Scott Baker from Breitbart.tv is my hero for the day.
» Seven-Minute Slam: The Inside Story of Glenn Beck’s ‘Ambush’ on ‘The View’
Source: www.breitbart.tv
In a video post dated June 2, 2009, Breitbart TV reporter Scott Baker reveals that – shocker – Whoopi Goldberg was lying about Glenn Beck’s lying. What’s more, Barbara Walters didn’t check her facts before the Baxter-esque duo ambushed Beck on his May 20 appearance on ABC’s “The View.”
The video – embedded at right – is quite long, but I’ve broken down below the information offered in it.
First up in Baker’s video is a recap of what was known before his investigation. Beck rode the Amtrak Acela from Connecticut to Washington D.C., and along the way, encountered Walters and Goldberg. The facts surrounding this encounter were hotly disputed in Beck’s appearance on “The View.” As it turns out, Beck’s version of the facts were incredibly accurate. For example, the main premise of the Viewettes’ accusations was that Walters called Beck over to their seats to speak with him – which Beck never claimed in the first place.
Baker follows with incredulity:
So the whole premise of the accusation was false? Pretty much. Why are we talking about this? Didn’t North Korea just test a nuke? Isn’t Chrysler going bankrupt? Didn’t Biden mock Obama’s teleprompter – you know, the important stuff? Why are we talking about who’s talking to who on a train? Why did this become a network television meltdown?
So how about the rest of it? The police escort and reserved seats, for example; were those things actually done for the Viewettes’ ease of transportation?
Actually, yes. So Beck wasn’t lying about that either. According to Baker, the head of Amtrak communications confirmed to him that ABC had contacted Amtrak in regard to the possibility of a curb-to-train police escort, and that the seats may have been reserved at the discretion of the train’s staff.
In sum, Beck didn’t lie or scramble the facts about his encounter with Walters – and did not so much as misspeak. Beck was also correct about the police escort for Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. Finally, Beck was, as far as anyone can tell, correct about the reserved seats.
Oh, and the icing on the cake: ABC refuses to communicate with journalists any more on the matter.
Now combine that with the obvious fact that Barbara Walters, a veteran journalist, did not check her facts, all while simultaneously attacking Beck, a self-described commentator, for not checking his facts as a journalist (which he never claimed to be).
The irony of this is nearly beyond belief.
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Glenn Beck: Who's the lying sack of dog mess now? …Indeed!!!!
June 3, 2009 - 12:07 ET
GLENN: Scott Baker is on the phone now from Breitbart TV. Scott, is this the most ridiculous story you've ever reported on?
BAKER: Oh, yeah, if not number one, it's got to be in the top five. And really it was because I felt personally responsible that you got annihilated because we were the ones that put up the original story the Monday after the dinner, when Whoopi gets on at the beginning of your appearance and says, somebody sent me this link, and I got really pissed off.
GLENN: You were the one?
BAKER: So I felt like I owed it to you to figure out what actually happened.
GLENN: I didn't know that. You what are you doing to me, man?
BAKER: I think it was, you know, I don't know, it was karma. My co host Liz Stephans and I were at the Hilton the night of the dinner and I saw and, in fact, I had this cool live backpack that let me wander around broadcasting live from inside the Hilton, and I saw Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. I did not see you, but I heard that you were there in your pirate cummerbund and everything. And so on Monday
GLENN: You cannot wear
BAKER: When I heard you tell the story about the train, I took it I think the same sort of tone you did. It was just sort of this odd little, you know, amusing thing.
GLENN: Yeah, just a funny stupid little story.
BAKER: Put that up as a post. In fact, people were really interested in because I think they are interested in the idea of privileged media elites being treated like privileged media elites.
GLENN: Right.
BAKER: And so all of a sudden this becomes I'm watching The View when you were on and I'm like, I cannot believe that this is happening.
GLENN: Okay. So hang on just a second. You know, you took the right approach to this story that they missed entirely and that is, you know, as an aside at the end of the story, I said this is why the media thinks, you know, all of these things are great, because they get this special privilege and they're like, "No, I ride Amtrak. I mean, what's wrong with Amtrak?" No, you don't ride Amtrak the way the regular people ride Amtrak. You just were escorted through the train station with police officers. Then they walked you into the car where there were magically some seats available that nobody was sitting in. You know what I mean?
BAKER: Would that that was exactly it. To me the heart of the story was not like who said hi to who. The heart of the story became hypocrisy and that's when I really got interested. In fact, that's when I sort of got a little ticked off because as I started to check on it and you guys are already talked about it a little bit on the air and Stu the played the clip showing that you never even said she came over to you. And still I thought, you know, what happens on here's a national television show that takes this rising conservative media star and spends an entire seven minute segment. And there are women that watch that show that may not have seen your Fox show, may not pay attention to anything and they are going to have a lingering impression, "Oh, this is the guy that makes stuff up," right?
GLENN: Right.
BAKER: It's easy to throw that out there, make fun of you for not saying, "Are you a reporter, do you check your facts" and then they move on and they don't want to hear about it. So that's when I started putting in calls to the Amtrak PR guys, the ABC PR guys. And honestly I thought I would get a little bit of response. I was astounded, stonewall everywhere. And so that's when I thought, all right, well, I'm just going to keep at this. And so that's what I did.
GLENN: Hold on.
BAKER: And that's when it cracked.
GLENN: Hold on just a second. Because you are a reporter. I'm not. When you got stonewalled, did you think, holy cow, did you go into this thinking that maybe I was making this up or I mean, how did you approach this and when did you know, oh, my gosh, ABC is lying?
BAKER: Yeah. Well, yes, you are right, you've got me because, you know, we've had you on your show that we do on Breitbart TV, the B Cast and we've hung out just a little bit a couple of times you've been in Pittsburgh and so I knew firsthand that you are a lying sack of dog mess. I knew that right away.
GLENN: (Laughing).
BAKER: So I went in with that, you know, as my obviously.
GLENN: Yes, yes. Glenn is clearly a lying sack of dog mess.
BAKER: Exactly. And in fact, what happened, I called I thought, you know what, I'm going to start with Amtrak, you know, before I call ABC.
GLENN: Okay.
BAKER: Because since Barbara Walters had said on the air, you know, a reporter should check out facts, you should have called me, it would have been no problem. I was expecting I'd have no problem on getting information from ABC. So I called Amtrak, left a message for the guy in their New York office and then actually in the piece that we have on the site, we include part of this episode.
GLENN: That's amazing.
BAKER: We were doing our live webcast.
GLENN: Yeah.
BAKER: Which is on after 4:00 and the guy called right at, you know, 4:05 or something like that. And I got one of those things on my iPhone that was like, you know, blocked number and I thought, this is the guy. And if I wait until our show's over, he's going to be gone. So I just answered the phone live, legally just record you know, because it was live for our audience watching. They could hear me but they couldn't hear him.
GLENN: Hang on just a second. Hang on, Scott. We're going to include this in our free e mail newsletter, we're going to include the link. What time did we get in Eastern time last night? 3:00 a.m., 3:30? 3:30 Eastern time we arrived in San Diego last night and I was so tired, but we stood in my hotel room with the laptop on the bed and we all stood there and we watched this for 20 minutes last night. And you see you on the phone with the guy from the Amtrak and they can just see the wheels in your head going, "You've got to be kidding me, man."
BAKER: Exactly.
GLENN: So we're going to include this whole video that he's talking about with the newsletter, and it's a good thing that we have a newsletter that is about 100,000 shy of the New York Times circulation. So we can correct the message. We don't need the media to do that for us. But it's an amazing thing to watch because of the media arrogance.
All right. So you have him on the phone. You're recording this and what does he say to you?
BAKER: Well, he gives me this very carefully prepared thing that says, it is not the policy of Amtrak to reserve, you know, seats, and there are some exceptions. And it was very vague, right? And listen, I had gone to the terms and conditions section of the Amtrak website. I can see, you know, how they worded things. And I went in. I tried to say to him even on that call, it's like, if Amtrak has a policy, we reserve seats for VIPs, no problem.
GLENN: No problem at all.
BAKER: Then reserve away. Great, treat them however you want them. That's fine. But if your policy is you can't reserve seats, then I kind of want to know. But he actually made fun of me wanting to know what happened. He said, "We're not investigating this because the parties, neither of the parties involved have requested that." And I said, "Well, why would they? Glenn Beck was on the train. He knows what happened. He doesn't have to call you and say, what happened to me." And I said, "And Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg aren't going to call you. I said, I'm calling you." And didn't want to answer it. And I said, well you know I'm going to call the Washington office. And he said, you'll get the same answer. I called the Washington office and he was exactly right; same answer.
GLENN: You should have called me because I would have asked for that investigation. You should have called me.
BAKER: But I wasn't I thought I didn't even like, you know, call your office and say, "Get Glenn to beg for..." because I thought, I'm just going to leave you guys out of it, see what I can find out. The top PR guy was out of town. So I was going to wait. That's why it took like an extra week to figure this out. And in the meantime then, you know, I start to kind of find out who is the PR person for The View and all that. Finally the top guy at Amtrak calls me back and I actually have the first adult conversation that I had the entire two weeks, and I was expecting he was nice, which was shocking, and I was expecting that I'd get the same kind of basic answer, but he said, I have some news for you. And I kind of just like gulped. And he said, I can confirm that ABC did contact Amtrak to request a police escort for Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. And I was like, well, holy cow. You know, that's kind of what Glenn described. And then he said
GLENN: They came in, and they came in and that's exactly what happened.
BAKER: Exactly.
GLENN: I said that on the air.
BAKER: And he said, here's the deal on how, you know, on probably what happened with the train. And he admitted he did not talk to the person that was the cabin attendant and he didn't know. So it's still unclear whether ABC requested specific seats, but really that doesn't matter. We know that ABC requested special accommodation for Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg, special treatment.
GLENN: Wait. But wait. We called Barbara Walters' office and you just asked her and she said, if you just want to know, you just call my office.
BAKER: So I e mail the PR guy at The View. I basically get ridicule, right? In fact, when I started he was like, you know, who are you, you know? And I was like, okay, that's a fair question. Not everybody in the world goes to Breitbart TV. And so I kind of laid it out a little bit, and honestly and I'm hoping you are sitting down. This is what he said about our story. He said, "That train has left the station."
GLENN: (Laughing).
BAKER: That was it, you know. I was like, come on. So finally after I think that this is I'm not going to get anything, I finally send an e mail and I say, listen, Amtrak has now confirmed information about what ABC requested. I'm going to go ahead and do the story whether you guys comment or not, but do you want to comment. He writes back and says, well, I'm not going to comment on something that I don't know what the allegation is. So I write back now saying what the allegation is and then I get an e mail from Whoopi Goldberg. And now, of course, now my dreams and hopes have all come true, you know. And like I'm exaggerating.
GLENN: Be very, very careful what you say about these did you get an e mail from her first? Did you send it? Be very careful on what you say here.
BAKER: Right, exactly. So when I say I got an e mail from Whoopi Goldberg, I got a forwarded e mail by her PR guy that was addressed "To whom it may be concerned."
GLENN: Right.
BAKER: But guess what. I'm the one who may be concerned. So I took that as answering me.
GLENN: Yes. But she probably had no intention of actually answering you. She may not have known that it was even going to you.
BAKER: Right.
GLENN: Why are you such a liar, Scott?
BAKER: I know, I know.
GLENN: So what does it say?
BAKER: And basically it just restated everything that happened on the show which is, in fact, what the PR guy had said in one of the e mails. "They talked about this on the air. Didn't you see it." And so she said, you know, here's what happened; Glenn Beck was wrong; I called him out. And it just and I was like, well, that doesn't answer any actual question. So I wrote back, thanked her and the PR guy for responding in the first place. And I said and I was very clear. Said, look, I understand it is possible, maybe even probable that the women, Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg, didn't know that ABC had requested this. However, I think that as you get out of your Town Car and police are around you walking you along, it might occur to you not every Amtrak passenger is getting this sort of escort. So I found that but still possible that they thought maybe Amtrak just on their own, you know, they won the Amtrak lottery that day.
GLENN: Sure.
BAKER: So I wrote back and I said, here are my questions, though. And I was very specific because I went over. I said, you know, Glenn never said that Barbara Walters approached him, you know, on the train. He didn't say, "I accused Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters of reserving seats on this train." He just said, "I got on the train and they told me that's seats were reserved and then these people got on." So this is all silly except for the fact that it became a seven minute segment where it was clear that Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg are like, we're going to take this guy down a notch; we want to wipe that smug smile off his face. And that's the part that got me mad. And I get an answer back from the PR guy that just says, there will be no further, you know, communication about this story. So I get nothing from Barbara Walters, nothing from her office. So after all of this, you know, sort of sanctimonious lecturing of you
GLENN: Do me a favor. Do me a favor. Will you write this down for me in a short pithy what you have. I'm going to attach it to a letter myself and I am going to send it to Barbara Walters' office myself because she said, "All you have to do is call." That's fine. I would like a statement back from her.
BAKER: Right.
GLENN: On what we have done. I'm not a journalist, I'm not an investigative reporter, but you are and so this is what has happened. I would like a response and an apology.
BAKER: That you didn't ask for.
GLENN: I did ask for, but it is such a stupid story. It is such a stupid story. I don't think this story is about me. This story is about, you know, look, if I'm an average Joe, do you do all this work on this stupid story for an average Joe? You don't, do you?
BAKER: I feel bad about that, but yes, you are probably right.
GLENN: Yeah. Because it doesn't matter.
BAKER: Right.
GLENN: So if you are the average Joe, look how this media wheel can just come and crush people. Barbara Walters, arguably one of the most credible women in America, looked at me with that Barbara Walters face, "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be," and said to me, we need to know what your character is, we need to know who you really are, after she accused me of lying.
BAKER: Right. Repeatedly.
GLENN: I mean, who wins on that, especially with her audience, who wins in that argument? Well, she clearly does. And she has besmirched my good name. I tell you, I wasn't as mad as I really ended up being until I spoke to my wife. And my wife was so angry, she said, "How dare they. This I was on the train. I witnessed all of it. Don't you understand what they've done? Look at what they're doing. How could they possibly do that to somebody?" And to me it's such a stupid story, it doesn't matter. But I would like to see Barbara Walters' response now.
BAKER: Right.
GLENN: Because I contend, Scott, that it really is I can see Barbara Walters being so out of touch with her lifestyle now because she's lived this for so long. She needs police and she, you know, blah, blah blah, blah blah.
BAKER: Right.
GLENN: And I have no problem with that. And I could see her not even, you know, just thinking, "Well, that's kind of... well, it always is like this." Whoopi Goldberg thinks, "Well, it's just always like this when I'm with Barbara." I don't know, but somebody owes me an apology to say, Glenn, I'm sorry, we didn't know; you know, Barbara was just Norma Desmond and didn't know this is the life she's leading now. And, you know, Whoopi, "I didn't know, either." Somebody needs to do that. Would you put something pithy together for me?
BAKER: I will be glad to write it up. The heart of it is exactly what you said. The incident is stupid. The hypocrisy and the stonewalling, it points to the bigger problem. And it's this ability of that sort of liberal media elite to try to effect a takedown, whether it's you or Joe the plumber. It's like, we're going to come in, we're just going to go bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, and then move on and you can't call us on it.
GLENN: That's right.
BAKER: And that's what I tried to do was call them on it.
GLENN: We're going to put this in our newsletter today at GlennBeck.com. Thank you for wasting so much time on this story.
BAKER: You got it.
GLENN: You've got to watch the whole thing, it's amazing.
Posted: Daily Thought Pad
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