Friday, May 24, 2013

Glenn Beck: What If the Obama Administration Isn't Lying About the Scandals?

In all likely hood, the Obama administration is directly responsible for the scandals, particularly the president himself.  But Glenn Beck throws in an odd possibility: What if the administration is NOT responsible after all?  This, then, would bring up great concerns over the great overlapping bureaucracies in our government.  In an article in The Blaze written by Erica Ritz, this scenario is discussed at length, citing Beck's opinions and what he based those on:

Glenn Beck: What if Obama Administration is Telling the Truth on Scandals?
(Above: President Barack Obama speaks at the National Defense University May 23, 2013 in Washington, DC. Photo: Getty Images)
On his Thursday night television program, Glenn Beck took a different approach to the scandals currently facing the Obama administration: let’s take our leaders at their word.
Few on the right believe the administration’s ever-changing stories regarding Benghazi, the IRS targeting conservatives, and the DOJ seizing the phone records of reporters. The struggle has been to elicit more information to fill in the gaps, or determine who was lying and when.
But Beck said that tonight, for the sake of covering all the bases, we should analyze the ramifications of if the president and his top officials are actually telling the truth.
Would it make you feel more, or less safe?
“The mantra of this administration in the face of the scandals has been the same: We don’t know, we just don’t know,” Beck said, playing a montage of the president, Attorney General Eric Holder, and others.
The only possible explanation if they are telling the truth, Beck said, is that President Obama is “completely disengaged and out of the loop.”
“That would mean he is not in charge of what is happening in the agencies that answer to him.  If that is true, are you comfortable with it?” he asked.  “Why is he so uninformed and out of touch?  How could he possibly effectively govern if he is that far removed? …If he is not the one being informed and updated and steering the ship, who is?  Is there anyone?”
Beck proceeded to analyze Benghazi, the DOJ seizing the records of reporters, and Operation Fast and Furious.
“…And the president of the United States had no clue?” Beck said.  “None? …If the president is not informed on national security threats like this, what else is he not being informed on?  How can he give a speech [on counter-terrorism] like he did today?  By his own admission, he’s not being brought into the loop.”
After covering all the scandals in more detail, Beck summarized: “This is the scenario the administration wants you to believe, it’s just been condensed.  It’s a scenario where, through their incompetence and indifference, Americans suffer and then when they find out about it, they vow to get to the bottom of it.  But have they gotten to the bottom of any of these yet?”
“If this is the story they want you to believe, it is so bad it begs one more question,” Beck concluded. “How bad is the truth?”
(Here is the link to the video of Beck talking about the subject.)

***
Below is today's statement from Beck's official website:

Glenn Beck by Gage Skidmore 3.jpg

(Above: Conservative political analyst Glenn Beck.  Courtesy of Wikipedia)

It’s been painfully obvious the administration is distorting the truth and even outright lying when it comes to the scandals plaguing the White House. But what if the story the White House is spinning is actually true – that the President, Holder, Hillary and other top officials don’t know anything about anything. What does that say about the administration? Glenn had more on radio today.
I want to go over something I went over last night on the TV show. It’s a really simple question, really simple question. With these scandals that are going on around the White House, it’s time for the American people to use some logic and ask themselves this question: What if the president and the top officials in his administration are actually telling the truth? Let’s take the man at his word, and it’s really hard to do seeing that this ‑‑ the truth keeps shifting six or seven times just in the last few days. It makes it quite a leap of faith to believe anything that they say. But today I really want you to take him at his word and let’s say they really didn’t know about any of these scandals. The story line the administration wants you to believe, and they want you to believe it because that somehow or another is better for them. If it’s really the truth, does it matter? It’s really hard to believe that this is the truth, but I’m going to give it to you just as they have laid it out and then ask you if you believe it and then ask you to believe it for a second and ask what does it say. Where does it leave us? What does it say about the future of our country? What does it say about this president? Are we headed in the right direction? Will we and our children be more safe or less safe? Let’s follow their lead. Let’s take them at their word. The mantra of this administration in the face of all three of these scandals is “We don’t know, we weren’t aware, I don’t ‑‑ I don’t know exactly, I certainly didn’t know anything and there certainly was no knowledge at the White House.” Those are all quotes. So pull back and think about those things. Three huge scandals and no one in the White House or around the president knew. That’s what they’re asking you to believe. But I want to ask you to believe it for a second. What does that mean if it actually is the truth? On the IRS the president wants you to believe that even though the IRS commission visited ‑‑ the commissioner visited the White House 118 times and the IRS commissioner knew about the scandal for over a year, that most of his senior White House staff knew of the scandal for over a year, the media was reporting on the targeting, TheBlaze had broken the news in 2012. And I want you to know we know for a fact. We know for a fact that this president is very aware of the things that we say. We know for a fact because we know people who have been in rooms. We know for a fact that this president discusses the things that we discuss on this program. So despite the fact that not only us but the media was reporting on the targeting in February 2012, this president had no idea. The charges were brought up at a congressional hearing last year. He always seems to find out things from the news. That was in the news. No one told him. He didn’t ask. His own team was debating internally at the White House with IRS officials on how to manage the public relations fallout, and somehow or another he didn’t know. Despite all of this swirling around, despite the fact that a president is also a political animal, politics matter, no one went and cracked open his door and said, “Mr. President, we have a problem.” No one asked him anything. He still doesn’t know anything. Carney has said “We weren’t aware of any activity or any review.” Really? The president has said “I can assure you I certainly didn’t know anything.”
It’s virtually impossible for the president to have not known anything about this scandal. It’s virtually impossible… unless he is completely isolated. There are millions of ways he could have found out: The news, his staff, 118 visits, little coffee klatches, actually listening to people. But he didn’t know. Let’s take him at his word. What does that mean? That means that this president, the IRS commissioner reports directly to the president. The IRS commissioner was meeting at the White House 118 times. It’s under the treasury. He meets with the treasury. It is literally down the hallway. You’ve got to go downstairs and through a hallway underground and you’re in the treasury building. The treasury is next door to the White House. It’s not across town. They report directly to the president, and he didn’t know. The only way that’s true is he’s out of the loop, he’s disengaged, he’s not in charge of his people, he has said “I’m going golfing; you guys take care of it.” He is more his wife who says she hates the White House, she hates politics and she doesn’t want anything to do with it. It’s ‑‑ he’s really asking us to believe that golf is ahead of knowing what’s going on. If that is true, if it is true that he doesn’t know, why? How can he effectively govern if he doesn’t know? And if he’s not the one being informed and updated, if he’s not the one setting the course, who is? Because we elected him to oversee. We elected him to get to the bottom of it. We elected him, not somebody else. He appoints all of these people. Did he give them carte blanche and do whatever they want and then don’t call me about it; I don’t want to know. I’m busy golfing. What is the story?
Being that our government is made up of elected representatives, the American people have the right to know who’s calling the shots. Is it the president or is it not? And if it’s not, fine; just tell us who is calling the shots. Is keeping the president out of the loop, is that intentional? I mean, remember with the Iran contra thing, the problem was they intentionally kept the president out of the loop. That was one scandal. This seems to be everything in his administration. This president doesn’t know what’s going on.
If the president president’s story line is accurate, either he’s not in charge or big government is failing… or, you know, the other, of course, we won’t accept for the purpose of this monologue as being true: He’s lying. The Associated Press, this thing shifts so fast, I don’t know how you can figure out what they’re saying to you. But the Associated Press and Fox News and CBS scandals where they’re wiretapping, they were wiretapping the phones of journalists. Once again, the White House just doesn’t have a clue, other than ‑‑ and this is a quote ‑‑ from hearing the press reports. Wow. Why even have an executive summary in the morning? Just pop on the TV. The man in charge of the DOJ, the attorney general, Eric Holder, doesn’t have a clue. He claimed he didn’t know anything about the AP, yet today we can report that he is now, new information, the guy who ordered the hit on Fox. But for the AP, Holder said he certainly didn’t alert the White House. Really? The reason why he did the AP is because he said it was the third biggest leak, one of the top three biggest leaks he’s ever seen, since 1973. It was vital to the nation’s interest and one of the most dangerous internal leaks he’s ever seen.
Now, I don’t know about you, but if we’re ‑‑ if we have dangerous leaks and one of the top three and the guy who reports directly to me ‑‑ remember, Eric Holder’s boss is the president. There’s nobody in between him and the president. Eric Holder’s boss is the president, and he never decides to go over in all of his meetings and crack the door and say, “Mr. President, we have the most ‑‑ one of the top three most dangerous leaks I’ve ever seen.” He never briefs the president on it? Not once? What does that mean? If the president didn’t really know, was your life put in harm’s way because they didn’t alert the president? He called this one of the most serious leaks of all time. If it was such a serious threat to national security, you didn’t alert the president of the United States as to what was happening? Americans were in danger and this president wants us to believe that for some reason, I don’t know what yet, but for some reason he was so detached from the office of the presidency, either campaigning or campaigning for gun control or playing golf or going on vacation or planning another party at the White House, that he didn’t even know a serious leak, one of the top three, was actually threatening American lives. If the president is not informed on serious threats to national security like this, who is being informed of these things? Who is calling the shot? Who does Eric Holder actually report to? What other security threats is he not being informed about? What else is he missing? What else doesn’t he know? Does it make America less or more safe? What does it mean for free speech that the president, who’s the one who lifted his hand and said to protect and defend the Constitution of America, what does it mean? Does the president’s indifference and disconnection from the issue promote free speech or stifle it? Does it keep the government in check? What message does it send if the president shows no interest in the stopping of the systematic targeting of whistleblowers and members of the press? Will it cause more people or less people to risk their livelihoods in order to keep government accountable and tell the truth? If less people are willing to speak out against the government, does that increase or decrease government power is this does it increase or decrease government abuses of that power? Is it good for you and your family if there are no whistleblowers?
On Benghazi, on top of ‑‑ on top of all of these things, the top officials in the White House had no earthly idea that trouble was on the horizon in Benghazi. All of them have said they didn’t have any intelligence prior to, but the facts now show they had plenty of intelligence on it. The president said he didn’t know that there were requests. He was, quote, personally not aware of any requests. No one in the administration knew. They weren’t told that they wanted more security. Well, who was? Who was? If the administration could miss all of the intelligence warnings that came in advance of the Benghazi attacks for September 11th, the day of any day we have to be more prepared and they weren’t aware of those attacks, they didn’t hear the voices crying out from the desert in the most dangerous place, if they couldn’t hear that, how did they miss that? If the president and the secretary of state didn’t have any information, any connection or apparent interest in the safety precautions for Benghazi at that time on September 11th, are public servants less safe or more safe today? Is America less safe or more safe? If they’re willing to go against the intelligence reports and concoct a bogus story about a video while claiming it was the best available intelligence, which it wasn’t, we now know, but they say they ‑‑ that’s all they saw, well, don’t you think we need to find out who put that bogus intelligence in and then claim to the president that’s the best we have? Shouldn’t we be firing that person right now? Shouldn’t the president be smoked beyond belief? Let’s just say that he still doesn’t get it. If he still doesn’t get it and he really didn’t know and he’s not really interested in finding the person that really put that bogus intelligence in there and then said that that was the best intelligence available, what else is this president being fed lies about that he’s gullible enough to believe?
For the purpose of this monologue, what else is he willing to be ‑‑ to believe because he’s just so disengaged? And in seeing that they haven’t been outraged by the YouTube video lies and haven’t fired the people responsible, does that make it more or less reasonable that they understand the security of the United States of America and your family the way you do? Seeing that the leaders around the world, including the president of Libya, came out on television the very next day and said “This is ridiculous; this was obviously a terrorist attack” and then we send Rice all across the television to tell the lies, the president did from the rose garden. Will the rest of the world trust us and our vision and our common sense more or less? And if the president laid out, you know, went to bed, as Leon Panetta said, had a quick briefing with him at 5:00 and then went to bed and then never heard any ‑‑ never heard a peep from the president or the White House, nobody contacted to find out what the Pentagon was doing. The Pentagon made all of the calls; the president was uninvolved; does that make you comfortable? Let me ask the left: That means the military industrial complex is not being watched over a guy you elected. That means the president of the United States said, “You just take care of it. Whatever you want.” Really? You’re comfortable with that? Because even a hawk like me, I’m not comfortable with that.
The president exercised his executive privilege and claimed Eric Holder was not aware. He and Eric Holder of Fast and Furious, he says he has complete confidence in that. Now here’s ‑‑ this is a gun‑running operation. Really? Help me out with that. Help me out. What does it mean? The president of the United States and the top man at the DOJ have no earthly idea that their own people are literally arming drug cartels with thousands of guns. Does that make Americans and our neighbors in Mexico less safe or more safe? If some rogue government underlings can get away with arming deadly drug cartels with guns and escape the notice of the management of the United States, what other dangerous activity are they engaging in that they don’t know about? How can the president lead if the president doesn’t have a clue on what’s happening around him? He doesn’t know what’s going on at the IRS; Americans become victims. He doesn’t know what’s going on at the DOJ, and both American citizens and members of the American press become victims. He doesn’t know what’s going overseas and Americans are victims, murdered in cold blood. He doesn’t know what’s going on with Fast and Furious and American border patrol agents like Brian Terry become victims, murdered, and people across the border are killed by the guns that were run by the DOJ.
This is the scenario that our president is asking you, hoping that you will believe, a scenario where through their incompetence and indifference Americans suffer as they get to the bottom of it. But they haven’t gotten to the bottom of it. There’s been celebrity parties and vacations. There’s been campaigning against the Second Amendment, and there’s been a lot of golf. You tell me. If that’s what they want you to believe, how bad is the truth?
If the president is actually telling the truth, I shudder to think who is really ruling this nation.

No comments: