Best of the Program | Guests: Blake J. Harris & Matthew Charles | 4/10/19

I have to tell you, today's podcast, Stu and I are both exhausted.

It is

a whirlwind of a podcast.

I recommend you listen to the whole darn thing.

We start with a border, George Soros, Chicago, what it's really all about.

That's amazing.

Then we roll into Blake Harris.

This guy is a liberal, a journalist, a really respected writer, wrote one of the books of the year a few years ago.

Now can't get arrested.

Now no one will talk to him because he exposes this amazing story about Facebook, Zuckerberg, and the guy who invented Oculus Rift.

It's an amazing rags to riches American dream story that is crushed.

Why?

Because the guy liked Donald Trump.

Unbelievable story and pulling the covers back on

Facebook and the mainstream media like crazy.

Let me give you a couple quick other things.

We have the Biden bracket.com situation.

We're in the eerie eight right now.

We may, by the time you hear this, be in the frightening four.

The bottom line is: go vote for the most creepy Joe Biden photo possible.

Do that today.

Tomorrow night is the big Joe Biden show.

You got to sign up at Blazetv.com/slash Glenn.

Use the promo code Glenn to get access to that.

Actually, we're not sure exactly how it's going to happen, but there's two parts to it now.

It's been growing in size because there's just so much meat on this bone when it comes to Joe Biden's corruption.

We're going to get to that tomorrow.

And if you want to see the background of the border with all of it laid out, with magnets on the chalkboard, go to glenbeck.com.

There's a free YouTube link to the entire show from last night.

You really need to see it.

Yeah, and please pass it on to your friends.

We end the podcast with Matthew Charles.

He was the guy the president introduced at the State of the Union, the guy who had been in prison for 21 years.

They release, and then two years later, they're like, oh, whoops, that was a mistake.

You got to go back to prison for 10 years.

Amazing story, and a really good guy.

That

and all the rest of it on today's podcast.

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

This is crazy.

You know, the house that I sold in Connecticut, I bought when I sold it.

We had made some bit of a profit on it.

We sold it after the crash.

It's now worth less than half.

Well, I mean, you know, the easier way to get homes at cheap prices is just steal a title.

That's the best way to do it.

If you just kind of go in there, you steal the title.

And 25 bathrooms, $2.5 million.

Yeah, but you could have got that.

You don't need $2.5 million.

You can do it for like $20.

You get a fake notary, stamp that thing on there.

You transfer the title.

It's really easy to do.

You can do it in like, you know, a couple of hours.

And then you own the home, you just borrow against the equity or whatever, and you're living a high life.

That's the way it goes.

Okay, all right, all right.

I mean, as long as it's legal.

Oh, I didn't say it was legal.

Home title lock will stop people from doing this to your house.

Home title lock, they're the only people that are standing in the way from stumming, stealing your title.

It's incredibly easy.

I don't think it's $20.

I do think it's $40.

So, I mean, like, that makes a difference.

Get the $100 search for free.

Make sure this hasn't happened already.

And sign up now.

Get protection for your home title with home title lock.

Hey, I want to talk to you a little bit about Simply Safe.

You know, helms are burglarized all the time.

So last night on TV, and we're going to try to make this episode available on YouTube sometime during the show today

because I want everybody to see it because you have to understand what's happening.

And I would so appreciate

if you would alert the people people in Congress that you trust, have them send them this episode so they can watch it,

and

alert them to what's really going on.

Last night, I was talking about the president.

He is getting to a point now where he's willing to do whatever it takes to secure the border.

But we're looking at the wrong place.

We're looking at the border as the problem.

That is not the problem.

And let me explain.

There were two chalkboards that I have done when I was at Fox, and they were both very, very important, and they still stand the test of time because one of them has just finished being

true.

Everything that I put on there

was a prediction, and it's all now complete.

And it's a really important chalkboard.

So let me go through two of them.

Here's what I said 10 years ago: that George Soros was building a shadow government.

Now, George Soros, we have done episode after episode after episode, and there's a really good episode by this guy named Mr.

Reagan that you should watch.

He has gone and he has updated some of the George Soros stuff, and it's very, very complete and really, really well done.

Just Google Mr.

Reagan or YouTube and follow him.

He's really good at laying things out.

What I said at the time was George Soros has this pattern, and this is the way he overthrows countries.

One, he forms a shadow government, and a shadow government is for the top-down, bottom-up, inside-out theory, that you need enough people at the top in government.

that are working coordinating with the grassroots level.

When you have those two, you can apply pressure on everybody in the middle, and that's you, the forgotten man.

So form a shadow government.

Then control the airwaves.

Then the third step he always takes is to stabilize the state with a crisis.

Now that crisis can be an economic crisis.

It can be an already happening crisis that you just exploit.

Fourth step, provoke an election crisis.

Fifth step, begin protests and accuse fraud.

Those are the five steps that George Soros always follows when he's trying to overthrow a country.

And I contend he's trying to overthrow the United States of America.

He is an open borders guy.

This is important for you to understand because when you talk about open borders, what does that mean?

People will say, open borders, well, we can all just, you know, go and be free.

Libertarians mean it one way, open borders that we should be able to work and do whatever we want without the government interference okay that's one way to look at it but that is not the way George Soros looks at it George Soros is not a libertarian George Soros loves big government so when you hear people talk about open borders and they like big government it can be and in most cases a sign that they are Marxist Leninists.

Because remember, the difference between the Nazis and the commies

was

not socialism,

it was nationalism.

Russia and the communists, the Marxist Leninists, wanted to have

socialism on an international scale.

So workers of the world unite.

There are no borders.

It's one world and one world government.

The National Socialists said, I don't want to fight for another country.

If I fight for my country, my country will be strong because my workers will fight for the other workers in my country.

But they're not going to fight for somebody in a far-off distant land.

So it's not international workers, it's national workers.

So when you hear about no borders,

it can be a sign that this is a Marxist-Leninist movement.

All right.

Let's go over whether George Soros has done what he said he would do.

Form a shadow government.

I contend that is the new Democratic Party.

I contend that it is all of the radicals that are in there right now.

In fact, Stu, why was Jesse Smollett let off or who let him off?

Who let him off?

I mean,

Fox, you're talking about?

Yeah, okay, yeah.

What's her name?

Nikki Fox?

Her last name is Fox.

I don't remember her first name.

Do you know how she was elected?

I mean,

she was brought into as like a kind of a radical opposition to the

funded hero.

Was it George Soros?

Yeah, I mean, because he has projects, and he did this with Secretaries of State.

Yep, Save Artists.

He did it with district attorneys.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

He concentrated on local government.

First, he did the national, then local, and all of those people all the way along.

And he has formed a government, a shadow government that thinks like he does, and they're radicals.

They're mainly Marxists.

Okay.

So I contend if you look at the new Democratic Party,

you'll see that that is, that's a shadow government.

They are not looking to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

They are looking to overthrow the free market system.

Two, control the airwaves.

I don't think we even need to address that, but let me just say this.

Have you noticed how if you speak out against George Soros, the media goes absolutely apoplectic?

You are immediately deemed an anti-Semite.

I have nothing.

I've won the Defender of Israel award from ZOA, and it was presented by Benjamin Netanyahu.

So I don't think I'm an anti-Semite.

With that being said,

because I talked to you about George Soros, I'm an anti-Semite.

No,

and I don't believe he was a Nazi.

I've never condemned him for what he did in World War II.

He some people will will claim he collaborated.

I don't think so.

I think he was just doing what he had to do to survive.

And I do not blame him for any of that, nor do I condemn him for that.

What I question is the fact that he never has dealt with it.

He never felt it was a problem at all.

I'm sorry, but you can't take land away from your fellow Jews while working with the Nazis

and not feel something.

I'm not saying that you feel guilt or something, but you have to feel something.

He didn't.

That disturbs me greatly because it says something about him being able to bury feelings and deep, deep feelings.

So, control the airwaves.

He absolutely has a handle on that through the New Democratic Party.

Destabilize the state with a crisis.

Well, he helped fund Black Lives Matter, occupy Wall Street.

He has funded the riots in Berkeley.

I mean, look at what he's done.

And he is now funding the caravans.

That's really important to remember.

So is he destabling the state with a crisis?

Yes, little by little.

Then

provoke an election crisis.

We were so close to an election crisis in the last three years or two years.

We have been told that this election was stolen, that this election wasn't legit, that this election was hacked by the Russians, and Donald Trump was part and parcel of that.

They wanted this election crisis so badly that when it has been proven that Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians, they're disappointed.

They want it.

They need it to be true.

That's critical.

They need it to be true.

Why?

Because of number five, begin protests, have the streets start themselves on fire, and accuse fraud.

Now look at what's happening.

Who gave the Russian dossier?

It was the Clinton people.

Hmm.

Who started media matters with George Soros?

Oh, that's right.

It was the Clintons.

Now we're starting to see this big move about the Electoral College.

I have not checked into this, but I will bet you that big money is coming from George Soros on that front as well.

And when we talk about accuse fraud and begin protests, do I need to say anything more than the women's march that happened the weekend of inauguration?

What were they doing?

He wasn't a legitimate president.

So George Soros has done what he said he would do.

This plays a role into what is happening on our border and you have to understand it.

Now, let me give you one more chalkboard quick.

This is the one that I said

every day, the last year of Fox, every day.

There was a chalkboard that I said anarchists, Islamists, communists, and socialists would all work together.

Last night on the TV show, I pointed out the main problem with this, there were two problems.

People said there would never be a caliphate.

That was a pipe dream

and/or some sort of whiskey nightmare.

And they also said Islamists and socialists would never work together.

Well, I kind of took that apart last night.

Because what would you call AOC?

A socialist.

What is Alan Omar?

An Islamist.

They seem to be working together, don't they?

And what are those goals?

Work together against Israel.

Yeah, that's done.

Work together against capitalism.

That's done.

Work together to overturn stability.

That's done.

I said, this is at the time, that the protests that these guys were working together on in the Middle East would become contagious.

They would cascade.

they would sweep the Middle East, and it would lead to a caliphate.

All of those things happen.

But here's what they miss.

It would then, the last part was it would begin to destabilize Europe and the rest of the world.

Has Europe been destabilized?

Yes.

How has it been destabilized?

Because of the

protests that became contagious, that cascaded, that swept the Middle East, that caused the caliphate.

All of those displaced people went someplace, and they were all aided by people like George Soros and Hillary Clinton.

You've got to take them, Europe.

Without the caliphate, without the Middle East on fire, you wouldn't have had the mass migration, which would

later than, as we now know, set the entire European continent on fire and lead to things like Brexit.

The last part of that is it would then spread to the rest of the world.

That brings me to the border.

And I have information that is you can look it up yourself.

Who is doing the caravan?

What is the real goal?

Is this spontaneous?

No.

This is directly from what I said would happen.

It is happening, and my research department has buttoned it up, and I will give you those facts in one minute.

Okay, it is really important to understand

that

top-down, bottom-up, inside-out

is a movement that must have people in the government.

coordinating with the people on the ground to turn a country inside out.

To tear it apart,

it can be torn apart by accident, but to turn it inside out, it has to have carefully laid plans.

So last year, it was almost exactly a year ago, that we started talking about the caravans.

At the time, I said these caravans are

what is coming.

Now, this is something that I have not told you.

I think until this week.

I've never said this on the air before.

But I believe there is a time that is coming, and Stu will tell you I've talked about this for probably 10 years, but I've never said it on the air.

I believe there is a time that is coming that our borders are going to be so overwhelmed, and people are going to be coming into our country, and it is going to change and become very ugly, and people are going to demand their land back.

People from

Central and South America and Mexico are going to demand their land back, and they will kill farmers

and they will take that land.

Now, I hope to God that that never happens.

I haven't said that, I've believed that for 10 years plus, but I've not said that because

there was no indication that that kind of stuff would happen, except you have to extrapolate so much.

But you are now getting real anger, you're getting desperation,

and a volatile situation to where you're starting to you're there.

You have people feeding

people hatred.

Our open borders policy, the sanctuary cities, the migrant caravans, they are all designed to overload the system almost in a cloud and pivot way.

And the president needs to understand and needs to fight this a different way.

His instincts are right.

He's fired everybody.

His instincts are right.

But I don't think he has anybody around him that can tell him what the root of the problem is.

You will never fix a broken arm with painkillers.

You have to fix the root of the problem.

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn, and I want to tell you about something that you should either end your day with or

start your morning with, and that is the news and why it matters.

If you like this show, you're going to love the news and why it matters.

It's a bunch of us that all get together at the end of the day and just talk about the stories that matter to you and your life.

The news and why it matters.

Look for it now wherever you download your favorite podcast.

Blake Harris,

he's an author of a book, The History of the Future, Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution that Swept Virtual Reality.

You know, I am so fascinated by virtual reality

because it is, once you really experience great virtual reality,

you see how powerful this is going to be.

I mean,

I don't see people really leaving their house very much after virtual reality, quite honestly.

But the story of the guy who came up with Oculus

has really been lost.

I didn't even know this.

And it is a fascinating story.

Blake is here with us now.

Hi, Blake.

How are you?

Hey, I'm great.

Thank you so much for having me on.

And I'm glad that you've tried good virtual reality and seen that it's going to change the future.

Oh, my gosh, it is.

And I'm not sure.

I mean, it's going to change it in good ways.

And I also see us kind of ending up like

what was that Pixar

movie where they're all big fat on a spaceship.

Oh, and Wally.

Yeah, Wally.

I mean, I can see us all kind of turning into that as well.

And we'll get into that here in a second.

Can you just tell us the story of

Oculus

and what happened and who first invented that and the story of this kid?

Sure.

So

this all happened back in 2012, so seven years ago.

And, you know, for however much your listeners know about virtual reality now, back then, even less people knew or cared about it.

You know, essentially, back in 2012, virtual reality was a technological punchline along the lines of, you know, flying cars or jetpacks.

Correct.

The thing that was like, you know, a sci-fi trope that was maybe going to happen, but never did.

And it was silly that we ever thought it would.

And most people had just given up caring about it, thinking it would happen.

Except there was a young man out there, a guy named Palmer Lucky, which is a real name, even though it sounds kind of like a fictional character name.

It's perfect for my book.

And so this kid, this 19-year-old kid, Palmer Lucky, he was living in a trailer in Long Beach, California.

And he was just obsessed with virtual reality.

He once described his trailer to me.

And I said, Palmer, that basically sounds like the meth ban on Brazil Bad, except your trailer has been retrofitted to build virtual reality headsets.

And he said, yeah, that's pretty much exactly what it looked like.

And so,

yeah, so imagine this little 19-year-old mad scientist building virtual reality headsets.

And he basically like cracked the code that had eluded so many scientists and tech people and sci-fi lovers for years and built this virtual reality headset called the Oculus Rift.

And it and you know, I would say the rest is history, but the rest is a book.

The rest is this company, Oculus, that less than two years later, he sold to Facebook for over $2 billion.

And, you know, we're still in the early phases of virtual reality and where it's headed.

But, you know, you really got to admire the young man for having this ambition and this passion for this thing that we all thought was kind of silly back then.

Okay, so

I was was at Facebook right after they purchased this, and they were all excited.

It's coming, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming.

And then you don't hear anything about it,

and we're still waiting for real, good virtual reality.

What the hell happened?

Well, the Facebook of it all had a really big impact.

So back then, you know, a large part of Palmer's motivation was that

he is, and he was, a gamer.

And so for him, he wanted to just step through the computer screen and actually enter a game and feel like it was all around him.

And so gaming was the initial focus.

You know, they did a Kickstarter campaign.

They raised, they thought they were going to try to raise $400,000.

They raised $3 million.

And

their slogan was step into the game.

So it was all about gaming.

And then once they sold to Facebook,

Facebook's interest was not so much the gaming, it was

insert, whatever you want to describe,

social engineering or communication, whatever the case may be.

And so that's a big part of why it's stalled out for the past few years.

But they actually are releasing a headset called the Oculus Quest, which is going to be the most affordable and most technologically sophisticated headset that is going to cost $400.

And that comes out next month.

And then you have the big question that I keep getting asked by people is, this is by far the best, most affordable headset, but Facebook owns it and I don't trust them.

What should I do?

Should I buy it?

And I don't have a very good answer for that right now.

It's amazing how Facebook has just blown their

trust.

Let me ask you something off topic, and then I'll get back to the story.

Mark Zuckerberg keeps saying things like, you know what?

We're going to come out with this product.

We're going to do this product.

And then that doesn't happen.

Is he even in control of his own company anymore?

I would say that he actually is absolutely in control of his own company more than any other CEO.

You know, Mark announced about a year and a half ago that he was doing that he was going to give 99% of his money away to charity, which sounds

a lot nicer and simpler than it actually is.

Not to say that there's a nefarious plot behind it.

But basically, he still has the majority voting share because of how we structured the stock.

And I would say that Facebook is more like a dictatorship than any other Silicon Valley company that I've ever researched.

And I'm sure we'll get to it in terms of why Palmer ended up leaving Facebook against his will and the politics of it all.

But that was really all driven by Mark directly.

Yeah, because the politics of it are really interesting because there's a Trump tie to this story, and it's a fascinating one.

It's one we've heard many times in other industries.

It's

fascinating that it is this level and you've never heard it.

We'll get to that.

Blake, we're going to take a one-minute break and then we'll come back.

The The name of the book that is laying this out is The History of the Future by Blake Harris.

We'll continue our conversation with him in just a second.

First,

talking to Blake Harris, the book is The History of the Future.

I would also highly recommend his book, Console Wars.

I mean, he's a great author.

Blake is with us.

And so far, Blake, really, what you have here is a great American entrepreneurial story, right?

This kid who is in a trailer.

He brings virtual reality from nothing to a $2 billion sale at Facebook.

You know, the technology is questionable about where it's going at this point with Facebook, but the exit of the inventor of this is a fascinating story.

Yeah, I mean, to me,

I don't know how familiar you are with my writing, but everything I write, I always try to write with my grandmother in mind.

You know, how can I get her interested in this tech story?

How can I get her interested in Sega Nintendo?

And so, to me, this was always just a story of the American Dream in 2012, 2016, 2019,

more so than it was about virtual reality.

And

then the final third of the book becomes this other monstrosity, which I guess might actually be a, you know, a good lens into the perversion of the American dream, just with how politics

weighs into everything.

But I also just want to say, you know, you mentioned right before the break that it's sort of astonishing how much Facebook has burned our trust over the past few years.

And

that's true for me.

They gave me unprecedented, almost unlimited access.

So I had a pretty high opinion of them just for my own selfish reasons.

But what I came to discover during my research, before my access was eventually cut off because of what I discovered, was just really,

really immoral and terrible.

And then also, I should mention that I'm a lifelong liberal,

not a fan at all of Trump.

So

as we'll get into now, like what I found,

I certainly wasn't looking for a sympathetic Trump supporter story, but that's what I found.

Wow.

Okay, so tell us the story.

Sure.

So in September of 2016, so this was like six weeks before the presidential election, there was an article that came out about Palmer Lucky, about the inventor of Oculus.

And the headline was Facebook billionaire secretly funding Trump's meme machine.

And the insinuation, explicitly and implicitly, was that, you know, every terrible meme that you've seen online for the past election season, everything misogynistic, anti-Semitic, hateful, et cetera, that Palmer was like running a troll factory and that he was the person behind it all.

And that just wasn't true at all.

The truth was that he made

a slightly less than $10,000 donation to a political organization that was pro-Trump, that was planning to put up billboards across the country.

And

that,

you know, I always kind of wonder how people would have reacted if they just had known the truth, because in Silicon Valley, they might have reacted just as badly.

But anyway, he's so unpopular in such a short amount of time,

to the extent that, you know,

one of my favorite publications, at least previously, Wired, you know, you'd think sort of an even-headed publication, nonsensationalistic.

Their headline in the midst of this was that Palm, their headline was that Palmer Lucky is the worst.

That's it.

Palmer Lucky is the worst.

And so

there was this, you know, PR crisis.

And

naturally, you know, Palmer wanted to write a statement to set out what was true and what was not true about the media reports and to say that he was a Trump supporter, but that, you know, this trolling thing and all these other aspects were not true.

So he wrote a statement.

This happened on a Thursday night.

He was not allowed to post it.

He was not allowed to say that he was a Trump supporter as it went up the flagpole at Facebook to the executive level, which I found initially hard to believe that that was actually the case.

But then I certainly believed it was the case because I was able to finally obtain the email records of it.

And I learned that the reason that it took so long for him to post his eventual statement was that Mark Zuckerberg weighed in.

Mark Zuckerberg personally drafted the statement that Palmer had to post.

And the statement that he drafted said that Palmer would be voting for Gary Johnson.

So not Trump.

That was too unacceptable to say he was a Trump supporter.

And so he had to post a statement saying that he supported Gary Johnson, written by Mark himself.

And

he did that in order to save his job.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

But he wasn't voting for Gary Johnson.

Correct.

That makes it illegal and unethical that he would be directed by the head of one of the most powerful organizations to say that he was supporting a politician that he wasn't.

Wow.

Yeah.

So I couldn't believe it myself.

So, wait a minute.

So, how is it that a guy with $2 billion

from Facebook doesn't sue Facebook for this?

Doesn't press charges.

Well, part of it was at the time,

you know, I interviewed over 200 people for the book.

And so I talked to some of the people that he confided to and asked for advice from about should he post a statement that was illegal and that he didn't agree with.

And their response was basically, yes, you know, you could sue Facebook and potentially win, but you wouldn't be at the company anymore and it would take years.

And more than anything, Palmer wanted to remain at the company.

You know, it was his baby.

it was what he had done with most of his adult life.

Granted, it was a short adult life at that time.

You know, he was only 24.

But, but, yeah, I mean,

he has a very strong case.

If he ever wants to pursue legal action, I assume that he signed an NDA of some kind

that prevents that when he's eventually fired.

But yeah, he was eventually fired.

He basically,

after he posted that statement, he was put on permanent vacation.

Facebook employees were told that Palmer wanted to take time off of work.

It was framed as Palmer's decision.

One of my favorite and saddest moments is Palmer's waiting to come back a couple weeks later, and he's

participating in a town hall call

conference.

or actually not participating because he was not allowed to interact with anyone.

And he was listening and he found out during this meeting that he had asked for six more weeks of subducation.

Okay, hang on, hang on, hang on.

I got to take a break.

We'll come back.

This is nuts behind the scenes inside of Facebook and Palmer Lucky, the guy who invented Oculus and how he was forced out because he was a Trump supporter.

The name of the book is History of the Future.

We're talking to Blake Harris, who's really fascinating.

He's written a book called The History of of the Future Oculus: Facebook and the Revolution that Swept Virtual Reality.

But it is interesting to me that he is a liberal, doesn't necessarily like Donald Trump,

and really liked Facebook going in, had unprecedented access.

And then when the inventor of Oculus, this entrepreneur, this 20-some-year-old kid, sells to Facebook and

the election heats up.

All of a sudden, he is in trouble with Facebook, and they force him to put out a deal.

It says he's not voting for Trump.

He's voting libertarian, when that wasn't the truth.

He plays ball.

He's told to go take a vacation.

They frame it as he's decided to.

He's on a conference call, and he finds out that he had asked for even more vacation.

And you know what's coming at the end of this.

We pick it back up with Blake Harris, who, Blake, I have to tell you,

I love people

who, you know, I may disagree with sometimes vehemently on things, but are open-minded enough to go, well, yeah, but this part is true or this part is true, and just let the chips fall where they may.

You're a very rare species.

I don't know if you know that.

No, thank you.

And unfortunately, I've come to realize that or to believe that that is the case.

You know, my book was originally due to HarperCollins.

The manuscript was due in September of 2016, the same month that this all went down.

And I ended up spending an extra two years, you know, for no pay working on this thing because this is a crazy story.

And you mentioned earlier that you hadn't really heard about this.

And

that sounds kind of bonkers because, you know, every other Facebook scandal to date, Mark Zuckerberg is not directly involved.

And he could always sort of throw up his arms and say, oh, I didn't know, or, you know, that was some other person's fault.

But he is the one who personally wrote this statement,

which was just bad for him to even put that in email.

And, you know, you're like, how is this not national news?

How is this not breaking news?

But then I talked to other journalists and I understand why.

You know,

these are the journalists, these are journalists I know under the context of they read my first book about Sega Nintendo and loved it.

So I think they have a somewhat positive opinion of me.

And I reached out to a lot of them to tell them that they had the story wrong.

And

they, and, you know, I offered to send them evidence.

I told them I was the only person who actually interviewed all the participants in this and had all the archival information.

And they basically said, yeah, but who cares?

He's a Trump supporter.

So maybe it's inaccurate.

But,

you know, if I had told that to my mom and she said that, I still would be kind of bummed that she didn't care about what was true and what was not.

But these are journalists.

this is their job.

And then when I told them, you know, not only was the reporting about Palmer wrong, but the reason he was fired was for political discrimination, they almost laughed in my face and say, Yeah, but that's not the kind of discrimination I care about.

And

yeah, political discrimination is perhaps probably, you know, less of a persistent issue than other forms of discrimination.

But when it happens, it's still bad.

We can all agree upon that, I thought.

No, apparently, not.

So, so

are you finding anyone starting to wake up, Blake?

Is there anyone?

Because, I mean, I know on the

right,

I have found a few people that are, in fact, several, that are, are like,

I'm out.

I'm done with this.

I'll call balls and strikes, and you know, my side screws up.

I don't care.

I will say that they're screwed up here because this is insane.

Uh, are you finding anybody that is starting to open their eyes to what is being created?

Unfortunately, less than you'd expect.

You know,

being a liberal and existing in probably some sort of liberal bubble, Election Day was a wake-up call for me.

You know, I was very upset, but my thought was, okay, you know, the voice of half the country, the majority in Electoral College has spoken.

I should actually listen to them because I find Trump repugnant, but they don't.

And they are my fellow citizens.

Let me figure out what I'm missing.

And I tried to do that.

And for, I feel like for the 24 hours after the election, a lot of other liberals were in a similar boat of, you know, we got to talk to the other side.

And then they instead decided to just double down and say, no, no, no, these people are just stupid or they don't understand that they're voting against their self-interest or whatever.

And so

you would have thought that more people would be waking up and just want to call balls and strikes and say, all right, I don't like Trump or I don't agree with his approach on this, but I actually think his strategy here was a good one.

And that's not the case.

Like, you know, you mentioned right before you had me on that your show from last night was now on YouTube talking about the border in a non-political way.

And I found myself almost laughing because on the left, there's no such thing as non-political.

Specifically in Silicon Valley, you know, there was a story last week that two weeks ago, Google had put together an ethics board for artificial intelligence.

This is crazy.

Sounds like a pretty good idea.

Yeah, really good.

Within less than a week later, it was disbanded because there was so much outrage internally at Google because one of the participants was a conservative.

Yeah, the Heritage Foundation, which is not the Heritage Foundation.

You got to be kidding me.

That's a radical group to them?

Exactly.

And that's really what I found in so many ways.

And it seeps into so much of what Facebook does as a company internally and also externally in the product.

It's like this idea that, yeah, all opinions, all political opinions are equal, but then this animals are the best way.

It's like, yeah, but some are more equal than others.

And, you know, every

conservative perspective is, it's not just another opinion.

It's not a different way of looking at things.

It's not, they might be right, I might be right.

It's just a value judgment.

It's, you know, if you do it one by one, it's all wrong.

It's all harmful.

It's all, it needs to be fought against, which is kind of crazy.

Because, you know, does it concern you that does it concern concern you that the people like this, R.

Zuckerberg, a guy who you went in admiring,

the power that they have and now

the growing collusion or

partnering with the United States government?

Does that keep you up at night?

It does.

I haven't slept very well, Glenn.

I haven't slept very well.

No, it does.

Yeah, I mean, I think you see now that people, you know, Facebook is no longer the tech darlings.

You know, maybe connecting in the world didn't turn out to be the best idea.

Now people are starting to look look into Facebook and and discover these scandals.

A lot of times they're things that happened years ago.

And and and it's not surprising that these things happen.

It's such a sloppy company.

And they they they don't the like

I guess one of the first ways that I really realized that what I was uncovering actually fit with with with the culture there was, you know, know, one of their top executives who had been there since the beginning, he would routinely share stories during the election season, like, there's no such thing as a good Trump supporter.

Well, I mean, there's Trump supporters of Facebook.

They learned pretty quickly not to talk about it.

In fact, you know, the Palmer one is kind of interesting because four months before, you know, he was outed as a Trump supporter, as the worst person,

you know, part of the issue was that he made his donation for $10,000 anonymously.

And four months earlier, he had been at a Trump rally and been willing to appear on camera at a Trump rally.

You know, like he seemed to have no issue with being associated with Trump.

But then in between, what happened was Peter Thiel was revealed to be a Trump supporter.

Everyone at Facebook, not everyone, a lot of people at Facebook tried to get him fired off the board for that reason alone.

And not just employees, but...

Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, who was also a board member, believed that that demonstrated enough bad judgment that Peter should not not be on the board.

And so Palmer realized, oh, I should probably not be vocal about my support.

And that was probably wise, because when it was revealed that he was a Trump supporter,

he didn't end up at the company anymore.

Blake, two more from me.

First of all, you know, the idea that every, there's no such thing as a good Trump supporter was pretty widespread at this time, particularly in the media and through a lot of these tech companies.

And obviously, that's, you know, a completely unfair thing.

However, at that time, there was a lot of really bad stuff on the internet that was associated with Trump supporters.

Was there any evidence that Palmer Lucky participated in anything really bad when it comes to

some of the darkest sides of that election?

Absolutely not.

And

I have essentially staked my career on this.

So, you know, like I said, I spent an extra two years on this.

I didn't just willy-nilly decide, oh, no, he's a good guy, or he didn't do anything wrong.

Like, I looked very deeply into his online activities and spent, I think, like 20 hours interviewing the founder of the organization that he donated to because it was alleged that these were white supremacists.

And I didn't want to just have one phone call because, you know, who knows, maybe he was lying to me to try to protect his image.

But

I've spoken to Palmer almost every day for the past three years.

I've spent years looking into all this stuff.

There is no evidence of any wrongdoing.

And I would bet my life that he did not do anything

that we would consider beyond the pale or

unacceptable.

Wow.

And the last one, Blake, is you mentioned it about your career.

Do you have one after this book?

Because not only are you fighting for a Trump supporter, which is not something you're supposed to be doing, but also you got access to Facebook.

You were able to get an incredibly detailed account because of that access.

And now

because you're being honest here, you know, they are no longer going to be fans of yours.

People in the future are going to be hesitant to give you access to the next thing.

Yep.

That's pretty much what I expect to happen.

But,

you know,

the only thing I published

while I was sort of undercover in Facebook for these past couple years was an article called This Is How Fake News Happens.

And it was all publicly available information.

I just wanted everyone to just go up and see,

here's what actually happened.

And here's how it was reported, and here's how this crazy game of telephone happened to make it even worse.

And the response to that, you know, was like 50% of people saying, oh, thank you for pointing out that the media messed up here with Palmer.

And then 50% of people calling me a Nazi, even though I was happily bar mitzvah.

I think that's weird.

I would be a Nazi.

Yeah, that's a strange choice.

I got the Defender of Israel award from Benjamin Etanyahu, and I also am anti-Semitic somehow or another.

Exactly.

And so, you know, people call me Nazi, white supremacist, whatever, complicit, blah, blah, blah.

And that was the reaction I kind of expected.

But instead, what happened is that it's been almost 100% positive.

And then there's just been silence from like, you know, my first book won like gaming awards and I was named like a gaming personality of the year.

And as of now, the book's been out for a month or so.

And there has been zero coverage of it on any tech or gaming mainstream website.

Wow.

Academy.

Wow.

That is incredible.

I'm surprised there's not more pickup too from conservative media on it because, I mean, here's the thing.

That was not your goal, but I mean, it is a really big story.

Here is the thing.

This is an amazing book.

I already own a book.

I'm holding a copy of it, but

this I got from the publisher.

Let me just show this so you know that I'm telling you the truth.

I just ordered another copy on Amazon because I want to support you.

You and I probably disagree politically on, I don't know, 90% of stuff.

It doesn't matter.

We have to have people who are willing to open their eyes and see the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

I ask every member of this audience, if you have Kindle, it'll cost you 14 bucks.

I don't know how much it is as a hardbound,

but buy this book.

A, it's a great book.

You're going to really enjoy it.

It's an unbelievable story, but you're also supporting somebody who needs the support.

Somebody who doesn't agree with you, but is willing to tell the truth.

We have to reward those people on both sides that are trying to do their best.

Blake, I really admire you, and I hope that we can meet.

I'd love to have you on for a podcast,

but I really admire you, and congratulations.

Thank you, and let us know any way we can help you.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

You bet.

Take care.

You bet.

Blake Harris, the history of the future.

The history of the future.

That is a

crazy story.

How is that not a bigger deal?

And I, you know,

on conservative media, for example, how is that?

I mean, the guy invented something that's game-changing.

Facebook buys it for $2 billion and he gets forced out because he went to a Trump rally and that is not everywhere.

How am I not seeing that on Twitter?

I've never seen this about people.

I saw four stories today about people harassing people in a Trump hat.

This is a guy.

This is way bigger than that.

This is gigantic.

This is illegal, as Blake said.

This is illegal what they did.

And

nothing?

Nothing?

Wow.

This book, if you are a fan of other shows

on the right, urge them to have Blake on to tell this story.

This is a very important story.

This tells you everything you need to know about Silicon Valley.

Listen to this guy.

He's not on our side.

He's a liberal, but he was disgusted by what he saw.

And he's telling the truth.

We have to help him get the word out.

Please buy this book, The History of the Future.

I'd love to see this go up.

I don't even know where it is on the charts.

It's probably nowhere on the charts.

Let's help him.

The History of the Future by Blake Harris.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

During the State of the Union, Donald Trump introduced a guy named Matthew Charles.

He was one of the first people released under the First Stepped Act.

And he has an amazing story.

He was arrested for selling crack cocaine and he spent 21 years in prison on a 35-year prison sentence.

He was released in 2016.

He walks out of prison with nothing, but he changes his life.

And he had never had any infractions, any write-ups at all in prison.

He was a model citizen.

He had turned his life over to Christ.

He goes out and he starts, you know, immediately getting involved in his community, in his church.

Then he finds out

in May of 2018, two years later, that was a mistake.

You have to go back and serve the remaining decade back in prison.

He doesn't throw a fit.

He goes back.

He goes back.

He was one of the first to released on the new criminal justice reform,

and we're thrilled to have him.

Matthew, welcome to the program.

How are you, sir?

Is Matthew there?

Yes, I am.

Hi, how are you, sir?

How are you doing, sir?

I'm doing okay.

I'm great.

It is great to talk to you.

I remember when they sent you back and I read that story and I thought, how is this happening?

First of all, the guy's turned into a model citizen.

And how is he dealing with that?

When you heard you had to go back and serve 10 years,

what was that like?

I was disappointed.

a little bit discouraged because at the time I had already served nearly 22 years and had been out for two years.

And because the government had appealed it and successfully won, I was being sent back.

And the fact that they couldn't take into account any rehabilitation that had taken place within me during that period caused me to

be very disappointed and discouraged.

Now, why couldn't they take into account anything that you had done and anything that you had become?

Because at the time, there was no actually incentives for rehabilitation.

It was just about incapacitation where you take a person out of society for a particular period of time.

And then, when that time is up, whether they are changed or not, you release them.

And because I was released based on the changes made to the 2010 sentencing,

they had not been made retroactive to me.

So, therefore, I was still required to serve 85% of my sentence.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my gosh.

So, Matthew, you got back into prison, and how long were you in prison before this prison justice reform happened?

It took seven months.

I went back May 14th and was released January 3rd.

And how did you find out about, you know, when you were released?

Where were you?

What happened?

I was in Kentucky at a holding facility waiting to go back to federal prison to serve that remaining 10 years.

And during the time that I was rearrested, I was being held in Kentucky.

And at the time, the inmates there were speaking about about the First Step Act, and they were talking about the different incentives that it had, as well as the discretion that the judges had in their own courtrooms to go below the mandatory minimums.

But I didn't know that it was going to actually affect me until late November, early December, when I seen that one of the provisions was that it made retroactive the changes to the 2010 sentencing guideline.

And so, did you apply for it?

Did somebody else apply?

The Public Defender's Office in Nashville, Tennessee, Mr.

Michael Holland, Ms.

Mariah Wooten, because they were already appealing my reincarceration, they had already had petitions before the court.

So once President Donald Trump signed it December the 21st and it became applicable after his signature, they just went on and filed a motion to the district court since they were already doing filings on my behalf, asking them to release me based on the First Step Act.

So, Matthew, it,

I mean, I'd like to hear you talk about the

I was sitting in the chamber during the State of the Union.

First of all, how did you get there?

Did the president call you?

How did you end up at the State of the Union?

It would have been nice to get a call directly from the president, but, you know, but I had actually

been invited by his staff via email.

I was invited twice.

I was invited to the first one, but it didn't take place because there was a government shutdown.

And the second time, they reinvited me.

And once I went there, I was able to go to the White House and meet him prior to going over to

the State of the Union at the Congress.

So it was an experience, but I had actually got the invite from his staff on his wife, Melania Trump's behalf.

So now you are.

You're sitting there.

The president

speaks about you.

We all stand up and give you a standing ovation.

What

was that moment like to a guy who had spent 21 years in prison, nobody was thinking of

you are

released, then you're pulled back, and the system is just grinding you down?

What was that moment like to have the president tell your story, have you stand up, and every

you know, the members of Congress and the Senate and

the White House, the justices, everybody standing up, giving you a round of applause.

It was a moment that would never be forgotten by me.

It was like I was in awe.

The only thing, as you was expressing those words, the picture that came to my mind was like a cartoon character where the roof of the head of the character just...

takes off and shoots toward the sky because it was like unbelievable.

So for me, it just felt like that.

It was pleasantly overwhelming.

I was like, wow, just completely amazed.

Never thought in a million years that I would be at the State of the Union, let alone having President Trump to actually speak about that and state welcome home to me.

I will, I will tell you that what it said to me as I was watching you

stand there in the same room with you.

As I'm watching that, I thought, this is what the American justice system should be.

The guy,

you know, committed a crime.

He

not only paid for it, but he went and he was reformed and he found redemption and he found his way.

And he's now welcomed back into society with open arms

with the president of the United States saying, Welcome back, welcome back home.

Yes, sir.

Tell me about the

pastor.

Tell me about your conversion from,

you know, guy that belonged in prison to guy that didn't belong in prison.

What it took place was I got arrested in December of 1995 for selling crack cocaine.

And once I was arrested and taken to the county jail, I was just there awaiting pre-trial and sentencing.

But there was a guy there named Jesus Duran who actually had got his sentence and was being transported transported out.

So he had left me some hygiene items, you know, soap, leodorant, toothpaste, and he also left me a Bible.

And it was a Brown Gideon's King James Bible.

So I didn't even know he had it because we never spoke about religion or anything of that nature.

So I accepted the gifts that he gave me and he left, but I started reading the Bible.

And through reading the Bible, it started coming.

I guess, to reality and awaken my spiritual side of me.

And I started attending Bible study classes at the county jail.

And the preacher would come in and do the Bible study, and they often left tracks on how to receive salvation.

So I took one of the tracks and I continued to read that Bible in my own time because, you know, in the county jail, you got a lot of time on your hands.

So therefore, that led me to stating the words that were on the track, then going to the Bible study classes and openly professing my faith before them as well.

And that decision that I made in February of 1996, I want to say two months after I was arrested and placed in the county jail, changed my life forever.

And everything that you still had, you still had 21 years before you would see the light of day.

And when you get out, it's hard for somebody like you to get a job and to acclimate.

How did you stay the path?

It was because of my faith in Christ.

Once I made that decision to surrender my life and heart over to the Lord Jesus Christ, I had, I would say, all of God's help, as all of God's children knew.

So, therefore, with God's help, I was able to make the right decisions.

I was able to be guided and protected by God during that time of my incarceration.

Because at that time, I didn't know I was going to serve 21 to 22 years.

I was expected to serve 31 or 32 years because I had a 35-year sentence.

Matthew, you know, this is such an amazing story.

And, you know, in the middle of kind of this, you know, know, somewhat divisive time that we're in, and it's hard to find the path forward.

Glenn, you've been talking about this forever.

There's only really one solution to this.

Yeah, I mean, you look at the world of what it was in 1995.

It's a different America, isn't it, Matthew?

Oh, yes, it is.

Very much so.

And we've been looking for solutions.

We keep going back and forth.

And the only thing I can think of is that we've got to turn back to God.

And it seems so trite.

It seems so simple.

It's so simple, people will dismiss it, but it's the only answer that will save us because we have to return to the

principles of just be decent to each other.

Just be good to each other.

Let's not lie.

Let's not cheat.

Let's not steal.

And that's correct because

through, like I said, through the Bible, through being a Christian and the experience itself, it shows us how to love one another as well as respect one another.

And as you stated, there is a different society in 1995.

There's a lot of divisiveness and things of that nature.

So I would say that the only thing that really going to bring true harmony and peace is once everyone or someone surrenders themselves over to the Lord.

Matthew, you were the beneficiary of a very rare bipartisan moment, as you were able to get out because of what President Trump and Jared Kushner in particular fought very hard for as long as Jan Jones.

I mean, it's really an amazing story.

What do you think the next step is there more that needs to be done in this area of criminal justice reform?

Oh, yes, sir.

There's a lot more that needs to be done because there are still those that are incarcerated that the First Step Act won't even affect because they've already done served the same amount of time I have or a little bit less than that, but they still have the extensive sentence that they receive under.

the harsh penal system, whereas the sentence or the punishment is not equivalent or in proportion to the the crime they actually committed.

So there's the things that we need to do to be able to reach forth and help those people who have also changed and want a second chance.

And then also those that are now coming into getting in trouble and going through the court system and in the prison.

We need to see what type of treatments are diversion to incarceration.

Maybe they may have a mental illness or a drug addiction where they need treatment and

medicine for as opposed to just incarcerating them.

What do you think the the percentage is of people that are in the prison system that are just mentally unwell?

They're just this is this is a mental illness.

I would say anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of those because at the time, yeah.

And it's sad too to see them there because it's like they're in a completely different world, but yet they're placed in the same sometimes violent atmosphere like the violent inmates are or the regular inmates are.

And then because they have those mental problems, they really are not able to cope.

And

they either get hurt or hurt somebody.

And at the time, there was no separate place to put these people.

They committed a crime.

They need to pay for the crime they committed.

So the only thing that was available at the time was giving them a sentence and putting them in prison with everybody else.

Wow.

Wow.

Matthew, thank you so much.

God bless you.

And I'm glad you're out.

And

as the president said, welcome home.

Okay, thank you.

And I appreciate it.

And God bless you as well.

God bless you, Matthew Charles.

Such a good way to

add some lightness to your day.

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