All Episodes
Previous Next
March 2, 2021 - Dinesh D'Souza
01:02:46
THE RONALD AND THE DONALD Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep37
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
The Ronald and the Donald.
Which way forward for the Republican Party?
Now, some Democrats are worried Biden may be so senile he'll push the nuclear button.
And newly elected Congressman Madison Cawthorn.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Hope you're enjoying the podcast.
As always, if you are, please hit the subscribe button and also notifications so you know when the next one goes up.
And please share the podcast with friends and family.
I'd like to get the word out and you can help me do it.
America needs this voice.
The times are crazy in a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
The philosopher Plato once spoke of a second sailing, by which he means a kind of new voyage in your career, where you set aside what you've done, the first voyage, and you venture out anew.
I think with Trump's CPAC speech, it's clear that Trump is now undertaking his And although his destination, the vessels that he's going to be sailing on are not entirely clear, I think Trump clearly is venturing out.
He clearly wants to play a major role in American politics and in the Republican Party, and it's quite obvious that he will.
For the whole first term, Trump has been, you may say, haunted by a critique that has been advanced primarily by the never-Trumper types, but also by a lot of traditional Republicans.
And that can be summarized in one sentence.
Trump is not Ronald Reagan.
Now, this is a little bit of a weird thing to say because, of course, only Reagan is Reagan.
George H.W. Bush wasn't Reagan.
That was more than obvious.
And no one else was either.
George W. Bush wasn't Reagan.
Mitt Romney wasn't Reagan.
Reagan is an American original, and I might say there will never be another Reagan, any more than there will ever be another Lincoln.
So this notion of another Reagan needs to be thought about a little bit more.
We're not going to have Reagan back.
Today a lot of people are asking the same thing about, who's going to be the next Rush Limbaugh?
And the truth of it is, there won't be another Limbaugh.
Limbaugh, too, was an American original.
But I think the invocation of Reagan is aimed at saying that Reagan was sort of the right type of president.
Trump is defective when measured by the Reaganite standard.
That's really what the Trump critics in the GOP or the Never Trumpers are getting at.
That Trump falls short.
And I'd like to analyze a very interesting article here in American Greatness.
It's called The Reckoning of Ronald Reagan.
It's written by Eric Lendrum.
And the theme of the article is that it's sort of like step aside Ronald Reagan.
Donald Trump has now taken your place.
So this article is arguing against the never-Trumpers and against the traditional Republicans.
And it's making the point that it's Trump's America now.
Trump is the one defining the issues that...
That really matter. Now, this is a huge topic.
It's, in fact, the topic at the heart, I think, of the GOP, and I'm not going to exhaust it in one segment.
I'm going to do probably over the next several days, multiple segments analyzing different aspects of this phenomenon.
I want to start by talking a little bit just about Reagan and my experience with Reagan because Reagan is sort of the reason I became a conservative.
I was a freshman at Dartmouth in 1980 when Reagan showed up in New Hampshire to campaign and for his debate with the other Republican candidates.
That's when Reagan uttered his famous, I paid for this microphone, that launched him to the forefront of the Republican field in 1980.
And I remember being very struck by Reagan.
I was an Indian-American student, not all that political at the time, just sort of getting my first whiff of American politics.
And I realized Reagan was larger than life.
And even though on the face of it, Reagan seemed almost...
He was presented by the left in a very comical, even cartoonish light.
We forget that Reagan, too, was derided in much the same way that Trump has been.
Trump is unserious.
He's ridiculous. He's a cartoon character.
They said exactly the same about Reagan.
But what I found appealing about Reagan was his appeal to this kind of big-sky conservatism, this idea that America was a force for good in the world, the idea of upward mobility in American society, a kind of ladder of opportunity available to all.
And also Reagan's appeal to, I would call it the decent society, traditional values, the idea that the American dream isn't sort of content neutral.
The American dream is a dream of living a life in family, in community, a life that includes a life of faith.
This was Reagan's America.
He wanted to see an America built on these core values.
I want to play a short clip of Reagan.
This was actually from the end of the Reagan era.
Reagan was kind of reflecting on his life and on his accomplishment.
Listen. Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government and with three little words.
We, the people.
We, the people, tell the government what to do.
It doesn't tell us.
We, the people, are the driver.
The government is the car.
And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast.
Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are.
Our constitution is a document in which we, the people, tell the government What it is allowed to do.
We the people are free.
Now two things strike me about this very characteristic statement of Reagan.
The first, of course, is his tone.
It's irenic. It puts you at ease.
It doesn't agitate you.
It settles you down.
And the tone is one of conveying, I would call it, that easy American confidence.
We've got this. You got the feeling with Reagan that here was a man very firmly in the saddle.
Here was a man who knew what he was doing.
And that's the sort of undertone of what Reagan is conveying here.
But then the content. Notice that Reagan is defining in a very picturesque way.
Who's driving the car?
Is government driving the car?
Are the people driving the car?
Who's giving the instructions?
Who's the boss? So Reagan here is not only preaching, but he's also teaching.
And that is a very important role for the president, namely to make the case, to lay out the agenda, but not just what the agenda is, not just the what, But the why?
I think this is what Reagan did very successfully.
If you go back and read Reagan's so-called evil empire speech where he makes the case against communism, he talks about why it's evil.
He talks about what's wrong with government.
He talks about why totalitarian government, how it grows.
And why it's such a threat.
So at the end of it, you feel like if you're a guy who's not that into politics, you don't know a whole lot about what's going on, Reagan lays it out for you.
There's an embedded narrative and there's an embedded argument.
I say all of this because it seems to me that while this is Trump's moment, I mean, I agree with this article when it essentially says that we're not living in the Reagan era.
We're not living in the era of the Cold War.
The issues of Reagan are somewhat obsolete.
Our enemy now is not A foreign opponent like the Soviet Union.
We're in a domestic Cold War.
Our enemy is at home right here.
These are the people who are taking away our liberties.
We don't have to wait for the Russian invasion or even the Chinese invasion because our liberties are being squelched by a kind of diabolical alliance between leftists and the government.
And leftists in the digital and the corporate sector.
And also leftists, of course, in academia and the media.
So, when Eric Lundrum talks about the fact that the Donald has taken the Gipper's place, in that sense he's right.
But, but, I think it's also important that the Donald learn a couple of things from the Ronald.
And one of them, of course, is Reagan's great and self-deprecating sense of humor.
Reagan had the ability to make jokes, not just at the expense of his opponents, but also at the expense of himself.
A very endearing quality in politics.
And the second is Reagan had this teaching quality I want to highlight.
Reagan always believed that he needed to make the case.
Trump, very often in a debate or in a rally, assumes that you know the case.
And so he simply alludes to things, but he doesn't document them.
He doesn't demonstrate them.
He doesn't argue for them.
And I think if he did, He would have a stronger case to make to the American people.
He might reach people that he wasn't successful in reaching the last time around.
He might ultimately be able to combine the best qualities of the Ronald and the Donald and move forward into a bright and irresistible future.
Mike Lindell has become the emblematic face of cancel culture, of the left censorship, of the effort to destroy a man because of his beliefs and because of his bravery.
And I for one am determined not to let that happen.
And one way we can support Mike, the best way, is to support his company and support his products, which happen to be terrific products.
I want to focus today about his Giza Dream bed sheets, which are made with long staple cotton.
Mike guarantees they'll be the most comfortable sheets you'll ever sleep on.
The first night you sleep on them, Mike says, and I agree, you'll never want to sleep on anything else.
These Giza Dream Sheets are available in a variety of colors.
Like all of Mike's products, they come with a 60-day money-back guarantee and a 10-year warranty.
So right now, you can buy one, get one free by calling 800-876-0227 and use promo code Dinesh.
For a limited time, on the sheets, buy one, get one free, call 800-876-0227 or just go to MyPillow.com, but make sure to use the promo code Dinesh.
Democrats, and I mean Democrats, are getting worried that Biden might push the nuclear button.
I'm not kidding. Here's an article.
Democrats call on Biden to relinquish sole authority over nuclear strikes.
Fascinating. Democrats are calling on him.
More than 30 Democratic representatives have written to Joe Biden, This is a group of Democrats led by Jimmy Panetta from California.
They signed a letter to Biden calling him to change the process by which a nuclear weapon is approved.
Wow. Let's look at this.
They say to Biden, and this is all very telling, you alone possess the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons.
Which assures that nuclear weapons remain under civilian control.
However, this is the big however, vesting one person with this authority entails real risks.
And so what they do is they propose a set of procedures, a bunch of alternatives.
First, they say, while any president would presumably consult with advisors before ordering a nuclear attack, there is no requirement to do so.
And so they go on to suggest these, quote, reforms.
All of which involve outside consultation and outside approval.
So one reform is Biden would have to get the approval of the Vice President, Kamala Harris.
And the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
So no firing nuclear bombs without Kamala's say-so and Nancy's say-so.
A second reform, any order would require certification from the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General.
So these two guys would have to sign off on it.
The President would not be able to do it on his own.
And the third is, you'd need a Congressional Declaration that would authorize, specifically authorize the use of nuclear force.
So... Until now, the president possesses the so-called nuclear football, which has a series of codes, and the president alone has the authority to fire.
Now, interestingly, with previous presidents, no one raised the issue of whether this authority should be changed.
And of course, the first question becomes, why are they raising it with Biden?
Interestingly, these 31 Democrats never give a reason.
They never say something like, Mr.
Biden, You might be a little past your prime.
You may not entirely be sure what's going on.
You may be entering what Shakespeare called the second childhood.
This is a particularly dangerous situation that we have not encountered before.
This is the sort of, you may almost call a donkey in the living room.
They don't go there.
But of course, that's what's on their mind and that's what's on anyone's mind who reads the article.
Now, here's Shakespeare, by the way, talking about the second childhood.
It's very illuminating.
This is from As You Like It.
Shakespeare has a speech, wonderful speech, about the seven ages of man.
I used to kind of recite this speech in school as a kid.
He talks about the seven stages of...
Of life. And he goes, at first it's the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse's arms, and then the whining schoolboy with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like a snail, unwillingly to school.
And then he goes through all these stages, and then he comes to the final one.
Here we go. Last scene of all.
This is Shakespeare. That ends the strange eventful history is second childishness and mere oblivion.
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
In other words, you lose it.
And of course, I think a lot of these Democrats worry, as many of us do, that Biden is losing it if he hasn't already lost it.
Shakespeare says that like babies, people who are very old have no teeth.
Become very dependent on other people and become very childish in their behavior.
So what does this childishness sort of really mean?
Well, I think it means when you're a kid that you can destroy things.
You know, kids are always like destroying.
Oh, you destroyed this, you destroyed that.
You destroyed the porcelain curio.
But of course, when you're in second childhood, it's like, oops, he destroyed the world.
Now... I think the worry with Biden for these Democrats, and again, they're saying out loud, without saying it explicitly, what we're all thinking.
You know, think of a little child.
Children love to push the button.
Have you ever seen a kid in an elevator?
Mommy, can I push the button?
Can I push the button? Can I push all the buttons?
Right? But it's one thing for a kid to want to do that.
It's a whole other thing for Biden to want to push the button.
I almost envisioned this macabre scene.
You know, here's Biden. I want to push the button.
I want to push the button. People are like, no, no, no, no, no.
You cannot push the button.
Here's Biden. Come on, man!
They're like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't push this button.
You cannot push this button.
And then Biden's like, get out of my way, you dog-faced pony soldier!
So this is Biden, you know, annoyed, exasperated, because he can't push the button.
Now, the scary thing is, these Democrats who are worried about Biden are kind of right.
We have to admit that, and look, there are people who go, Dinesh, I can't believe you're discussing that.
I can't believe you're actually speaking in a humorous mode about global thermonuclear holocaust.
And I'm like, guys, don't blame me.
I didn't vote for Biden.
I didn't put this guy who isn't all there in the White House.
I'm not the one who's going to blow up the world.
You're upset at me for pointing out what deep down you worry is a real possibility.
The bottom line of it is we've taken, we, and I say we in a collective sense, have taken a tremendous risk as a country.
And now the left is having this uneasy sense that, wow, you know, this second childhood thing is a real problem.
So if we don't invoke the 25th Amendment and wheel this guy out of there...
We need to put in some safeguards so that the man in charge of protecting our security doesn't blow us all up.
A lot of free email services aren't really free.
You pay with your privacy.
And since those companies have access to every email you send and receive, Big Tech can sell your data to the highest bidder.
When I think about my emails, I realize they often include all kinds of information.
I would be very disturbed if I felt I might end up with someone else's hands.
My finances, my medical data, my social security number, and personal exchanges.
That's why I set up a Startmail account to secure my email.
It makes me feel safe again.
Startmail keeps my email private, period.
Every email is encrypted, which means big tech can't read, scan, analyze, or sell my personal information ever.
Startmail prevents government agencies from spying on you.
With Startmail, deleted means deleted.
When you delete an email, it's gone forever.
And Startmail uses their own servers, which means they can't be put out of business.
Secure your email privacy with Startmail.
Sign up today and you'll get 50% off your first year.
Go to Startmail.com slash Dinesh.
That's Startmail with a T. Startmail.com slash Dinesh for 50% off your first year.
Startmail.com slash Dinesh.
For my latest book, United States of Socialism, I coined a new term, Identity Socialism.
And this is a concept I explore in the book.
Here's the book, United States of Socialism.
I urge you to look at it.
And the reason it's so relevant is because it describes the new type of socialism that the left is pushing in America today.
It's not sort of your grandfather's socialism, and it's not even the socialism of Marx.
Now, the folks at Prager University, PragerU, asked me to make a video on identity socialism.
And I did that, and it's just out.
So you can pick it up off the Prager University site or off of my social media.
Here's a little glimpse. There's a new socialism in town.
I call it identity socialism.
The old socialism, the kind Karl Marx dreamed up, was all about the working class, the sort of blue-collar worker who, ironically, voted for President Trump.
But today's socialists couldn't care less about the guy in the hard hat.
He had his chance at revolution and blew it.
Today's socialist is all about race, gender, and transgender rights.
Class is an afterthought.
So identity socialism represents a marriage, a kind of hybrid of classic socialism, Marxian socialism, socialism based on class division.
And to those class divisions, it adds all these new types of division, racial division, gender division, transgender division.
So today, if you go to a socialist conference or even talk to a lot of the socialists, Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar, you'll notice that they care about economic issues.
They're all big on their minimum wage and so on, but they care more about abortion than the minimum wage.
Many of them care more about the transgender bathroom or the transgender athlete than they do about universal basic income.
So they have a cultural Marxism that goes alongside and along with and helps define their type of socialism.
That's why identity socialism is today's breed.
Of socialism. And, of course, the question I explore briefly in the PragerU video, but I want to explore in a little more depth right now, is how did we get to identity socialism?
And this is a story that begins with Marx, but focuses on one man, a German refugee or immigrant to America, Herbert Marcuse.
I'll start with Marx because, interestingly, Marx predicted that there would be a working-class revolt in the developed countries, in Germany, in England, in France, and so on.
It never happened. Never happened in Marx's day anywhere.
And it's never happened to this day anywhere in the world.
No working class has ever revolted against the capitalist class, so Marx has proven to be, quite honestly, a false prophet.
But a lot of Marxists, starting in the 20th century, began to scratch their heads and say, wow, why is it the case that the working class is not on our side?
And one answer that they gave is that the working class is really too conservative.
The working class, in many cases, doesn't want to revolt.
They don't want to go against the capitalist.
They want to become capitalist.
They don't want to overthrow the boss.
They want to become the boss.
Werner Sombart, insightful economist, wrote many years ago that all socialist utopias in America come to grief on roast beef and apple pie.
In other words, the working class has it too good.
They live well.
They're not in the mood to launch some kind of revolution of the discontented because they're not that discontented.
And today, of course, as I mentioned in the PragerU video, a lot of them are actually showing up in Trump rallies and voting for Republican candidates.
Now... This was sort of Herbert Marcuse's starting point.
So this guy Marcuse, a very strange and diabolical character, he was a German of Jewish descent, and he fled the Nazis.
He was actually very sympathetic to fascist ideas.
The only thing he didn't like about the Nazis was their anti-Semitism, and that caused him to have to get out.
He taught at Columbia, at Harvard, at Brandeis, eventually ended up in California.
He became a kind of guru in the 60s, And Marcuse began to say, look, we can't count on these working class people to be socialists.
We need to find other proletariats.
What an idea. Let's find other proletariats who can sort of take up where the working class is falling short.
Maybe they can do the socialist revolution on behalf of the working class that is proving to be uncooperative.
And Marcuse had an insight, and the insight is that capitalism, on the one hand, may make the working class contented, but it makes other types of people discontented.
I think this is a very profound idea, because Marcuse noticed that there are bohemian artist types Now, these Bohemian artist types were confined to small quarters of Western civilization.
In Germany, you could find them in Munich in the Schwabing district.
You could find them in Paris on the left bank.
You could find them in Greenwich Village in pockets of San Francisco.
And Marcuse realized these people are artists and they have an artistic, an aesthetic revulsion against the market.
They think that they are standing up for culture.
Against civilization. Marcuse goes, let's recruit those guys to our cause.
But of course he knew there weren't that many of them, and they were only in small precincts of American life.
So Marcuse's starting point was the Bohemians, but he realized, if I'm going to create a mass movement for socialism, I'm going to need a whole lot of other people.
Marcuse's second idea was, what about if I go after the young people?
Now this was a big idea.
Marcuse's notion was, Let me see if these young people, who are, by the way, products of capitalism, their parents are paying for them to go very often to expensive colleges like Michigan and Berkeley.
And at the first glance, you may think young people in the 60s, the young people were people like, you know, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Mario Savio, Joan Baez, the singer, Bob Dylan.
So is it possible that people of this sorry stripe, these parodies of humanity, these horny, slothful loafers, are they potential revolutionaries?
Well, Marcuse thought, yes, we can make them that way.
But what we need to do is indoctrinate them.
They need consciousness raising.
What you essentially have to do is these are not people who have any real oppression, but they are bored.
And so what you can do is take other people's oppression and convince these people to feel it too.
This is the notion of consciousness raising.
And Marcuse realized this is not going to be easy.
We're going to need a whole generation of professors To indoctrinate these students.
So Marcuse's insight was, let's all become professors.
That's what he did. That's how he spent his life as a professor.
And his idea was that over time, we, what came to be called the new left, will take over the university.
The university will become our laboratory.
And then we will sow the seeds of...
We'll take these selfish...
Horny, navel-gazing students, and we will turn them into potential revolutionaries.
We'll do it ultimately by making them feel that they're attached to a higher cause.
And so Marcuse's first goal, let's indoctrinate the university and everything else will follow from that.
How would you like to keep an extra $961 a year in your pocket?
That's how much Gabby customers save per year on average on car and home insurance.
That's why when I was shopping for insurance, I used Gabby.
Gabby takes the pain out of shopping for insurance by giving you an apples to apples comparison of your current coverage with 40 of the top insurance providers like Progressive, Nationwide and Travelers.
Just link your current insurance account and in just minutes you'll be able to see quotes for the exact same coverage you currently have.
That's what I did. We are pretty typical in that we stay with the same insurance company kind of out of habit and we don't take the time to do research on rates.
Gabby took that time and effort away and showed us how much we could save with different insurance companies.
The average Gabby customer, like I said, saves $961 per year.
You're probably overpaying on car and home insurance.
See how much Gabi can save you.
It's totally free to check and there's no obligation.
Go to Gabi, that's G-A-B-I, Gabi.com slash Dinesh.
That's Gabi, G-A-B-I dot com slash Dinesh.
Gabi dot com slash Dinesh.
We're talking about the role of Herbert Marcuse in helping to pave the way for a transition from sort of classic socialism based on class to identity socialism.
And Marcuse realized that means bringing in all these new types of discontented people.
In some cases, artificially discontented.
You make them discontented.
And we talked about how he got the artists, and then he figured out a way to start going after the students, making the university the sort of node center, if you will, for a new type of identity socialism.
Marcuse then turned his attention to race.
Marcuse said, you know, it may be the case that in America particularly, the working guy is pretty contented, but look, there's a long history of racial discontent.
In other words, we don't have to create that discontent.
It goes back centuries. What about if we exacerbate that division?
What about if we tap into that?
What about if we draw, if you will, the blacks and Into our cause and mobilize their racial resentment against society to the political benefit of socialism.
So this required a kind of transposition.
Marx, by the way, divided society into just two camps, right?
The proletariat or the working class and then the exploiter as the capitalist class.
So in Marcuse's new kind of calculation, blacks become the proletariat and whites become the exploiting class.
And you can see right here how identity socialism is finding its footing.
And then Marcuse turns to the women, specifically the feminists.
It was the time of the women's rights movement and the women's equality movement.
And Marcuse went, look, what about if we harness the discontent?
And this is, by the way, a new type of discontent.
Technology is making housework into sort of a part-time profession.
Women are getting out into the workplace for the first time.
But the workplace is, of course, patriarchal.
It's been run by men for all this time.
So what about if we tap this gender or sexual discontent in which women now become the proletariat and men become the exploiting class?
And then Marcuse turned to sexuality more generally.
Now, he didn't talk specifically about gays or transgenders, but what Marcuse did is he said, look, American society is based on this sort of notion of traditional morality.
Why don't we attack that?
Why don't we create what Marcuse himself called polymorphous sexuality?
In other words, liberating the sexual instinct completely.
And this would create, Marcuse realized, all kinds of, quote, deviant types of sexuality.
But Marcuse's point is that that sexuality can be politicized.
Remember, we've had sexuality of all types, in fact, going to the ancient world, but it wasn't politicized.
I mean, Socrates, I guess you would say, was gay, but does that tell you what Socrates thought about democracy or about justice?
No, it had no bearing on it.
So, Marcuse's point is we have to have a new type of politicized sexuality.
Sexuality. And it's remarkable to see how this Marcusean vision, which he outlined in the 60s, has sort of been adopted by all these activist groups.
And just as Marcuse predicted, the university became the center for cultivating this identity socialism.
I think the remarkable thing that's happened in our time is that the politics of the university has been...
Conveyed through the media, through the entertainment world, into the larger culture.
So we have college graduates who are imbued with this resentment, some of it real, some of it bogus, but resentments based on race, on class, on gender.
On transgender. And then these resentments are then brought out and they become the license to establish new regimes of social control.
And that's really what socialism is about.
It's not just about your pocketbook.
It's not just about confiscatory tax rates.
It is ultimately a form of tyranny.
It's a form of controlling your life.
That's what Marcuse recognized.
That's what we want to do.
The only difference is that in the past, he felt...
Those guys were controlling us.
Now, we need to control them.
Now, we're living in a very different world from the 1960s.
In fact, a very different world from the one that Marcuse knew.
And yet, when you read his ideas, so much of it seems eerily familiar.
When it comes to identity socialism, we are even now living with Herbert Marcuse's legacy.
For most of my life, I thought a pillow is a pillow is a pillow.
There was nothing special about a pillow.
That is, until I discovered my pillow.
And what Mike Lindell taught me is that a pillow, like a watch, a phone, or a car, can be a work of art.
Mike's pillows will not go flat.
You can wash and dry them as often as you want.
They maintain their shape.
They're all made in the USA. For a limited time, MyPillow is offering these premium MyPillows for the lowest price ever.
You can get the queen-size premium MyPillow for $29.98.
It's normally $69.98, so that's $40 savings.
King pillows are only $5 more.
All the MyPillow products come with a 10-year warranty and a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Go to MyPillow.com and use promo code Dinesh.
Now, it's not just about the pillows.
You'll get deep discounts on all MyPillow products, including the Geezer Dream bed sheets, the MyPillow mattress topper, the dog bed, the towels.
Just call 800-876-0227 or go to MyPillow.com.
Don't forget to use promo code Dinesh.
I'm really happy to welcome newly elected Congressman Madison Cawthorn to the podcast.
One of my criteria for someone who's making a difference is that they are being attacked.
If you're not being attacked it means that the left does not find you threatening.
And you, Madison Cawthorn, are being attacked, which I take to be a part of.
You should put that on your resume because they're going after you because they're a little scared of you.
And they're a little scared of you because you represent, I think to them, the spirit of the MAGA movement.
So let's begin, if I may, by having you say just a little about yourself.
Say a little bit about why you decided to run for Congress.
And what to you is the MAGA spirit?
Well, Mr. D'Souza, it's an honor to be on your show.
I have looked up to you as kind of a mentor in the political sphere.
I've listened to you for many years, so it's a real dream come true to be on the show.
But, you know, a little bit about myself.
I decided to get involved in politics because, you know, I was really tired of having these tasseled loafers, pressed Slacks wearing kind of politicians that go up to Washington, D.C. And, you know, they do not have the back of Donald Trump.
They did not have the back of the American people.
And they were unwilling to take the fight to the Democrats.
And then also, I just got married, so very excited about that.
But after my now wife and I got engaged, we are obviously having those normal conversations of, well, when do you want to have kids?
How many do you want to have? And after that night, when I was kind of pondering our conversation, I thought to myself, wow, what is it going to be like to raise a kid in this kind of environment?
And that really gave me the impetus to want to get involved to actually make a difference before that comes.
It seems like Trump has been a key figure in your political mobilization.
Let me turn to a couple of things that Trump talked about at his CPAC speech, because I think we can almost speak about Trump, not redefining himself, but laying out his path forward.
I, for one, was very encouraged when Trump said, and I'm not quoting him, you know, we're not starting a new party.
Trump basically goes, we're not interested in that.
Trump looks like he's going to be focusing his efforts on, you may say, MAGAizing the GOP. Do you think that was the right move?
And do you think he can actually do that?
Oh, I absolutely do.
You know, a dear friend of mine, Lauren Boebert, had a great quote today where she said, it's about time that you get on board with America First doctrine or you're going to get ran over.
Because, you know, at this point, so many people in the United States of America have seen, and really, I gave all credit to Donald Trump on this.
He really took the collar off of a young conservative like me to want to go out and get in the fight of, hey, we need to start supporting Americans first and stop with all these social issues and worrying about different countries overseas.
While we still have homeless people on the sides of our streets, while we're in terrible trade deals, when we're funding almost all of NATO, we're gonna reenter the Paris Climate Agreement, with the Iran nuclear deal.
There's so many terrible directions that our country is being taken in that don't actually help the people that we claim to represent.
Now, as you know, the Republican Party, we talk a lot about the so-called, you know, the rhinos or maybe the renegade never-Trumpers who at this point aren't really Republicans at all.
But there is a, I would almost call it more of an emotional division rather than a philosophical division, between traditional Republicans and sort of Trumpsters.
And you can really see it that a traditional Republican is sort of the soccer mom in the suburbs or it's the business guy, you know, who's kind of a go-along, get-along guy in his community and he doesn't like high taxes and so he votes for the Republican Party.
But on the other hand, he's a little unnerved by Trump.
So the question I want to raise is how do we keep a Republican big tent?
That doesn't push people...
You know, we're getting new people in, but we don't want to push people out.
How do we include traditional Republicans and make them feel more relaxed about voting for somebody like Trump?
Well, you know, I think the thing that we really all love about President Donald Trump when he started his race in 2015 and then during his presidency's tenure, when he was just really starting to message what we were all thinking, what we all felt in very plain, simple terms... I think the biggest problem with the Republican Party is that we cannot really carry a message.
And so what I think people need to realize is to wake up to the great threat we're all facing in this world.
And that's the threat of government control.
You know, those who sacrifice liberty just to gain a little safety, you know, they deserve neither, as the great quote boasts.
And I genuinely believe that we need to allow people in the Republican Party to realize, hey, this person might not make me feel so happy when I see his tweets, but he's going to make sure that I have the right to parent my child the way they want to do.
He's going to make sure that I have the right to defend myself in the Second Amendment.
He's going to make sure that I have the right to express my own ideas and thoughts in this Newtown Square social media or to go to church whenever I choose or to actually have a job.
And so, you know, I genuinely believe the way we create a more connected party is by the party really messaging the threat that we are all indeed facing.
Is it part of our challenge to convince people that, you know, if you look up to previous Republican presidents like Reagan or even further back, that that was a different era?
You could almost say we're now fighting for our basic liberties And they're not being taken away by Iranians or Chinese, at least not directly.
They're being taken away by Google and they're being taken away by this kind of, you may almost call it insidious alliance of the left in government and the left in the influential cultural and corporate sector.
So in other words, we need a leader with fighting spirit because we're in a fight, quite literally, for our lives and liberty.
Absolutely. Dinesh, at the very beginning of this, you were talking about how one of your criteria to know if somebody's making a difference is if they're being attacked.
Winston Churchill had that great quote saying that if you have enemies, that's good.
It means you've stood for something in your life.
And although most people do not like negative press being involved with their politicians, they want somebody to just sit there and go along to get along.
But unfortunately, when people come and challenge the system, when people come and try and go against this establishment inside of Washington, D.C., and really the mainstream media, and I hate even calling them the mainstream media because they're not mainstream whatsoever.
The media really focuses on the 20% of issues that genuinely divide Americans, and then they profit off of that division.
And so the reason why I'm willing to fight so hard and go into this really uncomfortable form of combat that we're in And the political sphere is because, you know, I do not want our liberties to be taken away.
And so I think that's something that we can kind of go back to our districts with, is saying, hey, I know you might not like President Trump, but you need a fighting spirit right now.
And although these things don't make you feel good, it actually does good.
You know, PragerU has a great video that don't vote for what feels good, vote for what actually does good.
I mean, you say that the mainstream media aren't, quote, mainstream.
I don't even think that they're media in the traditional sense, because when the founders, for example, established the First Amendment to protect free speech in the press, I think they thought of a group of people who were outside of government, who were captive to neither party, who would apply an independent, critical lens on government.
And if you think about our media, they don't do that.
They're partisans. They're in with the other side.
They're part of the enemy camp, you might say.
They're almost propagandists for them.
Isn't it critical for Republicans and conservatives to build channels of information so we can get our side out without having to go through the refracting filter of the mainstream media?
Oh, you're absolutely correct, Nesh.
You know, I talk to my communication director oftentimes, oh, hey, who we're doing this interview with?
Is that a friendly outlet?
And, you know, it's so sad that we have to even have unfriendly and friendly outlets.
You know, they should just be reporting the facts blatantly so people can make their own decisions.
But like you said, that is not the world that we live in.
And Democrats have really forced us to have to be activists in every single aspect of our lives.
Because they have taken politics and applied it to absolutely everything, we have to now do the same.
So I think that, you know, people like yourself, and I'm sure this is why you got to the movie-making scene, is because you needed to combat what was coming out of Hollywood.
It's the reason I got involved with politics.
There's several other, you know, Charlie Kirk started Turning Point USA. Because we realize that, hey, the Republicans have, for whatever reason, over the past three or so decades, have just not wanted to build up the actual infrastructure needed to compete with the Democrat machine right now.
Now we're starting to suffer the effects of them really starting to outpace us with that infrastructure.
And so I absolutely agree with you.
We do need to build out our own channels.
Madison, Cawthorn, thanks for joining the podcast.
And if I can leave you with a piece of advice, it is don't just be thick-skinned.
Learn to enjoy being attacked.
It's actually fun, and it's a measure of the fact that you're actually doing a lot of good.
So keep it up. All the best.
Janessa, it's so encouraging, brother.
And hey, thank you for being a guiding light to me for all these years.
Have a good day, brother. Cybercrime is up 75% and by far the most serious cybercrime to worry about is home title theft.
The job of the criminals is easier than you think.
The title documents to our homes are now online.
The thief finds your home's title and forges your signature on a quitclaim deed stating you sold your home to him.
Then he takes out loans on your home and leaves you in debt.
You won't know until late payment or eviction notices arrive.
Insurance doesn't cover you, and neither do common identity theft programs.
That's why I protect my home with Home Title Lock.
The instant Home Title Lock detects someone tampering with my home's title.
They help shut it down.
Go to hometitlelock.com and register your address to see if you're already a victim.
Then use code RADIO to receive 30 free days of protection.
That's code RADIO at hometitlelock.com.
I've been on a bit of a rant about the Southern District of New York.
This is this corrupt gang of prosecutors that views their mission not as one of neutrally administering the law or justice, this is the furthest thought from their mind, but how to go after political opponents.
Now, I was in their sights a while ago, but their latest targets have been Bannon and Trump.
They're trying to go after Trump on tax reasons, and they don't really know what he's done, but they feel like, there's something there.
We should just subpoena everything and then find a crime that we can pin on him.
This is their modus operandi.
And of course, with Bannon, their idea is, even though he's been pardoned, can we find a way to get him anyway?
Because they know that they've got cooperative judges in New York, many of them Clinton appointees, Obama appointees.
In other words, guys who are sort of in on it.
And their idea is, how about if we carry the process kind of us pals around here because we all know who our joint enemies are.
This is how they operate. You get a little bit of a window into their mentality because some of these characters, when you meet them up close, when you look at them up close, they're not quite what you expect.
You know, you might expect some Conan the Barbarian, leftist type, a kind of alpha male, but no, a lot of these guys are sort of namby-pamby beta types.
You know, they've got little beards that they scratch, they kind of move their head, a little effeminate, you know, but they're vicious.
They don't lack any viciousness, and of course, they're deeply deceitful.
They have the beta vices.
They don't rely on overwhelming force.
They rely on low cunning and deceit.
Now, here's my prosecutor, who's no longer with the SDNY. That's a story I'm coming to in a moment.
But he's on television talking about my case and describing what to him was evidently no big deal.
Listen. Now, the president says he pardoned D'Souza because he was treated, quote, very unfairly.
What's your reaction to that?
Well, I was the U.S. attorney at the time.
There are career prosecutors, career agents who brought this garden variety case in connection with using straw donors illegally to contribute to a political campaign.
It's not the crime of the century.
We had about, you know, a thousand more important cases that we prosecuted at the time.
But Dinesh D'Souza was intentionally committed a crime, which is proven beyond all doubt.
He admitted his guilt in a guilty plea before the court.
He said he regretted the action.
His lawyer, by the way, who's no slouch, Ben Brathman, who has a lot on his plate these days, and is about as aggressive a lawyer as there is, literally said in court, we have no defense, Your Honor.
So the questions about whether or not he was treated unfairly It was litigated in the court.
The judge very well respected, Judge Berman.
Listened to the arguments about that.
Said it was all hat, no cattle.
There was no evidence of that whatsoever.
It's a kind of... Look, we prosecuted more people for that precise crime who are Democrats than Republicans.
This guy kills me.
He's amusing on all fronts.
First of all, this solemn assurance that, oh, you know, we go after the Democrats, too.
Well, you didn't go after Rosie O'Donnell.
Rosie O'Donnell violated, by her own admission, the campaign finance law on five separate occasions, giving to five different candidates.
And we know that she deliberately tried to circumvent the law because she used four different spellings of her name and five different addresses.
So she didn't want computers to collate and see that this was the same person, Rosie O'Donnell, making all these contributions.
Any prosecution from the Southern District of New York? Of course not.
In fact, no prosecution in any of the five different areas that Rosie contributed the money.
Here's an Indian guy. I don't know why, I mean, we Indians seem to specialize in this campaign finance violations area.
But there's an Indian guy named Sant Chatwal in New York, who gave more than $180,000 to Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates.
So I gave $20,000.
This guy gave $180,000.
He was the founder of Indian Americans for Hillary.
He had a clear political motive.
He wanted something in return for this money.
He was also corrupt.
He said publicly, he goes, that's the only way To deal with politicians, quote, to buy them, to buy them.
He was also convicted of witness tampering.
The FBI recorded him trying to get witnesses to lie in court.
He goes, never ever admit to anything.
Cash has no proof.
This is Chotwal. He is hauled before New York judges in New York.
What does he get? A fine, community service, three years probation, no prison time, no confinement.
So, this is the point.
Where's the equity? There is none.
Now, my favorite phrase from Preet Bharara...
This is a garden variety case.
So, this is part of their shtick.
We didn't even really sweat this one.
This was a garden variety case.
Well, Preet Bharara, this was a garden variety case.
It led to your garden variety firing and my garden variety presidential pardon.
I mean, how garden variety is that?
At the end of this process, I get all my rights back and, hey, you know, the old saying, karma is kind of a bitch.
What I mean by that is that I get my rights back.
My profile is bigger than ever.
I go on with my career.
I now have a cool podcast.
What are you doing? Well, what you're doing now, you used to have this big office, all these prosecutors at your beck and call.
You were a really big man on campus.
Now you're sitting in a small dark room at New York University.
You know, one student comes in to talk to you.
What about the transgender law?
You're like, can I get back to my, you know, chicken tikka masala?
You teach one course, you're tubing all day.
I mean, the point is, it reminds me of the line from Evita, you know, don't look down, there's a long, long way to fall.
And the truth of the matter is, Our situations have become reversed.
You tried to go after me.
You kind of got me. You thought you got me.
But you only kind of nicked me.
And I survived. And I came out on top.
And there you are in that little dank cubicle in NYU thinking, what happened?
What happened?
Well, what happened is you took on this garden variety case that came back to bite you in the butt.
Do you think there's a coincidence between Biden signing over 40 executive orders just in the first few weeks and the price of silver skyrocketing?
No, there's no coincidence.
Savvy investors know that precious metals are a hedge against inflation and government stupidity.
And Birch Gold Group is not only your headquarters for gold, but silver too.
If you want to purchase physical gold or silver dropship straight to your door, or help converting an IRA or eligible 401k into an IRA backed by gold and silver, Birch Gold Group is your solution.
They are the premier precious metals IRA company in America with an A-plus Better Business Bureau rating, countless five-star reviews, and thousands of satisfied customers.
And guess what? I'm one of them.
There's a tidal wave of inflation coming.
Gold and silver are your hedge.
Text Dinesh to 484848 for your free information kit on a precious metals IRA or to speak with a Birch Gold representative today.
Time is running out, but you can protect your savings now.
Text Dinesh to 484848.
You know, I was just in Naples, Florida last weekend speaking on behalf of a terrific group called Life International.
And I was talking partly about the pro-life issue and threats to life around the world, but I was also tracing the influence of Christianity and how Christianity did so much and does so much To humanize our world, to bring good things to the world.
And I raise the issue, the concern, that the diminution of Christianity, if Christianity begins to retreat, not just in Western countries, but in other countries also, that we will see a greater degradation of life.
Conditions will get worse for people.
So I'm talking here about just the practical approach.
Now, very often when I've done debates with leading atheists, they focus on the issue of, you know, is there a God, the historicity of Jesus, and those are all legitimate issues to debate.
They don't like to talk about practical issues because they say things to me like, well, Dinesh, you know, who cares about whether Christianity brings practical benefits?
If you knew that Santa Claus was fictional, but he still made you feel good about yourself, would you still believe in Santa Claus?
And the answer is no, but that's because of the premise.
If you knew that Santa Claus was fictional, so if I knew that Christianity was a myth, if I knew that God did not exist, then sure, I would not try to claim practical benefits out of it.
But the truth of it is, not only do I not know, but the atheist doesn't know either.
The truth of the matter is that the people who claim to know Don't know.
We Christians call ourselves believers because we believe.
And by believe, I mean there's an element of faith.
If we knew for sure, we wouldn't need faith at all.
Now, interestingly, many years ago, I did a knock-down, drag-out debate with Christopher Hitchens in New York City.
This was the first of about ten debates that we did together.
And, you know, very interestingly, these days, it's kind of fashionable for atheists to go, you know, Oh, Hitchens, man, he really owned you, and so on.
Now, no one who was at those debates thought that.
In fact, at the end of these debates, probably three of them or four of them, we had a vote, an audience vote, including in places like, you know, we debated at the University of Boulder, University of Colorado in Boulder, which is not exactly a right-wing precinct, very left-wing.
And yet, from the audience vote, I won.
I never lost a single one of those ballots or polls after the debate.
Now, there was a critical moment in one of my debates with Hitchens, this was the King's College debate in New York City, when right toward the end, a man stood up and said to Hitchens, he goes, Mr.
Hitchens, he goes, I am from the island nation of Tonga.
And he goes, before the Christian missionaries came, he says, Tonga was in a very bad way.
He goes, we had fratricidal tribal warfare, bloody conflicts that seemed never to stop.
He goes, we even had cannibalism.
He goes, we had illiteracy.
The children were uneducated.
He goes, then the missionaries came.
Many of us converted to Christianity.
The fratricidal warfare began to subside.
The cannibalism was outlawed and stopped.
The children are now going to school.
And then he posed this question to Hitchens.
He goes, Mr. Hitchens, what do you have to offer us?
And I kind of looked over and I could see this is a very rare phenomenon.
Hitchens was completely stunned.
He literally looked like someone had punched him in the belly because, you know, he was so used to his kind of, you may almost call it his avuncular...
Kind of superior routines.
Oh, Mr. Chairman, may I point out a point of interjection?
You know, the British accent and so on, all coming to martial use in his debates.
But here he was faced with this rather simple, practical question, which is, hey, we in Tonga were this way.
The Christians came and made us better off.
What is atheism putting on the table?
And although Hitchens came trying to make a comeback with some clever remarks about David Hume and some clever remarks about this and that, I think at the end of it, his answer was nothing.
We have nothing to offer you.
All we have to offer you is to dissolve your attachment to the Christian God, ultimately to erode your attachment to Christian morality, And I think, this is what I came back with, is ultimately, if that happens, we lose the respect for human life, we lose the idea of human dignity, we lose the idea of human brotherhood, we lose the idea of Christian morality.
In other words, Tonga begins to return to the barbarism from which it came.
And the point here isn't just about Tonga.
I mean, I could say the same thing about Goa, the part of India that my ancestors lived in.
We could talk about so much, so many parts of the world that have been humanized.
And ultimately raised, their moral level has been raised because of the influence of Christian humanity and Christian morality.
So at the end of the day, Christianity, I think, has the benefit not only that its premises are defensible, they're rational, we believe, of course, that they're true, but equally important, they make our lives better and they make us better.
If you're thinking of replacing your carpets due to pet stains and odors, you must try Genesis 950.
The reviews are amazing.
This is one product that actually works.
With water, it breaks down the bonds of stains and odors so they are gone for good.
Its antibacterial component removes pet odors from carpet and padding.
It can be used in a carpet cleaning machine, and it's green so it's safe for your family and pets.
Genesis 950 is made in America.
One gallon of industrial strength Genesis 950 makes up to seven gallons of cleaner.
But Genesis 950 is also great for bathrooms, floors, upholstery, and grease stains.
Debbie uses it to clean the entire kitchen and recently got ink on her pants.
And Genesis 950, to her surprise, took it right off.
Genesis 950 is great customer service.
Order one gallon direct at Genesis950.com to receive a free spray bottle, free shipping, and a $10 coupon code using the code Dinesh.
That's Genesis950.com.
The coupon's only available for a one-gallon purchase.
Genesis950. It's much cheaper than replacing your carpets.
It's time for our mailbox.
By the way, I'm very proud of the quality of questions that I get.
It means that I'm finding the type of audience I really want, an audience that thinks, an audience that wants to learn.
It's just downright awesome.
You can send your question, by the way.
You can write it out. I prefer if you send it as an audio question or even a video question.
If you want, you can video yourself.
Asking the question, and then send it to questiondinesh at gmail.com.
I'll try to get to questions.
I'll probably do. I try to do one a day, and it's really fun.
So let's turn to a question that's actually a very thoughtful one, the one that's really made me think.
Hi, Dinesh.
My name is Dee. Your podcast is different from others because not only do you present events from multiple sides, But you also educate through historical references and classics that are thought-provoking, similar to the way parables lead to enlightening epiphanies.
I really enjoy your show and I thank you for that.
Here's my question.
I know some liberals who are educated and have good qualities, which makes me baffled as to why these people can't see the fakery and manipulation from the left.
What factor or commonality would you say allows for these people to be brainwashed?
And what factor or commonality gives conservatives the ability to see the truth and not be duped?
So the question is about why liberals can be good people.
And believe some really bad things.
What is it about those bad things that appeals to them?
Now, I think one answer, one way to think about this is this, and that is that the liberal agenda is always presented as marching behind the banner of justice.
Justice. Social justice, for example.
Now, conservatives very often don't appeal to justice.
We appeal to freedom.
We appeal to liberty. But in doing that, we don't address the justice question head on.
Now, let's remember that justice is actually the primary human virtue.
If you look at Aristotle, he talks about justice as primary.
He doesn't talk about liberty as primary.
Let's think for a moment why that's the case.
I think it's because there's no such thing as good in justice.
Injustice is always bad.
Now, true, you may talk about things like the lesser evil, but a lesser evil is also an evil.
Now, by contrast, liberty, although a very important value, there are legitimate reasons to curtail liberty.
Even we would admit, even libertarians admit, that there are occasions in which liberty can be curbed.
Now, here's the point I want to make, is that it's not enough to try to challenge justice just by saying freedom.
It's important to meet the justice claim on its own terms.
And I think because we don't do that often enough, we allow the left to usurp the issue of justice.
Many of these young people who are idealistic, they don't know a whole lot about the world, but they want to be on the side of justice.
Remember, injustice always draws a visceral response if we see it.
There's something about it that we can't stomach.
We're outraged by it.
And so this explains the politics of indignation on the left.
So I think that there are good people on the left who want to be on the side of justice, who don't know enough about the world.
And who sign up so that they not only are on the side as they see it of justice, but they're perceived to be.
This sort of desperate human desire not just to be good, but to be seen as being on the right side and doing the right thing.
Bottom line of it is I think as conservatives, we don't do enough to get our message out.
We need to build the channels and platforms to do that.
Very often on campus in particular, and I've said this before, it's not that young people reject conservatism.
They've never heard it. They don't know what it is.
We haven't made our case.
We haven't challenged the other side on the basis of justice.
And that's why we allow good people who mean well and want to do well and want to be seen as doing well to fall in with the bad guys.
Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
▲
Export Selection