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What's Being Said About Megyn Kelly on Social Media Is Shameful

January 04, 2017
 Staff

WRITER

With the number one New Year's resolution being a change of job, you'd think people would cut Megyn Kelly some slack for trying out a new opportunity. Yet, following her announcement that she was giving up her primetime spot at Fox News for a daytime slot at NBC, people reacted angrily on social media.

"I think she took a big pay cut to go there, so it shows me where her values and principles are, which I think is great. If it works out that it's better for her, even in her mind, I think that's fantastic. Here's what is crazy to me, just crazy. The number of people that are online now saying that she's not only a sellout, but a traitor, a traitor to her country for going to NBC," Glenn said Wednesday on radio.

When did someone leaving Fox News signify being a traitor?

"When did NBC become a place against the United States of America? When did we pledge our loyalty to Fox News?" Glenn asked.

Read below or listen to the full segment from Hour 1 for answers to these questions:

• Was Megyn Kelly fired?

• Will NBC be a bad influence on Megyn?

• Why did Megyn take a pay cut?

• Who made the list of possible replacements at Fox?

• Why does listener Kevin think Megyn is turning liberal?

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

[soundcloud]

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:

GLENN: Conversation about a basic income experiment because what the future holds for us is extraordinarily different. We need to chart a course. Whether that's the answer or not, I don't know. I don't think it is, especially for America. But what is the answer? And what is truly coming? Big ideas around the corner.

Also, Megyn Kelly is leaving Fox. Obviously, Pat, they fired her, right?

PAT: Yes. Because she's on the air the rest of the week.

GLENN: Yeah.

PAT: And they like to fire people and then keep them on for a while afterwards. It's a really good idea.

GLENN: No, when they fired me, which clearly they did --

PAT: Clearly.

GLENN: -- they let me on the air for six solid months.

PAT: Six months. Yeah. So...

GLENN: Of course, Greta was off the same day. That's weird. That's really weird. But Megyn is leaving. And what's being said on Facebook about her is shameful.

PAT: Ridiculous.

GLENN: And who the replacement is according to the public, who do they want to replace Megyn Kelly? Boy, I am -- I'm really torn. I'm thrilled and excited, and at the same time, devastated if it would happen. We go there, right now.

(music)

GLENN: Oh. Thank you so much for tuning in. Here's Megyn Kelly last night saying goodbye to her audience on Fox.

MEGYN: This is a tough decision for me because I love this show. Our staff, our crew, my colleagues here at Fox.

And you, all of you, those who write me the lovely handwritten notes, asking about my kids and even those who very rarely complain on Twitter about our coverage after a show or a presidential debate, it's the kind of feeling that makes one feel connected to another human being. And that, after all, is why I believe we're here: Human connection.

The truth is, I need more of that in my life. In particular, when it comes to my children who are seven, five, and three. So I'll be leaving Fox News at the week's end and starting a new adventure, joining the journalists at NBC News who I deeply admire. I'll be anchoring a daytime show there, along with a Sunday night news magazine. And you'll see me there on the big nights too for politics and such.

I am very grateful to NBC for this opportunity, and I am deeply thankful to Fox News for the wonderful 12 years I have had here.

PAT: And to be leaving this hellhole now.

GLENN: I don't think she said --

PAT: That part was implied, I think.

GLENN: Really? I don't think --

(laughter)

She considers this a hellhole, you think?

PAT: I would guess.

GLENN: I don't think so.

PAT: That it's been tough for her since --

GLENN: Oh, no, it's been tough.

PAT: The last six months.

GLENN: I don't think anybody in her position leaves that place -- maybe -- without gratitude. I mean, even I left there with gratitude.

PAT: Yes. Yeah. I mean, true.

GLENN: With all the stuff that is going on behind the scenes --

PAT: But you know she is getting -- I don't know, she can't be being treated over there now. Do you think?

GLENN: No. No.

PAT: I mean, there's too many Trumpanistas over there who are pissed at her because she asked difficult questions of a presidential candidate. How dare she.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. I know.

So, you know, I think it has been hell for her. And I think it's -- you know, I don't know what the job is. So, you know, I think it's a good opportunity. Hopefully she will influence NBC more than they will influence her in many ways.

PAT: Yeah. The daytime talk show. Is she talking about MSNBC, do you think? Or is that --

GLENN: I don't know. I can't imagine her leaving -- well, you know --

PAT: I don't know. Really weird.

GLENN: MSNBC just hired Greta, so there's a possibility --

PAT: Oh, they did? I didn't even hear -- I hadn't heard that. Hmm.

GLENN: I haven't heard that either, maybe.

(laughter)

JEFFY: Really?

PAT: You --

GLENN: Somebody Google --

PAT: Did you just do it again?

JEFFY: Oh, my gosh.

GLENN: Google search that, please. Good God Almighty, Google search.

PAT: I think that's -- you might have just made some news.

GLENN: No, I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true at all. Somebody Google search that.

(laughter)

GLENN: Hey, that was --

PAT: Greta van Susteren to the --

JEFFY: While we're doing that, could be the whole package, right? She does stuff for MSNBC for online, for NBC. I mean, it could be the whole --

PAT: No. Okay. It's on Daily Caller.

GLENN: Okay. Thank you.

JEFFY: Eh.

GLENN: Woo.

PAT: She's making a quick and sudden return to cable news. 6:00 p.m. time slot at MSNBC.

GLENN: Right. So MSNBC is changing. I don't know what they're going to change to.

PAT: Yeah, yeah.

GLENN: But they are changing.

And, you know, they are -- they're looking for a new direction and a new -- I can't even say new direction. They're looking for new people with different voices. I do know that. Whether they're going to try to jam those in with what they already have, which seems to be a disaster to me -- I don't know.

And going on to MSNBC for Megyn Kelly seems like a pretty big step down.

PAT: Oh, yeah. Oh, no question about that.

GLENN: Daytime.

PAT: No question about that.

GLENN: Daytime Megyn Kelly. I wonder what they're paying her. Because apparently Fox offered her 20 million.

GLENN: They said they couldn't compete, and she took a large pay cut.

PAT: To go to MSNBC?

GLENN: Uh-huh.

PAT: Really? Well, then that tells you, doesn't it, that things have not been pleasant at Fox?

GLENN: Not necessarily.

PAT: I think --

JEFFY: No.

GLENN: It depends on what your goals are.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: I mean, her goals may not be --

PAT: To go from prime time to daily talk show? Eh, maybe. I don't know.

GLENN: No, that's not all it is.

Apparently, she's going to be one of the lead people, one of the leading voices for politics over there, which I think is big.

PAT: Yeah. Yeah. It's big.

GLENN: Remember, that's some of the -- it's Tom Brokaw. You know, the people made their livings, starting out just on the -- what do you call it? On the campaigns.

And is it a possibility that she's not doing a daily talk show on MSNBC, but possibly something along the lines of Kathie Lee?

PAT: Yeah. That was the other possibility I was kind of thinking. But it seems like time slot is already -- you wouldn't go past 10 o'clock in the morning, would you? Eastern time for that? Maybe.

GLENN: I don't know. Maybe. You have the whole west coast. You have the whole west coast. Maybe.

I don't know. But here's what I -- here's what I do think: One, it's clearly not about the money for her, which I'm glad. I was kind of watching this to see if this was a money move for her, where she would go. You know, because everybody said, "Oh, she's just playing them for the cash." Blah, blah. And I never thought that about Megyn. I think she's deeper than just going where the cash is.

So obviously that has happened. Because I think she took a big pay cut to go there. So it shows me where her values and principles are, which I think is great.

If she -- if it works out that it's better for her, even in her mind, I think that's fantastic. Here's what is crazy to me, just crazy, is the number of people that are online now saying that she's not only a sellout, but a traitor. A traitor to her country for going to -- go to NBC.

JEFFY: She betrayed her viewers. She disrespected our president-elect. Worst of all, you misrepresented who you really were all these years.

GLENN: Because she goes to work for NBC?

PAT: That is such bullcrap.

GLENN: When did NBC become a -- a place against the United States of America? When did we pledge our loyalty to Fox News? And, by the way, Fox News is currently saying that -- that Snowden or Julian Assange is a hero. I'm not sure that he's a hero. I'm not sure that I believe everything that he has said. I think it's an important conversation to have. But gosh, it was just a few years ago where Fox was saying he's absolutely a traitor and should be in prison. In the old days, he would have been executed. Now I believe everything that he says. It's an important discussion.

I'm glad that conversation happened on the air. I'm glad that Sean Hannity went over there and said that. That doesn't make Sean Hannity a traitor for doing that or a hero for doing that. It makes him a guy who wants to know the truth and went over and let us decide whether or not he's telling the truth or not. That's an important conversation to have.

Why is somebody who is leaving Fox News all of a sudden a traitor? This is out of control.

JEFFY: Good riddance. She always was a liberal whiner.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

PAT: This is unbelievable.

GLENN: Unbelievable.

PAT: It just -- it's pretty amazing because every -- it seems like every anchor, every news anchor, every reporter now has to adopt every sensibility of the president-elect. I've never seen anything like this.

JEFFY: Yeah.

PAT: If Trump doesn't like or likes somebody, everybody who voted for him must also like or not like that person.

GLENN: That's the same mentality that happened under Obama.

PAT: I don't -- I don't know that it is.

GLENN: Yes. It did.

PAT: I've never seen anything quite like this.

GLENN: Pat, it did. Because no one -- remember what we were saying. It's slightly different.

What we were saying at the time was, "Is there no one going to stand up?" They didn't shame each other, they just all fell in line. So they didn't have any traitors, if you will. They were all like, "It was a thrill up my leg." But you know that there were people there that were like, I don't know if I agree with all of that. I don't know if he's God. You know what I mean?

But they just never said anything. So there was nobody that fell out of line.

But do you really believe that they -- if somebody would have fallen out of line, that they would have killed them. And I don't mean that literally.

PAT: Right. Yes. Maybe.

GLENN: Seriously.

PAT: And it could be that I just -- I never expected this from the right. I just never thought that would happen because nobody fell in lockstep with absolutely everything George W. Bush said. We --

GLENN: Do you remember how much trouble we had though when -- when we fell out of step with him? Not to the degree at all by what's happening now.

PAT: Nowhere near. Nowhere near.

GLENN: But it was in that direction.

PAT: And there was -- I mean, with his immigration policy though, people weren't saying, "Well, yeah, all of a sudden, I welcome this comprehensive immigration plan." They weren't doing that then. They weren't doing that then.

GLENN: Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true.

PAT: And many people disagreed with him on the Ramos and Compean situation and fought him hard on that. They disagreed with him and fought him hard on him siding with Mexico for that illegal alien rapist murderer that he was trying to save.

GLENN: That's true. That's true.

PAT: I didn't expect this from the right. So it's been pretty bizarre to see. It's been pretty weird.

GLENN: So I wish Megyn Kelly --

PAT: I do too.

GLENN: I wish her all the best.

PAT: And I hope she's making a fortune at MSNBC.

GLENN: I hope that she influences them and she's not influenced by them in any stereotypical negative way.

PAT: I hope so too. But that's hard. That's hard. When you're surround by it.

GLENN: And especially if you've been mistreated, you know --

PAT: By the other people.

GLENN: Yeah. I remember when I first went over to Fox. You know, I think one of the things that didn't -- that helped me not hold back, where I maybe should have watched my tongue a little bit more, like I don't know people on my own show stressed -- is the long elevator rides that I would have at CNN, the way that I was treated over at CNN. I was treated by management at CNN very well and by a select few at CNN, like Anderson Cooper, very, very well. Others, I was literally a cancer. And elevator -- nobody would talk to me on the elevator. Nobody would look at me. In fact, all talking would stop when I would walk into the elevator. I mean, really bad, baby, nursery school stuff.

And so you just kind of walk -- I walked out of there going, "You know what, that's the way you're going to be, screw you."

And I hope that Megyn doesn't walk out of that -- for any bad things she may have experienced -- and I think the way she was gracious and the fact that they let her on last night shows that hopefully she doesn't have that attitude.

JEFFY: Yeah, that's why she's a sellout and a traitor. Good luck!

(chuckling)

GLENN: We got to stop, or we're not going to have anybody, except our own little teams. Our own little teams, and nobody will be listening to each other.

PAT: I hope our listeners aren't treating her that way.

JEFFY: No, I hope so too.

GLENN: No, I don't think they are. I don't think they are.

PAT: That's ridiculous.

GLENN: All right. Now, this, looking out your windows, you have your crooked, busted blinds. Are they blocking your view at all?

Let blinds.com help you start the new year off right. Blinds.com helped Tania and I completely transform our house. They gave us some of the best customer service we have ever experienced. There are two companies that I put into the highest level of customer service I have ever experienced. Number one, Apple. I don't know if it's still this way. I would assume that it was. But I -- I was all IBM. I didn't like Apple.

And I was all IBM. And would always use Windows and everything else until I couldn't get customer service. And I actually had an Apple product that I would never use. And I called their service, and I said, "Look, I've been trying to get service." And the guy said, "Look, I don't know anything about these. You know, I'm not authorized to tell you. And I might even get in trouble for telling you this. I shouldn't because we're in Apple. But I understand your frustration. Here, try this, this, and this."

He got my system to work. I hung up the phone, and I said, "Apple from here on out because of their customer service."

The other one that is customer service like that is blinds.com.

You will never witness customer service done right better, I think, than blinds.com. It's absolutely unbelievable. And the reason why they're so good is because they are the pioneer in doing this stuff online. So they had to get good at talking to people and talking with people and helping them say, "No, no, no, I want to make sure that you know what this looks like, so we're going to send you a sample, and it's not a hassle. I want to make sure you understand how easy it is for you to install, or you can grab us on the phone and we can help you, while you have the screwdriver in your hand, or we can help you line somebody up in your area that can install them." Whatever it is that you need to do, these guys will jump through hoops. It's why they are the biggest seller of blinds, shades, shutters, drapes online, anywhere on the planet. Number one is blinds.com. And now through January 31st, you'll get 20 percent off everything at blinds.com if you use the promo code Beck. 20 percent off of everything, site-wide at blinds.com. You just use the promo code Beck. Cellular shades. Roller shades. Blinds. Faux wood blinds. Shutters. Drapes. Whatever you need. Blinds, promo code Beck. Rules and predictions do apply.

[break]

GLENN: I have the names. Included a lot of people. Eric Bolling, .5 percent. Sean Hannity moved back to 9:00, 5 percent. Chris Wallace, 1 percent. Shannon Bream, 6.4.

PAT: She's actually pretty good.

GLENN: Greg Gutfeld, yeah, 3.8. Tucker Carlson, he's already at 7:00, 12.4.

Jake Tapper, 3.2. Brit Hume, 2.6. Kimberly Guilfoyle, 6.2. Bret Baier, 1.1. Shep Smith, .4. Janet Piro (phonetic) is five and a half. And Dana Loesch is at 32.6 percent.

JEFFY: Yeah.

GLENN: I would tell you, I would hate that, as Dana's coworker -- I would hate that. But if there's anyone who could sit in that seat and not be pushed around by anybody, she could do it. She could do it.

PAT: Yeah, she could pull that off.

GLENN: She could do it. You know, I've been saying for a long time, she's our Megyn Kelly on TheBlaze. She's great.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: And with the resources at Fox, she would be unstoppable.

PAT: There's another poll on Mediaite that has Laura Ingraham at 24 percent, followed by another Blaze person, Tomi Lahren at 17 percent.

GLENN: Really? Tomi would be --

PAT: So kind of interesting.

GLENN: If you're going to retool and go for youth --

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: You know, because she is huge.

PAT: Somebody who has huge social media presence.

GLENN: Social media is huge.

PAT: Gigantic.

GLENN: She would be a game-changer for Fox in more than one way. And, again, largest shareholder -- I don't involve myself in TheBlaze at all. I don't -- I have self-imposed lines around that for me.

But I am the largest shareholder. I would hate to lose either of them, but what a great opportunity for both of them. I wouldn't stand in their way. They're tremendous.

PAT: They have some really interesting candidates here, in this other poll: Katrina Pierson. Would that surprise you? If they brought in a Trump insider?

JEFFY: No. That's a good call.

PAT: And Dana Perino is the other pretty good option, I think there, that they've listed here, along with a lot of people on CNN that they'll never hire at Fox. Pretty interesting.

GLENN: Like who?

PAT: Like Don Lemon.

GLENN: Oh.

PAT: No way.

GLENN: Not only would they not hire him, he wouldn't take the job at Fox.

PAT: No, I don't think he would. I don't think so.

GLENN: Back in just a second.

[break]

GLENN: Hello, America. Welcome to the program. Let me go to Kevin on line one in West Virginia. Hello, Kevin.

CALLER: Hey, Glenn.

GLENN: How are you?

CALLER: I'm doing all right. I found out last night about Megyn Kelly leaving Fox. I think I can sum up why people have a problem with Megyn Kelly leaving Fox. It doesn't have anything to do with having a loyalty pledge to Fox. It has to do with the fact that outside of Fox News, the other networks, they've been lying to Americans. They have been lying about Americans for years. And she just joined another one of those networks.

Had she joined, let's say TheBlaze or Breitbart or some other conservative network, I don't think anyone would have a problem with her. But I think a lot of people see -- myself included, that Megyn Kelly is either becoming more liberal or she was a liberal the entire time and is now sort of just joining the people that she thinks more along the lines with.

GLENN: So, Kevin, let me ask you a couple of questions here.

CALLER: Sure.

GLENN: That assumes a couple of things that Fox, TheBlaze -- I'll include TheBlaze -- me, Breitbart, have never had an agenda or ever skewed a story or ever, you know, lied to people, knowingly or unknowingly lied to people. That there is no agenda. That our side is completely pure, A. Do you believe that?

And, B, that Megyn Kelly going over there would be an influence on them in a positive way. That there is only our side and their side, and those two should never meet.

CALLER: Well, if NBC was suddenly like, "Hey, we're not going to demean conservatives anymore. In fact, we're going to hire a more conservative host and give her a prime time spot," I think that would be amazing. But I wasn't born yesterday, so I don't think that's what they're doing.

GLENN: Well, hang on just a second. Hang on just a second. Did you have a problem with Greta van Susteren going over to MSNBC? Not NBC, MSNBC.

CALLER: I will fully admit, I do not not much about Greta van Susteren. So I would be -- it would be ignorant of me to start commenting on something I don't know anything about. So I'll defer to you on that.

GLENN: Okay. She is more liberal. I think she is more liberal in her life. But I don't think she's a crazy liberal. But she is more liberal. But I don't think she changed from a liberal Greta on CNN to a conservative Greta on Fox. I think she was consistent.

So I just -- I worry about these lines being drawn, where we're in camps. And if you go to the other side and even talk to them, you're in trouble. And I'm getting heat for this now. You know, I am intentionally going over to the other side and saying, "I'm not going to change my principles. I have not changed my position on policies, but I have changed my approach." And I refuse to put people into camps, or we're really going to put people in camps some day.

I want to have conversations, and I will have a conversation with anyone until they betray me. If they say one thing to my face and then do another, then I'm done with them. But I've worked with the New York Times. I went, and I met with them. And they -- you know, what you said that NBC wasn't doing, the New York Times did. And I've seen movement in this direction, where the New York Times said, "We cannot survive as a newspaper for just half the country. And we know we have this reputation. We don't believe that reputation. But we know that reputation is real, and we want to do everything we can to fix that reputation. Can somebody help us? How can we fix that?"

That's a good step. I'm willing to help anybody who says that. "How can I change the perception? And if I'm really doing something that I shouldn't be doing, can you help point that out to me?" Because they don't see it. They honestly don't see it, just like I think we don't see things. We're doing much of the same thing that Obama supporters did, and we don't see it.

CALLER: Glenn, I can understand that perspective. I actually voted for Ted Cruz as a protest vote in both the primary and the general election.

GLENN: Wow.

CALLER: Because I couldn't compromise my principles to vote for somebody who I felt did not deserve the office, which was, of course, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. But -- so I'm not coming at this with like, "Oh, she --

GLENN: Yeah, yeah, I get it.

CALLER: Some sort of lockstep, you know, brainwashed, oh, well, she must be in lockstep with the god/emperor Donald Trump or anything like that.

But I've grown up watching the media -- everyone except Fox because Fox is the only one around -- the only conservative network around for a while -- just lie about -- and to the American people, especially when I was younger about the Iraq War. Basically doing everything they could to help us lose that war.

GLENN: I agree.

CALLER: And considering I'm in the Armed Services, I take that pretty personally.

GLENN: I agree.

CALLER: And, like, it's not that she went to work for another network, it's the fact that she went to work for another network who has a decades' long history of being the most disgusting liars you could possibly imagine. I mean, it's like -- it goes in order. Number one, liars. Liberals. Number two, mainstream media.

GLENN: Let me -- let me -- let me -- well, that's a hasty generalization. I would urge you to define liberals as progressives. I know a lot of liberals who are really good people who I strongly disagree with on policy, but I don't believe are liars. Those who are self-pronounced progressives and especially those like Hillary Clinton who say, "I'm an early 20th century American progressive," that indicates to me they know exactly what that game is, and I will put those people into the category of liars. But I don't want to put that as a hasty generalization because I think a lot of people don't -- they don't know.

CALLER: I don't think it's a hasty generalization of Megyn Kelly though.

GLENN: That she's a liar?

CALLER: For one reason -- this is why I would think less of Megyn Kelly doing this than somebody else who is not as veteran or has been in media as long as she has, because she has been on the fighting side against a lot of liberal nonsense and mistruths. And so it's not like she's been insulated from the fact that the mainstream media outside of...

GLENN: So what happens -- what happens -- well, has George Will going over to ABC, is he less of a conservative because he's not at Fox and he's at ABC?

CALLER: I have to admit, again, I don't know who George Will is, so I couldn't comment on that.

GLENN: George Will is probably one of the biggest conservative minds -- do you know who Charles Krauthammer is?

CALLER: Yeah, he's the disabled gentleman on Fox, right?

GLENN: Yes.

PAT: Everybody knows K Ham. Everybody knows K Ham.

GLENN: Yeah. So K Ham is in the same category as George Will. George hasn't changed. We haven't seen what Megyn Kelly -- if Megyn Kelly goes over and she starts doing the same stuff and changes who she is and her approach, well, then you're exactly right. But I went from -- I went from -- I went from CNN -- I went from talk radio to CNN. And I said all the same things that I'm saying over -- now, over at CNN. And I said the same things when I went from CNN to Fox. Was I traitor? Because there were those who said, "Glenn Beck sold out going to CNN."

CALLER: No. I don't think it's hypocritical for me to have that opinion. Because at the time, at least for most people, anyway, most people didn't realize the media was as biased as it was.

I don't think somebody like you could get a job at CNN now. I don't think somebody half as conservative as you could get a job at CNN now.

But with Megyn Kelly going to the other networks as opposed to George Will going to, what was it? ABC. The reason why I think she might be becoming more liberal or revealing a bit more of her liberal ideas is because during the whole transgender bathroom issue, she was really sort of taking the side of, "Hey, it's perfectly okay to let non-men, pretending to be women into bathrooms, even if that means letting grown men into bathrooms with little girls." And seemingly showing that she probably holds legitimacy to the idea that you can be born with an XY chromosome, but if you decide that, well, actually I'm a woman, that that is a perfectly rational belief to hold. And that does not strike me as a conservative thing because that doesn't strike me as a factual or rational belief to hold.

GLENN: That is fascinating.

Okay. Okay. I agree with you 100 percent on that. However, does holding that position make you a liberal or just wrong on that issue? And if you are wrong -- depending on which point of view you have, if you're wrong or right on that issue, does that make you a traitor or just make you wrong on that issue?

CALLER: Well, like I said, Glenn, I don't think Megyn Kelly is a traitor. I'm not some sort of weird, you know, loyalty. We all have to be in lockstep. That kind of thing. But I do think if you hold that opinion, well, you are probably an idiot if you hold that kind of opinion. And I haven't met many conservatives who hold that opinion.

GLENN: Right.

CALLER: So we're going to assume that if she holds that opinion, she's probably a liberal. And I don't think that's too far of a stretch.

GLENN: Okay. So let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. Let me use two people because we both have our own networks and we're not going anywhere. Let's use Mark Levin --

CALLER: I wish I had my own network.

GLENN: Yeah. So let's use me and Mark Levin. We have our own thing. So I don't know what it would take to get us to go on to network television.

If NBC -- let's say that NBC is doing what I think they might be doing at MSNBC -- and I don't think -- it would be a crazy step down for Megyn Kelly to go to daytime on MSNBC. But let's just say that MSNBC has this new epiphany and this new vision, and they say, "You know what, we're getting slaughtered by doing what we're doing now." It's Crazytown to most of America. So we are in the business of making money, and we need to put something on that appeals to more than four people. So we want to add conservatives.

Now, I don't think this would work. But we want to put Greta van Susteren on and we want to put -- we want to put Megyn Kelly on, and we want Mark Levin to be right before Rachel Maddow. Would those people -- it wouldn't work. It would be a train wreck. But would those people be a traitor, or would that be a good thing?

CALLER: Well, it would be a good thing. But this is a -- this is a fantasy world hypothetical here.

GLENN: I don't think it is. I don't think it is. I don't think it is.

If NBC just hired Greta van Susteren --

PAT: Which they did apparently.

GLENN: Which they did. And they just hired Megyn Kelly, there is something in the air. Now, it's not -- it's not -- I don't think it is -- it's from the top-down. It's not from the bottom-up, in these institutions. I think the very top levels are starting to say, "This isn't working, and this is really going to hurt us in the long-run. We are going into camps. And it's only going to get smaller and smaller and smaller because the voices are louder and louder and louder on, you're a traitor. We can't be a part of that." And I think the top of these organizations are starting to understand that and are starting to say, "We can't do that anymore." So I don't think it is a fantasy.

CALLER: Well, I guess I'll have to give it some time because something like this hasn't happened in the media before. I need time to see it actually happen before I have I think as much like hope and faith as you do. I mean, I guess it's better to be, you know, positive and hope that the networks are becoming a little bit more unhinged -- becoming less unhinged.

GLENN: No, I think they're -- hang on just a second.

CALLER: I hope it's that, but I'm too cynical to believe it.

GLENN: Yeah. And I want you to know that I don't think -- I have just as much skepticism on them as they may have on me. Let's put it that way.

But I'm choosing to believe that there is -- only because I've had the discussions. I've had a discussion with a guy who came down for the full day and wanted to spend the full day with me from one of -- I mean, an organization that is -- oh, man -- more credible than this. But, I mean, like Mother Jones, almost. It's a print -- it's a print organization.

And the guy called several times and said, "Hey, I want to come down." And we said, "No." And then after a few phone calls, we said, "Okay." We sat down, and he said, "Look, I don't agree with anything you say. Nothing you say. But here's what I do see: We're all going to be out of business, we're all going to be destroyed, and we might all start building camps for each other if we don't stop this. And I want to know: Do you have some sort of insight on business, on how to make this work, because what you're doing right now is crazy, but maybe you have some insight that nobody else has."

And I said, "No. I just happen to believe that one thing that you just said, we're going to kill each other if we don't stop it. And that's more important than money or success to me." We had -- pardon me.

CALLER: Could I say something about that? About reaching out to people outside your camp.

GLENN: Yeah. Hold on just a second. I got to do a commercial. Then we'll come back and we'll get your comment.

Now, this. Resolutions are good, but action is much, much better. Goldline, the only company I trust and recommend. And here's the way I can tell you I put my money where my mouth is. I have some platinum I got from Goldline because right now platinum is less expensive than gold. That's how crazy this market is right now, where nothing makes sense. Platinum is less expensive than gold. Historically, that's -- that doesn't happen. What did I get my grandchildren? Oh, they loved it. Teething platinum. I got them a couple of coins to have their parents put in a safe-deposit box and save for them.

Gold, silver, platinum, I don't believe in the US currency for a long-term investment. I don't. But I certainly am not taking all of my money out of currency and putting it into gold. 10 percent of your 401(k) or your IRA is smart. Call them and do your own homework. 866GOLDLINE. 1866GOLDLINE or goldline.com.

[break]

GLENN: Cary, we have one minute. Can you make your point here? Go ahead. Cary, are you there?

PAT: It's Kevin.

GLENN: Oh, Kevin. Are you there? Go ahead.

Oh, jeez, did we lose, Kevin?

PAT: Are you there, Kevin? Kevin.

GLENN: Kevin, are you there? Line one.

PAT: Did we lose him? We lost him. So young too.

GLENN: Oh, shoot. I'm sorry.

PAT: You know, part of it is -- the problem with his premise was that it presumes Fox is pure conservatism. Fox is not pure conservatism. Fox is pure Republican Partyism. I mean, I wasn't even on the air there like you were, and I saw how not necessarily purely conservative Fox was. Fox is not the conservative outlet people believe it to be. I mean, look who they supported the whole campaign. Not a conservative.

Featured Image: Megyn Kelly (Getty Images)

RYAN: Kanye West and the Great Society

Graphic by Alexander Somoskey.

Donald Trump has been name-dropped by nearly every major rapper of the last 30 years, starting with a reference by Beastie Boys on their iconic album Paul's Boutique, the Sgt. Pepper of hip-hop.

He's been mentioned by Jay Z. Ludacris. Young Thug. Nelly. Kendrick Lamar. Juicy J. Rick Ross. Eminem. Big Sean. A Tribe Called Quest. Scarface. Lil Wayne. The Coup. Master P. Ice Cube. Mos Def. Raekwon, Ol' Dirty Bastard, and various other Wu-Tang Clan affiliates. R. Kelly. Pete Rock. Nas. E-40.

And don't forget this surreal moment in our nation's history.

Then-candidate Trump on SNL ... dancing to a Drake parody.(Screenshot from YouTube)

When Bun B referred to Trump on the Chopped-n-Screwed anthem "Pocket Full of Stones," he was keeping with a tradition of rappers admiring Trump. This only changed a few years ago.

But then there's Kanye West, who proudly donned the red MAGA hat after discovering Candace Owens and being called "a jackass" by our nation's first black President. Then Kanye was hugging President Trump in the Oval Office? While wearing a Make America Great Again hat, supposed symbol of white supremacy, Nazism, hate, evil?

(Screenshot from YouTube)

People flipped. Everyone did. Longtime critics suddenly — and bizarrely — embraced Kanye as an ally, while longtime defenders disowned him, abandoned him like nail clippings, often mocking his struggles with mental illness and labeling him, if you can believe it, a white supremacist.

Then, in a moment that changed music history, Kanye released the single "Ye vs. the People."

Ye vs. the People (starring TI as the People) www.youtube.com

In it, he challenges what he sees as the unspoken rule that black Americans have to vote Democrat. He had hinted at the idea on his track "Black Skinhead," from the hauntingly gorgeous album Yeezus, but now he was addressing it head-on, with the passion of a man going to Confession for the first time in a decade.

Why should black folks have to abide by any set of cultural or political or artistic guidelines to begin with? And, he argues, the pressure to adhere to this longheld framework is itself undergirded by a subtle and cleverly masked racism, imposed by a group of people who portray themselves as the champions of race and enemies of white supremacy and destroyers of dumb yokel rednecks with their Rebel flags and monster trucks and fully-automatic AR-15 assault weapons. All of which, it turns out, is some next-level projection.

Kanye also confronts the presence of these expectations and stereotypes in hip-hop. The idea that rappers must invoke a negative persona in order to succeed. And the moment they deviate from that image they are rebuked or ignored, even though the persona is damaging to the black community as a whole. Which is especially ironic given that the people who voice the most outrage tend to be highly privileged, supposedly progressive white folks who love to rant about white privilege and black oppression.

Is it better if I rap about crack? 'Cause it's cultural?
Or how about I'ma shoot you? or f**k your b***h?
Or how about all this Gucci, 'cause I'm f****n' rich?

Best of all, Kanye has answers. And they differ from the erudite solutions offered by, say, A Tribe Called Quest, who, like Kanye, have modeled a healthy, positive image of blackness for the black community.

A central theme within "Ye vs. The People" is empathy as power, rebellion, freedom.

Make America Great Again had a negative perception
I took it, wore it, rocked it, gave it a new direction
Added empathy, care and love and affection
And y'all simply questionin' my methods.

This concept is an extension of the powerful devotion to positive energy that Kanye adopted around that time, a purview he has cultivated into a wild new form of electronic gospel.

But his personal transformation was tough.

That [MAGA] hat stayed in my closet like 'bout a year and a half
Then one day I was like, "F**k it, I'ma do me"
I was in the sunken place and then I found the new me.

This is a struggle that many Americans undergo. Researchers call it the spiral of silence. The idea that the news media and social media present biased opinions as though they are fact, and when the message conflicts with a person's opinions or values, they feel isolated, alone.

Kanye and T.I. during the making of "Ye vs. the People"(Screenshot from YouTube)

As Kanye raps in "Ye vs. the People"

A lot of people agree with me but they're too scared to speak up.

Because we have an incredible ability to sense public opinion. So when we suspect that we hold a belief that rails against acceptable thought, we tend to keep quiet about it. That silence makes the opinion seem even more taboo, resulting in a more widespread silence.

In reality, many of these supposedly taboo opinions are not only popular, they are normal and practical and logical. Healthy, even. And the real danger is in demonizing them. But too many people are afraid they'll be ostracized for expressing their beliefs.

Like how — despite what we've been led to believe — most Americans cannot stand political correctness.

But the small minority of people who champion it are powerful and loud. They're like that cardboard city in North Korea, just visible enough from the border to make it seem like a thriving community. They're the Wicked Witch of the West, or Iago from Othello, or Plankton from Spongebob Squarepants.

So far, they have been successful. Although "success" by their metric is anarchic and primal, all destruction and loudness and people nervous to speak their mind. And the cost of rebellion can be devastating.

By the time Kanye West wrote "Yay versus the People," he had gotten sick of this power dynamic. So he broke the spiral of silence."

*

In the words of German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Whoever has language has the world."

Humans alone have it.

But in order for us to know freedom in our world, our language has to be public, shared, active. Because each of us thrives constantly with language, a stream of it always in our mind. Aristotle defined "thought" as the infinite dialogue between the soul and itself. Conversation is the exchange of thought between people. When we converse, we simultaneously release our infinite dialogue and accept the other person's. By speaking, we shape the world and free ourselves.

*

Another way to say it is that Donald Trump might have inspired the song that could very well signify the end of Hip-Hop, which is not only the most popular genre of our zeitgeist, it's the most popular, and successful, form of music in American history, which is the most important era of musical history.

If the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, and Drake literally outpaces the Beatles, then, well, you get the point God forgive me. And Kanye is bigger than Drake. So who better to have the final word on the capacities of Hip-Hop than Kanye West?

Nobody.

Every genre must come to a close. There's a reason why people aren't eagerly awaiting the next great disco album, or flocking to arenas to hear the newest bluegrass superstar, or asking to get their hair done like the latest syringe-armed guitarist of Guns N Roses.

(Screenshot from Instagram)

The great era of Rock 'N' Roll ended roughly about the time Radiohead traded their guitars and drums for synthesizers and sequencers, not long after Kurt Cobain took an insane amount of heroin and cradled a shotgun in his guesthouse, only to be discovered several days later by an electrician. Even worse, Nickelback soiled Cobain's legacy with godawful anthems, and who have their own weird and contradictory and hilarious connection to President Trump.

These days, Rock N' Roll lives mostly via nostalgia, as evinced by the explosion of cover bands. Notice how you don't see any hip-hop cover bands. You will, someday. But, for now, Hip-Hop reigns supreme. And Kanye is the King.

The brilliant Nina Simone once told a reporter that "An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times."

Because music accords itself to the gravity and creative truth of the era. And currently we entrust hip-hop with this complicated maneuver.

But the past year, Kanye has been crafting a new sound through his Sunday services, weekly jam sessions with acoustic musicians and a choir and everyone dressed in white, praying through song, herding us into a better place, looking above for guidance. If it's anything like his track "Ultralight Beam," it will bring calm to our divided culture.

Mark my words: The resultant album will usher in an entirely new era, a magical flash in human history.

So far, hip-hop has been the defiant child of R&B and Electronica, the grandchild of Spoken Word and Steve Reich Minimalism, with tinges of Punk. Not for much longer. Kanye will see to that. And, weirdly, President Trump has helped inspire this transformation.

Meaning, Donald Trump will have had a hand in reinventing music as a whole, in spreading a movement of positive reformation. Love him or hate him, it does not matter. What other politician can make that claim?

There's an optimism to this that Dave Chappelle captured in his now-infamous Saturday Night Live monologue, just days after Trump was elected, asking Americans to at least give the man a chance. And again in his special "Equanimity," when he said

I swear no matter how bad it gets, you're my countrymen, and I know for a fact that I'm determined to work shit out with y'all.

In a moment of now-tired irony, the usual suspects heaped a barrage of hate at Chappelle for these remarks. But their outrage does not matter, in the grand scheme of things. Because it is an incredible time to be alive. It's beautiful. We should never forget that, no matter how petty or outrageous daily life gets.

At the moment, we are a country that is — everywhere, secretly — hurting. But we are Americans. Together. This is America. And, every day, God delights in our greatness and our empathy and our endless gift for love. So open your heart and listen. Say what you need to say.

New installments of this series come out every Monday and Thursday. Check out my Twitter.

RYAN: Michael Bennet, Little League

Photo by Sean Ryan

Every day, life getting shorter. Every day, life going faster. Every day, like a roller coaster. These were the kinds of things that Michael Bennet was saying.

Michael Bennet, God bless him, he seemed like a decent lad. All week he had his family there. He said his campaign was their family vacation. He had had prostate cancer but would you believe he survived?

"Life is getting shorter," he said. "Every day."

Photo by Sean Ryan

He was well spoken. Dry. Talked with an air of consultation. Like you were in his office, and he had things to tell you.

Like a Little League coach who could actually be a coach someday.

*

I would encounter Bennet again the next day, at the Iowa State Fair.

Having just seen Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) at a small Baptist church, we ventured to the fair to see Bernie Sanders' riot of a Sunday speech. Bennet was on before him, so I got there early, and I paced off to get a restroom break. The media center is in the basement of the administration building, right by the Political Soapbox stage.

For whatever reason, the first-floor men's restroom has giant windows along the wall, and you can see right out onto the walkway that wraps around the building. I did not realize that this was the path that the candidates take to get to the stage.

Photo by Sean Ryan

And, this far into the 2020 presidential election, they never went many places alone. They had a press swarm and their wives and maybe an old friend who relocated here when the hurricane sank his house.

I was rushing. Panicking, really. Because I heard all the commotion. But nature abides by its own pace. And as I shuffled to the sink to wash my hands, my pants fell all the way down. I was exposed. Out in the open and in such desperation, you clobber yourself outside of time. It was all slo-mo with the Chopped-n-screwed voices as I scrambled to lift my trousers and audibly gasped the words, "Well just no." At that exact moment, that "accidental Renaissance" painting occurred as I locked eyes with Michael Bennet, slowly maneuvering the walkway.

These sorts of things happened, didn't they? There you were in a restroom, at an NFL game or a concert or maybe a bar, and you see someone you work with, or someone from church or school, and you lock eyes for a moment in confusion then revert to cave talk and shrug and get on with what you were doing. But it's weird when only one of you is actively part of the etiquette and allowances of a restroom and one of you is held to a higher standard, for the sake of common decency. Now let's say that you, the restroom occupant, happen to be credentialed press, and the outsider, Michael Bennet, happens to be a candidate for president of America.

Once the herd passed by behind him, I laughed a bit, quietly, because life could be very funny.

*

Onstage, Bennet, a senator from Colorado, gave the performance of a cake falling into a pool. Like he had been ghost-busted. Like he had spent the last two months learning the Fortnite dance moves and now that he had mastered them, suddenly Fortnite was for losers, and Fortnite dances, well, they were even worse.

The Political Soapbox is great because every candidate has 20 minutes. Those 20 minutes were theirs. Most of the time, they got romantic like a Backstreet Boy singing up toward an open window. Occasionally, they lost it. Bennet did neither. He belly-flopped into hay bales.

Photo by Sean Ryan

Remember that the growing crowd had the dangerous feel of a natural disaster. And it was gaspingly warm that day. So neither the crowd nor the environment were ready to give Bennet a freebie.

He gave a ravishing speech, full of neat invective. Then looked up and realized he still had 14 minutes on the clock. Oof. That was most of it, and he'd already done the Floss and the Robot and the Electro Shuffle, and honestly his shoulder was a little stiff from all that dance practice. So he opened the floor for questions.

Now, that was not the greatest idea. For one, this was not the type of place for such a thing. They called it a soapbox because you were meant to live out the phrase "on a soapbox" by ranting and fist-pounding and all other theatrics.

The Bernie Sanders supporters hadn't arrived en masse yet, so most of the people around the stage were clad in Trump gear. And they all had their hands up ready to ask him questions. Well, firebombs, really, masked as interrogative statements. Bennet shouted without breathing, then said, "I want to find a non-male person who has a question."

This did not sit well with the males who did not like the trend of personalizing all things, cautious gendering, and the sudden change of direction so that now they had to just listen.

Most people did not care.

"I do not support Bernie's plan," Bennet shouted. But would you believe the Bernie supporters had literally just arrived, you could smell their hair dye.

They jeered, then acted exactly — and I mean exactly — like the Trump supporters.

"I would rather support free pre-school than free college," he shouted. "Many people talk about... " but the jeering was too powerful. And the Bernie supporters had likely just had quinoa açaí bowls at their pre-Bernie brunch, so they were unstoppable. Well God bless the man for scratching "Give Presidency a Try" off his bucket list. Because at least he had a bucket list.

What did they have? Student debt and a restraining order? They being the growing factions of Bernie and Trump supporters in the audience. You could not see any pavement. It was just people and faces like the Mediterranean in the evening, all the way to the towering walls of the Grandstand.

Looking out at all that chaos, all that latent disaster, Bennet must have felt a deep stirring.

The night before, Slipknot headlined at the Grand Stand, a sold-out show. Rollicking and bursting and howling. How many drumbeats could drummer Jay Weinberg get per minute? At one point, vocalist Corey Taylor unleashed a demonic bellow, then adjusted his mask and looked out to all those people, those devoted fans, because many of them had Slipknot tattoos, and maybe he, like Bennet, indulged a moment for himself, a personalization of the grand setting, then shrieked, then persuaded the audience to lift their hands into the air, maybe toward a constellation of their choosing, and extend their middle finger like it was an egg landing on a pillow, which symbolizes the human condition.




New installments to this series come out every Monday and Thursday morning. For live updates, check out my Twitter.

RYAN: Donald Trump and Fox News troll the media

Sean Ryan

President Trump couldn't personally make it to Houston for the 3rd Democratic Debate, so he paid $7,500 for a single-engine Cessna to fly in circles over Texas Southern University campus while pulling a banner that said, "Socialism will kill Houston's economy! Vote Trump 2020!"

For four hours, it chugged around up there. You could hear it everywhere. It was the soundtrack of the night.

You can just imagine Trump's face as he had the banner-plane idea. You can hear him putting in the order. You can see his list of demands. And at the very top, "I WANT THE LOUDEST PLANE YOU CAN FIND!!!"

*

Was that Bret Baier in the aisle, adjusting his reading glasses and thumbing at the strap of his comically small backpack as he crossed the blue-carpeted gymnasium? He looked like the human version of Wisconsin. He was saying something but all you could hear was the plane overhead.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Bret Baier, the stoic host of "Special Report with Bret Baier" on Fox News and the network's chief political anchor. He's underrated, if you ask me. Legacy. Old-school. He just delivers the news, which is what most people want. He talks the way anchors used to talk, with the American accent unique to news anchors even though he was born in New Jersey and raised in Georgia.

I had spent the last year-and-a-half on a series of in-depth profiles on some of the major countercultural figures of our time. People like Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, and Carol Swain. So my first impulse was to rush over to Baier and profile the guy. Nobody else would, after all. The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's. But they ought to. The man has a hell of a story.
He joined Fox News a year-and-a-half after it was founded, as the southeast correspondent in Atlanta. A few years later, on a Tuesday in September, nineteen terrorists hijacked four passenger airliners and crashed into America.

When the first plane hit, Fox producers told Baier to just get in his car and drive to New York City. They needed back-up reporters for the next day. When the second plane crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m., they said, "Step on it, Baier."

He and his producer were an hour outside Atlanta when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon. Still a good 8 hours away, but closer to D.C. than to New York City. So they re-routed to Arlington, Virginia, as fast as they could. Past a blur of fields full of indifferent cows. Past houses full of people who could hardly talk, people who couldn't describe what they were seeing and hearing, all the smoke and the blood and the office-supply confetti. Past towns that barely moved, gas stations with nobody in them, people sunken into a far-away stare.

Yet there was the sun, with only a few bangles of cloud every so often. America had been paralyzed but the earth kept trucking along, quiet and unbothered. It must have felt strange for Baier, to speed down empty highways — toward literal death and chaos — under a perfect sky, below cascading light and color.

Nature doesn't care if we make it out alive.

*

That day, Baier reported live from a Citgo station across the street from the Pentagon, rubble in heaps of flame behind him. It was like he'd fallen onto a different planet and was reporting back to home.

The next day arrived and it was so quiet everywhere. Nobody knew a damn thing. We could not believe our eyes. We all turned to reporters and anchors for answers. Most often, they blurted out whatever they could.

Something about Bret Baier gave audiences a much-needed boost. Reliable, sturdy. Like he said what had to be said and not a word extra.

Fox kept him in D.C., indefinitely. A friend helped him find an apartment. He never went back to Atlanta. Two weeks later, Fox News appointed him Pentagon correspondent, a position that saw him travel the world, including 13 trips to Afghanistan and 12 to Iraq.

Halfway through George W. Bush's second term, Baier became Fox News' White House correspondent.

Then, a year before he would earn his current position as anchor, Baier became a father. His son was born with holes in his heart — five congenital heart defects. Twelve days later, the boy underwent open-heart surgery. Baier and his wife waited in tiled rooms drenched with flowers and ESPN and drab ultraviolet light, surrounded by machines full of beeps and whirring and beeps and whirring.

Baier's son has since undergone two additional open-heart surgeries, nine angioplasties, and one stomach operation. In an interview with Parents Magazine, Baier said that his son's health problems have "given me perspective about my job, going through policy and politics in Washington, D.C., to see the bigger picture."

*Part of the reason I couldn't tell whether or not it was Baier is he's usually up on the main stage. For the 2012 election, he moderated five Republican debates, and co-anchored FNC's America's Election HQ alongside Megyn Kelly.

The 2016 election would propel him into a much larger role. He anchored three Republican debates, but this time he had to handle Donald Trump.

Baier knew Trump personally, from before the election. They'd played golf together. He described Trump as "a nice guy outside of his TV persona" and never thought Trump would actually make a run for the Presidency. Onstage, Trump was much different. And Baier had been tasked with maintaining control.

A devout Roman Catholic, he appreciates a nice glass of wine and a fine cut of steak. He likes a good joke, too. In January, 2019, Baier signed a multi-year deal with Fox News to continue "Special Report." A few weeks later, he and his family went to Montana for a ski trip. The weekend was wonderful. But they had to get back to New York because Baier was scheduled to appear on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" that Tuesday.

Imagine him, again in a car hurtling toward a fateful destination. How he squinted through the frost-pocked windshield and gripped the steering wheel. As he guided the white SUV along the two-lane road to the airport. The land looked haunted, barren, lifeless. Everywhere, the world was frozen white. Snow and ice blanketing the fields, gauze over the sky.

At some anonymous intersection, Baier pumped the brakes, but the tires hit an ice patch, and the SUV spun loose. An oncoming car slammed into the driver's side, launching the vehicle into an embankment, wedged on its side. A man named Zach stopped his pickup truck and helped the family crawl free, and the Montana Highway Patrol rushed them to the hospital.

"Don't take anything for granted," Baier tweeted later. "Every day is a blessing and family is everything. It's always good to remind yourself of that before something does it for you."

Before every debate that he moderates, Baier spends 10 minutes alone, praying.

*

A Freedom of Information Act request in 2011 revealed that Fox News was actually right. That the Obama Administration really did hate them. And had intentionally excluded them from a press pool two years earlier. Then laughed about it.

The documents unearthed snarky emails between various high-ranking aides in the Obama Administration. In one, the Deputy White House communications director bemoaned Baier's reporting on the bias. "I'm putting some dead fish in the [Fox News] cubby — just cause Bret Baier is a lunatic." That same day, deputy press secretary Josh Earnest bragged in an email that "we've demonstrated our willingness and ability to exclude Fox News from significant interviews."

The Trump administration pulled a similar stunt in July, 2018 by banning a CNN reporter from the press pool. Trump and Fox News had developed a beneficial relationship by then. And CNN was a lifelong competitor, a public enemy.
That night, Baier delivered an official statement, "This decision to bar a member of the press is retaliatory in nature and not indicative of an open and free press. We demand better. As a member of the White House press pool, Fox stands firmly with CNN on this issue of access."

Fox News rebuked Trump in solidarity with CNN. It was a heartening gesture between two seeming enemies. Fox News were standing up for truth, defending journalism, rejecting tyranny even though the ban would have benefitted them as a company.

Who knows how many books and dissertations and articles have been written about Fox News, usually in relation to bias, usually with a scathing tone. The conclusions differ wildly, yet each one claims certitude.

Generally, academics and journalists have taken a doomsday tone when talking about Fox News. Accusations of evil, fear-mongering, bigotry, hatred, misinformation, propaganda, racism, homophobia, and so on.

Despite these outcries, Fox News has consistently held its spot as the most-watched network in the country. Imagine how that makes its critics feel.

In an August 3, 2018 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Baier said, "the biggest problem is that the people who are most critical of Fox are usually people who have not watched Fox News."

Fox News is composed of two distinct departments. Punditry and straight news. Or "opinion news" and "descriptive news." Consistently, surveys of the public rate Fox News as both the least- and most-biased news network.
Last year, a survey found Fox News to be the second most-trusted television news brand in the country, after the BBC.

In a separate study, Democrats rated its bias score at (negative) -87, while Republicans placed it at (positive) +3. Which is like if, at a football game, one referee said "Touchdown," while the other referee said "Turnover, leading to Touchdown for the Defense." It can't be both, can it?

Public opinion may not be the best metric for understanding Fox News, especially in 2019.

Quantitative studies have offered clearer conclusions. In 2016, a content analysis used crowdsourcing and machine learning to examine over 800,000 news stories published over a year by 15 major outlets, from the New York Times to Fox News. They wanted to chart media bias.

What they discovered is that news outlets are far more similar than we believe. Much of the perceived bias is a matter of separating "opinion news" from "descriptive news." For conservatives, it's punditry. For those on the left, it's op-eds and long form investigative pieces, although the left tends to insist that they're not biased, that they are instead just more apt to tell the truth, even though research has disproven this belief.

The researchers found a much larger bias-divide in opinion news, whereas descriptive news was practically neutral. One of the researchers described Fox News' descriptive news as "guided by similar news values as more traditional, legacy media."

University of California Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote that "Fox News stands next to industry, state government, church, and the regular media as an extra pillar of political culture all its own."

Say what you want about Fox News, they play a crucial role in the so-called mainstream media. And, despite what Fox News will lead you to believe, they are definitely part of the mainstream. And they are by no means the innocent victim. And certainly not powerless. And they have all kinds of problems that I will not defend. But we'll talk about that in a later installment, the one about Kamala Harris at a gun control rally, advocating for propaganda.

*

After two months of political events, I suspected that different news networks have their own signifiers, like the distinct stripes and markings on various spiders.

Wall Street Journal reporters tended to carry old-timey notepads and interview any bystander they could find. Breitbart usually only sent one person, and he wandered around with his iPhone, recording every single thing. Politico, prim-suited men who could just as easily work on the stock market.

Most of the reporters dressed like that, in stagey business attire. Prim for a high school job fair. Meanwhile, the photographers, mostly men, looked like professional paintball players. The camera crews and technical staff were the only ones decked in tattoos and wearing sandals and generally not caring about the chaos all around them. On-camera talent were covered in makeup and shrink-wrapped into dresses or suits with chip-clips along the spine.

The Washington Post sent the classiest and most bored-looking people I have ever encountered. They never looked at their laptops as their fingers chopped at the keys, and you assumed they were pretending until you read their stories online. You could spot ABC because their camera crew wore faded red ABC hats. Associated Press looked like they had just come back from a battlefield assignment in Syria, and never donned the same press credentials as everyone else, preferring a tattered AP lanyard. And you always knew when someone was with the New York Times because they announced it to the entire room.

And Fox News? At democratic events, they usually hid. But not that day, in Houston, as Bret Baier walked up the aisle to a table a couple rows in front of me.

Most people arrived in the Media Filing Center several hours before the debate. Fox News got there just slightly after that, as everyone was wiggling in their seats and connecting their laptops to a shared outlet.

There were seven or so in the pack of Fox News, all grinning. They all had white to-go sacks from Chick-fil-A. And the room got quieter, so Trump's plane got louder. It was a double trolling event.

As host of the debate, ABC would be providing dinner. This information was included in the credentials email that all of us had received. So nobody else had brought food with them. No need.

Even better, I was familiar enough with that part of Houston to know that there was not a Chick-fil-A anywhere close to us. Who knew where they'd gotten that Chick-fil-A, but odds are it wasn't warm. Who knew if there was even any food in the bags.

They had brought Chick-fil-A into a building full of national media during the third Democratic Presidential debate. The 2020 election was already full of outrage about plenty of things, and one of them was Chick-fil-A. To some folks, the red chicken logo might as well have been a swastika. That very week LGBT activists had vehemently — cartoonishly — protested the opening of several Chick-fil-A's throughout North America. Chicken sandwiches had become yet another flag on the tug-of-war rope in the Culture War of our country.

To be clear, the political left was anti-Chicken and the political right was pro-Chicken. The media tended to lean anti-Chicken, and frequently wrote about anti-Chicken causes, often scolding pro-Chicken voices, or ignoring the struggles of the pro-Chicken community only to deny any opinion on Chicken at all. That was the cowardly part, of you ask me, the pretending like they weren't activists.

The Democratic candidates definitely leaned anti-Chicken. Sometimes they took it so far that it upset moderate anti-Chicken advocates. Because was it really so bad to eat Chicken? Couldn't you be anti-Chicken but also enjoy Chicken occasionally? Why did everything have to be either "all Chicken all the time unless you hate freedom" or "no chicken ever unless you support hate"?

The fight had spread everywhere. Airports, stadiums, malls, campuses. All had served as battlegrounds for the anti-Chicken versus the pro-Chicken.

The previous President was anti-Chicken. In fact, he may well have enflamed the entire movement. During his tenure, there were nationwide protests that saw pro-Chicken advocates angrily and proudly eating Chicken while anti-Chicken advocates protested outside and occasionally engaged in homosexual affection, which was being threatened by Chicken, according to them.

Every time the pro-Chicken folks bit into a Chicken sandwich, it was like they were gnawing away at the anti-Chicken people themselves. Degrading their identity. Because, for them, it was about the identity.

But the current President, unabashedly proud of his pro-Chicken stance, once served Chicken at the White House to some winning sports team, and the anti-Chicken activists saw it as proof that Chicken and hate go together. And maybe Chicken would even lead to the impeachment of the President they hate, which would mean the Vice President would become the President, but he's one of the most pro-Chicken people in America, so they'd have to impeach him, too. And the Supreme Court, it was overrun with pro-Chicken types.

This election, the Democratic front-runners competed for the bolder plan. They would end Chicken in America once and for all. They would obliterate our evil President and his Chicken Supremacy. Their stump speeches relied on harsh criticisms of pro-Chicken voters, who pretended to find the whole anti-Chicken movement amusing but were secretly enraged by it. In fact, they were certain that the anti-Chicken movement had been systematically silencing them for years, and that they had to fight for their Chicken in order to keep everything that they valued, even all the not-Chicken.

The media and the democrats and Hollywood and academia — all hated the Chicken, because they hated the pro-Chicken people. If they had their way, no more Chicken, ever again. And no more pro-Chicken deplorables. And tonight the anti-Chicken politico-culture complex would prove it, with long rants which get confirmed by glowing articles, calculated takedowns about the merits of anti-Chicken and the evils of pro-Chicken.

Yet here was Fox News, with actual Chicken. And they were smiling. Maybe in part because the police who were guarding us all tended to be pro-Chicken. And this was Texas, after all, an incredibly pro-Chicken state. But there were 49 other states and 14 territories, and all of them were fighting for or against Chicken.

Some experts even said we were on the cusp of a Civil War.


New installments to this series come out every Monday and Thursday morning. For live updates, check out my Twitter.

All the Evidence for Ukraine: The Scandal Explained

We've heard the catchphrase "follow the money" so often that it's nearly a joke. It gained added attention in the 1976 movie All the President's Men, which follows the story of the two journalists who uncovered Watergate. "Follow the money," their source told them, "and you'll find corruption."

Problem is, corrupters hide their bad behavior remarkably well. They are masters of disguise. But if you look closely enough, you can spot the seams splitting in their choreographed routine.

One technique that magicians use for psychological misdirection is called the false solution. The goal is to distract the audience, to make them believe that they know what's really happening. All the while, the machinations of the actual trick are happening right in front of them, because "implanting an unlikely and unfamiliar idea in the mind can prevent participants from finding a more obvious one."

Billions of dollars. Lost. Gone.

I want to tell you a story of tremendous corruption, masked cleverly, using many of the same techniques that magicians have used for centuries. Only it's not a rabbit disappearing into a hat or a coin vanishing behind an ear. It's billions of dollars. Lost. Gone.

And the people responsible are the same people who have been so monstrously worked up about Trump's impeachment. The same people screaming about Trump's malfeasance with Ukraine are actually the ones misbehaving in Ukraine.

It's essentially an elevated, highly organized form of projection. Only instead of one person lashing out at the world, it's an entire political party, right up to the top. The very top. Barack Obama. It's right there on video.

Or how about the audio recording we uncovered, with Artem Sytnyk, Director of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine, openly admitting a connection between the DNC and Ukraine?

So far, the story told by the Democrats and the media has been about Trump and Ukraine. Every so often, you hear mention of Joe Biden's dubious history with the war-torn country.

We were the first to talk about Joe Biden's connections to Ukraine back in April, with our candidate profile on Biden.

It turns out, the whole debacle was much worse than we thought. It stretched further than Uncle Joe. What we found out is that the DNC was working with the Ukrainian government.

This isn't a conspiracy theory. And we have the documents to prove it.

Read on to discover everything you need for a 30-second elevator pitch that you can give to your friend and say, "Look, here's what you need to know. Here's what's really going on."

If anyone is guilty, they should go to jail.

Last night, in Ukraine: The Democrats' Russia I revealed the elaborate misdirection taking place.

I said it last night and I'll say it again: If Trump is guilty, he should go to jail. If anyone is guilty, they should go to jail. Because this is too important to the Republic.

Watch the hands, follow the money.

Here are the documents, video, and audio that we found in our reporting. This is the hard evidence that will help you explain this unbelievable situation to other people.



  • June 2016 State Department memos detailing contacts between George Soros' office and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.




As you can see, we did a lot of research on this, and we've done our best to condense it for you. It still requires you to do your own homework, but there's a tremendous freedom to that.

You are seeking the truth.

You are bucking the mainstream media. You are rejecting them. And you are seeking truth. Because they abandoned truth a long time ago and they certainly aren't interested in recovering it now.