All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 6, 2021 - Dinesh D'Souza
57:37
WHAT WOULD THEY SAY? Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep148
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
What would the American founders think if they could see Joe Biden's America?
I'll give you my take on that.
There's just a single honest journalist in the White House Press Corps.
I'll name who that is.
And Congresswoman Lauren Boebert joins me in studio to talk about mask mandates, COVID at the border, and the tyranny of Nancy Pelosi.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
The times are crazy, and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Surveying the state of modern America, the America that the left has created, particularly over the last six months, I sometimes wonder what the American founders would think if somehow they could reappear today and survey Joe Biden's America.
Now, I think there's little doubt that they would be horrified, horrified at this diminution, this perversion, this abandonment of the ideals and principles and constitutional structures that the founders tried to put in place, that they were hopeful would be secure over many, many generations.
And for the most part, their experiment has proven successful.
But I think it is now gravely endangered.
When Benjamin Franklin was asked, what have you given us?
He said, a republic if you can keep it.
And it remains questionable whether we, and by we here I'm speaking really about our ruling elites, Can or even want to keep it.
Now, of course, the left is going to say, well, you know, the founders, yeah, they might be very grumpy at what they see today, but that's because they were such bad guys.
They were such evil men who didn't care about equality, didn't care about social justice, didn't care about racism.
In fact, they embodied racism.
And so we are now trying to distance ourselves, you might say, from our forefathers.
And push in a new direction.
That's why we call ourselves, this is the left talking, progressives.
Because progress here is defined as a movement away from the American founding.
And I want to face this head on a little bit by looking to see...
What do we say in response to those who want to disclaim their heritage?
Cut the ground out, you might say, from under them.
Push away the legacy of the founders.
Pull down their statues, and so on.
There's a beautiful article by Anthony Esselin.
It's called A Forgotten Piety, in which he begins by talking about the biblical commandment to honor thy father and mother.
But he applies this more generally, not just to our fathers and mothers, but to our founding fathers.
And piety is not a word we hear very often today.
But piety, a certain piety toward the country, was not so long ago part of our national practice.
On Memorial Day, Anthony Esselin, Tony Esselin remembers, he goes, you know, as a kid, I would go to the Memorial Day ceremonies, I would see the 21-gun salute, I'd see the veteran playing taps.
It was very moving.
There was a ritualistic element to it.
But it induced in you a sense of awe, a sense of reverence, a sense of piety.
By the way, Abraham Lincoln talked about that piety as being an essential part of patriotism, a sense of, he almost called it, he didn't use the term civil religion, but an almost religious sensibility here applied to one's love of country.
Now, Esalen goes on to make the point, and I'm not quoting him.
He goes,"...we don't honor our fathers and mothers because they were perfect.
We ourselves are sinners as they were.
We honor them because they were our fathers and mothers, and they gave us a gift we cannot repay, the gift of life itself." So applying this to the country, our forefathers gave us a country.
And not any kind of country, but a country that is so good that virtually nobody who is born and brought up here chooses to leave.
And virtually everybody in other countries, particularly large parts of the developing world, would come here in a day if they could.
So they've given us a country that we can see our lives flourishing.
And so the appropriate response, I think this is what Esalen is getting at, is gratitude.
We fault the founders for what they did.
But Esalen says, what have we done?
The founders gave us this great country, not just a country of where we are born, but a country of abundance, a country where even the ordinary guy has all this stuff, all this material abundance that's the envy of the rest of the world.
And what have we done with it?
What kind of real progress can we show, moral progress, to accompany this material progress?
How well have we raised our children?
How soundly have we protected our schools?
How safe are our streets?
What sense of civic community and bonds of citizenship have we cultivated?
How close are we to Martin Luther King's ideal of the beloved community?
Esalen's point is, we have squandered our inheritance.
We want to fault the founders, but we don't turn the lens on ourselves.
He says, let's try to remember the America that the founders had to deal with.
He goes, when the settlers got here, they looked at America and there was nothing else.
Here, he says, there were millions of miles, and yes, it was rich farmland, but most of it wasn't even farmed.
He goes, we had thousands of miles of navigable rivers, but there were no bridges, no canals, no aqueducts, no levees.
We had all these minerals, but where?
In the ground. Nobody knew how to get them out.
And if we didn't get them out, in fact, if the country were left to the Indians, they'd still be in the ground.
He goes on to point out, we had no real schools.
We had virtually no universities.
And he says, within a relatively short time in the scope of history, look at the way that the founders and their successors transformed this country.
Here we have to take seriously what the left says, which is to say, yes, but then they do it in part, at least in part, through conquest, through slavery, through all kinds of forms of oppression.
And we've got to remember that there is truth to this.
But these forms of oppression, including slavery, including xenophobia, parochialism, bigotry, these are all universal.
You won't find any place in the world where all these things are completely absent.
So the surprise here is not that we had oppression in America.
The surprise is that in America, we developed, through our founding principles, and this is the key, we developed movements of resistance to all these evils.
And we didn't have to.
You know, in countries where Where the oppressed people are the majority, South Africa being a classic example.
It's not that hard for the oppressed people.
They're, after all, the elephant, and the oppressor is the ant, at least the ant in terms of numbers.
It's not surprising the oppressed people rise up and they overthrow the oppression.
They're stronger. The oppressed people are more in number, and collectively they're stronger than their oppressors.
But that was not true in America.
If you think about the Civil War, which was largely a white man's fight, there were a couple of black divisions that got involved toward the latter part of the war, but this was a white man's fight.
So white men fought other white men to end the oppression of blacks.
That's a very startling fact.
That is a fact that should, in fact, introduce reverence toward our founding principles, which were at the root of that fight.
Lincoln understood this perfectly well.
And so I end with Esalen's conclusion.
He says we should not focus so much on what the sins of our fathers were, but what our own sins are.
And they're considerable.
They're not the same. And that's why we're blinded to them.
The founders, one thing you can say about them is that they left the world a lot better than they found it.
And the real question is, can the same, will the same one day be said of us?
Hey, do you know about Mike Lindell's upcoming cyber conference?
He wants you to watch on frankspeech.com.
Here's Mike talking about it.
Listen. I'm having a cyber symposium on August 10th, 11th, and 12th.
This historical event will be live streamed 72 hours straight on my new platform, frankspeech.com.
Now, for the duration of the Cyber Symposium, Mike is going to offer all kinds of specials on Frank's speech.
Specials not available elsewhere, but to take advantage of them, you've got to use promo code Dinesh.
I want to talk to you about his special for my listeners, a special on the Giza sheets.
Now, the first night you sleep on these Giza sheets, that's it.
You're not going to want to sleep on anything else.
These Giza Dream sheets from MyPillow come in a variety of sizes and colors.
And here's Mike's special offer, Sale of the Year for a Limited Time, 50% off.
It's as low as $49.99 on the sheet.
So call 1-800-876-0227 or go to MyPillow.com to get the discount.
You've got to use promo code D-I-N-E-S-H, Dinesh.
I'm really happy to have freshman Congresswoman Lauren Boebert in studio.
She's from Colorado. She's the former owner, or current owner maybe, Lauren, of Shooter's Grill Restaurant.
So she's a businesswoman.
And she's also, wow, making a stir in Washington in a good way.
Lauren, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Thanks so much for having me, Dinesh.
Boy, we met, Debbie and me and you and your husband, we met in Washington State.
Yes. Tell us about that.
So that was an interesting event for me because this guy wanted me on his radio show and I went on there just talking about the Second Amendment.
My restaurant kind of has that Second Amendment feel with all of the waitresses open carrying.
And he was like, this is a really cool concept.
Let's talk about it. And then I was invited to a Lincoln Day dinner where you were the keynote speaker.
And once I got there, there was this think tank.
And all of these great political minds were in this room and everyone was speaking.
And I kind of nudged my husband and said, What are we doing here?
I can't keep up with these people.
And then the MC comes to me and says, listen, Dinesh is running behind, so we might have to have you come up and speak in his place.
His plane just landed.
He's trying to get here. I'm like, oh my goodness, what am I going to talk about?
And I started thinking about just the issues with our school boards and how we need to get involved at a local level.
Moms need to stand up and participate in those meetings.
And you kind of saved the day.
You showed up on time and you were able to speak.
And I was like, cool, I don't have to do that.
But then they still wanted me to speak after you.
I said, I have to follow Dinesh D'Souza.
What is this? And so that was quite an interesting night.
I felt very much out of my place.
But I left there knowing there was something more that I could do for our country.
And I ended up getting involved to the point of running for Congress.
I took out a five-term incumbent.
It was the first time in 48 years in Colorado that an incumbent lost a primary, and we won with no money, and we won by 10 points.
So it was so incredible to go through that experience and see that I could actually affect and represent millions of people all across the nation.
So in some ways you're saying that that event sort of almost propelled you to the national stage and made you think that you could do more than just be someone who was locally active.
You could actually enter the political process.
You could actually compete. You could actually win.
That's so awesome. That's so good.
And now you find yourself in Washington, D.C., And, you know, it's a strange place.
It's an ecosystem unto itself.
So, give us your first kind of, you know, you've been there six months.
What are your impressions? Well, first of all, being a mom of four boys and a restaurant owner, I've spent a lot of my life taking chaotic situations and putting them in order.
So chaos and dysfunction are right up my alley.
So D.C. is a perfect fit for me.
We all know that the only kind of order that Nancy Pelosi has is tyrannical rule.
And that's kind of what we're seeing here.
And, you know, actually, we had discussed how a lot of members of Congress kind of get this big head when they get to D.C., But in this current Congress, the 117th Congress, Nancy Pelosi makes sure to keep us humble and keep us in our place and know that she's the boss and we're in her house.
It's such an interesting dynamic when you're there and you think, wow, our nation's capital, the people's house.
But then you see Speaker Pelosi and she says, no, this is my house.
You see that with the fences, the miles of barbed wire walls.
The thousands of National Guards.
She is very much making that her own kingdom.
Very interesting. So you're saying she doesn't function.
I mean, when I think back to speakers of the House, Tip O'Neill and others, I mean, they were the leader of the majority, and this was under Reagan.
But you didn't get the idea that they were personally saying things like, everyone's got to do this, everyone's got to do that.
You got the idea that this was a collegial operation, but you're saying that's all gone now.
You've got this 80-year-old woman, right?
And every time she speaks in public, I mean, she's batshit.
I mean, she's basically, you're dealing with someone who doesn't seem to be really all there, but somehow, nevertheless, the combination of that is combined with this authoritarian streak, and you're feeling it.
Very much so. Even the Republicans.
I mean, in a way, the January 6th committee, the task force, is a perfect embodiment of that, right?
That's exactly right. We started off this Congress with Nancy Pelosi removing Republicans from their committee assignments.
And now, she's still doing it with a special commission that she's put together.
Now, she was the one that was in charge of the security.
She oversees the security there at the Capitol.
And as soon as she saw that there were members who were going to question why The building was not secure.
Why we didn't have extra reinforcement when it was requested.
She said, you're not on the commission anymore.
And she doesn't want those questions asked.
And so it's very interesting that this is how everything in Congress is right now.
There's no such thing as bipartisan unless a Republican votes on a Democrat bill.
She controls the floor schedule.
I have lots of legislation that's not coming to the floor because she won't allow it to.
And the only Republicans, it's not that she doesn't want an opposition.
She seems to want a kind of a puppy dog opposition, right?
So you have a Liz Cheney.
And so she's happy, okay, I'll have Adam Kinzinger, I'll have Liz Cheney on my committee.
You've got these Republicans.
I think, in a way, Kevin McCarthy captured it well when he called them Pelosi Republicans.
They absolutely are. Right?
Now, talk about how odd it is that you've got these Republicans who participate in Republican...
Yes. Specifically, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, I had no problem calling them out because they are invited and welcomed into our closed-door meetings as a Republican conference, and yet they're allowed to go back to Nancy Pelosi's commission and release all of those secret conversations that we're having, those intimate conversations that we're having with our trusted colleagues.
And I think they should be removed from the conference.
They should not be allowed in those meetings with us and to engage with us at that level.
This commission is a complete sham.
If it wasn't, then Jim Banks and Jim Jordan would be allowed on that commission.
But she's showing us right from the beginning that this is a sham.
And then also, with her political authoritarian power, she is even controlling the attending physician at the Capitol.
When we come back, I'm going to talk to Lauren Boebert about mask mandates at the Capitol and a whole bunch of other stuff.
I want to talk to you about Birch Gold.
Now on July 4th, 1776, we declared our independence from taxation from a government an ocean away.
Today, our government is the one imposing oppressive taxes while at the same time sending our wealth overseas and driving the value of the dollar into the ground with reckless spending.
It's time to declare your independence for your savings.
Cut your ties to the US dollar and invest in gold and silver with Birch Gold Group.
Now if you haven't reached out to Birch Gold to diversify part of your IRA or 401k into a precious metals IRA, do it today.
Text Dinesh to 484848.
Get a free information kit on protecting your savings with gold.
I buy my gold from Birch Gold.
They have an A plus rating with a better business bureau, countless five star reviews and over 10,000 happy customers.
Talk to them.
Have them help you safeguard your investments.
Text Dinesh to 484848 to claim your free information kit and speak with a precious metals expert on holding gold and silver in a tax sheltered account.
Again, that is Dinesh.
Text it to 484848 and protect your savings today.
I'm back with Congresswoman Lauren Boebert.
We're talking about Nancy Pelosi and her tyrannical ways.
Well, let's talk about this whole business with mask mandates, because it seems to have reached almost comic proportions.
And when you're ordering around, first of all, members of Congress, and then second of all, their staffs.
And in some cases, threatening to arrest him.
And then you said she enlists the White House position.
So describe your kind of first-hand, up-close experience with dealing with this congressional nanny.
She is a congressional nanny.
I'm going to use that one. So, first of all, I think that we had it right in the beginning.
When we first heard of the coronavirus, we had it right.
Wash your hands, don't touch your face, social distance, you know, just have good proper hygiene and consult your doctor.
That is the most trusted relationship anyone has.
It's between yourself and your doctor and what your doctor advises.
Not political figures and government overreach mandating everything.
So we've gone a long way from that.
We had 15 days to slow the spread and now it's show us your papers or else.
And at the Capitol, we were getting ready for a seven week break.
We're out of session for seven weeks.
And we have three days left to go and we get a notification that masks are mandated again.
And we consulted the attending physician.
Who sent out this letter without talking to Leader McCarthy, only talked to Speaker Pelosi, and he's supposed to confer with leadership.
And so we asked him about this.
What is going on with this mask mandate?
What new information do you see that is causing us to triple down on this?
He said, well, the CDC guidelines.
We asked to see the reports that he was referring to with the CDC guidelines.
Well, those are unpublished. Well, have you read them?
No, I have not. Mr.
Dan Crenshaw actually stood up and said, well, I've read them and you're referring to a study that was done in India with a vaccine that's not approved in America and these guidelines are coming from that and you're enforcing them on Americans when that's not even something that is happening here in the United States.
So the entire time, the attending physician is speaking to us without his mask.
It's hanging at his neck.
He's saying that he's not political.
He's very much medical and he follows the science and he follows the guidelines.
Well, he's surrounded by multiple people.
You say, well, doctor, why aren't you wearing your mask?
He kind of chuckles and he gets real smug and he says, I'm under the designation rule.
Well, the CDC guidelines, Dinesh, does not have a designation rule.
That is a political rule by Nancy Pelosi.
Even in his letter to members of Congress, he gives one set of guidelines for the Senate.
Masks are recommended.
And for the House, masks are required.
And where are they required? Where the C-SPAN cameras are rolling.
Because it's all political theater.
Now, this is a key point.
And I think, in some ways, it's not even really hypocrisy.
I just saw a little clip on social media with AOC, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
She's unmasked.
She's sitting with a big gang of people.
They're laughing and jostling each other.
Suddenly, apparently, it's like, photo time!
And she's like, wait, wait, wait, wait!
Puts on her mask! Put your mask on!
Yes! Photo! And then, one minute later...
A mask is back off. She's back to normal.
Yes. So you get the sense that these people, it's not just that they say one thing and do another.
They really feel like they're above the rules.
Yes. I mean, think about Cori Bush, right?
Her recent comment where she goes, listen, I'm going to spend $150,000 on private security.
You guys get over it.
Why? Because I need to be here fighting for defund the police.
I mean, you can't make this stuff up.
No. No. No, and this is what we've been seeing all along and the American people are waking up to that.
They're waking up to the more than hypocrisy of all of this.
We see Speaker Pelosi getting her hair done in a salon without a mask when other Californians aren't allowed to do that.
We see them going to fancy restaurants and being maskless.
You have Governor Whitmer, she's spotted in a restaurant without a mask and they're taking their flights to see family when you're only allowed to have 10 Members of your family over for Thanksgiving and the hypocrisy is starting to drive people up a wall and they're saying enough and this is why we need to take back the house because these people have showed that they are unqualified to be in charge directing this country.
One of the points Debbie makes about Venezuela, and I would make the same point about India, is that you've got these political figures, and they believe that they belong to a special species, right?
It's not that they're being hypocrites.
They think there are no more hypocrites than a lion is a hypocrite by thinking, I'm the king of the jungle, the rules that apply to the other animals don't apply to me, because I'm a superior creature that needs to be measured according to a different standard.
Yes. And so you have politicians in India, they'll put emissions requirements, they'll be moved around in stretch limousines.
You can't do this, but they're doing it.
Yes. We have climate czars who whiz around on their jets.
This is something that we're seeing all the time.
It's interesting. I was passing by, I was walking through just a strip mall yesterday, and I saw a doggy treat bakery.
And I was like, well, look at this. Isn't this a concept?
You have these exquisite doggy treats, this bakery for dogs.
I said, that is a capitalist nation, because in a socialist nation, you bake the dogs.
Very interesting. You know, let's continue on this hypocrisy for a minute.
I'm thinking of Cuomo now.
Here's a guy. Look at the chutzpah of this guy, right?
First of all, you know, I saw Joy Reach is like, stop complaining about Cuomo.
After all, you know, you guys defended Kavanaugh.
You know, I remember in Kavanaugh's case, you had a single accuser talking about, what, a 30-year-old accusation that could not be corroborated.
Even by the one woman she named who was there, right?
So the question was, did this even happen?
In the case of Cuomo, there's no doubt.
Eleven women. These are women on the left.
They worked for him. They were on his team.
And so they ratted him out because he was...
And not only was he abusing them, he was creating an atmosphere of abuse.
So I think we're going to have to push this into the next segment.
But say a word about the...
How, again, Democrats, and I think here, if you look at who is the ancestor of Cuomo here, I think of Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton did exactly the same thing.
He got away with it.
So, aren't these people who think that, in a way, the rules of Me Too and so on don't apply to them?
Right. And actually, you and I were having a personal conversation, and I think that you explained it so well.
They actually... Put on the clothing of Me Too to try to comfort others and say, look, I'm with you, I support you, but they are actually the predators.
And that's a very dangerous place to be in.
But I mean, when you look at the left and just how vile and how gross some of their actions are, It's a wonder how any of them are in these positions.
I mean, you look at CNN and the vile actions that were taken on a Zoom call, and they bring him back in.
And I mean, that would not fly anywhere else.
I wouldn't bring an employee back to work for me who was engaged in acts like that.
And now you have the brother of Governor Cuomo writing his talking points, and he's still very much...
I mean, he's literally advising his brothers about how to discredit the accusers and how to minimize what he did.
And what I find most delicious, they were recruiting Me Too activists to go after the accusers.
I mean, this is beyond...
I mean, this is taking things to a whole new level.
That's right. There's no limit for this.
When we come back, we're going to talk to Lauren Boebert about...
A little bit more about January 6, perhaps, but also about some of the environmental craziness in her own district.
When's the last time you looked at your mortgage payment?
I mean, really looked at what you're spending.
If it's been a while, you could be overpaying and not even know it.
It's true. The interest rates we're seeing now are the lowest they've been in five months.
There are options in the twos.
My stepson, Justin, is looking for his first home.
He called American Financing and he was pleasantly surprised that they agreed to give him 2.875% and no fees, which could mean hundreds of dollars in monthly savings on his mortgage.
Do yourself a favor like Justin did and make a 10-minute call to American Financing.
Get that free. I'm back with Congresswoman Lauren Boebert.
Lauren, you know...
At the same time that the Biden administration is imposing these mask mandates, they're talking about stricter COVID regimen, forced vaccines.
They're kind of pushing companies to do that.
On the southern border, you have...
An infusion of COVID-ridden illegals, not just from Mexico, from all over the world.
Let's talk about that.
Yes. So Dinesh, I've been to our southern border three times now.
And I even brought a piece of the border czar with me.
I brought flat Kamala down to the border to have her see what she's done there, what her policies have caused at the border.
And that's the closest she's got to the southern border.
She had a pretend trip there to El Paso, which is one of the most secure places.
Parts of our southern border, even though she didn't go and see the wall.
But our southern border is so porous.
It is unsecure. Biden stopped construction on day one.
And now we're hearing reports of 7,000 positive cases from illegals just in McAllen, Texas alone.
And when I speak to Border Patrol agents about COVID-19 policies, they are not testing illegal immigrants for COVID. And like you said, they are coming from more than 100 different countries.
This isn't just a Mexico issue.
They are infiltrating from all over the world through our southern border.
And Our Border Patrol agents are not testing them for COVID because they cannot handle quarantining all of them.
They have to get them processed and through as quickly as possible.
In the McAllen Airport, I have sat there and watched dozens of groups of people with manila envelopes with their notice to appear on the inside and that notice to appear Is there identification now in the United States?
This gives them legal standing to remain in the United States.
And then they could even present that document to get health benefits and food stamps and housing.
And we are flying them.
We are busing them all throughout the United States.
So if the Biden administration is serious about COVID-19 restrictions, They need to secure the southern border because we are shipping COVID-19 all throughout our country right now.
How can they with a straight face even say to the American people, do this and do that, when you're basically worsening the problem and you're doing it consciously?
Yes, and punishing American citizens for your policies.
Yeah, exactly. I know that the guy, Bill Mulligan, who covers, he's Fox LA, and he went to Catholic charities and he said something like, you know, how many of the people that you're housing here have COVID? And they basically said, we're not allowed to say.
We're not allowed to say.
So they're suppressing...
Information. Is this, do you think, with Biden, is it that the radical leftist attorneys who have been pushing essentially for an open border, they just want to swamp the United States?
Yes. And do you think that Biden's just captive to that gang?
Yes, for everyone else, for the small business owners, for the people who are looking at more restrictions, more shutdowns, more lockdowns, more mask mandates, for the farmers and ranchers at the southern border whose properties are being destroyed, For the women who are being raped, for the unaccompanied minors who are being left alone to cross in the hands of the cartel because that's an easier way to get them into America, this is a crisis.
But for the Biden regime, this is mission accomplished.
If they were serious about any of this, they would go down and secure the southern border.
But they're not even taking a look at it because they'd have to admit that there's a problem.
And to them, there is no problem.
And we're seeing just how radical they will go.
I mean, look at the voter laws.
There's all of this upheaval about beefing up our voter laws.
Cleaning up the rolls.
Cleaning up the rolls, yes. And having signature verification.
having the state legislature actually determine election laws, what a concept.
And they're calling that Jim Crow 2.0. But in New York, you have to show your medical documents to even go into a restaurant. Wow. Let's talk about your home district.
You were talking just yesterday about the fact that You've got all these fires, you've got mudslides.
Talk about the craziness that you're dealing with at home because of environmental policies.
So last year Colorado had three of the worst wildfires in history.
And that's because of Democrat policies.
They have not allowed us to go in and actually manage our forests.
We have bark beetles that have destroyed, completely decimated our forests.
And we have billions of dead standing trees in the western United States.
Much of which are right there in Colorado, and we are not allowed to go in and harvest the amount of trees that we need to actually clean up those forests.
Instead, you get crazy leftists who make fun of President Trump for saying we need to go in and rake the forest floors.
Well, that's a real thing.
We're not going in with our plastic rakes and doing it by hand, but we need to clean up the forest floors.
Since we've had those forest fires, we created that big, huge tinderbox and got it prepped for Mother Nature to manage our forests for us.
And now we are experiencing heavy rainfall, which is causing tremendous mudslides, and it's shutting down access to the western part of Colorado.
This is affecting businesses in such a terrible way, and now we have to declare emergency orders and try to get this resolved.
Interstate 70 is heavily impacted in the Glenwood Springs Canyon and that is at minimum a four-hour detour.
For most people it's a seven-hour detour to go around and that is affecting Supply transportation, people getting to Denver for hospitals and visits, and even folks that just work on the other side of the canyon, and they are not able to go and go to work in their normal route.
We have other side routes that are now closing because of more mudslides, and it's just the hypocrisy of not being able to actually take care of the land We love environmental policies that actually work, and we are good stewards of the land, and we want to be able to take care of it.
But this not-in-my-backyard extremist point of view has got us to this point where our lands are untouchable and unmanageable.
I think, Lauren, you're illustrating one of the key principles of being a good representative, which is, yes, you have to participate, and you do, in all the big national issues, the border, guns, and so on.
But at the end of the day, you also represent your local constituents.
And so the stuff that's bothering them, I can't get through this mudslide, I can't get to work, you've got to fight for them on those fronts.
And I think that's the way that Republicans can combine Yes.
Having a constructive role in the national sphere, but at the same time making sure that you are doing a good job for your constituents, and that's how you get re-elected.
Yes, and that is so important.
I promised that I would be their voice and I would secure their rights, stand for the Constitution, but I also promised I would work for the people of Western Colorado, and so I'm just honored to do that.
Lauren, awesome. I'm so glad you are now part of town.
Thanks for coming on the podcast.
We'll see you again.
Thank you, Dinesh.
How would I describe the kind of person that takes balance of nature?
One word, investor.
An investor understands that we do small things today in order to reap big rewards tomorrow.
That's the key mindset of one who takes balance of nature.
I know that by putting all those vital ingredients into my body, literal building blocks sourced from 31 fruits and veggies, every day I'm giving my body the best chance at fighting off sickness and enjoying my optimal health for years to come.
Ten daily servings of fruits and veggies, all in six small capsules.
They're absolutely no trouble swallowing.
They're always fresh, nothing artificial.
They smell great.
Invest in your health.
Invest in your life.
Join me and experience the balance of nature difference for yourself for years to come.
For a limited time, all new preferred customers get an additional 35% discount and free shipping on your first balance of nature order.
Use discount code America.
Call 800-246-8751.
800-246-8751.
Or go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code America.
You know, I often blast on this podcast the leftism and often the sycophancy, the sheer genuflecting tone of press coverage.
And this is a manifest in the White House press corps.
It's an embarrassing spectacle.
CNN reporters, you know, to Jen Psaki or in some cases to Biden.
How did you get so great?
How are you going to defeat those evil Republicans?
Now, this is really not journalism.
But there is one journalist who stands out in the White House press corps, and this is Peter Doocy of Fox News.
Now, this is a young guy. He's 34 years old.
He's actually the son of the Fox& Friends co-host Steve Doocy.
And one might think that, hey, in the Trump administration, you know, the left-wing press was ferociously adversarial.
And so, no surprise, now that Biden's in office, Peter Doocy representing Fox is going to be fiercely adversarial and shout at...
But no, actually, Peter Doocy is the perfect gentleman.
His questions are always well thought out.
They are adversarial.
But let's remember that it's the job of the press to be adversarial.
I mean, why would you need a press?
You would just need a public relations office if you were asking questions that elicit the information the administration wants to put out.
They don't need a press corps to do that.
The function of journalism is to put intellectual and political pressure on the government to make it clarify and say things that perhaps it doesn't want to say or meet arguments it would rather not deal with.
And this is really what Ducey does, and he does it in a very civil way.
So let's look at the classic Ducey question.
Here we go. Why is it that the federal government is asking vaccinated Americans to wear masks to stop the spread of COVID-19, but at the same time federal agents are releasing COVID-19 positive border crossers into small towns in Texas?
Boom! You want to fight the epidemic.
You're talking about going to emergency measures to do it, and yet you're letting in all these untested COVID-positive people into the country.
What possible sense can that make?
So, interestingly, the left doesn't like this kind of thing.
They like the courtier press, and so they blast Ducey.
Oh, Jen Psaki really owned Ducey.
But it's not a matter of owning Ducey.
It's a matter that Jen Psaki is being pressed by Ducey To answer questions that nobody else really asks.
When Gwen Berry, for example, the athlete, said, oh, I wish I can win a medal because I'm going to, you know, defile the American flag on the podium.
You know, and just doing this in the name of the woke left.
So here's Pete Doocy now asking Jen Psaki.
She just asked the question.
She turned her back while the anthem played, says Peter Doocy.
Does President Biden think that is the appropriate behavior for someone who hopes to represent Team USA? Now, Jen Psaki's response actually is not bad.
She kind of does a little bit of a Jen Psaki pirouette.
She goes, well, I haven't spoken to the president specifically about this.
This is kind of a standard response when Biden is brought up.
Then she goes, well, I know he's incredibly proud to be an American.
He's got great respect for the anthem.
And then she says, and this is kind of her so-called owning of Pete Doocy, he would also say, of course, meaning she says Biden would say.
She's actually putting words in his mouth.
Biden doesn't say very much.
But lots of people are playing ventriloquist with Biden.
He would say, of course, that part of that pride in our country means recognizing there are moments when we as a country haven't lived up to our highest ideals.
No one would disagree with this.
And it's a perfectly appropriate response from Jen Psaki.
My point here is not to blast Jen Psaki.
It's to say that asking these kinds of questions and getting the White House to respond is the essence of what journalism is.
And isn't it a pity that with this full room of the White House press corps right now, in terms of real journalism, there's only one guy doing it?
From critical race theory in your children's classrooms to policy changes under the current administration, you need to know what's happening from a news source you can trust.
Unfortunately, most media outlets opt for shameless virtue signaling and state propaganda in lieu of the truth.
It's an insult to your intelligence, which is why my good friends at The Daily Wire are providing an alternative.
From The Daily Wire newsroom comes Morning Wire, a daily morning news podcast that gives you the facts you need to know first.
Brought to you by Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley and co-host Georgia Howe, Morning Wire will wake you up with the latest developments in politics, sports, culture, and education, all with a heavy emphasis on the truth.
News drops every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, so subscribe now to hear the trailer.
And if you like what you hear, leave a five-star review to help Daily Wire provide a source that all Americans can wake up with and trust.
Each episode will be short with only enough room to fit the facts so you can be sure your breakfast isn't being served with a side of someone else's agenda.
Subscribe to Morning Wire as soon as you can.
I've talked on this podcast before about the need to develop ways that we can break free of censorship, particularly censorship on these digital platforms and from the tech companies.
I'm delighted to welcome entrepreneur Eric Finman who's been doing something about this.
Eric, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for joining me.
Let me start by having you talk a little bit about yourself and how you caught the entrepreneurial bug.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I guess growing up, I was always someone that liked to, I guess, be into crazy things.
Like one of the things that I was really into, I guess some kids had video games, some kids had sports.
I had Bitcoin. I first heard about Bitcoin, I guess, at a protest.
Some people got arrested for dancing.
So it was very much like a Footloose-like protest.
And then some guy had this orange shirt on and it had a B that looked like a dollar sign.
And I was like, what's that? And he was like, it's Bitcoin, man.
It's going to end Wall Street, bro.
And he ran off.
And then I went back, looked at Bitcoin and all that.
It was like, wow, this is the future.
And I think that really inspired me, I guess, to do things that are kind of That are outside of the norm or be into things that are outside of the norm.
And I thought, you know, get into starting businesses and building technologies that are just as world-changing as Bitcoin.
I mean, one of the appeals of Bitcoin is the idea of doing an end run around these kind of government controlled official currencies.
Talk a little bit about, you've come up with a product called the Freedom Phone.
Was that a response to breaking the kind of hold that big tech and censorship has on people's lives?
What gave you the idea and what need were you responding to?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, I started the Freedom Phone because basically, yeah, I mean, there's free speech is just dying in America.
And that sounds a little cheesy, but it's very true.
And I think growing up, that was something I always liked to push boundaries on what you could say, you know, much to, I guess, maybe the people around me chagrin.
And that's something that's so quintessentially American.
And they're taking that away from us.
And And I felt like I actually have a nice...
I had a nice reputation before I did the Freedom Film thing.
You know, CNN liked me to bring me on about Bitcoin and everything.
And then, yeah, but to me, it's like I'm pretty much above all other issues.
Free speech is the most important thing because it's the core.
It's a core issue and they're just taking that away and that's something that is in America's DNA. I want to create the freedom phone so that way we weren't reliant on people's hardware, but we're reliant on our own.
Because you can have the best software in the world, but if you rely on other people's hardware, it doesn't really matter.
You see that parlor, you know, they got banned off the App Store.
You could even see non-political apps like Fortnite.
If you don't pan up enough to Apple, they get banned from the App Store.
So that's why I wanted to do this Freedom Phone project because, you know, if we don't have our own hardware, we don't really have free speech because you're just like praying for big tech not to ban you.
So you're trying to create essentially a device that is liberated and not dependent on all these companies that could shut you down.
Talk about some of the qualities of the phone itself.
What would someone who has a Freedom Phone, what would that enable them to do and what would it protect them from?
Yeah, absolutely. So with the Freedom Phone, we have two main features.
The main feature is the App Store, so that way you're able to download all the normal apps Normal Phone has, but plus band ones as well.
And then we also have another thing.
We have a privacy guard called Trust.
And then that basically doesn't just warn you about things tracking you.
It actively stops you.
And we recently just partnered with a company called Clear.
And that way, this is like every phone is the most secure.
You see Pegasus, which was this security vulnerability provider.
That every phone had and all that.
In this partnership with Clear, we made sure that this phone is Pegasus-proof.
So that way they can't get in your phone whatsoever.
So it's amazing, at least in regards to Pegasus, right?
So I mean, it's really secure.
So any app that you download now, it gets totally siloed on its own little island.
And so if you happen to download malware and people don't think, well, malware and phones...
Malware on phones totally exists.
You just don't realize it.
So if you accidentally download malware without knowing it because of this, you know, it just doesn't work.
And it's siloed in its own little bubble.
Can't see what you're doing on the rest of your phone.
So that's an amazing privacy feature.
And there's so many more things than just that too.
So it's really cool. Well, Eric, thank you for your work in producing some new stuff and putting it before the public.
You guys may want to check out Eric Finman's Freedom Phone, an attempt to fight back against the tyranny of big tech.
Thank you, Eric, for joining me.
Thank you so much. It's on freedomphone.com if you want to check it out.
Guys, Mike Lindell is offering a ridiculously good deal on his towels. This is a six-piece towel set.
We have a bunch of them in our house, Debbie and I do, and this includes two bath towels, two hand towels, and two washcloths. They're made with USA cotton. They're soft yet absorbent.
Regular price $109.99. Mike is offering them for $39.99. So it's a great deal.
Take advantage of it. Call 800-876-0227 or go to MyPillow.com to get this great deal.
You've got to use promo code Dinesh.
I want to talk in this segment about Greek tragedy.
I'm going to focus on a single play by one of the three great Greek tragedians.
This is Aeschylus. I'm going to focus on the first play in his trilogy.
The trilogy is called Oresteia.
The first play in this trilogy is called Agamemnon.
It's named after King Agamemnon.
And as we look at this we begin to understand tragedy as a literary genre but we also begin to get insight into human nature, the tragic dimension of human nature. Now Agamemnon was the leader of the Greek expedition of a thousand ships that went to Troy, sacked Troy, destroyed Troy, burned Troy, and
brought Helen back to Greece. And Greek tragedy is defined by taking this material of myth and problem.
And focusing in on it.
In no way does Aeschylus try to cover the Trojan War.
In fact, he's covering an episode in this play Agamemnon that happens after the Trojan War.
So during the Trojan War, while the Greeks were fighting the Trojans, they committed some terrible atrocities.
And I want to mention three.
First, When King Priam, the Trojan king, fled to the temple of Zeus for protection.
Now, this is a king going into the temple of a god.
It is considered sacrilegious to go in there and kill him on the temple.
And yet, that's what the Greeks did.
Atrocity number one.
Priam's daughter, Cassandra, was raped by the Greek warrior Ajax.
This is a warrior named Ajax the Younger.
And this defilement of the daughter of a king is atrocity number two.
And number three, the Trojan warrior Hector had a young son, a baby, a child named Astyanax, and the Greeks grabbed this kid and flung him from the battlements to his death.
Now, these atrocities went above and beyond the normal carnage of war.
And in the story of the Trojan War, the Greek gods became extremely angry.
They had actually urged the Greeks to do the expedition, but they became angry and they decided to punish a lot of the Greek warriors, either by what would happen to them after the war, or that they would be essentially condemned and lost at sea.
Odysseus himself, the Greek warrior, was at sea, was away for years.
He didn't get back for 20 years from the Greek expedition, and when he got back there was all kinds of trouble at home.
That's the plot of the Odyssey.
Well, we're going to focus on Agamemnon, the Greek king, because when he came back, it turned out that his wife, Clytemnestra, had taken up with another man named Agistus, and the two of them planned together to murder Agamemnon.
That's the plot of Agamemnon.
It's a gruesome murder.
Now, like a lot of Greek tragedy, there's a lot of drama.
the murder occurs offstage.
But you hear about it, and it's almost unbearable to listen to.
In fact, Clytemnestra talks about Agamemnon's blood splashing all over her, and she loves it.
She says, basically, to me, it was like a plant being watered in the spring.
I mean, think about that. Now, you might ask, why would Clytemnestra want to murder Agamemnon?
Is it because, you know, she's having this affair, has taken up with this other man?
Well, it turns out that's not the case.
Her motive is much deeper than that.
In fact, it's revenge.
Before the Greek king Agamemnon went to Troy, he sacrificed, he murdered his own daughter, Iphigenia, as a sacrifice to the gods to give him success in the battle at Troy.
Think about that. And naturally, the child of young girl's mother, Clytemnestra.
So this is why she has the affair.
This is why she allies herself with Aegisthus to murder Agamemnon.
It's to take revenge for the killing of Iphigenia.
Now... As in Greek tragedy, when you think you've figured something out, things kind of get a lot deeper.
And we now have to turn to Agamemnon's own motives and why he would do, as a father, something so absolutely horrific.
It turns out that once Helen has been taken to Troy, Agamemnon goes to Zeus, the greatest of the Greek gods, and says,"'What should I do?' And in this play, Zeus says very clearly, you must go to Troy.
So Agamemnon has a kind of absolute duty, not only to recover Helen, who is his brother's wife, but he has an absolute duty to avenge the stealing of Helen and to sort of protect the honor, not just of his brother, but of his city, of Greece itself.
Because this is a gross violation of hospitality to abduct the wife of a Greek princess, Helen of Troy, and take her to Troy.
So, Agamemnon has an absolute duty to do this.
Now, when he sets out to do it, the winds are terrible.
He can't put his ships at sea.
It's too dangerous. And so, Agamemnon tries to figure out what's going on.
Now, he's informed... By a prophet that Artemis, another god, is angry at him and is demanding of him that he sacrifice his own daughter.
Artemis says, I will not change the winds unless you sacrifice your daughter Iphigenia.
Now, when Artemis is giving his reason for why he would impose such a horrific demand on the Greek king, Artemis says something extremely strange.
He says that he saw an omen, he, Artemis, saw an omen where two eagles fell upon a rabbit, a pregnant rabbit, and the eagles devoured the rabbit and they devoured the rabbit's offspring.
All the little baby rabbits were savagely cut to pieces by the eagle.
And Artemis goes, this is why you have to do this.
Now, on the face of it, this seems a little bit weird.
What would a dream about eagles and a rabbit have possibly to do with the Greek expedition to Troy?
But here is where I think we see the greatness of Aeschylus because this dream is actually supposed to represent what is about to happen in battle.
The rabbit is, in fact, Troy.
The eagle is the Greeks.
So the Greeks, just like the eagle, are going to devour Troy.
And they're going to commit, as I said earlier, atrocities against the Trojans.
And those atrocities are going to be so outrageous.
That the gods are going to be infuriated by it.
So it's almost as if what Artemis is saying to Agamemnon is, you are going to become a very wicked man, a very hard man at Troy.
You and your troops are going to do very bad things over there.
Well, if you're going to be that kind of person then, you need to become that kind of person now.
And so...
You know what? Take your daughter and show your heartlessness now by sacrificing her.
And if you do, we will clear the wind.
Everything will be calm.
You can sail to Troy. Now, the essence of Greek tragedy—we see this in Aeschylus, we'll see it later in Sophocles and others—is Putting a man in a position where he has an impossible choice.
Agamemnon, on the one hand, has, as I mentioned earlier, an absolute duty to go to Troy.
Zeus has demanded it of him.
He has no way to refuse that.
On the other hand, as a parent, he has an absolute duty to his family.
He has an absolute duty to his daughter.
For a father to murder his own daughter countermands everything that we know And care about in family relations.
So here is Agamemnon.
And the remarkable thing about Greek tragedy is the fact that these choices are forced upon him.
And there's no way that he can get out of them.
He has to choose one or the other.
In fact, Zeus basically says that if you don't go to Troy, I will drive you mad.
And in a sense, Artemis is saying is if you don't sacrifice your daughter, you can't go to Troy.
So, on the one hand, by following Zeus and sacrificing his daughter, which is the choice that Agamemnon makes, and he goes to Troy...
He sets up the circumstances of his own murder.
So we see here that Clytemnestra is not entirely wrong in what she does.
She is retaliating for a barbaric act committed by her husband, the murder of their own daughter.
And so we see here in Greek tragedy that the fact that a choice is forced upon you in no way liberates you from the consequences of that choice.
And it is the essence of human tragedy that when we're faced with choices that we must make, we are nevertheless not freed from the moral payback that comes from making those choices.
▲
Export Selection