Glenn Beck may be mocking reports that he was the inspiration for a violent shooting in California by telling viewers that a donation to the liberal group that made the report has left him fearing for his life.
After years of denying an association with billionaire George Soros, Media Matters announced Wednesday they would accept his $1 million donation.
"Despite repeated assertions to the contrary by various Fox News commentators, I have not to date been a funder of Media Matters," Soros said in a statement. "However, in view of recent evidence suggesting that the incendiary rhetoric of Fox News hosts may incite violence, I have now decided to support the organization."
Now Beck is saying that it's Soros' "minions" that may actually incite violence against him.
"Mr. Soros, let me just tell you one thing," Beck said on his Wednesday Fox News show. "If anything happens to me... blood will be on your hands, sir."
The donation amounts to a "$1 million bounty on my head," according to Beck. "It's almost like a 'WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE' poster."
"Gee, Mr. Soros, your not inciting violence over there towards me? You're not making me public enemy number one are you? I hope not, Mr. Soros, but I'll make sure to track down all of that violence."
Beck may have been sarcastically referring to Media Matters' efforts to show how a California shooter, who planned to target the Tides Foundation, saw the Fox News host as a "schoolteacher."
Throughout the interview -- and in a letter I would receive later -- Byron tells me I need to watch Beck's programs from June if I want to learn about the Soros-Obama-Petrobras conspiracy he heatedly described in our earlier conversation.
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"Think like a conspiracy theorist," Byron tells me during the interview. "Except don't use the word 'theory.' Because the conspiracies are not theories. The official report is the lie; the conspiracy is the truth."
Byron says he thinks Beck has improved in recent months. "I don't think he's a natural newscaster, you know what I mean?" he says. "I look at it more like a schoolteacher on TV, you know? He's got that big chalkboard and those little stickers, the decals. I like the way he does it."
Drummond Pike, CEO of the Tides Foundation, warned Fox News advertisers that they could share in the responsibility if Beck incites future attacks. "The next 'assassin' may succeed, and if so, there will be blood on many hands," he wrote.
Beck spent nearly all of his hour-long Wednesday show focusing on the $1 million donation.
"We have to be careful on whom we turn to," he said. "This is why I believe I have talked about peace and nonviolence on this program more than anyone else in all of television, maybe all of them combined. More than anybody else since the 1960s."
"There are nutjobs in the country. There are nutjobs that want power. There are nutjobs that want to take personal violence for there own -- there are. And we have to be careful because the country is sitting on a powder keg," he continued.
"I don't know how I became the radical but that's what George Soros would like you to believe."
Soros wants you to "turn to him and these shadowy organizations. Turn to him or his minions for answers," according to Beck.
"They have got to shut us up. They have to paint me as a radical, a danger, anything. Smear, discredit, take [me] out," he concluded.
