After exposing an alleged billion-dollar fraud scandal in Minnesota's Somali-run child care programs, 24-year-old independent journalist Nick Shirley became an overnight sensation. While he continues to bust suspected fraud rings, like alleged hospice/Medi-Cal fraud in California, lately he’s had his sights set on busting a different kind of scandal: America’s dangerous flirtation with socialism.

This endeavor recently led him to Cuba, where he spent only 24 hours documenting life under communism before he was forced to leave due to being followed by intelligence agents, experiencing seizure of his equipment, and having a disturbing confrontation with a Cuban general.

On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Shirley recounted his intense venture into a country that captures the dark reality of socialism.

Shirley tells Glenn that he decided to go to Cuba primarily because of the “rise of communism and socialism here in the United States.”

“I was shocked by what I saw inside of Cuba,” he says.

“Somebody described Cuba to me just the other day as from a distance it looks beautiful and quaint, and then when you get right up to it, it is rot and decay and suffering. Is that what you found?” asks Glenn.

“One hundred percent,” says Shirley, recalling how Cuba’s beautiful historic buildings are “crumbling” and their streets are “not in good condition.”

And then there’s the plight of the people.

“People are starving. Seven out of 10 people are going without three meals a day. Kids aren't going to school because there's no power. The universities actually shut down because they can't go to school when there's no power,” says Shirley.

Even though Cuba blames the nation’s condition on the United States, he argues time does not corroborate this narrative.

“For 60 years, they've been underneath this communist regime, and they haven't figured it out. ... They've decided to be our enemy for so long, and now the United States is even offering support, it looks like, and it seems like they've rejected that support,” says Shirley.

Shirley’s mini documentary that captures his short stint in Cuba is an honest picture of what the socialism so many left-wing Americans and politicians are advocating for here in the U.S. actually looks like.

“So you're going to see how people really don't have freedom of speech inside of this country, how the buildings are eroding, how these children aren't going to school, how there's no hope in the eyes of these people,” says Shirley.

“All the young people that I spoke to, they're all ready for a change. A lot of them even said like communist is the worst thing that can possibly happen,” he adds.

Communism certainly wasn’t beneficial for Shirley, a visiting foreigner, either.

Upon landing in Cuba, authorities at the airport immediately seized most of his professional camera equipment. He and his team were then followed all day by intelligence agents. When they tried to sneak out of their hotel around 4 a.m. to leave early, a two-star general was waiting and interrogated them about their filming and interviews before they managed to escape to the airport.

Shirley points out the irony of the Americans who are actively pushing for a socialist government in the U.S.

“Right now, we have this huge movement inside of our country for ideas like socialism, for communism, and these people are protesting every week,” he says. “Underneath the communist regime, they would not be able to protest, so they're wanting something that would actually suppress them and stop them from doing exactly what they are doing here inside the United States.”

And yet when he or others show the grueling reality of communism in other countries, these protesters only seem to double down.

“Either they're getting paid heavily to promote this communist idea that it would be great here inside the United States, or quite literally they are brainwashed to the point where they have somehow believed that capitalism have spelled them so bad that they want to accept a government that would make them so suppressed that they would not even be able to voice their opinions out in public,” he tells Glenn. “That's what really shocked me.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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