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TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY

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Glenn interviews Sylvester Stallone

January 18, 2008
 Radio Clips

The Glenn Beck Program

GLENN: We have Sylvester Stallone on the phone?


 


 STALLONE: Hello.


 


 GLENN: Mr. Stallone, how are you?


 


 STALLONE: Very good, thanks.


 


 GLENN: Well, I have to tell you. To have Rambo back is quite exciting.


 


 STALLONE: I'd say for me. I mean, I never thought it was going to happen and here we are.


 


 GLENN: So here's a movie about pretty much God, family, country.


 


 STALLONE: Right.


 


 GLENN: Kind of all the things that Hollywood really doesn't like making movies about. I mean, how the hell did -- is it just because you walked in and said, we're making this movie?


 


 STALLONE: God's on commercial right now. I'm sorry, family's on commercial but he'll come back.


 


 GLENN: How did you get it done?


 


 STALLONE: You know, it's really am an act of attrition. Nobody wanted to make Rambo just like nobody wanted to make Rocky because the whole business paradigm has changed so much that it's all about use films and concept films and Rambo's considered low concept compared to what's happening today. And luckily there is a man named Javy Lerner of New Ridge Films, said let's give it a shot. I said we've got to find something pertinent to write about. So I wrote a story about Mexico and MS-13 and let's go into that area. I thought that would be kind of intriguing like a modern day western. I thought that's a little too close to home and I don't know if that's going to be around the world. So then I called Fortune magazine and certain individuals and said where is the most egregious display of human right violations on the planet? They said, Burma, and no one knows about it because the Chinese and the Burmese spend millions of dollars a year with Washington and lobbyists to suppress what's going on. So I investigated and it almost simplified it. It's like The Magnificent Seven. You have a group of small peasant being overwhelmed by the second largest Army in the Far East and they've held on for 60 years, Glenn, and they are hanging on by their nails and they have these missionaries, these Christian workers, from Oklahoma, Chicago, bus drivers, policemen, they pool their money together, they go and they bring medicine and Bibles and I thought, I could create a story around this, of Rambo being this atheist and he's a boatman going up and down the river and he's the only way they can get into Burma down the river and then the adventure begins. His story begins, a man completely pessimistic about a man who spent his entire life up to his waist in blood and realizes war is natural; peace is an accident.


 


 GLENN: Wow. So, you know, we were talking about this. It's almost, I don't know -- I don't mean this in a bad way. It's almost like Father Goose. I kind of got the Cary Grant image of, jeez, you're on the boat and you are kind of going and you're going against your will. Kind of?


 


 STALLONE: Yes. But the doing this will subconsciously, he knows that he is so dead inside, yet this one woman like one of the leads on Dexter, there was an element of innocence, that optimism. Rambo's so cynical that it's like, if I can get this one spark, this person who truly believes that life can be turned around into Burma and out alive, I've also become alive again. There's -- I have to have one foot left on the fence so that I can still believe that humanity is worth living. So I call it the King Kong syndrome where you have this wild beast and then he sees this sense of -- this woman who represents purity in the future and will go to the end of the Earth to protect her because his life means nothing, but her survival does.


 


 GLENN: You know, there's a promo out that has the pieceworkers going in and Rambo says, are you armed? And they say, no! And Rambo says, and you're not changing anything. Stallone that's right. Are you bringing any weapons? No. Well, you are not changing anything. Because that's Rambo's mentality. He's figured out that words don't work. But they do work but not in his world.


 


 GLENN: So I'm just trying to imagine the Hollywood meeting. When you just described that scene alone.


 


 STALLONE: Oh, no, it's brutal. I'll be flat out. This is perhaps the most brutal action film for sure ever made. I had a dilemma there that as we're speaking right now, the Burmese, these peasants, are being tortured and they are not being shacked. These children are being thrown live into cement of the general's homes to bring good luck, decapitation, children's heads left on spikes on front lawns of their parents' until they rot as a reminder. Rape is plugged to the Army. Kids run cannibalism. When your injury is captured, the other soldiers take a bite out of you to show that they own your show. It's beyond. So I think I cannot water this down. I cannot make this sugar-free violence. If we're going to really show Burma the way it is, then we have to cross that line and I'm asking you to go in that area. And to their credit the rating boards gave us a seriously hard R, but what you will see in this is the real deal, and it's hard. It's rough.


 


 GLENN: I can't even imagine what a real hard Stallone movie is like.


 


 STALLONE: No, it's like peanut butter and jelly, Mr. Rogers' neighborhood compared to this.


 


 GLENN: Explosive? Stallone please. If you're lucky you get hit with that.


 


 GLENN: So it comes out January 25th. Have you had any -- was there any part of you -- because I know the latest Rocky -- and in fact, if you don't mind, I've got to let my producer Stu say hello to you because he's the biggest Rocky fan on the face of the Earth.


 


 STU: Greatest movies of all time.


 


 GLENN: He means it and I'm sick of hearing it.


 


 STALLONE: Okay.


 


 GLENN: But anyway, when the new Rocky came out he said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he was worried and a lot of fans were worried. Oh, no, you're going to wreck the franchise. Did it all occur to you with this one, jeez, the new Rocky movie did well and it was critically acclaimed, everybody loved it; I've got to do Rambo right.


 


 STALLONE: Right, right. I do. Because the other, the last Rocky was not very, very well done. I knew that. It's the one that Rocky was undergoing brain damage and it was all off, completely off. I was working with amateurs. I wasn't on the ball. I take full responsibility for it. And it bothered me more than anything that the one character that brought me into the business I was going to let go out on a very, very sour note. And 18 years, 16 years passed and a lot had happened to me and I thought, if I'm going through these feelings, fear of the future, I said, what if the things I love most in the world are taken away, do you want to go on? I said these are subjects that I think the audience can relate to, then I have a story that's worth making. And luckily we put all that together with the fact that he's not really trying to be heavy weight champion. He wants to go back in the ring as he quotes it, to replace old me with new me. That's all, just to get the beast out of him. And Rambo, I also felt that the last Rambo was dealt with, kind of went awry and that's not the note I wanted to go out on. Also I thought what about a man, a soldier who's done everything for his country and realizes that war is natural; peace is an accident, nothing has changed; just go home and live your life because we are savage, we're born animals and it's got that kind of real atheistic look on life. Can you imagine going placement at the academy: I'm going to change the world, I'm going to make the world a better place. 30 years later they're divorced, they're alcoholics, their children don't talk to them and they're bitter and I say why did I do this? Why didn't I just become a fireman and say to hell with it? That's kind of like the way this whole Rambo situation is. Until these missionaries which represent optimism and hope coming to his life and things begin to turn around. Also, the other Rambo, Rambo III, you know, I'm in a tank top half the movie and it's more of a vein glorious attempt to run around and kind of do like beefcake with a bow and arrow and I wanted this one to be truly real, that could be duplicated by mercenaries. So to me it's a much more masculine and mature film. And again by far the best action film I've ever done.


 


 GLENN: Stu, I'm sorry, he's not going to be wearing the tight shirt.


 


 STALLONE: I'm sorry, the Spandex is out. I'm passing that on.


 


 GLENN: Sylvester Stallone, it's a great pleasure to talk to you, sir. We would love to have you on the show when you're in New York.


 


 STALLONE: I'd love to be welcome. Please welcome me on.


 


 GLENN: Anytime, sir, we'll make an hour for you anytime you want. Best of luck. Bye-bye.

'I don't give a damn whether they come voluntarily or under subpoena': Ted Cruz fights for tech CEO hearing BEFORE election

Photo by Ken Cedeno-Pool/Getty Images

The Senate Judiciary Committee was set to vote on subpoenas to compel Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify on alleged censorship and bias across their platforms. But that all changed when Republican committee members "expressed reservation about the maneuver," Politico reports.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who chairs Judiciary's Subcommittee on the Constitution, was definitely not one of the committee members with cold feet. On the radio program Tuesday, he told Glenn Beck that he's fighting "vociferously" to ensure Dorsey and others testify before the November 3rd election.

"Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg are both going to testify. They're are going to testify in person. They're going to testify before Election Day. That's what I think should happen," Cruz said. "That's what I'm fighting vociferously to happen. Right now, the companies are negotiating with the chairman's office to discuss terms to come voluntarily. I don't give a damn whether they come voluntarily or under subpoena. They need to testify in person and answer questions for the American people about why they are trying to steal this election, to suppress the free speech, and to censor the press."

The subpoenas would require Big Tech leaders to testify on the alleged "suppression and/or censorship" of two consecutive blockbuster stories from the New York Post. The first story was about emails that allegedly came from Hunter Biden's computer which are currently being investigated by the FBI, and the second was based on additional emails that allegedly showed communist China directly offering millions of dollars to then-Vice President Joe Biden.

"Big Tech stepped in, and they've done something they've never done before," Cruz explained. "We know that Big Tech has been censoring individual conservatives, trying to suppress conservative speech. But the step they took here is, they blocked if any individual user tried to share either of the New York Post stories, [they] were blocked ... Sharing a news story, from a major media outlet is part of democracy, part of free speech. And not only that, they blocked the New York Post itself. Right now, today, the New York Post is not being allowed to post its own damn stories on corruption. This is ridiculous. It's a threshold that's never been crossed before, of Silicon Valley oligarchs declaring the authority to determine what the press is allowed to report, and who is allowed to see it."

Watch the video below to catch more of the conversation:

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

TIMELINE OF CORRUPTION: Biden’s nefarious ties with communist China exposed

Pete Linforth/Pixabay

If we learned nothing from the media over the past 4 years it's that colluding with a foreign entity to either win an election or for personal gain is absolutely grotesque. Well, that depends on whether you have a (D) or (R) before your name anyway. President Trump was impeached on rumor and innuendo yet Joe Biden has all but skated on his corruption up to this point.

Below is a timeline that shows the level of corruption and the lengths the Biden's went to in order to build that family's wealth and influence internationally.

2009

In 2009, Joe Biden was the brand-new Vice President and John Kerry was a U.S. Senator. Just five months after Joe was sworn in, his son Hunter, and Kerry's stepson, Christopher Heinz, formed an international private equity firm called Rosemont Capital. It had several different branches, including one called Rosemont Seneca Partners.

2010

Just nine months after Rosemont Seneca opened its doors, Hunter Biden went to China for meetings with executives from China's biggest banks, and its sovereign wealth and social security funds. That's unheard-of access for a brand-new firm. Was it just coincidence that at the same time Hunter was meeting these Chinese bigwigs, his dad was meeting with China's then-president Hu Jintao in Washington DC at a nuclear security summit?

2011

In May 2011, Joe Biden met with Chinese officials for the U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue conference in Washington. Just two weeks later, Hunter Biden went to Taiwan for meetings with the same Chinese financial giants he'd met in China in 2010, plus some new ones.

2013

By December 2013, Joe Biden was enjoying his second term as VP, and John Kerry was now Secretary of State. That's when Joe traveled to Beijing on an extended official trip and Hunter traveled with him on Air Force Two.

During their stay, Vice President Biden met with President Xi and Hunter was mostly out of sight. We don't know exactly what he was up to, but the deal finalized between Rosemont Seneca and the Bank of China just ten days after the Bidens' trip pretty much gives it away. The most powerful financial institution in China formed a joint venture with tiny Rosemont Seneca to create a giant new investment firm called Bohai Harvest RST – the "RS" stands for Rosemont Seneca.

The firm is often called "BHR" for short.

Hunter Biden was a member of the Board. Remember, the Bank of China is government-owned, which means its business is completely intertwined with the goals of the Chinese Communist Party. BHR also got the freedom to operate in the newly created Shanghai Free-Trade Zone where, over the next six years, it would use $2.5 billion of Chinese government money to invest in China, as well as in other countries, including the U.S.

During their Beijing trip, Hunter also introduced Jonathan Li to his dad. Li is Hunter's business partner – he's CEO and Director of BHR.

Hunter arranged for Joe to meet Li in the lobby of the hotel where they stayed during their Beijing trip.

2014

In 2014, one of BHR's first major investments was in the China General Nuclear Power Corporation.

CGN is a Chinese government-owned nuclear power company that sold off a stake of the company to outside investors. Problem is, CGN was under FBI investigation for paying informants in the U.S. to steal nuclear secrets.

In 2016, the FBI arrested the ringleader of this nuclear espionage, a man named Allen Ho.

When they arrested Ho, he was using a random code generator to access funds being provided to him from – where else? – the Bank of China.

Yet while this FBI probe was going on, the son of the Vice President owned a stake in the company being investigated. And even after arrests were made, Rosemont Seneca did not alter its relationship with BHR, nor did it divest from CGN, even though it was stealing U.S. nuclear secrets.

2015

In 2015, BHR partnered with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) to buy an American company called Henniges for $600 million.

AVIC is a gigantic military contractor in China – think Lockheed Martin – that makes fighter jets, bombers and drones. BHR bought 49% of Henniges and AVIC bought 51%.

Henniges is a precision parts manufacturer specializing in anti-vibration technology. The stuff they make is known as "dual use" by the U.S. State Department, which means the technology can also have a military application.

Because of that, the deal had to be approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) since it could have national security implications. The thing is, the American side of BHR – meaning Hunter Biden and his pals – had to know there were serious national security implications with AVIC.

The year before they formed a partnership with AVIC, the Wall Street Journal reported how AVIC stole technology related to the U.S. Air Force's F-35 stealth fighter and used it in its own stealth fighter for the Chinese.

How the Committee on Foreign Investment approved that deal remains a mystery. CFIUS does not publicly disclose any information regarding its decisions. Their findings are not publicly announced.

Interesting that China accounted for the largest share – with 74 transactions – approved by CFIUS during Obama's second term (2013-2015).

Under the umbrella of Rosemont Capital was a real estate company called Rosemont Realty. In 2015, a Chinese company called Gemini Investments bought a 75% stake in Rosemont Realty. The company was renamed Gemini Rosemont

Gemini brought $3 billion to the partnership with Rosemont, with the aim of buying "Class A institutional-quality commercial office properties in U.S. markets."

Red flag (literally) – Gemini Investments is a subsidiary of the China Ocean Shipping Company, a.k.a., "COSCO."

COSCO is a Chinese government-owned company. Its headquarters in Beijing is actually next to the headquarters of the Bank of China. COSCO is well-known for its close military ties. It's essentially a branch of the Chinese Navy.

2017

In 2017, BHR invested in Face++. That's the facial recognition phone app built by a Chinese company that is incorporated in a separate app built by the Chinese government. Police in the Xinjiang [Sin-jong] region of China use that app to keep tabs on citizens, and track and detain Uiguhr [Wee-ger] Muslims.

The app allows police easy access to data about Chinese Muslims including things like religious activity, blood type, and even the amount of electricity they use.

2018

In March 2018, a spokesman (Chris Bastardi) for Christopher Heinz (John Kerry's stepson) emailed The Hill to say that Heinz had "no operating role" in Rosemont Seneca, and that he was not involved in any of Rosemont's deals in China (which contradicts Schweizer's report in his book Secret Empires).

Chris Heinz was involved in Rosemont Capital. Rosemont Seneca was established under the same GP as Rosemont Capital, but Chris Heinz had no operating role in it. Chris and his family have no financial interest or investment in Bohai Harvest RST, he has never traveled to China, and he has never met with the firm's Chinese management team or investors.

2019

In October 2019, Hunter Biden's lawyer, George Mesires, said Hunter did not conduct any business on that 2013 trip to Beijing with his Dad.

Mesires said the timing of BHR's business license getting approved was purely coincidental because the paperwork had been submitted months before the Bidens' China trip.

According to Hunter's lawyer, the approval " was not related in any way, shape or form to Hunter's visit."

Hunter Biden finally stepped down from the BHR board last October (2019), but he DID NOT give up his 10% stake in the company.

Peter Schweizer: Hunter Biden's jailed former business partner flips, grants access to NEVER-before-revealed emails

When Bevan Cooney — the former "junior" business partner to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer — went to jail in 2019, investigative reporter and New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer thought he'd never gain access to the damning emails Cooney had promised. That all changed three weeks ago when Schweizer was given complete access to Cooney's gmail account.

Schweizer joined Glenn Beck on the radio program Tuesday to describe just some of the business deals revealed within these emails — like Hunter working with an alleged Russian criminal and with Chinese communists to secure their assets, or to secure one-on-one time with his dad, then-Vice President Joe Biden. And all of this new information is completely separate from the emails allegedly discovered on Hunter Biden's laptop recently reported by the New York Post.

"So, I want to make this clear. This [Cooney's emails] has nothing to do with what's on the laptop … It didn't come from [Rudy] Giuliani. It didn't come from anybody else, right?" Glenn asked Schweizer.

"That's absolutely correct," Schweizer confirmed.

He briefly explained how Cooney, a former Los Angeles nightclub owner, is currently serving a prison sentence for his involvement in a fraudulent business bond scheme with Biden and Archer. From prison, Cooney gave Schweizer written permission to access his Gmail account.

"This is really important," he noted. "We're not looking at printouts. Not looking at PDFs. We're actually in his Gmail accounts themselves, sifting through these emails. And there's a shocking amount of information about deals involving China, involving Russia, involving all sorts of things they were trying to pull off."

Watch the video below to catch more of the conversation:

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

O'REILLY: The Left HATES Trump so much, they'd rather vote for the 'senile, corrupt guy'

The king of "No Spin" and bestselling author of "Killing Crazy Horse," Bill O'Reilly joined Glenn Beck on this week's podcast to talk about the latest developments in Joe Biden's Ukraine and China corruption scandal. Now that some of the details are finally coming out in the open, does the average Democrat care? Maybe, but the Left doesn't seem to.

O'Reilly argued there's more hatred for President Donald Trump now than in 2016, and that some people hate President Trump so much that they'd rather vote for the "senile, corrupt" Joe Biden.

"Hunter got tens of millions of dollars from Ukraine, from Russia, from China because his father was vice president. I have no doubt in my mind," O'Reilly said. "But the hatred for Donald Trump overrides that in the minds of millions of viewers. They're saying, 'You know, we'd rather have the senile corrupt guy than Trump.'"

Asked by Glenn if any other Republican running for president would be met with the same level of vitriol, O'Reilly answered, "The Left is the Left. They don't like America. The want to redo the Constitution. They want to take some of our freedoms, like the Second Amendment and the First Amendment, and change them. And they want to destroy capitalism and replace it with a big centralized government in Washington that controls the economy … but I'm talking about the folks. I have liberal friends and I say to them, 'Do you not understand that when you vote for Biden, you're voting against your own self interest?'"

Watch the video clip from the full podcast below, or find the full episode HERE:

Want to listen to more Glenn Beck podcasts?

Subscribe to Glenn Beck's channel on YouTube for FREE access to more of his masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, or subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.