This is a rush transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 27, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "At Your Beck and Call" segment tonight, two situations. One involves smoking pot. No, Beck did not do that on the program, at least as far as we can tell. And the other segment is on the Senate Intelligence Committee headed by Dianne Feinstein, which is going to investigate the CIA's War on Terror techniques.
With us now, the star of the "Glenn Beck" program seen on FNC at 5 p.m., Alan Colmes — no, I'm sorry, Glenn Beck. I've been smoking pot backstage.
Click here to watch Glenn Beck unleashed!
GLENN BECK, FOX NEWS HOST: This is hostile.
O'REILLY: I know, I know.
BECK: I know, Bill, that you have — you receive letters.
O'REILLY: All those letters from your groupies: "You're mean to Glenn."
BECK: And I just want you to know, I brought a new book. It is "The Beginner's Guide to Words Bill O'Reilly Might Expectedly Ask You to Define, Volume One." Right here.
O'REILLY: I thought that was your new book, you know.
BECK: No, no.
O'REILLY: "The Easter Sweater"? Didn't you have "The Christmas Sweater"? Can't we have a sweater for Easter, too?
BECK: It's "The Easter Boot."
O'REILLY: OK, "The Easter Boot." We've got to get serious on this Dianne Feinstein thing. But this is just red meat for guys like you and me.
BECK: Yes.
O'REILLY: I mean, these — Feinstein is not the worst of them, by the way. She's usually pretty levelheaded.
BECK: Sure. Well, she's had a lot of time to think because she's flying in her husband's private jet all the way across...
O'REILLY: They're wealthy people. But she's not irresponsible. But there seems to be an undercurrent on the left — maybe you can explain this to me — that they just want to do damage to people who have protected us for the last seven years, eight years. They want to hurt the people, the CIA, the military, the Bush administration. They want to hurt them, the people that have kept us safe. I just can't get it. I'm not getting it.
BECK: Well, here's the thing. I don't know if they want to hurt — I don't think that's her intention if you're saying that she's, you know…
O'REILLY: Why launch — Panetta doesn't want this, the new CIA chief. He doesn't want this investigation.
BECK: Because they have a fundamental — I think they have a screw loose — and they have a fundamental misunderstanding. I mean, for them to launch an investigation at this point — they've been briefed. The whole time they've been briefed. They know exactly what was going on. They knew what was going on. These are the people that, you know, had a hard time defining torture.
O'REILLY: But they didn't know what some guy in Lebanon was doing. Some guy, you know, that's what they want.
BECK: That's why I think that we should just — if we're going to torture, we should torture. If we're going to do it, let's stop farming it out to somebody else.
O'REILLY: Let's stay focused here. We'll get to the...
BECK: I'm riddled with ADD. I can't stay focused.
O'REILLY: Try, all right? This is the big show. It's not the afternoon, all right. Try.
BECK: OK.
O'REILLY: There's got to be a reason why Feinstein and Pelosi and Leahy and all of these far-left loons want to do damage to the country. This hurts the United States.
BECK: Yes.
O'REILLY: You know who the happiest people in the world are on a CIA investigation? Al Qaeda. They're the happiest people. Let's find out what the CIA is up to. Who does it help?
BECK: It helps Al Qaeda. Wait a minute. Are you saying that these guys might be un-American?
O'REILLY: I'm not saying un-American. I would never say that. I'm saying misguided severely and maybe should be tortured.
BECK: Who would do that?
O'REILLY: We'll play them your show. That would be really...
BECK: Really? Now, do they have to watch the whole thing?
O'REILLY: We'll strap them to the chair.
BECK: See what's happening here? Always.
O'REILLY: So you're not telling me why they're doing it. You're not telling me why they're doing it? You don't know?
BECK: Because they're fundamentally misguided.
O'REILLY: Yes.
BECK: They believe that everybody should have sunshine and lollipops, and everybody — if we just sit down and talk with everybody, we'll be OK. That's their goal. The other option is here, Bill, is that they are leftist, Marxist, that would like to destroy the United States of America. But that would be crazy.
O'REILLY: Well, I don't know if I'm going to go that far. But...
BECK: Of course not.
O'REILLY: But I do think that there is — I think they should explain themselves, and they're cowards because they won't come on.
BECK: They're not going to explain themselves. They have nobody to answer to anybody. The press isn't going to make them answer.
O'REILLY: They have nobody to answer to at all, except you and me. That's why we're here.
BECK: They're not answering us.
O'REILLY: Oh yes, they will.
Now, pot. You have this guy on your show, and I'm walking down the hallway. I'm looking up, and there's Beck giggling. I'm going, is Beck back on the juice? Why is he giggling? Why did you have this guy, the pot legalizer, on your program?
BECK: Because what's happening, we can't have a single discussion here in America anymore. We can't have a single honest discussion and talk about anything that makes any sense. Really, honestly, we might as well all be high, because at least maybe the news would start to make sense.
O'REILLY: Are you a libertarian? Do you want pot to be legalized, drugs to be legalized?
BECK: Look, as a recovering alcoholic, drugs and alcohol destroy people's lives.
O'REILLY: Absolutely.
BECK: Destroy people's lives. Almost killed me. So I'm not a fan of drugs by any stretch of the imagination. If this country got to a place to where they were responsible enough to where everybody had personal responsibility, and I could just — I could see, "Oh, the guy with heroin. Oh, he's right there laying on the street. Oh, well," and walk over him, and everybody else would walk over him because that's his choice, well, then we could legalize drugs. But nobody is that responsibility — nobody has that kind of responsibility.
O'REILLY: You know, look, but I worry about the children and the new attorney general, Eric Holder, has now signaled California. And you know the big con out there, the medical marijuana con. If you have a hang nail or you have a little headache, you can go in and buy three pounds of marijuana. Holder basically said go ahead, we're not going to bother you. It's quasi-legalization in California.
BECK: But what they're talking about now is raising taxes, and that's why we had this on, because look, if you want to talk about legalizing drugs, then have that conversation. Not the tax thing.
O'REILLY: It's a dodge.
BECK: That's exactly right. Everything is a dodge. Today — last week you asked me, Bill, are we going to nationalize the banks? Yep. Well, what are we doing today?
O'REILLY: Citibank.
BECK: Nationalized. Would you say that's nationalization?
O'REILLY: Close.
BECK: What's the definition of nationalization?
O'REILLY: The government runs Citibank.
BECK: Exactly right.
O'REILLY: I'm not going to do business with Citibank.
BECK: And were they running it last week before this big buyout? You're damn right they were running it. But they will tell you this isn't nationalization. Just like they'll tell you the stuff in the bill is not really earmarks. Words have absolutely no meaning.
O'REILLY: There has always been propaganda, always been propaganda in this country.
BECK: No, no. No propaganda. Words have no meaning anymore. We have the troops pull out. When Obama said he was going to pull all the troops out of Iraq, did you think that that meant leaving 50,000 troops in Iraq? For what, 10 years?
O'REILLY: I don't know. We'll see. All right. Glenn Beck, I think I got something out of that.
BECK: Those who are smoking pot will. He's right, dude. He's totally right.
O'REILLY: Hey, dude, look, it's Alan Colmes. No, it's Glenn Beck, everybody. Five o'clock on FNC.
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