Glenn sat down with the mayor of Irving, Texas and a security expert on his T.V. program Monday night, to discuss the story of Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old boy who was arrested after bringing a homemade clock to school last week. Once again, the media dropped the ball and got the story all wrong.
"You will change your mind once you have all of the facts," Glenn said.
First, Glenn described the story as it came out last week, and who could be against this?
"A young, clean-cut Muslim teenager is trying his hand in a science project. He makes a homemade clock, goes to school. Instead of praise for his invention, he gets arrested and suspended from school. Even when the police knew that it wasn’t a bomb, they still arrested him," Glenn said. "He's just another victim of Islamophobia in America."
Like many people, Glenn said the story tugged at his heart and he was about to voice his own support for the teenager. But then, the facts came out.
Watch the clip of Mayor Beth Van Duyne and Jim Hanson from the Center for Security Policy speaking with Glenn. Scroll down for additional footage.
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
GLENN: Let me just propose a theory. I’m just thinking out loud, but I’m trying to make sense of this. My theory is that for some reason Irving is important to the Islamists, not the Muslims, but the Islamists. It could be as simple as the progressives trying to turn Texas blue, and this is just the place where they’re just going to start planting the seeds and taking a stand. You pissed them off, and now this is a dog whistle. This is not a story that is for anybody to hear, except for the Islamists because once you create a boogeyman, now all the money, all the resources, all the intellectual power, all is focused on your little town of Irving, Texas. You think there’s a possibility that that’s true?
MAYOR VAN DUYNE: It’s nothing that I really want to have to face that that’s true. I would hate to think that that’s true.
GLENN: So would I, but can you explain it any other way?
MAYOR VAN DUYNE: I mean, as much as we’re being portrayed as a small town in Texas, the fact is that Irving is one of the top 100 largest cities in the country.
GLENN: It’s the most diverse city in the country and gets along.
MAYOR VAN DUYNE: Most diverse zip code.
GLENN: And it gets along, everybody generally gets along.
MAYOR VAN DUYNE: Fifth safest city in the country for a city our size.
GLENN: So, tell me, and Jim, I’d like to hear you because the Mayor is probably not going to say this. Does that sound unreasonable to you?
JIM: I think it’s completely reasonable. I think it’s happening. I don’t think there’s any question that this latest event was a PR stunt. It was a staged event where someone convinced this kid to bring a device that he didn’t build, as you mentioned. It’s a RadioShack clock that he put in a briefcase, and in a briefcase it looks like a bomb. You know how I know that, Glenn? Because I’ve built briefcase bombs and blown them up. That’s what they look like. So, anyone who looked at that was reasonable in assuming that that was a dangerous device. They did that to create the exact scenario that played out. They wanted people to react, and they wanted to portray this kid as an innocent victim.
I think he was a pawn of potentially his father. His sister actually claimed that she was suspended. His sister told MSNBC that she was suspended by the same school district for making a bomb threat years ago. Don’t know if that’s true yet, but she said that in her own words. So, there’s a vendetta from them, and they’re tied, as you mentioned, with CAIR, and CAIR is Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas tied. They’re basically involved in civilization jihad, so I think you’re right.
GLENN: Has the president reached out to you, Beth?
MAYOR VAN DUYNE: No, I have not heard at all from the president.
GLENN: Surprise you?
MAYOR VAN DUYNE: I was really shocked when I saw his tweet, yeah. I was really surprised. It seems to be an underlying habit that he is going to second-guess police officers without any kind of information. I now have our police chief who is a wonderful, wonderful man, a family man, a churchgoing man, and I now have our police officers as well as a number of teachers, school administrators, receiving death threats as a direct result of this. It is unfortunate, and it has got to stop.
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
MAYOR VAN DUYNE: We’ve heard more from the media than the child ever released to the police when we were asking him questions. He told a lot more to the reporters than he ever told to the police. There’s a problem with that. If your child was in that school and you saw something like this come in, you would want to make sure it is our priority to make our children safe in school, period. Irving is the fifth safest city in the country. We’re pretty very proud of that fact. We have a very professional police department. I’m very proud of them. What has happened as a result of the hashtag of the misinformation that has been spread like wildfire immediately by the president is we now have death threats on members of our police department and in our school district. For what?
JIM: For doing their jobs.
MAYOR VAN DUYNE: And to make sure that our children are safe in that school.
GLENN: What’s coming next?
JIM: This was a success. It was a raging success for them. They are celebrating and dancing, and they’re planning their next influence operation, because that’s the correct term for this. It’s an influence operation.
GLENN: Explain that.
JIM: You take a situation, and you create the appearance of something bad to get an effect. They created the appearance of an anti-Muslim bias where there was none, where there was pure public safety concern, and they use that to portray Muslims as victims, Americans as bigots, and our system as stacked against them. They will do that again, and what they’re trying to do is censor any criticism of Islam. That allows them to do things like impose sharia tribunals like the mayor shut down and use Islamic law to supplant US law. They’re going to be more successful the more the media helps them by not being concerned that this is actually happening, by just looking at the surface and not digging deeper.
GLENN: Beth, what should we do? What should we do?
MAYOR VAN DUYNE: Well, first of all, don’t just jump on a bandwagon and knee-jerk reaction when you read a headline. I think people thought that they knew a lot more about this story just by reading a headline. Clearly that’s not the way to react. I think we need to start supporting our teachers and start supporting our police.
GLENN: Hang on just a second. I thought I knew more about this.
MAYOR VAN DUYNE: That shocks me, by the way. You have my cell phone number. You should’ve called me up.
GLENN: But I read the story. It’s not something that was on my radar. I just read a quick little story, and I’m like how is this possible?
MAYOR VAN DUYNE: That was my first reaction, but I’m in the position where I can start immediately making those phone calls. At six o’clock in the morning I’m calling and waking people up going I need to know more information about this. But I think when you’re the president, you probably have some resources to be able to make a few calls.
GLENN: And you have the common sense that I had. As I was thinking, I didn’t actually type it out, but as I was thinking, you know what, I’m with Ahmed too. That’s an outrage. And then I thought what are you doing? You don’t even know anything about this story. I think that’s what happens to us.
