Glenn Beck: 'There was a coup during the election'

Glenn Beck said on Wednesday that libertarian and Tea Party-minded members of the GOP were forcibly escorted out by the party’s “old guard” prior to the 2012 election.

In late August 2012, Beck was prepping to do a number of events with FreedomWorks when he received a phone call.

“It’s about 4:00 in the afternoon and I get a call from the president of FreedomWorks, Matt Kibbe, and I can hear the distress in his voice,” Beck said. “[Kibbe said], ‘Glenn, I’ve just been escorted out of my office by armed guards and told not to come back.’”

Kibbe told Beck that he wasn’t the only one who was forced out.

“There was a coup during the election, and it was powerful,” Beck said.

“They were trying to get rid of the libertarian, Tea Party-minded power players, and first and foremost on that hit list was Matt Kibbe and his allies. They didn’t like the fact that FreedomWorks was cleaning house in the GOP…that they were targeting people like Orrin Hatch. It didn’t sit well with the Karl Roves of the GOP world…”

Beck said he was sharing the “coup” story now because “the exact same thing -- the same people really -- are doing this now in the GOP.”

“Anyone in Congress or the Senate who associates with FreedomWorks, the Senate Conservatives Fund, the Tea Party, anybody, anybody is being targeted by the same class of establishment Republican progressives,” Beck said. “They do not like it when you organize. They do not like it when you choose the candidates that you actually want.”