GLENN: Today is the New York Times was full-fledged New York Times. Today, the New York Times today MSNBC, today, CNN, they're back to their old tricks. It didn't take them long before they started blaming this on the left -- I'm sorry. On the right. Before they started blaming this on Donald Trump.
Now, if we remember, they blamed the right and Sarah Palin for Gabby Giffords, because she had released something about districts that needed to be targeted. "She used the word 'targeted.' In this atmosphere, with what they're saying, of course that's going to drive -- well, the person who used the gun to shoot Gabby Giffords was a lefty -- and nuts! Was not on the Sarah Palin email list. Let's just put it that way. Didn't see the targeting stuff. It wasn't Sarah Palin. And yet, the New York Times wrote this.
Conservative and right-wing media were quick on Wednesday to man forceful condemnation of hate speech and crimes by anti-Trump liberals.
They're right. Though there's no sign of incitement, as direct as in the Giffords' attack, liberals should, of course, hold themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right. But there is no sign of incitement.
Okay. Somebody puts out a political piece and says, "We have to target these districts." That's incitement. But Kathy Giffords -- Griffin. What is her name?
STU: Griffin. Griffin.
PAT: Yeah, it's Griffin.
GLENN: Sorry. She was never a star in my world. I don't know what she did to think she was a star. But she'll never get her career back of that one gig a night --
PAT: Once a year.
GLENN: On CNN.
Anyway, incitement. How about holding a picture of Donald Trump's bloody head? Incitement, how about a play that week in New York City making Caesar look like Donald Trump and having a bloody assassination in Central Park, so much so, that the sponsor -- what was it, Bank of America?
PAT: Uh-huh.
GLENN: Pulls out. Unsolicited, pulls out and says, "This is over the top." So much so, that even the New York Times' critic says, "This is over the line."
But there's no incitement there. No, no, no. Nothing as strong as, "We need to target these districts."
STU: And that is legitimately the quote. This is from New York Times, not in 2011, but today. In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin's political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other --
PAT: Unbelievable!
STU: -- Democrats under stylized crosshairs.
This has literally been disproved and debunked for six years, and today they're still writing it.
GLENN: It doesn't matter. Those -- those elites -- those in the newspaper -- this is why I've asked you for years, write a diary. Write a diary. Because your children have absolutely zero chance of reading the truth.
Remember, the Tea Party, the biggest American movement of -- of -- of a populist movement. A movement where grassroots takes over and changes the course of an election in two years, the Tea Party, that wasn't even put in TIME Magazine's year in review. Why?
Because they don't want records of it. Why put a record of that so we have a hard time diminishing the impact and telling the truth of what really happened.
This is a writing and rewriting of American history, in realtime, as historians go back.
But I will tell you, I've learned more from the lost diaries of the German people, than I have from any history book on what really happened in Germany.
Keep a diary.
So here's the New York Times saying this today and saying there's no link. Write in your diary and cut out any posts that you have, and make sure it's on paper. Cut on any post that you have, and make sure that you have the Kathy Griffin -- Griffith -- Grifford -- that one.
STU: Grifford, that's it. Kathy Grifford.
PAT: It is.
GLENN: That one. Whatever her name is, make sure you have the picture of her holding the bloody head two weeks before this shooting. Make sure you have the story of Shakespeare In the Park, one week, days before this shooting. And then I want you to write this: These things did not cause this crazy lunatic to shoot. It wasn't -- make sure you put that he was a Bernie Sanders volunteer. But then I want you to make sure that you put Bernie Sanders and what he said yesterday. Here's what he said yesterday.
BERNIE: Madam president, I have just been informed that the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice this morning is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign.
I am sickened by this despicable act. And let me be as clear as I can be: Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society. And I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.
GLENN: Stop. I'm asking you one question -- I want you to listen to this one question and only answer this question. Do you believe that he believes what he just said? Pat.
PAT: Yeah. Uh-huh.
GLENN: Jeffy, do you believe that he believes what he just said? That he condemns violence.
JEFFY: I'm not sure.
GLENN: Wow. Stu.
STU: I mean, his actions from last time this happened --
GLENN: That's not the question.
STU: That's not the doubt. The literal words he says, yes. He does not want violence. He condemns it.
GLENN: He has a long history of condemning violence. However, question number two, is he a political human being? Pat.
PAT: Yes.
GLENN: Jeffy.
JEFFY: Yes.
GLENN: Stu.
STU: 100 percent.
GLENN: Which explains what he said after Kathy -- after --
STU: Kathy Grifford.
GLENN: Whatever. After what he said about the other shooter.
STU: Yeah, Jared Lee Loughner. He raised money off of it. He said he blamed it on right-wing reactionaries: This horrendous act of violence is not some kind of strange aberration for this area, where it appears threats and acts of violence are part of the political climate. Nobody can honestly express surprise that such a tragedy finally occurred.
GLENN: Okay. Stop.
I believe -- I believe that yesterday Bernie Sanders, when he found out that this was one of his guys that was a campaign volunteer, I believe he was horrified that somebody could say that -- not for political reasons. I believe Bernie Sanders would not want somebody shooting at Congress members.
STU: Of course.
GLENN: Period.
Now, we don't get that respect from the press. We don't get that respect. They won't give that to us. They're still relitigating a false claim of -- of a shooting that happened by a crazy person on the left. They're still blaming that on Sarah Palin. And relitigating that today. They're, still, on MSNBC -- there was a tweet that went out and said, "Donald Trump is responsible for this."
I'm going to give you two answers to the question on who is responsible: Who is responsible? I'm going to give you two answers. And both of them are absolutely true. But both of them are separate and apart from each other.
You want to belly up to the big boy table? You want to hear things that -- that everybody will tell you today, to make you feel good, that you should tune to another show -- if you want to hear the truth stick around. I'll share it, next.
Continued in hour 3
GLENN: Hey, before we get into -- before we get into what we can do, could -- I think it's important to start with the correction of the New York Times today. The New York Times has issued a correction to what they had printed about Gabby Giffords. Do you want to go over that? This is unusual and remarkable, I think.
STU: Yeah. I mean, it's quite unusual, especially from -- because, I mean, they do issue corrections, a lot of times on kind of meaningless stuff. You know, details -- they do issue a lot of -- to correct one of their editorials, one of the main points they were making is pretty freaking significant. Here's what the correction reads: An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that a link existed between political incitement and the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords. In fact, no such link was established.
GLENN: That's amazing.
STU: I don't know how it gets to print. I don't know how they don't that know before they put the actual editorial up.
PAT: Wow. Yeah.
STU: But I'm glad they corrected it. And it is important. There is absolutely zero evidence -- in fact, it is proveable that this had nothing to do with it. You know, to the point of, he was obsessing about Gabby Giffords three years before the ad came out. And, you know, there's -- if he had any leaning, as we said -- an acquaintance called him a liberal. But it was not a political assassination. It was not that.
I mean, this is a guy who believed grammar was a conspiracy.
GLENN: Yeah.
STU: It's almost incomprehensible what --
GLENN: Yesterday, it was a political assassination attempt. Yesterday, it was about politics. But it had nothing to do with Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders rhetoric or anything else. This guy was nuts. This guy believed what he believed, and he's the one who loaded the gun, got the gun. Lived in his van for two weeks. I mean, the guy was nuts, period.
It was politically motivated. Who had anything to do with that? Did Rachel Maddow wind him up?
STU: No, she -- he tweeted about Rachel Maddow. He tweeted about Ed Schultz. He tweeted about all these shows.
GLENN: I will tell you this, if you buy into that, then you better check his Facebook and what he tweeted and what he Facebooked about. A lot of stories from Russia Today.
STU: Yeah, Russia Today is another one.
GLENN: So was he wound up by the Russians?
STU: And I don't know if this was been widely reported, but he was also pretty much -- he was very pro-Sanders. Anti-Clinton, right? Like he was that left-wing socialist, wants Bernie, but not Hillary type of guy.
But he loved a lot of these left-wing shows. Is it their fault? No. Of course not. It is not their fault at all. It's not Rachel Maddow's fault. It's nobody on MSNBC's fault.
GLENN: You could make the case that the uber, uber left, just like the uber, uber right, they do want revolution. And he may have been a supporter of the Antifa movement, I don't know.
STU: There are groups certainly that advocate for violence.
GLENN: That want revolution.
PAT: Wouldn't it be refreshing if the left did the same thing we're doing right now?
STU: Wouldn't it be?
PAT: Wouldn't that be great? Give it -- a balanced look at it. A fair and balanced -- since Fox just dropped that, we can take it from them. We got a fair and balanced look at --
GLENN: Did they say what they were replacing it with?
PAT: I think most watched, most trusted.
GLENN: Isn't the most trusted name in news, isn't that the CNN most trusted --
PAT: I don't know. But Fox has actually won every poll along those lines for years now. So maybe they're going to take it from them. I don't know.
STU: And there were some examples today -- for example, of the Jared Lee Loughner thing, you said, wouldn't it be nice?
GLENN: Yeah, there are.
STU: Chris Hayes, for example, on MSNBC, when that out, people on the right were criticizing. How can you tie this?
And he said, yeah, I'll step up here and say that's completely nuts.
PAT: Wow.
STU: These are tough examples. It's hard to do that when you're on the left in a moment like this, and those people should be given credit. We should also criticize the people who don't -- who don't do that, and who break the -- you know, who create a double standard for themselves and blame the right for 2011 and don't do it here. When here it actually -- there's at least a tie.
GLENN: Right.
STU: Jared Lee Loughner didn't support Sarah Palin. There is an absolute -- that is provable. Here we have a situation where this person did support all these left-wing causes. But that still doesn't make them responsible. That is not the way this works.
GLENN: Right. So it is really easy -- it's really easy on the left to do what the New York Times did at first. It's really hard for them to issue the correction.
It is really hard for people on MSNBC to come out and say, look. Just like with Gabby Giffords, it was crazy then, it's crazy now.
It's really hard for people on the right to say that. And not throw stones. Because everything depends on clicks now. Everything depends on ratings.
I mean, it was really interesting to listen to Bill O'Reilly talk about ratings earlier this week. He's on with us tomorrow, by the way. But when he was on with us, he talked about ratings and how everything is done for ratings.
Well, how do you get ratings? You get ratings by dividing people. You get ratings by calling out a bogeyman. Because that's what -- that's what people want. They want the red meat. So who are we going to be able to work with? Who can we -- who can we trust to give us the news and give it to us straight? Well, people like Jake Tapper, who were consistent then and are consistent now.
Those are the things -- these are the times that we can learn, who is trustworthy? Who is going to say it, when it was tough?
STU: Let me give you a little flashback here, which is perhaps maybe the best example of this. We haven't even discussed since this whole terrible tragedy happened.
This is back in 2010. A couple hosts on the program, Pat Gray, Stu Burguiere, filling in for Mr. Glenn Beck that particular day. And there was a shooting, eight people killed at a workplace. And we talked about it. I said, a guy like that, who is a little bit unstable anyway, can't help but react to the constant pressure of Keith Olbermann on the air on MSNBC, talking about all the racism there is out there. Because that was his complaint.
And then we said, Keith Olbermann was responsible. Keith Olbermann was responsible for the shooting. And Media Matters did a big report about how we --
PAT: That's right.
STU: We -- blaming Keith Olbermann for the shooting. What an unbelievable charge. How dare you.
Of course, they cut out the next paragraph and next few seconds where I said, "Obviously we're making a point here." Let's move that to the case of the Tea Party members. They're constantly convinced the government is after them, and they're going to come take their guns. Well, who is always talking about that? Glenn Beck. So, therefore, he's responsible every time anyone does anything. They actually had to issue a correction because they --
GLENN: Media Matters.
STU: Media Matters issued a correction. Because what we were saying at that time, when it was hard for us, was, you know what, Keith Olbermann is not responsible for a murder. He can say anything he wants in a political context, outside of actually saying specifically go murder people. And it has nothing to do with the shooter.
Media Matters intentionally cut that off and later got caught and had to issue a correction about it. And here we are, years later, where the same crap happens, from many of the same people, and, you know, we have to choose whether -- you know, what kind of people we want to be. Do we want to be the people who actually stand up and say -- and can live with ourselves and sleep at night, knowing that we have consistent principles, or do we just want to throw around the same crappy accusations the other side does in those moments?
