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Aug. 31, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
49:40
SUPPRESSION OF EVIDENCE Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep404
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This episode is brought to you by my friend Rebecca Walser, a financial expert who can help you protect your wealth.
Book your free call with her team by going to friendofdinesh.com That's friendofdinesh.com Coming up, a senior FBI agent has been given the boot for suppressing evidence unfavorable to Biden on the eve of the 2020 election.
Very important. I finally figured out what may be the FBI's motive for the Trump raid on Mar-a-Lago.
I'll tell you what that is.
Are standardized tests racist?
There's a dispute between John McWhorter and Ibram Kendi, and I'll tell you who's right.
Sociologist Dr. Kim Johnson joins Debbie and me.
She's going to talk about her new documentary, American Woman.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
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The times are crazy, and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
A very interesting development at the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose implications are not entirely clear yet, but a senior FBI agent, this is a guy named Tim Tim Tibbult.
T-H-I-B-A-U-L-T.
Tim Tibbult.
has been escorted out of FBI headquarters and apparently is being either removed or I mean, there's a little bit of a shading as to which of those options it is, but what is not being shaded is that this guy is out of the FBI building.
This was, by the way, the story was broken by the reporter John Solomon and then picked up and further reported by many others, including the Washington Times.
And evidently, this guy, Tim Tybalt, is the guy who suppressed the Hunter-Biden story.
Now, he didn't suppress it all by himself, but he was one of the key figures in blocking the Hunter-Biden story from getting out prior to the 2020 election.
So let's think about that. This is the FBI actively involved in election interference and in suppressing damaging information against Biden.
Now, there are several elements to this story.
We know recently, Mark Zuckerberg, by the way, the founder of Facebook, now called Meta, Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan's show and he said it was the FBI that pressured Facebook not to highlight the Hunter Biden story, to downplay it, to repress it.
Zuckerberg says, we didn't shut it down completely, but we did give it less traction.
We did sort of pull it back.
And think about it, it's the FBI, the FBI, the supposedly neutral police agency of the government that is now working with these social media platforms, not to fight misinformation, but to fight accurate information that would have been damaging to the Democrats.
So the FBI seems to be now a little bit like the KGB, kind of a fully owned police arm of the Democratic Party.
Now, this fellow, Tybalt, was apparently posting all kinds of political statements against Trump and against the Republicans while he was leading the public corruption unit of the FBI. He is also apparently a guy who was telling other FBI agents, don't open the Hunter Biden laptop.
Let's remember that the FBI had the Hunter Biden laptop and has had it for a while.
So long before reporting came out from Miranda Devine and others, what's on the laptop, the FBI had it.
They could have gone through it.
They could have set up a whole operation because there's a lot of data on the laptop.
But this fellow Tybalt, perhaps among others, put out the word as senior FBI agents, this is not something we really want to go into right now.
And at the very least, they wanted to push any investigation of the laptop post the 2020 election.
It also seems, this I'm getting from John Sullivan, that FBI whistleblowers have told both Jim Jordan and Chuck Grassley, so Jim Jordan in the House and Chuck Grassley in the Senate, that this Tybalt fellow concealed the partisan nature of the evidence that he was putting forward to Christopher Wray and Merrick Garland to open their investigation into Trump.
So in other words, he's pushing partisan This is very reminiscent, by the way, of the Steele dossier.
In the case of the Steele dossier, as you know, this was funded, bankrolled, really set up by the Clinton campaign.
The FBI was in on it.
They then used this fake dossier to open an investigation.
So here is Tybalt again using partisan talking points, if you will.
To push for an investigation.
There's some question about whether there's even bogus information that was used to justify the Mar-a-Lago raid.
I'm going to talk about the raid in the next segment.
But John Solomon is reporting that in the documents that were submitted to the court to justify the Mar-a-Lago raid...
There was a CBS Miami article called Moving Trucks Spotted at Mar-a-Lago.
So think about this. This is a local CBS station spotting moving trucks.
They don't know what's in the moving trucks.
They just see moving trucks. And the FBI goes, oh, judge, you need to give us a warrant to raid Mar-a-Lago because who knows what's in those moving trucks?
As if to say that Mar-a-Lago, a huge operation that conducts...
Golfing events. Can't have moving trucks at Mar-a-Lago without the FBI thinking that this is probable cause.
Probable cause for what? So we're beginning to see here how bogus this operation is and how thin the FBI's justification is for doing the raid.
But more importantly...
The election interference, I think, is a very serious matter.
Now, there are several Republican senators who have now demanded of the FBI, we need the names of all the FBI agents who are instructing other agents, but also instructing Facebook.
That somehow the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
And let's remember, this wasn't just a couple of FBI agents.
You remember the 50 so-called intelligence officials, very prominent names, head of the CIA and so on.
All these guys affirming, even though they're in a position to know better, that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
They were basically lying and lying.
All of the lying is for the same purpose.
All of the lying is to make sure that Trump doesn't get elected.
Trump, by the way, is not surprisingly all over this.
He put out a statement.
So now it comes out conclusively that the FBI buried the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election, all caps.
And he goes on to say, this is massive fraud and election interference at a level never before seen in our country.
And I think this is a case where it's hard to disagree.
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What was the purpose of the FBI raiding former President Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago?
Now... We're good to go.
By the way, the Biden DOJ wanted to keep this affidavit.
The affidavit is the document that justifies, that's presented to the court, saying, here's what we got.
This is what shows that there's probable cause that a crime has been committed, and therefore, Judge Reinhart, we need you to sign off on the raid.
That's what the affidavit does.
The Biden DOJ wanted to keep the affidavit sealed.
It has been partially released.
Of course, a lot of it has been blackened out or redacted.
Let's look at what we do see.
First of all, what we do see is that the Apparent justification for the raid is it was triggered by a request that was made by the National Archives.
The National Archives, kind of a national library that keeps documents.
And the National Archives said, we think, we believe that there may be, or we believe that there are, classified documents in the boxes that Trump has in his possession at Mar-a-Lago.
So right away we realize we're dealing with a kind of a document fight.
There seems to be nothing in the affidavit that says that Trump wasn't cooperating in the return of these documents.
So the question then becomes, let's say that Trump is in possession of classified documents.
Why would you do a raid?
Remember, the raid is not merely, there are documents I want to get him back.
The raid is, I think, a crime has been committed.
So where's the crime? Is the crime that the documents are classified and Trump is not entitled to have them?
That becomes a highly gray area for the simple reason that there is...
Now, if you or I had classified documents in our possession, then the FBI could prima facie say, well, clearly, Dinesh has no reason to have these documents.
Let's go raid his house.
But when you're dealing with the former president of the United States...
The issue of whether these documents are classified or declassified, let's think about who's the one who declassifies them.
Answer, Trump!
Trump is in every position to declassify the documents in his possession, and so the idea that somehow you can raid his house Because he is in possession of documents that he himself has the power to declassify.
This is a very dubious proposition.
This is really what makes all this so unprecedented.
Remember, Hillary, for a fact, had classified documents in her possession.
Hillary was the Secretary of State, not the President.
And yet, the FBI made the decision not only not to raid, but not even to investigate.
No attempt to even go after Hillary, even though James Comey admitted that A, she has classified documents.
B, she destroyed documents, even though subpoenas had been issued for those documents.
So, this seems to be a case where the FBI is after something.
And the real question is, what is the FBI after?
One theory that seems very persuasive to me is that the FBI wants documents to be taken away from Mar-a-Lago that can be used against the FBI. In other words, not used to jeopardize national security.
Let's remember that organizations like the FBI and the CIA, whenever they say the word national security...
You've got to ask, is it really national security or is it your security?
Is it really that the country is in danger or is it that your corruption is in danger?
The latter in many cases, and the latter certainly in this case, much more likely.
So, what seems to be going on is that the FBI has reasoned that there may be documents in Trump's possession...
that can be used to bust the FBI to prosecute the FBI to go after corrupt agents and going all the way to the very top going up to Agents that could be the director, the associate director, the top agents in particular areas.
And so the FBI is before the Republicans take the House, before Jim Jordan becomes the head of the Judiciary Committee.
Remember, Jim Jordan is going to look very skeptically on this Mar-a-Lago raid.
In fact, when Debbie and I were down in Mar-a-Lago, I think this was for the screening, if I remember correctly.
Honey, you can correct me if I'm wrong.
It was for the screening of the movie where we were having lunch afterward and there was Jim Jordan at Mar-a-Lago.
And so with this guy being now in charge of the House committee overseeing the FBI, it makes total sense to me that the FBI goes, listen, if there's any incriminating information against us that is in Trump's possession under the pretense of national security, let's get it back.
That way we have it.
They don't have it.
And we can then hide it.
We can keep it away from Trump.
We can keep it away from Jim Jordan.
we can prevent the accountability that we need, that should be happening to us, from happening to us.
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I want to weigh in on a very interesting skirmish that is going on between the conservative live.
Black linguist.
His name is John McWhorter.
And Mr.
Anti-racism himself, the critical legal theory guru, Ibram Kendi.
I first learned about this from Kendi, not from McWhorter.
But Kendi is attacking an article that McWhorter published in the New York Times.
The article is called, Lower Black and Latino Pass Rates Don't Make a Test Racist.
And Ibram Kendi goes that basically, when you have a test, and the facts are kind of clear, that the test that we're talking about is called the Association of Social Work Boards test.
This is to become basically a social worker.
And it turns out that if you administer this test, 84% of whites who take the test pass it, but only 65% of Latinos and 45% of blacks.
Now, I should say right at the outset that this pattern of whites doing better, Latinos doing less well, blacks least well of all, applies to every test.
No matter whether you're talking about a math test given at the seventh grade, or you talk about the LSAT or the GMAT to get into graduate school, or the firefighters test or the police sergeant's exam, it doesn't matter what the test is, you name the test.
If you administer it to a random sample of blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians, you will get this result.
So this is what has to be explained.
Why is it that different groups are doing so unequally?
What Ibram Kendi basically goes is there are two possibilities.
Either the test is racist or something is wrong with black people.
And Ibram Kendi goes, since we all know that nothing is wrong with black people, therefore the test must be racist.
This is literally the caliber of reasoning.
So Ibram Kendi is, in a sense, daring you to say that there is something wrong with black people.
Otherwise, he's forcing you to admit that the problem is not with the test takers, but with the test itself.
And he sort of has McWhorter in this kind of a trap, because he keeps saying that McWhorter in his article keeps...
Qualifying his argument by saying, well, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with black people.
And I think the problem here is that the terms, there's something wrong with black people, is too general.
Because nobody is saying, and this is really what McWhorter should have clarified, that there's anything wrong with black people or with any group intrinsically.
Nobody is saying that Blacks or Latinos or any group is deficient intrinsically or naturally or biologically.
But it is a simple fact that groups perform differently pretty much in everything.
And there are reasons for that.
Groups perform differently on the basketball court.
Groups perform differently in the Olympic races, the short distances, the long distances.
And groups perform differently on academic tests of performance.
Now, the reason for this very often can be traced.
McWhorter is actually on the right track.
At one point, he talks about the fact that he looks at things like...
Do blacks and whites, are they equally likely to read books?
And he goes on to show that, no, there have been studies that show that blacks actually read less than other groups.
I've seen numerous studies, and by the way, my book, The End of Racism, now about 20 years old, but gets into this in excruciating detail.
It has literally thousands of footnotes that substantiate the case.
But there are differences in family structure.
There are differences in homework habits.
If you just do a study and ask, for example, what is the average amount of time that is spent doing homework for different racial groups, you get huge differences.
So is it any surprise that the behavioral differences...
Behavioral differences that themselves are rooted in differences of family structure and so on because obviously it just simply makes sense if you have a two-parent family there's going to be a little more time for the parents to supervise the upbringing and the homework habits of the children single parent family mom's at work and has to cook and do other things when she comes home obviously there's going to be less ability to do that so The point here is that McWhorter is right and Kendi is wrong,
but for the McWhorter case to be more solid, you have to make a critical distinction between falling behind due to intrinsic or genetic or biological factors.
McWhorter is not saying that.
I'm not saying that.
By the way, I'm sometimes thrown in with the sociologist Charles Murray.
Dinesh and Murray are both in the same camp.
No, we're not in the same camp.
In fact, I've got a long chapter in my book, The End of Racism, which is a critique of Charles Murray's The Bell Curve.
So I have never been on board with the idea of explaining racial differences in performance, in academic performance, by pointing to biology or pointing to genetics.
On the contrary, I think it is cultural and behavioral factors that explain why some groups do better as they do than others.
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Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, the old Soviet Union, is dead.
Dead at 91%.
And I read the New York Times obituary of Gorbachev, a very long obituary.
In fact, for people who don't know, you think, well, how did the New York Times write this, like, 15-page obituary of Gorbachev, like, in one day?
Well, the answer is the New York Times writes obituaries before you die.
In fact, I've been trying to get them to show me mine.
It's probably been written.
It's probably very mean-spirited, but they probably have it.
But Debbie's getting a little agitated here.
But no, it is customary for them to write the obituary of public figures.
And I've got to say that their obituary of Gorbachev is pretty fair-minded.
I was actually expecting them to do their usual thing and go, Gorbachev was the guy who really ended the Cold War, wasn't Reagan...
In other words, to turn the obituary into a polemic.
They don't do this. In fact, they say this, I'm going to quote, Very accurate statement.
Presided over is actually a very appropriate term because Gorbachev was standing helplessly as he watched explosions going on all over Eastern Europe and then ultimately the revolution making its way into the bowels of the Soviet Union itself.
I mean, the Communist Party.
These were monumental events that many of us witnessed, some of us fairly close up.
What the obituary downplays, however, I think is the relationship between Gorbachev and Reagan, which was a very remarkable relationship historically.
I mean, Reagan would literally joke with Gorbachev, very unusual for the two leaders, adversaries in a Cold War.
I mean, I remember the incident of Reagan telling Gorbachev the joke, which basically involves Gorbachev at his sort of summer dacha or his summer house, and he is urgently recalled to the Kremlin.
And so Gorbachev goes out, his driver's sitting in the car, and Gorbachev goes,"'I'm in a big hurry.
You get in the back.
I'm going to drive.'" And Gorbachev starts, you know, tearing down the road.
He's going 100 miles an hour.
And there are two Soviet cops who see this car go flying by.
And so one of them jumps on his bike and gives chase and kind of flags the car over.
To give the guy a ticket, because this is just not allowed.
And then he comes back to see the other guy who was at his initial post, and the other guy goes, well, did you give him a ticket?
And the guy goes, ticket? No, no, no, I didn't give him a ticket.
Too important. And the guy goes, well, who was it?
And the guy goes, I don't know.
And he goes, you don't know?
He goes, how do you know he was important?
And the guy goes, well, his driver was Gorbachev.
So this was Reagan's joke that he told Gorbachev.
And Gorbachev enjoyed it.
He chuckled heartily.
And so, these two men had almost a kind of a back-slapping relationship which took on a profound significance when the Soviet Union itself was dissolving because Gorbachev was losing his power.
Of course, he had the ability to crack down both in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union.
He asked Reagan for advice.
Think about this. Gorbachev is asking Reagan what he should do as his own power is dissolving.
Gorbachev is saying to Reagan, in effect, I'm at the edge of a precipice.
What should I do?
And Reagan's advice?
Take one step forward.
In other words, keep going.
Reagan is, in a sense, asking Gorbachev to sign his own political death warrant.
And remarkably, Gorbachev does it.
So Gorbachev, when we look back at him, in some ways you can say he was ineffective, he was incompetent, he was trying to save communism, not destroy it.
But his redeeming quality was that he was decent.
When he had the chance to use massive force against the Eastern Europeans and even against his fellow Russians, he decided better not to do that, better to let the Soviet Union dissolve itself.
And so communism in that sense died in the Soviet Union.
Now whether communism is being revived in other parts of the world is a whole other question.
People have sometimes said history will remember everyone by only one line, sort of like Washington was the father of the country.
Lincoln freed the slaves.
And it's interesting to think about how Gorbachev might be remembered, but I would suggest this line for Gorbachev, which I think captures both his decency and his ineffectiveness.
And that is that Gorbachev lost the Cold War without firing a shot.
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Or go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code AMERICA. Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast Dr.
Kim Johnson. She's a professor of sociology at Lockhaven University in Pennsylvania.
She teaches courses on economic sociology, sociology of religion, society and the state, as well as the sociology of conservative thought.
She's actually a producer and co-owner of a new film, which we're going to talk about in the next segment.
It's called American Woman, and Deborah D'Souza is part of that lineup.
So Debbie will join me on the second segment.
Kim, it's a pleasure.
I think we met, gosh, it was now around 2015, I believe, when I came to speak at Lockhaven University.
And it was a memorable experience, and we've stayed in touch at least a little bit over the years.
Well, Dinesh, it's nice to see you again.
Thank you for having me on your show.
And I cannot believe it's been seven years since you visited Lockhaven.
And I don't know if you remember or not, but there was a to-do when, you know, the faculty found out that you were coming to the university.
And one of the things that happened was the night before, less than 24 hours before your visit, the administration required us to move the venue.
And so we had you in this beautiful ballroom and it was an alumni center.
And because some faculty complained, we had to move you to another venue that I didn't think was as nice.
But it just goes to show you what happens when you're conservative or libertarian in Activia.
Now, Kim, you have been in academia a long time, and you've seen the changes in academia.
Would I be right in describing it as saying that it used to be that conservatives had a place in academia?
We were the minority, perhaps.
But we were not pariahs, and there wasn't an effort to sort of clean us out.
But it appears that even in universities that had sort of a moderate or conservative reputation, I think of places like Texas A&M, there seems to have been this kind of leftist takeover, and it's the worst kind of leftist.
My question to you is, how do you survive as a sort of a dinosaur, so to speak, in this environment?
And then I'm going to ask you about whether this is a situation that can be turned around or whether it's or not.
Yeah, that's a good question.
And you're completely correct.
Academia has changed so much.
I've been at my university.
This is year 22.
And I've seen it change so drastically.
It used to be, yeah, conservatives and libertarians, they were, you know, of course, the minority, but we didn't know each other's political beliefs or affiliations.
And if we did, you know, it wasn't it wasn't a big deal.
And today there's Some severe groupthink that goes on within the university.
And if you do not go along with that, there's going to be consequences.
And we're seeing this across the country with conservative academics.
I'm assuming that the pressure is felt perhaps in different ways, both by faculty and by students.
In other words, if you're an outspoken conservative student, it's almost like you don't belong here.
You have a triggering effect on the rest of us, but students come and go.
Whereas with a professor, that's your life, that's your livelihood, that's the place that you, in a sense, have lived for, in your case, more than a couple of decades.
And are you finding it lonelier and more difficult, or have you found a way to navigate this kind of treacherous environment?
Well, a few years ago, even when you came to visit, which we're so grateful for, you're a national figure, and you came to our university, which is up in the mountains of central Pennsylvania, and it's changed since then, unfortunately.
It's gotten worse.
And it makes me sad.
It really does, because the university used to be a place of intellectual development.
We would cultivate the students' potential.
We transmitted knowledge.
And most importantly, we would pursue truth.
And today, that's not the case.
And students are being indoctrinated.
And, you know, the way I phrase it is that an actual progressive coup d'etat has occurred within academia.
And what's so bad about it is that it's not only private institutions this has occurred in, but also state-funded institutions.
So taxpayers really should be aware of what's going on within universities within their states.
And so hopefully we can shine some light on that.
I mean, it seems to me that...
Once this reaches a certain tipping point, it's hard to get it back because faculty, as you know, are a self-perpetuating body.
So if you've got a group of leftists running the history department, they're going to be, and if they are ideologically committed, they're going to hire other people who are perhaps even more to the left than they are.
So this is not a self-correcting problem, is it?
It's not, and that's a good observation.
Because, you know, most parents aren't aware of this, but what's occurring right now is if you are a conservative or even a libertarian, so you might agree with half of what the liberals are left, whatever you want to call them, you might agree with half of what they're saying, or maybe three quarters or 90%, but that's not enough, okay?
And so if you don't come from that ideological perspective, you will not get hired.
And what parents don't understand and students don't understand is that the faculty who are getting hired now, they are going to influence young people for the next 30 to 40 years.
And I'm not just, this isn't my opinion, look at higheredjobs.com, go to the Chronicle of Higher Education and look at the actual job listings.
Unless you specialize in some aspect of social justice or race or gender, I used to teach theory.
That was my main area of focus.
And now, because I thought I'm safe, oh, I teach theory, I can go to any university.
Well, you have to have an emphasis in intersectionality in order to get hired as a theorist.
So I don't think that the public recognizes that what's occurring right now will impact the next 30 to 40 years.
And that we need to wake up and do something about it.
I do think possibly we can save it, but it's not unless, you know, the public starts to complain about it.
Wow. Kim, when we come back, we're going to talk to Dr.
Kim Johnson about a new film that you should see.
It's called American Woman.
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Feel the difference. Back with Dr.
Kim Johnson, professor of sociology at Lockhaven University.
We've been talking about the campus, but Debbie and I are joined together for this segment because you, honey, you're in a new film that Kim has produced.
It's called American Woman.
Kim, you know, you've been in academia, you've been obviously writing articles.
What gave you the idea of moving into films and why this topic?
Okay, so there's a couple of things.
Well, one, as a sociologist, we observe trends and social trends and cultural trends.
And, you know, I feel that's part of my job.
And when President Donald Trump Actually, candidate Trump when he ran to be president, I noticed some things going on culturally.
And so I started to really get into politics at that time, like a lot of people, right?
And so that started it.
And with the pandemic coming early on, it was probably January or February, I saw the authoritarian politicians beginning to try to control us.
And in our state, it was very bad.
You know, I live in Pennsylvania. With the lockdowns and the mandatory masking and the forced vaccinations.
And so I decided to either, you know, I was going to sulk in despair about what's going on or I was going to do something.
And so I got in touch with my former student, who's the co-producer of American Woman, David Scarpelli.
I think he's going to be on your show sometime soon.
And we decided to create something that would inspire other people.
So yes, we wanted a documentary.
Yes, we wanted to educate people.
But we also wanted to inspire them to actually get up and do something.
And so that's what we started.
And for me, I noticed that conservative women were really just powerhouses within the movement.
And there wasn't a lot of information, even for one of my classes.
What I do is I try to show both sides of the issue.
Even today, even though the leftists do whatever they do, I still present both sides.
And so I was looking for some information on conservative women, and there was nothing out there as far as video.
So I thought, Dave, let's try to do this.
And Debbie, I don't think you know this, but you were the first person that we had on our list to ask to be in the film.
Aww. Well, I feel very honored.
I remember, as we talked about before we went on camera, that you asked me to do this interview smack dab in the middle of the pandemic.
It was the summer of 2020, and most of the listeners know that I'm a germaphobe, and so it was really tough for me to even get out of the house.
I mean, it was bad. But I knew how important this was for To you, and really to our culture, to showcase conservative women.
And I know I'm one of many.
But one of the things that I want to know is, what made you decide on the title American Woman?
Okay, that's a good question.
I don't think the word American is used enough We certainly don't hear it in higher education very much.
And Dinesh, I noticed on some of your gear, you had the word American on, it was a sweatshirt, I think I saw.
So if people are interested, they can go purchase some of your clothing.
So I wanted the word American in the title.
And it just made sense for the second word to be woman.
And also, in academia, I felt that the feminists have taken over that term.
And defining that term for us.
And I thought and Dave thought that we should redefine it in a way that the general public understands, because apparently we're having difficulty understanding what the word woman means.
We've seen the Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
And also, Matt Walsh, he just made a movie, What is a Woman?
So that's sort of in the air, don't you think, this idea of what it means to be a woman?
So I think it's appropriate given our time.
And who are the other women in the documentary?
We have such...
Just outstanding women.
I'm sure you two have gone through this, but when you have to cut, you have to keep cutting.
It's like giving up a child.
Just on you, we could have spent over an hour or an hour and a half, but you have to pick and choose.
However, just to answer your question, we have Beverly Beattie.
She's Beverly Williams now.
And she is the young woman who painted over the BLM mural in front of Trump Tower.
And we get some insight that you don't see anywhere else into what was going through Bevelin's mind the night before.
It's really good. I think it's really good.
And so she shares that with us.
So we have Bevelin Beattie.
We have Mary Vogt.
She was appointed by Donald Trump to work on the Council for Disabilities.
She has a disabled child and she's doing wonderful things.
We have Dina in our movie.
She works for the Leadership Institute.
And we have Emily Burning, who runs an organization called Let Them Live, and she's saving babies.
And so if anybody is interested in the pro-life issue, I think they'll really like our film.
Awesome. And how can we see this film?
Thank you for asking. I appreciate that.
It's on Amazon.
It's also on Vimeo for people who have Vimeo accounts.
And we're looking to also distribute it on DVD as well.
But right now, those are the two places.
And, you know, we are getting such positive feedback.
I'm getting emails from people and texts.
But I'm going to request that if you did enjoy the film, if you could go and leave a review on Amazon, because that would help us out.
So basically, just go on Amazon and search it as American film, sorry, American woman film, and it'll pull it up, right?
Because I want people to really support this film.
Thank you. There is another movie that came out a couple of years ago.
I knew that going into it, called American Woman.
It's a drama. But now, because so many people are searching ours, we're getting the first hit.
So if they put American Woman 2022, it should come up within the top four.
Perfect. Thank you.
Dr. Kim Johnson, thank you very much for joining us.
Really appreciate it. Thank you.
I really appreciate being on your show.
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The opening scene of the Odyssey begins with a surprise.
We expect to be following Odysseus, seeing him on Calypso's island as a captive.
There's a reference to him sitting by the sea and really weeping in his longing to go home.
But the story moves in a different direction.
It actually moves into...
Ithaca, where we see Penelope, Odysseus' wife, besieged and beleaguered by over 100 suitors.
Now, who are these suitors? Well, it turns out that they're young men, for the most part.
And there are young men who are fatherless.
Very interesting fact about most of them.
Why are they fatherless? Because many of their fathers went with Odysseus and the Greeks to Troy.
So many of their fathers were killed.
So we have a phenomenon here in the Odyssey.
Not entirely unfamiliar to us in contemporary America, which is what happens to young men when they grow up without fathers, and the answer is many of them are out of control, and they're arrogant, and they have sort of grown up really with each other, and here they are besieging Penelope, harassing her, and also wasting Odysseus' estate.
By which we mean killing his cattle and eating them and drinking his wine, squandering his possessions, taking gifts for themselves off of.
And so here's Telemachus, at this point a young man, just over 20, and he has been sort of fatherless.
Remember, his father Odysseus has been away now for 20 years, 10 years of war and 10 years getting home.
And so Telemachus is...
Withdrawn, he's somewhat immature, and of course, there is no way for him to handle such a large gang of suitors.
Now, Penelope, Odysseus' wife, is in a very awkward situation for a reason I want to describe now.
And that is, she has, first of all, she doesn't want all these suitors.
She has been trying to put them off, and And they are all demanding of her that she make a choice of one of them to marry.
So their premise is Odysseus must be dead.
It's time for you, Penelope, to choose one of us who then will take Odysseus' place.
The suitors have no regard for Telemachus.
Of course, let's say Odysseus was dead.
Well, Telemachus would be his rightful heir.
The estate should go to the son.
And not to mention that Odysseus is the king of Ithaca.
So Telemachus now becomes the lawful ruler.
But the pseudas will have none of this.
And so Penelope has been trying to put them off, trying to distract them, trying to pass time, waiting for Odysseus to come home.
And the way she does that, kind of a famous episode, is she says that she has to weave a burial shroud for Odysseus' father, a guy named Laertes.
Now Laertes is still alive, but he's very old.
And Odysseus is the only son.
Odysseus' mother is dead.
And so Penelope says, look, it's my job, so my kind of last task here is to weave a burial shroud for Laertes.
Then I will be ready to consider remarriage and consider one of the suitors.
But what Penelope kind of slyly does is she weaves in the day and she unweaves in the night.
So the shroud never gets done.
Problem for Penelope is that one of her maids, in fact, one of the slave women, betrays her.
One of the slave women tells the suitors this is what she's doing.
The suitors hide.
They're able to surprise Penelope, unweaving the shroud.
Penelope is, well, kind of busted.
So this trick is not going to work anymore.
Penelope knows it.
So, you have a situation that has gotten kind of desperate in Ithaca.
And I think you begin to see here why Homer begins the story in this way.
Some scholars, when they note that Odysseus is not present in the Odyssey for five books, I mean, he comes in in book five.
They wonder if this is a kind of a flaw on Homer's part.
Why not begin the story right with Odysseus?
And as we'll see, Homer doesn't tell the story in chronological order.
He tells some of Odysseus' story, and then he has a major flashback, and then he comes back to the present.
And there are reasons for why Homer does this.
But I think that the reason for these four books, and by the way, scholars call them the Telemachy.
Why? Because of the Odyssey is the story of Odysseus.
Really, the first four books...
The story of Odysseus' son Telemachus, hence the name Telemachy.
And the reason that Homer goes here is he wants to show the desperation of the situation.
He wants to show that Odysseus is needed right now.
By the way, the interesting thing with regard to Penelope is that if Odysseus is alive, it is their absolute duty to preserve Odysseus' estate forever.
For the rightful king to come back and reassume his position.
If Odysseus is dead, then Penelope has to turn over the estate to her son, to their son, Telemachus, and remarry.
There's no place in ancient Greek society for kind of this unmarried woman, not even for a widow.
But Penelope doesn't know, is Odysseus alive?
Is he dead? So she is in this terrifying situation where If one is true or the other is true, she knows what she has to do.
But since she doesn't know what is true, she doesn't know if Odysseus is alive or not, she's kind of caught in this terrible predicament.
And then you've got these suitors who are becoming increasingly important.
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