Best of Program | Guests: Chad Felix Greene & Leon Wolf | 12/13/18

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Hey, welcome to the podcast.

A great show for you today, surprisingly, don't you think?

Yeah, I mean, we weren't trying to make it good.

Yeah, and it's very rare.

We'll hit them about once every 10 days where it's a good podcast.

But today, you don't want to miss it.

We talk about Cohen and what this means with the National Enquirer.

Also, a little bit about the Farm Bill.

We have an interview with Chad Felix Green about being gay and conservative.

He wrote this great article for the Federalists that says, you know, I'm gay, and

it was less dangerous for me to be gay than

it is for me to be conservative.

Oh, and the reaction to it is priceless.

Oh, my gosh.

It just proves that it's a lot of fun.

Straight liberals that are like, you don't know what it means to be gay.

And you do?

Anyway, we have that.

Also, a little bit about the Chinese and Canadians, what's happening there.

And

an update from a story we told you yesterday out of Tacoma.

A guy who arrived on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, always wanted to go back.

His wife of 71 years just passed away.

I asked the audience, Do you want to send him to the 75th anniversary of D-Day?

You did an update with the family on today's podcast.

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

It's Thursday, December 13th.

I love Patriot Mobile.

I love Patriot Mobile, too.

I don't know why people don't do this.

I don't know either because I think people just get, you know, you get stuck in the rut of

some company you've been with for a while with your cell phone, and you don't think about where your money's going.

But I mean, it's going to, a lot of times, hardcore left-wing causes because these companies spend tens of millions of dollars supporting progressive candidates, progressive causes.

And it's your money, right?

You're paying it to them and they're paying it to that too.

The great thing is you still have the same great service, you know, using backbones and you have the great service.

However, you're not paying all the extra fees to these companies that they're taking and diverting to causes that you hate.

Yeah,

it really doesn't make any sense to do it the other way.

Patriot Mobile is fantastic.

Go to patriotmobile.com, switch.

They're going to help conservative causes.

It's patriotmobile.com slash blaze.

Get started today.

When you use the offer code Blaze, they're going to waive your activation fee for up to two lines just stop supporting the left-wing causes patriotmobile.com slash blaze or 1-800 a patriot for patriot mobile it's worth a couple of minutes to make this switch it makes a big difference i'm very excited about uh the head of google and everything that he's doing and wants to do yeah and continues to do right because they're completely neutral you know well and trustworthy yes he's not biased no he runs his company based on the fact that he's not biased Right.

And of course, their motto itself is don't be evil.

Well, you know, they can't be.

No, they changed that.

They did change that.

Yeah, they did change that.

So I guess now they can be evil.

They can be evil.

They're like, you know what?

We are doing a lot of evil things.

It's too hard.

Yeah.

That's a pretty harsh line.

Pretty harsh line.

Yesterday, he testified that,

you know, your concerns about AI are very legitimate.

However, the tech industry should be trusted to responsibly regulate themselves.

Yes.

I agree with that 100%.

Because, again,

they used to have a motto that was don't be evil.

Right.

People who are evil, like, okay, the devil comes back.

Okay, let's just say the Antichrist comes to earth.

He's not going to have that motto.

Right.

No, he's not.

No, he is not.

No.

Although he might say he does.

What do you mean?

He might actually say.

No, the devil when you're evil, you have to admit that he's

to say yes.

It's like, are you an undercover cop?

You have to say yes.

You have to say yes.

Yes.

So are you the Antichrist?

He has to say yes.

Are you doing evil?

Yes, we are.

Yes.

Okay, you caught me.

Dang it.

I'm here to destroy mankind.

You caught me.

Call me again, a scooy-doo fan, that mystery machine every time.

Wasn't it your conversation with

okay, okay, what's his face?

What was his

developer of the AI?

Ray AI.

Ray Kurros Raw.

Kurzweil.

And his thing was, yeah, we're just going to develop it, and there are no concerns because our culture at Google is such that we wouldn't do anything.

We'll never do these things.

That's what he said.

We'll never do it.

We'll never do these things.

And I said, when in the history of mankind has that worked?

Yeah.

And then one time.

Right.

Well, now, because it's better now.

Because we're Google.

Right.

Google.

And that's not enough for me.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That seems to be lacking.

What if they had Hugo Boss design some snappy uniforms for everybody at Google?

Do they look really cool?

They look really cool.

And they hold up through history?

Well, then I think you'll let them.

You'll let them.

Because nobody would dress like that.

No.

If they were evil.

No, that's right.

Right.

That's right.

So you know they're specifically evil when they start dressing like that.

So he got to talking about

Google's AI as it applies to

filtering out some of the hate, the hate speech and the important work.

Important work.

He said he has found, through these algorithms, some hateful conspiratorial YouTube videos.

And he described them as abhorrent.

And he indicated that the company is going to work harder to improve its systems to get rid of this stuff.

Things like one of the videos he mentioned was one that's real popular, I think, among all conservatives.

It's the one where Hillary Clinton and Uma Abadine attacked, killed, and drank the blood of a young girl.

Oh, yeah.

I think we've all been all over that value.

Finally, it's out.

How many times have we played that?

Yeah, finally, it's out.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Somebody in the middle of the day.

It's such a relief that's finally talking about how Hillary Clinton drinks blood of children.

And Uma, Uma and Hillary were both

killing and drinking the blood of the girl.

Is that typical like you know, partisan spin, though?

Are they trying to say they only drank the blood of one girl?

Yeah.

Is that what they're trying to say?

Come on now.

I mean, no, you know what I mean?

Here's the thing.

So we all know they won't cover this.

They won't cover this.

That they're only drinking the remaining blood that the Jews didn't make in Damatza.

Thank you.

Right?

Thank you.

Because of

cabal.

You know, you can never say that.

Here's the thing about these algorithms.

I don't need the algorithm to tell me that that YouTube video isn't necessarily factually based.

Wait a minute.

Can you not at least give the American people

any credit?

Nope.

No.

Nope.

No.

Nope.

No.

So we need these algorithms.

No, of course we do.

And that's good.

That's good that AI is going to clean up all this stuff.

So all the know, killing and drinking of blood of girls from our politicians, those videos are going to go away.

So think about this.

Think about this.

Because we used to say, hey, listen, it was on Walter Cronkite.

Absolutely.

It was on Walter Cronkite.

I heard him say it.

The more they take these algorithms and they say, yes, we're taking away all of the things that aren't true,

the more weak our mind becomes because we're not searching for those things ourselves.

The more we trust them to.

The less capable capable we will be

at discerning that.

And the more we will say, look, the algorithm would have taken that out if it wasn't true.

Right.

I mean, we just become lambs for the slaughter.

And Google is, Google is so brilliant.

Just brilliant.

I learned this from...

Who was it?

The guy who did the creepy line movie, I think.

And he was talking about, look at,

it was in one of the books.

I can't remember.

But

look at the Google homepage.

When you go to Google, what's on the page of Google?

Go to their homepage.

Just the search thing.

Just the search.

Okay.

Go now to Yahoo.

Totally clean.

Oh, yeah.

There's all sorts of stuff on Yahoo.

Yeah.

Right?

It's got politics.

It has news.

It has advertising.

It has all of these things.

Google kept it clean because they wanted to say, we're completely neutral.

We're nothing.

We're not trying to sell you anything.

We're not trying to do anything here at all.

No ass can trust us.

Yeah.

It's brilliant.

It's brilliant.

That is their uniform from Hugo Boss.

Their front page is their uniform.

Which they've not changed since it was

debuted, I think, in 19, what, 97?

98?

They don't want you to.

Hasn't changed a bit.

They don't want you.

They want you to see the word Google and what you're looking for.

So it's your friend.

That is brilliant.

It never pisses you off.

Yeah.

It's a brilliant strategy, and it's a great hiding place.

And it works so well that we continue to use it even though we know we probably shouldn't.

How many times have we tried to get away from Google stuff?

And you can't because every time you try a different engine, it doesn't work as well.

And you're like, okay, I'm just going to Google it.

Right?

I mean,

that's what I do every time.

I've tried Bing.

I've tried, you know, Yahoo.

It's like Lycos.

It's like

Jeeves.

it just don't work it's like Google has become a verb where like Kleenex just means to us tissue okay and people it's tissue it's tissue paper it's not Kleenex Kleenex is a brand how did that happen other than they must have been out in the market for a long time before anybody caught on that hey uh you know, wiping uh wiping a little box is a good thing.

Here, you could have a tissue, and it could be, I don't even know who makes tissue besides Kleenex, but I know everybody who

does.

But we still call it Kleenex.

Google is so far ahead of their competition.

It's like if Kleenex competitors were like cardboard, you'd have a cardboard box, and you'd reach in and you'd pull out another piece of cardboard.

You'd be like, okay, can I have the Kleenex?

Because it doesn't do it.

There's nothing that is even close, I think, to Kleenex.

It's so immersive, though.

I I mean, because if we say Google, and we need an alternative, we will get 1,400 calls from people saying, I use DuckDuckGo, which is another

search engine.

And DuckDuckGo does actually seem to be pretty good.

And every time I've used it, I've used it on Chrome, the Google browser, which doesn't do me any good at all.

I don't think.

That's the only reason why they have the browser.

Because they know you will escape someplace else.

It's like I said to Ray Kurzweil: so, Ray,

why would a company like Google allow me

to Google things or allow me to find things that could dismantle them?

If I was going to make a new thing, I couldn't do it online because you'd be monitoring everything.

And why wouldn't

why wouldn't it be in the best interest of the company to make sure that I'm thwarted some way or another or that I'm watched and you guys just take it?

And was his answer?

They just wouldn't?

They just wouldn't.

They just wouldn't.

They just wouldn't.

They're just too good.

The culture at Google is too good.

Well, they're not evil.

All right.

They're not evil.

That's when you're dangerous, though, right?

When you think you're so good and your goals are so wonderful, it's when these really terrible decisions get made.

It's because you're sure the end game, I know I'm right on.

So, yeah, we have to cut corners here, here, and there.

That's why the creepy line is so...

spooky because they came out and said look we know there's this creepy line and we're we're going to go right up to that line, but never over it.

Well, that line is probably pretty gray.

You know what I mean?

Let's know.

I don't, I don't know about you, but when I, like, I'm paying my taxes and stuff, I don't say, I want to go right up to where I'm going to go to jail, but no further.

Because this is essentially the decision-making process of Joe Biden.

Whenever he sees someone in a biker outfit, he's like, I got to go right up to the creepy line and not cross it.

But he doesn't know where the creepy line is.

He constantly is over it.

Yeah.

I guarantee having him sit on your lap is past the creepy line

the best of the glenbeck program

america i need you to brace yourself okay just brace yourself

we're gonna have a conservative on and sure that's that's not unusual

but in one minute we are going to have

a gay conservative.

What?

I didn't even know they existed.

And the left is saying that if you're gay and conservative, you just need to shut up.

And I think that's the words most uttered by anti-fascists.

A fascinating story, a fascinating tale from one of the guys who is a contributor at the Federalist.

He wrote a piece a couple of days ago.

The stigma against my conservative politics is worse than the stigma of my being gay.

Oh my gosh, that was setting hair on fire everywhere.

We go there in one minute.

This is the Glenn Beck Program.

The stigma against my conservative politics is worse than the stigma of being gay.

Everything I was told to fear about being openly gay has become a reality in being openly conservative.

Chad Felix Green wrote this story in The Federalist, and we have him now to talk not only about the article, but also the backlash on the article.

Chad, how are you?

Good.

Good.

Thank you.

Welcome to the program.

So you are,

tell me your evolution.

Tell me, you know, when you came out, what you faced, what you feared when you came out.

Well, I came out in 1998, shortly after Ellen did.

I was the first openly gay student in my high school, and it was a huge dramatic issue, and everything that I had access to at that time was gay media that told me that I was going to be rejected by my family, my friends, I was in physical danger, and

I was

terrified every day about the impending doom that was going to happen to me.

And over the years,

I really only experienced people being accepting and

loving and careful and sort of fragile around me

for most of my experience.

And I was very liberal in college.

And then

honestly, listening to I started to explore you and Ann Coulter and

I realized that the foundation of my views leaned more towards libertarianism than progressivism.

And

I just sort of became a conservative by the sheer force of I had no other choice because

I couldn't promote or accept progressive ideas.

Yeah, and you can't change what you believe.

It becomes fundamental to you.

So Chad,

do you actually mean that the stigma is worse because you're a conservative than it was when you came out in 99?

Absolutely.

When I came out,

people thought they were concerned about me.

My grandmother,

who was a very religious Christian, was worried about my religious experience.

My dad was worried that I was going to get hurt,

that I was going to become HIV positive, that sort of thing.

There were a lot of, what is your life going to be like now?

Because people at that time really didn't see much of a life.

as an adult for a gay person.

You kind of moved to Bixia, disappeared.

And that was, there was a lot of understanding that needed to happen.

People just needed to experience me as a person and realize how normal and average I was.

As a conservative, I experienced genuine hatred based on stereotypes and bigotry and prejudices.

Okay, so wait, wait, before you start there, you were a liberal when you came out.

And so you didn't have any of the conservative hate on you because you were, you know,

trying to destroy our society because you're a liberal and

all of that stuff.

Or, you know, none of the conservative hate that,

you know, you're going to burn in the fires of hell and you should be destroyed.

I certainly perceived it from watching, from reading LGBT media.

And that's the reason why I started to explore conservative media because I really wanted to I wanted to read your books.

I wanted to read Ann Culture books, John Handy, everybody, and debunk everything.

I wanted to prove that the right was hateful and wrong and accidentally realized that I agreed with you.

But the truth is that nobody treated me.

I experienced people who disagreed with me.

I experienced people who were ignorant, that didn't really understand.

I've never interpreted religious disagreement as hatred because I've always seen it coming from a place of genuine concern and empathy.

But you also don't deny that there are those people who are out there and, you know, I mean, the Westboro Baptist Church,

but it is bigger than that.

There are a lot of people who have been gay throughout, you know, human, the human experience

that have been, you know, deeply affected and hurt and persecuted because of their homosexuality.

Yes.

Okay.

And, of course, in the world right now, outside of the United States, it is a very real danger to be a gay person or perceived to be a gay person.

Correct.

All right.

So

what have you experienced now as a conservative?

Well, the truth is that since I've been active online,

as a conservative, I spend most of my time trying to explain to people that I don't believe or embrace what they think I do.

And in doing so, attempting to prevent them from trying to harm me in some way.

I've, of course, been physically threatened, as all conservatives online are.

I've had to make sure that my personal life is very protected because people do actively try to get you fired.

They will try to, they'll send police officers to your house.

They will harass your friends and family.

Early on when my Facebook was opened, my friends and family received harassment from people based on things that I said and I had to protect all of that.

No one ever did that to me as a gay person.

I never experienced people saying,

finding out that I was gay and then treating me badly.

The moment that people associate me with being a conservative, I'm instantly a Nazi, if not Jewish, I'm instantly a racist and a bigot, and I'm deserving of genuine hatred.

And that's a startling experience to interact with people and realize that they genuinely hate you based on something that they genuinely don't understand about you.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

We're talking to

Chad Felix Green.

He wrote the article in the Federalist, The Stigma Against My Conservative Politics is Worse Than the Stigma of Being Gay.

Tell me about stop flaunting your conservatism.

So

one thing that people say constantly, and you'll saw a lot of this when someone asked, is being

conservative worse than being gay,

was no, being conservative means you're a bad person.

I'm often told, well, if you don't want to experience the hatred, stop being a bigot or

stop harassing people

who

you hate from their perception.

And I always sort of associated that with, if I just stopped talking about conservative issues, if I just stopped correcting

lies and inaccuracies that I see in media, if I just stopped talking back to the left, they would leave me alone.

And that's exactly the advice that I got when I was younger.

And I would tell people I was gay and I feared a negative backlash.

People would say, well, why do you have to tell everybody?

Just don't tell anybody.

It's no one's business.

That's what I experienced today is in my regular life,

most people don't, you know, most people I know aren't interested in politics, but they'll say, well, why do you do it then?

Why don't you just stop?

And there isn't a...

an appreciation of what we actually do.

They just assume that we're sort of complaining about the hatred that we're inviting on ourselves.

And they don't really understand that we are fighting for something that we actually believe in and that the hatred that we're getting for it

is based on fighting.

But they'll say that, you know, you're gay, you're born that way, you have no choice.

And that's not a political viewpoint.

Right?

Take that argument apart.

I think that's a huge concept here is people saying, well, you can stop being conservative.

Or they assume that I'm conservative because I am self-hating or because I'm ignorant in some way or because I haven't been exposed to the right type of people, that I will get better and become progressive.

And the reason that I used that analogy, that I didn't choose to be conservative, is based on my personal experience of I fought it every step of of the way.

I refuse to refuse to.

I love that.

Chad, I love that.

Because

you are intellectually honest.

And the biggest problem that we have in America is it's a lot of people will not explore because they'll start to.

And if they start to see that maybe their side is weak, and I mean on both sides, any side, they start to see that they're maybe they're not right.

They'll stop because they instinctively know if I find out that this is true, then I've got to change everything and my life is going to be much different.

And they don't want to do it.

They're afraid.

So congratulations on not being that person.

Anyway.

Thank you.

It would have been a whole lot easier if I had.

I bet it would.

I bet it would.

But no,

I realized that

the foundation of

what of the foundation of LGBT is progressivism.

You can't escape that.

And, you know, I have a husband, and that that didn't come from conservative ideas.

That came from progressive pushing.

But the foundation of progressivism denies liberty.

It denies individuality.

It denies freedom.

And that's where I realized that I had a significant breaking point.

I kind of will talk about it, the left and the right today as the left as being progressivism.

And everyone who doesn't agree with progressivism finds themselves on the right.

And as I explored these ideas and tried to challenge them, I realized I am pro-life.

I am

pro-gun in that I think you should be able to defend yourself.

You know, I am

smaller government.

I don't want to depend on the government for everything.

I don't want to give all of my money to the government for these kinds of things.

And so in a way,

I really don't believe that it's as simple as this is too hard.

I could just become a liberal.

I would be lying if I did that.

Being conservative is the consequence of my intellectual honesty about what I believe.

That's great.

We're turning to Chad Felix Green of the Federalist.

And something interesting happened, I think, Chad, with the wording of the headline of your story, which is the stigma against my conservative politics is worse than the stigma of being gay.

And it didn't identify in the headline that you are actually gay.

And what it led to, at least what I saw online, was an army of straight liberal people trying to teach you a lesson of what it means to be gay and what it's like for people who went through that experience.

What is it like to get hit up by a bunch of straight liberals and giving you lessons on being gay?

It's very common.

I'm always assumed to be a straight white Christian

based on my looks.

It's an interesting,

you know,

I have red hair.

I am just assumed.

And so it's become a running joke that I will just simply respond by saying, gay Jew.

Because people just,

they come in with the assumption, the only people who are bad fall into this category.

And the only people who think like this are bad, therefore you must be one of those people.

And I constantly, you know, we talk about identity politics as a negative thing.

I actually use my privilege as

somebody who is a minority to sort of force many on the left to realize that they are closed-minded on this, that this isn't a worldview that is exclusive to ignorance or that's exclusive to any particular race or religion or anything, that this is, you know, me being gay and Jewish does not impact my views on, you know, tax policy.

And

that

they have to address their own prejudices and realize that they simply disagree with what's

the

reality is they disagree with what I'm promoting, but it has nothing to do with who I am.

And that's what I'm trying to get across when I do that.

You also said lumping Milo in with typical conservatives.

Talk a little bit about that.

Oh, well, you know,

to every gay conservative and every conservative, Milo is controversial.

I appreciated him early on because he was kind of the lady gaga, the madon of our movement.

And, you know, if we went back a decade or so ago and he were a liberal, he would be a media sensation.

His type of land of lands and comedy is what South Park and Family Guy and liberal humor was.

And I appreciated that he pushed the boundaries of the freedom of speech limits and he kind of he kind of exposed the fact that colleges were growing more intolerant.

But I don't always find him to be principled.

As a conservative, I find him to be more of a contrarian.

And that's fine.

There's a place for that.

But the reality is that I am compared to him and every gay conservative is.

And we are, in a lot of ways,

the concept that we are valid

to begin with is based on him

as a template.

And they view him as a scam artist.

So

one of the stereotypes that I find all the time is that I'm doing this for attention or I'm doing this as a scam or a con, that this isn't really, I don't know what they think I'm gaining from it, but that I'm doing this in a provocative way just to be provocative.

And so I find that frustrating.

And so when they look at Milo's sort of extreme expression, they say, well, that's just what conservatives are like.

He's just honest about it.

And it's frustrating because we spend so much of our time trying to dispel a lot of the

mythology around that.

And you know what's interesting is this is what happens.

This is the difference between conservatives, hopefully, conservatives and progressives.

One is a group hive mind that everybody has to be in a bucket and everybody is alike and there's no differences.

And hopefully, libertarian conservatives know, no, we're all different.

I don't answer for him and I don't agree with him, but we're kind of on the same side on this particular issue and we're not on this issue.

I applaud your article and your courage to say it.

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

Like listening to this podcast if you're not a subscriber.

Leon Wolf is the managing editor for theblaze.com

and he's in to talk to us a little bit about Michael Cohen and also, if we have time, China and Canada, because this is this is extraordinarily revealing.

And I think China just caught on to what Donald Trump and America may actually be doing with this trade war.

Let's start with Michael Cohen.

Sure, let's do it.

So yesterday he was sentenced to three years.

Right.

And what is the important part of this to you?

The important part

is not just Cohen, but of course the company that produces the National Enquirer also basically entered a plea agreement.

So you have

people now, both friendly to Trump,

previously very loyal to Trump, who have admitted basically in sworn statements and plea agreements that they were ordered by Donald Trump to commit felonies.

Now, the National Enquirer came out and kind of changed their story a bit.

And it's my understanding that this one is we were working with the campaign,

not necessarily Donald Trump directly, which changes it and makes it even more significant, does it not?

It does.

And so people struggle to understand this.

And I was talking with Jason Butrell about this just before I came on here.

People don't understand why is this a campaign finance violation?

Can they prove that it came through the campaign?

It's actually the fact that the money didn't go through the campaign is what makes it a campaign finance violation.

Because it's a legitimate campaign expense to spend money to protect the reputation of the candidate, right?

But that's the purpose of the money expenditure.

If you're going to do that, you have to either declare it as a campaign expenditure or the people who make the expenditure have to report it as a contribution in kind.

One of those two things has to happen.

Neither of them did happen.

It was clearly designed to evade the reporting requirements of the FEC, and that's what makes it a campaign finance violation in this case.

And so both of them are making the case that they were doing this at a request from Donald Trump.

And so it's,

as I understand this, and you're a former attorney, so you know this.

In campaign finance, right?

Yeah, I did campaign finance for over two years.

Okay.

That was almost exclusively what I did.

So

when it comes to this, it's a felony because

if I told Stu, hey, go kill this person, I'm being held just as culpable for the murder as he is, correct?

Right.

And, you know, look,

any campaign, any presidential campaign in particular, they're so large, of a general election candidate, you know, a serious candidate, is going to probably have some campaign finance violations

just because it's such a difficult thing to keep up with and maintain 100% compliance.

But if you have a willful violation, as this appears to clearly have been, that's what brings it into the level of out of, oh, we're just going to fine you X number of dollars and people have to go to jail.

Okay, so let me give you, let me take you through a couple of things.

First of all, Dinesh D'Souza, that was clearly a political hit.

Rosie O'Donnell was much worse.

You're saying an inconsistent application of the law, right?

Yes.

This is what you're talking about there.

So, I mean, if you're going to put Dinesh D'Souza in prison, Rosie O'Donnell should have gone to prison as well.

She was much worse, did basically the same thing, except she knowingly was doing it, admittedly saying, you know, I'm using different names and everything else.

She knew exactly what she was doing.

Not a problem for Rosie O'Donnell.

When it comes to Barack Obama, campaign finance violations, I think it was $2 million campaign finance violation.

He paid a fine.

Why is this one different?

Because of what I just said.

I mean, I think the expectation is that

in the course of handling all the various different donations and recording all the donations in kind, you almost always miss some.

That's like an expected thing, and then the FEC catches you and you file an amended statement and you pay a fine.

It's sort of like taxes, right?

Like

they always say like you have no idea if you're really filing everything perfectly.

And if they really look into it, they're going to find something that you screwed up, even completely unintentionally.

Right.

But with Al Capone, there was another set of books.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So the difference is between, oh,

I had a good faith belief that I could claim this as an exemption, and I hid $150,000 worth of income intentionally from the IRS.

Those are two different penalties.

So

what is the Trump explanation for this?

So

Trump's explanation is...

It's a plausible one.

Okay, I wouldn't laugh it out of court if I were a judge, is that the money was not spent to protect his reputation as a candidate.

It was spent to protect his reputation with his family prevent his wife and his kids from being embarrassed that's what it is it is the bill clinton excuse right um and it kind of an interesting analogy you know we've been through this once before actually people have already forgotten it even though it's been less than 20 years ago but john edwards as you recall was prosecuted for literally this exact same thing john edwards had an affair he used campaign finance money to pay off his mistress to to stay quiet he was prosecuted for this now

Ultimately, that was part of his argument to the jury, which was successful at least in hanging the jury, was, you know, look, this is, this is, you know, A, it's a legitimate campaign expense because it's protecting my reputation as a candidate.

And B,

you know, it's not a campaign finance violation because I have other interests that were involved that I'm trying to protect with that.

So

unfortunately, that one we didn't get like a court ruling on, like a judicial decision that sets a precedent as to whether that's a valid argument or not.

But there's at least an argument that a jury, and look, John Edwards.

is not a sympathetic was not a sympathetic guy.

His wife was dying of cancer.

Okay.

The jury had every reason to hate him and come down like a ton of bricks on him, but for whatever reason, enough of them bought that on the jury that he ended up walking.

And the other thing was a Washington Examiner that kind of did a story on this and made the point of

when

a presidential candidate, for example, their example was goes to get a haircut.

You have to get a haircut to

look good on camera.

And so he goes and he pays for his own haircut.

In theory, you could say that's a campaign finance violation because he's spending money to improve his candidacy.

But of course, that would be completely ridiculous.

And if you go down that same line, is there a kind of a line of defense there?

Like, yes, he's spending money that will help him as a candidate in theory, but this was more of a private thing.

And that's

why they should overlook it.

I think Donald Trump could make a case he was more afraid of Melania than he was of the American people.

It could be.

It could be.

But the problem that he's going to face is going to be:

what did Cohen and the National Inquirer people tell the DA, right?

What did Donald Trump say to them?

And of course, a lot of that we don't know yet.

If they have him saying,

this will destroy my campaign,

then it's a different story.

And that's the big thing, because if it's just Cohen's word, it means nothing.

Yeah, but

if it's Cohen's word and the National Inquirer's word, it means nothing.

It means nothing.

But if they have texts and emails and recorded phone conversations, then it's a different.

It could be big.

And that is big because, you know,

as we say this, this is not part of the Mueller investigation, right?

This is all Southern District of New York.

They have the policy they're not going to indict a sitting president.

This is all about what the House is going to do, right?

And it's all about what the Democrats can convince people politically is an impeachable offense.

I mean, that's what impeachment is.

It's not a legal thing.

It's a political thing.

Gerald Ford said it best.

You've done,

you were an attorney for campaign finance violations.

Impeachable offense, this, where it stands today.

Let me say this.

I've seen people prosecuted for less, okay?

But those people were not the president of the United States.

That's a completely different ⁇ it is a completely different ballgame.

Let me switch to China and Canada because there's something going on and most people are not paying attention to this.

China has now just

disappeared a Canadian

suit.

They got another one this morning.

They got another one.

Yes.

Explain who they are.

I'm handicapped because I came and got off a plane and got right here, so I don't know the particular, but it's another, it's a fairly low level.

It's not anybody who's on the level of the one that the Canadians, you know, snatched from the Chinese.

It's not like the CFO of a major company.

It's still more, I think, on the level of message sending than actual retaliation.

So, what happened is we said

there's a Chinese official in Canada.

Sorry,

her

father is high up in the Communist Party, but she runs a company that has been known to be dirty for a very long time, stealing all kinds of stuff from America.

And so Donald Trump said,

we want her extradited into the United States.

She can't go home.

China flipped out.

Now, China has just taken two business people from Canada, and they're saying, you better release ours because two can play at this game.

This

is really, I think,

what is really happening on China.

And this is the beginning of a very

strong Cold War here between us.

We are saying

the trade war is not just about the trade imbalance.

It is about stop stealing our stuff.

Right.

So I'm, you know, I have been waiting for someone to do something like this, like what Trump has done for a long time.

Like, I'm not, I've never thought tariffs were the answer.

I still don't think they're the answer.

But

it is an issue, the Chinese theft of American intellectual, they just have no respect for Western intellectual property.

It's a known problem.

It has been for years and and years and years.

And we've all been screaming for somebody needs to do something.

And now Trump has done something.

I think that's a good first step.

But what we're seeing is that this is a very dangerous game to play, right?

Because the Canadians, you know, Trudeau has got to go to his people and say, I have a reason for holding this CFO of, you know, China.

And Trump has got to come to the American people and say, we have a reason for this person we've arrested.

The Chinese government

don't have to explain this to their own people.

They can snatch as many of our people and Canadians as they want and just disappear them off the street.

And they don't have to go and say, oh, you know, well, here's why.

This is just, somebody's just gone.

And that's the concern: is that there are a lot of American Canadian nationals over there.

If we start engaging in this tit for tat,

who knows where that could end up?

Who knows where that could end up?

But it's an interesting first step in,

you know, if it is a negotiating play, we'll see how it works.

Real quick, in 60 seconds, tell me what you think is going to happen in both of those cases where they leave.

This pure speculation, I'm asking you to look in 2019.

Are we going to see impeachments in the House or just investigations?

I don't think so.

I don't think we're going to see impeachment proceedings in the House unless something else major comes out.

I don't think this campaign finance thing is going to be enough for the Democrats to roll the dice on that because you have to know Republicans are not going to buy this.

They have to know it's a dead end in the Senate no matter what happens.

If some other damaging information comes out, if Trump's approval rating dips down into the 20s, if the economy goes sour, maybe we see a different analysis.

But I doubt it.

Canada, China, United States, trade.

How does the

get worse in 2019 to a happy ending, or does it get worse?

And there's, you know, we're not headed towards a happy ending a year from now.

Cautiously optimistic that it's going to get better.

I think that both sides are at the point and there is dialogue that's going on.

I think both sides are at the point that they can still back away from the precipice on this one.

And I hope that that's what ends up happening.

But, you know, it is, listen, it is very important for us to protect our intellectual property rights.

And I hope that some, I'm hopeful that some kind of deal will get worked out to where that'll happen.

We both have a lot to lose.

And I think they have more to lose than we do

just on technology, at least today.

Now is the time to play this card

if you're actually going to play it.

Leon, thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Mackenzie Adams, a little girl who she was nine and committed suicide.

I don't even know how that happens to a nine-year-old.

This story is so tragic on many levels.

Edwina Edwina Harris,

the aunt of Mackenzie Adams, is with us now.

First of all, Edwina, our deepest, deepest sympathies go out to you and the family.

I cannot imagine what you guys are going through now.

Thank you.

It's been really hard.

So, first of all, tell me a little bit about Mackenzie.

Tell me who she was.

Mackenzie was a very bubbly little girl, very smart, very funny.

She liked to tell jokes like a granddad.

Loved family, loved to travel, zoo, go out to eat, the beach, you know, just a really sweet, fun, and energetic kid.

So she was being bullied in

school.

And

she was being bullied, if I'm not mistaken, because she was friends with a white kid.

Is that true?

That is true.

It's more to it, of course.

Because, you know, of course,

she was a cute little girl, you know, had a lot of love.

You know, every jealousy is not just what you have, but it's who you have around you as well.

So that was some of it.

And the family that she wrote with loved her unconditionally as if she was theirs because they only have one child as well.

So she was like his sister.

They were really, really close.

And

they would pick her up for school sometimes, and she would go in.

and

and was it white kids or black kids that were or both that were it was both that was bullying her it was both

man

does it ever

does it ever get better um in alabama um

so uh

so what was happening with the bullying that you can talk about like what was being said

um basically what you guys have read uh the you know, the name Carter the B and black nigger and on papers it would say, kill yourself, kill yourself, things like that.

Yeah.

And of course, Mackenzie, you know, we come

at home, we're Baptist, so she comes from a faith-based home.

We all, you know, we go to church, we believe in God and faith and all of those things.

So what she did is not something that's taught.

you know, that's not even something that's even brought up, you know, as far as suicide and killing yourself and death and things of that nature.

So she's taught to love everybody.

And, but the bullying, you know, of course, my mom is a respected individual in this community, which is something that has been lacking to be said because my mom has master's degrees.

She works for DHR and the mental health center as well.

So the people that's in the school system have worked with my mom in one form or fashion or another because my mom dealt in children's services.

So

the talks of bullying my mom addressed because because she knew about it.

The talks of how to deal with it, my mom was, these are the things that she, in her profession, has always helped other people get through.

So

the breaking point on that Monday that happened at school that had to have pushed her there because she had a loving environment that

would we hear, right?

All she had to do was

do you know what happened on Monday that pushed it over the edge?

That is something we are still working on, and I'm working diligently with Chief Austin to find that information out.

Because, you know, kids have their cell phones, and it's a lot of things that

we're finding that we're still searching and trying to get final answers about.

Now, I read that

she was a great student, hundreds on all of her tests.

But then recently, that started to fall apart.

So that was a warning sign that something was going on.

And she did talk to your mother.

And the mother did talk to the teachers, right?

Absolutely.

My mom went to the school.

My sister called the school.

My mom went up there a couple of times.

And as I said, my mom worked with these,

with the schools in both cities because of her profession.

And they were more so of colleagues.

And so

she talked to them and they assured her that they would make sure that she would be fine.

She can come talk to them anytime she wanted.

If anything was happening, she just Mackenzie just should let them know.

And that was to the assistant principal, to the counselor.

And my mom was not able to speak with one of the teachers, but she was able to speak to another one.

So, yeah, they assured my mom.

I mean, my mom wouldn't keep sending my niece back if she didn't get that assurance from people that she's worked with before.

And the

main bullying kid,

he was suspended for bullying earlier, was he not?

Now, I don't know about suspension, but I do know he was put in in-school suspension.

Well, you know, in school, the ISS, not completely suspended from school, which is what he needed to be expelled from school.

But he was put in in-school suspension, yes.

And with that came documenting documentation, which my mother does possess, a carbon copy of that information where that incident took place when he was put in in-school suspension and my niece was rolled up for standing up for herself.

So

I can't, I just, I, I,

you know, I have kids and at nine years old, I mean, I'm worried about my, you know, my

14-year-old son and my 12-year-old girl.

And I see the rate of suicide going through the roof, and something is happening with our kids.

But at nine, it's, it's, this is just, it's stunning.

And I've I've been thinking about you guys and praying about you and your family, but I also

feel

so

I'm so worried about her friend who,

I mean, how is it, do you have any idea how the family is dealing with this?

So he doesn't feel like my friend just because I was white or just because we were friends or whatever the reason that she's dead now.

I just, this

is such a tragedy.

He's actually at the beach right now.

They, I don't, I'm not sure if they're going to return him, um, which I highly recommend.

And that's my recommendation for any parent that really feels in their heart that my mother did what she said, which was went to the school and reported it.

That if you feel in your heart that my mother did what she said, because you know my mom, everybody in this area knows my mom and my dad, dad they're respected individuals in this county

to move your kid because if this is what they want to say what more will they do if it was your child if your kids are feeling threatened at school please move them please move them because

Sending your kids out of your home from your protection to give them to someone that it will fail to protect them, that is not a good feeling.

I am a mother.

I am also in the school systems in atlanta as well and

i take what i do very seriously when you have allowed your kids to leave your home and come into my possession they are now my children and i'm going to protect them in every fiber of my being i am not a punk educator.

I am not scared of these kids that think that bullying is okay.

I stand up to these kids just as I did in high school.

When this happened, an outpour of people that I have protected, some I honestly have forgotten because it was my heart to do that.

If I saw somebody being mistreated, I would step up for them.

But I was also one of the popular kids.

So I was in band and chili and different things like that.

But that was my duty in my position, just as I have one now in media in Atlanta, to stand up and be this voice for those people that seem, that can't do that.

And those individuals like you're doing, I don't know how this happened to your niece, when all you did was took care of me all through high school, all through middle school, or whatever the timeframe it was that I protected those individuals.

And it wasn't just one or two.

It was, you you know, 40, 50 different people that, and I was like, oh my God, I was like, girl, what are you?

You know, I forgot because that's just who I am.

That's just what my family, who my family is.

And for it to happen to my niece, it was heartbreaking because nobody stood up for my niece.

Nobody, the karma that we've done for people, the good.

My niece had to suffer with this.

No teacher stood up like my mom and my dad and myself have stood up in the education system.

My aunts that are teachers and professors and doctors in education.

Nobody stood up for my niece.

Nobody stood up for my baby.

Nobody.

Really?

You have started

a GoFundMe page called the McKenzie Foundation.

You can find it just by searching for McKenzie Foundation.

And you have a goal of $10,000.

You've already gotten $3,000.

And

you want to focus not just on the bullied, but you also want to focus on the bully

him or herself.

In what way?

Well,

when this happened, some of those guys that I did go to school with and some people I didn't know, they said, well, Edwin, I just want to be honest with you.

I was the bully.

And the reason I'm telling you is because I trust you.

But I also read where the person that I used to bully in school was stating a story how their life is still in turmoil because they have been bullied for so long in school.

So it doesn't stop when you're an adult.

These things live with you for the rest of your life.

So said so many people that I've been reading that have been inboxing me.

So I want to bring in those people that have opened up to me and there was a bully.

Right now, I'm talking with them to see what was happening in your life at this time that made you feel that coming to school to bully someone else was okay.

And if the story varies.

It's from things that happened with drug addiction.

It was a single-parent home.

Other family members was bullying them.

So they came to school and bullied someone else.

So the bully has to heal first.

Because if we can target and help the bully, they couldn't bully.

They won't bully someone else because it takes a bully for there to be bullying.

Edwina Harris,

the aunt of Mackenzie Adams.

My wife and I

wish we could be at the funeral on Saturday.

I don't know why.

I just feel so attached to

Mackenzie and what she went through and

the little boy

as well.

And I just want you to know that you're in our thoughts and in our prayers and

blessings to you and the family.

And may this turn out to be, in the long run, something that will bring honor to McKenzie's name for a long, long time to come.

Yes, sir.

Thank you so much.

If you would like to donate, you can go to GoFundMe.

It's the McKenzie Foundation.

They're trying to reach $10,000

to

be able to have some of these former bullies come in and maybe make a difference.

It's worth a try.

GoFundMe.com.

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