More Beck paranoia: Links Obama administration's swine flu public health emergency declaration to already scheduled Sebelius confirmation vote

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

From the April 27 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program:

BECK: Let me go to Travis. Hello, Travis, you're on
The Glenn Beck Program. Line one -- hello, Travis.

CALLER: Can you hear me?

BECK: Yes I can, sir.

CALLER: OK. Just a quick comment there. I was reading this right-wing extremist magazine called Fusion where they talk about the Constitution and crazy stuff.

BECK: Yes.

CALLER: And I learned a little something about declaring a state of emergency, and which I thought was, you know, very enlightening and all. And then yesterday I see in the news the swine flu has affected 20 people in our country out of 300 million, and now we've got a state of emergency again. And I'm just wondering what these powers are being used to do. You know, we don't hear anything about this --

BECK: Well, I -- I will --

CALLER: -- in the mainstream media in regards to why it's a --

BECK: State of an emergency.

CALLER: Yes, exactly.

BECK: Well, I will tell you this. There's only two ways to look at, and we're going to look at it both ways later on in this broadcast today and also tonight with some of the experts. There's only two ways to look at this. Our government is moving wildly fast. Unlike anything we -- I mean, we did the research last night, and we went back to the AIDS epidemic --all the way back, looking at all the different things. They've never moved this quickly.

So, that could be that because Barack Obama's administration is so incredibly efficient, could be that they know that this is much worse than we think it is. Or, what was it Rahm Emanuel said, Stu? “A crisis is a horrible thing to waste.” Do you realize that we don't have any of the Health and Human Services people? Out of the 19 appointments, he has appointed zero.

This could be to move his Health and Human Services person into the office rapidly. She's supposed -- she's supposed to go through more confirmation hearings today, I think. She can be confirmed right out of the gate because of this swine flu. So don't look over here, look at the swine flu, look at the swine flu, look at the swine flu. And she just goes right through the gate.