The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government recently held a hearing and Glenn knew it would be a wake-up call for how close we are to living Orwell's 1984. But it was even more disturbing than he thought it would be. "We live in two separate realities," Glenn says. While Republican lawmakers and journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger focused on exposing how our government is using psychological warfare against its citizens, the Democrats and their witness just kept comparing Trump to Hitler. "This is brainwashing...this is the worst of the worst," Glenn says. "And they didn't want to talk about it."
TranscriptBelow is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Yesterday, there was a very important hearing in Congress on the weaponization of the federal government.
And I knew it would be a wake-up call about how close we are to living Orwell's 1984.
But in a surprising way, it was even more disturbing to me. And, you know, in the super boring way, that all government hearings are. I'm going to have to spare you from watching all of it. I have clips from it. And then go watch all of it.
I will summarize what happened. The hearing started from a speech from the Democrat ranking member about how there is absolutely positively none, zero evidence that the government colluded with social media to censor people.
Okay? This was the first five minutes. My eyes were ready to pop out of my head. But this was old news. We already know there's evidence.
We already have seen the Twitter files and everything else. But then she continued on that theme.
And then the democratic committee members, decided to talk about. Instead of the government colluding with social media, to strangle the First Amendment to death. They didn't want to talk about that.
They wanted to talk about Donald Trump. Seriously.
They brought in a witness, a former Homeland Security and counterterrorism adviser to Mike Pence, to talk about how Trump is literally Hitler.
VOICE: In your testimony, you cited violent language, increasingly incendiary language being invoked by President Trump about the so-called enemies. One of the words he used was vermin.
What does that echo in your mind?
Anything else come to mind, historically, who refer to enemies of the state as vermin?
VOICE: Yes, the horrible Hitler.
VOICE: And Goebbels.
GLENN: Yeah. And Stalin. And probably Mao. Not good people.
Not good people.
But here she is, echoing what every democratic member said.
Other than that Trump is Hitler. He wants to ban all Muslims. Overthrow the government. And he is going to start exterminating people.
Now, here's the second part of her testimony.
VOICE: Weaponization of the federal government is a serious topic that requires sober analysis.
And fortunately, what we see here today, and what we have seen from this committee over the past year, is instead of politically motivated fantasy detached from reality, members of this committee and their witnesses made grand and vague accusations about government censorship.
But those foggy allegations are refuted by the facts, that private social media companies moderating content on their own. Private platforms is not government censorship.
GLENN: Oh, my gosh.
VOICE: It is those private companies exercising their own First Amendment rights. To rid their platforms of misinformation.
GLENN: There is a treasure trove of documents.
You will not believe -- when you go down this rabbit hole, you must -- you must go down this rabbit hole.
When you go down the rabbit hole of what was released this week.
And I'm going to go into it here in a second. You will see the actual documents and emails. All right?
It was like watching two unrelated hearings playing over each other at the same time.
At one moment, there were witnesses talking about how our government is using psychological warfare against its own citizens. And then boom, Trump is Hitler.
We live in two separate realities. It's like half the country, recently came from an alternate universe, which got melded into ours. In some cosmic storm.
I don't know. Maybe this is global warming or something.
And sometimes the portal rips open. And the two universes sit side by side. Yet totally separate.
We're talking about how social media is colluding with the government. This is not just censorship.
Colluding with the government. And the documents prove, the US Intel and military industrial complex, to literally change the way people in America think. They are operating government psyops on Americans.
This is brainwashing. This is Manchurian candidate stuff.
This is -- this is Ray Bradbury.
I mean, this is the worst of the worst. And they didn't want to talk about it. This is a major issue. And we've got less than a year.
And if we don't solve this, we're done.
Now, I watched two men. Who both, I think were both lefties. Okay?
They were both Democrats and lefties. At one point.
But they are actual journalists.
Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi.
Former Democrats, debating with a democratic congresswoman who so help me, was arguing that because there was only 35 percent of URLs labeled, removed, or soft blocked. That there was evidence that there was no censorship. And you could hear Matt Taibbi, say kind of under his breath.
35 percent of the First Amendment.
Okay. But at the same time. Pence's former adviser was saying, the only weaponization of the government we need to worry about is Trump.
Who isn't even in the government right now.
And since he's Hitler, you know, wouldn't it be best to get a hold of this government censorship apparatus? Before your Hitler comes back?
I have to tell you, there was also this bizarre effort to equate free speech on the internet, with horrific crimes. Listen to this. This is one congresswoman, Democrat, asking Matt Taibbi, if he was okay with having rape, live streamed online.
Here it is.
VOICE: Mr. Taibbi, yes or no, should social media companies allow rape and murder to be live streamed by terrorists on their platforms in order to create fear and incite violence?
VOICE: I believe it would violate their terms of service.
VOICE: So your answer is no. They should not be allowed to do that?
VOICE: Live stream rape and murder? No. I think that would count as speech that is prohibited under --
VOICE: Good. Good.
GLENN: It's not speech. It's crime! It's rape and murder. That's not speech.
I have to play one more clip of a democratic Congress man calling the whole thing a conspiracy.
But in doing so, actually explained what was happening. Oh, so very well.
VOICE: So if we really want to talk about the weaponization of the federal government. And we should talk about it. That's Donald Trump. That's not this grand, crazy conspiracy of how the administration has utilized the social media companies, against whom the First Amendment does not apply, in order to suppress speech.
GLENN: Thank goodness many of the committee members recognized that.
VOICE: So an agency funded and created we, the government. A partnership funded and created by -- or by the government's number one stated goal is to censor true information.
VOICE: The whole narratives. Whole ways of thinking.
VOICE: That should terrify everybody. Democrat, Republican, independent, young, old, anybody else.
VOICE: This is so critical to understand.
In whole thinking. This is not about the old censorship. Twitter was censored. That's not this.
There is censorship.
But now we have added covert operations, run and funded by the Pentagon, run by our military industrial complex.
In public/private partnerships, to destroy the lives, not only the narrative.
But then to destroy the lives of those who the government needs to be silenced.
Even if they know it to be true.
Then, active disinformation, you run by puppet voices and bots to get you to think a different way.
And it's not just about misinformation, that's out there.
They want to block anyone, on any narrative, that might disagree with the government's narrative. And do that in advance.
Remember, Michael added something really important here.
Whole narratives.
Whole ways of thinking.