The media has accused Glenn over and over of being a conspiracy theorist. There's just one problem with that. Conspiracies are based on speculation, not fact.
Take the Muslim Brotherhood, for example. Glenn has reported on the radical group's plan to take over America. This is a fact based on a document called The Project, found in Germany by the U.S. government after 9/11. It outlines how to infiltrate the United States government, businesses and turn Americans against Americans.
"When you say something like the Muslim Brotherhood has a plan to take over America, that sounds crazy. But once you look into the sources and you see what it is, well then, it's a different story," Glenn said Thursday on his radio program.
Now take Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the man that Democratic Party leadership want as their next chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Rep. Ellison has been tied to the Nation of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood and holds radical left-wing policy positions. He's also said very troubling things about 9/11.
"A conspiracy theory, to me, is what Keith Ellison said in 2007," Glenn said.
In 2007, Ellison compared 9/11 to the Reichstag fire, an arson attack used by the Nazi Party to further its agenda. The insinuation being that 9/11 was blamed on a specific group so the U.S. government could get citizens riled up and fearful, and pass laws like the Patriot Act.
"Keith Ellison is making the charge that Bush was the one who benefited from 9/11," Glenn said. "Yet, the mainstream media are pretending as if none of that is the least bit controversial."
And that is exactly why Republicans and conservatives don't trust the press.
Read below or listen to the full segment for answers to these questions:
• Do people believe the Nazis started the Reichstag fire?
• Why was the Patriot Act written before 9/11?
• When did Donald Trump realize he might win the presidency?
• Why did Democrats lose so many elected positions at all levels?
• Should we have a plan to invade Iceland?
Listen to this segment, beginning at mark 41:04, from The Glenn Beck Program:
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:
GLENN: I want to talk to the media here for a second. The media has made me into a conspiracy theorist. And they will say, "Made you into one? You made yourself into one." By saying things like the Muslim Brotherhood has a plan to take over America. Yes, it's called The Project. It was found by the US government in, I believe, Germany right after September 11th. It outlines how to infiltrate the United States government, how to infiltrate businesses, how to turn us against ourselves here in America. It's called The Project. You can look it up. It didn't come from me. It came from the United States government. That's who found it. You don't cover those things.
So when you say something like the Muslim Brotherhood has a plan to take over America, that sounds crazy. But once you look into the sources and you see what it is, well, then, it's a different story.
Well, the latest was you're a conspiracy theorist because you've said that George Soros paid for protests.
PAT: I've read story after story on that.
GLENN: Story after story after story on that. That is out there.
Now, I don't remember which protests he paid for. But his organization does that. We know that in other countries absolutely positively, he's on the record saying he does that.
PAT: He's proud of it. Proud of it.
GLENN: He's proud of it. Okay. So it's not a conspiracy theory.
A conspiracy theory, to me, is what Keith Ellison said in 2007.
Listen to the man that may be the head of the DNC and what he said about 9/11.
KEITH: Because remember 9/11, right? You never had all this discrimination against religious minorities but for 9/11. You know, you had it, but you didn't have it to the degree that we have it now.
9/11 is this juggernaut event in American history. It allows -- I mean, it's almost like -- you know, the Reichstag fire kind of reminds me of that. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?
VOICE: Yeah. Who benefited from 9/11?
KEITH: Well, I mean, like you and I both know.
VOICE: Yeah, Bush.
GLENN: Bush.
KEITH: But the thing is, after the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the communist for it. And it put the leader of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.
GLENN: Okay. So Keith Ellison is making the charge that Bush was the one who benefited from 9/11.
PAT: So he could bring about religious discrimination?
GLENN: And the Patriot Act and everything else.
PAT: Unbelievable.
GLENN: Now, you can say that the Patriot Act was there before there was a 9/11, but that doesn't mean that the Patriot Act -- that 9/11 happened to pass the Patriot Act.
The Patriot Act was written before 9/11. And it was going nowhere. Nobody wanted to do it. It was written in Virginia. Do you remember that? Stu, look that up. This is a really old fact from the deep reassesses and cobwebs of my mind. When we were arguing it, we looked back and it was written in Virginia by a couple of guys in Virginia. And they wanted pieces of the Patriot Act. And it didn't go anywhere.
I think Joe Biden was even part of that. So the argument is, is that he's making the argument that 9/11 was blamed on somebody so they could go religious discrimination and they could soup everybody up and make them afraid. Well, that's a conspiracy theory.
Show me the evidence of that. Now, if the press wants to have any credibility, you have called people on the right hateful conspiracy theorists.
Will you call out the person who is now going to be the head of the Democratic National Committee? Will you call him a conspiracy theorist?
No.
PAT: Not in a million years.
GLENN: And if they don't, it, again, will just play into more resentment and more dissent and more -- Donald Trump did not beat Hillary Clinton. He beat the press. He was running against the press. That's what he said.
Now, you guys haven't even addressed why Hillary Clinton lost. I haven't seen one autopsy on Hillary Clinton and why she was the worst candidate of all time. The Republicans have known this for a long time. She was the most beatable candidate you could have run.
PAT: Which is what we said from the beginning. That was the one thing during this election cycle we were right, was how bad Hillary --
GLENN: Yes. Yeah, anyone -- I said my shoe could beat Hillary Clinton.
PAT: Yes. Yeah.
GLENN: She was the most beatable candidate. I haven't heard that from the media. They're not doing the autopsy there. All they're doing is they're talked about Donald Trump and what a horrible disarray his cabinet picks are. First of all, he's ahead of every other president in his cabinet picks.
It, of course, is messy. Can you imagine how many picks you have to make in, what? Sixty days? Yes, it's a mess. I'm sure it is. He didn't expect to be president -- and I have this on good authority -- until I think it was 4:30 in the afternoon.
They thought they were going to lose. And at 4:30, somebody came to him and said, "You know what, things are actually in play." He didn't believe it, until North Carolina came in and Florida. And when North Carolina and Florida came in and they were waiting so long on Connecticut and Pennsylvania, he looked at one of his aides and said, "We might win."
They weren't -- they were putting the -- the -- the pathway down for Trump TV, not the presidency. And he's still ahead of every other president, appointing their cabinet members now. And what is the press doing? All they're saying is what a disarray it's in.
What are you talking about? What are you talking about?
Why don't you talk at all about the disarray the Democrats are in? What are the Democrats going to do? The Democrats have lost so many people in local, state, and federal locations, they've lost so much power because the popularity was Barack Obama, not his policies. They also -- even people who voted for Hillary Clinton, 34 percent of those who voted for Hillary Clinton don't believe the press. They think the press was in the bag for Hillary Clinton. And they don't like it. Seventy-four percent of the American people don't trust the press.
PAT: The only thing left Democrats have is Richard Gephardt. That's all they've got left.
STU: Wow. That's what America has left.
JEFFY: Yes.
PAT: For 2020, we look forward to Richard Gephardt. And what is he going to be? Eighty-nine? 106?
JEFFY: That's not important.
PAT: It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. That's what we have left.
STU: By the way, yeah, there's a -- so Biden wrote something after his -- after the Oklahoma City bombing that had several of the pieces that would later go into the Patriot Act. It was a 1995 bill. CNET referred to it as its cousin. The Patriot Act's cousin. So it was similar.
GLENN: And this was the one that was written in Virginia with a group of governors or something like that?
STU: I don't -- I was looking for the Biden part. I don't have that. Whatever.
GLENN: Okay. So there was -- and I'm not saying it was the same one.
STU: Right. And that makes sense, right?
GLENN: But there was the framework of the Patriot Act, ready to go.
STU: Right. You have --
GLENN: That doesn't -- that doesn't mean that they were like, let's blow something up so we can get this through.
STU: Right. Which is where a lot of people take that.
GLENN: Correct.
STU: It means that they had a terrorist attack. They thought of a way to address it. They didn't necessarily get that through. But when another terrorist attack had, they had the framework.
GLENN: Yeah. And they said, "Let's try this now."
STU: Yeah, "Let's try it now. It would work."
GLENN: Yes.
STU: That's not a nefarious conspiracy.
GLENN: FDR did not trust the Japanese. He did not trust the Japanese.
He sent people out to find out if we needed to do internment camps before December 7th. Do we need to do internment camps for the Japanese? Find out.
The general came back and said, "Nope. They're good Americans. We don't need to do it."
He didn't have the political capital to do it. September -- I mean, December 7th, 1941, that gave him the political capital to be able to say, "We're going to do this because of that," even though he had that idea before December 7th.
Was it a conspiracy that December 7th -- yeah, there are those people who say, "See, he caused it. He knew it was going to happen." No, he didn't
PAT: Well, he may have known it was going to happen, but I don't know that he -- he let it happen --
GLENN: Yeah. He knew a strike --
PAT: -- for internment camps --
GLENN: He knew a strike was coming.
PAT: Yeah, he did.
GLENN: He didn't know and say, "Everybody look over here."
PAT: Yeah.
STU: And in a way --
GLENN: And neither did --
STU: -- this can be a positive, right? You wouldn't necessarily want a tragedy to happen and then just say, "All right. Let's start thinking of new ideas right now in the midst of this and pass them." You would want it to be a little bit more thought out than that. You would hope that --
GLENN: It is their job. It is their job.
STU: Right. It's their job. It's the same thing with the Iraq War. They're like, "Well, they drew up plans for the Iraq War before 9/11." It's like, well, yeah, they should have a plan to invade everywhere, just in case the idea comes up and they need to put it into effect.
GLENN: It's their job.
PAT: Especially countries that are shooting at our aircraft.
GLENN: Should we have a plan to invade Canada? No. If I find out there's a plan to invade Canada for no reason, well, no. But the minute Canada becomes hostile to us, is there a plan to say, "What do we do in case the border becomes a place of unrest?"
PAT: There better be.
GLENN: Okay. There better be something there. Because that's a possibility.
PAT: What about just taking care of the curling problem? What about just --
STU: You got to stop --
GLENN: You got to stop curling.
PAT: Stop the curling problem.
GLENN: Yeah. It's a stone and ice. Get over it. And it's a broom. Stop it.
PAT: And sweeping the ice. Stop it.
STU: But with the military budget we have, I would argue that there should be, I don't know, a few people sitting around thinking about, "What if we have to invade Iceland?" We should have that plan somewhere in a drawer just in case we have to do it. Why -- we have the resources for that.
PAT: That might be our biggest problem that nobody talks about.
GLENN: I will tell you, there's not a plan to invade Iceland. But I can tell you, there's an expert on Iceland whose job is to only think about Iceland, that he would be the first one we would call if something happened. And he would be like, "You know what, that's crazy. I've been thinking about this. I've been thinking about this." Because that's all you do, you're just focused on Iceland.
STU: Yes.
GLENN: That's what should happen. This is not what Keith Ellison is saying.
STU: No. He seems to be thinking that -- it's weird. Because he doesn't -- he's smart enough to know that he's in front of a bunch of people. So he doesn't actually --
GLENN: Plat it again.
PAT: However, he walked up to that line many times. It wasn't just this time.
GLENN: Play that again.
KEITH: Because remember 9/11. Right? You never had all these discrimination against religious minorities but for 9/11. I mean, you know, you had it, but you didn't have it to the degree that we have it now.
9/11 is this juggernaut event in American history. It allows -- I mean, it's almost like, you know, the Reichstag fire -- kind of reminds me of that. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?
VOICE: Yeah. Benefited --
GLENN: So 9/11 is the Reichstag fire. Well, if you know anything about the Reichstag fire -- and he's about to explain that -- that was a total setup. The Reichstag fire, we believe, was started by the Nazis.
PAT: Uh-huh.
STU: Of course. Yeah, that's what he's obviously insinuating.
GLENN: That's what he's insinuating.
STU: I mean, he would probably argue, what I was trying to say is they took advantage of it like the Nazis took advantage of that. Not necessarily that they caused it.
GLENN: Right. Do we think -- so what you're saying is -- you want to talk about a conspiracy theory, what you're saying is replace Bush with Obama. That a tragedy happened and Barack Obama said, "I can finally get control of everybody's email. I can finally get control of everybody's phone calls. I can get rid of warrants, where I don't want to. I can stop dropping drones on people. I'll have control of everything. I'll be able to take the NSA." That -- you think the press would accept someone saying that about Barack Obama?
STU: No.
GLENN: You would be the biggest conspiracy theorist on the planet. And this isn't just a commentator. This is the guy they want to run the DNC.
STU: Yes.
PAT: He's a US congressman.
STU: Uh-huh. And to be fair to Keith Ellison, to give him a little bit of a break here, the man is saying things that were mainstream Democrat positions at that time.
GLENN: Yes.
STU: You go back to polling through that era, you'll find 40, 50 percent of Democrats believed just that. And sometimes the majority of Democrats believed those things, that Bush did 9/11, and he was responsible for it. Or at the very least overlooked it.
GLENN: Right.
STU: Katrina, took advantage of it. Didn't care. He hates black people.
There were a million of these conspiracies that were mainstream Democratic positions for the typical voter. And while he might be a little bit out of step with what they want in the press at that time, he was not out of step with the people who were voting for him.
GLENN: Now, the -- the press wonders why Republicans and conservatives don't trust them and feel the way we feel. Because of that. And this is why I said, we have a third time at bat. First time happened with George Bush. And the Democrats went off the rails. And we stopped listening to them. And then, Barack Obama got in. And we went off the rails. And they stopped listening to us.
It's time to get it right this time. It's time to get it right. But you must call each play equally. If you don't, it's going to get much worse.
Featured Image: Keith Ellison (D-MN) holds a news conference about what he calls 'the rhetorice attacking Muslims and the Islamophobia' in the 2016 presidential election at the National Press Club May 24, 2016 in Washington, DC. Highlighting remarks by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Ellison and fellow Muslim Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) said the issue of Islamophobia is not isolated to just one candidate or one election. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)