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Why Did NBC Pass on ‘the Biggest Story of the Year’?

October 11, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Shortly after the New York Times broke the Harvey Weinstein story, Ronan Farrow published an in-depth piece with 10 months of research into horrifying allegations about the film mogul and how he treated women.

But why did Farrow’s devastating interviews with 13 women who say Weinstein harassed or assaulted them end up in The New Yorker when he works for NBC? Sources inside the network told the Huffington Post that Farrow was working on the Weinstein story on behalf of NBC as recently as August, but NBC had “concerns” and instead let him take it to The New Yorker.

Glenn and Stu talked about this bizarre facet of the Weinstein case on today’s show. (Skip to 3:53 in the Soundcloud clip embedded above to get straight to the NBC story.)

“This is a huge story,” Stu said. “[Farrow] took on everybody. And it’s interesting that a guy being paid by NBC News winds up releasing the biggest story of the year for The New Yorker.”

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: So I want to talk to you a little bit what MSNBC and NBC News has done. They have just released a story about President Trump.

Now, listen to this. President Donald Trump said he wanted to what amounted to a nearly ten-fold increase in the US nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation's highest-ranking national security leaders, according to three officials who were in the room.

Trump's comments, the officials say, came in response to a briefing slide he was shown that charted the steady reduction of US nuclear weapons since the late 1960s. Trump indicated he wanted a bigger stockpile, not the bottom position on the downward sloping curve.

According to the officials, President Trump's advisers, among them joint chiefs of staff and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were surprised.

Officials briefly explained the legal and practical impediments to the nuclear build-up and how the currently military posture is stronger now than it was at the height of the buildup.

Did Trump's call to expand nuclear arsenal lead to Tillerson's moron remark? Revelation of Trump's comments that day come as the US is locked in high-stakes standoff with North Korea over its nuclear ambition, and it is poised to set off fresh confrontation with Iran, by not certifying to Congress that Tehran is in compliance.

Trump convened a meeting Tuesday with his national security team, which they discussed a range of options, to respond to any form of North Korean aggression. Or if necessary, to prevent North Korea from threatening the US and its Allies with nuclear weapons.

The president's comments during the Pentagon meeting in July came in response to a charge showing that in the meeting, on the history of the US in Russia's nuclear capabilities, that showed America's stockpiled had its peak in the 1960s. But his comments raised questions about his familiarity with the nuclear posture and other issues.

Two officials present said multiple points in the discussion, the president expressed a desire, not just for more nuclear weapons, but additional US troops and military equipment.

Any increase in America's nuclear arsenal would not only break with decades of nuclear doctrine. But it would also violate international disarmament treatments -- treaties signed by every president since Ronald Reagan. Non-proliferation experts warn that such a move could set off a global arms race. If you were to increase the numbers, the Russians were match him, and the Chinese. There hasn't been a military mission that required a nuclear weapon in 71 years.

Details of the meeting have not been previously reported. They shed additional light on the tensions among the commander-in-chief, members of his cabinet, and the uniformed leadership of the Pentagon, stemming from vastly different worldviews. Moreover, the president's comments reveal that Trump who suggested before his inauguration that the US must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability, voiced desire as commander-in-chief, directly to the military leadership in the heart of the Pentagon this summer.

Some officials in the Pentagon were rattled by the president's desire for more nuclear weapons. And his understanding of the other national security issues from the Korean peninsula to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, why am I reading this to you? Why am I giving you this story?

Well, what do you think that story does over in China? What does that story do in -- in Russia? What does that story mean to the North Koreans?

NBC has taken a position now to run a story about how the president said he wanted -- later came back and said, "No, they were right."

He can't do that. If he did, it would kick off an arms race. And if that happened, it would greatly destabilize the entire world.

If he was looking for additional nuclear weapons and you're Chinese, what do you think you do?

If you are in a country where everything is run by the state, what do you think their advisers are saying this story means?

As we found out after the fall of the Berlin wall, Russia took all of our -- our newspaper stories, and they believed that we're all CIA plants. They believed that we were planting that information in the news, to send them messages.

Now, has that made our life more secure or less secure? Has this helped us with national security, or hurt us with national security?

The story goes on to say, this is why the president's advisers are calling him a moron.

So not only did they put the rest of the world on alert, that the president may be doing things that are illegal, which there is no evidence of that. In fact, the story later points out exactly the opposite.

But he -- he wants to do this. He wants a big military buildup on the week that he said to North Korea, there's only one thing that's going to solve.

Well, what is that? That's war.

So NBC decides to release a story that puts us all in grave danger. They're willing to go out, and they're willing to blast President Trump for political reasons. And they're willing to possibly destabilize the entire world.

In a completely unrelated story, Stu, can you give me the update from Ronan Farrow

STU: Yeah, Ronan Farrow, of course, was reporting on the Weinstein case. He was working on it for ten months. Ten months of research.

GLENN: This is Mia Farrow, Woody Allen's son.

STU: Yes. So another thing you might know about Ronan Farrow is he's an employee of NBC News.

GLENN: Hang on just a second. He's a respected journalist. I don't know for what for.

STU: He has won awards.

GLENN: But, yes, he's won huge news awards. He's a respected journalist at NBC.

STU: And by and far, the most accomplished thing he's ever done is the story about Harvey Weinstein. This is going to upset his career for -- I mean, this is a huge story. By all accounts, he did a great job reporting it. Was diligent. Was threatened personally by Harvey Weinstein with a lawsuit during this process. Really, did -- he took on everybody. And it's interesting that a guy being paid by NBC News winds up releasing the biggest story of the year for the New Yorker.

GLENN: Now, hang on just a second. It's not that he just went out. NBC told him to go find another outlet to publish this.

STU: Yep.

GLENN: Now, this on the heels of Saturday Night Live, on Saturday, having whole bunches of Weinstein jokes. And shockingly, cutting all of them and not making any reference to Harvey Weinstein at all.

STU: And there's an interesting -- I guess a side-by-side there. Because you might say -- and I have no problem with them reporting the NBC thing. Or the nuclear arsenal thing.

You could argue it's just a leak. But if it's a news organization, I think they have a legitimate stance to say, "You know what, damn the consequences. Damn the torpedoes. If we have a big news story that's important to the people, we're going to bring it. We're going to bring it out." You just can't make that point when you just gave the biggest story of the year to the New Yorker because you were afraid of the consequences from Harvey Weinstein. You can make the point about the nuclear story being legitimate. But it is obviously an actual danger to our national security.

Now, that doesn't mean you don't print it. I mean, if it's a real story, and it's really important, you could still do it.

But, I mean, they were not worried about the consequences of actual nuclear world war. But they were worried about the consequences of Harvey Weinstein.

That is an incredible statement. And, I mean, you want to talk about priorities. I don't mind you saying damn the torpedoes. But if you're going to take one of these things into account to not report a news story, maybe the one about the ten times nuclear arsenal increase is the one you skip.

GLENN: See, I didn't see those two stories connected at all.

STU: Oh.

GLENN: And I'm sure neither do the people at NBC.

(laughter)

STU: Really? Because I thought there was a pretty direct --

GLENN: I think -- it's just happenstance that I brought them up side by side.

STU: Oh.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.