Mercury Confidential: Which member of TheBlaze team briefed the president on national security?

by Meg Storm

Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes at Mercury Radio Arts? Just how do all of Glenn’s crazy ideas get done? Does anyone ever get a chance to sleep? Well, over the next few months we are going to take you inside MRA, giving you the inside scoop on everything from publishing to special events, 1791 to TheBlaze. We will be interviewing members of our New York, Columbus, and Dallas staff, bringing you all the info, so you can know what it’s really like to work for Glenn.

Catch Buck on Real News, weeknights at 6pm ET only on TheBlaze TV. You can listen to The Buck Sexton Show Saturdays at 12pm ET on TheBlaze Radio Network.

Not many people can say they have briefed the president of the United States in the Oval Office. Even fewer people can say they briefed the president of the United States on matters of national security in the Oval Office at 26-years-old. But, during his time in the CIA, that was just another day at the office for TheBlaze’s Buck Sexton.

“I did run Oval Office intelligence briefings for the president on subjects that I had particular expertise in,” Buck said during an interview in TheBlaze newsroom. “That was the president, the vice president, the national security advisor, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, so essentially some of the biggest government national security figures. That was really cool. I think I was 26 the first time I briefed the president.”

Since joining TheBlaze in the summer of 2011, Buck has accumulated quite a few projects. After being hired as National Security Editor of TheBlaze.com, Buck became a regular contributor on TheBlaze TV before joining the Real News panel full-time. More recently, Buck added a three-hour weekly radio show to his repertoire. He hosts The Buck Sexton Show live from the ‘Freedom Hut’ high above Times Square, Saturdays from 12pm to 3pm ET on TheBlaze Radio Network.

So how exactly does one make the jump from working in the Iraq and Afghanistan offices of the CIA to working for TheBlaze? For Buck, it was a bit of a winding road.

“I grew up here in NYC. I was born and raised on the East Side here in town,” Buck explained. “I went to St. David’s, which was a school on the East Side as well. We all had to wear a jacket and tie. It was a fun little place. Then I went to Regis High School.”

It was during his time at Regis, a tuition-free, all-boys Jesuit high school in Manhattan, that Buck began to realize his interest in politics. “Regis was amazing. That was where I first started to realize that I was different from other people in how I view things – in so far as I was more conservative,” he said. “It was not a hostile place for conservatives though. There was a strong Christian ethos behind it.”

While his high school may not have been an unfriendly place for conservative thinkers, his college experience was a little different. Buck attended Amherst College in Massachusetts, and it took just a couple of hours on campus for him to realize what he was in for.

“That was a real wake up call from the very beginning. And when I say, ‘from the very beginning,’ I mean from day one,” he recalled. “At our first events I was hearing all these things I had never really been exposed to before, even though I had grown up in New York. All of a sudden I am being told about white male patriarchy, and Western culture hegemony, and all these kind of pre-packaged ideologies that they just hammer in. I felt under assault from the beginning. I stuck it out though.”

As a right-leaning student on a left-leaning college campus, it is often easiest to just sit back and bite your tongue. But then came the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, an event that would prove to shape Buck’s thinking and career.

“All classes were canceled and everyone was kind of walking around in a haze,” Buck said of September 11. “And they held the only all-school assembly that happened while I was there. We gathered in the auditorium. I remember the president [of Amherst], who was kind of a slimy used-car salesman, got up and said something like, ‘We are gathering as a community…’ And then a professor stood up and said, ‘This is what happens when you make people angry.’ And essentially launched into – what I would hear a lot more of – which was that the attacks were a response to U.S. aggressions abroad.”

“I actually stood up and walked out, along with a few of my friends who were, if not conservative, at least sane. After that it was pretty much on,” he continued. “I had thoughts about going to join the military. I had thoughts of leaving Amherst, right after September 11, and serving and then trying to come back and finish my degree at some point.”

Instead, Buck decided to utilize his unique academic background, which included Arabic studies. “For someone who already had some Mid East politics background, who was already studying Arabic at the time, the opportunities were huge,” Buck explained. He spent time at several prominent foreign policy Think Tanks, including the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the American Enterprise Institute, and Council on Foreign Relations.

Those experiences ultimately groomed Buck for his very first job out of college at the CIA. After graduating Amherst with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, Political Science in 2004, “it was a pretty straight shot into the CIA,” Buck said. “The first job I applied for my senior year – the first application I sent out – was the CIA. I got it. It took about a year to get through the clearance process, to get through the background checks and everything else.”

There isn’t a whole lot he can talk about from his four years in the CIA. He was first assigned to the Counterterrorism Center, which he described as the “tip of the spear for anti-Al Qaeda efforts in the intelligence community.” After about a year there, he was moved to the Iraq office for a couple of years before arriving at the Afghanistan office in 2009. Part of the job included spending time in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I was in the CIA a little over four years, and it was time to either get an advanced degree or at least figure out what I wanted to do,” Buck said. He ended up back to New York City as a member of the NYPD Intelligence Division, which specializes in counterterrorism work. “I worked at NYPD Intelligence for something like 18 months total,” he said. “During that period, I officially resigned from the CIA because I knew I wasn’t going to go back to D.C.”

If Buck’s time at Amherst served as a philosophical awakening to the tactics of the progressive left, working for the government was a pretty eye-opening lesson in why bigger doesn’t always mean better.

“I have very little faith or trust in the government. I believe in a government that is very simple and straightforward in task, and has the consent of the American people, and is rooted in Constitutional authority. As opposed to, now it is sort of a free-for-all power grab. I think we are much closer to that than people realize,” Buck said. “They are very quiet about it, but there are other quasi-anarchist libertarians running around the federal government. I have some friends who are still on the inside, and they won’t leave because they are well compensated and senior in the ranks now, but they secretly think it is a bloated monstrosity. People have no idea how much goes into it.”

After leaving the NYPD, Buck was accepted to New York University’s Stern School of Business, and he had all intentions of going, until a chance conversation led him to TheBlaze.

Buck was introduced to Betsy Morgan, President and Chief Strategy Officer of TheBlaze, through a mutual friend, and after learning more about his background, Betsy invited Buck to TheBlaze offices for a meeting.

“The first time I showed up in TheBlaze office [in the summer of 2011], there was nothing here. I met with Betsy in some office where all there were two sort of random chairs and a card table,” Buck said laughing. “We had our meeting and she started talking to me. And she basically told me that I should come to work here and not go to business school. I thought about it – I didn’t really want to go to business school.”

“I had always wanted to do conservative media. I was known in the CIA for both being avidly conservative and doing impressions of all the senior CIA officials, which I would do for people. That was nothing new for me,” he continued. “The opportunity for me to come here and do media was cool. It was a risk professionally, for sure, but risk was not something I was averse to before hand. And I am not averse to it now.”

Buck forewent NYU and joined TheBlaze as National Security Editor. From there, he started doing some commentary on GBTV [now TheBlaze TV]. He is now a regular panelist on Real News, which airs weeknights at 6pm ET on TheBlaze. And his gig on Real News led to “me telling the radio people I wanted to do a radio show,” he explained. And that led to the birth of The Buck Sexton Show on TheBlaze Radio Network.

“So now I am doing the radio show, Real News, and I am still national security editor of TheBlaze,” Buck said. “That is pretty much the soup to nuts.”

Media presented Buck with a unique challenge, considering his background in the intelligence community had basically trained him to avoid journalists at all costs. “Not only did I have no TV experience, I was actually trained to avoid journalists like they were radioactive. I was trained to not say anything,” Buck explained. “But at the Agency, we had a lot of training in how to present material, breakdown really complex material so people could digest what you are telling them. That was incredibly helpful for the job, but it was a huge mindset shift. I went from an office where you couldn’t bring your cell phone into the building with you, and to do so was a serious security violation, to an office where there are live video cameras around me and microphones everywhere. Psychologically, it was a pretty big shift.”

It was right around the time Buck really began to settle into his new job on Real News that the opportunity to host a weekly radio program presented itself. “I love hosting the radio show. I really view it as sort of a one-on-one conversation. That is kind of the embodiment of how I think of everybody who is listening. I refer to them affectionately as ‘Team Buck,’” he said. “My approach to the show has always been: I want to do the radio show I would want to listen to.”

Buck has quickly been able to cultivate a relationship with his audience by utilizing the immediate feedback mechanisms radio offers. Aside from the standard practice of taking viewer phone calls, Buck live tweets during his show and that feedback often influences the course of the show. “So when I say it is a conversation with the audience, it really is,” he reiterated. “I have a representative sample of who’s listening and what they want to hear.”

One of the primary differences Buck has noticed between radio and TV is the rhythm. While the Real News panel is “fun” and “lively,” television seldom provides the time to really dig deep into a topic. “In television, I have found that you have to throw punches right away. Not meaning you are going after people, but you have to give your best stuff,” Buck said. “You have to launch in with something that is worthwhile, interesting, moving the conversation, adding to the conversation.”

Radio, on the other hand, allows time to offer an idea but then build and construct a narrative around that hook. “I am somebody who suffers from an excess of analytic thinking, I suppose,” Buck explained. “I kind of bring my best stuff every night on Real News – try to just get out the most interesting thought or question or insight that I can offer at that time. And then, come the radio show, I can go broader or deeper and add all that together and synthesize something that is even more in-depth.”

The benefit of having a weekly show is the ability to really pre-plan the topics for the program in a way a daily show could not. Instead of relying on the news-of-day, Buck spends his week curating the best and most interesting stories he can find. Borrowing a phrase from the CIA, he looks at each program as a ‘deep dive.’

“Every day is prep essentially, as I view it,” he said. “I can really pick the subjects through the week and put together a ‘best of’ the week, which is a huge advantage for someone like me who wants to do a lot of in-depth analysis. I can really craft a three-hour narrative on Saturday. I call it the ‘deep dive’ with folks. It’s actually what we used to call big briefings in the CIA.”

If you are at all familiar with The Buck Sexton Show, you know that its breakout star has been a Soviet-inspired teddy bear. ‘Commie Bear,’ as it is affectionately referred to, adds a dose of jollity to the program. After covering a story on Real News that involved a Swedish advertising company infiltrating Belarusian airspace and dropping ‘Freedom Bears’ – little stuffed animals with messages of freedom written on them – over the country, Buck decided to parody the situation. Little did he know, his “joke story” would turn into an institution.

“That was a real story, and I figured we would do a joke story in response that my contacts in government got me quick access to the Soviet reaction to the ‘Freedom Bear,’ which is ‘Commie Bear,’” Buck said. “And from there, it just kind of took off. I thought it would be a joke segment we would do once or twice, and now it is at the point where, if I go two radio shows without doing it, I start getting a lot of emails from people who are not asking but demanding that they want Commie Bear.”

Buck’s career has taken him to some of the most dangerous places on earth and exposed him to some of the country’s most sensitive intelligence information, but he has settled in quite nicely to his ever-expanding job at TheBlaze.

“I enjoy the media,” he said candidly, “and I think if you can enjoy your job then you picked the right one.”

Catch Buck on Real News, weeknights at 6pm ET only on TheBlaze TV. You can listen to The Buck Sexton Show Saturdays at 12pm ET on TheBlaze Radio Network.

 

 

What do clay pots have to do with to preserving American history?

NurPhoto / Contributor | Getty Images

Editor's note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Why should we preserve our nation’s history? If you listen to my radio program and podcast, or read my columns and books, you know I’ve dedicated a large part of my life and finances to sourcing and preserving priceless artifacts that tell America’s story. I’ve tried to make these artifacts as available as possible through the American Journey Experience Museum, just across from the studios where I do my daily radio broadcast. Thousands of you have come through the museum and have been able to see and experience these artifacts that are a part of your legacy as an American.

The destruction of American texts has already begun.

But why should people like you and me be concerned about preserving these things from our nation's history? Isn’t that what the “big guys” like the National Archives are for?

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1946, a Bedouin shepherd in what is now the West Bank threw a rock into a cave nestled into the side of a cliff near the Dead Sea. Instead of hearing an echo, he heard the curious sound of a clay pot shattering. He discovered more than 15,000 Masoretic texts from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

These texts weren’t just a priceless historical discovery. They were virtually perfect copies of the same Jewish texts that continue to be translated today. Consider the significance of that discovery. Since the third century B.C. when these texts were first written, the Jewish people have endured a continued onslaught of diasporas, persecutions, pressures to conform to their occupying power, the destruction of their temple, and so much more. They had to fight for their identity as a people for centuries, and finally, a year after the end of the Holocaust and a year before the founding of the nation of Israel, these texts were discovered, confirming the preservation and endurance of their heritage since ancient times — all due to someone putting these clay pots in a desert cave more than 2,000 years ago.

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So, what do these clay pots have to do with the calling to preserve American history? I didn’t understand that prompting myself until the horrible thought dawned on me that the people we are fighting against may very well take our sacred American scriptures, our Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights. What if they are successful, and 1,000 years from now, we have no texts preserved to confirm our national identity? What kind of new history would be written over the truth?

The destruction of American texts has already begun. The National Archives has labeled some of our critical documents, like our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, as “triggering” or “containing harmful language.” In a public statement, the National Archives said that the labels help prepare readers to view potentially distressing content:

The Catalog and web pages contain some content that may be harmful or difficult to view. NARA’s records span the history of the United States, and it is our charge to preserve and make available these historical records. As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions. In addition, some of the materials may relate to violent or graphic events and are preserved for their historical significance.

According to this statement, our founding documents are either “outdated, biased, offensive,” “possibly violent,” or a combination of these scathing descriptions. I’m sorry, the Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.” Our Constitution is not “outdated and biased,” and our Bill of Rights certainly is not “offensive and possibly violent.” They are glorious documents. They should be celebrated, not qualified by such derogatory, absurd language. Shame on them.

These are only the beginning stages of rewriting our history. What if they start banning these “triggering” documents from public view because they might offend somebody? Haven’t we torn down “triggering” statues before? What if we are no longer able to see, read, and study the actual words of our nation's founding documents because they are “harmful” or “possibly violent”? A thousand years from now, will there be any remnant to piece together the true spirit behind the nation that our founders envisioned?

The Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.”

That is why in 2008, I was prompted to preserve what I could. Now, the American Journey Experience Museum includes more than 160,000 artifacts, from founding-era documents to the original Roe v. Wade court papers. We need to preserve the totality of our nation’s heritage, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We need to preserve our history in our own clay pots.

I ask you to join with me on this mission. Start buying books that are important to preserve. Buy some acid-free paper and start printing some of the founding documents, the reports that go against the mainstream narrative, the studies that prove what is true as we are continually being fed lies. Start preserving our daily history as well as our history because it is being rewritten and digitized.

Somebody must have a copy of what is happening now and what has happened in the past. I hope things don’t get really bad. But if they do, we need to preserve our heritage. Perhaps, someone 1,000 years from now will discover our clay pots and, Lord willing, be able to have a glimpse of America as it truly was.

Top 10 WORST items in the new $1.2 TRILLION spending bill

Kevin Dietsch / Staff | Getty Images

Biden just signed the newest spending bill into law, and Glenn is furious.

Under Speaker Johnson's leadership, the whopping $1.2 TRILLION package will use your taxpayer dollars to fund the government through September. Of course, the bill is loaded with earmarks and pork that diverts money to fund all sorts of absurd side projects.

Here is the list of the ten WORST uses of taxpayer money in the recently passed spending bill:

Funding venues to host drag shows, including ones that target children

David McNew / Contributor | Getty Images

Money for transgender underwear for kids

Funding for proms for 12 to 18 year old kids

Bethany Clarke / Stringer | Getty Images

Border security funding... for Jordan and Egypt

Another $300 million for Ukraine

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

$3.5 million for Detroit's annual Thanksgiving Day parade

Icon Sportswire / Contributor | Getty Images

$2.5 million for a new kayaking facility in Franklin, New Hampshire

Acey Harper / Contributor | Getty Images

$2.7 million for a bike park in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, a town with a population of less than 2,300 people

$5 million for a new trail at Coastal Carolina University

$4 million the "Alaska King Crab Enhancement Project" (whatever that means)

FRED TANNEAU / Stringer | Getty Images

There is no doubt about it—we are entering dark times.

The November presidential election is only a few months away, and following the chaos of the 2020 election, the American people are bracing for what is likely to be another tumultuous election year. The left's anti-Trump rhetoric is reaching an all-time high with the most recent "Bloodbath" debacle proving how far the media will go to smear the former president. That's not to mention the Democrats' nearly four-year-long authoritarian attempt to jail President Trump or stop his re-election by any means necessary, even if it flies in the face of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Biden is doing worse than ever. He reportedly threw a tantrum recently after being informed that his polls have reached an all-time low. After Special Counsel Robert Hur's report expressed concerns over Biden's obviously failing mental agility, it's getting harder for the Democrats to defend him. Yet he is still the Democratic nominee for November, promising another 4 years of catastrophic policies, from the border to heavy-handed taxation, should he be reelected.

The rest of the world isn't doing much better. The war in Ukraine has no clear end in sight, drawing NATO and Russia closer and closer to conflict. The war in Gaza is showing no sign of slowing down, and as Glenn revealed recently, its continuation may be a sign that the end times are near.

One thing is clear: we are living in uncertain times. If you and your family haven't prepared for the worst, now is the time. You can start by downloading "Glenn's Ultimate Guide to Getting Prepared." Be sure to print off a copy or two. If the recent cell outage proved anything, it's that technology is unreliable in survival situations. You can check your list of supplies against our "Ultimate Prepper Checklist for Beginners," which you can find below:

Food

  • Canned food/non-perishable foods
  • Food preparation tools
  • Go to the next level: garden/livestock/food production

Water

  • Non-perishable water store
  • Water purification
  • Independent water source

Shelter

  • Fireplace with a wood supply
  • Tent
  • Generator with fuel supply
  • Go to the next level: fallout shelter

Money

  • Emergency cash savings
  • Precious metals

Medicine

  • Extra blankets
  • Basic first aid
  • Extra prescriptions
  • Extra glasses
  • Toiletries store
  • Trauma kit
  • Antibiotics
  • Basic surgery supplies
  • Potassium Iodate tablets

Transportation

  • Bicycle
  • Car
  • Extra fuel

Information

  • Birth certificates
  • Insurance cards
  • Marriage license
  • Immunization records
  • Mortgage paperwork
  • Car title and registration
  • House keys, car keys
  • Passports
  • Family emergency plan
  • Prepping/survival/repair manuals
  • Go to the next level: copy of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and other important books/sources

Skills

  • Cooking
  • Gardening
  • Sewing
  • First Aid
  • Basic maintenance skills
  • Go to the next level: farming/ranching
  • Self-defense training

Communication

  • Family contact information and addresses
  • HAM radio

Miscellaneous

  • Flashlights and batteries
  • Lamps and fuel
  • Hardware (tools, nails, lumber, etc)
  • Extra clothes
  • Extreme weather clothes and gear
  • Gas masks and filters
  • Spare parts for any machinery/equipment

Is Trump's prosecution NORMAL?  This COMPLETE list of ALL Western leaders who served jail time proves otherwise.

PhotoQuest / Contributor, The Washington Post / Contributor, Win McNamee / Staff | Getty Images

Mainstream media is on a crusade to normalize Donald Trump's indictments as if it's on par with the electoral course. Glenn asked his team to research every instance of a Western leader who was jailed during their political career over the past 200 years—except extreme political turmoil like the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Irish Revolution, etc.—and what we discovered was quite the opposite.

Imprisoning a leader or major political opponent is not normal, neither in the U.S. nor in the Western world. Within the last 200 years, there are only a handful of examples of leaders in the West serving jail time, and these men were not imprisoned under normal conditions. All of these men were jailed under extreme circumstances during times of great peril such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.

What does this mean for America? Are Trump's indictments evidence that we are re-entering times of great peril? Below is a list of Western leaders who were imprisoned within the last 200 years. Take a look and decide for yourself:

Late 1800s

The Washington Post / Contributor | Getty Images

Jefferson Davis: The nearest occurrence to a U.S. President to serve jail time was in the case of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Jefferson was captured in Georgia by Northern Soldiers in 1865 and locked up in Fort Monroe, Virginia for two years. He was offered a presidential pardon but refused out of his loyalty to the confederacy.

Early 1900s

PhotoQuest / Contributor | Getty Images

Eugene V. Debs: Debbs, a Midwestern socialist leader, became the first person to run for president in prison. He was locked up at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta having been convicted under the federal Sedition Act for giving an antiwar speech a few months before Armistice Day, the end of World War I. Many of his supporters believed his imprisonment to be unjust. Debs received 897,704 votes and was a distant third-part candidate behind Warren G. Harding, the Republican winner, and James M. Cox, the second-place Democrat. Harding ordered Debs’s release from prison toward the end of 1921.

Nazi sympathizers and collaborators: After the end of World War II in 1945, several European leaders who had "led" their countries during the Nazi occupation faced trial and imprisonment for treason. This list included Chief of the French State Philippe Pétain, French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, and Minister-President of Norway Vidkun Quisling. The latter two were also executed after their imprisonment. President of Finland Risto Ryti and Prime Minister of Finland Johan Wilhelm Rangell were also tried and jailed for collaborating with the Nazis against the Allied Powers.

Late 1900s

The Washington Post / Contributor | Getty Images

The end of the Cold War: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was one of the pivotal moments that brought the Cold War to a close and marked the end of Communist East Germany. With the fall of the wall and the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the former leaders were brought to trial to answer for the crimes committed by the GDR. General Secretary Erich Honecker and General Secretary Egon Krenz were both put on trial for abuse of power and the deaths of those who were shot trying to flee into West Germany. Honecker was charged with jail time but was released from custody due to severe illness and lived out the rest of his life as an exile in Chile. Krenz served 4 years in jail before his release in 2001. He is one of the last surviving leaders of the Eastern Bloc.

Lyndon LaRouche: Larouche was a Trotsky evangelist, public antisemite, and founder of a nationwide Marxist political movement, became the second person in U.S. history to run for President in a prison cell. Granted, he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a long-shot third-party candidate. When he tried to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, he received 5 percent of the total nationwide vote. Even though in 2000 he received enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in a few states, the Democratic National Committee refused to seat his delegates and barred LaRouche from attending the Democratic National Convention.