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Coming up, Crooked's back.
I'm talking of course about Hillary Clinton with a strange rant about Republicans wanting to rig the 2024 election.
I'll explain. I'll reveal how the left is running the Kavanaugh playbook against Herschel Walker and how we are on to them this time.
In a not-much-changes department, I'm going to try to show how Democrats used mail-in ballots to steal the 1864 election from Abraham Lincoln.
And this is the Dinesh Chisoor Zia show.
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.
Crooked is back.
And Crooked, of course, is the very fitting name that was given to Hillary Clinton by Donald Trump.
And he would, initially he called her Crooked Hillary, but after a while he just dropped the Hillary and started calling her Crooked.
And Crooked is back with a video that she made warning about the, well, not the midterm election, but the 2024 election.
Here's a little piece of that.
Listen. Hello, Indivisibles.
I'm here to highlight something that is keeping me up at night.
And I know this group really understands what I'm about to say.
I know we're all focused on the 2022 midterm elections and they are incredibly important.
But we also have to look ahead.
Because you know what?
Our opponents certainly are.
Right-wing extremists already have a plan to literally steal the next presidential election.
Here's Hillary Clinton.
Republicans are going to steal the 2024 election.
Now, with Hillary, there's always an initial feeling that this woman is nuts.
In fact, Debbie walks in.
She's deranged.
She's out of her mind.
And there's a little bit of that going on, because even if you just watch her, the way that she talks, hello, indivisibles, she says, what Who addresses people like that?
This is just a very unnatural person and a very unnatural way of operating.
And then she also has the kind of, first of all, she has a sort of witch-like attire and her extremely annoying manner of speaking.
I mean, the net effect of this is electric in a very bad way because Hillary has the personality of an electric chair.
But what's she even talking about?
How are Republicans planning to steal the 2024 election?
Are Republicans now, you know, deploying mules?
Do Republicans have a plan where mules are going to stop by the Heritage Foundation and the NRA and evangelical megachurches and take fraudulent?
No, she's not talking about any of this.
She's actually talking about a case coming up this fall before the Supreme Court.
And the case is really about who makes the rules that govern elections in America.
Now... There are three possible answers to that question.
Number one, rules for elections are made at the state level by state legislatures.
They decide how the district should be carved up or drawn, and this would include some element of gerrymandering, which by the way is done by both parties.
It is the state legislatures that prescribe how the election will be conducted, what the mechanics of it are.
In other words, they organize the process of the election in their state.
That's option number one.
Option number two... You have officials in the executive branch.
This would include the Secretary of State and others, elected or unelected.
It could be someone, for example, who's head of an elections commission or some appointed elections official.
They make the rules.
They decide the election will be held in this manner and in this way.
And the third option is that the rules will be made by courts.
And we're talking here about state courts.
A notorious example comes from Pennsylvania, where in 2020, the Pennsylvania courts and ultimately the Pennsylvania Supreme Court basically said, we are extending the deadline for the return of absentee ballots to three days after the election.
Wow. This was nowhere in the law.
This was, in fact, not permitted by the law.
But the Supreme Court decided, since we're living in the age of COVID, it is within our power to make exceptions to the law.
And so, here we go.
Three-day extension. Now, Democrats manipulated these rules like nobody's business in the COVID era.
So the rules in which you've got secretaries of state cutting deals with outside organizations, in which you've got elected and unelected officials deciding on their own, I'm going to mail out millions or in some cases tens of millions of ballots, whether or not citizens ask for them or not.
In which you have courts, as I just mentioned, modifying and altering the rules.
Democrats like this because they can play the system.
But let's turn to the Constitution and see what the Constitution says.
This is called the Elections Clause.
Article 1. Section 4.
I'm going to read it. The times, place, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.
Wow. That settles the issue.
That couldn't be more clear.
Now, Congress has some power of its own to make election rules.
But the point here is that we see that it's not the state courts and it's not the state officials.
It is the state legislature that is given the power by the Constitution to To decide, quote, the time, place, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives.
So what Hillary Clinton is afraid of is the Supreme Court will do nothing more than affirm, and they don't even have to quote, in a sense, they don't have to write a decision, just read from the Constitution.
And Hillary's terrified.
She calls this the power of state legislators to overturn elections.
That is just flat-out nonsense. The state legislature can't overturn an election.
The point is the state legislature sets up the rules and the manner in which the election is conducted. So, for example, should absentee ballots be allowed and in what situations?
Should there be signature matching and how should that be done? So, all these mechanics of running elections, the authority is constitutionally ascribed to state legislatures and what Hillary is really scared of is the Supreme Court will do nothing more than affirm this constitutional principle.
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I want to talk about what's happening in Senate races around the country.
I think it's worthwhile to focus on the Senate because, well, it looks fairly obvious that the House is going to swing, and probably pretty heavily, into the Republican camp.
Even Democrats appear to be conceding this.
They seem to be giving up on some races that they thought they could win.
Even other races that were once classified as leaning Democratic are now toss-ups.
So the momentum seems to be with the Republicans, as it is on the Senate level.
And let's look at some of the key races going on here.
In Arizona, Blake Masters.
Has pulled even with...
Who's the guy in Arizona, honey?
The astronaut.
Yeah, Mark Kelly, the astronaut.
And Kelly looked like he would have that.
In fact, even I said on the podcast, I think Republicans may win three out of four in those races.
But it looks like Masters has a good chance.
J.D. Vance, I think, is going to win in Ohio.
He's ahead... The Oz-Fetterman debate was a spectacle, wasn't it?
Wow. He made Biden look like Einstein.
So, and in fact, Democrats were running around afterward to explain.
Initially, they were like, he did really well.
And there were some media figures.
And this just shows how horrible these people are.
They don't even feel, they're untethered by reality.
Well, the editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer decided that Fetterman won the debate decisively.
As if to say, did we watch the same debate?
This is not even a matter of two guys who are in a fight and you say one guy wins.
This is a case where Fetterman was struggling to get out a coherent sentence and actually produce some massive whoppers that made you even wonder if he knew what he was saying or even what his name was.
So, Oz looks like he will win that one in Pennsylvania, unless the state of Pennsylvania just goes berserk and for inexplicable reasons decides, you know, we want the brain-dead guy.
I don't see that happening.
In Washington State, where you would think Patty Murray would have a fairly easy time holding her seat against Tiffany Smiley, it looks like Tiffany Smiley is closing in on Patty Murray, and so a race that this would be a big pickup for the Republicans.
And then, of course, there's the issue of Herschel Walker.
And here's what I want to focus on the media doing what they always do.
In fact, this is the Kavanaugh playbook.
A second woman comes forward and says that Herschel Walker paid her to get an abortion.
Now, let's notice, first of all, there's a formula, right?
They have one woman, and then they realize, well, Herschel Walker denies that he said she that.
We need a second woman. And so, boom, here comes the second woman.
The woman. And unsurprisingly, the second woman is in the company of one Gloria Allred, ambulance-chasing attorney.
And then the two of them come forward, and the first thing they say is, this is not about politics.
Yeah. Not about politics.
That's why they chose, really, 12 days before the election to do this.
It has nothing to do with politics whatsoever.
And then, of course, the media circus is moving as if to say that this is all on the up and up.
So, you know, this is...
This is like going to one of those Hollywood sets where you've got a comedy going on and then the laugh machine is right there.
And so, in other words, it's all staged and the stage effects include the so-called reception of what is being said.
So, you have jokes which, frankly, aren't all that funny, but...
The machine goes, you know, there's a guy operating the machine.
Well, that's the media. Their job is to bow and genuflect and applaud what the Democrats say and try to get the Democrats across the finish line.
So the actors know what they're doing.
Everybody is like playing their role.
This is performance artistry at all levels and includes the performance artists at CNN and the performance artists at the New York Times.
It's fake news from top to bottom.
In fact, if they want to really complete the script, it seems to me that we have the first woman, we have the second woman, and then the next step is escalation.
So the Democrats now need a third woman to come forward, and her charges have to be way over the top, because it's not enough to say, well, she paid for an abortion.
She has to say that Herschel Walker paid her to have 40 abortions, or 25 abortions, Or that he was a gang rapist and he was basically handing out money for abortions to women left and right.
It has to be something...
So in other words, they're looking for Julie Swetnick.
They're looking for the sort of extremist in the Kavanaugh accusations.
Now... I don't know where Swetnik is.
She's probably unavailable.
And also it might be too obvious to produce her again.
So they need an equivalent of Julie.
They're probably putting out the word, you know, can we find some Democratic activist who's willing to come forward and play her assigned role?
I think as Republicans, we're onto this.
We know this is a racket.
We know that this is a scam.
Yeah, it almost worked with Kavanaugh.
But you know what?
It's not going to work with Hershel Walker.
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I hadn't seen this article until attorney Marina Medvin.
By the way, she's been on the podcast.
She's been someone who has been gallantly defending January 6th protesters.
So Marina sent me this article and it's out of New York.
The New York Supreme Court orders the city to Well, the state, I guess.
No, I'm sorry.
It's New York City.
To reinstate all employees who are fired because of their vaccination status.
This is fantastic.
Apparently, the case originated when four Department of Sanitation workers who had been fired from their position in February of this year The New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the New York Department of Sanitation, the Commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, David Chokshi, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
In other words, they sued the New York City establishment that had fired them.
And fired them, why?
Because they weren't properly vaccinated.
And the court says in the ruling, not only do you have to hire these guys, you have to hire everybody that you fired for this reason, and you have to give them back pay.
In other words, you cannot deprive them of their pay, even though they haven't been working from February to now.
It was your fault.
You wrongly terminated them and you need to put them back.
Now, the court didn't say that you can't have a vaccine mandate.
It did say, it noted, that the vaccine mandate appears to have outlasted the pandemic.
And the court, I think in a very amusing observation, said, didn't President Biden say the pandemic is over?
So in other words, you're appealing here to emergency powers, and you're saying that this is an extreme step that you had to take because there was a pandemic going around infecting everybody, and the court goes, but the president says that there isn't.
So in other words, your order outlasted the so-called emergency and yet it was still in effect.
The court goes on to say that your stated rationale for doing this is that these people might be contagious and might infect others.
But the court very accurately says, does being vaccinated prevent you from infecting others?
No. This is now well-known.
This is now well-established.
No one denies this.
Not even Fauci. And so, the point being, the court says that vaccination status is no immunity, either in getting the virus yourself or in giving it to someone else.
So, you can see what the court is doing here.
It's basically knocking down the stated rationales for having this policy in effect.
And then... The court also notes that the New York political establishment was handing out exemptions left and right to all kinds of people that it said don't have to get the vaccine.
And who are those people?
Athletes, artists, and performers.
So evidently, Broadway could continue operating because performers and artists don't have to get a vaccine.
Are performers and artists and athletes not in close contact with others?
They sure are. Is it the case that they somehow have some magical immunity in which they can't give the virus to other people?
Not at all. So, says the court, if it really was an emergency, and if it really was the case that you are trying to essentially establish a uniform rule throughout the city so that people are not going to transmit the virus, Why did you exempt whole groups of people and say they don't have to do it?
The very fact that you're saying that they don't have to do it raises the question of why don't you equitably treat other employees And let them not do it either.
Grant them exemptions if they apply.
Out of the guys who sued, a couple of them asked for exemptions.
In fact, they said initially, we're not asking you to get rid of the rule.
We're just asking that you don't force us to abide by the rule.
But of course, the city goes, no, we're not making any exceptions for you.
And so you're fired.
And so these guys decided to go to court.
Now, this is the beauty of going to court, is that not only do you get restitution, but so does everybody similarly situated.
And so I see this as a sort of return to common sense, because in fact, Debbie and I were talking about this yesterday, and we were talking about how the original expectations and promises about the vaccine turned out not to be accurate.
The idea that the vaccine will prevent you from getting COVID. Lots of people said that.
It's clearly not true.
The fact that the vaccine will prevent you from transmitting COVID to others.
Lots of people said that.
That turns out to be not true.
So really, what the court here in New York is doing, and this is the New York Supreme Court, the highest court in New York, is nothing more than reaffirming what is already known about COVID, widely established, in a sense uncontested, and applying that to misguided public policy.
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A few days ago on the podcast, I talked about reasons to impeach Joe Biden.
And I gave four or five reasons, but I said one reason not to impeach Joe Biden is over his phone call to Saudi Arabia.
But as it turns out, I didn't know enough about that phone call, and there is a new article in the New York Times, the New York Times of all places, that convinces me that this is an additional reason to impeach Joe Biden.
In other words, there is an impeachable offense here.
And as we look at it, look at what the article reveals, we see that Biden is acting corruptly once again.
Initially, I thought that Biden's phone call was nothing more than, hey, Saudis, we have this oil problem in the United States and people in America are suffering with high gas prices.
We also have this war in Ukraine that's preventing us from buying Russian oil.
So we want you to help out the U.S. consumer and produce more oil so that the prices will go down and this will help all Americans.
You can't impeach Biden over that.
In fact, arguably, Biden is doing his job in looking out for the welfare of the American people.
But that is not, in fact, the full story.
Here's the article in the New York Times.
U.S. officials had a secret oil deal with the Saudis, or so they thought.
Now, I've got to give credit to the New York Times here because this is the reporting that I haven't seen anywhere else, and this is not helpful to Biden.
In fact, it's extremely damaging.
It turns out that U.S. officials were trying to save Biden's chances, the Democrats' chances, in the midterm election.
And so they cut a deal with the Saudis in which the Saudis would agree to lower oil prices between September and December of this year.
So think about it. This is not a case where the Saudis are saying we'll lower oil prices across the board.
It's give us a temporary boost so we can get our party to success in the midterm elections.
This is outrageous because here's Biden not acting to benefit the American people.
He's acting to benefit himself.
In fact, according, it seems that the U.S. officials knew oil prices are high.
In fact, we don't mind that they're high.
We just don't want people to be worrying about that before they vote.
So, what we're going to try to do is engineer with the Saudis a secret deal in which they lower the prices, then we get past the midterms, and then they can do whatever they want.
This is basically the message, the deal, that was made between, evidently, I think it's the U.S. State Department, but there could be other departments and officials involved, anyway, between the Biden administration and the Saudis.
And you know what? Beautifully, appropriately, the Saudis essentially reneged on the deal.
Now, the Saudis say, we didn't renege on the deal.
The deal wasn't exactly like that.
But the wonderful thing is the Saudis basically refused to go along.
They did not increase production to lower prices.
In fact, they did the opposite.
Initially, what they did is they slowed production, and now they made a decision with OPEC. Let's remember that OPEC is a coalition of oil-producing countries, but the Saudis are the dominant players in OPEC. And the Saudis are saying, listen, OPEC voted.
We voted to reduce oil production.
The Saudis say this was an economic and not a political decision.
And I think, very importantly, the Saudis could have added and should have added, we aren't going to get involved in U.S. domestic politics.
We're not here in the business of doing Biden political favors.
And frankly, why should the Saudis do Biden any favors?
Biden has been aggressively hostile to the Saudi regime.
In fact, on the campaign, he essentially said, I'm going to isolate Saudi Arabia.
I'm going to punish them because of the killing of this guy Khashoggi, this journalist who supposedly was on the payroll of the Washington Post.
He was killed, I believe, in an embassy...
In a Saudi embassy, but in Turkey or in some third country.
In any event, Biden was like, I'm going to teach the Saudis a lesson.
But Biden decided that his political needs were greater.
And so he made this decision to go to Saudi Arabia.
He didn't want to go. He wasn't planning to go.
But this was a little bit of his payback for the Saudis' Increasing oil production to save Biden and the Democrats all their butts in the midterm.
And when the Saudis decided not to go along, the Biden people were furious.
We'll teach the Saudis a lesson and so on.
And frankly, the Saudis have nothing to worry about.
The US has no lesson to teach them.
In fact, one of the Saudi princes is quoted in the Times saying, I keep listening to, are you with us or against us?
So evidently this is the Biden people. Are you with us or against us? And the guy goes, we are for Saudi Arabia and the people of Saudi Arabia. We have to deliver our ambitions. In other words, we're not for you or against you. Frankly, we're in charge of running our own country.
And we will do what is in our country's own best interest.
I mean, isn't it funny?
The Saudis don't hesitate to be, you know, Saudi Arabia first, just like every other country.
The Russians are Russia first, the Chinese are China first.
But somehow when Trump is America first, no, we shouldn't be for America first.
We should be for America last, which seems to be pretty much what Biden is all about.
But in this case, it's very clear.
This is not a departure from Biden's America last policy.
This is merely Biden trying to save the Democrats when they are in a bad place economically before an election.
So, therefore, I conclude that my earlier comment needs to be modified.
It was wrong. We have, on top of all the other impeachable offenses that I mentioned, this one as well.
With the consumer price index increasing yet again, the stock market has been in turmoil.
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I've been doing a whole bunch of interviews on my new book, 2000 Mules, and one of the questions people ask is, what's in the book?
That's not in the film.
And of course, I talk about how the book can more extensively lay out the evidence, provide more references, answer critics.
But one other thing that's in the book is some history that's not touched upon in the movie at all.
And here's a very telling episode in which the Democrats, going back to 1864, let's remember this is Lincoln's campaign in the middle of the Civil War for re-election, a campaign that Lincoln feared that he would lose.
A critical state in this campaign was New York State.
Lincoln had won New York State in 1860, but New York State also was very heavily Democratic, especially around New York City, just the same as now.
And the Democrats organized a massive fraud operation.
Debbie's like, don't make the comparison.
You can infer the comparison yourself.
Well, here's what happened.
At first, and this is a little bit of an irony, the New York Democrats were afraid that the soldiers would vote for Lincoln.
Think about it. The soldiers are themselves taking the brunt of the war.
They're the ones suffering, but they want the war to be successfully prosecuted and finished.
They're on Lincoln's side. So the New York Democrats proposed that soldiers cannot vote in the field.
They have to show up in person.
This obviously is very difficult to organize.
So eventually the New York Democrats had to relent and agree that this could be done by absentee ballot.
The soldiers could fill out the ballots, sign them, and the ballots would then be carried back and returned and counted.
Both sides tried to campaign for the soldier vote.
And let's remember that the Democrats would normally have a tough time with soldiers, but in this case the Democratic candidate in 1864 was George McClellan, who was the Supreme Commander of the Union Army.
So, McClellan insisted that he was going to get a big chunk of the soldier vote, and he set up, in fact, these kinds of soldier clubs that he called the McClellan Legion to round up the soldiers and get them to vote for the Democrats.
Now, interestingly, once the vote started coming in, and by the way, the leading generals on the Union side, which is to say Grant and Sherman, both endorsed Lincoln.
They both said, Lincoln is our man, and we need Lincoln to be re-elected for this war to be successfully brought to its conclusion.
So the Democrats decided, we're not going to get the soldier vote, most likely.
It's time to start cheating.
And two Democratic Party agents, Moses Ferry and Edward Donahoe, were arrested in Baltimore for creating an elaborate voter fraud scheme in which they would take ballots.
First of all, some of them would falsely fill out the ballots and impersonate soldiers.
So they would put the soldiers' names on the ballots, but the soldiers themselves had not filled out the ballots.
They would also take ballots and alter the result.
So the soldier fills out the ballot but votes for Lincoln.
They change the vote to go from Lincoln to McClellan.
And when Moses and Ferry, initially they denied it.
We had nothing to do with it.
Show us the video, you know.
But eventually they both confessed.
And they both agreed they did it, and they implicated several other New York Democratic Party operatives, and they essentially confessed that this was a Democratic Party scheme to try to tip the balance in this critical state for McClellan.
But it was spoiled, it was busted, and it was stopped.
And when the vote came in, 400,000 soldiers voted in 1864, 78% voted for Lincoln.
So this is a very good example.
When I say the Democrats of the party are voter fraud, there are numerous examples of this.
Going back to Tammany Hall, immigrants coming off the boat, Democratic operatives meeting them with ballots, basically saying, listen, sign here, we'll fill the rest of it out, no problem.
All the way into the 20th century where Democrats suppressed the Black vote in the South because the Black vote at that time was going heavily for the Republicans.
So Democrats, in other words, are really good at this.
They've been doing this for 150 years.
In that sense, 2,000 Meals is simply about the latest chapter of a very sordid story.
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The scene in Book 17, as Homer describes it, Odysseus, dressed as a beggar, is making his way to the palace.
And Homer beautifully cuts back and forth between Odysseus walking to the palace and what's going on inside the palace.
The suitors are eating, they're drinking.
Homer says they relished games of darts and discus.
They're playing inside and outside.
They're making a big racket and a big mess, quote, with no thought of others.
A critical phrase here, the complete absence of zania.
Remember, zania is not simply the host's duty toward the guest.
But it's also how the guest should behave in relation to the host.
And notice that these are unwanted guests.
They haven't been...
They've overstayed their welcome.
They are abusive.
In fact, they're plotting to kill the host.
Nothing could be a more serious violation of Zania.
And Homer is creating the idea that these are horrible people, not just impolite, but murderous in their intentions, and they deserve what's coming to them.
They spread out their cloaks over the chairs and killed plump goats, large rams, fatted pigs, one domestic cow, and cooked them for the feast.
So this is the way in which the suitors are, you may say, eating their way through Odysseus' provisions and Telemachus' inheritance.
Now we cut to the swineherd, Eumaeus, leading the beggar into town.
He's dressed in dirty rags.
And interestingly, one of Odysseus' own slaves, a guy named Melanthius, sees him.
Now Melanthius obviously doesn't know it's Odysseus.
And Melanthius is a bad guy, as it turns out, somebody who's kind of made a deal with the suitors.
And he sees the...
The beggar, and he starts abusing him.
You foul pig man, where are you taking this old swine?
So here is Melanthes.
He's actually addressing Eumaeus.
You foul pig man, because Eumaeus is a swineherd, where are you taking this old swine?
So it's almost like the pig man is normally leading a pig.
In this case, of course, he's leading Odysseus.
And here is Odysseus's...
I mean, think about the irony.
The slave is referring, insulting the king of Ithaca, although he doesn't know that.
As Odysseus goes past Melanthias...
He lunged out to kick him on the hip bone.
What a fool! Odysseus was not pushed off the path.
He stood there in place.
He wondered whether to rush at him armed with his stick and kill him or grab him by the ears and push him down onto the ground.
Instead, he braced himself and kept his temper.
Odysseus does not here want to blow his cover.
And then as he walks by, Melanthus curses him, and he also curses Telemachus.
In fact, he says, I wish Apollo would shoot silver arrows at Telemachus in his house, or the suitors would kill him.
I'm sure Odysseus is far away and never coming back.
So the absence of Odysseus, you can see here, is emboldening guys like Melanthus to be openly and brazenly disloyal.
He's now backing the suitors.
He wants the suitors to kill Telemachus.
And he goes... There's not going to be any accountability for this.
There's no rule of law here anymore.
It's basically the law of the strong.
And who are the strong?
Well, the suitors.
Why? Because there's 120 of them, and only one Telemachus, and he's only in his early 20s.
So Eurymachus now is one of the suitors.
The scene moves to Eurymachus, and we see him being fed meat by the slaves.
He's kind of the leading one of the suitors.
And now we have a delicious little detail by Homer, very telling.
As Odysseus is approaching the palace, there is a dog that is sitting there named Argos.
Argos, the dog that lay there, raised his head.
Now, says Homer, Odysseus had trained this dog, but with no benefit.
He left too soon to march on Troy.
The master gone.
The dog lies neglected without an owner in a pile of dung.
When the guy who's running the country is away, things don't get looked after.
Here's a small example of that.
This little dog that would normally be cared for, that would normally be trained, is just sitting despondent in a pile of dung.
Now, as Odysseus starts to approach, the dog, of course, recognizes Odysseus and starts wagging his tail.
But, says Homer, he was too weak to even move toward his master.
Odysseus notices the dog.
He knows that this is the dog that he trained, but again, he can't reveal himself.
He can't rush up to the dog.
So it says he wiped his tears away and hid them easily.
So Odysseus is actually moved to tears over the pathetic condition of this dog lying really in dung.
And then, says Homer, the dog essentially having seen Odysseus, So, you have this very memorable scene of a dog, and the death of the dog, in a sense, is a form of mourning, if you will, for all that has happened in Ithaca in Odysseus' absence, and the great need for Odysseus.
He'll never get the dog back.
But maybe if he acts promptly and effectively, he will get his family and his country back.
Odysseus and the swineherd Eumaeus enter the palace, and immediately the suitors turn on Eumaeus and begin to throw insults his way.
Here's Antinous talking to Eumaeus.
Pigman! You famous idiot.
Why did you bring this man here?
Don't we already have plenty of homeless people coming here to spoil our feasts?
You had to ask this other one as well?
So there's a kind of mockery going on here.
Now, it's not uncommon for people seeking alms or food to go to the palace.
That's actually normal.
But here you have the suitors.
And the remarkable thing is they're acting as if Odysseus' wealth is their wealth.
They're like, we don't want to be sharing with these bums who are showing up, homeless and in need.
Of course, the irony that Homer leaves Odysseus For the reader or the listener to notice is this is actually the king of Ithaca.
This is his palace.
This is his stuff.
So we have the peculiarity, a peculiarity that only we can appreciate.
The suitors can't appreciate.
They don't know it's Odysseus.
They think it's a beggar. And so the insults continue.
This is really a book, if you will, of derision aimed at Odysseus.
And the suitors basically tell Odysseus, you know, stop bothering us.
Get out of here. Now, Odysseus speaks, and it's very interesting what he says.
He says, you would not give a grain of salt from your own house.
You sit enjoying someone else's food, and yet you will not give a crumb from this great banquet to me.
So here's Odysseus basically reminding the suitors in a kind of saucy way, hey listen, this isn't your house, this isn't your palace, this isn't your food.
You wouldn't give it if it was your house, but it's not your food.
So why don't you give some of it to a beggar like me?
And Antinous responds by taking a goblet and essentially flinging it at Odysseus.
Now Homer says it did not knock him over.
He stood there, shook his head, and silently considered his revenge.
Odysseus has to be here very restrained so that he can only reveal himself at the right time.
And then, very interestingly, Penelope comes in.
Now, she takes in the scene, and Homer here is just piling irony upon irony.
Penelope, initially, as far as we can tell, there is a little bit of ambiguity here, does not seem to recognize Odysseus.
Now, I should say that scholars here disagree about this.
There are some scholars who think...
That Penelope is extremely circumspect.
She is reserved like Odysseus.
She might recognize him, but obviously not.
She knows right away it's a big mistake for her to go, Oh, Odysseus, you're back!
No, she knows that he needs to reestablish himself in the house, get rid of the suitors.
Only then can they be reconciled.
But here's Penelope saying, Our wealth is decimated.
There is no man here like Odysseus who could defend the house.
But if Odysseus comes back to his native land, he and his son will soon take vengeance.
So this is all very interesting because, as I say, Penelope is operating, you may say, behind the screen.
She says, we're in a big mess.
Look at the situation over here.
They're insulting this beggar.
How I wish my husband were back.
He would reestablish order.
And, of course, there her husband is disguised right in the room.
So, Odysseus is himself quite inwardly wrenched to see this scene.
His own wife, whom, let's remember, he has not seen in 20 years.
How tempting it must have been for him to reveal himself to her, but he does not.
He draws himself aside...
And he talks only to Eumaeus.
And he says, I'm going to have to reveal myself to Penelope soon, not immediately.
And... And he says, why don't you sort of arrange a meeting at dusk where, at an appointed spot, she can come to me and I will tell her.
So, obviously, Odysseus wants to reveal himself to Penelope in confidence.
And only then reveal himself to the suitors.
So this all has to be managed very carefully.
And Homer is, as I mentioned earlier in an earlier episode, following the plot here really in slow motion.