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GLENN: Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the career of academy award winning actor Jon Voight died suddenly last week. It's sad. Lab results aren't all available yet, but most experts believe that his career's death was caused by a column that he wrote in which he argued that Barack Obama and the Democrats were using Marxist propaganda to usher in a new socialist era. No. Ended soon after when later he called general Wesley Clark. I didn't think I would ever agree with somebody in Hollywood as much as I agree with Jon Voight. God speed Jon Voight's career, Jon Voight's career, dead at 62. Jon Voight, the actor, currently on the phone with us now. Hey, Jon, how are you? Jon, are you there? Jon?
VOIGHT: Yeah.
GLENN: How are you?
VOIGHT: I'm good. Can you hear me?
GLENN: Can you hear me?
VOIGHT: Yeah.
GLENN: Well, there you go. How's your career doing now?
VOIGHT: I think just fine, Glenn.
GLENN: You know, Jon, I have to tell you.
VOIGHT: I always wait for your introductions. A couple of things. Your introductions are fantastic to me. You know, and the other thing is you are such a visual person, you know, that I actually even on radio, I see you. I see the way, you know
GLENN: I apologize for that.
VOIGHT: I'm telling you, you're fantastic.
GLENN: So Jon, I saw this story, what, about a week ago, week and a half ago and, A, I mean, I don't know what would make you say that
VOIGHT: Well, you read my op ed piece.
GLENN: Oh, yeah, sure did. I can't imagine what would make you say that there's a Marxist or socialist era that they are ushering in with universal healthcare, free college tuition, universal national service, universal 401(k), free job training, wage insurance, free child care, universal preschool, more subsidized private housing, fatter earned income tax credit for the working poor and a Global Poverty Act. I don't know why you would say that they are bringing in some sort of a socialist era. But you know what I find interesting, Jon, is, and I'd like you to talk about this.
VOIGHT: Yeah.
GLENN: The way that the new Hollywood blacklist or the McCarthy era is alive and well in the one town where they should know this is evil to do this kind of stuff.
VOIGHT: Yeah, absolutely, Glenn. As heinous a thing as you can imagine to intimidate people, to try to squelch any kind of, you know, any kind of opposition to this fellow with this kind of intimidation.
GLENN: You had one of the big entertainment writers, I guess, Jeffrey Wells said and I'm just amazed at this statement. He said, quote: You'd think an arch conservative which I don't think, are you you don't think you are an arch conservative, do you?
VOIGHT: No.
GLENN: You lean to the right but you're generally center.
VOIGHT: I would you know, it's very hard. These kinds of, you know
GLENN: Labels.
VOIGHT: Labels that people put on people, I don't go for that anyway. I just think that I'm a person who's trying to find the truth and express it as I, you know, get the opportunity.
GLENN: So this guy said, think an arch conservative, working in an overwhelmingly liberal town, would think about restraining himself for expedience sake if nothing else. They are basically saying you can't have an opinion in your town if you want to have a job.
VOIGHT: Yeah, that's what they're saying.
GLENN: What do you
VOIGHT: Expedient say. Interesting, huh? That's held up as an interested of some sort.
GLENN: How do you how did you react to this? What have you done since the column?
VOIGHT: You know something, I've been kind of I haven't been as aggressive perhaps as I should have been in regard to this, you know, intimidation because it is a very pernicious act and it seems like one of the reasons why I wrote the article was because nobody knows about Michelle Obama. The people who are supporting him and cheering him, you know. If you ask them why they are voting for him, you don't get very, you know, very substantive answers.
GLENN: Yeah.
VOIGHT: You get, well, he's a nice looking fellow, I like the way he talks, he's I like change, I want change. They have no idea what the change is that this fellow is going to usher in.
GLENN: Right.
VOIGHT: And he helps them. Obama helps these people by saying very vague things. Nothing that they can put their finger on. He says things like, he said during one of his speeches he said I don't want you to just believe in me. I want you to believe in your own dreams. Well, what does that mean? It means, of course, that I'm anything you want me to be. But on the other side there's an agenda that he has that is very clear and it's and if you look into his background, you can see very clearly the agenda. And as you mentioned, when I say socialism, all those things you mentioned are part of the package, of course, if Obama becomes President. So they are trying to keep away from any understanding of what he's going to do. And the way they do it is by cutting any kind of inquiry off with this kind of intimidation. So it's a real you know, it's a really very disturbing package that we're looking at here.
GLENN: Jon, you were if I'm not mistaken, weren't you an antiwar activist back in the Sixties?
VOIGHT: I was. I was caught up in that movement as most people were.
GLENN: Sure.
VOIGHT: And probably because of that, I see a little bit more clearly now what's going on.
GLENN: What happened to you? Because you were, along with the Jane Fondas of the world and you went down that path and then what happened? Where did you change? What
VOIGHT: Well, a couple of things changed. First of all, I spent a lot of time with the Vets. I was always considerate of the Vets, thank God for that. And then I saw what happened at the end of the war which I allude to in my article. I heard from the left. And, of course, this leftist movement, it was filled with slogans and propaganda and we just went along with the crowd. It was a very popular thing. And the left was saying that the Vietnam situation was our problem, that we were the problem, that once we pulled out, everybody was going to come together and hug and it was going to be fine. And then, of course, we saw after the Paris peace accords and we pulled out, we saw what happened. The communists came in and there were, you know, two and a half million people slaughtered in Cambodia and South Vietnam. And the peace movement, looking at that carnage just turned away and walked away and never looked back. And it was very disturbing to me, and it didn't the dime didn't drop for a little while but that was the beginning of it.
GLENN: How do they because they're still doing they are still doing this and in many ways the people on the extreme left, for instance, I mean, you can even take it to oil. They don't want us to drill for oil but yet they will buy it from Saudi Arabia, a country that is so oppressive, they will buy it from Russia. They don't have a problem with what Russia is doing. And Putin is an evil guy.
VOIGHT: Pardon?
GLENN: And pow continue is such an evil guy. Where is that disconnect? Why is it just, do you think it's just a is it just a hatred for America or what is it?
VOIGHT: Well, I guess it's many things but it really is a blindness, isn't it? They don't seem to see what they're doing. Of course we would be more environmentally clean than anybody. If anybody was going to raise the environmental question, we would be the best people to be distributing oil and delivering the oil to folks throughout the world because we'll do it in a much cleaner way than anybody else. And besides the economic consequences that we're suffering now and the enemies around the world that are being benefitted by our money. All of that stuff, you know, it just seems like it seems like a no brainer that you would say, well, yes, we should be drilling for oil and we should be developing all those other alternative methods of energy as well at the same time. And then you see this phenomenon that we're looking at with Nancy Pelosi closing down the shop when people obviously want this vote to happen. And
GLENN: And, you know, I was talking about this today, Jon. There's not a single, there's not do you remember when George Bush went on vacation like two years ago and everybody was like, where is George Bush, why is he on vacation. I have not heard that from the media. Where is, where's Nancy Pelosi? Where are the Democrats when America needs a vote on oil?
VOIGHT: Exactly right. And you wonder where you know, obviously it's not it doesn't take very much to know that everybody's pretty upset. And what is the what are the senators and congressmen doing with that anger? I really, I can't, I don't get it. But, of course, the media is in the pocket of the Democratic party and no one's really reporting this.
GLENN: I have to send you some pictures of some pictures that a friend went down, I think it was in Peru, went down to Peru and there were Support Obama posters in the subways and on the highways.
VOIGHT: Amazing.
GLENN: In Peru. And you're like, what? And it was those very socialist iconic kind of images. You know what I'm talking about?
VOIGHT: Yeah.
GLENN: And he goes, I thought of you when I saw them. I have to send them to you. I saw them and I thought, this is exactly what you were talking about, that they're using the propaganda. But it is so odd. Have you ever, have you ever seen a presidential campaign that is global in its nature?
VOIGHT: Yeah. Well, you know, this is there's a strange thing going on, this alliance between the far left and the Islamists. This is a very pernicious and dangerous phenomenon we're looking at.
GLENN: What do you mean?
VOIGHT: Well, somehow the left, you know, look at the crowds that he gathers in Europe. They're lefties. And these lefties are the remains of the communist movement.
GLENN: Right.
VOIGHT: You know? And I saw I had a front row seat at that when I was in the antiwar movement. That was all manipulated by Marxists.
GLENN: And you didn't know it at the time or you just ignored it?
VOIGHT: I put it together later. And then, you know, of course there have been very good books coming out about it. David Horowitz's book was very clear.
GLENN: You remind me a lot of him.
VOIGHT: He was really on the inside of that. I saw little, you know, sprinklings of it but I really wasn't on the inside of that movement. But, of course, SDS took meetings with the communists and it was a communist victory, the antiwar movement shutting down that war.
GLENN: The reaction in Hollywood, I know they went after I love this. The editor in chief of Variety, Peter Bart, went after your quote, intellectual equipment, made fun of your relationship with your family, just went personal on you.
VOIGHT: Uh huh.
GLENN: Really just a hatchet job all around.
VOIGHT: Yeah.
GLENN: What is the reaction for the from the conservatives that you know that are afraid to come out, Jon, that don't have an Oscar?
VOIGHT: Well, you know, obviously there is I don't feel so much listen, I care so much about this country, Glenn.
GLENN: I know you do.
VOIGHT: I'm very concerned about the country, much more concerned about the country than I am about my work but, of course, I'm an older fellow.
GLENN: Yeah.
VOIGHT: You know, people know who I am. I have less ability to be intimidated in a sense than others coming up. You are absolutely right. And with these kind of attacks, they are meant to silence people. And I say that to Peter, jeez, this is as bad as it can be, fellas.
GLENN: But talk to them, did you
VOIGHT: No, I didn't. But, you know, I probably should. I've been running around doing a bunch of things, but I should talk to Peter and let him have it about this. This is really as bad as it can be. This is stuff that we've seen in the past, you know, in Nazi Germany they squelched criticism that was coming up. In every regime and throughout the history since that time, this has been in evidence. And when we've seen it, we've, you know, come out against it. But that is happening in our own country, in our own in this political campaign is quite disturbing.
GLENN: Jon, if you don't mind, I just want to share something. The first time I met you, we had dinner with some friends. And I was really impressed by you for a couple of things. You tried to set the record straight between the two of us right away, and it took a lot of courage to approach me and say the things that you did that we don't need to go into. But you were a courageous man. I looked at my wife when you walked away and I said, wow, there's a man of integrity. And then I watched you the rest of the night, and in the conversation with some very smart people, you were taking notes and what I got from that is you are a man that is still learning. You are a man that still cares enough about this country
VOIGHT: You bet, uh huh.
GLENN: that when you hear viewpoints that you may or may not agree with but you want to find out more about, you were taking notes to be able to research it more. And I have to tell you, very few people are still actively engaged in the learning process, and the learning process of the history of our country and the current history of our country in the future, and I am very impressed with you.
VOIGHT: Oh, thank you so much, Glenn. You know, in terms of learning, I might say, and I probably should say this every time I'm asked to speak, is that there are there's a hidden agenda in this, in this election. People are keeping Obama a mysterious object. But there's some books coming out and everybody should get those books.
GLENN: Yeah.
VOIGHT: There's the Corsi book, Jerome Corsi book, the Obama Nation.
GLENN: What's the other one, Stu? I'm trying to remember.
VOIGHT: The case against Barack Obama, the unlikely rise and unexamined agenda of the media's favorite candidate. These are good books for us to anybody who doesn't know what he's done, who has who every time they are asked a question, what has he done, what are his qualifications and they have no answers, they should read these books.
GLENN: Yeah.
VOIGHT: Something's happening here and we should be aware of it.
GLENN: Jon Voight, we'll talk to you again.
VOIGHT: Thank you, sir.
GLENN: You bet. Bye bye.
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