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Sept. 20, 2021 - Dinesh D'Souza
55:49
THE FRAME-UP Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep 178
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Time Text
John Durham's a real plotter.
He takes a single shot.
He doesn't go after the herd.
But by examining the carcass, we can really see the evil schemes of the Democratic Party.
How the FBI announced a riot.
For Trump supporters, but they were too smart to show up.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt joins me.
We'll talk about the Remain in Mexico policy for illegals.
And finally, I'm going to look at Martin Luther's role in the controversial indulgences issue.
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.
He's a, let's get the facts first.
Let's cross every T, dot every I. He was very careful not to do anything before the election.
This is kind of, you must almost call it the Republican mode of investigation.
The Democratic mode is the opposite.
Indict first. Lock people up.
We'll get some evidence on them later.
So Durham, in this sense, has been, well, a bit of a disappointment.
He's the kind of guy who goes hunting and he's got, you know, all these targets out there, all these buffalo just waiting to be taken out.
No, he just shoots one of them.
Well... I guess this is Durham's second carcass.
The first one was the FBI agent, or Officer Clinesmith, who was busted by Durham several months ago.
But now Durham has indicted a top Democratic lawyer, a guy named Michael Sussman.
And Sussman is part of a Democratic law firm, a firm that was in fact contracted to the Hillary campaign.
This is a guy working in close tandem with the Hillary people to do what?
Well, it turns out to fake, to concoct, to create a bogus narrative right before the 2016 election against Trump.
And the value of Durham's indictment, it's a detailed indictment, I've read through it very carefully, is you can sort of see the different, how this works.
How the Democrats have great confidence that they can count on the FBI to go along, Play along. And the media.
So, essentially what you have is you have Hillary Clinton through Sussman putting out a lie.
The lie is then picked up by the FBI. Then they leak to the media.
The FBI is doing an investigation.
The media blares this out.
And then Hillary herself waves and goes, this is very disturbing news that I'm seeing in the media.
News that it turns out So, this is kind of delicious stuff to look at because you see this is basically like, you know, Satan and his little devils and how they work together to corrupt the human race.
Now, this is It's not, by the way, the Clinton team's first foray into this.
Their big foray was the bogus Steele dossier that, by the way, they paid millions of dollars to commission.
They tried to conceal their role in it.
In fact, when they paid for the Steele dossier, they marked it as legal fees.
So no one would know that they're paying really ultimately for a bogus document run by this British spy Christopher Steele against Trump and use that as the basis for getting FISA warrants and so on.
So, this story involving Sussman is part of that larger effort to frame Trump.
It's a big frame-up.
So, let's look at how this frame-up works, because it involves a lot of different parties.
Now, on September 16, 2016, Michael Sussman, a prominent lawyer, meets with the FBI. He meets with James Baker of the FBI, and he tells him, listen...
I'm coming to you not as a representative of any organization.
I'm coming to you as a concerned citizen because I have evidence that the Trump campaign is involved, is colluding, you might say, with a Russian bank, a Russian-based bank called Alpha Bank.
And this guy goes, Sussman goes, here are the documents, you can take a look at them.
Now, let's back up and look at how these documents got generated.
Turns out that Sussman did not disclose to the FBI that he was being paid by the Clinton campaign.
Now, how do we know that?
How does Durham know that?
Because he has the invoices.
Sussman actually billed for his time in coming up with the fake documents.
He billed for the meeting with the FBI. So he's red-handed here.
He's red-handed in misleading the FBI about who he's representing and where he's getting the information.
Turns out, Sussman's firm, by the way, which is called Perkins Coey, is part of this democratic sort of bag of dirty tricks operation.
By the way, Mark Elias, a major figure in the Clinton campaign, general counsel to the Clinton campaign, also a partner of this firm.
By the way, Sussman and Elias have now both resigned, have both left the firm.
So what's going on here is that you have it in a kind of triangular collusion between the Hillary campaign, which is paying for this, this guy Sussman and his law firm, and it turns out very interestingly, an unnamed tech executive.
Who is this tech executive?
I can't wait to find out.
The indictment doesn't say.
Could it be one of the big names?
Sundar Pinchai at Google or Zuckerberg?
It's not clear. But we know that it's a high-up guy.
Why? Because this is a guy who says that he's looking forward to being offered a top job in the Clinton administration.
So he thinks Clinton's going to win.
He's looking for a top job.
It looks like his role in producing this kind of fake frame-up is aimed at endearing himself to the Clinton people.
He's sort of delivering for them.
Now how does he work?
This tech guy apparently gets all these other quote, researchers, and he tells them to go look for stuff on Trump.
And in fact, he tells them, listen, you don't even really need proof.
His point is, he says, it's all that you need is enough to get the FBI quote, a useful narrative.
In other words, we just need enough that the FBI is going to jump on it, we're then going to leak it to the media, we've got the story.
So, now, internally, and Durham, this is where Durham's digging pays off, he discovers that these researchers kind of know that they're doing a fake operation.
In fact, one of them basically says, listen, there's no there there.
Now, some of these research are totally in on it.
In fact, one of them says, listen, the way we can link these different entities that are actually separate, that have no dealings with each other, is we can create fake sales forms.
And it'll make it appear like these entities, the bank and so on, are actually dealing with each other.
So if the The FBI looks like, oh yeah, there's some suspicious activity between otherwise unrelated entities.
In other words, the activity is being faked.
It's being essentially planted by the researchers.
But even after they do that, one of the researchers, and this guy is just basically described without being named, We're good to go.
To make even a very weak association.
So he's basically saying, we've got to pull out all the stops of lies in order to even create the appearance of something.
There's nothing really here at all.
So these guys know what's going on.
They know that they're part of a fraud.
And I'm hoping that Durham indicts all of them, indicts the tech executive, indicts all these co-conspirators.
And in fact, one of the researchers says, quote, the only thing that drives us at this point is that we just do not like Trump.
Whoa! The beauty of all this is that the reason that these people do this is they know that the FBI will jump, A, and B, they know the media will play along.
So who's the big sucker here?
And I won't call him a sucker.
I actually have met this weasel a few times.
He's one of these... He works for Slate Magazine.
His name is Franklin Four, F-O-E-R. And, of course, this guy jumps on it.
He does a big article in Slate.
And the theme of the article, of course, is, yes, there's been disturbing connections between Trump and the Russian Alpha Bank...
Now, the sneaky thing about Ford, and if you meet the guy, you'll see right away this is the kind of guy who's sneaky.
I mean, you just have to kind of hold onto your wallet while you're talking to him, is that he talks about the fact, he says, quote, a group of scholarly digital researchers has discovered this incriminating data.
Little does he say, no, it was a tech executive in bed with the Clinton campaign looking for a job who put up his cronies to do this, to fake this.
Four acts like, no, independent researchers all over the world are like, whoa, what do we have here?
So, a completely fake operation.
And then the beauty of it is...
After MSNBC jumps on it, after all the media jumps on it, you've got major articles all over the place, all about these links between Trump and the Alpha Bank.
Jake Sullivan, by the way, is talking about it.
Of course, Rachel Maddow is all over it.
Finally, this is the beauty of it, Hillary Clinton weighs in.
Here's Hillary Clinton's Tweet, I'm going to read it to you because it just shows that this is kind of the mistress of deceit.
Quote, Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump organization to a Russian-based bank.
Okay. So, this is the Democratic Party in a nutshell.
They cook up a false report.
They then drop it on the FBI, knowing that those goons will be like, yeah, let's look into it.
And then, the media, yeah, we can counter these suckers.
Let's call Franklin Ford.
Yeah, hello, yes, I'm ready.
You know?
And then Hillary was like, what do I see here?
Wait a minute! Hold on!
Trump is colluding with Russia!
This is the stupidity at the end of it, because, you know, Durham's busted it all.
But this is the sort of diabolical operation here.
you feel like you're in the opening scene of Paradise Lost, where we're right in the bottom of Milton's hell.
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Public attention has moved a little bit away from Afghanistan.
Partly it's the Millie scandal.
Partly it's what's going on at the border.
Partly, of course, it's the Durham indictment.
But there's a report just out that the Kabul suicide bomber, the guy who murdered 13 Americans and nearly 200 Afghans, This guy was set free from, guess where?
Not Gitmo, Bagram Prison.
In other words, this guy was in prison at the base of Bagram.
We let him out.
Why? Because we were getting out of there.
And so this guy goes out and says, okay, time to put on my suicide vest.
Time to arm up on the explosives.
So this report is unconfirmed.
I've seen it from Chuck Colesto.
I'm going to follow it very carefully to see if it can be confirmed today.
What is confirmed is that the Pentagon has now admitted that their great, triumphant, you know, we got these ISIS guys who are coming to attack the airport.
We took revenge for the suicide bombing.
No, we didn't.
The United States, in fact, killed a guy who was...
This is a poor NGO guy.
This is a guy who's on our side.
In fact, his family members told The Times that Ahmadi had applied for refugee resettlement in the U.S. He's, I'm one of you.
Take me with you. Boom!
We blow him up. We blow up ten members of his family.
We kill, in fact, his seven children.
Think of this. This is like a war crime.
Horrific. And then when we think back to all the horrific boasting by the Biden administration, we have gotten two high-profile terrorists.
And for a while it was really suspicious.
What are their names? Who were they?
What are their backgrounds? No word on any of that.
And then it took the New York Times and the Washington Post, by the way, to do an investigation, to go over there on the scene and to realize that, no, you didn't.
You got the wrong guy.
And this is what is so outrageous.
After, you know, Biden's statements...
That he had taken appropriate revenge.
We've taken action. We've made them pay.
No real backing down.
No genuine apology.
Here I'm now quoting from an article in Fox News.
No disciplinary action expected officials say...
U.S. military stands by intel leading to strike.
Wait a minute. You're standing by the intel?
The intel was valid?
Really? Obviously the intel was wrong.
The real question is, where'd you get it?
And you know what the answer to that is?
Well, at least Becker News is reporting that they got it from the Taliban.
The Taliban tipped off the U.S. Hey guys, you know, now that we're talking and all, there's a dangerous car coming to the airport.
You might want to, like, get them with a drone strike.
By the way, the U.S. government did not get congressional authorization.
They were acting like this is an emergency.
We have to act now.
And so... It is possible, at least reported by Becker News, that the Taliban did this.
Why? For obvious reasons.
They would love the United States to blow up one of their own guys.
They would love the United States to kill civilians because then they can turn to the Afghans and say, listen, this is kind of what we've been telling you all along.
These foreign invaders do not care about any of us.
You know, you're one of them.
You're one of us. You're an Afghan.
Who cares? Kaboom!
That's the United States.
That's what they want the United States' image to be, a callous superpower that doesn't even really care.
Now, my final tidbit on all this is that people aren't leaving the Mazar-e-Sharif airport right now.
The Taliban is blocking it.
And if you listen to these pathetic statements from the U.S. State Department, you realize that they have no leverage.
First of all, they're trying to change the topic.
Every time you bring it up, Ned Price, by the way, who's the spokesman for the State Department, he goes into these little side paths.
He says things like, I want to commend veterans groups which have played an important role and welcome role in this.
A constellation of actors has come to the support of the people of Afghanistan, blah, blah, blah.
But here comes the key line.
Only when pressed. I'm not aware that any international flights, charter flights, or otherwise have left Mazar-e-Sharif.
And then the usual mindless rubbish.
We will continue to work as this, just as we continue to work on overland routes as well.
We have been very clear that the individuals who've expressed a desire and willingness to leave should be allowed to leave.
This is kind of like, I would call it diplomacy by memo, diplomacy by rhetoric, as if us being, quote, very clear about it is going to actually make anything happen on the ground.
This is a pathetic operation from start to finish, and this latest episode, getting the wrong guy, perhaps even letting out the guy from Bagram prison to do the suicide bombing, This is all just a grim metaphor for the sheer, not just incompetence, but also malevolence that is a defining feature of the Biden administration.
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Halloween, it seems, has come early to the nation's capital.
Did you watch that scene over the weekend of the Trumpster protest?
By the way, this was supposed to be a huge riot.
There were gigantic numbers of riot policemen.
The FBI was there in force.
And guess what? Nobody showed up.
The Trumpsters were too smart.
They knew that this was a trap.
And so they stayed away.
Now, the left of course is trying to make hay of what happened over the weekend.
They're like, yeah, well, the fact that there were less than 50 protesters really shows that Trump's appeal has waned.
Nobody really likes the guy anymore.
Well, no. If I had a demonstration here in Texas for the...
For the January 6th protest, so there'd be thousands of people showing up.
But they didn't show up to D.C. because they knew what was going on.
Now, we want to zoom into a scene of an arrest, or an attempted arrest, that doesn't turn out quite that way.
And this is from the protest itself.
Take a look. Listen. What happened?
Are you on the cover?
Are you part of the event?
I'm just here. What's your name?
No. What's your name?
Just don't drop it on my head.
How about that? Perfect.
What do you want to take? I don't know if you were watching closely, but this is really very entertaining.
Basically, what's happening is the riot police are busting this guy because they find that he's armed and they discover he's an undercover...
Now, there are lots of little details about this and what's kind of fun is when you look at this clip on YouTube, if you read down the comments, you see how carefully people watch this stuff and how smart they are in figuring out what's going on.
I just want to read some of the comments because they help to flesh out The full texture of this incident.
So the first guy goes, isn't it funny watching these guys barely able to walk in their stormtrooper costumes?
If you actually watch them leaving the scene, it's like Robocop.
These guys can barely walk.
They're so heavily accouted with all this equipment.
Somebody else comments, the FBI threw a riot and nobody came.
Yeah, the Trumpsters are too smart.
We're not falling for this one.
One of my favorite comments, so many undercover feds, they're arresting each other by accident.
So they're like, all these FBI guys, all these different agencies, they're all arresting each other.
Oh no, which agency?
Oh yeah, okay, fine, yeah.
So you can see what's going on.
This is an orchestrated event.
And then, did you check out the FBI agent?
One of the comments captures the whole situation.
Get shorty. I mean, the FBI agent is like, he's like, well, here's another comment.
Of course, the Fed is four feet tall.
Another comment. Don't the Feds have a minimum height requirement?
I mean, can you really be?
I mean, don't you need to sometimes be able to check out the view?
Oh, Alright, here's another comment, very interesting.
Watch the big cop trying to say something without voicing it out loud.
Look at his mouth. So see, basically it was good as the big cop realizes that they busted one of their own guys, but he doesn't want to say it.
So he doesn't go, man, the guy's an FBI agent.
That's why you have to watch the video carefully.
Well, here's a comment.
Here's a comment. The comment is, back up, back up, so we can hide what we accidentally exposed.
This isn't about safety at all.
Now, the French have a term.
It's called the agent provocateur, which is basically a guy...
Who entices other people to commit illegal acts.
He falsely implicates them just to basically ruin them, to get them busted, to get their reputation destroyed.
The French would use their own policemen, by the way, as ajars provocateurs, in order to discredit groups that are protesting the government.
And that's exactly what's going on here.
This is essentially a deep state operation intended to entrap Trumpsters.
That's what it's for. And of course, you know, the truth of it is no one's arrested.
It was a completely peaceful demonstration.
But still, I'm waiting for the final denouement, which is basically some of these officers, you know, heavily armed, showing up before Congress.
This guy touched me.
That guy pushed me.
It was traumatic. It was worse than January 6th.
I mean, this is all.
You have to realize what's happening in America today is that what's happening on the ground is It's completely different.
And of course, there'll be reporters going, oh, troubling, very disturbing.
The Trumpsters were at it again.
So you have public narratives here that have been completely unmoored, removed from reality.
And part of what we have to do, I think, is just keep a sharp eye, just like all these different commenters, so that we're basically conveying to those guys, we know what you're up to.
You're the real frauds.
You're the real danger to the republic.
And the worst thing for you is...
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Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast Eric Schmidt.
Eric is the Attorney General of Missouri.
He's formerly the State Treasurer.
He was also in the Missouri State Senate.
And he's running for U.S. Senator in the election coming up next year, 2022.
Eric, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for joining me.
I really want to begin by commending you because you joined with the Texas Attorney General and launched a very important strike against the Biden administration's border policy.
This resulted in a favorable decision by Judge Kaczmarek, but even the Supreme Court refused to issue an injunction.
The net effect, as I understand it, was to restore something like Trump's So-called Remain in Mexico policy.
Talk a little bit about the process of taking on Biden on this.
First of all, what did you see that made you feel like you needed to act?
And then second of all, how did you win this big win that has essentially overturned the cornerstone of their immigration policy vis-a-vis illegals?
Well, it's great to be with you, Dinesh.
Yeah, look, we knew that when Joe Biden, on day one, when he started reversing all of the great progress that President Trump had made on a whole host of issues, including on immigration reform and securing our border, that the Republican Attorneys General were going to have to be the last line of defense for our republic.
And that was made very clear and we anticipated, but the left has definitely Had its way with Joe Biden.
He's doing their bidding and the most radical agenda I think we've ever seen in our lifetime.
As it relates to this issue specifically, on day one, Joe Biden reversed President Trump's very successful Remain in Mexico policy or the Migrant Protection Protocols.
And so to prevent this kind of catch and release policy that Obama had during his tenure, President Trump instituted that policy, which basically said, look, if you're coming here from Central or South America, you're traveling through Mexico to get to the United States seeking asylum.
The waiting room is going to be Mexico.
Because if you don't do that, you see what's happening right now, which is you come across the border, you're in the United States, you get a court date, you're released into the interior of the United States, and you're never seen again.
And this was Joe Biden's policy after he reversed President Trump's successful policy where that wasn't the case.
So we filed suit with Texas.
We won at the district court level.
We won at the Fifth Circuit.
And we also got a victory at the Supreme Court in a 6-3 ruling, which is really a victory for border security and the rule of law.
I mean, let's look at some of these numbers because you see the radicalism of what Biden was trying to do. Here's an article that says that in 2019 there were 57,000 migrants who applied for asylum at the border in this way. But this year alone, or since October to now, we have seen 1.47 million apprehensions at the border.
So it seems that Biden basically was leaving the door open, so to speak.
And what is the consequence, Eric, of the Supreme Court decision now?
Is the Remain in Mexico policy in effect?
I ask this because I'm seeing all these scenes on social media.
A lot of it's being done by Bill Milligan.
reporting out of Fox LA, but he's at the border and you have these sort of incredible conglomerations of Haitians and other refugees and they're piling at the US border and they're, I mean, it's a scene out of Slumdog Millionaire. I mean, you got people defecating and they makeshift shelters. So this is all happening. What is going to happen to those people? Are they going to actually be sent back or left on the other side of the border or are they allowed
in the United States? They should be. So the net effect of the Supreme Court's ruling was that President Trump's remain in Mexico policy is in effect.
Now, the enforcement issue is going to be the next challenge here, right?
And one of the good things from the district court judge's order was requiring the Biden administration every month to give a report so Texas and Missouri can check on that and do whatever steps we need to require enforcement.
But you put those numbers, that's almost 1.5 million.
By the way, people that we know of, okay, that we know of, That's five St.
Louis's. Since January, St.
Louis, now the St. Louis metro area here in Missouri is bigger than that, but the city of St.
Louis, that's five city of St.
Louis's that have become here illegally.
It's complete lawlessness.
It's a complete disregard for the rule of law.
Joe Biden created this crisis by himself, and now what do you see?
They want to move amnesty through by way of reconciliation in Congress.
And so this is part of the left's plan to have an open borders and amnesty policy.
Joe Biden is absolutely executing this.
And so look, this is one front of this battle, important battle.
The other front is Texas, we're actually today filing the lead amicus brief in support of Texas on the Title 42 issue, which is Right now, you've got Joe Biden wanting five-year-olds to wear masks, requiring vaccinations of 100 million Missourians.
However, there's no testing of any illegal immigrant that's coming across the border right now.
And so Texas is challenging that, and Missouri is supporting.
So we're going to do everything we can to secure the border.
This is a really important issue.
This is about sovereignty.
This is about safety. It's also an issue about human trafficking, Dinesh.
What you see now, the numbers of not only the cartels moving drugs through the border, it's very profitable for them to move human beings across the border through their networks, taking advantage of people, by the way, for huge sums of money.
So this is an issue that doesn't just affect border states.
It's an issue for everybody in the country, which is why we felt it was so important for Missouri to take the lead.
And do you see these two parts?
One is the kind of open border, the other an effort to push a legalization process through reconciliation, which I guess the Senate, the parliamentarian has basically said no to.
But nevertheless, is this the Democrats' scheme to create a permanent political advantage for themselves by essentially importing voters that they don't have currently inside the United States?
It's absolutely about power and control right now, Dinesh.
What you see, the Democrats know, this is my view, and you mentioned I'm running for the Senate in 2022.
I think there's a reckoning coming from the voters in 2022.
So I think the Democrats want to move as quickly as they can to the left for the policies they never thought they would actually see happen, and they have a chance to get it done now.
You see open borders and amnesty.
You're seeing this, you know, continuing to stoke fear for this, you know, forced vaccination of hundreds of, you know, over 100 million Missourians, the masking of our kids in schools, adding states to the union, packing the Supreme Court, federalizing our elections.
This is a radical agenda.
And you're going to have, you know, one of the other lawsuits is not necessarily on topic, Dinesh, but one of the things worth pointing out, you know, the Democrats are talking about, you know, climate change.
They actually have a working group right now that came up with what they call the social cost of greenhouse gases, which is John Kerry's leading to decide future warfares and conflicts and what that's going to be because of climate change.
We filed a lawsuit on that, too, because it's going to cost farmers and ranchers and manufacturers millions of jobs.
But if they can find a crisis, Okay, to push a policy agenda, that's the business they're in right now.
And fortunately, we're seeing that at the southern border, and it's a total disaster.
Do you think, Eric, that there is a massive resistance building up?
I mean, when you look at the foreign policy disasters, one on top of the other, I mean, the apparent usurpation of power, even if briefly by Milley, the disaster in Afghanistan, I mean, it seems to me you can't even use incompetence to explain why you would leave massive amounts of weaponry behind, let alone Americans, that you now can't get out.
So, as Americans look at this, do you have a kind of innate confidence that the American people are like, wow, this is not really what we signed up for?
Or do you think the Democrats, with the help of the media, can con the American people into, even though things are bad, don't believe your lying eyes because we in the media are telling you differently?
Well, I think they are doing that, but I do think that this is an issue.
This is a battle to save America.
That's what this fight is all about.
This republic, this idea of self-governance, that we all have individual rights, that they come from God, and government's just supposed to be our shared project to protect those rights.
One of the few limited powers the federal government's supposed to have here, of course, is securing the border, which they're not doing.
So I do think this is a radical agenda, but I think the good news is, at least what I'm seeing on the ground, I was at three different events just this past week in Missouri.
I've never seen this kind of energy.
And it's bubbling up from the people, right?
Which is what this country's all about, from the people.
So they're showing up at these city council meetings.
They're showing up at these school board meetings.
They're showing up at rallies to push back against this because they know this agenda tears at the fabric of who we are.
This is not who America is.
We've been the freest country in the history of the world.
They don't want to see the forced I think that you're about to see America really kind of rise up in 2022.
Speak loudly and say, this agenda, which we're now getting a full glimpse of when the Democrats have, you know, every lever of power at their disposal in Washington, D.C., They're tired of it, and they want something different.
And by the way, why I view my role as Attorney General right now, that last line of defense on that front line of freedom, because it has to be the Republican AGs pushing back right now, because unfortunately in Washington, they have all the levers of power.
And this is, as I said, a fight to save America.
And I don't mean that rhetorically.
I mean that literally. Eric Schmidt, thank you very much.
I really appreciate you making the time and coming on the podcast.
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I want to talk about Trump's disloyal general.
Yes, of course, I'm speaking about General Milley.
And I've spoken over the last several days, well, most of last week, about the full complexion of Milley's double treason, as I call it.
Treason, number one, is the usurpation of power.
Number two is the collusion with General Li of China without, it seems, proper authorization.
But Milley is a guy who has been sanctimoniously trying to have his own way even before that.
Here's a speech, by the way, of Milley extolling the Constitution and acting as though he is the true apostle of the Constitution, even though, as it turns out, he's the exact opposite.
Listen. You see, we are unique among armies.
We are unique among militaries.
We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator.
We do not take an oath to an individual.
No, we do not take an oath to a country, a tribe, or religion.
We take an oath to the Constitution.
Well, yes, the fundamental problem with this is that Milley seems to think that he can read the Constitution his own way.
Where does it say in the Constitution that you, General Milley, have the authority to sidestep the elected president?
Where does it say that you have the authority to go over the head of the president and talk to America's leading adversary?
Where does it say any of that in the Constitution, you buffoon?
Now Milley, it turns out, felt that he was acting because, as he saw it, this was, quote, the Reichstag moment for Trump.
And what he means by the Reichstag moment is the moment in which Trump supposedly overrides the Constitution and becomes a dictator.
Well, how is Trump going to do that?
First of all, Trump has been the elected president.
Second of all, Trump is running in an election against Biden.
So he's following the democratic procedures.
He might think the election is stolen.
But nevertheless, that's not a subversion of democracy.
That's an attempt to investigate democracy to make sure that democracy is properly working.
If you really think about it, this Reichstag analogy boomerangs right on Milley.
What do I mean by this? Well, let's take a moment to talk about the Reichstag fire, the burning of the German parliament in 1933.
Now, Who did that?
Well, it was done, historians generally agree, by one guy, the Dutch communist, a guy named Marinus van der Luby.
But what the Nazis did is they made it seem like it was a very big plot.
They made it seem like this was not just one guy who set fire, but rather this was part of an effort to overthrow the government.
And so the Nazis used it as a pretext to do what?
To impose the enabling laws to essentially for dictatorial seizure of power.
And, ha ha ha, in this case, the very person to do that is Millie himself.
So Millie, the Reichstag fire event, is Millie invoking, Trump's going to become a dictator, therefore I have to become a dictator to prevent Trump from becoming a dictator.
So the Reichstag fire analogy just boomerangs on Millie, becomes a reflection of Millie himself.
This is a very dangerous man, and I'm a little scared that he's still the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
I think Biden likes him because he feels that Milley is going to be sort of his thug.
He's glad that Milley did all these things to Trump because he thinks that now he will be Biden's protector.
But, of course, the problem with that kind of a dictatorial general is that he has the dictatorial mind, and at some point Milley might conclude, hey, listen, this Biden guy isn't exactly all there.
Can we really trust him with the nuclear codes?
Wouldn't they be safer in my hands?
So the dictatorial mindset persists, and this guy is not just disloyal to Trump, Milley, but rather he's disloyal to the United States.
Just a few weeks ago, one of America's leading nonprofit law firms, First Liberty Institute, asked patriots like you to sign their letter to help stop President Biden's radical scheme to pack the U.S. Supreme Court.
Now, since then, a quarter of a million people have signed on, with tens of thousands joining their coalition every day.
Franklin Graham, former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese, Dr.
James Dobson, the Family Policy Alliance, the Heritage Foundation, they're all on board.
But we only have until September 29 to include your name before this goes to the Biden Commission.
Now, look, if we don't stop the radical left from installing four more justices so they can rig the system in their favor, it will end the rule of law as we know it in America.
Please sign your name now.
Debbie and I both have.
Go to SupremeCoup.com.
That's SupremeCoup.com to sign First Liberty's letter.
That's SupremeCoup.com.
And may God bless America.
You know, I was thinking this morning about Trump's disloyal General Milley.
I've just spoken about Milley.
But I was thinking, is Milley's conduct unprecedented?
Is he the first guy to try to usurp power?
Is he the first guy to undercut his own commander-in-chief in this way?
And as it turns out, the answer is no.
In fact, if we flashback to the Civil War, Lincoln had a problematic, in some ways disloyal, a general who tried to undercut him.
Also, no surprise, a Democrat.
And this is General George McClellan.
McClellan was, in fact, the leader of the so-called Army of the Potomac, of the Army of the Union.
Now, McClellan had been a supporter of Stephen Douglas against Lincoln in the 1858 Senate race.
So Lincoln knew that he was a Democrat, but I think Lincoln thought he's a general.
He's going to basically represent the United States.
But as soon as McClellan gets in, he starts undercutting Lincoln in all kinds of ways.
In fact, he wrote a letter to his wife and On November 17th, this is 1861, and he goes, I went to the White House shortly after tea where I found the original gorilla.
Who's the original gorilla?
Lincoln. So here is McClellan, and he goes, what a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now.
McClellan is like, I'm working for a buffoon.
This guy's a gorilla. And by gorilla here, he means that he lacks education, he lacks culture, he lacks knowledge.
He's basically a human ape.
On November 13, 1861, Abraham Lincoln decided to pay a visit to McClellan.
Part of what he wanted to find out is why McClellan was not fighting.
McClellan was basically encamping the army.
He was doing drills.
You march over there.
You march over here.
But not attacking. So Lincoln went to see him.
Let me talk to him about it. McClellan basically wouldn't meet Lincoln.
McClellan's staff told Lincoln, McClellan's already, he's already closed out for the night.
Kind of like Biden. 6 p.m.
He's already asleep. Lincoln, very discreetly, with unbelievable fortitude, Lincoln says, okay, well, maybe he's busy.
I'll check in on him another time.
And Lincoln leaves. Now, the thing about McClellan was that he was eventually fired in 1862.
Lincoln realized, enough is enough.
Let's get rid of him. So Lincoln had the good sense to clear this guy out.
But McClellan resurfaces two years later in 1864.
He's the Democratic Party candidate for president.
And the slogan of the party, very important, quote...
The Constitution as it is, and the Union as it was.
What they mean is, let's go back to the way things used to be.
Let's have slavery in the South.
Let's repeal the Emancipation Proclamation.
This is actually what McClellan is running on!
And Lincoln was afraid he would have won.
In fact, if it wasn't ultimately for the taking of Atlanta, a real shift in the fortunes of the war, McClellan might have won.
And it's really almost terrifying to contemplate what might have happened then.
So, Milley is a bad guy, and McClellan was a bad guy.
Now, they weren't equally bad.
McClellan wasn't in any sense a traitor to his country.
But he was disloyal, he was a bad general, and he was a Democrat.
In their recent budget proposal, the White House Budget Office forecast inflation for 2021 at 2.1%.
Now, the actual inflation rate, much, much higher, over 5%.
And the point is inflation's here.
It's coming faster than our government is prepared for.
And their solution is to stick their heads in the sand.
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Okay.
I want to talk in more depth today and continuing tomorrow and the next day about Martin Luther, the great insight that Luther had about the central, the essence of Christianity and Luther's debate with a formidable adversary, Desiderius Erasmus, the great Christian humanist.
But I think before I do that, I want to say a little bit of a word of where I'm sort of coming from on all this.
Some of you know this, but others may not.
So I grew up in India, and even though India is a Hindu country, my family was and is Catholic.
We're part of a small Catholic minority in India, about 3%.
And the Catholics in India, for the most part, were converted by Portuguese missionaries who came to India right around the 16th century.
So my Catholic heritage goes back quite a bit.
Now, I wasn't raised in a devout Christianity.
In fact, I'm sorry to say, looking back as a kid, it was kind of a nominal, I would call it a sort of go to church on Sunday.
I did do sort of Catholic catechism, but it was a social Christianity.
My real faith, my deeper faith came only in adult life and actually came with my encounter with evangelical Christianity, the recognition that this was not just about keeping the commandments, that Christianity is something that involves a commitment of your life, a personal relationship with God, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, a faith that infuses your everyday life.
So that is really where I am.
But at the same time, when I did apologetics, as I got into debates with leading atheists and so on, I very much decided to frame my arguments in terms of C.S. Lewis's mere Christianity.
In other words, not to get so much into the internecine disputes between Catholics and Protestants, but to create a kind of joint front against radical secularism, which seems to me is the real adversary, a radical secularism that would take down both Catholicism and Protestantism and Evangelicalism if it could.
Now, my goal in looking at some of these debates around the Reformation is really twofold.
It's not sort of who was right, the Catholics or the Protestants.
It's really different. It's number one, to find that united common ground.
Now, we know that Catholics and Evangelicals work together politically on certain issues.
For example, the pro-life issue.
There's a kind of moral commonality between the two groups.
But I insist that there's also a theological commonality.
And I'm eager to find where exactly it is.
Where it is that the two sides can both learn from one another and draw on insights from the other.
I mean, I've done that in my own life.
And I think it can be done more broadly.
Number two, it's very important to me that we...
Have in Christianity faith-seeking understanding.
And by that I mean I'm always looking for the best way to present, to formulate, reformulate, and do an exposition of Christian doctrine in a way that makes sense, that brings, you may say, the mind and the heart together.
So with that preface, let me delve into the Now, the Reformation had three major themes.
One, sola fide, salvation by faith alone.
Two, sola scriptura, all spiritual truth is in the Bible, sola scriptura, only from Scripture.
And three, the priesthood of the individual believer.
These were the three main themes of the Reformation.
I want to focus really on the first one because it's clearly the most important.
Luther thought it was the most important, and it is.
And it is the idea that your salvation is not determined by works.
It's not determined by anything that you do.
It is a free gift, an unearned gift, that is given by God himself that we receive, as Luther says, as empty-handed beggars.
Now, it is sometimes believed that Luther, and this is said both by some Protestant critics of Luther, but also by Catholics, that Luther really wasn't trying to divide the Church.
He wasn't trying to create any kind of fundamental schism.
His argument with the Catholic Church was not foundational.
It was kind of incidental.
And I think this is actually quite wrong.
It is true that in his early critiques, including his famous 95 Theses nailed at the cathedral door at Wittenberg, that Luther focused on a more narrow target.
But then as time went on, as we'll see, and this is part of the story I want to tell, Luther's critique became deeper, became more radicalized, became more fundamental, went to the heart of what Christianity is about.
So this wasn't a giant misunderstanding.
Luther was a kind of reformer who became a revolutionary.
But to understand this, we have to begin, and this is all I'll be able to cover today, is the so-called indulgences controversy.
Now, what's an indulgence?
This was a practice that was fairly common in late medieval Catholicism, and it was the idea that you can do penance.
For a sin that you've committed by offering a payment.
Cash. So as part of your rectitude of atonement, if you will, for something wrong that you've done, you give money, not necessarily to the church, it could be to the church, but it could also be you give money in alms or you give money to a charity of some sort.
The point is you buy, if you will, your atonement.
Now, in fairness, the medieval Catholics did not understand indulgences as being a way of sort of, it wasn't a certificate of absolution.
If you think about what the Catholics call the sacrament of penance, it's divided into three parts.
The first part is You have to do a kind of internal inventory of your life and your sins.
Now, by the way, Luther himself did this.
Luther was, as he was in a monastery, spent a lot of time thinking about, he was very self-conscious about ways in which he had departed, if you will, from God's path.
So, step one is examination of conscience.
Step two is contrition.
You have to be sorry for your sins.
But step three is you have to make some penance or some atonement.
So indulgences really covered number three.
Indulgences didn't prevent you from having to do the examination of conscience.
It didn't substitute for you feeling the contrition.
But it did allow you to get out of doing any other kind of penance by offering a payment.
Now, right around Luther's time, there was a Dominican named Johann Tetzel who was raising money through indulgences to build, well, St.
Peter's Cathedral in Rome.
And he was working with the backing of the local bishop, which was the Archbishop of Mainz.
And Luther, in his 95 Theses, objected to indulgences.
He was actually not totally against them.
In fact, his main concern, interestingly enough, was that they were being misused.
They were being sort of wrongly billed as a way to get people out of doing good works.
This is very interesting because when we think of Luther, we think, well, Luther was not all about good works.
Luther was all about faith.
But Luther denied this.
Luther always emphasized that good works are important.
And here, in his early career, what Luther is basically saying is that if you let someone, in doing penance, simply make a payment, he's not going to do those acts of love, those good works that are an important part of Christianity.
Now, if you don't believe me, if you think, well, wait a minute, Dinesh, is this some kind of new take on Luther?
I just want to read for you, and I'll kind of close on this.
I want to read from you some of the actual 95 theses that Luther nailed to the cathedral in Wittenberg.
I'm just going to read... Well, here's number 41.
If a pardon is given through indulgences, it should be given cautiously in case people think it's more important than doing good works.
That's Luther. 42.
Christians should be taught that the buying of indulgences does not compare with being forgiven by Christ.
43. A Christian who gives to the poor or lends to those in need is doing better in God's eyes than one who buys forgiveness.
44. This is because of loving others.
Love grows and you become a better person.
A person buying an indulgence does not become a better person.
And it goes on like this.
I'm only going to read one or two more.
A Christian should buy what is necessary for life and not waste money on indulgences.
Quote, the Pope should have more desire for devout prayer than ready money.
And it goes on like this.
So you begin to realize that Luther isn't saying don't do indulgences.
What he's saying basically is don't let indulgences become so promiscuous, so widespread, that they prevent Christians from the message that they need to To do good works, works of love as Luther would have it.
Now, it's very important to realize that Luther moves from this in relatively short order.
All of this is occurring between about 1517 and 1521 to a more radicalized position, a position that I will take up next time in which Luther moves from the periphery, you could call it the abuses of medieval Christianity, to a radical critique of medieval Christianity itself.
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