All Episodes
Previous Next
March 25, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
51:52
TRUMP V. CLINTON Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep297
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Donald Trump has filed a bombshell lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and a whole bunch of Democratic operatives.
My daughter, Danielle D'Souza Gill is here.
We're going to talk about that.
Attorney Marina Medvin is going to join me.
We're going to discuss how she beat the system in an important January 6 case.
I want to talk about how the army is lowering its physical performance standards for women and older recruits.
That's obviously not good.
Nicole Hannah-Jones has been claiming that tipping is a product of slavery, and I'll get into the details.
And finally, I'm going to talk about the inner depths of Dante's Hell, where we meet a count named Ugolino, and we also meet Satan.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
The times are crazy in a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Donald Trump has filed a bombshell lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.
Yes, it's Trump versus Clinton.
Not only Clinton, as it turns out.
There are a number of other defendants.
Anyway, I'm delighted to be here with my daughter, Danielle D'Souza Gill.
She's the author of the book, The Choice, The Abortion Divide in America.
She's also host of the TV show called Counterculture with Danielle D'Souza Gill, which appears on Epic TV. Danielle, this is actually, I think, a lot of fun here, and it looks like Trump is giving it to them.
Look at all the defendants in this lawsuit.
It's Hillary Clinton.
It's the Democratic National Committee.
It's the Perkins Coie firm.
It's Mark Elias, who used to be a partner in that firm.
Michael Sussman. This is the guy, the Democratic operative, who has been indicted by Durham.
Jake Sullivan, John Podesta, Christopher Steele of the Steele dossier, the FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe.
So this is like a menagerie of bad guys.
And Trump is suing them for framing him.
He's suing them for faking and cooking up this false Russia collusion narrative, which they not only tried to use to win the election in 2016, but having failed to do that, they used it to launch the Mueller investigation, four years of unremitting, in fact, uncritical media coverage.
The media swallowed this and repeated it.
I mean, countless stories on this.
So what do you think about Trump going to the court to hit back?
I think it's exciting and great that he's doing that.
And I think the only thing that's annoying is that because it's a civil case, we're not going to see them going to jail, right?
Because this would basically mean that if he wins, they would owe him money because of all the pain they caused him, things like that.
But we won't see Hillary locked up because of this, even though she should be.
So we have to wait for the DOJ to get involved.
in order for her to actually go to prison, which I think we're all, you know, kind of hoping for that, but I still think that it's good that Trump's going to, you know, kind of see this all vindicated for him.
So this is an important distinction that Danielle is making between a civil case and a criminal case.
In a civil case, you can file for damages, but that's kind of all you can file for.
And we'll come back to another benefit, I think, which is that you can put Hillary on trial.
You can put the facts on trial, and you don't have the media camouflage.
You can do cross-examination.
You can call Hillary to account.
None of this has really happened.
But I think...
The criminal case now, we don't just have to wait for Republicans to take the House and the Senate and the presidency.
Why? Because we have a special counsel, John Durham, and he does have the power to indict people.
Now, he's indicted Sussman, but I call him the tortoise.
He moves really slowly.
I mean, at this rate, it'll be like 2032 before his investigation is finished.
I wonder if Trump is trying to send Durham a message through this suit.
Yes, and I think it also sends a message to everyone who already knows that, you know, Hillary is crooked.
They already know that the Russia hoax was really silly.
I mean, even a lot of people on the left really don't talk about it anymore because they just used it as a big talking point at the time when they wanted to push impeachment, things like that.
So I think it's definitely important that he continues this.
I mean, even someone like, you know, Meghan Markle files these Trump suits against a tabloid or something, even though she's, you know, kind of...
But she wants to drive a point.
Yeah. But, I mean, Trump was obviously not guilty in any way.
So, of course, he should pursue that.
I mean, there are some people who will say, well, Trump is really vindictive and maybe he has a vindictive streak.
But you know what? I think that's actually a good thing in these cases because this guy, like, doesn't let it go.
You know what I mean? A lot of Republicans would be like, well, that That was 2016.
Let's let it be. Let's move on.
This is kind of the Republican sensibility.
It's not Trump's sensibility.
I think in Trump's case, when he's wronged, he wants to go to considerable lengths to be vindicated.
We see this in the election.
He wants to be vindicated on the 2020 election.
And he wants to be vindicated here.
Now, he has been vindicated by the facts.
But nevertheless, the crooks, and we're talking here, you know, it's too bad you don't have a hundred media organizations in here also, because they're included in this.
They were part of the hoax.
And almost none of them have apologized.
Almost none of them have said, you know what?
Yeah, we perpetrated lies for four years.
Maybe we were suckered.
Maybe we were willing to be suckered because it was our side.
But the absence of apologies, I mean, that's one big dog that hasn't barked.
Right. And even if they do, by that time, it's so much later, kind of like with the Hunter Biden laptop story, which they suppressed.
And then, of course, later they, you know, say, oh, okay, you know, maybe there's validity to that.
But then, of course, at the time, I mean, the time has passed.
So back then, they already kind of got everything they needed to out of the Russia hoax.
So, I mean, I do think that they should be held accountable for everything that they did.
But at the same time, it's like, well, when it really mattered, you know, they were still peddling those lies.
I mean, it's important, I think, in these sorts of cases, and this one in particular, not to settle the case, not to sort of take some sort of settlement, because that prevents the case from going to trial.
What you actually want to do is have a courtroom, which the media is not going to be able not to cover, ideally a televised courtroom.
And you call these people.
You call Peter Strzok. You call Christopher Steele.
You expose the connections between them.
You're able to get discovery, the documents, how these people were all communicating in a kind of diabolically corrupt ring.
I mean, I mentioned, you know...
Well, what if they settled, though?
Would that make it seem like they were guilty?
Which they are guilty, but I mean, not really.
Not really, because a lot of times people settle cases because they don't want the hassle of it.
So a corporation is sued, they'll settle it.
They're not admitting they did anything, and almost all settlements include neither side is admitting anything.
Oh. So I think that Trump is smart enough to know he doesn't want a settlement.
What he wants to do is press the case to its conclusion and use the case for a change, not to have himself on trial, which is kind of what the Russia collusion did, but put Hillary on trial.
Don't know what kind of towels you have in your home, but if they're not my pillow towels, you need to reconsider.
Ordinary towels just don't dry you very well.
They feel soft and lotion-y when they're new in the store, but you take them home, they don't absorb.
Why not? Because ordinary towel companies typically import the product and they add softeners to make the towels feel good.
But they don't dry you very well.
Now, Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, has solved this problem.
He founded the best towel company right here in the USA. They have proprietary technology to create towels that feel soft and actually work.
They're made with USA cotton.
They come with the MyPillow 60-day money-back guarantee.
These are the only towels that we use in our home.
Now, for a limited time, Mike is offering a really good deal on a six-piece towel set.
This includes two bath towels, two hand towels, Two washcloths, all made with USA Cotton, regularly $109.99, but now $39.99.
Good deal. Call 800-876-0227.
That number is 800-876-0227 or go to MyPillow.com to enjoy this offer.
Get deep discounts on all the MyPillow products.
You've got to use promo code DINESH. Guys, Marina Medvin is a heroine of mine.
She is a nationally recognized criminal defense lawyer.
She's been doing terrific work in defending some of the January 6th protesters.
And I'm delighted to welcome her back to the podcast.
Marina, good to see you again.
How are you doing?
You must be feeling...
Not too bad because of the outcome in the case of Jenny Cudd.
Say a little bit about the case and then let's talk about what the judge said and how you basically, well, kind of beat the system with this one.
Well, thank you very much for having me on once again.
And yes, we're very happy with the outcome in the Jenny Cut case.
We do believe it was an equitable outcome, all things considered.
I think probably the most fair outcome would have been a $50 fine, but that's besides the point.
As far as these cases are concerned, it is a fair outcome.
The Jenny Cut case was interesting because we relied on a lot of independent conservative media reports of the Portland cases and the Seattle cases to piece together dismissals that took place in Portland and Seattle and to review briefs that were filed in those jurisdictions by the DOJ. And how the DOJ characterized the conduct of Antifa and BLM on those days.
And we used the government's own words against them.
We looked at how much praise they gave to the protesters in Portland and praise to the protesters in Seattle.
And we compared that to the disparaging remarks made about the protesters in D.C. on January 6th, the conservative protesters.
And we were able to show a true disparity between the two types of cases.
And as far as how the individuals were being treated, you had individuals committing felonies, victimizing police officers, causing injuries, and the DOJ dismissing those charges against those individuals Without explanation, we can only presume it was with political motivation, because there is no explanation for why.
And by the way, and this is interesting, the DOJ has a table for January 6th cases, and everybody's name, anyone who's been charged or arrested on January 6th, their name goes into this table, and it's a public database.
And the DOJ has a webpage for each individual who they arrested on January 6th, and their case status, the facts against them, There are plea agreements.
Everything's posted online for easy reference.
But in Portland and Seattle, there is no such table.
So it's actually very hard to know who has been charged with what, what are the case dispositions, and you actually need the assistance of reporters to go out there, find that, and bring it to the public for lawyers to be able to truly review And so we're very grateful to independent media for bringing all of those cases to our attention.
We were able to use those to put together our arguments and argue for what we're calling an equitable sentence under the circumstances for Ms.
Jenny Cutt. I mean, Marina, this I think is really important because it's been made as a rhetorical point by Julie Kelly, by me, by many others, that you have disparate treatment, you have selective prosecution.
It's a whole other matter to be able to document this, put it before a judge, and get a judge to agree with you.
In this case, we're talking about Judge McFadden.
And by the way, Jenny Cudd is a Texas florist.
She went into the Capitol, but she didn't break anything.
She was not, didn't do anything violent.
She apparently made some boastful remarks afterwards about, we did this and we did that.
But apparently, when she said we, she didn't mean that she did it.
She just mean that that's something that somebody did.
And so, you describe that as a little bit of an intoxicated diatribe that she made.
But of course, they were trying to use it against her and act like, well, the we means she did it, and so she should be held accountable, even though there was no evidence she did.
but I think the good news is that Judge McFadden, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, agreed with you that there was disparate treatment and on that basis rejected the Justice Department's effort to give her 75 days over two months in prison and instead gave her a fine, but no prison, right?
What was the, talk about the sentence and talk about what the judge said in his ruling.
Indeed, the government asked for 75 days in jail for Ms.
Jenny Cudd, who walked into the Capitol, walked around with inked the red velvet ropes.
You know, the tourist ropes? She actually did that.
That actually happened. Jenny Cudd walked within the red velvet ropes.
Inside the Capitol, she prayed in a prayer circle.
She protested a little bit.
She took selfies. She yelled at somebody not to break any property.
And then she left when a police officer politely asked her to leave.
And she abided by that order.
So that's the extent of Jenny's conduct.
In terms of what she did or said afterwards on video, she, as you said, boastfully describes the conduct of others.
Yes, that happened. She was intoxicated in one of the videos, and she made a variety of statements of that video that the government tried to use against her.
It's a 25-minute video, she said all kinds of things, and they attempted to use that against her.
She said a couple of things going into the Capitol, coming out of it, that the government didn't like.
But as far as the judge's main concentration in this case, it was on her conduct inside the Capitol, because that's what she was charged for.
At the end of the day, she pleaded guilty to a trespass misdemeanor.
The conduct was going inside the Capitol when she didn't have lawful authority to do so.
That's the underlying conduct.
And what she did inside, the judge characterized as being on the minimal scale of what some of the other protesters were doing.
She just walked in and she walked out without, as you said, damaging any property.
And her behavior inside was not dangerous or hurtful to anyone.
Her words may have been, and the judge characterized her words as hurtful, but not her actions.
And at the end of the day, she is being penalized for her actions, not just her words.
The words, if anything, go to state of mind.
But in terms of the underlying conduct, it's a trespass.
It's a physical behavior that was criminalized.
Her being there, not the things she said.
And the sentence reflected the case.
And so the judge gave her two months of probation and a fine.
And the fine was a bit high, but that reflected the words.
I don't know.
A first-time offender for somebody with no criminal record who doesn't cause any property damage, takes selfies, walks within red velvet ropes and walks out when a police officer asks them to.
I don't know what other case the government has ever requested jail time for somebody like this.
And they requested 75 days here, not a week or weekend, 75 days.
It was extraordinary, it was disproportionate, and it was rude.
Jenny, let's take a pause, and when we come back, talk a little bit more about the Jenny Cut case, but also an important motion that you filed that's being picked up by others about the political prejudices of the jury in Washington, D.C. We'll be right back.
We all know from our parents that fruits and veggies are really good for our health, and this is now confirmed in innumerable medical studies.
And yet most of us don't eat the required amount of fruits and veggies.
And so here's a sort of plan B that's working for Debbie and me.
It can work for you. It's called Balance of Nature.
We take three of the fruits right out of this bottle and three of the veggies right out of this one, and we're done.
We've got it all. We've got everything we need.
And Debbie also swears by this.
It's the balance of nature fiber and spice.
And essentially, it dissolves in water.
You can put it in juice. Debbie says it keeps her regular.
It also helps with her acid reflux.
So 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 BALANCE. Call 800-246-8751.
That's 800-246-8751.
Or go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code BALANCE. I'm back with Attorney Marina Medvin.
We're talking about January 6th cases and specifically here about a Midland, Texas florist named Jenny Cudd.
Marina, one of the techniques or tactics that was used by the government is they were trying to Tie Jenny Cudd with another woman named Aleel Rosa.
Now, apparently they had some video of these two characters walking together, walking in and perhaps walking out, and so they charged them jointly.
make one person's actions be also pinned on the other, and you help to sort of disentangle that.
Talk a little bit about how the government here is playing fast and loose by trying to take A and B and imply that A and B are conspiring together when A and B never met before and just happen to be walking in the same place at the same time.
Well, these two individuals, Mr. L.
Elio Rosa and Ms.
Jenny Cudd, did happen to know each other from a prior protest, but they had no plans to come to the Capitol together.
They certainly had no plans to enter that Capitol building.
They were at the protest, they saw each other there.
One entered Mr.
Elio Rosa and followed a few seconds later by Ms.
Jenny Cudd, and the two of them were in the building in the same areas.
They're not jointly conversing or making a plan to do anything together, but the government charged them together.
Now, there is a benefit to the government when they're charging two people together.
And first of all, as far as proving a case, it's this idea of where there's smoke, there's fire.
There's two people doing this.
They must have had a plan or this implication of some kind of conspiracy, even though they're not charged with a conspiracy.
So there's this implication by charging them together, but also how they're able to use evidence.
So in this case, Mr.
Elio Rosa went to the FBI and made a statement.
And the statement truly wasn't that incriminating, certainly not against Ms.
Cudd, if anything, it separated the two.
But nonetheless, the idea was that the government could introduce that statement Against the two of them at trial, so also against Ms.
Cudd because she's at trial with him.
But she wouldn't be able to cross-examine Ms.
Tarrosa as a result. She wouldn't be able to point out any issues wrong with the things he said because he doesn't have to take the stand as his own trial.
But if they have separate trials and that statement is attempted to be used against Ms.
Cudd, we would be able to object and Ms.
Tarrosa would have to take the stand.
And my client would have the right to cross-examine the witness against it.
And that is a much more fair right to be able to show the jury, if we were to have a jury trial, to show them the true nature of the statement of where it's coming from and any issues with that statement.
So by the government joining cases together, the government makes it easier for them to convict both of the defendants than if they had to try them separately.
So it's an advantage to the government.
Marina, listening to you, I mean, it's so clear to me how important it is for these defendants to have good counsel, because these are arguments that have to be pressed before these judges and made in a sophisticated way, and that's something you've been doing.
Let's pivot to an important claim that you made, I think in the connection of this case, Which was you challenged the venue.
You basically said, listen, you can't just take these defendants and put them up before a kind of D.C. jury because these guys have been poisoned against these defendants.
Talk a little bit about what you said.
I have an excerpt from your filing, but I'd like you to describe what the argument was essentially for moving the trial outside of D.C. You suggested in this case, let's move it to Texas.
Why? Why? The D.C. jury pool is exceptionally biased.
It is the most biased jury pool in the United States of America.
So the way that the federal courts are set up, each federal court will draw a jury from the localities, and there will be multiple jurisdictions usually.
And D.C. just draws from D.C. And so we just have D.C. jurors.
So first of all, that jury pool is very small.
And second of all, the individuals in that pool are exceptionally biased, especially for a case like this.
It was over 95%, I believe was the statistic, over 95% voted against Donald Trump.
Of course, the primary issue in this case is Donald Trump supporters.
So you have an individual who's advocating on behalf of Donald Trump.
You have a woman who's wearing a Trump flag as a cape in this case.
That's how she was dressed.
And you have 95% of D.C. who voted against Donald Trump.
And they did that in two elections, 2016 and 2020.
Normally, when you, as a lawyer, try to change venue, you're going to do a variety of polls to try and figure out, well, what do the locals believe?
In this case, we had the biggest poll of all, right?
We had the election. We had the election for president.
So we had two exceptionally large polls already on the record.
And we knew what the D.C. jury pool already believed.
And so you're full of people who will likely disagree with your client politically just to begin with.
Then you have to say that, oh, they'll be fair.
Okay, well then let's look at what percent of those people are employees of the federal government because they would have a conflict of interest here as well.
The federal government's prosecuting these individuals and these individuals stepped on federal property.
And that's a large chunk as well.
And so we talked about eliminating, based on a variety of questions, presented a variety of questions that we would pose to a jury.
And we started eliminating people from that.
And then at the end of the day, the question was, well, how many jurors that can be fair are left?
And we don't believe there are any.
We don't believe that it is possible to put together a fair jury panel for these defendants.
And we drafted that motion back in March.
And we used a lot of the local publicity in Washington, D.C. against Ms.
Cud. They have honed in on Ms.
Cud locally in D.C. They were making...
A huge fuss about her being able to go to Mexico on a vacation.
It was a big deal for them, even though that's actually a routine motion that's done in criminal cases.
When someone's facing misdemeanor charges, that they are allowed to travel, we simply need to seek permission at the court.
It's a routine motion. It's done very commonly, but it became a big deal just because the media made it a big deal.
But they kept honing in on her and playing her videos over and over again because of the bombastic language that she used in her videos.
It was just an interesting story for the media.
And because of all the media attention she received, the local Drupal knew her personally.
And the issue again remained.
Well, the way the media is presenting her And the way that the individuals who reside in D.C. have been personally penalized by January 6th.
Now, these are individuals, and we put a bunch of maps in there.
These are individuals who couldn't travel freely.
These are individuals who were subjected to constant National Guard around them.
If you look at their maps and roads, they had to basically see fencing everywhere they traveled in a lot of the regions around the Capitol and a lot of the public buildings for months.
So this impacted local Washington, D.C. residents personally.
And so each of them was personally impacted.
And now we're saying, well, let's try and have you judge this fairly.
How is that going to be fair?
How are we going to find that fair jury?
And we also presented this memorandum that we filed that took weeks to put together, but also presented psychological experiments with individuals who claim they can be fair and scientific showings that even individuals who think they can be fair at the end truly cannot when they're personally impacted.
And that's what we were able to show in this memorandum.
Now, one factor you never mentioned, and probably it's prudent not to mention it, but nevertheless, I like to mention these kinds of things.
Isn't it also a fact that you've basically got, you know, to be honest, a kind of a black city?
You've got an overwhelmingly black population in DC.
And the reason I mentioned this is because of the media portrayal of the January 6th defendants.
Oh, they're white supremacists, oh, they're racist.
Their motivation for going to the Capitol wasn't just to challenge the election, but was to somehow promote their Confederates, their little Robert E. Lees.
I mean, think about the effect of saying that in front of a black jury.
Isn't that another poisonous factor that you would have to add to this already comprehensive mix that you've given us?
The race of an individual juror should not be considered when picking a jury.
But that being said, actually, the data that we put into our memorandum focused on white individuals and white guilt and how they viewed other white individuals like Ms.
Cudd. And so in that sense, we use race, but in a different way.
And it wasn't black jurors that we were concerned with.
It was actually white liberal jurors that were of concern to us in our memorandum.
We were discussing the psychology and various experimentation.
That's already taken place and studies have been conducted.
For white liberals and how they view poor white defendants.
And there is quite a bit of bias that they have towards white defendants who they see as conservatives and who they disagree with.
And they are actually very unforgiving to those individuals.
And so the bias would actually come from white liberals.
That's actually fascinating.
Hey Marina, thanks very much for joining me for an eye-opening conversation.
Thank you, Dinesh.
The Russia invasion of Ukraine has sent the markets into an uproar.
The market's going down. Gold is going up.
Hey, this is exactly why you have gold as part of your investment strategy.
Precious metals have historically been a safe haven in times of geopolitical insecurity.
Now, birch gold is the leader.
And converting IRAs and 401ks into a tax-sheltered IRA backed by gold and silver.
Now's the time to protect yourself by investing in something with real value, gold and silver from Birch Gold, if you haven't done so already.
With thousands of satisfied customers, an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, Birch Gold can help you protect your savings.
So go ahead and text Dinesh to 989898 to get a free information kit on gold.
There's no obligation.
Now, like me, you'll be thankful that you have gold in your retirement account.
If you want to know how issues of equity, in this case we're talking about gender equity, but other forms of equity as well, are undermining the U.S. military, here is a perfect example of that.
The U.S. Army, following a three-year review, has apparently scrapped plans to use a uniform physical...
Fitness test for all soldiers.
Why? Because apparently women and older soldiers can't pass the test, or at least can't pass the test at the same rate as younger and male soldiers.
And so they've decided, you know what, let's establish multiple sets of standards.
And you see right here how this has been happening in academia, and here we see it affecting the military.
Now, apparently the army scrapped the test after a RAND. RAND is kind of a research foundation, and they had a study that said that men are passing the test at higher rates than women.
Apparently, 44% of women failed the test from October 2020 to April 2021, compared to 7% of men.
And now, you know, a normal attitude to this would be, listen, obviously men in general are stronger than women.
Of course, there's no bar to women participating or competing in the military, but there should be a uniform standard.
The women who are strong enough, who are able to do the work, are going to pass, and the women who are not are not.
And that's okay. But no, the Army's view is that men and women need to pass the test at the same rate.
And what does that mean? Well, it basically means, you know, it's kind of like saying you have a high jump and only the really competent high jumpers can get over it.
So you just keep lowering the bar until it's like one foot over the ground and then everybody can jump over.
Hey, our rates are all equal. Men and women can jump over the bar at the same rate.
This is basically the kind of twisted logic that is going on over here.
And so, what's happening is that...
Now, the Army apparently used to have a kind of three-part test.
They replaced it with a more sophisticated six-part test, which was thought to better replicate actual conditions needed for combat and reducing the risk of injury.
So, the new test...
Which the army had used, had been using, was considered to be more closely calibrated to what you actually want soldiers to do.
But then this kind of equity issue intrudes and so the army has decided to decided to pull away from the test or at least not apply that not not have the same expectations of women as of men not have the same expectations of older soldiers as of younger soldiers. This is the kind of thing you get out of a study the Rand Institute is
It says that the scores collected during the diagnostic period show some groups failing at noticeably higher rates.
So, but anyway, this is taken to be a blow against equity.
Something needs to be done, guys.
And it's this kind of mentality that causes really ultimately standards to be lowered across the board.
And the net effect of it obviously is a less effective U.S. military.
So you spend a lot of money on the military.
It's supposed to be the best military in the world.
I'm not sure if it is.
First of all, it hasn't really proven its prowess in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, where in Afghanistan, just a bunch of tribesmen were able to hold off the U.S. military and eventually take power.
Who's running Kabul today?
They are, not us. And so you would think that the army would be in some sort of crisis.
Listen, we need to raise our standards.
We need to recruit better people.
We need a stronger, more lethal military.
But instead, their big question they want to ask is, Why aren't there more women who are able to do the physical stress test?
Who likes to get aches and pains?
None of us do, and yet we somehow accept them as natural or inevitable.
But now there's a 100% drug-free solution and you need to check it out.
It's called Relief Factor.
Relief Factor supports your body's fight against inflammation.
That's the source of aches and pains.
And the vast majority of people who try Relief Factor order more.
Why? Because it works for them.
Debbie's a true believer in relief factor.
It's been a game changer in relieving the pain caused by her frozen shoulder.
She knows if she doesn't take it regularly, the pain's going to come right back.
So Debbie's like, I'm not going to be without this again.
Being able to lift her arm, exercise, this is all super important to her.
Relief factor is the tool she needs, and she's glad she's got it.
Now, you too can benefit. Try it for yourself.
You'll see. Order the three-week quick start for the discounted price of just $19.95.
Go to relieffactor.com or call 833-690-7246 to find out more about this offer.
That number again, 833-690-7246 or go to relieffactor.com.
You'll feel the difference.
There's been an interesting practice on the left to try to now trace all normal modern practices to slavery, to claim that they're relics of slavery and in some cases of segregation.
I remember the Princeton historian Kevin Cruz writing an article a few years ago claiming that traffic patterns in Atlanta could be traced back to segregation, I guess because at one time there were segregated neighborhoods.
Matthew Desmond, a Sort of a third-rate historian tried to say that Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are a legacy of slavery.
Why? Because apparently on slave plantations they used accounting.
Now, of course, there was accounting long before slave plantations.
Accounting goes back to the Middle Ages or even earlier.
Obviously not the Microsoft spreadsheet itself, but then neither did the slave owners have Microsoft spreadsheets.
So, the idea here is just to find something that occurred in slavery, find something that is occurring now that seems remotely similar, and go, there, look at it.
Shows how all of American life is essentially based on and derived from the legacy of slavery.
Well, the latest kind of idiocy in this kind of, it all goes back to slavery contest...
Is the concept of tipping.
So think about it. You tip an Uber driver or you go to a restaurant and leave a tip.
You check into a hotel and you tip the doorman.
The argument is that's due to slavery.
That's an American practice, by the way.
You don't see it in other countries, at least not to the same degree.
And moreover, if you go back, you find that slave masters...
It was after slavery, supposedly, that this kind of tipping practice became widespread in the United States.
At least this is the narrative, according to Nicole Hannah-Jones.
And Nicole Hannah-Jones makes outlandish statements that basically look like she's just come out of a vodka spree.
But it turns out that, no, she's picking it up from...
She reads the kind of far-left rabble literature, and she picks up these kinds of claims and then gives them a sort of patina of respectability by sort of parading this in the New York Times and on her social media feed.
So here's Nicole Hannah-Jones.
Tipping is the legacy of slavery, and she goes...
And if it's not optional, then it shouldn't be a tip, but just include it in the bill.
Have you ever stopped to think why we tip?
Like, why tipping is a practice in the U.S. and almost nowhere else?
Now, I've said before in the podcast, this is downright stupid.
I've traveled pretty much all over the world.
Tipping is universal. There's tipping in Africa.
There's tipping in India.
But the historian, the economic historian Philip Magnus, who's been on this podcast, well, what Magnus has done is he's written a kind of thorough article on this tipping issue.
And this is a guy who really knows how to dig.
So he finds out that Nicole Hannah-Jones got her ridiculous claim about tipping from a kind of left-wing activist named Saru Jayaraman.
This woman sounds suspiciously Indian.
And anyway, she's apparently some kind of a...
Health activist, not really an academic of any kind, and she wrote an article which had a paragraph on tipping and all the other leftist sources are picking up her nonsense.
In any event, what Magnus really shows is that all of this nonsense about tipping tracing to the aftermath of slavery isn't really true.
Tipping goes way back to the Middle Ages and In fact, it's so common that tipping is referred to more than once in Shakespeare's plays.
Magnus quotes an example from Twelfth Night.
He goes on to point out that you have European travelers who are writing this as in the early 1700s.
So, obviously, long before the end of slavery, either in England or in the United States.
And they're talking about the common practice of tipping in inns and in taverns and in restaurants and so on.
Charles Dickens talks about tipping in the old curiosity shop.
And now, tipping was initially a little more rare in the United States than it was in Europe, and apparently that's because most Americans grew up, at least in older times, in villages or in small towns, and businesses were run by local proprietors who owned their own business.
So typically, you walk into a place, you buy some jam, you buy some bread, you know the guy behind the counter.
He lives down the street in your small town.
And so you're not going to give him a tip, necessarily.
Apparently, tipping was somewhat more of an aristocratic practice that essentially a count or a baron or a marquee, in the case of France, would leave a tip.
So there was a certain element of aristocratic condescension in tipping.
And there were some Americans who criticized the practice as being very European and being very aristocratic.
And so there has been something of a debate about tipping, but the debate has nothing to do with slavery.
I think that's the key point.
And so here's Phil Magnus, and he's been a little bit of a bulldog in exposing...
One after the other, this kind of serial fantasies and the serial inanities of Nicola Hannah-Jones.
And here he catches her in the latest one, and I'm sure she's kind of annoyed about it.
And if I were Phil Magnus to kind of rub it in a little bit, I would, at least in the mail, send Nicola Hannah-Jones a tip.
Imagine the lifelong impact of a journey to the Holy Land.
Surrounded by like-minded travelers, picture yourself stepping foot in iconic locations right out of Scripture.
Join Dr. Sebastian Gorka and Dinesh D'Souza on this life-enriching Israel Tour, November 30th through December 9th, 2022.
For more information, call 855-565-5519 or visit StandWithIsraelTour.com.
We are now going to go into the deepest part of Dante's Hell.
As I mentioned earlier, Dante's Inferno has 34 cantos, 33 in the Paradiso, 33 in the Purgatoria, so 100 cantos in all.
And we're going to be talking about Canto 33, so one from the very end.
And remember, we're talking about the circle of fraud.
And fraud, betrayal, treachery, these are, in Dante's book, the worst kinds of sins.
Far worse than sins of incontinence, which were the early cantos.
Sins of violence, which were the middle cantos.
And now we're kind of in the circle of, well, Dante...
You can call it complex fraud.
And complex fraud is distinguishable from simple fraud.
So simple fraud is the con man who puts a fast one over somebody else and takes advantage of them and perpetrates a kind of deceit or fraud on them.
Complex fraud occurs when there are people who have deep obligations to others.
So a good example of this would be, for example, a bishop or a churchman who takes money for a particular purpose.
Let's say, for example, to go on a pilgrimage and then ends up spending the money on themselves.
They would be betraying a trust for someone to whom they have a kind of bond.
Or if somebody betrays their own family or their own children, which Dante's book ranks about as bad as you can get.
And we're going to talk about this exact issue.
In this canto.
One really interesting thing about Dante's Divine Comedy is that although we associate hell, and even the Bible associates hell with fire, fire is the kind of predominant metaphor, the fire of hell, hell and brimstone, Dante does use fire and hell.
We've talked about souls being encased in flames.
We've talked about There's landscapes that have been so burned that they're parched.
And in fact, even the faces of sinners that have been so burned that you can see the burn marks on their face.
So Dante is not reluctant to use fire, but he actually...
Fire is not his big trope here in Inferno.
In fact, very interestingly, as you get to the very depths of hell, it's pure ice.
It is cold.
It's isolated and the sinners are sort of encased or encrusted in ice.
In fact, the ice kind of clogs up their ears.
It blocks their eyes.
Apparently they shed tears and the tears then freeze and prevent them from being able to see.
And in the very depths of hell you have Satan.
And Satan has on one side Brutus and on the other side Cassius.
A little bit of a surprise to people who have been sort of raised on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar where Brutus and Cassius are presented as conspirators to be sure and traitors in a sense to be sure, but as traitors who saw themselves as fighting against tyranny.
Now Cassius is clearly in Shakespeare's view the more envious character, Brutus perhaps the more noble character.
But nevertheless, you can read Julius Caesar kind of two ways, and many readers come across thinking of Julius Caesar as a great man, and Brutus and Cassius as these sort of lesser suspect, dubious characters who try to...
Get rid of him.
But there's a whole bunch of other readers, and I would say myself included, that take a more ambiguous and much more sympathetic view, not only of Brutus, but also of Cassius.
And that is Shakespeare's portrait, which comes through Plutarch and other sources.
This is not Dante's source.
Dante's view is completely different.
Dante is actually a defender of empire.
And a defender of empire, not on its own sake.
The empire is good. It's good to have, you know...
No, but Dante's view here is that an empire in which a Christian monarch is able to sort of carry the Christian message throughout the world and rule justly with admittedly unlimited power, this is Dante's vision of how the earth should be ruled from Rome.
Dante is very emphatic, however, that the Pope and the religious authorities manage the spiritual domain, that they should not be active in the earthly domain.
And let's remember that Dante's own exile is when the Pope...
He sends troops, turns out to be French troops, into northern Italy and Dante as a sort of, as a Guelph is thrown out.
He's a white Guelph and the black Guelphs take power and Dante is sent into what turns out to be permanent exile.
He lives in Verona, he lives in Ravenna and he dies, he dies there.
When we come back, I'm going to go back now into the specifics of Canto 33, where we meet one Count Ugolino.
I am discussing Canto 33.
This is The Depths of Dante's Hell.
I was talking about how at the very end of it Dante encounters Satan, but it's not really accurate to talk about an encounter because, and this was obviously a conscious and very shrewd decision by Dante, you might expect some kind of grand confrontation between Dante and Satan, but no, Dante realizes at this point he's a different pilgrim than he was at the beginning of the Inferno.
He's learned a lot. We'll see in a moment how he's learned, but Dante's view is the devil is to be avoided. The devil is not to be engaged.
Don't fool with the devil.
And so when Dante sees, gets kind of a sidelong glimpse at Satan, he quickly moves away and does not attempt to engage Satan in any way.
We don't get the kind of Dante-Satan encounter in The End of Inferno, not at all.
Now, a little earlier, Dante had encountered a corrupt friar named Fra Alberigo.
Now, this guy is a really bad guy.
He's been taking bribes.
He's kind of a corrupt guy in the church.
And it's a very interesting depiction because Dante was under the impression that this guy was alive.
And it turns out that he is alive.
A kind of exception, almost, to the obviously dead people who are here in hell.
But Dante makes the point that his soul is dead.
And so, in a way, he's already been damned.
He's already in hell. And even though his body is still on earth, Dante says his body is inhabited, or at least Dante is informed, his body is inhabited by a devil.
So this is a really bad guy, Fra Alberigo, and he kind of beckons to Dante, and he's been weeping tears, and the tears are freezing in the kind of icy cold of the depths of hell, and this Fra Alberigo guy tells Dante, hey Dante, come over here, not hey Dante, but he beckons to the pilgrim to kind of wipe the ice out of his eyes.
And Dante, very interestingly, refuses to do that.
Now, let's think of how far Dante has come.
Now, you know, true, there are some readers who read this and go, oh, this is a very insensitive action on the part of Dante.
He can't. Can't even help this poor guy and remove some...
No. The whole point is that in the early parts of the Inferno, Dante was sympathetic to sinners.
He was very sympathetic to Francesca.
He was sympathetic to Pierre Delavigne.
And his... You know, he swoons in the one case.
He's filled with pity. He's even filled with pity when he sees his old mentor, Brunetto Latini, in the circle of the Sodomites.
And so Dante was sort of taking the sinner's side against God.
But notice here the opposite.
Deep in hell, Dante knows that these guys are exactly where they deserve to be.
And you know what? They're not only exactly where they deserve to be, they're exactly where they want to be.
Now this is a very profound idea we need to think about for a little bit because Dante's view, which I think is the correct view, is that the people who get God are the people who want God.
And the people who get hell are the people who want to be there.
Now, in the first case, it may seem kind of obvious.
I don't think it is obvious, by the way.
When the Bible says that salvation is the gift of God, many people think that God is giving us a gift called salvation.
But think about it. Let's look at that phrase.
Salvation is the gift of God.
God is the gift!
God himself is the reward.
And so if you seek God, and think of all the biblical passages where it's ask and you shall receive, and seek and you shall find.
Notice it's not seek and you may find.
It's seek and you shall find.
And so the Bible is promising that if you seek God...
You're going to find God.
The true seeker will, in the end, be rewarded.
And so, Dante sort of picks this up.
And in Dante's, we'll see this in Purgatory, we'll see this in Paradise, the people who are there sought God.
Many of them lived turbulent and tempestuous, in some cases even vile and disgraceful lives.
But in the end, they turned, their soul turned, and they sought God.
The sinners here in hell don't want God.
And we're going to see this really clearly in the case of this guy named Count Ugolino.
He is a guy that wants to be exactly where he is.
He derives a certain kind of perverse satisfaction even from being in hell.
Now, this may seem kind of crazy, but what we're going to find out is that deep in hell you have enmity, you have rage, you have deadly enemies who derive a certain perverse satisfaction in inflicting pain on each other.
And so, to me, the rather unforgettable image here as we go right into hell Let me just begin with the first few lines and I'll leave it at this and pick it up the next time.
Lifting his mouth from his horrendous meal, the sinner first wiped off his messy lips in the hair remaining on the chewed up skull and then spoke.
Wow! Let's pause for a moment.
You have a guy, and we'll discover in a moment, this is Count Ugo Lino, a political figure, a Guelph, as it turns out, from the northern part of Italy.
And what is he doing?
He is actually gnawing on another man's head.
He's biting him, and he's sort of cannibalizing the other man's head, and so he lifts his mouth from this horrendous meal, and apparently there's all kinds of stuff in his mouth, so he has to wipe off his messy lips, which have gotten hair which he has bitten off from the other guy, and he takes a sort of interruption from what he's doing to speak.
And we're just going to follow his first words here.
He says to Dante the pilgrim, You want me to renew a grief so desperate that just the thought of it, much less the telling, grips my heart with pain.
So what he's saying to Dante, Count Ugolino, is he's saying to Dante, You want me to tell you my story.
For me to tell you my story is going to be for me to relive it.
It's going to cause me intense pain to do it.
It grips my heart with pain.
And so the question then becomes, Why are you doing it?
And the answer is that Count Ugolino wants to tell, even though it causes him pain.
And you might remember here that this was exactly what Francesca said to Dante.
She said to Dante, in effect, it's going to cause me pain to have to tell you my story again about me and Paolo and everything that happened and how it ended.
And yet she does.
She goes right on ahead.
And so you might ask, why did she do it?
And here we ask, why does Ugolino want to tell his story again?
And here's why. Because he wants to expose the villainy of the guy whose head he's biting.
And basically, Ugolino's point is, even though it causes me pain, I don't care.
You know why? Because I want to get this guy.
And what Dante is getting at here is this is the essence of enmity and rage.
Very often people who are filled with enmity and rage, it hurts them.
But they don't mind.
Why? Because they take a certain kind of perverse satisfaction causing more harm to the other guy.
So Dante wants to sort of rat out this other guy.
He wants eternity and he wants, I'm sorry, Ugolino wants Dante to know this is the true villain.
This is the guy who belongs in the deepest part of hell.
Not me. Because he wronged me.
And when we come back...
▲
Export Selection