Best of the Program | Guest: Col. Carlyle 'Smitty' Harris | 12/11/19

Hello and welcome to the the podcast for today.

It's a Wednesday.

We got a good one for you.

I mean we go from

pigeons wearing cowboy hats out in the wild

not making that up.

Nobody knows how the hats are getting on them, but they're wearing little teeny miniature cowboy hats.

We go from that today to Time magazine pretty much debunking half of the testimony that happened in the house when they all said, No,

I told them.

Really?

Because Time Magazine has a blockbuster interview with one of the principals, and he says all those people that were testifying got it wrong.

And I have no problem with my memory.

I don't know what happened.

This is absolutely stunning.

Also, the man of the year is not just a person of the year, it's a kid of the year.

And we talk about that as well.

And the IG report, how devastating it is for the Obama administration, the DOJ, and how President Trump, because he's so good looking, so handsome,

has the best words, is the smartest guy around, knows how to do it.

If that man shows up and really does this trial in the Senate right,

I mean, who knows?

Lincoln?

Washington?

Teddy Roosevelt?

I mean, we'll have to carve his face on Mount Rushmore, and I'll explain why on today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Blandbeck program.

I want to give you some amazing news and ask you why you haven't heard this everywhere.

I want to read this story from Time magazine.

Time.com came out yesterday afternoon.

Since the start of the public impeachment hearings in Congress last month, Andrew Yermak, a top advisor to the president of the Ukraine, has heard his name come up again and again in witness testimony.

He took part in many of the events at the center of the impeachment inquiry.

I want you to listen to that.

His name has come up again and again.

In fact, his name is mentioned in the impeachment inquiry dozens of times.

He was at many of the events that were quoting at the center

of the impeachment inquiry.

And a 300-page report last week by the inquiry mentions Yermak by name dozens of times.

But in his first interview about those public hearings, Yermack has questioned the recollections of,

this is Time magazine, of crucial witnesses into the impeachment inquiry, into Donald Trump's alleged abuse of his office for political gain.

So the guy who is at the center

of the events that make the impeachment inquiry,

the guy who is quoted,

The guy who is, they say all of them said, oh, no, he was there.

He's now saying,

I don't think the witnesses remember this correctly.

Yermak told Time magazine in an interview on December 4th, listen, I want to tell you straight.

Of course, now, when I watch these shows on television, my name often comes up, and I see people there whom I recognize, whom I have met, and whom I know.

He says, referring to the witness testimony.

That is their personal opinion, especially the positions they expressed while under oath.

But I have my own truth.

I know what I know.

The most crucial point at which Yermak's recollection contradicts the testimony of the inquiry's witnesses relates to a meeting in Warsaw on September 1st, when Ukrainian President Zelensky met with Vice President Mike Pence.

Do you remember this?

The story is that they were meeting, and all of a sudden, Mike Pence just ended the meeting quickly, and they walked out.

And the ambassadors,

they all had to quarter Mr.

Yermach and say, I am sorry for that.

I don't know.

I mean, look, you just have to do what the president says, or you're not going to get any of this aid.

That's what the witnesses said.

This was the only time that we have anybody

saying quid pro quo.

Most crucial point is his recollection that contradicts the testimony of the inquiry's witnesses.

The meeting was part of an ongoing effort by the Zelensky administration to improve ties with the Trump administration.

One of the American diplomats who attended that meeting, Gordon Sondlan, the U.S.

ambassador to the European Union, testified before the inquiry last month that he, quote, pulled Yermak aside after the meeting and delivered an important message.

U.S.

aid to Ukraine would probably not resume until Zelensky's government announced two investigations that could implicate President Trump's political revivals.

Quote, I told Mr.

Yermak that I believed that the resumption of the U.S.

aid would likely not occur until Ukraine took some kind of action on the public statement that we had been discussing for many weeks, end quote.

That's the testimony.

Now let's see what Mr.

Yermak says.

This statement was allegedly intended to announce two investigations, one into the discredited claims that Ukraine helped Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Notice, this is not a friendly article to Donald Trump.

Notice they say the discredited claims that Ukraine helped Hillary Clinton's campaign, and another related to the work that Hunter Biden, the son of the presidential candidate Joe Biden, did for Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings.

Based on testimony from Sondlin and other witnesses, the final report from the House Intelligence Committee concluded last week that Sondlin made this offer of a quid pro quo clear to Yermak that day in Warsaw.

Following, quoting, following that meeting, Ambassador Sondlin pulled aside President Zelensky's advisor, Mr.

Yermak, to explain that the hold on security assistance was conditioned on public announcement of the burism of Biden and 2016 election interference investigations, quoting the report.

Yermak, however, according to Time Magazine, disputes this.

Quote, Gordon and I, the ambassador from the U.S., were never alone together.

He said when Time magazine asked about the Warsaw meeting, quote, we bumped into each other in the hallway next to the escalator as I was walking out.

He recalls that several members of the American and Ukrainian delegation were also nearby, as well as bodyguards and hotel staff, though he was not sure whether any of them heard his brief conversation with Sonlin.

And I remember everything,

quoting Yermak, and I remember everything.

Everything is fine with my memory.

We talked about how well the meeting went.

And that's all we talked about, Yermak says,

Still, help me out here.

That's kind of a big deal, don't you?

I think so, yeah.

I mean, they even say these comments cast doubt on an important moment in the impeachment inquiry's reconstruction of events, specifically the only known point at which an American official directly tells the Ukrainians about the link between U.S.

aid and the announcement of specific

investigations.

They have said the whole time, we didn't know this.

They didn't say that this was tied together.

And Sonlin, remember, changed his testimony.

He changed his testimony.

And that's when he said, okay, I did tell Yermack this.

And that was the only thing that the impeachment inquiry could hang their hat on as someone who was firsthand doing it.

It was Sondland.

Now Yermack says, and I think this is really important.

And I remember everything.

Everything is fine with my memory.

We talked about how well the meeting went, and that's all we talked about.

⁇ End quote.

In a statement, Sonlin's lawyer said Ambassador Sondlin stands by his prior testimony, I'm not sure which one that was, and will not comment further.

In his initial testimony to the impeachment inquiry in October, Sondlin said he never knew the U.S.

aid in Ukraine was conditional on the investigations that Trump wanted.

But the following month, Sondlin amended his testimony with a sworn statement in which he described the conversation with Yermack in Warsaw.

Oh, now I recall speaking individually with Mr.

Yermack, where I said the resumption of aid would likely not occur, and we had been discussing that for many weeks.

So was he lying the first time, or was he lying the second time?

And this is not a rhetorical question now.

This is perjury.

Because the guy who he said he talked to says there's nothing wrong with my memory.

I never had that conversation.

Well, one of them's lying.

I mean, it could also be the guy from Ukraine,

undoubtedly.

And, you know,

there's an argument, and they make it in this story, that it makes sense.

You know, they're still dependent on the U.S.

for

funding.

I mean, the same thing that would have made them do this in the first place, which was to please Trump and to get the funding, could make them do this this time.

So let me say, however, we don't have evidence of that.

And it certainly brings up a massive question.

And, you know, if let's just say you came up with this idea to impeach a president and actually did an investigation and did a legitimate inquiry instead of the crap that they did the last couple of weeks, you'd have to have this, they'd be able to sort this out.

Instead, they're just jumping to it and assuming the worst in every single circumstance to get their political answer.

So, I thought about that.

I thought, okay, well, so what they're doing is they're relying on aid, blah, blah, blah.

We're just a few months away from an election.

Okay.

If you thought that Donald Trump was going to be impeached and removed from office,

you would shut your mouth.

You would not start taking this case apart.

You just shut your mouth because I need aid.

So best case scenario is he's making this up because he's seen what the case is and sees this case is going nowhere.

He's not going anywhere.

And beyond that, the Democrats are so weak, they will not win in the next election.

Otherwise, you just shut your mouth until someone asks you in an authoritarian.

Yeah, why do an interview with Time magazine about it?

Why do it?

Why do it?

You are undermining the Democrats.

Yeah, I mean,

and you just don't do that unless you know who's going to win.

Or you think you know.

Yeah.

I mean, we did see this with some of these officials who said things on both sides of it.

But I mean, this is a this is pretty, pretty damning.

I mean, like, you, how do you go through an impeachment inquiry without knowing this?

How has this come out after you've issued articles of impeachment?

Think of how pathetic that is.

This is a guy in the center of the story, the one, as they point out in Time, the one point of contact that would actually illustrate that there was a quid pro quo for financial aid.

And they have they even talked to the guy?

And they didn't even talk to him.

And look, here's your Mac.

Now, listen to this.

When Time asked him whether he ever felt there was a connection between U.S.

military aid and the request for investigations, Yermack was adamant.

We never had that feeling, he said.

We had a clear understanding that the aid

has been frozen.

We honestly said, okay, that's bad.

What's going on here?

We were told they were going to figure it out.

And after a certain amount of time, the aid was unfrozen.

We did not have the feeling that this aid was connected at all to any one specific

issue.

I think that's totally reasonable and goes completely with everything

except what Sondlin said

as he changed his testimony.

It goes completely with everything that we hear from everyone, including Sondlon, until he updated a month later his own testimony to say, oh, I.

Oh, yeah, I did do that.

Now, they're saying that it's absolutely reasonable that Sonlin, I mean, that Yermak would say this

because of,

you know, politics.

They need America.

But you don't do that unless you think they're not going to impeach this president and remove him from office, and he's not going to lose the next election.

So if you take the Democratic point of view on this,

it makes no sense unless the president's going to steamroll the Democrats.

You just stay quiet.

Don't make it any worse for yourself.

You know, just play.

We didn't say anything.

So if President Trump is removed from office or the next president comes in, it's a Democrat, you can say, we didn't pick sides on this.

We could have, but we didn't.

We didn't pick sides.

They're picking sides.

This is Zelensky.

This is his number two two guy.

So this is the president of Ukraine picking sides.

That should tell you something.

That should tell you something.

Now,

you can accept that as, well,

Ukrainians are just doing this for their own personal gain because they have pressure points.

Why is it unreasonable to look at Sonlin and say, well, he testified the exact opposite way, and then he suddenly remembered something.

What was his pressure point?

What happened in that month in between?

Was there anything, any calculation, or did he just wake up one morning and go, oh, you know what?

I completely forgot.

That doesn't sound reasonable to me.

The best of the Glenbeck 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.

Hello.

Welcome to the program where we're going to have an intellectual discussion about who the person of the year

is and all of the glory that this individual brings.

Now, person of the year.

Time magazine looked at everyone.

They, according to the BBC,

looked at people who made a real impact in people's lives.

And when I ask you that, think of this right now: who made a real impact in your life?

Who was it?

Globally, who changed your life this year?

Who made the impact that you were this?

If this year had to be summed up, it would be summed up with this name.

Who would it be?

Who would it be?

Now, I can't honestly think of anybody except Jesus and my family that truly impacted my life.

They truly impacted my life.

Now you go out of that, and I think about the business people who I work with.

Stu, he's made my life a living hell this year.

But I've impacted your life.

But you impacted it like a car wreck, like a T-bone car wreck.

Right, that would impact your life.

It would impact.

Right.

So you look at, but you have to go

to the global scale or at least to the national scale.

Who really impacted your life?

Who sums up this year?

Oh, I think it's clear.

I mean, I think it's

clear.

Go ahead.

We know what a problem climate change is, but it's the massive

biggest moral challenge and scientific challenge of our time.

And if you don't think so, how dare you?

Greta Thunberg is our time personality.

As we were all discussing climate change and how we're all all going to die, miserable, horrible deaths from either drowning or a fiery death of some sort, starvation or too much food, not enough CO2, too much CO2, all those things are in our future in about nine years now.

According to Dame

Emma Thompson, she said just last weekend, as we all know, your house pet has a lot of protein in it, and you should remember that because soon, very soon, perhaps, we will all be forced to eat our pets.

That's just how bad things are going to get.

And this, of course, is the BBC.

I mean, is this.

Think about how ridiculous this is.

And I know every year we have to do the same.

I feel like we do the same segment, right?

There's always some dumb person they've named Time Person of the year, and I don't know why we give any attention to it.

All that being said,

Greta Thunberg, okay,

what has she done?

She came out and she complained about the climate.

Okay, has she solved the climate?

No.

What has she done?

She's alerted people that there's a problem with the climate, and she's 16 years old.

She screamed at all of us and said how bad we are because we've taken this world.

Which, by the way, I don't know if she noticed this.

If she grew up in previous generations, her life's a hell of a lot better at 16 years old than it was for every previous generation before her.

She could have grown up in

just beautiful, beautiful peace and comfort in the World War II generation.

Oh, that was a glory time.

Right where she was there,

maybe she could have been rounded up

by a government official because she was saying controversial things against the government.

Here she is, a 16-year-old who reads the World The Riot Act, blames us for stealing her future.

This is a person who we have,

whose parents and who the media has made her into.

a person who, I mean, think, listen to this statement.

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood.

Say it like her, though.

Say it like her.

No, no, no.

You're the only one.

You're the only one that can even get close to her.

Yeah, I know.

Do we have how dare you?

How dare you?

Yeah.

We'll see if we can find it.

Stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.

Think about that, though.

Like, this person believes that a 0.9-degree temperature rise over 100 years destroyed her childhood.

We've ripped away any positivity she can think of in her entire life.

You know who stole her?

Because of less than one degree Celsius.

Do you know who stole her future?

Her parents.

Her parents stole her future.

It's not her future.

Her childhood.

Stole her childhood.

That's when you look at your child when they're 10 years old and they're like, Mom, dad, I cannot slave.

Yeah.

And you're like, guys, we're going to make it.

It's all right.

We're going to make it.

I know because my kids at one point watched a few of my shows and went,

I got it.

And I said to them, we're going to make it.

It's fine.

We're going to make it.

It's going to be tough.

Come on, let's go to Auschwitz.

I'll show you how tough it's going to get, but we're going to make it.

My kids are, my kids are adjusted.

My kids are fine.

My kids don't think that I stole their childhood or that anybody stole their childhood.

You could say, well, you've really impacted my future because we're not going to have anything.

Think of what she's saying.

You stole my childhood.

I mean, that's just sad.

It was legitimately sad.

I mean, she's 16 years old, you know, and she's been so indoctrinated that she believes this craziness to the point of like she's, she won't take a flight.

across the ocean to talk about it.

She takes a boat in which they have to fly the captain of the boat across the ocean to take her back on the boat.

Which doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't make any sense.

She's not making any difference.

She,

let me say this clearly, has made no difference.

There is not one thing that is different today than was different that was happening yesterday.

She has not saved any emissions.

She has not done anything to do this, to affect this problem in any measurable way.

And we give her person of the year because what?

She's yelling at adults about the thing that she's complaining about

like just from the perspective of being a parent like this is the behavior you want to encourage in children just like i just said just the media you want to encourage you want to encourage kids to be so self-absorbed and so self-important that they are they are looking at all adults at 16 years old and saying get out of my way yeah and i got news for you everybody on the left who's saying no she wants something important for the climate.

She's doing a great thing.

This is a wonderful thing.

First of all, encouraging activism as an end is not a positive.

This is something that's happened over the past, I would say, 20 to 30 years where we started rocking the vote.

And, oh, look, look at what our kids are doing.

They're volunteering for X cause or Y cause.

That's not an end.

If they're volunteering for something beneficial and great, well, that might be an end.

But we've come to this point where we're just praising activism as a thing.

And the thing she's suggesting in the speech where everyone remembers how, how dare you?

Everyone remembers that where she just yelled at the adults.

That's all there was.

Everything else was common sense.

What she's suggesting are things that are far more extreme than Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.

She, when, you know, everyone claps for her in the speech.

They're yelling at them.

She is yelling at the people in the room, the leaders who haven't been able to get these things done.

She's talking about, no, think of how dramatic this is, Glenn.

This is not a normal proposal that like a left-leaning left-leaning candidate would bring up.

She's talking about in 10 years,

a 50% reduction in emissions.

50% in 10 years.

That's like AOC's fever dream.

And you know what she says about the 50% reduction in 10 years?

How dare you?

She says, how dare you?

How dare you?

She says, she says,

the popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius and the risk of getting setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

50% may be acceptable to you, but those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution, or the aspects of equity and climate justice.

They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of dollars and tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

How dare you?

How dare you?

Thank you.

But she's saying that thing that I just was talking about as AOC's fever dream is so unacceptable.

That's what motivated her to say, how dare you.

She's not talking about...

This is a person who has lost all ability to keep things in perspective, very common among 16-year-olds.

And she's being rewarded for it in dramatic fashion as becoming one of the most

popular people.

And, you know, again, I think these awards should go to people who have accomplished things.

She has talked about the climate.

Talking about the climate does nothing for the climate.

How dare you!

This is one of those things where you're getting,

it is today.

If you've just

made

a video that went viral, you haven't created anything.

Right.

You know, you haven't really created anything.

No.

And you're just becoming famous because you're the person that was seen on this saying that.

Fame is not a goal.

Getting the word out is not a goal.

If it was a goal of getting the word out, I'd be one happy man all the time.

Because I've gotten the word out.

On a lot of things.

On a lot of things.

That's not the goal.

The goal is to make a case to where it changes people's vision and hearts.

And quite honestly, I think she's done the opposite.

Anybody who thought, well, you know, I want to be reasonable, you listen to her.

And you realize.

And you're like, I don't want my child to be like that.

I've got to be a better parent and make sure that I keep my kids from seeing that anger.

This is everything that they said the Tea Party was doing to their kids.

Scaring them to death.

They're losing their childhood and they're indoctrinating them.

That's what Greta is a result of.

How dare you?

Thank you very much.

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.

Ultimate Disruptor will be the, it is possible to be the person of the year next year for 2020, and that will be

Donald Trump.

If,

if

he does the impeachment trial in the Senate right, and if he does what he does best and gets people to watch,

he will disrupt the Justice Department, the DOJ,

intelligence community.

He will destroy the credibility of the DNC.

It is all happening in January if they do it right.

And he will be the ultimate disruptor of the year, possibly the disruptor of the last 100 years.

And there's been a lot lot of disruption, but this one could give your country back to you.

Greta is on the phone?

Hello, Greta.

Hello.

Hi.

Hi.

How dare you?

I didn't mean to make you hold.

How dare you make me wait?

I didn't.

I'm sorry.

I'll be watching you, Mr.

Beck.

This is all wrong.

I shouldn't be on this phone.

I should be back at school on the other side of the ocean.

You really should, but you're Time Magazine Person of the Year.

All of you have come for me and my generation.

How dare you?

How dare you?

I woke up this morning

and I specifically requested

birthday cake, mini muffins, and I was supplied with banana nut.

Banana nut.

How dare you?

Okay, well, I...

When I woke up this morning,

my mom...

She had put out my claws and laid them out for me today.

And she laid out my plain gray sweater.

Mm-hmm.

When I specifically requested my other plain gray sweater

for behavior.

Yeah, well, has it wrecked your childhood?

I mean, let's have some perspective here.

It has wrecked my childhood.

It has ruined my life.

It has destroyed all human existence.

Right, I don't think it...

I don't think it...

I had chores.

I had chores to do today.

Chores.

Chores.

Chores.

Chores.

I had chores to do.

Chores, okay.

And I was required to do them, but I did not want to do them.

I wanted to yell at parents about the climate.

And I was supposed to make my bed.

And I was supposed to clean my room.

How dare you?

I asked for help, and mom said no.

And I said I want an open

looper will help me.

How dare you give me the operopa?

We've got to run.

Thank you so much, Greta.

I appreciate it.

Greta Thurnberg, who is, of course, the person of the year here on the Limbbeck

Limbeck program.

So the most Googled things in America.

Number one, what do you think we Googled the most?

Most Googled in the entire country.

In the entire country for the year.

Well, it's obviously a Kardashian.

Which one?

Probably.

Nope.

Nope.

I was going to break it down in that way.

No, I don't know.

What is it?

Disney Plus.

Okay.

Yeah, a a lot of hype.

Amazing, though.

Disney is going through, I mean, they are the first company to ever have a $10 billion

year on just 10 movies.

Each, right?

No, it's so six movies have already gone to a billion dollars.

Right.

It does not include Frozen 2, which is, if it hasn't already hit a billion dollars, and it does not include Star Wars, which obviously is going to hit a billion.

So there are going to be over 10 billion for the year.

And that's just in their movies.

And we should point out the only movie I think in the top top nine movies of the year that isn't theirs is Spider-Man.

And that one is kind of theirs.

It's partially theirs.

They own, there's like

an agreement with Sony, who actually distributed it.

But they actually have part of that piece, too.

I mean, they are completely dominating.

They are completely remaking Epcot.

Completely remaking it.

Really?

Yeah.

Completely remaking it.

It's going to be

a theme park with rides and everything else.

And they're just blowing it up.

As a Disney nerd, how do you feel about that?

Oh, I'm thrilled with it.

It's been Yesterday Ville for a long time.

Because Tomorrowland was like 1985.

Yeah.

And Epcot, I mean, Walt Disney said, you know, it should always be in an ever-state of change.

And always ahead of time.

And always ahead.

And they have missed that mark, you know, back when they opened the doors in 1980.

Maybe they'll get it.

Maybe they'll get it now.

But anyway, so Disney Plus was the number one.

Number 10 on what is,

what is.

Number 10 is what is a Mandalorian?

Wow.

And that just happened.

Star Wars.

Right.

Disney Plus 3.

Right.

So think about all the things we asked, what is

over the year.

In the last month, there's been enough people saying, what is a Mandalorian that it has put it on its top 10.

And the number one baby search is Baby Yoda.

Number one.

Holy crap.

Yeah.

They are just

dominating everything.

I mean, there was a time, not all that long ago, that Disney really kind of seemed like they were on the downswing.

And, you know, it didn't seem like...

I remember when I was 19 years old and I couldn't afford it, but I remember reading about Disney being on the outs and Michael Eisner was rumored to be coming in and their stock was just tanking.

And I wanted to buy one share of stock.

And it was like $10 or something like that.

I just wanted to buy one share because that's all I could afford.

You were a a cool kid, huh?

Oh, I was so popular.

Yeah, I thought so.

So popular.

I'm 19, and I'm dreaming about buying one share of Disney stock.

Could there be a bigger loser sentence than that?

Especially in the days when it was a loser.

It wasn't like it was like Apple.

You know, it's going, no, I'm telling you, it's going to take off.

This was, everyone was saying, it's over.

And I'm like, no way.

What would it be worth, though?

Have you done the calculations?

No, let me do it.

No, I don't want to do that.

It'll be good.

I think it'll be good for the show.

No, it will be very good.

It will be very bad.

It'll just be another another long list.

It's going to be fine.

All right.

Number two on the list of what we Googled, Cameron Boyce.

That's

the guy who died, what, July 6th.

Then Nipsey Hussle.

That was another one that was shot and killed.

Then Hurricane Dorian.

Then Antonio Brown, the NFL player with the rape

accusation, then Luke Perry, who died.

I mean, we are just, we're morbid.

When we're looking for news, we're looking for who died today.

Who died and why should I care?

Then it was Avengers Endgame, Game of Thrones, the new iPhone 11, and then Jussie Smollett was number 10 of the big things that we googled.

I think it's interesting also,

they looked at different things

like

trips.

The number one thing that people were looking into

on going places

is, shoot, what did I just say?

I can't find this particular page.

Yeah, the Maldives,

which

no need to Google.

No need to Google.

The Maldives, my wife has wanted to go to the Maldives forever.

And she just likes the sun and everything else.

I don't even know where the Maldives are.

And so I Googled them.

Where are the Maldives?

What are the Maldives?

And it's beautiful.

And then I googled how much is the ticket to go there for airlines.

It takes you 36 from Dallas.

It takes you 36

hours to fly there.

No place, the moon is not worth 36 hours in a plane.

36 hours.

And then you got to come back.

I mean, if you're moving there, you're like, oh, well, I'm moving to the Maldives.

And so, okay, maybe you spend 36 hours, but to visit for a week, 36 hours.

And because I was looking around Christmas time, no, this is a few months ago, the

coach ticket was, I think, $24,000.

And first class was like $56,000.

And I'm like, who's going there?

Who's taking 36 hours and 24 grand to sit next to the toilet

and go into the Maldives?

I'm so relaxed.

I'd be freaked out the whole time.

I've got to spend 36 hours next to the toilet and coach in just a few days.

I'd be too stressed out.

So don't Google it.

You don't want to go.

That seems like a really long time.

Unless you're going for like, what, a month?

I mean, what was the appropriate

seriously though?

But what would it feel like?

You're going coach, no legroom,

36 hours

between two big fat people.

I'm one of them.

And you're sitting there and you're like,

for the last few days of the vacation, I'd be like, I don't want to go back.

Not because it's so beautiful here.

I don't want to get on that plane again.

Yeah, I don't want to go.

I don't want to go.

I don't want to go.

That's where drugs come in.

You drug yourself heavily for the flight.

And maybe you take enough that it's questionable whether you wake up or not on the other side.

That's about how much you should take.

Yeah, if you could put me down, you could freeze me or do whatever you have to do to get me to Mars.

Okay, I'm okay with that.

I don't think they're freezing people to get to Mars, by the way.

By the way, we never talked about the Mars thing that came out earlier this week, where you can't have,

if you decide, you know, hey, Elon, I'm going to go.

I know you've been begging, but I'm going to go.

And I'm going to live on Mars.

If you live on Mars, and we don't know how much time this will take,

but at least...

the next generation, so if you have children on Mars, those kids will be Martians and they will not be humanoids.

They will not be, I should say it this way, they will not be earthlings.

And so you will be having relations with

another species,

something,

an alien, an alien.

And they say now that

the people that will be coming back and forth from Mars, If you find a hot Martian and you're like,

I mean, it's, hey, what happens on Mars stays on Mars.

They say you can't do it because it might kill you.

I don't know.

A,

there's so many questions I have.

A, how do they know that?

B, why would they want to know that?

C, what is the reason?

Any questions you would have to ask?

You're sending humans into space for the rest of their life.

Can I just, I got a question.

How's sex work up there?

I mean, that's one of the obvious questions.

How do they know that you're going to die because did you see the movie for the, what was it, for your stars or I'm your star or whatever that one was.

That sounds great.

The way you see that.

Where that kid was born on Mars and then he had to come back for some surgery or something.

Remember?

And he could only stay on.

That's how they know.

They saw it in a movie.

Telling you.

I mean, it sounds riveting.

No, it's because you, because of

mutations, basically.

Yeah.

There'll be mutations in your DNA just so you will be more,

you will adapt.

And so you'll adapt to the gravity, you'll adapt to everything.

So your body will work differently.

And so you won't have the strength to be able to live on Earth because

your whole system will be made for a different atmosphere and a different

gravity.

No, I mean, I guess it's something to be concerned about because we're right around the corner.

I mean, we'll be there any day.

So we better feel

there by the time 2030.

2030?

10 years?

How long does it take to go to Mars?

Oh,

sure.

Should we say

we'll launch by 2030?

People towards Mars.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Elon Musk says 2024.

Yeah.

And he says it might even be earlier than that.

Think of that.

He could probably.

That'll be.

Think of that.

That would happen then in the next Trump presidency.

She, if he had another term.

If he has another term,

sending a group of people to Mars will happen

in that term.

I mean, Elon Musk has also told us Tesla was going to be profitable.

So, I mean, he's not always reliable.

Did you see his court case?

How did he get out of that one?

Well, it was an offhanded comment on Twitter.

You're going to get, call the guy a pedo guy.

Who knows?

You know, I mean, it seems like a, I don't, you can't sue everybody for every insult you get on Twitter.

Let's not be ridiculous here.

By the way, six to eight months to Mars, and you would have made 280 times your money, which is nice, but also is not going to change your life.

$280.

With a $10 investment.

Is that with the split?

That's with all the dividends and everything.

Oh, that's no big deal.

Well, I mean, it's a nice amount.

If you put $1,000 in, it would have been really nice.

I probably would have put maybe $200 into it.

Okay, well, that would have been pretty nice.

Would have been pretty nice.

Because $100 would be what,

$28,000?

Shut up.

$28,000.

Shut up.

So you're talking about $50,000.

Shut up.

I don't know why you're yelling at me.

How do you do that?

Because shut up.

Here, there's a new t-shirt available at Glenbeck.com or in the Blaze shop, and it's right here.

Just shut up.

This is the best of a Glenbeck program.

Like listening to this podcast?

If you're not a subscriber, become one now on iTunes.

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It was April 4th, 1965, when Colonel Carlisle Smitty Harris's plane was shot down over Vietnam.

He was captured and sent to a POW camp for eight years, years, 2,871 days, he was held in one of the most notorious

prisoner camps of any war, the Hanoi Hilton.

He endured torture and abuse.

He was confined in horrible conditions, and yet, somehow or another, he managed to find a way to survive and give others hope.

Smitty is on the phone with us now.

Hi, Smitty.

How are you?

I'm just fine.

How are you?

I am great, sir.

I'm interested for you to lay out the story that is in your new book called Tap Code.

Before we get to what the Tap Code is, tell us the conditions.

I mean, what were you?

How old were you when you first went down in 1965?

I was 36.

You were 36 years old, and you go down.

Your life, you were married to your wife, Louise.

You have children?

yes you had children we had two daughters and she was to deliver our third child in about a month after i was shot down oh my gosh so you crash how long before you were captured

it was almost immediately uh

unfortunately when my chute opened at fairly low altitude i was right over a vietnam village and was only able to

slip the chute slightly to land just outside the village.

And there were people looking up at the sky and saw me.

I was overcome by

people there, some with guns, most with bows and sticks, but I was captured immediately.

And did you have any idea what was in store for you at all?

I knew I was going to be in North Vietnam for quite a long time.

I

would not have thought eight years, but at any rate, I knew I was going to be confined, and

I knew little beyond that.

So when you get there, it's now called the Hanoi Hilton.

And it was...

Tell us about what life was like for everybody at the Hanoi Hilton.

Well, we lived, there were several parts of the Hanoi Hilton, and

they were separated enough that we did not have good communication between groups.

And the North Vietnamese did not let us communicate even with people in the next cell.

And they tried to

use everything, including torture, to keep us from communicating.

We were mostly held at first in solitary confinement.

And then as the

more shoot downs were brought in i think due to pressure of numbers we had a cellmate

sometimes

and uh

the food was awful uh well it was meager

we lost about 20 percent of our normal weight in the first three or four months that we were there.

Fed twice a day of water, soup, and some rice or sometimes bread.

And what was your cell?

How big was the cell?

The cell was

about seven feet by seven feet and there were concrete bunks on either side with a narrow aisle in between.

Sometimes heavy wooden planks.

were used as the beds.

And the only

thing in the cell besides us were some heavy stocks at the end of the beds

uh to hold our ankles and also uh a bucket and that was it

and smitty we know what they did to john mccain i mean they pulled his arms out of his sockets and uh I mean, the torture that you guys went through is

horrendous.

What did you what were they trying to to get out of you?

Well, initially, they were trying to get military information like the capabilities of our aircraft, targets, organization,

anything that would help them from a military viewpoint.

But after,

you know, a few months, they found that

they had exhausted their efforts to get that kind of information because we would not cooperate with them at all.

We'd We'd give them name, rank,

service, summer, and date of birth and were punished accordingly.

But they didn't get any good military information.

So then they tried to indoctrinate us by telling us the history of Vietnam and everything that was wrong with the United States and then

get us to write some statement that was favorable to the North Vietnamese.

And if you were unsuccessful.

in that.

If you were alone and you didn't have anybody to talk to,

how is it that that didn't work to some degree on somebody?

Well, it did.

At first,

we had no communication between different parts of the Hanoi Hilton.

And some of the guys were told that everyone else was cooperating.

Why didn't they?

And that, you know, using one POWW against the other.

But as soon as we got communication, we cleared that all up and started working as a military unit.

And so you did it as individuals.

And that communication was tap code.

And you created this.

And

what was it?

How did it work?

Well,

really, I did not create it.

I had learned it

before I went over to Okinawa, to my duty station there.

And

when I was shot down,

it was not

any of the services.

So I

guess I was the only POW that knew the tap code.

And is it like S is it like Morris code?

Well, no, it was a five by five matrix of the alphabet.

We left out the letter K.

And

the

first line was ABCDE, the second F-G-H-I-J,

and the third, LMNOP, and so on.

So you would tap

the first column was A-F-L-P-V,

and you would tap one of those letters

just by tapping identify it, and then pause, and then over to the letter that you wanted to send.

For instance,

an L would be A

tap, tap, tap, tap.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, no, that's all right.

I think I get it.

I think I get it.

So

did you, you began to communicate with each other, and how did that change things?

Well,

it was

a moraster for one.

Misery loves Company.

But the biggest thing was that we were able to communicate what was going on,

what they were trying to do to each of us, and we could find ways to try to counter what they were

attempting to learn from us.

And we all,

being military,

with any communication group, no matter how small or how large that group group might be, we would find out who was a senior ranking

POW in that group.

And

he would make decisions for us.

We felt comfortable with that because,

for instance, if we would discuss what was the best answer to some of their

questions, and

there would be several approaches, but he would say,

we are going to respond this way, and everybody's going to be consistent.

And

it really helped us

avoid giving the North Vietnamese any advantage whatsoever.

Do you know who Hugh Stafford is?

Commander of the U.S.

Navy, Hugh Stafford?

You remember him?

I know the name.

Okay.

I was given by his family all of his records from his time there.

And it was,

I've never read anything, I've never read anything like it.

And part of the things that he said was,

towards the end, I'm afraid of rescue, and I'm afraid of going home because I'm afraid of how I'll react because I know people had to move on with their lives.

They don't know if I'm alive or dead.

And I'm still where I was when I was shot down and went through all of this, but everything has changed when I get home, I'm sure.

Were you worried about that with Louise and the children and without any communication?

I was not worried at all.

Louise and I had a, I'm going to say a perfect union, and we trusted each other and knew each other.

And I also knew that Louise was a very strong person.

who could take care of our finances, our children, and make decisions for our family.

And I knew that when I came home, I would walk through the door and it would be as if I'd walked around the block.

And did she know the whole time?

I know she sent 100 packages over.

You only got two, but so she knew you were there and alive.

Yes, she found out in August, I was shot down in April, that I actually was alive as a POW there.

But she believed from the very beginning

that even though

my squadron mates have seen my airplane go down in a ball of fire and did not see me eject.

Smithy, my best to Louise.

Thank you for sharing some of this.

This book is epic.

It's the epic survival tale of the Vietnam POW and the secret code that changed everything.

And it really goes between his story and Louise.

You really have to hear Louise's story as well because she played a big role for all of those whose husbands were missing.

And these two together are amazing.

It's called Tap Code, a true story, Tap Code.

It's available everywhere.

It would make a great Christmas gift for people.

Smitty, thank you so much, and my best to Louise.

God bless.

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