The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guests: Michael Shellenberger & John Ziegler | 10/31/22

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Pat Gray joins the guys to go over Paul Pelosi's attacker, his possible ideological leanings, and the media's manipulation of the story. Author of "San Fransicko" Michael Shellenberger dives deep into the attack on Paul Pelosi and the dangers of nationalizing oil and gas. "The Death Of Journalism" co-host John Ziegler joins to give his unique take on Paul Pelosi's attacker and the journalistic standards he uses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So do you think we're any closer to the truth on any of this stuff? We're getting there, I think. You know, I mean, I do think, there's a big piece that came out from, we didn't even talk about this. A big piece that came out in Vanity Fair, along with ProPublica working together. Right. To say that it looks like, yeah, more likely than not, it was a lab leak that Carlin caused COVID-19. I was shocked by that because they weren't banned.

Yeah. They were not banned. And so it's okay to do this reporting in retrospect. You can say, hey, you know what? Wow. what an amazing time that was when we all thought that it was it was a it was

you know that's natural you don't even have to go there I have to fact check you on that we all didn't think we all didn't think we all didn't think that's the point there's a lot of people saying wait a minute this this and this does not add up what's the problem here and then we were all kicked off of social media so no one heard it from us again we're in that window right now

we're a week from an election and they are not going to let anything come out that screws up this narrative after after the election things come out that we'll screw with the election, just not against the Republican or the Democrats. Right. What they want to be the narrative will be the narrative for the next week. You've got to be really on your toes right now. Hey, tomorrow we start live streaming the first hour of this

podcast on YouTube in case you want to watch it. Ooh. Sounds like fun. Yeah. And help us get to a million subscribers. You know, we just started doing YouTube for me, what, two years ago? Yeah, we never really focused on it, unfortunately. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah, I kind of wish we had a, I've done that earlier. Well, I mean, Stephen Crowder was just banned from YouTube until after the election. Isn't that interesting? This is what I'm talking about.

Yeah, I know. I know. So we'll see how long we last in the next five days. But it's on YouTube. And today's show is great. We talk about Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, what the real story is on that and so much more, including the idea to nationalize America's oil and gas. Oh, I get the lion.

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Get our new favorites box now. You're listening to. The best of the Glenn Beck program Hello you sick twisted freak Welcome to Mr. Pat Gray from Pat Gray on Leash. Hello Pat. Hello, Glenn.

Oh, it's good to have you here. Love your costume. That is the best mask I've ever seen. Thank you. Scary as hell. Yeah. Really is. I know.

Yeah. It took eight hours. Really? Yeah, eight hours to do this mask. Holy cow. Yeah. Well, it's good. It's good.

don't know exactly who you're supposed to be but it's really good so what are your thoughts on the Nancy Pelosi shooting I think there's what wait what story are you breaking a new one no no no the Nancy Pelosi's husband being

hammered can't you say that either that's a whole different story that's a whole difference earlier the the debacle that happened at the Pelosi compound yeah well that's right wing cooks for you isn't it

that's what they do. That's what they do. White supremacists and MAGA Republicans. That's what they do. Mega MAGA Republicans. Mega MAGA Republicans who are incredibly violent. I think we're going to find, I think there's some other things going on. I mean, the guy, when you go to his house, Michael Schellenberger did a really good article on this.

He's joining us, by the way, in about half an hour. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's really good. I mean, go to his house and take a look around and then tell me the guys are right-wing. Maga Republican. Black Lives Matter. He's living in a bus.

He's practically homeless. He's not that you can't be a Maga Republican and be homeless. I just don't know that many. Do you know a lot of homeless people? A few. A few. Do you? Yeah.

Huh. Have you offered them maybe some help? A hand-down. Yeah, a sandwich, but then I got fined for it. You can't feed them. All right. Unless the city okay. the homeless. But then the LGBT rainbow flag is another telltale sign of Maga Republicanism.

I mean, there's so many. The BLM sign. The BLM sign. All of that is. And the hemp bracelet making that he did. How many hemp bracelets have you made? Right. Between the necklaces and the hemp bracelets. And the fact that he was, I don't know if it was a traditional marriage, but married to the other girl who had a nude wedding in San Francisco City Hall. And there does seem to be some nudism going on. Yeah. And she also got her older son to try to deliver love letters to this underage boy that she

wanted to escape with. I mean, if it's not the moral majority, I don't know what the moral majority is. It's like I listen to, I can't even tell you how many, you know, mainstream media podcasts this weekend to try to get, to try to understand the narrative and what they were telling us and what was true. Because I'd like to know. We have to know. We have to know. And I, if the viewpoint is that this person was a left-wing hippie nudist for many, many years, who over the recent future went through some sort of transformation and became a right-wing figure. I don't blame the Democrats.

I don't blame the Democrats. I don't blame the Republicans for that. But I do blame the media because every single one of these stories went through the recent posting, including this person followed Glenn Beck of the Daily Wire. Jordan Peterson. That was just right-wing people that he followed on his Facebook. But just recently, just recently he found us. though, his entire left, like, the fact that his house... Including Jesus is the Antichrist?

No, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus. Well, that's another thing. What? You know, if you listen to this program, how anti-Jesus we are. You can see why he's a fan. But he also believed he was Jesus. For, it seems like, over a year, he believed he was Jesus. But like, you, how can, if you are an honest media organization, and I know I wasn't listening to them, which is the problem here. But like, if you were honest, you would mention both, right? You might mention, okay, look, he has some conspiracy theories on there. He had anti-Semitism on there. He had left-wing nudism stuff.

He had a BLM sign. I mean, it's easy, I think, to come to the conclusion that this was not a story of political extremism. It was a story of someone who did drugs for multiple decades and blew his mind up. He's nuts. But here's the thing. They're even saying, I don't remember which paper it was, one of the, you know, L.A. Times, New York Times of the Post, but they're saying even if he was crazy, it's still that dangerous rhetoric that fed into his head.

Well, let me ask you this. Did we ban Jody Foster? I mean, when Hinkley said, I just, I wanted to impress her because I love her and I watch all of her movies and I thought this would impress her and he tried to kill Ronald Reagan, was there one peep of saying, this is Joe? Cody Fosters, we got to put pants and a big coat on that woman, make sure she looks very unattractive or ban her movies. No.

There was no talk of that. And of course, that would be the same approach to a story like that. Yes. Just like, by the way, we did not blame Bernie Sanders for his own, his campaign volunteer trying to shoot 10% of all elected Republicans in Washington, D.C. By the way, can I ask, why the conclusion. concern here about this guy and the guy who flew in, I think from San Francisco to kill Kavanaugh. Yeah.

Much more recently. It was just like gone. Yeah. They didn't care. Nobody cared on that. Nobody cared. Do we, do you know that the Sunday news programs that week didn't even cover the Kavanaugh story? Didn't even cover it.

Didn't even cover it. My gosh. Didn't cover it. Now, of course, the difference here is number one. They get to blame the other side. And number two, we are eight days away from an election. And they will do anything to get these seats to go the right way. So they will not report.

We are in the Hunter Biden window here. We learn about the truth of Hunter Biden from the mainstream media approximately one year after it's relevant to an election and one year before it's relevant to an election. As far away from an election as possible. Well, now that we're a week, we are in full-fledged Hunter Biden, the Hunter Biden window. where the media seems to have completely convinced themselves, they can abandon all appearance of journalism to try to win this election, to do anything they can to flip one or two seats here or there in an area that might have gone red, make them go blue,

anything we can do. That's where they are right now. So you really, the mainstream media never has a sufficient bank of trust that we should all be believing exists. But I will say now you have to, you can't believe anything they say. You can't believe anything they say for the next week. You can't. I have to tell you, they say, you know, all these crazy conspiracies.

What? Like the one that Hillary Clinton is currently pushing about the 2024 election, saying that it's all going to be stolen by the Republicans. They're all saying this. That there is this giant cabal of MAGA people out there that just want to destroy the country. that we're against a democracy, which in a way we are, we're for a republic, not a democracy. But that's beside the point. All of these things that they have been saying, Russiagate, all of this, Joe Biden is clean.

There's no, he's the cleanest clean guy. Federman is completely healthy and ready to serve. This is incredible coming from these people. And they wonder why conspiracy theory. bubble up. Well, because somebody thinks something's wrong. And let me use the left or the right doing something wrong that causes conspiracy theories. The 9-11 commission.

Excusing what was his name that came out with the underpass, Sandy Berger, who went into the National Archives. Now, think of this with what we've just gone through with Donald Trump. Sandy Berger goes in, asks for the presidential archives for George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton opens them up. It's about Saudi Arabia. Something about relationships. We don't really know any more than that. Puts it in his underpants. Leaves, goes across the street, destroys a few by the time the National Archives run out to catch him and get the rest of the... And he's only lost his security clearance for a year. You want to know why there's a conspiracy theory around 9-11? Because you didn't explain that. You didn't come clean and explain that.

And so people fill in the blanks. When something doesn't make sense, they try to make sense of it. And anyone who is giving them lines of bull crap and just doesn't say what we said earlier this morning, we don't know what happened. But here are some questions that need to be answered. Those people are not furthering conspiracy theories. Those people who ask questions are the ones that create the conspiracy, are the ones who create the conspiracy theory look at people like us.

and say, they're even questioning this. How could they possibly question this? We told you what it was. Okay, show us, just show us the tape. Just show us the tape of the guy getting in. That would help. Show us, explain to us why he downloaded all of those posts, these crazy posts.

Why did he post them all in one day? Can you explain that? And that's fine if he did. Maybe he did it that way. But that seems weird. Something that would be notable. I mean, look, I think he is insane and I think he has a massive drug problem. And so that would explain.

There's the number one thing. There's the number one thing. Did you know that he was in the hospital and not jail? I didn't know. No. Did you? No. Yeah. Neither did I.

Need to die till this morning. He's in the hospital. Well, okay. Was he hurt? Or is that a psychiatric hospital? Because that's some important information. Where's the answer on that? Right now, the only goal is to make sure that Republicans are blamed for this.

Yeah, that is. So that votes can be cast in the right direction. Well, here's the thing. I think this makes people even more determined to vote. You must end this madness. It has to end. It has to end. And the first step is voting on Tuesday and not just forget about just the national politics.

Look at your local politics. I told my family the other day, for the first time in my life, Republican lever all the way down. I've never done that. Never have I done that all the way down. Well, you mean you've never voted like straight party ticket. hitting the lever that does all of them, basically. Yeah. And I tell you, we need people in our states.

We have a chance of having, I think, 40 states or 37 states that would be all Republican, Republican governor, Republican, it's like in the 20s that it would be Republican House and Senate. So the legislature and everybody involved would be a Republican. Yeah. That will stop. the nonsense in Washington. States have the power to do it. And I'm thrilled to see that people are acting locally. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Michael, how are you, sir? Great. Good to be back, Glenn. Yeah, thank you so much for all your hard work on this.

Well, thank you for having me on. I'm excited to talk about it. Okay, so tell me, tell me what you have found. What's true, what's not true? Well, Look, what we know is that this is somebody who, according to multiple witnesses, including the mother of his children, was struggling with mental illness for over a decade. We know he was homeless for a while. We know there was extensive drug use. You know, mental illness, serious mental illness like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are pretty rare, but we do see a lot of drug-induced mental illness,

and particularly from methamphetamine use, but certainly other drugs over time, can cause psychosis, which is, of course, the classic insanity of not being able to tell the difference between reality and your imagination. And so what's obvious here is that the alleged suspect in the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband was in the grip of psychosis. And to blame political ideology is just what you said. It's the equivalent of blaming Martin Scorsese for making the movie Taxi Driver on John Hinkley Jr.'s. attack on Ronald Reagan. It's the crazy ideas expressed in the blog posts of the alleged attacker of Pelosi are themselves symptoms of the underlying psychosis.

It's incorrect to point to them as the cause. So I heard this morning that he is in the hospital or was this weekend. Were those for injuries or is he in a psych ward? It could be both. You know, I think if he's, you know, if he's, you know, he wouldn't be hospitalized long term if he's in the hospital. He'll be held. He'll be diagnosed by a psychiatrist.

And we'll find out soon. I mean, I think that the good news is that the truth gets out. It was obvious to me because, of course, I'm very close to this. I wrote a whole book about this. It came out last year. It was obvious to me as soon as I heard about who he was and started talking to his neighbors and his family members, that this was somebody that was somebody that was, unwell and this was a result of a sickness, I was disturbed by how quickly, even so-called mainstream

journalists were to basically go and blame conservatives, blame Republicans, blame Trump. You know, if somebody were to be like, I read Michael Schellenberger's book, and that's why I committed this crime, it would be inappropriate to blame me for that crime. And I think everybody knows that, but in this toxic political environment, I think it's important to remind people of that. We never blamed Bernie Sanders ever. In fact, we were clear on day one that it wasn't Bernie Sanders' fault that one of his supporters went and tried to kill all the Republicans in Congress. That's ridiculous. Of course. Yeah, I mean, I was sorry to see it. I mean, basically, I had one episode in particular. There's a reporter who supposedly like focused on

disinformation at NBC News, who came out and he tweeted at my, my report. and said, oh, my reporting had been debunked because there's all these blog posts showing that the suspect and the attack had written crazy things, including some right-wing things, but also things about fairies and demons. And I thought very disturbing because I have a hard time believing that that journalist didn't know that what was driving was mental illness or psychosis. it really appeared that he was deliberately misleading people in order to engage in partisan political behavior just 10 days before an election. And it's not just on Twitter. I mean, if you watch Meet the Press yesterday, Chuck Todd's program on NBC, the whole program was basically dedicated to this topic. And at no point in any of the program did they even discuss the fact that the suspect was clearly in a psychotic state, suffering from delusions under long-term drug use. Instead, Chuck Todd made the whole show about political radicalization and ideas.

And I just think that's terrible reporting. I think it's very partisan. I won't speculate as to the motives of the journalist, but it's either bad journalism or politics. Is it worse that they did that or that when Kavanaugh, the guy from California came to kill Kavanaugh, they didn't even report it on any of the Sunday morning shows? Well, I mean, that's the other thing.

and I wrote a post about this yesterday, Glenn, and you're absolutely right. I mean, it's disturbing. I didn't really, I saw when the Kavanaugh assassination happened, of course, I paid attention to it, but I'll say this, there are many progressive and liberal people in my life who still do not know that there was a serious assassination plot against Supreme Court Justice Breit Kavanaugh, because it was not covered in anything close to this. So just as you said, three days after that assassination plot was revealed, none of the Sunday talk shows wrote about it. The New York Times buried the story on page A20. The Pelosi assassination, alleged

assassination attempt was on the front page of the New York Times two days in a row. And I'll tell you the other thing about it is that the suspect in the Kavanaugh killing was clearly motivated by his pro-choice and his pro-gun control views. And his own lawyers last week said that he was mentally fit to stand trial. In other words, it appears, and again, there's still more information to come, and I don't want to get ahead of it, but it appears as though the suspect in the Kavanaugh plot was genuinely motivated by political fanaticism, not by mental illness, whereas in the Pelosi case, he clearly was driven by psychosis mental illness, drug-induced, or underlying, we don't know, but the media basically reversed and did not and covered the Pelosi plot attempt as though it were driven by political fanaticism rather than by psychosis.

It really is incredible. You are from the area, Michael, and you were down there, right? These are some of these interviews we've seen when you were there, right? I was. I was. I mean, I think it's, you know, I'm a journalist at heart, and so it's not that far from my house. and I went down there and I interviewed all the neighbors. I mean, I'll tell you a couple of shocking things. I won't name names, but I was not impressed by the reporting of the other journalists. Good journalism is that you go and knock on all the doors and you interview as many people as you can. I was the only one doing that.

There was a lot of laziness here. There's a lot. And it's also the partisanship and the laziness are related, because if you have the idea that this was after Pelosi, then you don't want to go and get it. to the bottom of the other stuff. You don't want to go do those interviews. You want to stick with your little story. So that was part of it. And then, you know, like there's just, it's a really, you know, when you get into it, Glenn, as you might imagine, it's a tragic story. I mean,

it's two kids as a station. So she herself is something, I think she probably has a personality disorder and also long-term drug use. The kids are in that house. They apparently weren't going to school. I mean, this is a real, you know, it's basically a symptom of exactly. the problems I described in San Francisco, which is that we've stopped enforcing basic laws. And when you stop enforcing laws against people that are suffering mental illness or addicted to hard drugs, they don't get the help they need. And I think that's part of the lesson here is that this tragedy could have been averted if we enforced basic laws and mandated drug treatment and psychiatric care for the people who need it.

Um, you know, it's not that every time someone, you arrest somebody for breaking a law that they have to go to prison or they have to be punished, certainly some people do, but other people are just sick. And I think the track, I think what we'll discover as, as time goes on is that the suspect in the Pelosi attack was somebody who was very ill and needed to get treatment mandated many, many years ago, but didn't get it because we're in the grip of frankly some pretty radical left, uh, political ideas. Did you see the op-ed by, gosh, who was it? Shoot, lost his name. The guy who just wrote this weekend about the, you know, op-ed about Tom Cotton at the New York Times and how, yeah, he's an op-ed columnist, and he even didn't say anything about it. He said, because we were afraid to. When you said a minute ago that, you know, they don't want to find it, how many are afraid to do their job in journalism?

Well, I was afraid. I mean, I think there's a lot of, you know, you know my story. I mean, I came from the radical left. I consider myself a moderate. I'm politically independent. But, yeah, I mean, I was afraid on everything. And, you know, partly you worry about losing your friends. You worry about upsetting your family.

You worry about no longer being able to make a living. and, you know, what you're describing as a column by Washington Post reporter Eric Wemple, who writes a media column. And he basically, to his credit, there was an ambivalent reaction to it, interestingly enough, but basically to his credit, he came out and said it was wrong for the New York Times to fire its op-ed page editor, who ran, of course, this op-ed by Senator Cotton arguing for the use of the National Guard and U.S. troops to put down the riots. Well, he was not only did the New York Times, because of the outrage by its woke journalist staff, they basically denounce the op-ed. They fired the op-ed page editor.

Everybody watched this happen and knew it was wrong. And, you know, so to his credit, whatever it was, like two years ago now, this columnist of the Washington Post said that that was wrong. You know, I think it's good that, you know, it's better late than ever, and he's one of the first people to say it. But yeah, I mean, it's almost a, it's a kind of, yeah, it's social fear. You're worried about your friends and your family, but it's also a financial fear. Like, am I getting fired from my job? This is really serious stuff. And I think that the partisanship, and you always emphasize this, I think it's so important, you know, we need to allow disagreement in our society.

We need to appreciate and rewarded. I always kind of, I'm always shocked by how many people, instead of being like, oh, I disagree with you, they're like, you should stop saying that. Right. Right. Right. Right. We're with Michael Schellenberger.

I think, Michael, because you have experience in your family with schizophrenia, I think it was your aunt. Yes. Yes. So you've seen it firsthand. Can you? Well, yeah. I mean, it's interesting.

Of course, you know, when you're a child, you know, and, you know, she would say crazy things, you know, and so your parents have to explain to you. what that what's going on and it is a little scary of course it helps to have your parents there to kind of talk you through it but yeah she thought that the president of the united states i think at the time it was ford or yeah i think it was for to nixon that they were communicating with her directly to the television set you know so i think there's a reaction that people have to this case where they go okay maybe he was psychotic conspiracy theories out there and those need to stop well no First of all, we have freedom of speech, and that means that we actually let people have conspiracy theories.

We let people believe all sorts of things. That's a point of a free society. So the idea that we're going to get rid of certain ideas is a very bad road to go down. But the other thing is just that psychotic people will always find some justification for their behaviors. That's different than suggesting that those are the motivations. I do think this is something that people can get. but they have to think about it for a minute, which is that, and we know this is true for everybody, right?

It's that like you have a motivation to do something, but you might give a different reason for why you did it. Well, people that are psychotic, they give crazier reasons often. But in many cases, like I look at this case, and I suspect, Glenn, that what we'll discover is that this is somebody who was, you know, he's lost. He lost his wife and kids. He wasn't able to hold down a good job. He was using heavy drugs.

his motivation was probably to somehow make his life better, as crazy as that sound. I know. To be a hero or something like that. He had some story in his head about how he was going to become a hero for, this is how often these guys think by making its attack. And that's ultimately what was driving it, not like, you know, not some political radicalization. So I, but there are some, there are few things about the story that I don't know if they're true or not. I, you know, I look at these things.

And the reason why we have a plethora of conspiracy theories is because we no longer trust the media. We no longer trust the government to tell us anything close to the truth. And then there are these things that just kind of hang out in the air and nobody explains them. And it doesn't fit in with the storyline that the media is going for. First of all, does that make sense to you? You think that's right? Well, yeah, sure. I mean, look, here's, you know, the media, they're partisan now.

Right. And maybe they've always been, although I do think there's no doubt that it's gotten worse. Yeah, much worse. So when this happened, they rushed to make this a story about why you should not vote for Republicans. The Best of the Glenn Beck program. On Ziegler is with us. He's got a new podcast out, which is fantastic. I listened to it this weekend.

The Death of Journalism. He is the co-host there, and we have several things we want to talk to him about that come about with the death of journalism. Hello, John. How are you? I'm doing well. Happy Halloween. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Well, you sound like you're in the mood. Well, I got two young kids. It's a big holiday. Oh, yeah, yeah, I know. Okay, so, John, let's start in San Francisco with Paul Pelosi. What is your take on this, you know, being a guy. who, when given a bone, never ever releases it. What is really happening here?

Well, I have a pretty unique take on this one. I think everybody's wrong. As your guest in the last hour said, there's no question that the initial left-wing narrative that this was some sort of a MAGA attack is utterly ridiculous. I do not believe in that at all. I am very suspicious of the Where's Nancy comment? And that could have been either not said or been said in a very, very different context.

I think that there's a lot of unanswered questions here. I totally get the skepticism. And the skepticism, Glenn, on the right on this story is off the charts. I've been spending most of the last three days on social media interacting with people about this. And there is absolutely no trust at all in the official. version of events, and I understand. I mean, there's no question there should the 911 call should be released, the body cam footage, security footage. I understand why people are asking questions about this official narrative, because the official narrative is utterly hilarious and

ridiculous. But you do have to recognize at some point the media has to, that they're the one's causing the conspiracy theories by not just laying the evidence out. Glenn, what you just said there's the most important point of any and all this. It's way bigger than what really did or did not happen with Paul Pelosi, and it's a large part of our podcast, the death of journalism. And for instance, you know, the election conspiracies, I blame the news media for a large part of that because of the way they treated, you know how I feel about Donald Trump, they treated Trump horrendously for four years.

It's not a shock that his supporters don't trust you when you tell them that the election would be fair. Right. So that's the media's fault, not entirely, but in large part. But let me go back to Pelosi for a second. So we're prefacing my answer to your very good

question with, I totally get the skepticism, and I totally get, I really get the deep, deep desire people on the right for the left to eat it on this because of their rush to judgment. that this was a MAGA guy. But what Elon Musk did with the tweeting of the gay sex gone wrong theory and Denexta Susan and some other very prominent right-winger jumping all over that, I think was a huge

mistake because I don't think that theory makes any sense either. Sometimes really strange things happen. Sometimes Jeffrey Epstein really kills himself in prison and somehow is able to do that. sometimes O.J. Simpson kills his wife and a friend who just happens to be coming by at that moment. I mean, that's the way life is often very weird. Now, I'm not saying, again, we shouldn't be asking questions. We should, especially this close to an election. But the gay sex gone wrong theory I have huge problems with,

and I think that in a way here, conservatives should have focused on debunking the MAGA myth and making this a crime issue and basically turned, you know, to use a sports analogy, a field goal into potentially a going for on fourth down and throwing a pick six. I just, I don't like the conservatives are doing what liberals are doing,

which is rushing the judgment without all the facts. Right, right. And that's, I think, very troublesome. This is a problem on both sides, but the left clearly started this. So let's go through a couple of things that don't make sense to you, that you think need to be explained?

Well, I think a large part of what's happening on the right is that the fog of war is being interpreted in a way that they want to see the story go. And Glenn, you know, I've become very well known for debunking these types of stories. Right. And I have a rule. I have a rule that if I want an outcome to be the case, I am requiring two or three times as much evidence. Yeah, me too. push me in that direction, right?

You have to do it that way, because you have to adjust for your own biases. And instead, conservatives or people on the right on this story are going in the other direction. They're taking fragments of stuff that happened in the middle of the night in the initial report.

Let's be clear. Let's blame the media again. The news media is not just terrible because they're biased. They're terrible when it comes to getting details right. They're just awful. And so there are elements of the original reporting that are still being used, like, for instance, that there was a third person that opened the door, that the, you know, that closely referred to the suspect as a friend.

Well, those, that the suspect may have been totally either naked or is underwear. All those things are now in dispute, and they're important parts of this counter-narrative. Hang on just a second. The one that says he was a friend is, I don't believe, in dispute. I think that's actually on the tape. And I think it actually works to say that the story is as you believe it is. And as I believe it is, this nut job comes in the house. I think Paul Pelosi was speaking somewhat in code because he said, yes, he's waiting for my wife. He's going to wait for my wife.

And he's a friend. And I think he was, I think he was. I think he was playing that to the police because they were just going to do regular dispatch, but the lady felt the woman who was at dispatch felt something was really wrong and hit the, I don't know what you call the red alert, but had everybody race to the place because she knew he didn't sound right. That's a good, that's really good analysis there, Glenn. And so what, you know, and you're using the kind of thought process. use. I go through, okay, what's the official story? And is there a plausible explanation for everything that we have been told? And that is a very plausible explanation because we know this guy was nuts, okay? We know that. So how, but can you be nuts and take a website that's been there for 15 years

and dormant and all of a sudden hop on a few days before and post stuff that looks like you've been posting a year or so. Right. And it's all crazy stuff. Well, that's a very good question. And I totally agree that that should be investigated fully and there should be high suspicion towards anything that points towards the MAGA attack theory on this, because that is a situation that very much like I already excoriated the right for, the left, desperately wants to be true. Right. That's always, it's always one of the key points in evaluating any of these stories. How much does the media want it to be true? And they desperately, 10 days before an election,

want the MAGA attack story to be true. So I guess I'm saying a pox on both, on all sides here. But, you know, the, I wish, why can't we just wait now? And demand that the footage be released, the 911 call be released. I mean, this is clearly a very politically charged story. just before a major election involving, you know, the husband of Nancy Pelosi. Look, I get that for conservatives, it's very, very difficult to believe that a straight man could be married to Nancy Pelosi for all these years. I get it.

But I happen to know people have known Paul Pelosi since his days at Georgetown. I went to Georgetown. My father went there. There's no rumors about him being gay, okay? Those story broke. There's nobody coming forward to say they've had gay. sex with a suspect, which you would expect would be the case, right? With all the media coverage as in created, unless Hillary Clinton had them all killed.

John, I forgot about that. Yeah, right. John, I haven't seen as much, because I have seen a couple posts about this theory you're mentioning. You know, I haven't seen as much coverage on that, so I don't know much about that part of it. But I do think that part of the reason why we don't get the facts on this one right away is the elections eight days away. This, we can't know the whole story here, which appears to be just a lunatic doing something crazy. We can't have that whole story because they need to use it for eight days. After eight days, we'll have the same thing that we're getting now with like, let's say COVID, right? Where we're getting, oh, well, maybe those lockdowns of the schools weren't such a good idea. We'll get those after the fact. We, they cannot give us anything

other than this was January 6 related, at least for the next eight days? I agree with that totally, and it's frustrating as hell, and we should fight back against that with everything we have. I've already mentioned the Elon Musk thing, and see, that to me is what put that the gay sex gone wrong theory into the stratosphere and may have caused great damage, because obviously Musk is under a microscope right now, and he is being destroyed for having shared a link that I never would have even dreamed of sharing. And here he is, you know, obviously of great prominence and being looked at with great scrutiny.

And I think he lost a lot of sway that he may have had previously with people that are in the middle. And now the media is making him into an enemy all over a story that not only was incredible. I don't, you know, it is not true. And I'll be shocked if it turns out that this is anything close to what that theory entailed. And like I said, there were other prominent right-wing commentators who jumped all over. But still, your point is really well taken. The time continuum with the media is a real issue because we're now living in an age where you've got to get the story out immediately. Social media reacts.

We've come up with our own narratives that fit our own priors. And truth doesn't matter. And then by the time it does come out, No one cares anymore. Yeah. Can we spend a couple of minutes here on James Gordon Meek? Sure. He's the guy who was an ABC journalist working on a book about the disaster in Afghanistan,

was picked up by somebody in black vans in front of his house back in April. There's witnesses to it. He was thrown into the van. And then he hasn't been seen since. And I was in a meeting yesterday and my guys were like, We're not getting anywhere on this. And I'm like, oh, I know somebody. I know somebody who won't sleep until he figures this one out.

You've done an initial look into this James Gordon Meek disappearance. And what have you found? Well, you know, the reporting on this I find to be very interesting because there have been two major stories, one by Rolling Stone, one by the Daily Beast, which kind of contradict each other. Yes. And in critical ways. And again, it's hard to determine, all right, what's incompetence by the news media, which I'm always first. That's always where I go first in the modern news media is incompetence. And I frankly think that the Rolling Stone story may have been greatly incompetent.

You know, it's a shame, though, Glenn, that we don't have a news outlet that would be, have a special entree into this story. I don't know, like ABC News. Yeah. Like, where the guy, where the guy worked for years and was very, very prominent. And, you know, apparently they're scrubbing from news stories that he was the producer for David Muir, you know, because we're going to pretend that this guy never existed before. Look, this is one of those, this is one of those classic stories that exposes a lot of what we talked about in the previous segment. That the lack of trust in all institutions, the media, the FBI, you know, all else. elements of our government is so low, so catastrophically low, that all bets are off now,

and that all questions are relevant, and even sometimes things that end up being conspiracy theories come from very rational people, because that's the world we're now living in, that we no longer have any reason to trust what we're being told, and that's the really scary part. As far as what really happened here, you know, the theory that this didn't have anything to do with his ABC work, I think makes sense. some sense because there's no evidence that he went to ABC and said, hey, protect me here, because that would make some sense, right?

If you're working at ABC and, you know, you're being accused of having classified information related to your work, the first thing you're going to do to protect yourself is go to the giant ABC, use their lawyers, and what have you. That did not happen here. So I wish we had more information. This is a story that I think we absolutely should keep an eye on. But I don't currently have an answer to the question of what really happened. There's too many things here that just are just wrong on it.

It needs some answers. And it might be non-nefarious. It might be the guy just freaked out and sliven. But it's just too weird. John, before you go, I want to tell you, I listen to your podcast. Who's your co-host? What's her name? Liz Habib.

She's a former news anchor and sports anchor here in Los Angeles and a professor of journalism at Syracuse University. She, if she told the story about, you know, losing, was it her parents, her mom? Yeah, her mother on with COVID. And it was so powerful. And that's where you're beginning, the death of journalism is on COVID. And what journalists did and didn't do. Powerful stuff, John. It's right up your alley. Really great podcast.

Thanks so much, Glenn. I hope people check out the death of journalism. Appreciate your time. You got it. John Ziegler, the death of journalism, wherever you get your podcasts.