, and the quote was something like, we needed to get her out of the way or we couldn't get these investigations done.

So that has been spun in the media as if Giuliani was saying, well, she was a truth teller and we wanted to lie.

And so she was in the way.

So we had to remove her.

I love that.

And it's like, that's not what he was saying.

He was saying she was blocking.

She was blocking the travel visas for the people that Giuliani was trying to interview.

and she was blocking them.

And we have evidence that she was blocking them.

It's admitted.

They admit it.

I mean, she says, well,

we didn't think that they should be here.

They were involved in what we thought was corruption.

We shouldn't invite them to the United States.

I mean,

okay, but that was Giuliani's point.

And she perjured herself because she said they never did that.

They never blocked anybody from coming in.

And it says here, at least in the New Yorker article, now they seem to be admitting it,

which is no surprise.

But listen, there's two pieces of explanation for these controversies from them, which I found to be fascinating.

One of which, and I've watched your specials, I've never heard before.

I have uncovered new information

that you didn't have in your feelings.

I don't know if this is worthwhile.

Do you have evidence or did you get this from Maxine Water?

No, it's not.

It's better evidence than that.

It's coming directly from the source.

Okay.

Okay, so first of all, You have to understand that this is their explanation for the issues that went around with Hunter Biden.

Why was this even allowed by Joe Biden?

Now, this part you may have heard before, but I found it fascinating to hear it crystallized in this way.

Hunter, who has long struggled with severe drug and alcohol problems, had almost no expertise in the region or in energy.

And many U.S.

and Ukrainian officials suspected that the co-founder of Burisma had put Hunter on the board in the hope of protecting himself from prosecution.

Again, this is their defense.

This is their theory.

They're way out on a limb here.

Some White House and State Department officials disapproved of Hunter's role at Burisma.

No, no, no.

They never said anything about it.

Nobody ever brought anything up, and even there was not even a hint of impropriety.

Right, I know.

It's so weird.

They were concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest.

The appearance of the appearance.

Which is a violation.

The only violation, really, is the appearance.

Right.

The government ethics code specifically says you cannot allow yourself to be entered into a situation in which the appearance of corruption is possible, especially when dealing with things overseas.

But they mostly

avoided discussing the matter with Joe Biden.

The vice president had a.

Now, think about this.

This is a guy who wants to run the free world, Joe Biden.

Yeah.

The vice president had an unwritten don't ask, don't tell policy when it came to his family members' business decisions.

Now,

that is completely unacceptable from a president of the United States.

I might have some problems.

I would just say it's pretty unacceptable, honestly, from any father in the United States.

You know,

Michael,

I'm just saying, you and Fredo, go out, do whatever you want.

No ask, no tell.

Right.

All right.

I'm not going to ask you anything about it.

That's what mob families do.

Right.

That's not what normal families do.

Normal families sit down and go, wait a minute, wait a minute, you're doing what?

No, don't, don't, don't do that.

Remember, Biden's supposed to be the guy rooting out corruption all over the world.

Right.

But he won't even ask, let alone, you know, if he gets asked and gets lied to and maybe he was manipulated and it was a mistake.

He's specifically not asking because he doesn't want to know.

Right.

Like if your kid comes home and they're, you know, they've been gone for three days and they come home and they got white powder all over their face.

Don't ask.

Don't ask.

You might want to wash your face.

I don't know what's going on.

And especially when you are the vice president of the United States and your son is a drug addict.

Yeah.

I'm not saying this in a disparaging way.

I'm just stating the truth.

He is an out-of-control drug addict who is going to destroy himself and the whole family.

You don't ask him about his business.

Look,

we all have our issues.

Hunter seems to have more of them than most.

Yes.

And certainly, with his history and his problems with addiction, he is completely incapable of drawing these lines successfully.

That is not something that Hunter Biden is able to do.

Clearly, the man, you know, look at what's just happened in Arkansas, where he is, his dad is in the middle of a presidential campaign and now has a new grandchild from a stripper who

was impregnated while he was dating the widow of his other son.

His other brother.

Yeah, his brother.

Of

Joe Biden's other son.

This is not someone who's capable of making these decisions in a reliable way.

And to implement a don't ask, don't tell policy for him is completely irresponsible.

Not by Hunter Biden, because we know that's irresponsible, but by Joe Biden.

I mean, their defense is he's completely irresponsible.

If you can have any sympathy, you can have sympathy in some ways for Hunter.

He's got a massive problem.

He's a massive problem.

And he doesn't seem to be successfully dealing with it.

And a lot of people can't successfully deal with it.

So you get into this world.

I'm sure it's impossible with the inertia of drugs and such to get out of it.

And

you feel bad for him.

However, when you're the president, you're going to want to be the president of the United States.

You're the vice president of the United States.

And your defense as to why you didn't see this coming was you didn't ask about it because you thought,

because no one wanted to have a situation in which he had to have the truth.

He actually physically avoided, intentionally, the truth.

Do you know why?

It's because it's not his money.

Listen, hear me out.

Imagine that it's Joe Biden Industries instead of the United States of America.

And he's

on the board of directors of Joe Biden Industries.

He's very high up.

It's got his name on it.

And he's responsible.

And Joe Biden Industries goes out of business if they find out that there's any monkey business going on.

So he appoints his son to be, let's say, the chief business development guy.

And he's just making deals, but some of the deals he makes for him and other deals he makes for the company.

Do you think the CEO, the chairman of the board, or Joe Biden wouldn't say

to his son, wait a minute, wait a minute, what is that deal over there?

Oh, that's mine, Dad.

Yeah, but that deal looks like you're playing it against the company.

So I got to know what that deal is.

Because, son, we're all out of business.

Yeah, you're right.

He would do that if it was his money.

If they were running a bakery.

Yes.

He would ask every question.

But it's not his money.

It's our money.

It's our money and our reputation.

So there's nothing for him to lose.

He doesn't lose anything.

And he is so arrogant because look at what they're getting away with.

They have the cover of the press.

They are on the right side of history.

So they think they can get away with anything.

I mean, how Hillary Clinton can go travel the country right now and say, oh, you know what?

In this country, no one is above the law.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my gosh.

I think I'm going to hemorrhage from my eyes.

I could bleed to death in half a minute just from the blood shooting out of my eyes after hearing that.

Now, this is just...

Their explanation for this.

However, it's not the new breaking information.

Oh, it's not.

No, this is not why why Hunter took the role.

Okay.

There's more.

Oh, there's a big one.

Okay.

All right.

Hang on just a second.

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Hunter Biden.

Hunter Biden.

He's about to, he he gets this offer from Burisma, this very shady gas company

over in Ukraine.

And he has no experience with gas.

No experience with the language.

Doesn't know the company.

His dad happens to be vice president of the United States.

And doing gas investigations.

Yeah.

And

granting money to gas companies.

Now that, if you're Hunter Biden, Kendall Roy from Succession, you might have a moment.

A moment of hesitation there, right?

Because you're thinking,

Why do they want me to do this job?

And they're going to pay me all this money.

This seems a little suspicious.

It seems a little out of the blue.

Exactly.

But hey, dad, when I was all coked up last night, I was thinking, I could do that.

I could do that.

I could do that.

I have a gas.

I could learn the language.

I mean,

who would pass on me?

Right.

Right.

So maybe you get, but you maybe have a moment of suspicion.

Right.

And you're worried maybe about your dad's

political future and his reputation.

Right.

Now, he goes through through a little of this hesitation as he's making this decision.

Do I take this job with Burisma?

And, you know, he gets the back and forth about, oh, we're serious about transparency and all the stuff you'd expect to get from a new employer.

But he's still skeptical because he's, I mean, you'd be skeptical of the situation.

Sure.

But then it happens.

You start doing your own research, right?

Okay.

You start looking into this.

And this is a quote from the New Yorker article.

All right.

Hunter felt reassured on a a more personal level after doing some of his own research.

He read that the co-founder of Burisma had championed efforts to ensure that bears held in captivity in Ukraine were treated more humanely, opposing a long-standing practice of housing bears in open pits.

They are trying to make the case that Hunter Biden took the job at Burisma because he was worried about bears in captivity, that they were being held in open pits.

And this guy at Burisma was like, no more bears and pits.

Come on board, Hunter.

You know, I thought I might be in bed with a bad guy, but then I found out he's against bears and pits.

I'm against bears and pits.

We came together.

It was on my match.com profile.

No bears and pits.

It was the one thing.

I had been praying and praying and praying.

How do I know what's true?

How do I know who I can trust?

No bears in pits.

And then I thought to myself, that doesn't make any sense.

But when I started doing my research, I saw he doesn't want bears in pits.

It was meant to be.

It certainly wasn't the $80,000 a month.

No.

It was, we didn't want bears to be left in pits.

We wanted them roaming free and probably murdering murdering Ukrainians all over the country.

So let me ask you this: what the hell does it have to do with him?

I don't know.

I guess.

I mean, I don't know.

I don't speak the language.

I'm not qualified for the job.

This just might be a scam.

No, they love me.

I mean, the way it's presented is legitimately like, well, you know what?

It sounded bad, but then he seemed nice because of the bear thing.

So I took the job.

He's

what do you Vladimir Putin pets leopards?

And I got, I mean, I've never been to Ukraine, but like, am I going to walk by?

There's going to be big pits of bears everywhere.

Like, what can I tell you?

This is the worst.

Ukraine, after what the Democrats have done to them, will have a tourist rating of zero.

No one will want to go.

It's just nuclear waste, corruption, and bears in pits.

Oh, man.

I mean,

you thought they got far down the list of bizarre explanations, and then they're like, well,

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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Thanks.

Are you going to Star Wars this weekend?

I am going Thursday night.

Are you really?

Yes.

I haven't gotten my tickets yet.

I bought them a long time ago.

For some reason, I bought them like the day they came out.

So I'm very excited about it.

And again, I think, you know, I don't quite agree with Pat's analysis of the series.

Like, I don't think they've all been bad since the first couple.

I think there's been some good ones.

There's been some good ones.

But it it is.

Everybody's doing a power ranking.

We should do our power ranking at some point.

Yeah.

We have time to do it now.

Yeah, we've got a couple of minutes.

Two minutes.

So if you look at all of them and you include the old ones and the new ones.

And the spin-offs.

And the spin-offs.

There's 10 movies to the 12-year-old.

Number one.

Number one.

Tell me where you disagree.

Number one, New Hope.

I go number one, Empire Strikes Back.

Number two, I might, you know what?

I might switch that.

Yeah.

Because number two was Empire Strikes Back.

And I had New Hope number two.

Most people are going to be there.

Yeah, I think I'm with you on that one.

Number three, Return of the Jedi.

I do disagree with this one.

With most people.

Okay.

Where do you put Return of the Jedi?

I put it.

What do you have as number three?

Force Awakens, which I know a lot of people don't like, but I like that one.

No, I have that as number four.

Fourth Awakens.

Then number five, Rogue One.

I had that four.

So we're not far off.

Yeah, number six is Solo.

Wait, wait, aren't you at number five?

Oh, number five is is Rogue One.

Rogue One, okay.

Okay, number six is Solo.

I had that at eight.

Number seven is The Last Jedi.

See, I had that one like I was going back and forth between last and second to last.

I did not like that.

No, no, no.

I'm at seven.

Number eight is Attack of the Clones.

Number nine, because of Jar Jar Binks is still in it.

Number nine is Revenge of the Sith.

And number ten is Phantom Menace.

I mean, those first three have to be.

They have to be last.

Yeah, I guess I probably put Phantom Menace last.

Though I Last Jedi,

when I watch it, I watched it recently again, and it was like, I'm like, this isn't that bad except for a couple of really bad moments.

But it just feels like not even a Star Wars movie.

But you just have to remember, that's number seven.

It's just barely beating out Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and Phantom Menace.

I mean, it comes a point where it's like, yeah, it's all kind of trash after this.

Yeah, yeah.

They're about 50-50, 50 i think on like movies i actually liked which is not a great ratio for like the biggest franchise of all time no and one you're so loyal to that it opens up and you're like of course i have opening day tickets

the best of the glenbeck program

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Douglas McKinnon Road on the Hill this weekend is a potential trap being set by seemingly loyal Republican senators.

I don't even know what loyal Republican senators mean anymore.

Douglas McKinnon joins us now.

Hello, Doug.

How are you?

Glenn, thanks for having me back on.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah, no, not a problem.

I'm fascinated by this.

Tell me the theory here.

Well, the theory is, I think,

as we talked about in the past, I had the high honor to work for President Reagan in the White House as well as Bush won.

And I think this White House, as good as they are, and I'm a supporter of the president, I think Trump is the best president since President Reagan.

That said, I do believe the President and the West Wing are putting way too much faith in the Senate.

And it's one of these things where I talked to two,

one senior staffer and a former senior staffer up on the Hill who told me that there were a number of meetings going on behind closed doors between a number of Republican senators.

You know, and the fear is that with the weight of history, and as you and I understand very, very well,

Even most, quote, as you just said, you know, what's a loyal Republican senator, right?

Because the vast majority of these Republican senators, either privately or publicly, can't stand President Trump for a lot of reasons.

The main reason being Lynn, they can't control him.

They've never been able to control him.

They can't predict what he's going to do.

And so because of that, does it make more sense for them to have someone who's part of the club become president and someone who's part of the club, who's a good guy, by the way, but is vice president Mike Pence.

But Mike Pence is part of the club.

And again, how easy would it be for just, you only need 20 of the 53 Republican senators to say, wait a minute, I think here's our historic opportunity to remove a president, none of us like.

And again, the conventional wisdom is

the president's going to get acquitted in the Senate trial.

It's going to be a slam dunk.

But my whole point is, and the point of these two stoppers that I was speaking with, was let's not assume that.

And as I said in the piece, too, one of President Reagan's favorite lines was, okay, let's trust but verify here.

So, how do you verify?

Because I mean, I go back and forth, Douglas, on this.

I look at

what really happened and what really went on with the Democrats in Ukraine and this whole thing with the press.

It must be exposed.

With that being said,

I'm not sure it will be exposed because I think people like

possibly Lindsey Graham,

you know, what's his name, Turtleface,

in the Senate.

Yeah, McConnell, thank you.

I think these guys

are

wouldn't they didn't want things exposed either.

They want to continue to play in the club, and they probably are dirty along the same lines as

what the Democrats have

looked like they've been up to.

And Donald Trump is a hand grenade, and he went off and he exposed a lot of this dirt.

And I'm not sure that

there are people on both sides that want this to stop.

Well, I agree with you in that sense, too, what I always tell people that are fresh to the United States who don't understand the system.

I said, amazingly, if you watch the movie Mr.

Smith Goes to Washington, which was made 80 years ago, and you look at the Taylor machine and what's going on is he's controlling various members of the Senate.

Basically, nothing has changed since the time that movie aired 80 years ago.

And that's one of the things where Trump is coming in, and he is a disruptor.

What Nikki Haley, Governor Haley, said, you know, one of the reasons so many people dislike him is he is a disruptor that can't be controlled.

And so to your point, it's one of these things where who can you, in fact, trust?

And my point and the point of these stoppers is, well, don't trust anybody because ultimately there's a historic opportunity here for 20 Republican senators to change history, to invalidate the votes of 63 million Americans who voted for President Trump, and to join with basically Glenn, the deep state,

and create this unofficial coup and remove a legitimately and constitutionally elected president of the United States.

This really is chilling.

Okay, so why do you think that this has a chance of happening?

Because

when they were talking about articles of impeachment, look at the numbers with the people.

The people are not for it.

You know, the Democrats are even having defectors.

When they started this, they said,

We think we could probably get 10 or 20 Republicans on board.

They couldn't even get all Democrats on board for this.

Well, I mean, and that's the thing, and that's the conventional wisdom, right?

And again, the conventional wisdom says 99.9% chance, you know, the Senate's going to acquit.

Everyone's going to be happy.

And I do suspect that may be the case, but the whole point here is I think the Trump White House is going into this with eyes sort of, if not fully closed, somewhat squinted in terms of what's going on in the Senate, what conversations are taking place, you know, who can we double check with,

and what can we be doing that we're not doing right now to protect ourselves and to protect this president.

And I'm a little bit surprised that there's at least no conversation emanating from the West wing of the White House that publicly puts these guys on notice.

You know, I think that would be a smart strategy.

So, Douglas, what are the things you're watching for as a political consultant?

What are the the things that you're watching to see if this tide is going in or out?

Well, I think one of the things that people should be paying attention to are what conversations are taking place.

Are any conversations, you know, and this is where you have to have sort of insiders that are leaking some of this information

and saying, are there conversations taking place between certain senators in the West Wing?

Are there certain conversations taking place between certain staff members and the vice president's office?

I mean, there's a lot of different things that are happening beneath the scenes.

And it's one of these things where this is such a unique opportunity.

And as we know, you know, before, you know, President Clinton was never going to get impeached.

President Nixon resigned before he could go through this.

But it's a totally different dynamic, Glenn, with Donald Trump, because he is a one-man band.

Washington, D.C.

has never seen anyone like him in its history.

He basically got elected by himself.

And so for all those reasons, and to your point about this club being even whether it's Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell or others, he is a disruptor that they would, if it was a perfect world, as we both know, Glenn, and if they could just flip a switch and make him disappear,

they would do it tomorrow.

Yeah, they would.

All right.

Let me switch subjects with you because I know you have a new book, and I didn't even, you know, you're not on to talk about it, but I wanted to talk about it.

You have a new book out, The North Pole Project, in search of the true meaning of Christmas.

Can you tell me about it?

Sure.

Yeah, it's just people tend to be walking away from Christmas left and right, and people tend to be forgetting about just the Christmas spirit and what does it mean.

And so the story is basically about a multi-billionaire who lost his way in life.

He ended up getting, you know, the trophy wipes and all these things, and he's got $54 billion,

and all of a sudden he's 50 years old, and he's totally lost in life.

And he's sitting in his...

35-room mansion by himself one day contemplating doing the worst when he gets a call from his minister brother in Texas who says what is wrong with you Christian you have to try to save yourself and this and this 54 this this 50 year old billionaire when he was a child with his brother living on an army base he used to collect money to give presents to the other poor children on the army base and his minister brother says Christian become that person again become Santa Claus all over again and so this

billionaire literally decides to recreate the North Pole and Santa's workshop on the North North Pole.

And not only does he do that, Glenn, but he recruits people from all over the world as his quote-unquote elves, who they themselves are going through some of the worst that life has to offer.

And they are sort of healed by joining this project.

And together, these people change the lives for the better of over 500,000 orphans around the world.

So

is this a story that can be read with your kids, but is kind of like Harry Potter can be read by an adult and enjoyed, but also the little older kids, too.

100%.

It's one of these things where people, we're getting emails now from people that are exactly doing that.

Every night, they're reading one chapter with their families aloud because it really is sort of reinvigorating the Christmas spirit in all of them, and that's what makes me the proudest.

For me, I didn't take a dime for this book, by the way, Glenn, and everything goes to charity.

That's great.

Douglas McKinnon, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

The name of the book is The North Pole Project,

and his article, which I think is

possibly right on the mark, is a trap being set for Trump in the Senate trial, is available at The Hill.

Thanks so much, Douglas McKinnon.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

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All right, Stephen Kent is here.

He is with Young Voices and the host of Beltway Banthas podcast, which is a fun podcast.

And this week, the new Star Wars.

Do we have a bit of the clip for the new Star Wars?

This is the new Star Wars.

It comes out Thursday.

Stu has his tickets.

Pat has his tickets.

I don't have my tickets.

but it opens up, and this is this is the last

the rise of Skywalker.

Listen,

it's an instinct

feeling

the force brought you together.

We're not alone.

Good people will fight if we lead them.

People keep telling me they know me,

and no one does.

Long have I waited,

and now

you're coming together

is your undoing

what uh what are you doing there 3PO

taking one last look sir

at my friends

how sweet

um

I'm just getting so and so.

I'm getting really dark on all the cute little things that George Lucas started.

I want them all to die.

I'm for baby Yoda, but all the rest of the stuff that George Lucas did, I just want to die.

Let's go to Stephen, who's with us now, Stephen Kent.

Hey, Stephen.

Glenn, good morning.

Do you have any

insight on what's going to happen?

They're bringing Ray and Kylo together to create balance.

Is this going to be a preachy movie?

What's happening?

Well, Star Wars is always at its best when it's a little bit preachy.

I mean, it's never not had a message since it began.

But again, like what to expect.

The movies supposedly ended in 1983, and then they ended again in 2015.

And now here we are.

They're ending supposedly again in 2019.

We've been talking about this, you and I, since 2016.

I got to say, my anxiety is pretty high, and my expectations are just kind of all over the place.

So, do you think, who's directing this?

This is J.J.

Abrams again, who took over the Force Awakens when it was rebooted.

He did a good job.

He did.

He made people feel comfortable with this being a reboot of Star Wars or a continuation of that story.

I think it's a nice, safe pick that they did, and it's going to round it all down nicely.

All right.

So, this is not one of them that went through like three directors, right?

J.J.

Abrams has been on this the whole time.

It was originally slated to be given to Colin Trevaro, who directed the Jurassic Park sequels.

And it was taken away from him for reasons that are kind of unclear, but they've just written that off to creative differences, which means that he couldn't play ball with all the

high-budget expectations that came with that studio.

And

this is Disney-owned, right?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

This is Disney.

They're going to take us across the finish line here and try try to make this all make sense.

Not just these three movies, but all nine of them.

And you were asking about what to expect from this movie.

I think the only thing that we have to go off of is the voice of Emperor Palpatine that shows up in these trailers.

If you think about Star Wars and continuity, the only thing that stretches from episodes one all the way to nine is Senator, then Chancellor, then Emperor Palpatine and the actor Ian McDiermid.

So he's coming back for this final movie, and the big question is going to be how the heck does that happen because he was blown to pieces in Return of the Jedi.

Oh, I hope they do another thing where he floats through space like Leia.

Because that really worked well, I thought.

Steven, is that the worst thing you've ever seen?

They had the actress dies.

They have a way for her to die and they bring her back.

Yeah, but would you have wanted Leia to die by being stuck into a vortex in space?

Yes.

Yes, yes, I would have.

In fact, there's a vortex and I have several characters with the vortex with their name on it.

Yeah, yeah,

that was an odd choice, and I personally kind of fell out of my seat at that.

And I just always look away when that scene comes around in The Last Jedi because it's a little too much cheese.

Okay, so

they're mixing the two, the dark force and the light.

They're finding balance.

Is that what we think this is going to be where they're like, you know, not everything is bad?

Well, when I first came onto the blaze and talked to Pat and Stu in 2016 about the Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, that's where I was at, that they were going to find a balance between the light side and the dark side and kind of do away with this holy war between the Jedi and the Sith.

And then that came around to the Last Jedi.

Ryan Johnson basically snubbed that idea entirely and kept the status quo going.

I think all indicators are still pointing towards a complete disruption of the Jedi-Sith conflict and the light and dark paradigm.

And I think that's going to be pretty healthy for Star Wars going forward if we can sort of balance out the moral imperative of having a clear light and dark and good and evil.

That's the mix that they have to get right here.

So who is the Skywalker that's rising?

My opinion of this is that the Skywalker is the Force user.

So that the Skywalker is going to be sort of melded into a title for people who choose to walk in the ways of the Force, study the old ways, study the history, Luke Skywalker, Anakin, all those great heroes.

I think they're going to do away with these sort of religious titles that come with the Jedi and the Sith, and they're going to be just a new class of warrior, like samurais, skywalkers.

That's my personal theory.

The easier answer might just be that it's Kylo Wren because he's the only skywalker currently living.

He's currently fallen, and he could still stand back up and rise back to his family's legacy.

Tell me that you were

not

blown out of your shoes, shocked, when you heard that Disney did not make any baby Yodas available for Christmas.

That was pretty stunning.

It was really, really stunning.

But, you know, it kind of cuts against a couple different narratives about Disney.

Are they either after the money and chasing every single dollar they can get, or are they meticulous and protective of the brand?

It kind of threw a little bit of a wrench in everybody's opinions about Disney with that.

I think that they have a new mouse.

With baby Yoda, that thing is so cute.

It's making me watch the Mandalorian and actually continuing to give it a chance, even though the last few episodes have been like, okay, come on, let's pick it up here.

What's the story?

Yeah,

we're all united and stand with Baby Yoda.

It's been something our own household has enjoyed.

And it's pretty remarkable to see that actually happen pretty organically, where this sort of cute creature is put into Star Wars to make everybody, you know, kind of be able to enjoy a kid-friendly series that is otherwise pretty violent.

And it's being received incredibly well.

I mean, I don't think it is, it shows that George Lucas, the George Lucas impact or influence is gone.

Because this is the character that he always tried to find, and they have now found it.

Yeah, I suppose that is true.

I know the first bungle of cute creatures was with the Eloks and Return of the Jedi.

And they were horrible.

And

when you think about the first early divisions in fandom, fandom was always quite united around Star Wars four and five, that being the Empire Strikes Back.

The first big rift was Return of the Jedi and sort of the acute nature of the Ewoks and some of the narrative choices of that film.

And we've been reliving that horror show of incredibly divisive Star Wars movies ever since.

I have a couple theories about that myself.

Do you think maybe this is where the divide in America started?

The divide in America started

yeah and on endor

uh uh are you going to uh are you going to the conference uh this weekend for turning point

i am not no oh okay well i was hoping to to see you there but uh i guess not so well i'm sure you'll do a bang-up job oh i'm sure i will i'm sure i will what's your what do you have a uh have you done them this thing that everyone is doing with the ranking them in the you know all 10 movies in order of preference yeah you know i feel like i've I've done it every two years, and at this point, I'm like tired of throwing it up there.

But Return of the Jedi has always been my number one since we actually just discussed that.

And then Revenge of the Sith, Sith episode three as my number two.

Those are both incorrect, just to let you know.

I've never heard a correct answer when it comes to Star Wars.

And, you know, that's just kind of the fun generational nature of this saga.

Every group and cohort of generations have their own preferences when it comes to these movies because it is their Star Wars.

And that's kind of why we're all tearing each other's heads off perpetually with these movies.

It's a little bit beautiful.

It's also a little bit maddening.

So how do Millennials stand on the first three?

Yeah, yeah.

Episode one, two, and three.

Yeah.

Do they feel the same way?

Yeah,

elder millennials kind of fall in with Gen X with a lot of skepticism about the prequels and heavy critique.

What I've seen in the past couple of years has been an incredible,

not revisionist history, but sort of a fighting back by millennials about enjoying the first three Star Wars movies because they were kids when they watched it.

They didn't really have those blinders on about what is cheesy and what is bad acting.

They just watched it and it was Star Wars and it was cool.

So I've actually seen a huge swing back in favor of the prequels and a lot of people readdressing those movies with a little bit more favorable light.

And that's what's so funny because apparently George Lucas destroyed everyone's childhoods with those movies.

Oh, and now we're

talking about George Lucas.

Greta Thurnberg is talking to George Lucas when she said, You stole my childhood.

That's what she stole everything from me.

She's talking specifically about Phantom Menace.

That's what she's talking about.

Dare you.

Stephen Kent, thanks so much.

We'll talk to you again.

Stephen Kent,

spokesperson, Young Voices, and a host of Belway Banthas podcast.

The best of the Glen Beck Program.

Welcome to the Glen Beck program.

We have Lauren Chen, the host of Pseudo-Intellectual, the podcast.

And you're Lauren, you're a Canadian.

Welcome to Texas.

It's the real America.

It's colder than I thought it would be here, though.

Frankly, I'm a little bit disappointed.

I was hoping for some more.

Well, Dallas is different.

Dallas is,

you know, this is, I guess, the high elevations of Texas.

So it's a little bit colder.

And tomorrow it could be 90.

I'm leaving tomorrow.

That would make sense.

So it probably will be 90.

So first of all, tell me about the podcast, how the health is,

you know, of the numbers, et cetera, et cetera, because of YouTube.

I know a lot of your stuff is on YouTube.

You're a member of the Blaze TV, so you're part of our podcast family.

But

how are you affected by the purge and everything that's going on with Google and YouTube?

So for the purge, there was this, I think last week, just this new set of rules and policies regarding harassment that was released.

So far, as far as I know, they don't always tell you about these things, but we haven't had any videos taken down, which the same can't be said for other creators, but we've been okay for that so far.

But for us, the biggest thing with YouTube and Google has just been this ongoing challenge of trying to get our videos out there.

Previously, with YouTube, if you kind of tagged your videos properly, if people were interested, if engagement was good, YouTube's YouTube system would recommend you to potential viewers.

They watch, they subscribe, your podcast grows like that.

Or if you kind of can jump on the bandwagon topic that everyone's talking about, trending news, you can kind of grow your audience like that.

Not Not anymore.

That is not how that happens anymore, especially if you're in news commentary, especially if you're in conservative news commentary.

So what we've been finding is that really the only way we're still able to be growing, which we are, thank goodness, is through our audience sharing our videos.

People don't understand how important that is to share

and not just like, but share.

Because if you don't share, the algorithms are not, they're not doing anything for me or for Lauren or anybody really that is conservative.

It's they're not sharing.

I look at like Instagram.

I'm found always by

zero numbers outside of my subscribers.

Yeah.

And it doesn't even make it all to the subscribers.

Exactly.

No, and YouTube.

I don't know if this is politically motivated or just their system is not good, but subscribers will actually get unsubscribed from your videos.

My own mother has been unsubscribed from my channel several times.

So it's frustrating.

And she's telling you that she didn't do it?

Yeah, of course.

I'm hoping she did it.

But it's very, very frustrating.

That's why some of our videos will actually tell people: please share our videos.

Go to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, wherever you can, just, you know, or email it to people.

Even we have, we can see where our traffic is coming from.

For some videos, more people find us from being emailed the video from their friends than YouTube's actual

ridiculous.

Which is really bad.

But there are some conservatives that

want to force

YouTube or Google or whatever, control them,

give the government some oversight to it.

We're now having conservatives talk about porn and that porn should be regulated by the government, which is

incomprehensible to me as a conservative.

Well,

this is the debate that's been blowing up on social media.

I remember, I think it was last week, I just log on to Twitter, check my feed, and everyone's talking about porn.

I'm like, okay, what's I've clearly missed something?

So how this conversation started off was Matt Walsh, who's with the Daily Wire, wrote an article talking about how there's, I guess, renewed interest trying to do something about children having access to pornography.

Because I think there have been studies out.

The average age that a child first sees hardcore porn is, I think, 11 or something, like 11 years old.

And it's really shocking.

We're not just talking about maybe the 70s era center folds where it was just nudity.

This is porn.

Really, real porn.

My son found, saw his first porn, I think, when he was eight.

Wow.

And it really screwed him up.

Just like searching on the internet randomly.

Yeah, he was on, somebody had handed him his phone or something, and randomly this porn thing came up,

and he went.

to the babysitter because he didn't know what to do with mom and dad.

And he went to the babysitter and he was so upset and crying and just like,

I don't know what this was.

No, and that's not an exception.

This is very, very common and you don't even need to be looking at it.

With things like pop-ups, you could just be on what you think is a regular site and then you get a nap or something that's not so regular.

So with that in mind, I think everyone agrees children should not, that's not acceptable.

They shouldn't be exposed to that.

So people like Matt Walsh, who is somewhat more, you know, of the, I guess,

let's get it done.

Yeah, I didn't want to say that.

Well, yeah, your words, not mine.

So he's for just like, let's get rid of this.

This is not doing any good for anybody.

And his position was he wanted to ban it completely, right?

Yeah, well, he, that's insane.

He says he wants to ban it completely, but if you read his article, he kind of first started with

if there's a way that children can't do it, that's good, but he doesn't think it's possible.

He doesn't think it's possible.

There are other writers who have said, well, hang on, let's, and I'm kind of in the, I don't want to ban it, not because I think it's good, you should be looking at it, but it's like, okay, you're, if you're you're an adult and you're that's your decision to make.

But with when it comes to children, I do think we need to start having a conversation about what to do with this.

In the UK, they've, before I guess they're a bit ahead of us, they were having conversations about do we need government involvement in this.

They ended up having coming to a system where internet service providers actually have like a filter that's on the default where you can still opt out of.

I'm not sure exactly how that works, but it's sort of

an extra safeguard that's by the internet service providers, not parliament, to protect or just to make sure people don't accidentally see things that they don't want to be.

And Matt's a smart guy.

This is one of the things I really like about this debate as far as

kind of in the conservative media is that there's actually really smart people on both sides that

there's like an interesting divide there.

Like so many with these issues, like you're talking about, well, do you for impeachment or against impeachment?

And 99%

of conservatives are against it.

And, you know, all the left.

Like, that debate is somewhat boring to me.

Like, this is an interesting one because there's people that I find to be very interesting on a lot of different topics that go the opposite way

from me on this.

I think Ben Shapiro

kind of broke it down in kind of, are you a rights-based conservative or a common good conservative?

And I thought that was an interesting way of thinking about it.

Because there's a lot of common good conservatives, and common good is no different than a progressive or a socialist.

But even though there's always common good.

Well, I mean, there's definitely differences, I would say.

Well, no, no, but as far as you're just banning things or saying you know better than everyone else, and so you'll you'll control things from a top-down government.

That's that's a progressive mindset.

Makes me nervous for sure.

You don't know I think there are a lot of conservatives like Matt Walsh or and even Michael Knowles, again, with the Daily Wire, who are saying, we're not libertarians.

We are conservatives.

If we're, like, they don't have a problem with it.

But what I'm interested in this discussion for is the aspect of children.

Like I said, if you're an adult, you do you.

I would, you know, want to have a conversation with you if you were my friend or family member about the healthiness of that, but you should have the right to.

But when it comes to children, I think, you know, we don't allow.

children to go buy tobacco products.

We don't allow children to go buy alcohol.

We don't allow children to buy firearms, right?

It is strange when it comes to children, there's this almost, we're not okay with talking about it.

It's it's just we've taken for granted that this is what is going to happen.

Children will access this.

And it's like, well, hang on.

Can we at least maybe discuss this?

Is there something parents need to be doing more?

Should we be, should this be a tech-based conversation?

I just want us to be addressing this more because before we started looking into it, I had no idea.

And maybe this is because I'm, you know,

a little bit older than some of the kids who are coming into this.

Now, I was from the dial-up generation.

Internet was not a given, right?

It was kind of like,

do you need to call someone today?

Because I would like to send an email sort of thing.

It's very different now.

There are studies that have been done that show that I think it's the younger you are when you're first exposed to pornography, the more likely you are to slide into actual like

deviant upset, things like bestiality and things like that.

So people have called this a public health crisis.

And for a lot of people who are maybe struggling with addiction, I don't think that's,

I don't think that's

exaggeration.

There is no doubt.

Studies have been done on the brain to show that, A, when you're a kid, you are not able to handle this.

B, when you're an adult, pornography has the same

properties as heroin does.

It actually chemically affects your brain the same way heroin does.

It becomes addictive and destructive.

Now, not everybody, but

you know, for a good number of people, it does.

That doesn't mean that, you know, heroin we do ban, but alcohol, look how destructive that is in people's lives.

But that's my choice to drink and destroy my life or not.

When it comes to kids, there are technological ways, if we were serious, that we could give people the opt-out to make sure that doesn't happen.

It's clearly something we can do.

When it comes to conservative, I'm a conservative, but I'm a constitutionalist, and I don't take kindly to the limiting of any kind of speech, especially that kind of speech, which I abhor.

Well, that's actually its own conversation because within the porn debate, there's also people asking, is porn even free speech?

Right?

Does that count as freedom of expression the same way something like an unpopular opinion might count as freedom of expression?

And a lot of people will say, of course, porn is free speech.

But when you think about it, you know, you can go on the street corner and say whatever type of political views you want no matter how controversial you can't go on the street corner and

play any kind of video you want so there's

even with how our society functions there is clearly we are putting porn in a different category and then some people say well well what about sexual art how does that fit into free speech and it's like this is a conversation where i don't have all the answers i don't even know myself where do we draw that line because there are obscenity laws that have been ruled constitutional and i don't know where that line is right but that that is if it is out in public and that's why solve this by giving people a way to keep that away from unsuspecting people.

That's kind of you have to choose and go into it.

No tricks, you know, and you can opt out.

But you don't have to.

There's no other form of speech where there's a public versus private definition, right?

Because I have leftists tell me that all the time.

Well, I didn't consent to hear your hate speech.

And I'm like, whatever, it's freedom of expression.

You don't need to consent to hear me.

But I do agree with you when it comes to something like pornography.

There should be two-way consent involved for viewing.

But again, this is an area where that we are treating porn different than other forms of speech.

So I'm not saying people shouldn't be able to do it, but I think we do need to realize we've already put it in this other category.

And that disturbs me.

I'm more hyper-vigilant on it because.

I don't want any biting around the edges of any kind of speech or

silencing of anything

in this society now, because every step we take with an excuse, it gets easier and easier to say, well, this is damaging too, to hear Lauren Chen talk about these things, which were clearly not right.

That's harming children.

And I just, I'm sorry, but I believe in the slippery slope.

Lauren, thank you so much.

That's Lauren Chen.

You can find her pseudo-intellectual podcast, wherever you get your podcast.

You can follow her also on Twitter at the Lauren Chen and also on Blazetv.com.

Thank you, Lauren.

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