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What happens when a reasonable constitutionalist meets a reasonable progressive? A useful conversation ensues.
Eric Liu, CEO of Citizenship University and author of You're More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizen's Guide to Making Change Happen, joined Glenn in studio to discuss the destructive nature of politics and how to push back against a rigged system.
Enjoy the complimentary clip or read the transcript for details.
GLENN: Eric Liu is a new friend. We started to get to know each other maybe two months ago. He came down from his hometown of Seattle, which is also my hometown.
He is a CEO of Citizenship University. He teaches civics at the University of Washington. Just that is enough to say, I don't think we're going to have a lot in common.
(laughter)
GLENN: He is -- he was described by a mutual friend of ours, Matt Kibbe, as a progressive who wants to talk to the other side. And I -- I sat down in my office with Eric, and I said, "This is going to be an interesting conversation." And you -- you pretty much, if I remember correctly, started the conversation with, I'm not an early 20th century American progressive.
Is that -- am I remembering that right? Or did I hear that in my --
ERIC: Well, you asked if I was.
GLENN: Yes. And so your answer was?
ERIC: Yeah.
Well, my answer was, I'm a progressive in the sense simply that I believe you can't just let things be. I think that society, a community, a political system, an economy is like a garden. You know, when you leave things be, for a while, things grow awesome. They're great. Right? They grow like gangbusters.
But after a certain point, noxious weeds take over, and they start to kill the whole thing. After a little while of letting things go, the garden tips over and it dies.
GLENN: Well, there's a difference between that and to use your garden -- let me take it to a farm. Theodore Roosevelt. So I'll take it out of the Republicans. Talked about breeding of humans, in compared to breeding like cattle, because noxious weeds -- people will marry, and they're too stupid to know who to marry and who not to marry. I mean, there is -- there is a place to where the farmer or the rancher takes it too far.
ERIC: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I think, you know, there's a good wide open space between that vision of, hey, we're citizen gardeners. We own responsibility for making sure that we tend, that we weed, that we see the plot between that. And eugenics. You know, that whole world view --
GLENN: Yes. Yeah.
STU: Just a personal thing for us. But would you mind using an analogy that isn't related to vegetables? We're not familiar.
ERIC: You don't get what I'm talking about?
STU: Yeah, we just don't understand.
GLENN: He's a vegetarian and still doesn't understand them. He hates the fact that he's a vegetarian.
You write, why do most people think "power" is a dirty word? Because they think it means coercion and violence. They associate it with the worst in human nature. And if I can summarize, a couple things that you say: There are three laws of power. The first, power concentrates, that it feeds itself and it compounds, as does powerlessness. Second, power justifies itself. People invent stories to legitimatize the power that they have. And third, power is infinite. There is no inherit limit to the amount of power people can create.
Take me through those three points.
ERIC: Yeah. These are pretty fundamental to any understanding, I think, of whether you're on the right or the left, how we live in this incredible age right now of bottom-up citizen power. People all across-the-board are knocking over entrenched monopolies, knocking over entrenched systems of status quo. And so when you look at those three laws, number one, power concentrates. You know, when you have it, you tend to get more.
GLENN: Yeah.
ERIC: When you don't have it, you tend to get less. Right? And that plays out in economic terms, in terms of the rich get richer and so forth. But it's also political.
GLENN: You see it honestly with the conservatives. Progressives have control of much of the media, and the conservatives struggle to have a toehold in that media. And we seem to get less and less.
ERIC: Well, I think that's right. I mean, I think there is a way in which -- okay. So that's number one: Power concentrates.
GLENN: Yes.
ERIC: But what you're touching on is also law number two: Power justifies itself, right? So people who tend to be in power, and from your perspective, that's progressives in the media. In other times in American history --
GLENN: Well, let's take it in your field, I mean, in the university, you can't tell me that you think that progressives don't control the universities and manipulate and justify itself?
ERIC: Well, I think progressives dominate the academy. Progressives dominate the media.
GLENN: Yeah.
ERIC: But domination is one thing. It's justifying itself as telling these just so stories about why that ought to be so. Right?
GLENN: Correct.
ERIC: And so an example I'll use more from the left is the classic case is trickle-down economics. To me, the idea that people who are already wealthy and already privileged telling you, you've got to take good care of us, man. You've got to coddle us and make sure you give us nice tax breaks because that's the only way any of my wealth is going to leak down to the rest of you, right?
Economic theory tells you, there's not actually a whole lot of truth to that. But it's a story. It's a way of justifying people having what they have. Right?
White supremacy has always been that kind of story line. You know, that, hey, look, whites are better and more suited for governing and governing themselves and running the show than non-whites, so this just ought to be the way it is. Right? You non-whites ought not to be kind of crowding into the public square.
So if all you had were these two laws here, that power compounds and it justifies itself, you get into a pretty grim doom loop. Right? You get into a situation -- well, you get into a dictatorial authoritarian situation. The only thing that busts you out of that doom loop is law number three, which is that power is infinite. And that people, wherever they are, even if they're outside of those circles of concentrated power, can generate new countervailing power out of thin air, simply by organizing.
And, you know, I actually on the road have been completely consistent in saying exhibit A is the Tea Party. The Tea Party, 2010, arrived without clout, without connections, without permission, without anybody saying, "Hey, go on and kind of lead a movement here to challenge the entrenched status quo in both parties." But these people remembered that they had infinite power, and that if they simply began to organize with another, which is simply asking one other human to join you in a common endeavor and say, you know what, let's make some plans here. Let's get on a common message. Let's do some things together. They began fundamentally to change the game, right?
And I think this age that we're in right now is one that connects the Tea Party, with Occupy Wall Street. With $15 an hour. With Black Lives Matter.
You may think, wow, all these people. I don't agree with all these people. But the reality is, all of them are remembering that in this bottom-up way, citizens can exercise far more clout and muscle than most of the time we remember we have.
GLENN: So this is -- and I know this audience is -- is feeling it. And I say this in the spirit of just defining where we are. Okay?
As I'm listening to you and I heard about, you know, trickle-down economics, I wanted immediately to stop and battle you on that.
ERIC: Yeah.
GLENN: There's several things that you said that I immediately wanted to say, no.
(chuckling)
STU: That's okay though.
GLENN: It's okay. It's okay. But that's where we get lost. Because we don't listen -- we don't let the other person finish. And so we're not listening to each other.
But let me -- instead of battling on those things, let me take you here on that. I agree with your three points. And I agree with you on the last point. And I -- you know, I -- I'm sorry, I have to say it, but not only power is infinite, with power comes money too. Money is infinite. So we spend so much time telling people, sit down, shut up, to protect your own power. Okay?
And I can't -- you can't do it because that guy is in your way. You can't make money because that guy has it all. Money and power. They're usually put together. And they are infinite. As we see in Silicon Valley. You can dream, you can do. It's the idea of America.
Here's the thing that I want to get to on this -- on this power: There are progressives on both sides of the aisle. There are progressives that are Republicans, progressives that are Democrats. And the -- the original idea was either fascism in the early 20th century. They thought fascism and communism was neat. So the early guys were, who is going to control the cows? Who is going to be the rancher on the cows? Who is going to tell these dummies that don't get it how to live their life? We'll protect them, and we'll have the power.
And so there's fascists, and there's communists, if you will. Both of them end the same way in authoritarianism.
How do we get to a point to where the people who are truly constitutionalists -- this is what makes us different. What the progressives started in the early 20th century is just to bring us back to the European model. Look what's happening in France: Communism or fascism. Forty percent is voting for fascism or communism. That's craziness.
How do we get to the point to where we can say, "I want you to -- I want you to have the power that you want. I want you to have all the success that you want." But I -- I don't want you telling me what success I can have or what I have to believe or what line I have to tow. I don't want control of your life. I want -- I want 330 million experiments happening that will pop up, and I'll go, "My gosh, look at that life. I'd like to pattern my life after that." Instead of somebody trying to cookie-cutter us all. And I think that's what a lot of people on the left are feeling, especially youth. They're seeing that -- that -- that current running through the right, that says, I want a strongman. And they miss the strongman on the left.
So how do reasonable people come together in the middle that are saying, "Eric, I love you and I respect you and I don't have a problem. Don't control my life. I won't control your life."
ERIC: So I want to start with appreciating what you said at the outset, which was, there were three or four moments when I was speaking earlier where you just wanted to hop up and say no. Right?
I think that's huge. I don't want to just kind of skip past that. I think it's really worth naming that. And I'm sure many of your listeners are like, no.
JEFFY: A couple of people in the room.
(laughter)
ERIC: Yeah, I'm sure. So I think that ability to hear that inside yourself, to kind of sit with that and say, "Hold on. Let's let this play out."
GLENN: And not -- and hang on. And not stew on that like, okay. I got to wait until he stops. I got to remember this.
JEFFY: That's hard. That's hard.
GLENN: Because I couldn't remember -- I couldn't remember -- I know there were three or four things that I thought of that I wanted to say no. But it's stop yourself and let it go. And listen to the other side. That's really hard.
ERIC: That verb right there, man. I think politics, especially in DC, is filled with what I call debaters listening. Right?
GLENN: Yes.
ERIC: You're just listening inasmuch as you need to get the quick gist of what the guy is saying. And then your wheels are spinning, how am I going to pound him back? How am I going to destroy what he just said, right?
GLENN: Yes.
STU: Yep.
ERIC: And what I'm talking about is basically citizens listening.
GLENN: Yes.
ERIC: Like humans actually full-body listening. Right? And checking yourself and saying, okay. Before I react -- I know my talking points I'm going to kind of wheel out here. Right? And the same thing just happened for me.
GLENN: I could see it.
ERIC: You were describing this vision of what you're articulating. You know, you're describing progressivism as top-down, cookie-cutter, controlling either fascist or communist, you know, the state solves everything or tries to solve everything for people.
GLENN: And the reason why you're here is because I don't believe you believe that.
ERIC: I don't believe that, right?
GLENN: Right.
ERIC: And I don't accept that definition in the first place.
GLENN: But do you believe there are those that do that?
ERIC: I do. And I think we're here because precisely as you say, because there is a space between that caricature and the caricature that I could throw out, you know, that all Libertarians are just complete individualistic kind of, you know, sociopathic selfish people that just want to go their own -- that would be equally wrong and stupid, right?
GLENN: Correct. Correct. We've made the media and sound bites. And we are reflecting it in our own conversation. If we can't judge each other in one sound bite, then we don't engage.
ERIC: Yeah.
GLENN: We get lost. And those sound bites make us into cartoon characters.
ERIC: Yeah.
GLENN: And we're not those cartoon characters.
Across Nigeria, Christians are being hunted, churches burned, and entire communities wiped out — yet the world remains silent. In this powerful discussion, Glenn Beck and Rep. Riley Moore uncover the horrific truth behind Nigeria’s Christian genocide and the shocking indifference from global leaders. This silent war on faith is one of the greatest humanitarian and moral crises of our time. Will America stand up for its brothers and sisters in Christ before it’s too late?
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: All right. Riley, let me talk to you about Nigeria, and what's happening in Nigeria. It's the scariest, most deadly country in the world, if you happen to be a Christian. And nobody seems to -- to be talking about it. And, you know, you have been involved in, you know, urging Secretary Rubio to say Nigeria is a country of particular concern, which I don't what an that means exactly. What doors does that unlock?
RILEY: Yeah. So that is -- that designation actually fits in the U.S. Code. So it does unlock 15 different Levers for the President when a country is designated a country of particular concern. That could be holding development money, that could be going to international institutions to free assistance through there. That could also halt security assistance, which would be arms sales and training and things like that, that have been going on in Nigeria. We could sanction individuals. It gives the President the authority to do a number of different things that can really, I think, leverage the Nigerians to actually start caring about our brothers and sisters in Christ, who are getting murdered for the professions they're facing in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
So I think this is a good first step, and we're going to see how the Nigerians react to this now. I've been having meetings with Departments of State.
We are going to meet with the Nigerians here at some point as well, here in DC.
So we're going to see what they're going to bring to the table. But also the President, who always puts all options on the table, has said, if they don't start fixing this, they're there couldn't potentially be kinetic military actions on -- in Nigeria.
GLENN: What does that mean?
Boots on the ground?
RILEY: No. To me, it does not mean that. To me, you have -- you have complex issues that are going on, over there. Where you have in the middle band of the country. This is where the Fulanis are. And these are herdsmen. And this is where you get this radical strain, obviously. Islamic terrorists, these Fulanis. These are herdsmen, tribes, and they have been attacking Christians in that middle band. In the northern part of the country is mostly Muslim. Southern part of the country is mostly Christian.
So that middle part, where they graze their cattle and all that, is where you see a lot of these flash points and murdering going on. But then in the northern part of the country is where you have ISIS, Boko Haram. They are operating there. And where they're taking over towns and communities, as we saw in Syria, right? Previously. Same type of thing.
GLENN: Yeah.
RILEY: CAIR is enfranchising, going on over there, all through the Lake Chad region, actually. So that's where I think, if it made sense to have some type of military action in forms of an airstrike or something like that, to -- to be able to tamp down some of the leadership and break up some of that structure in there.
That's something that would make sense. But to me, just speaking for myself, I want to try to work with the Nigerians, for them to do the right thing here.
President Trump obviously I mentioned, on Truth Social. Needs to specifically look into this. Which we are doing here in Congress. I want them to do the right thing.
I think the Nigerians actually have the chance right now to actually strengthen their relationship with the United States, if they're going to do the right thing.
But we can't allow to continue the slaughter of Christians where we have over 7,000 just this year, have been killed, for being Christian.
We can't allow that to continue, as a Christian country ourselves, which we are.
I know we're -- you know, some may debate that. I promise you, and nobody knows more about the founding of the country than Glenn Beck. Is that this is a Christian nation, founded on Christian values.
And we have to stand up for these people. Because nobody else is paying attention to this. Other than you, and some folks at Fox news. And that's really about it.
GLENN: Oh, I tell you, you know, I was planning on bringing my cameras with me. And I was going to go to Nigeria in the first quarter. And I have had briefings and warnings from the highest levels. Do not go.
You are not going. And I said, yes, I am. I want to bring this story.
You can't go. I've been to war zones. And this one, they're like, this is the most dangerous place on earth right now!
That's pretty remarkable, that nobody is really talking about it.
RILEY: It really is, and it's this silent genocide, that has just continued on since 2009, where we've had in between 50 to 100,000 Christians murdered for their faith. Our brothers and sisters over there, suffering, and no one has done anything about it. You might remember the bring back our girls movement around 2012ish, '14.
GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.
RILEY: Seventeen of those girls have still never been brought back. People forgot about it. It's fine. Boko Haram just has them. It's not fine.
It's not okay. And there are a lot of Levers that the administration is able to pull here, I think to get the Nigerians on the right course.
It's not that they don't have resources. This is an oil rich country. With a lot of critical minerals.
They have the means to be able to do this, at the end of the day, it's a question of prioritization. And what their goals actually are. And we need them to focus on this. Or the President will start to focus on it.
GLENN: Well, I will tell you, 19,000 churches have been burned.
And yet, from what I'm hearing, there are some in the Nigerian government that are like, no. This is not what's happening. This is not about genocide. It's not about Christians. It's just squabbles.
Really? Fifty to 100,000 people. And 19 thousands of individuals people have been burned in little squabbles, that don't have anything to do with radicalized Islam?
RILEY: Exactly. And this is the excuse I've gotten from people on the ground, look, do terrorists kill other people other than Christians? Yes, of course they do. But we're talking about five to one is the ratio, Christians versus non-Christians are being killed over there right now.
Secondly, I want to point out for everybody, President Trump has a designation in Nigeria. It means his first term.
It was taken off by the Biden administration. Because they claimed the killings had more to do with arable land and herders, and actually the root cause was climate change.
GLENN: Climate change.
RILEY: Yeah. That's why these killings were happening. Because of climate change. Where that's why we saw the murder rate just skyrocket during the Biden administration.
And President Trump, who cares very deeply about these issues, he's not going to allow that to persist anymore.
GLENN: He said, if there is an attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet. Just like the terrorist thugs that attack our cherished Christians.
I will tell you, I've -- you know, been reading up on it. And doing our homework.
And, you know, it reminded me of how the Germans went into Poland. Where they would just take whole communities. They would put them in the church. And lock the doors. And burn it to the ground.
That's what's happening in Nigeria. They're doing the same thing. They're burning churches. Not just burning churches. They're gathering Christians up. Putting them in, locking the doors, and then burning it down so that all of these women and children and men die in a fire in their church. And it's horrific. It's horrific.
What does the average person need to do?
RILEY: Yes. The average person needs to call their number of Congress and elevate this. And make this an issue that is on their radar, that they care about.
I'm introducing resolution which would be a sense of Congress, that we support the President. And we support the people and the Christians of Nigeria, and their plight.
And we condemn what the Nigerian government is doing, in action around this. That resolution should be getting introduced here soon.
So that would be something that would be hugely helpful.
GLENN: Wow.
It will be interesting to see who votes for that, and who doesn't.
That would have been -- that would have been a no-brainer 15 years ago. Just a no-brainer.
And now, I wonder if you can even get that passed. That's sad. Sad.
RILEY: It's sad. And I think we need to put it to the test. Put it to the test.
Certainly, if I'm whipping the votes, I don't have Ilhan Omar in my "yes" column.
But, you know, let's -- let's put it to the test here.
Is New York City’s new mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a socialist or a communist? Glenn Beck takes a look at history to explain why it doesn’t really matter: BOTH lead down the same road …
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: You know, we've been talking about socialism, and Donald Trump is getting pilloried in the press for calling Mamdani a communist. And I find this ritual here, that we're going through is just, you say the word socialist, and, you know, 25 years ago when I said that these people were socialist, everybody said, "Oh, my gosh. You can't call them socialists. That's an outrage." I said, "The mask is going to come off, that they can't wait to tell you they're socialists."
Now Donald Trump said, you know, Mamdani is a Communist. And everybody is like, oh, my gosh. Look at this hysteric from the Cold War. He's just -- he's out of the Cold War radio drama.
So let me just clear this here. Because the difference between the two terms, you know, is really not some great firewall of virtue here. As if one leads to like Scandinavian candles and the other leads to gulags. That's not what's happening.
What we've forgotten here is what always is forgotten. And that is how Karl Marx actually talked and saw the two. He didn't draw, you know, polite little distinctions. He described socialism as the transition. The necessary scaffolding that leads to communism. That's Karl Marx. So socialism for Karl Marx was the road, not the destination.
Communism is the end of that road. He wrote -- he wrote an essay, the Critique of Gotha Program. And Marx said, under socialism, from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution. Under communism, to each according to his needs. The only difference here is timing. It's not philosophy.
It's not goals. It's just how far along the revolution you are, okay?
Socialism is the bridge to communism. According to Karl Marx, don't take it from me. Communism is the completion of socialism. It's -- it's the antithesis of a free market system. Even Lenin called socialism the first and necessary phase of communism. So it's not partisan rhetoric. Okay?
This is the literal architecture of Marxist thought. But can we get out of the theories of all of this?
I mean, history gives us warning. Much more vivid than any theory. You know, we would like to imagine that the worst horrors of the 21st century came from one beast alone.
And we think that's Hitler. But actually, a bigger beast was Stalin. But if you want to look at Germany from 1930 to 1945. You see something really uncomfortable.
A socialist movement that curdled into something monstrous, while it never called itself communist. In fact, the Nazi government. The national socialists. The Nazis were not communists. They were against the communists.
They killed communists!
But they shared the same foundational belief. That the rid is disposable, and that the state defines the truth.
They both believe that rights are not given by God, but administered by political power. And that dissent on any of this, has to be crushed for the good of the collective.
That is the -- that's the definition we should care about!
Socialism doesn't to give full marks communism to become catastrophic. It just has to replace the individual conscience with the will of the state. And don't you see, that's what's happening here? They'll crush you! They'll destroy you. You disagree with them, they'll destroy you. Even if you've been on their side. I am going to share eye story with you, from 1979 that happened. That I don't think most people understand. And in New York, you better understand it.
When a society accepts the premise, that premise, history shows the -- the slide can accelerate from a utopian promise to industrialized cruelty. Horror show.
Like that!
Germany saw it. Russia saw it. China saw it. Cambodia. North Korea.
Cuba. I mean, it's all right there, just different flags. Different slogans. But it's the same structural error.
So can we stop with this mocking of the language?
You know, people laughing. Oh, you said Mamdani is a communist, but he's just merely a socialist. You're missing the point entirely.
The issue is not whether the label is technically perfect. The issue is the philosophical DNA is exactly the same. Collectivism over the individual.
State control over personal agency. Central planning over free will.
And that the belief that human nature can be engineered by a political force. That's where it always goes wrong. It doesn't understand human nature. So you can argue all you want, about where socialism ends and where communism begins, but honestly, that's like, hey, kids, memorize the date of this war.
Why? Why? I'm never going to use that fact again. What difference does it make? The thing we should care about is, why was that war fought? What happened at the end of that war? When communism and socialism, we should be saying, where does that road lead?
I can tell you that the road always begins with the state controlling your choices. Okay?
It will control your choice of energy, money, your children's education. Your speech.
Your job. What you drive. And it always ends with never greater liberty. It always ends the same place. In a society that has forgotten that freedom is fragile.
That power concentrates. That people are the same over and over and over and over again!
Human beings. They go bad! Especially when you give them power, and they're told they're part of a grand collective. Humans are willing to commit horrors they would never do as an individual.
That's the biggest thing. You get these horror shows of 100 million dead, because it's a collective!
We're all doing it. I'm not doing it. Everybody is doing it. That's the warning.
That's historical. And we ignore it at our own peril. Now, the problem here is, is that socialism is on the rise. And communism will be next.
Remember, when I first started talking about Obama, they -- I was -- I was raked across the rolls -- the coals, every day for even suggesting he might kind of like socialism. Now, socialism is fine!
So that road is still going to -- we're going to continue rolling down that road. And any country that goes into socialism -- we're not talking about a capitalist. We're not talking about Sweden anymore.
In fact, we are actually talking about Sweden. Look at the road they're going down now.
I mean, they're going into their own kind of authoritarian rule with Sharia law.
That is coming to Sweden. We are not talking about this friendly socialism. We're talking about the complete abandonment of the free market entirely. We've been this stupid little hybrid, that doesn't work. It only causes misery. We've been this hybrid.
And it doesn't work in a country this large and a country this diverse.
But look if you're -- you know, if you grew up after 9/11, where have you seen capitalism work for you?
Okay? You've seen, I know I've seen it. I've seen the rich get richer. And I don't mean the rich.
I mean the really, really, really rich. The ones that the Democrats never really talk about. They say they hate the rich. The rich have to pay their fair share.
But they're hanging out with George Soros. They're hanging out with the Ford Foundation. They're hanging out with Bezos and all of these other people. Because that's -- that's -- that's real control! Okay?
They don't hate those guys. They never do anything to affect their taxes. They don't pay taxes. Because they have the money to put it into trusts and everything else.
You don't have that!
So when I say, I've seen it happen. I've seen the rich get richer.
You know who the rich are?
Citibank. These banks that have been taking our money through bailouts, when do we get that money back?
When do you get that money back?
You don't!
You don't. That's why this is working. That's why you can say, socialism is neat. Because nobody knows the killing machine that socialism actually is. Nobody has any idea. Look at the killing machine. Look at the killing machine that's being built in socialist Canada right now.
What is it? MAID is the third or fourth biggest killer. It kills one in every 20 Canadians. Why is that happening? That's not out of compassion. That's because they're running out of money for health care. That's what that's about. Get them off the dole! Stop it. Now, if they're earning a lot of money, get them in, because we can still get their money, but let's make sure they're making money. If they're getting old, if they are cripple, if they fought in a war and just can't has come it themselves, if they're super, super young, if they have an expensive cancer, let them die. Help them die!
That's because they're looking at the collective, not the individual. And that's -- that's the beginning of the dark killing machine in a socialist country. And Canada is -- is -- I mean, it has socialized medicine. The problem is, it's all failing. Socialism always fails.
Capitalism has -- has taken people out of poverty. Solved problems. Healed people. Given people heat and houses and cars and airplanes. All of that is because of the free market. All of that is the free market.
You get rid of the free market. You put it in the hands of governments. And you have monsters. Monsters. And we know it, because we've seen it over and over and over again.
But our -- if you're -- if you -- if -- if you don't remember, or barely remember 911, you've never been taught any of this.
You've never been taught what it actually means. So you're seeing this play out, over and over again. Look at that guy, look at, he's not going to have to pay a price. He's just going to get away with it. And he's taking all of our tax dollars. Okay. I hate all of that.
This capitalist system, it's corrupt!
You're seeing that play out in real time. You're not seeing anybody actually go to jail for these things.
Of course, you think that it doesn't. I don't think it works the way it is right now!
But then you're -- you're given this false utopian promise. Without any information.
Read the warning label on socialism!
Where has it ever worked?
Show me where it has worked!
And don't say Sweden. Sweden.
Sweden is falling apart right now. Do you know why?
Because Sweden, everybody was blond hair, blue eyed, they were all related to each other. It was a small, little country.
You can do it when everybody is the same, and it's small. It will work in -- to some degree!
But the minute you start going diverse, the whole thing falls apart. So you want to be Sweden?
Go ahead. Look at Sweden today.
I don't want to be Sweden.
Read the warning label. That's our job, to show that warning label.
It's our job to teach what's not being taught. This is a death cult.
Stay away from it. Warning. Warning.
Is this the 'smoking gun' evidence that could put former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey behind bars? Just the News CEO John Solomon joined Glenn Beck to reveal some shocking new revelations, including Comey’s own emails allegedly authorizing anonymous leaks to the NYT on the Clinton case, potential handwritten notes proving he KNEW Hillary’s team approved the Russia collusion hoax, and a possible email from Comey referring to Hillary Clinton as “President-elect Clinton." Will a Northern Virginia jury hold the Deep State accountable? Or will politics bury the truth again?
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: John Solomon is with us. He is the CEO and editor-in-chief. In chief of Just the News. If you don't check that every day, you're really missing out on a really great news site. Justthenews.com. John, I have made a promise with my audience a long time ago, I do my best not to waste their time.
And as I'm looking through the things I want to talk to you about, I have to start with this question: Is any of this going to mean anything in the end, or is this -- are we just spinning our wheels and wasting our time, talking about how the deep this scandal with James Comey is becoming?
JOHN: That's a great question. And I don't think history has an answer yet. It will really depend on the tenacity and the focus of the Justice Department, the prosecutors, and the jurors that are going to catch these cases. Right? Are they willing to rise above politics and say, "We don't want an FBI that goes after people based on their political color, not the quality of the evidence against them."
And that is what began on 2015 on James Comey's watch, a different type of FBI that seemed to go after Donald Trump and his associates, regardless of evidence, and protect Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden, even though the evidence against them was pretty strong, as we ultimately found out from the IRS whistleblowers. So we don't know yet. Listen, these are going to go to trial if the judge lets them go to trial.
The judge in the Comey case seems to be giving the prosecutors a hard time there already. But that's going to be litigated. I'm going to go up to the Supreme Court. It will be a long battle.
But the question is, is the fight worth it?
I think if you don't punish the people that created this mentality, you have deficits in America for a long time.
Banana republic, prosecution arc. And I think that's not what Americans want. They want to say, the FBI is above politics. It hasn't been in the last texted, until the last few months, under Kash Patel.
GLENN: Okay. So let's talk about what the new evidence is the -- the burn bags.
The hidden rooms. And the evidence that now has been found that -- that shows Comey looks like he was lying. To Congress. When he said, no.
I didn't know anything about it.
JOHN: Yeah. Yeah. So let's remind people what the alleged lie is, what he's been accused of and indicted of. He told Congress in '17, and then reaffirmed, unequivocally in 2020, that he never asked any of his staff to provide information to the news media. The government, Kash Patel found significant documents that go to the contrary. They chose not to go after James Comey. So in the Bill Maher administration, they knew the same evidence, but they didn't go after him. What is the lie?
He told Congress, I didn't -- one, I never authorized anyone to leak to the media anonymously about the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump cases. And, two, I don't think I knew anything about an intelligence intercept that Hillary Clinton was setting up a fake Russian collusion hoax, that we ended up investigating.
Well, we now know, first, his own emails, with his own top lieutenant, Daniel Richmond. A former lawyer who he brought into the special government. The FBI. There's an FBI employee, showed that James Comey, told him, good job, and make them wiser as he was briefing them on how he was anonymously trying to spin the New York Times and provide information to the New York Times about the Hillary Clinton case.
So directly on point to the testimony he gave. I didn't authorize him to leak about Hillary Clinton in their emails. So this guy was leaking it. He was affirming it, and saying, go ahead. And he was encouraging him to make that reporter wiser. In other words, give them more information anonymously.
So that's the first lie. The second lie -- and, by the way, the grand jury bought that evidence, that we believed he lied.
GLENN: Okay.
JOHN: And that is what we call the Clinton planned intelligence. Was Comey, as John Brennan claimed. And as other evidence -- did Comey know, did he pay attention, did he have some awareness that as the FBI was starting to investigate the Russia collusion ruse, the hoax, that Hillary Clinton had been interpreted, or her people had been intercepted, showing that she approved the plan. He said, it doesn't ring true. I don't think I knew about it.
Well, in a locker, in a burn bag, they found some handwritten notes of James Comey, that appeared to include the briefing from John Brennan where he clearly knew, that Hillary Clinton had been intercepted -- or, her team had been intercepted, saying she approved this plan to hang a fake Russian shingle on Donald Trump's campaign house. Now, those are handwritten notes.
GLENN: Yeah. That is in his handwriting, that he clearly understood. And so now you've got him on -- on two really significant lies. That show that this whole thing was -- was -- they were in collusion with one another. And all of this was bogus.
And they knew it from the beginning.
JOHN: Yeah. That's exactly right. That's why, when you look at this. And then take the third bag of this. Those notes were never produced in earlier subpoenas to Congress or other investigations. They were found in a room, where it appears, according to the government, there is an effort to get rid of or hide this evidence.
So it hadn't been hidden from prior subpoenas, according to the government, according to Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor. And then, two, it looked like they were in burn bags. Meaning, they would never be there.
Now, some other people said, oh, well, there's electronic records of it.
It turns out according to the government, there was no electronic record of the note. Meaning, if they had been burned or destroyed, it would have never happened.
Now, why would James Comey want to lie about this? Because as we see in these same emails, it appears he had a motive.
His motive, as he wrote, his colleague is, I fully expect to be working for president-elect Hillary Clinton. She's talking this way, before the election in 2016.
He thought Hillary was going to be his boss. And as he wrote Dan Richmond, he said, I think Hillary Clinton will be, quote, unquote, pleased by the way I handled her email chase. In other words, he reopened it and cleared her a second time.
And when the smoke cleared, Hillary would like to keep him out as FBI director. That's the insinuation of those notes. So --
GLENN: Yeah. I want to get the exact. I want to give the exact phrase he wrote. A president-elect Clinton will be very greatly.
JOHN: Yeah. Grateful, I'm sorry.
GLENN: Wow.
JOHN: Yeah. Grateful. So he expected it -- that's his mindset in the fall of 2016.
And he opens up an investigation on Hillary Clinton, what we now know to be a ruse. Bad evidence. An agency had to lie to the FISA courts to get the FISA warrants. If his motive was that, or his thinking was that. He probably does not want to admit that I was warned, that maybe this was all a joke before I allowed this investigation to go forward. Before I affixed my name to a FISA warrant that the courts have now said was misleading, false, and violated the law. So that is the context at which the prosecutors are going to try to bring this -- bring this case. Now, it's going to be in northern Virginia, where there are a lot of federal workers and a lot of anti-Trump sentiment.
Can they get a conviction? We don't know. But is it worth trying to do it? Most people I talk to said yes, because the alternative is you have by inaction a sanction, which is what Bill Maher and John Durham did by not bringing this in 2020.
GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Can I switch topics. There's something that came out today. James Comey's daughter, and the Epstein case. Apparently, James Comey's daughter sent a message to Epstein, that if you don't have to prove it. But if you can show us anything that ties Donald Trump to this, it's going to go a lot easier for you.
Can you give me this story?
JOHN: Yeah. I've seen it. I've not been able to corroborate it. In this world of media today. I've been super careful. It's hard to know if things are true. I haven't found anyone yet who seems to know the proof on it.
It's possible. Who knows? I mean, prosecutors make these sort of deals all the time. And as we know, it seems in the last decade or two, I think when you have to go back to the era of the Ted Stevens prosecution. The IRS pursuit of conservative groups. And maybe the prosecution which turned out to be malicious and wrong of Virginia governor McDonald.
There is a culture that began at the beginning or around the time of the Obama era. Where winning for prosecutors is more important than winning fairly or on the face of the evidence.
And that's why these cases ultimately got overturned. That mentality exists in the Justice Department.
And then when you add the nature of politics, the Trump Derangement Syndrome that seems to come in, in 2015. You have a very dangerous prosecutorial and law enforcement system that's easily weaponized and can easily cheat.
And unless you got multi-million lawyers, you probably will get hosed, because very few people will find the grounds to overturn this.
And that it is crushing power of the state, that Jim Jordan talks about. Chuck Grassley talks about. That Donald Trump wants to reform.
And I don't know, in this case, whether Mr. Comey did this or not.
Because I can't confirm it yet. But if I knew, I'll come back to you.
GLENN: Right.
JOHN: The scenario does go on. And we've seen it. And it's very, very troubling.
There's a case coming up in New York, where the FCC has to admit that there were journalists writing fake stories that were then used to justify investigations of companies.
A system of cheating to get a consequence regardless of whether it's warranted, is something we all have to take a deep breath. We have to fix it. Or we won't be any the different than rectangles and Iran.
GLENN: I will tell you, that I am so glad to say, that you said, I can't confirm this.
I haven't found a source to confirm it.
Because when I read that story, it looks as though one of the people that is telling this story is the guy who was in jail, with Epstein, who would also have motive for making something like this up. So, you know, I don't want to exonerate her.
And I don't want to condemn her. I just want the truth.
And he doesn't seem like a reliable source.
JOHN: Yeah. I think we have to get the evidence, and try to -- listen if the lead is something -- let's check it out and true -- find out if it's true.
We learned that Russia collusion wasn't true. I think we'll learn that most of Ukraine impeachment wasn't true.
And I think today, we just have to dig in first. Get the facts.
But we will -- we will do that. I promise, I'll get back to you, as soon as I know what I can find out for the government.
GLENN: Yeah. Thank you, John. I appreciate all your hard work.
John Solomon from Just the News. Go to JusttheNews.com. Follow him. John Solomon. JSolomonReports on X. But he is an old school journalist. Investigative reporter. Has worked for everybody, until everybody was like, you can't say those things. That's our side!
And then he just left and did his own thing. And I'm very grateful for it.
Editor-in-chief of Just the News. John Solomon
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