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BLOGJanuary 25, 2018

Ben Shapiro: You Can Like Trump’s Policies While Admitting He’s ‘Character-Deficient’

Good Trump vs. Bad Trump?

On today’s show, Glenn asked Ben Shapiro how conservatives can navigate the minefield of supporting President Donald Trump in the good things he does while still acknowledging when he does wrong.

We shouldn’t feel compelled to make excuses for bad behavior, and Trump doesn’t need conservative leaders to compromise their principles to cover for him.

“If we’re not willing to call out bad when we see it even from people [when] we like what we’re getting from them, then we can’t have an honest conversation,” Shapiro said. “It turns into simply fan-boying or fan-girling.”

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Last hour, we were talking to a professor from George Mason and he was talking about how bad education is. And I was talking a little about the brainwashing that is going on and the activization of at least 10 percent of our college students that just want to be liberal activists. And who is doing that on the other side?

Who is activating today's youth to be able to get them to defend the Constitution and conservative principles? The answer is sitting in my studio right now. Ben Shapiro. How are you doing, Ben?

BEN: Hey. Doing well. How are you?

GLENN: Good. I know you had a great time in Connecticut yesterday. One hundred security officers to protect your speech and zero protesters.

BEN: Yeah. That's how it always goes. And you always think, why do we need these security officers, and half the time there's a riot.

But it was nice. I mean, it was 500 students who showed up. They closed it to the general public, which was too bad. They should have allowed another 5, 600 people in, because they had another 700 reservations, is what I heard. But in any case, it was a really nice event. Everybody enjoyed it.

GLENN: Did you anybody on the left that has -- because I have -- people who are hard on the left, who say, I'm really concerned about what's happening on college campuses?

BEN: I think that's a growing concern for a lot of people on the left. And I think anybody who is an honest person on the left, has to look at the way that they're cracking down on free speech and think to themselves, this is a problem. And it could reverse itself and bite us. This is not a single-edged blade.

GLENN: Right.

BEN: It's a serious problem, that they're allowing the hecklers veto to prevail here. That somebody from the community will threaten something, and suddenly 100 officers are necessary. And we ban everyone from the general public. They've now done this at northwestern. They did this at UC Berkeley. They just ban people from coming in entirely from the outside community. Whereas, last week, Anita Hill spoke at UConn, and it was completely open to the public. They barely needed security. It was totally fine.

GLENN: All right. So you're going to join us today for a few minutes on the television show. We'll do some stuff for subscribers only on TheBlaze. We'll talk about the future of the conservative movement. And what our principles are and how we navigate from here.

But I want to talk to you about kind of the news of the day. Get your point of view on, do we have the audio of the secret society? Or do you have the latest memo or piece?

Two days ago -- was it two days ago or yesterday, Ron Johnson comes out, and he said, and we have -- we have a source that says there was a secret society. Meetings that were going on. And we know we have this text message. And something didn't feel right.

I want everything released because if that is happening, but I also said, I think it was yesterday, that kind of sounds a little like McCarthy saying, I've got the names of 250 people right in my pocket. If you don't have it, you're going to destroy everything.

And here's what we found out yesterday, about what that -- that memo -- or that text message actually said. Here's the clip. Go ahead.

But we're going to have to decide --

GLENN: Sorry. Sarah, not that one. Go ahead.

STU: The single message -- again, the single text message sent the day after Trump was elected was from senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page to Peter Strzok, the top counterintelligence officer at the FBI and a key figure in the bureau's past investigation into Trump and Clinton.

Here's the quote: Are you even going to give out your calendars, Page asked Strzok. Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.

GLENN: Ben, that's not a secret society.

BEN: No. No. The way all Republicans are talking it up yesterday was like, this is going to be the view from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where he looks down and there's just a bunch of people chanting. Tearing the guy's heart out and setting it on fire.

GLENN: Big fire. Cutting him up.

BEN: And what it actually ends up being is just a bunch of nerds who sit around and have beer and talk about work. But I really -- this is my big problem, is no one is waiting for all the evidence to come out, before and their narrative conclusion is Donald Trump definitely concluded with Russia, and the FBI is in the midst of one of the greatest investigations of our time that is going to uncover the real source of Donald Trump's victory. And any questions that are asked about that are completely out of line.

And then on the right, you have this counter-narrative, that the FBI is thoroughly corrupt. It has been completely run through with people on the left who don't care about the truth and are simply out to get President Trump.

And my tendency is to think that there's a lot of in between there, and it's probably somewhere in the in between. Meaning, that there probably are people like Strzok and Page, who don't like Trump. We don't really know the impact that they've had on this particular investigation. One of the texts that people seem to be ignoring on the right is the text from Strzok to Page, saying, it's going nowhere.

STU: Right. There's no there there, right?

GLENN: No, they're actually -- yeah, the right is now starting to use that and say, look, even this guy said, there's no there there. Well, you can't have it both ways. You can't say he's an evil guy trying to take him down, oh, and he didn't want to join.

BEN: None of it makes any sense. And all of these propositions can be true. It can be true that the FBI was politicized by the Obama administration. Most clearly in the Hillary Clinton investigation. There's no question that the FBI was political in that investigation.

GLENN: Yes, correct.

BEN: It's also true there are bad apples in the FBI. It can also be true that the investigation right now is doing what it's supposed to do. It can also be true that that investigation has gone beyond its original bounds and is now moving into obstruction, which seems to me a lot more of a stretch.

Right. All these things can be true at once. But people are not waiting for all the evidence to come out, before they jump to whatever facts support the conclusion that they want. Either the FBI is thoroughly corrupt, or the FBI is thoroughly pristine.

STU: And to find the real conclusion here. Doesn't the theater hurt? This idea that everyone comes out and screams about how we know we have a security society. And we know Russia has colluded with Trump.

Doesn't that really hurt the search for the actual truth?

BEN: It does. And one of the biggest problems that I have here is that there is information that could easily be declassified and is not being declassified.

President Trump is the president of the United States. He is the chief executive. That means that he actually gets to declassify, for example, the FISA application on Carter Page. One of the big complaints from people on the right, I think quite -- quite -- quite possible this is true -- is that the FISA application on Carter Page was based on the Steele dossier, the Fusion GPS dossier that was funded by the Democrats and was essentially based on Russia disinformation.

Okay. If that's the case, then why not just release the application? Right? The FISA application, Trump can do that. He can do that right now.

And I've been told by people, well, he doesn't want to look like he's politicizing the investigation.

How does he not look like he's politicizing the investigation? I mean, the guy tweets about Jeff Sessions and Andrew McCabe and James Comey every five minutes.

All I want, you know, just as an American, all I want is more information and less conjecture. Because all I'm getting is conjecture and posturing. And now you've got -- the Democrats are putting out their memos. So now we have a memo fight. We have these secondhand memos that are not even based on the classified intel fighting with each other. It's all stupidity to me. I don't understand --

GLENN: Yeah. The classified memos -- even the people who are writing memos about them haven't seen the classified memos.

BEN: This is what the DOJ says. And if that's not true, then wouldn't you expect Devin Nunes to say, no, I have seen the classified material, and my memo was based on that classified material? But the DOJ emailed Devin Nunes, sent them a letter yesterday, and they said, listen, don't release that classified memo.

Because number one, a compromise to national security. But number two, you actually haven't seen the underlying classified materials you're talking about. So why are we reading a memo, not based on the classified materials that are actually at issue, especially when a lot of those classified materials could become declassified by the president?

All this says to me -- here's where I think this is going, based on the evidence that's on the table. Where I think this is going is I think Robert Mueller is going to try to establish a pattern of obstruction against President Trump. He's going to suggest that President Trump was trying to fire James Comey and go after his own DOJ and go after Andrew McCabe in order to stop an investigation into him. Because whether or not Trump is innocent, he thinks he's innocent. And, therefore, he was trying to, quote, unquote, obstruct the investigation. This is the problem with obstruction as a charge, there doesn't actually have to be an underlying crime in order for you to obstruct. Right? If you're obstructing an investigation, it doesn't matter whether there's actually underlying anything that went bad.

The problem is, I think we're going to get the worst-case scenario. Because I've become a pessimist, that we always get the worst-case scenario.

GLENN: Yes.

BEN: The worst-case scenario here is that, there is no actual legal obstruction. Right? Because the actual statutes and obstruction do not cover President Trump firing James Comey, or even saying to Andrew McCabe, who did you vote for? That doesn't -- obstruction is a legal charge.

As a lawyer, these charges in the US code do not apply to what President Trump has done. It doesn't matter.

The left seizes on Mueller's suggestion that there has been some sort of informal obstruction. And then they launch an impeachment push against President Trump. And then Republicans are forced into the position of having to defend some of the stupid and I think dismal things that Trump has done, from firing Comey, which I think was dumb, to demanding a loyalty oath. All these sorts of things that are not illegal, but are not smart.

And so we're sitting around, defending those. And then the Democrats are browbeating us and saying they need impeachment. It just -- it ends up being a battle over bad behavior, as opposed to a battle over criminality. And the left will charge that the right is fine with criminality. And the right will say that the right is trying to use the law in the wrong ways.

And, you know -- both will be half right, and both will be half wrong. And it will just be awful. It will be awful all the way around.

GLENN: That's good. Good. Good.

STU: That's optimism.

BEN: The good news is I honestly don't think the impeachment tribe will go anywhere. And I think people will survive.

Honestly, I don't think people care that much about this, other than the diehard political fanatics on the right who think Trump is absolutely innocent of everything and has never done anything wrong. And people on the left who think that Trump is absolutely guilty of everything and is going to be impeached. They're waiting for the deus ex machina to come in and just remove Trump from office, which is not happening.

GLENN: So I think we're in the same area. I talked about it a few weeks ago and said, I don't think anything is going to happen with the Trump information. But sadly, what I think is going to happen is we're going to miss the mark on Russia. This whole investigation --

BEN: Russia, we haven't mentioned that in 15 minutes.

GLENN: Russia. I know. This is not about -- look, I think Hillary Clinton was absolutely corrupt. And the FBI has mountains of evidence of lots of people in -- in our government in Washington, that were corrupt with Uranium One. Why haven't we seen any of that evidence? Now, whether she was personally corrupt, sure looks like it. But I don't know.

When it comes to Donald Trump, I don't like the meeting in Trump Tower, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't know if there's any crime there that's been committed.

I do know this, the FBI has known things about Russia. And they have not -- they have not followed through. Why? Is there someone that is saying, you know, kind of like, what's his name that went in and took the documents out of the library of Congress, or the --

STU: Sandy Berger.

GLENN: Yeah. The national archives. Both sides were kind of like, no, that's pretty okay. I'm pretty okay with that. Because both sides are dirty with Russia. We need to know, can we trust our Justice Department? Yes or no?

Can we trust them to do independent investigations? And the second thing is, how bad are things with Russia? How could is the influence and the bribery and the scandal with his Russia? And let the chips fall where they may. I don't think it's going to happen.

BEN: I agree with a lot of this. And I also don't think it's going to happen. I think everyone -- if you're on the side of what the FBI is doing right now, then you're going to stand up for the FBI no matter what.

If you don't like what the FBI is doing right now, then you're going to suggest they're a nefarious institution in the pay of the opposite side.

GLENN: How do either of these not accomplish the goals of Vladimir Putin, of destroying our republic?

BEN: Well, I mean, I think that Putin was very smart. He realized that all he had to do was drop a hint of conspiratorialism into American politics, and everybody would jump on it with both feet.

And he was right. It's worked. We're at each other's throat over essentially -- I'm not sure there's much there there. And I think that's particularly true. If you look in another area, where Russia was supposedly nefarious, I really don't think that Russian bots were manipulating people's information hold during the last election cycle. I think people are jumping on that because they find it politically useful. So Russia interfered in the election. But I think what they've done even more -- to more success even, is they've allowed that impression that they interfered in the last election cycle to now create the basis on which everything else moves.

So, for example, the release of the memo hashtag that was trending last week, suddenly Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff are suggesting the reason it's trending is because of Russian bots. And they're calling on Facebook and Twitter to actually crack down on these nonexistent Russian bots that were supposedly sending this trending. Daily Beast did a report yesterday, and they said it wasn't Russian bots. That was just a bunch of Republicans who were hashtagging -- the point that Dianne Feinstein and Schiff are doing is -- what they are doing is they want Facebook and Twitter to crack down on right-wing media outlets, claiming that's a way of cracking down on fake news. So they're using the Russia bot stuff and they're using the Russia stuff as a proxy of getting to a political goal they want to get to. I swear, every day, I wake up and I think -- I'm cynical enough about politics today. And then by that night, I'm thinking, my God, I need to be twice as cynical as I was this morning. Because it just doesn't work.

GLENN: Back with more Ben Shapiro here in a second. Markets are beginning to price for potential interest rate hike in March. If you missed the show last night. I did a chalkboard. And it was really interesting.

Because I know I did this chalkboard a couple of times when I was at Fox. One that was similar. And I said, look, this is what I'm looking for. This is where we're going to start to have trouble. If these things happen.

Well, now, these things have happened. If you missed the chalkboard last night, make sure you watch it on TheBlaze.com/TV. Become a subscriber. And please, watch the first ten minutes of last night's show, because you will be prepared for what I believe is coming. And it's all due to math and history.

GLENN: Talking to Ben Shapiro, who I think is the leader of the future movement of the conservative -- of conservative thought in America.

He is everywhere on college campuses and everywhere online, where it counts with the youth.

We were -- we're in a weird situation right now, to where we have a president who is, in many ways, giving us as conservatives, things that we haven't seen since maybe Reagan. Okay? We have a great Supreme Court justice. Israel, for the love of Pete. Reagan didn't even do that.

BEN: Yep.

GLENN: So we have some great things. And then we're also in this position of having a guy who we -- is real -- lives a despicable life, if those porn star things are true. Okay? And I tend to believe they're true.

So you look at this, and for some reason, we can't say, I -- bad Trump, good Trump. Don't like that Trump. Like that one.

BEN: Yes.

GLENN: You have to buy into all of it. And I think that's killing us.

BEN: I totally agree. I mean, during the last election cycle actually coined the good Trump, bad Trump framework. I actually had sticks with faces of Trump on them. And when he would do something good, I would hold up the happy Trump. When he would do something bad, I would hold up the sad Trump.

We had -- we actually had the jingle on my podcast. Good Trump, bad Trump. Which one will it be today?

And that is -- I think the biggest problem I have right now with the way American politics are going, it really is not about Trump. It's about us. Because if we're not willing to call out bad when we see it, even from people that we like what we're getting from them, then we can't have an honest conversation.

It turns into simply, fanboying or fangirling for a particular political figure. You see this on the left too. They can't call out -- they couldn't call out Obama when Obama was engaged in obvious corruption with the IRS, for example. While saying, we like Obamacare. But we don't like what he's doing with the IRS. You see this on the right now, with regard to Trump's character.

Look, Trump is character deficient. There's just no question that the man is -- you would not have him babysit your children. Right? You have a list of people. He's near the bottom of the list in terms of people he would be responsible for like my one and a half-year-old son.

GLENN: Yes. My 13-year-old son.

BEN: May be more dangerous for the 13-year-old actually. You don't know what will pop up on the pay-per-view.

GLENN: Let's not even talk about him. People I really respect and like. Tony Perkins. What the hell was this?

STU: Interesting phrasing of that question.

GLENN: Yeah.

BEN: Yeah, so do I.

I think, again, we have to learn to live with cognitive dissonance. You can like a lot of the things he's doing. And as an evangelical Christian, or as an Orthodox Jew, as I am, I think you can stand and say, listen, this guy is standing up for religious liberty, with the judges that he's appointing. He's standing up for Israel. He's standing up for -- he spoke at the March For Life. He's standing up for a lot of religious priorities that I really like. And all of that is wonderful, and all of that is good. Also, you shouldn't have sex with porn stars while you're married and your wife just gave birth.

GLENN: If you're a religious leader, I think you should leave it at, you shouldn't have sex with porn stars, unless it's your wife.

(laughter)

Then you should talk to her about not being a porn star.

BEN: But the fact that we feel compelled to make excuses for bad behavior is something that I think leads people who are in the middle, not even on the left, people in the middle to say, well, you're not being intellectually honest about your own side. And you lose your own moral credibility in that line.

I'm not worried about Trump losing his credibility. Trump is a big boy. He can protect himself. He's shown that he's fully capable of kicking back of kicking back against people who criticize him. He does it all the time. He doesn't need people playing defense for his personal failings. And, by the way, his personal failings don't damage him politically.

I mean, I have an entire theory of what damages Trump politically. And the answer basically is what we call the -- the -- the strong efficient markets theory. Right? That when it comes to the stock market, there's a theory. That you cannot beat the stock market because everything is already priced in. Right? You have analysts who are all day sitting there and looking at companies and determining what their value is.

So unless there's a new piece of information, it's not going to change the stock price of any given stock. So you can't beat the market. I think that that holds true, particularly for Trump, even to the extent that new information doesn't change what you feel about Trump.

If you think Trump is despicable, you're still going to think Trump is despicable. If you think he's wonderful, you're still going to think he's wonderful.

Which suggests to me, that when he does something bad, we don't to have stand around and defend him. Like this is going to destroy his political career. The man won an election after being caught on tape, talking about -- bragging about grabbing women by the genitals. I don't think he requires your defense at this point. I think he'll be just fine. But I'm not sure that you will be just fine. Right? It's really about you. It's about what you are willing to say is good or bad. And what your friends think about you, and what people think of as a person, based on what you are willing to condemn and what you are willing to accept.

GLENN: But you can accept the policies and despise the actions in personal life.

BEN: 100 percent.

GLENN: And it's perfectly okay. But people aren't willing to embrace that. Tonight, 5 o'clock, Ben Shapiro will be joining us on TheBlaze.com/TV.

"The Most Dangerous Place on Earth Right Now!" - SHOCKING Details of Nigeria's Christian Genocideplay icon
RADIO

"The Most Dangerous Place on Earth Right Now!" - SHOCKING Details of Nigeria's Christian Genocide

Across Nigeria, Christians are being hunted, churches burned, and entire communities wiped out — yet the world remains silent. In this powerful discussion, Glenn Beck and Rep. Riley Moore uncover the horrific truth behind Nigeria’s Christian genocide and the shocking indifference from global leaders. This silent war on faith is one of the greatest humanitarian and moral crises of our time. Will America stand up for its brothers and sisters in Christ before it’s too late?

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: All right. Riley, let me talk to you about Nigeria, and what's happening in Nigeria. It's the scariest, most deadly country in the world, if you happen to be a Christian. And nobody seems to -- to be talking about it. And, you know, you have been involved in, you know, urging Secretary Rubio to say Nigeria is a country of particular concern, which I don't what an that means exactly. What doors does that unlock?

RILEY: Yeah. So that is -- that designation actually fits in the U.S. Code. So it does unlock 15 different Levers for the President when a country is designated a country of particular concern. That could be holding development money, that could be going to international institutions to free assistance through there. That could also halt security assistance, which would be arms sales and training and things like that, that have been going on in Nigeria. We could sanction individuals. It gives the President the authority to do a number of different things that can really, I think, leverage the Nigerians to actually start caring about our brothers and sisters in Christ, who are getting murdered for the professions they're facing in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

So I think this is a good first step, and we're going to see how the Nigerians react to this now. I've been having meetings with Departments of State.

We are going to meet with the Nigerians here at some point as well, here in DC.

So we're going to see what they're going to bring to the table. But also the President, who always puts all options on the table, has said, if they don't start fixing this, they're there couldn't potentially be kinetic military actions on -- in Nigeria.

GLENN: What does that mean?

Boots on the ground?

RILEY: No. To me, it does not mean that. To me, you have -- you have complex issues that are going on, over there. Where you have in the middle band of the country. This is where the Fulanis are. And these are herdsmen. And this is where you get this radical strain, obviously. Islamic terrorists, these Fulanis. These are herdsmen, tribes, and they have been attacking Christians in that middle band. In the northern part of the country is mostly Muslim. Southern part of the country is mostly Christian.

So that middle part, where they graze their cattle and all that, is where you see a lot of these flash points and murdering going on. But then in the northern part of the country is where you have ISIS, Boko Haram. They are operating there. And where they're taking over towns and communities, as we saw in Syria, right? Previously. Same type of thing.

GLENN: Yeah.

RILEY: CAIR is enfranchising, going on over there, all through the Lake Chad region, actually. So that's where I think, if it made sense to have some type of military action in forms of an airstrike or something like that, to -- to be able to tamp down some of the leadership and break up some of that structure in there.

That's something that would make sense. But to me, just speaking for myself, I want to try to work with the Nigerians, for them to do the right thing here.

President Trump obviously I mentioned, on Truth Social. Needs to specifically look into this. Which we are doing here in Congress. I want them to do the right thing.

I think the Nigerians actually have the chance right now to actually strengthen their relationship with the United States, if they're going to do the right thing.

But we can't allow to continue the slaughter of Christians where we have over 7,000 just this year, have been killed, for being Christian.
We can't allow that to continue, as a Christian country ourselves, which we are.

I know we're -- you know, some may debate that. I promise you, and nobody knows more about the founding of the country than Glenn Beck. Is that this is a Christian nation, founded on Christian values.

And we have to stand up for these people. Because nobody else is paying attention to this. Other than you, and some folks at Fox news. And that's really about it.

GLENN: Oh, I tell you, you know, I was planning on bringing my cameras with me. And I was going to go to Nigeria in the first quarter. And I have had briefings and warnings from the highest levels. Do not go.

You are not going. And I said, yes, I am. I want to bring this story.

You can't go. I've been to war zones. And this one, they're like, this is the most dangerous place on earth right now!

That's pretty remarkable, that nobody is really talking about it.

RILEY: It really is, and it's this silent genocide, that has just continued on since 2009, where we've had in between 50 to 100,000 Christians murdered for their faith. Our brothers and sisters over there, suffering, and no one has done anything about it. You might remember the bring back our girls movement around 2012ish, '14.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

RILEY: Seventeen of those girls have still never been brought back. People forgot about it. It's fine. Boko Haram just has them. It's not fine.

It's not okay. And there are a lot of Levers that the administration is able to pull here, I think to get the Nigerians on the right course.

It's not that they don't have resources. This is an oil rich country. With a lot of critical minerals.

They have the means to be able to do this, at the end of the day, it's a question of prioritization. And what their goals actually are. And we need them to focus on this. Or the President will start to focus on it.

GLENN: Well, I will tell you, 19,000 churches have been burned.

And yet, from what I'm hearing, there are some in the Nigerian government that are like, no. This is not what's happening. This is not about genocide. It's not about Christians. It's just squabbles.

Really? Fifty to 100,000 people. And 19 thousands of individuals people have been burned in little squabbles, that don't have anything to do with radicalized Islam?

RILEY: Exactly. And this is the excuse I've gotten from people on the ground, look, do terrorists kill other people other than Christians? Yes, of course they do. But we're talking about five to one is the ratio, Christians versus non-Christians are being killed over there right now.

Secondly, I want to point out for everybody, President Trump has a designation in Nigeria. It means his first term.

It was taken off by the Biden administration. Because they claimed the killings had more to do with arable land and herders, and actually the root cause was climate change.

GLENN: Climate change.

RILEY: Yeah. That's why these killings were happening. Because of climate change. Where that's why we saw the murder rate just skyrocket during the Biden administration.

And President Trump, who cares very deeply about these issues, he's not going to allow that to persist anymore.

GLENN: He said, if there is an attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet. Just like the terrorist thugs that attack our cherished Christians.

I will tell you, I've -- you know, been reading up on it. And doing our homework.

And, you know, it reminded me of how the Germans went into Poland. Where they would just take whole communities. They would put them in the church. And lock the doors. And burn it to the ground.

That's what's happening in Nigeria. They're doing the same thing. They're burning churches. Not just burning churches. They're gathering Christians up. Putting them in, locking the doors, and then burning it down so that all of these women and children and men die in a fire in their church. And it's horrific. It's horrific.
What does the average person need to do?

RILEY: Yes. The average person needs to call their number of Congress and elevate this. And make this an issue that is on their radar, that they care about.

I'm introducing resolution which would be a sense of Congress, that we support the President. And we support the people and the Christians of Nigeria, and their plight.

And we condemn what the Nigerian government is doing, in action around this. That resolution should be getting introduced here soon.

So that would be something that would be hugely helpful.

GLENN: Wow.

It will be interesting to see who votes for that, and who doesn't.

That would have been -- that would have been a no-brainer 15 years ago. Just a no-brainer.

And now, I wonder if you can even get that passed. That's sad. Sad.

RILEY: It's sad. And I think we need to put it to the test. Put it to the test.

Certainly, if I'm whipping the votes, I don't have Ilhan Omar in my "yes" column.

But, you know, let's -- let's put it to the test here.

The TRUTH about Zohran Mamdani and communismplay icon
RADIO

The TRUTH about Zohran Mamdani and communism

Is New York City’s new mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a socialist or a communist? Glenn Beck takes a look at history to explain why it doesn’t really matter: BOTH lead down the same road …

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, we've been talking about socialism, and Donald Trump is getting pilloried in the press for calling Mamdani a communist. And I find this ritual here, that we're going through is just, you say the word socialist, and, you know, 25 years ago when I said that these people were socialist, everybody said, "Oh, my gosh. You can't call them socialists. That's an outrage." I said, "The mask is going to come off, that they can't wait to tell you they're socialists."

Now Donald Trump said, you know, Mamdani is a Communist. And everybody is like, oh, my gosh. Look at this hysteric from the Cold War. He's just -- he's out of the Cold War radio drama.

So let me just clear this here. Because the difference between the two terms, you know, is really not some great firewall of virtue here. As if one leads to like Scandinavian candles and the other leads to gulags. That's not what's happening.

What we've forgotten here is what always is forgotten. And that is how Karl Marx actually talked and saw the two. He didn't draw, you know, polite little distinctions. He described socialism as the transition. The necessary scaffolding that leads to communism. That's Karl Marx. So socialism for Karl Marx was the road, not the destination.

Communism is the end of that road. He wrote -- he wrote an essay, the Critique of Gotha Program. And Marx said, under socialism, from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution. Under communism, to each according to his needs. The only difference here is timing. It's not philosophy.

It's not goals. It's just how far along the revolution you are, okay?

Socialism is the bridge to communism. According to Karl Marx, don't take it from me. Communism is the completion of socialism. It's -- it's the antithesis of a free market system. Even Lenin called socialism the first and necessary phase of communism. So it's not partisan rhetoric. Okay?

This is the literal architecture of Marxist thought. But can we get out of the theories of all of this?

I mean, history gives us warning. Much more vivid than any theory. You know, we would like to imagine that the worst horrors of the 21st century came from one beast alone.

And we think that's Hitler. But actually, a bigger beast was Stalin. But if you want to look at Germany from 1930 to 1945. You see something really uncomfortable.

A socialist movement that curdled into something monstrous, while it never called itself communist. In fact, the Nazi government. The national socialists. The Nazis were not communists. They were against the communists.

They killed communists!

But they shared the same foundational belief. That the rid is disposable, and that the state defines the truth.

They both believe that rights are not given by God, but administered by political power. And that dissent on any of this, has to be crushed for the good of the collective.

That is the -- that's the definition we should care about!

Socialism doesn't to give full marks communism to become catastrophic. It just has to replace the individual conscience with the will of the state. And don't you see, that's what's happening here? They'll crush you! They'll destroy you. You disagree with them, they'll destroy you. Even if you've been on their side. I am going to share eye story with you, from 1979 that happened. That I don't think most people understand. And in New York, you better understand it.

When a society accepts the premise, that premise, history shows the -- the slide can accelerate from a utopian promise to industrialized cruelty. Horror show.

Like that!

Germany saw it. Russia saw it. China saw it. Cambodia. North Korea.

Cuba. I mean, it's all right there, just different flags. Different slogans. But it's the same structural error.

So can we stop with this mocking of the language?

You know, people laughing. Oh, you said Mamdani is a communist, but he's just merely a socialist. You're missing the point entirely.

The issue is not whether the label is technically perfect. The issue is the philosophical DNA is exactly the same. Collectivism over the individual.

State control over personal agency. Central planning over free will.

And that the belief that human nature can be engineered by a political force. That's where it always goes wrong. It doesn't understand human nature. So you can argue all you want, about where socialism ends and where communism begins, but honestly, that's like, hey, kids, memorize the date of this war.

Why? Why? I'm never going to use that fact again. What difference does it make? The thing we should care about is, why was that war fought? What happened at the end of that war? When communism and socialism, we should be saying, where does that road lead?

I can tell you that the road always begins with the state controlling your choices. Okay?

It will control your choice of energy, money, your children's education. Your speech.

Your job. What you drive. And it always ends with never greater liberty. It always ends the same place. In a society that has forgotten that freedom is fragile.

That power concentrates. That people are the same over and over and over and over again!

Human beings. They go bad! Especially when you give them power, and they're told they're part of a grand collective. Humans are willing to commit horrors they would never do as an individual.

That's the biggest thing. You get these horror shows of 100 million dead, because it's a collective!

We're all doing it. I'm not doing it. Everybody is doing it. That's the warning.

That's historical. And we ignore it at our own peril. Now, the problem here is, is that socialism is on the rise. And communism will be next.

Remember, when I first started talking about Obama, they -- I was -- I was raked across the rolls -- the coals, every day for even suggesting he might kind of like socialism. Now, socialism is fine!

So that road is still going to -- we're going to continue rolling down that road. And any country that goes into socialism -- we're not talking about a capitalist. We're not talking about Sweden anymore.

In fact, we are actually talking about Sweden. Look at the road they're going down now.
I mean, they're going into their own kind of authoritarian rule with Sharia law.

That is coming to Sweden. We are not talking about this friendly socialism. We're talking about the complete abandonment of the free market entirely. We've been this stupid little hybrid, that doesn't work. It only causes misery. We've been this hybrid.

And it doesn't work in a country this large and a country this diverse.

But look if you're -- you know, if you grew up after 9/11, where have you seen capitalism work for you?

Okay? You've seen, I know I've seen it. I've seen the rich get richer. And I don't mean the rich.

I mean the really, really, really rich. The ones that the Democrats never really talk about. They say they hate the rich. The rich have to pay their fair share.

But they're hanging out with George Soros. They're hanging out with the Ford Foundation. They're hanging out with Bezos and all of these other people. Because that's -- that's -- that's real control! Okay?

They don't hate those guys. They never do anything to affect their taxes. They don't pay taxes. Because they have the money to put it into trusts and everything else.

You don't have that!

So when I say, I've seen it happen. I've seen the rich get richer.

You know who the rich are?

Citibank. These banks that have been taking our money through bailouts, when do we get that money back?

When do you get that money back?

You don't!

You don't. That's why this is working. That's why you can say, socialism is neat. Because nobody knows the killing machine that socialism actually is. Nobody has any idea. Look at the killing machine. Look at the killing machine that's being built in socialist Canada right now.

What is it? MAID is the third or fourth biggest killer. It kills one in every 20 Canadians. Why is that happening? That's not out of compassion. That's because they're running out of money for health care. That's what that's about. Get them off the dole! Stop it. Now, if they're earning a lot of money, get them in, because we can still get their money, but let's make sure they're making money. If they're getting old, if they are cripple, if they fought in a war and just can't has come it themselves, if they're super, super young, if they have an expensive cancer, let them die. Help them die!

That's because they're looking at the collective, not the individual. And that's -- that's the beginning of the dark killing machine in a socialist country. And Canada is -- is -- I mean, it has socialized medicine. The problem is, it's all failing. Socialism always fails.

Capitalism has -- has taken people out of poverty. Solved problems. Healed people. Given people heat and houses and cars and airplanes. All of that is because of the free market. All of that is the free market.

You get rid of the free market. You put it in the hands of governments. And you have monsters. Monsters. And we know it, because we've seen it over and over and over again.

But our -- if you're -- if you -- if -- if you don't remember, or barely remember 911, you've never been taught any of this.

You've never been taught what it actually means. So you're seeing this play out, over and over again. Look at that guy, look at, he's not going to have to pay a price. He's just going to get away with it. And he's taking all of our tax dollars. Okay. I hate all of that.

This capitalist system, it's corrupt!

You're seeing that play out in real time. You're not seeing anybody actually go to jail for these things.

Of course, you think that it doesn't. I don't think it works the way it is right now!

But then you're -- you're given this false utopian promise. Without any information.

Read the warning label on socialism!

Where has it ever worked?

Show me where it has worked!

And don't say Sweden. Sweden.

Sweden is falling apart right now. Do you know why?

Because Sweden, everybody was blond hair, blue eyed, they were all related to each other. It was a small, little country.

You can do it when everybody is the same, and it's small. It will work in -- to some degree!

But the minute you start going diverse, the whole thing falls apart. So you want to be Sweden?

Go ahead. Look at Sweden today.

I don't want to be Sweden.

Read the warning label. That's our job, to show that warning label.

It's our job to teach what's not being taught. This is a death cult.

Stay away from it. Warning. Warning.

Could Comey FINALLY go to JAIL thanks to this smoking gun?play icon
RADIO

Could Comey FINALLY go to JAIL thanks to this smoking gun?

Is this the 'smoking gun' evidence that could put former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey behind bars? Just the News CEO John Solomon joined Glenn Beck to reveal some shocking new revelations, including Comey’s own emails allegedly authorizing anonymous leaks to the NYT on the Clinton case, potential handwritten notes proving he KNEW Hillary’s team approved the Russia collusion hoax, and a possible email from Comey referring to Hillary Clinton as “President-elect Clinton." Will a Northern Virginia jury hold the Deep State accountable? Or will politics bury the truth again?

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: John Solomon is with us. He is the CEO and editor-in-chief. In chief of Just the News. If you don't check that every day, you're really missing out on a really great news site. Justthenews.com. John, I have made a promise with my audience a long time ago, I do my best not to waste their time.

And as I'm looking through the things I want to talk to you about, I have to start with this question: Is any of this going to mean anything in the end, or is this -- are we just spinning our wheels and wasting our time, talking about how the deep this scandal with James Comey is becoming?

JOHN: That's a great question. And I don't think history has an answer yet. It will really depend on the tenacity and the focus of the Justice Department, the prosecutors, and the jurors that are going to catch these cases. Right? Are they willing to rise above politics and say, "We don't want an FBI that goes after people based on their political color, not the quality of the evidence against them."

And that is what began on 2015 on James Comey's watch, a different type of FBI that seemed to go after Donald Trump and his associates, regardless of evidence, and protect Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden, even though the evidence against them was pretty strong, as we ultimately found out from the IRS whistleblowers. So we don't know yet. Listen, these are going to go to trial if the judge lets them go to trial.

The judge in the Comey case seems to be giving the prosecutors a hard time there already. But that's going to be litigated. I'm going to go up to the Supreme Court. It will be a long battle.

But the question is, is the fight worth it?

I think if you don't punish the people that created this mentality, you have deficits in America for a long time.

Banana republic, prosecution arc. And I think that's not what Americans want. They want to say, the FBI is above politics. It hasn't been in the last texted, until the last few months, under Kash Patel.

GLENN: Okay. So let's talk about what the new evidence is the -- the burn bags.

The hidden rooms. And the evidence that now has been found that -- that shows Comey looks like he was lying. To Congress. When he said, no.

I didn't know anything about it.

JOHN: Yeah. Yeah. So let's remind people what the alleged lie is, what he's been accused of and indicted of. He told Congress in '17, and then reaffirmed, unequivocally in 2020, that he never asked any of his staff to provide information to the news media. The government, Kash Patel found significant documents that go to the contrary. They chose not to go after James Comey. So in the Bill Maher administration, they knew the same evidence, but they didn't go after him. What is the lie?

He told Congress, I didn't -- one, I never authorized anyone to leak to the media anonymously about the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump cases. And, two, I don't think I knew anything about an intelligence intercept that Hillary Clinton was setting up a fake Russian collusion hoax, that we ended up investigating.

Well, we now know, first, his own emails, with his own top lieutenant, Daniel Richmond. A former lawyer who he brought into the special government. The FBI. There's an FBI employee, showed that James Comey, told him, good job, and make them wiser as he was briefing them on how he was anonymously trying to spin the New York Times and provide information to the New York Times about the Hillary Clinton case.

So directly on point to the testimony he gave. I didn't authorize him to leak about Hillary Clinton in their emails. So this guy was leaking it. He was affirming it, and saying, go ahead. And he was encouraging him to make that reporter wiser. In other words, give them more information anonymously.
So that's the first lie. The second lie -- and, by the way, the grand jury bought that evidence, that we believed he lied.

GLENN: Okay.

JOHN: And that is what we call the Clinton planned intelligence. Was Comey, as John Brennan claimed. And as other evidence -- did Comey know, did he pay attention, did he have some awareness that as the FBI was starting to investigate the Russia collusion ruse, the hoax, that Hillary Clinton had been interpreted, or her people had been intercepted, showing that she approved the plan. He said, it doesn't ring true. I don't think I knew about it.

Well, in a locker, in a burn bag, they found some handwritten notes of James Comey, that appeared to include the briefing from John Brennan where he clearly knew, that Hillary Clinton had been intercepted -- or, her team had been intercepted, saying she approved this plan to hang a fake Russian shingle on Donald Trump's campaign house. Now, those are handwritten notes.

GLENN: Yeah. That is in his handwriting, that he clearly understood. And so now you've got him on -- on two really significant lies. That show that this whole thing was -- was -- they were in collusion with one another. And all of this was bogus.

And they knew it from the beginning.

JOHN: Yeah. That's exactly right. That's why, when you look at this. And then take the third bag of this. Those notes were never produced in earlier subpoenas to Congress or other investigations. They were found in a room, where it appears, according to the government, there is an effort to get rid of or hide this evidence.

So it hadn't been hidden from prior subpoenas, according to the government, according to Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor. And then, two, it looked like they were in burn bags. Meaning, they would never be there.

Now, some other people said, oh, well, there's electronic records of it.

It turns out according to the government, there was no electronic record of the note. Meaning, if they had been burned or destroyed, it would have never happened.

Now, why would James Comey want to lie about this? Because as we see in these same emails, it appears he had a motive.

His motive, as he wrote, his colleague is, I fully expect to be working for president-elect Hillary Clinton. She's talking this way, before the election in 2016.

He thought Hillary was going to be his boss. And as he wrote Dan Richmond, he said, I think Hillary Clinton will be, quote, unquote, pleased by the way I handled her email chase. In other words, he reopened it and cleared her a second time.

And when the smoke cleared, Hillary would like to keep him out as FBI director. That's the insinuation of those notes. So --

GLENN: Yeah. I want to get the exact. I want to give the exact phrase he wrote. A president-elect Clinton will be very greatly.

JOHN: Yeah. Grateful, I'm sorry.

GLENN: Wow.

JOHN: Yeah. Grateful. So he expected it -- that's his mindset in the fall of 2016.

And he opens up an investigation on Hillary Clinton, what we now know to be a ruse. Bad evidence. An agency had to lie to the FISA courts to get the FISA warrants. If his motive was that, or his thinking was that. He probably does not want to admit that I was warned, that maybe this was all a joke before I allowed this investigation to go forward. Before I affixed my name to a FISA warrant that the courts have now said was misleading, false, and violated the law. So that is the context at which the prosecutors are going to try to bring this -- bring this case. Now, it's going to be in northern Virginia, where there are a lot of federal workers and a lot of anti-Trump sentiment.

Can they get a conviction? We don't know. But is it worth trying to do it? Most people I talk to said yes, because the alternative is you have by inaction a sanction, which is what Bill Maher and John Durham did by not bringing this in 2020.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Can I switch topics. There's something that came out today. James Comey's daughter, and the Epstein case. Apparently, James Comey's daughter sent a message to Epstein, that if you don't have to prove it. But if you can show us anything that ties Donald Trump to this, it's going to go a lot easier for you.

Can you give me this story?

JOHN: Yeah. I've seen it. I've not been able to corroborate it. In this world of media today. I've been super careful. It's hard to know if things are true. I haven't found anyone yet who seems to know the proof on it.

It's possible. Who knows? I mean, prosecutors make these sort of deals all the time. And as we know, it seems in the last decade or two, I think when you have to go back to the era of the Ted Stevens prosecution. The IRS pursuit of conservative groups. And maybe the prosecution which turned out to be malicious and wrong of Virginia governor McDonald.

There is a culture that began at the beginning or around the time of the Obama era. Where winning for prosecutors is more important than winning fairly or on the face of the evidence.

And that's why these cases ultimately got overturned. That mentality exists in the Justice Department.

And then when you add the nature of politics, the Trump Derangement Syndrome that seems to come in, in 2015. You have a very dangerous prosecutorial and law enforcement system that's easily weaponized and can easily cheat.

And unless you got multi-million lawyers, you probably will get hosed, because very few people will find the grounds to overturn this.

And that it is crushing power of the state, that Jim Jordan talks about. Chuck Grassley talks about. That Donald Trump wants to reform.

And I don't know, in this case, whether Mr. Comey did this or not.

Because I can't confirm it yet. But if I knew, I'll come back to you.

GLENN: Right.

JOHN: The scenario does go on. And we've seen it. And it's very, very troubling.

There's a case coming up in New York, where the FCC has to admit that there were journalists writing fake stories that were then used to justify investigations of companies.

A system of cheating to get a consequence regardless of whether it's warranted, is something we all have to take a deep breath. We have to fix it. Or we won't be any the different than rectangles and Iran.

GLENN: I will tell you, that I am so glad to say, that you said, I can't confirm this.

I haven't found a source to confirm it.

Because when I read that story, it looks as though one of the people that is telling this story is the guy who was in jail, with Epstein, who would also have motive for making something like this up. So, you know, I don't want to exonerate her.

And I don't want to condemn her. I just want the truth.

And he doesn't seem like a reliable source.

JOHN: Yeah. I think we have to get the evidence, and try to -- listen if the lead is something -- let's check it out and true -- find out if it's true.

We learned that Russia collusion wasn't true. I think we'll learn that most of Ukraine impeachment wasn't true.

And I think today, we just have to dig in first. Get the facts.

But we will -- we will do that. I promise, I'll get back to you, as soon as I know what I can find out for the government.

GLENN: Yeah. Thank you, John. I appreciate all your hard work.

John Solomon from Just the News. Go to JusttheNews.com. Follow him. John Solomon. JSolomonReports on X. But he is an old school journalist. Investigative reporter. Has worked for everybody, until everybody was like, you can't say those things. That's our side!

And then he just left and did his own thing. And I'm very grateful for it.

Editor-in-chief of Just the News. John Solomon