All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 1, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
48:07
SPEAKING OUR MINDS D’Souza Podcast Ep447
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
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, I want to make the moral case for free speech.
Why should it be allowed, even if speech is hateful or hurts people's feelings?
I'm going to review new information on the extent of U.S. government collaboration with tech platforms to install comprehensive regimes of censorship.
I'm going to raise some unanswered questions about the Paul Pelosi incident, such as, why didn't he lock himself in the bathroom before the police got there?
This is the Dinesh D'Souza 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.
With Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, the whole censorship, free speech debate has changed.
Why? Because before this, you had the three major platforms, Twitter, YouTube, Google, all together creating an across-the-board censorship system that you couldn't really escape from.
And that meant that, as a practical matter, honest debate on a whole range of issues, not every issue, but at least a dozen important issues, Climate, the elections, the trans issue, abortion, other issues, stifled, regulated, with penalties for, you may say, offending the kind of established orthodoxy.
Now, that's changed on Twitter.
Twitter is now largely a free speech platform.
There's a lot more things to be done.
Musk has to clean house.
Happily, I think he's about to fire a quarter of the Twitter workforce, probably more to come.
And he needs to remake Twitter in a free speech way so that you've got a staff that is committed To Elon Musk's own vision of free speech.
Now, the left is trying right away, which is a very predictable move, to throw him into a panic and to basically say, free speech is extremely dangerous.
Now, before we get to why it's dangerous, let's look at why free speech is good.
There are really two reasons to have free speech.
The first is we are speaking or language animals, you might say.
We're the kind of animal that can think and speak.
And we are social animals and we are political animals.
This goes right back to, you know, Aristotle, the ethics and the politics.
And so it is part of our humanity to be able to speak our mind and speak what we think and speak what we feel.
This is part of our essential dignity and our humanity.
So free speech allows us to be us.
When you control what people say, it's like controlling their movements or it's like controlling their access to using their own money.
You're stifling their personality.
You're mutilating them as full human beings.
The second reason for free speech is we have a democratic political system, a constitutional democracy in which debate is the mechanism for people to come to agreement or to clarify their disagreements.
In a monarchy, you may not need free speech as much because the guys at the top, well, the one guy at the top makes all the decisions.
Everybody else just obeys.
But in a self-governing society where the citizens, in a sense, even if indirectly, are the rulers, free speech takes on a kind of greater importance.
The founders, of course, knew this.
But... What about hate speech?
Here's an article from The Root.
And then, of course, you have all the little leftists and journalists scouring through Twitter.
Oh, I see an anti-Semite comment over here.
I see a racist comment over there.
Oh, I see a homophobic comment over here.
Oh, Twitter has now become a racist paradise.
And And then here, of course, is another article.
What a cursed Halloween on Twitter.
Why is it cursed? Because apparently hate speech has been unleashed.
Now, let's pause and note that the censorship that's been going on in Twitter and elsewhere is not merely hate speech.
It is censorship of real discussion of when life begins.
It's been censorship over what happened in the 2020 elections.
It's censorship over...
Are there such things as biological men and women?
So all these issues have been suppressed, not merely hate speech.
And the second point is that even though we're now told hate speech is everywhere on Twitter, I haven't seen it.
Have you seen it?
But here's my point. So what?
Bigots are human beings.
Bigots have free speech.
Who cares if there's some racist, anti-Semitic rubbish on Twitter?
Or anti-Indian stuff, for that matter.
Oh, Dinesh is a brown-skinned jackass.
Deport Dinesh.
He's a felon. Lock him up again.
So what?
These are people exercising their free speech.
The freedom of expression that we all enjoy on the platform is more than worth extending the same freedom to some not very nice people.
Now, the left wants content moderation.
That's their kind of polite word for censorship.
But what they don't realize is, I mean, they only want content moderation done by them.
If they have genuine content moderation, in which you have a real ideologically diverse board, the content moderation would apply to them too.
I mean, look at Biden. He puts out lies every day.
Gas prices were $5 when I came to office.
Not true. So, if you want to ban misinformation, ban Joe Biden.
So, if you want content moderation, you'll realize that this is a sword that can cut in either direction.
I think we're better off with as little content moderation as possible.
Sure, there are incitements to violence, certain types of illegal things that should not be permitted on Twitter.
We're not debating that.
What we're saying is that Twitter becomes, for political purposes and for intellectual purposes and for artistic purposes, a genuine forum for free speech.
You all have helped to build MyPillow into the incredible company it is today, and Mike Lindell, the inventor and CEO of MyPillow, wants to give back to my listeners.
Right now, MyPillow is offering exclusive offers on their bedsheets, their six-piece towel set, and even offering an extended 60-day money-back guarantee.
Orders placed now through December 25th will have an extended money-back guarantee through March 1st.
Wow! The bedsheets are marked down as low as $29.98, and believe me when I say $29.98, You're going to get a great night's sleep in these.
The six-piece towel set, made with USA cotton, comes with two bath towels, two hand towels, two washcloths, typically retailing at $89.98, but now $39.98 with promo code DINESH. So, limited supply.
Be sure to order now.
Call 800-8760-227.
That's 800-8760-227 or go to mypillow.com to get discounts.
You need to use promo code DINESH. Remember when the Biden administration talked about creating an office to police disinformation?
There was an uproar.
They shut that down. But the project, not under that name, has proceeded with full steam.
And more and more information is coming out to show the extent of collusion between the Biden regime and these supposedly independent and private platforms, notably YouTube and Facebook, but also including Twitter prior to the Elon Musk acquisition.
Now, there was a very important article in The Intercept.
The Intercept is a kind of left-leaning magazine.
One of the founders was Glenn Greenwald, who then left The Intercept, in part because The Intercept was blocking discussion of legitimate issues.
But nevertheless, every now and then The Intercept surprises you, and here they surprise you, they surprise us.
With a bombshell article, bombshell because of the level of detail that it shows about the collaboration between Biden, between the Biden administration and these platforms.
I'm just going to touch on a few highlights of it here, and then I might go into it subsequently in a more elaborate way.
First of all, Facebook and Twitter created a special portal For the government to request takedowns.
Now...
Let's think about this. This is not a case where the government is just sending them an email saying, hey guys, this guy is putting out misinformation.
Ban Alex Berenson.
Or ban this guy.
Or let's get rid of Alex Jones.
Twitter and Facebook say, alright, we're going to make this system easy for you.
Here's a special portal.
You just get into the portal.
You list all the guys you want to be restricted or kicked off or banned.
We'll take a look at it.
So, from the portal itself, the...
You can't tell who's making the final decision.
Are the Biden people saying do it and Facebook and Twitter just doing it?
Or are the Biden people making a recommendation and then Facebook and Twitter comply with it if they want to?
But either way, the collusion is fully documented here.
I think this is really where the First Amendment violation becomes really clear.
Government, Congress, but in a broader sense government, shall make no law restricting freedom of speech or of the press.
Prior to the 2020 election we discover from The Intercept, tech companies including Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, Wikipedia, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Verizon met on a monthly basis with the FBI, CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, and other government representatives.
So once again, the collusion is not limited to occasional electronic communications and a phone call here, and let's check in with Twitter over there, but rather you have regular conferences and meetings, meetings presumably in person, in which these guys share ideas.
And what happens at this kind of a meeting?
Well... It turns out that one of the regular attendees at these meetings, no surprise to me, Vijaya Ghade, the chief legal officer of Twitter, she met monthly with DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, to basically discuss how to carry out censorship plans.
So Homeland Security would say, go after this guy.
Vijaya goes, yeah, let's do it.
And so it's almost as if Vijaya is working for the government, working for the Biden regime.
In another occasion, a Microsoft executive texts the DHS, and here's what he says.
He says, platforms have got to get comfortable with GOVT, government.
In other words, he's expressing frustration that there is some intention or some people on these platforms who don't want the government to be telling them all the time what to do.
And he basically goes, we should.
We should be told what to do.
The government should be actively intervening in these private platforms.
FBI agent Laura Demlow was in communications with Facebook that led to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
So, you might remember that Mark Zuckerberg had testified that the FBI told him Not to circulate or promulgate or let the Hunter Biden story get wide distribution.
We now know the name of the FBI agent who was communicating with Facebook and saying, essentially, I mean, think of it, this is blatant election interference going on here.
And the same woman, FBI agent Laura Demlow, meets with Twitter and says, And with DHS and says, we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.
Now, private companies are held accountable.
They're held accountable by their customers.
That's what it means to be a private company.
This is not what these guys mean.
What they mean is that these private companies aren't really private.
They should be held accountable by the government and In other words, we are talking about a government-private sector collaboration in which the companies are private only in name, but are in fact controlled by the government.
There is in fact an ideological description of what that kind of arrangement is called.
It's called fascism.
If you want to know what the left's real plan is for your kids, just look at the reaction to the work Patriot Mobile did in multiple school districts in Texas.
The left is really losing their minds now.
Patriot Mobile is America's only Christian conservative mobile phone provider and a force for conservative values.
This is because they take a portion of your bill and fund conservative causes and candidates who believe in the sanctity of life, We're good to go.
Go to patriotmobile.com slash Dinesh or call 972-PATRIOT. Get free activation with the offer.
The code is Dinesh, D-I-N-E-S-H. Special discounts available for veterans and first responders.
Join our movement. Make the switch today and a difference tomorrow.
patriotmobile.com slash Dinesh or call 972-PATRIOT. The left is very bitter about the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision over ruling Roe v.
Wade. And they're trying to do whatever they can in a desperate, angry way to strike out, to lash out in every direction.
Now, the Biden DOJ is arresting pro-lifers, accusing them of Violating the so-called FACE Act, the FACE Act basically by obstructing or by blocking access to abortion clinics.
Again, the left does this all the time.
They do this on campus.
They do it elsewhere. They are either not arrested or they are arrested and released immediately.
But these pro-lifers are facing long prison terms.
So this is the deep inequity of injustice, the deep inequity of our society.
And here we see the left in a different way trying to go after justices.
Now we've seen how they have protested at their homes, they've chased them out of restaurants.
But now they're trying to get their books cancelled.
Wow! This shows the extent of it.
So Amy Coney Barrett has a book contract with Penguin Random.
This is Random House merger with Penguin Books.
And it's apparently a $2 million book advance for Amy Coney Barrett to tell her story and to lay out her judicial philosophy.
But there is a revolt in the publishing world.
Several hundred, it turns out the number, originally it was a couple of hundred, now it's over 600 publishing industry staffers.
By the way, not just from Penguin Random House, but from all kinds of other publishers, Simon& Schuster, and HarperCollins, Macmillan.
They've all written a joint letter basically asking the publishing house not to publish Amy Coney Barrett's book, to cancel the book.
Now, these are publishing people.
They, you would think, would have some commitment to free speech.
And so they recognize in the letter that this is going to make them look a little bad.
And so they start out by saying, well, we're not against free speech.
And they go on to say, besides, we're not even against disagreement.
They say, well, some of us have worked on books that we don't agree with.
So they've got to show now in this letter that there's something particularly extreme or egregious about Amy Coney Barrett, and they go about trying to do that.
They say that Amy Coney Barrett is a disgrace because having disavowed, having said that she would respect the Constitution and not impose her own personal or religious convictions on her decisions, and they go on to say, well, she's done exactly that.
She is Catholic and She believes that life begins at conception.
That's a Catholic doctrine.
And so what is she doing here in this case but imposing her, quote, inflicting her own religious and moral agenda upon all Americans?
And they say, we're outraged by this.
They go on to say that abortion is a human right.
Now, they know it's obviously not a constitutional right.
It's nowhere to be found in the Constitution.
And neither is it a human right.
I mean, what? The right to kill?
The right to terminate someone else's life?
But, nevertheless, they appeal to, quote, international human rights organizations who widely recognize abortion access as a fundamental right.
So, the idea here is Amy Coney Barrett is against these fundamental rights.
She's against them on the basis that she has deep religious convictions.
Now, what makes all of this a little bit nutty is that if you look at Amy Coney Barrett's opinions, It's very clear that she is, in fact, writing a legal opinion based upon an analysis of the Constitution.
So if the abortion right could somehow be found in the Constitution, and Amy Coney Barrett goes, yeah, it's right there in the Constitution, but you know what?
I have a religious problem with that.
I have a religious problem with the Constitution.
But of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
There is no abortion right in the Constitution.
There are a number of other enumerated rights there.
Abortion is simply not one of them.
So, the abortion right was from the beginning conjured, made up, fabricated, read into the constitution by the Berger court going back to 1973.
And actually yesterday on the podcast I had on the producer of a good movie.
It's called Roe v.
Wade. And in that film, it shows that the justices were actually intimidated, pressured, cajoled.
To make that decision in 1973, really not even based on legal reasons, but based on sort of political and family pressure based upon, well, aren't you a feminist?
Don't you believe in women's rights?
So these justices were sort of trying to sort of be nice guys and appease their wives and appease their militant daughters.
I mean, this is the sordid mechanism of how we got this, and we had it for 40 years.
And all Amy Coney Barrett said is, and by the way, the opinion here was written by Alito, a brilliantly reasoned opinion in which Alito basically goes, listen, I'm not canceling out a right.
We're not invalidating a right.
There never was a right.
The right was essentially something that was imagined and And imposed and you may say put into the Constitution in a kind of deeply unauthorized way.
And so all the Supreme Court is doing is restoring constitutional integrity by saying what's not in the Constitution is not in the Constitution.
And so this is nothing more than a kind of vendetta against Amy Coney Barrett.
They're angry with her.
They're obviously trying to take it out on her.
She was the last of the justices to get in there.
And so they're blaming her for what happened in the Dobbs decision, and they're trying to do it by getting a publisher to cancel her book.
They shouldn't do it. Inflation continues to be a plague on our economy, our families, and our savings, and the irresponsible spending from the left just continues to exacerbate the problem.
Now, don't be over-leveraged in the stock market, and don't let your savings wither away.
Hedge inflation with gold from Birch Gold, like I do.
That's right. I buy my gold from Birch Gold and you can too.
Listen to this. If you text Dinesh to 989898, you'll get your free information kit on gold.
You'll also get a free gold bar with any purchase by December 22nd.
But you have to claim your offer by Black Friday.
Don't allow the left to devalue your savings.
Text Dinesh to 989898.
Claim your free information kit now from Birch Gold.
You can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account, and Birch Gold will help you do it.
When you place an order by December 22nd, Birch Gold will send you a free gold bar.
Text Dinesh to 989898 and secure your future with gold today.
I wanted this segment to raise questions, unanswered questions, about Paul Pelosi that show us that we're really not getting the full story here.
And we maybe never will, because now that this is a federal case, If they're able to get this guy to plea bargain and get a long prison sentence, then there won't be a trial.
And if there's no trial, the facts won't really come out.
And I think that is actually what the federal government wants in this case.
They want to keep everything under wraps and they want their kind of media narrative to be the one that people sort of gullibly believe.
First of all, we've had facts that keep changing.
And if you think about it, there's no reason for the changes.
But nevertheless, first Pelosi knew the guy.
Then he didn't. First there were three people there.
Now two. Both guys had hammers.
No, only one. Both of them were in their underwear.
No, just Pelosi.
So, wait, how is it the case that the police kept putting out false information?
In fact, it's not just the police.
I listened to the audio tape and you can hear the policemen, they're reporting on what Paul Pelosi said, and he was able to name his assailant, and he also called him a friend.
So how does the fact that Paul Pelosi called him a friend square with the fact that he didn't know him?
Oh, he was being intimidated.
The man was right there.
And so he called him a friend because he was trying to sort of create an atmosphere in which the guy wouldn't really suspect anything.
That makes no sense.
Paul Pelosi was alone in the bathroom.
Remember, he convinced the guy, I want to take a bathroom break.
Evidently, the guy was like...
Oh, sure. Go take a bathroom break.
Paul Pelosi's like, well, you know what?
My cell phone's in the bathroom.
I'm charging it there.
Who charges that cell phone in the bathroom?
Nevertheless, Paul Pelosi makes his way into the bathroom.
And here's my favorite part.
So he was under no pressure to...
He could have told the police whatever he wants.
He didn't say, I'm being attacked as an attacker in my house with a hammer.
He didn't say any of that. He sort of tells the police that they should do kind of a wellness check on him.
And then guess what? He comes out of the bathroom.
Now think about this. If you are faced with an assailant with a hammer...
Threatening you? And you run to the bathroom to make a call and you somehow manage to make a call.
Wouldn't you lock yourself in the bathroom?
But no. Paul Pelosi comes marching back out, which tells me he didn't feel threatened at all.
And now one reason not to feel threatened is he knows the guy.
Another reason not to feel threatened is that for whatever reason, he didn't know the guy, but he thought the situation could be easily diffused.
Now... How did this guy, David DePape, get in?
Think about it. No armed security?
No security personnel at all at the Speaker of the House's house?
No cameras?
No surveillance? No alarm system?
This is San Francisco.
It's a dangerous city.
You're talking about a high government official.
So where's the security camera footage?
Why haven't we seen any of it?
Isn't there any? Are the Pelosi's so dumb that they don't even bother to get this kind of security?
Nobody bothers to get it for them?
Or, option number two, I go with option number two.
There is this information available, but they don't want to release it.
They don't want to release the surveillance footage.
They don't want to release the body cam footage.
Why? Because that's going to tell what really happened.
And that may very well contradict the sort of narrative that they're trying to build around all this.
What are the details about the hammer?
Did this guy, David, bring his hammer?
He comes with a hammer? Or did he...
Find the hammer in Pelosi's house.
Or did Paul Pelosi come up with a hammer and David DePape then grabs the hammer from Pelosi?
If David DePape didn't bring a hammer, this would seem not to be some kind of a premeditated attack.
Maybe he showed up for whatever reason, or for other reasons, things got out of hand, and then the hammer came on the scene.
How was Paul Pelosi allowed to take this bathroom break?
Does that make any sense to you?
And finally, how is it that the attack only occurred when the police got there?
If this guy was a real assailant, why would he leave Paul Pelosi alone?
No attack. Police come, then he attacks him.
What kind of sense does that make?
And what kind of sense does the police reaction make?
Why didn't they draw their weapons?
Why didn't they shoot the guy?
I'm not necessarily even saying shoot to kill him, shoot to bring him down, shoot to stop him.
Why didn't that happen?
That would seem to be the logical, if this guy is actually smashing Paul Pelosi's head with a hammer.
None of this really makes any sense.
I don't think we should believe a word of it.
Of course, it's being deployed politically.
That's the other convenient thing about this.
The left loves to create, this is a MAGA guy nonsense.
This is a Berkeley nudist.
Obviously paranoid, so his paranoia flies in all different directions.
But there's no MAGA motive here.
They're trying to take the blame away from the episode itself.
And place it on somebody, by the way, who's thousands of miles away.
Guess who? None other than Donald J. Trump.
You've heard me say it. I'm not a super fan of the flavor of veggies.
But I have to admit, when I'm in the produce section, all the vibrant colors of fruits and veggies look so good.
Now, Dr. Howard at Balance of Nature explains all the colors you see in the produce section equal nutritional variety.
Different colors signify different key nutrients.
So if you eat only your favorite one or two veggies, well, you're missing a whole world of vital nutrients.
This is why Debbie and I take these six little fruits and veggie capsules each day and Each daily dose is made up of a blend of 31 different fruits and veggies.
31. So variety equals vitality.
Give your body everything it needs with Balance of Nature for a limited time.
All new preferred customers get an additional 35% discount and free shipping on your first Balance of Nature order.
Use discount code AMERICA. Call 800-246-8751.
That's 800-246-8751.
Or go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code AMERICA. Guys, you probably remember the very tragic story of one of the January 6th protesters, Matthew Perna, who took his own life.
And I believe it's very important to know the human side of these stories.
We have on the podcast his aunt.
Her name is Jerry Perna.
She and Matthew are very close, and she was there for him during this 13-month ordeal after he was arrested for entering the Capitol on January 6th.
Jerry Perna, you can follow her on Truth Social, just Jerry Perna, G-E-R-I. The website is rememberingmatperna.com.
Jerry, thank you for joining me.
This is a tragic story, and one that you've been very close to.
Let's start by talking about Matt Perna.
What kind of a guy was he?
And talk a little bit about his personality, but also talk about his beliefs and why he went to Washington, D.C. on January 6th.
Thank you for having me, Dinesh.
Was a man who was decades ahead of his time.
He was brilliant. He read constantly from the time he was a little boy.
He always had a book in his hand.
He would go through one, two books a day and had an extensive library in his home.
Very, very articulate in speaking.
He did podcasts on Facebook where he educated people about the benefits of holistic medication instead of going the pharmaceutical route because his mom had in fact died due to a hospital error seven years before.
And Matt was very much against the pharmaceutical industry and everything that it promoted.
So much of his Facebook presence was about CBD oils and alkaline water and eating healthy and Really not political in the sense.
When Matt started out in taking any interest whatsoever in the elections, he was actually a Bernie Sanders supporter, and we used to go back and forth about that.
But it didn't take long, and when President Trump decided to run, Matt was full on board with him, and he did his research.
He wasn't one to jump into something.
But he believed that Donald Trump was, you know, the right person for the job and supported his presidency.
And then when he ran the second time and the election was stolen, Matt believed it was stolen.
But he believed that when January 6th rally was coming up, it was not going to be a day of Bad things happening.
He thought it was going to be a celebration.
He thought it was going to be a historical day that he wanted to be part of when the election didn't get certified.
And that's why he went to January 6th.
He didn't go there with any preconceived notions about rioting or causing any problems or any altercations with police or anything.
He went there believing that this historic moment was going to take place and it ended up being the exact opposite.
Let's talk about that part of it.
So, Matthew, he was there on January 6th, and then immediately following begins the crackdown on the January 6th protesters.
Matt gets arrested.
Let's talk about what he was charged with doing.
Give us a feeling for that kind of ordeal because, I mean, I have a little sense of it myself because of a campaign finance case I was involved in.
But most ordinary people who don't go through this have no idea of what you're up against.
I want you to talk about how Matt dealt with all that and how it reached the tragic point of him taking his life.
Well, when it started out, Dinesh, it was the misdemeanors.
It was trespassing, parading, you know, and the attorney that he hired felt that this was an open and shut case.
It's a misdemeanor, a slap on the wrist, and that'll be the end of it.
And then about, I think it was about a week and a half went by when the DOJ came back and charged 240 people with the felony charge of obstruction of Congress.
And this was mind-boggling to me because I had several videos sent to me from people who were there that showed Matt outside of the building at 258 In outside and Congress had adjourned it to 15 and I brought this to the attention of his attorney I said he wasn't inside how could he obstruct if if the meeting had been over and it just didn't matter it's just like every little thing we came up with to dispute their claims they just squashed them and while they were doing that they were squashing my nephew's spirit He would get ready for a hearing.
It could have been a status hearing.
It could have been just something minor.
And he'd have a suit and tie on and he'd go to the attorney to be on the Zoom call.
And 15 minutes before he left the house, the attorney would call.
They canceled it today, Matt.
We're going to do it in two weeks.
Two weeks would come.
They postponed it a week.
And it was just constantly having the rug pulled out from underneath him.
As he's watching them arrest hundreds of people for nothing, grannies walking through.
And when Matt went into the Capitol, he was armed with a cell phone.
He had a cell phone in his hand.
He didn't have any weapons.
He didn't break anything.
you didn't touch anything.
What some of us would do just to be young again, the simple things like climbing stairs, getting in and out of bed, taking a walk, aren't always that simple.
Too many aches and pains, but they can be.
Because thankfully now there's a 100% drug-free solution for those aches and pains.
It's called relief factor.
Relief factor supports your body's fight against inflammation.
That's the source of aches and pains.
The vast majority of people who try it love it.
They order more because relief factor works for them.
She can finally do the exercises she loves like planks, push-ups, or a stationary bike, all thanks to Relief Factor.
It's been a real game-changer for her and for many other people.
You too can benefit. Try it for yourself.
Order the three-week quick start for the discounted price of only $19.95.
Go to relieffactor.com or call 833-690-7246 to find out more.
That number again, 833-690-7246.
6907246 or go to relieffactor.com.
Feel the difference. So he was in there for less than 10 minutes and he went out the back door and then he posted a video on Facebook, a live video with his friends.
And you can go to our website and watch it, but it was the video that ultimately damaged him the most because they took words out of context.
Like in the video itself, the way he's talking in it, he's very nonchalant, very not rattled or anything.
And he tells his listeners, don't worry, it's not over yet.
Well, they took that it's not over yet as a threat.
That was a terroristic threat.
And that is what is written in his court papers.
There was an emoji of that day when he was there.
He put an emoji of an American flag and a firecracker and a bomb.
The bomb emoji was listed as evidence as him being a terrorist.
Dinesh, Matt never, ever had a parking ticket in his life.
He was a very clean-cut kid his entire existence, kind-hearted and generous.
And this wore him down.
It took him from being such a strong person and so articulate and so smart To being scared to leave his home.
And when he had decided finally to just plead guilty to the charges, his attorney told him he was looking at 6 to 12 months in a federal prison camp.
And Matt even started researching federal prison camps.
And because Matt taught English in Thailand and South Korea and he knew different languages and he was very, very intelligent, he started reading how he could help these inmates get their GED. And that's what he was thinking about.
What can he do to be productive while he's in there?
So he had resigned himself to six to 12 months being okay, even though he didn't commit any crimes.
So a week before his sentencing hearing, and this is not a coincidence because nothing they have done so far is a coincidence.
His sentencing hearing was scheduled for the anniversary of his mother's death.
The same day.
And a week before, he called his attorney and he said, I have a bad feeling.
Why would they schedule that on the day my mother died?
And the attorney says, well, I have some bad news for you.
They're planning to add a sentencing enhancement at your hearing.
And your hearing has been postponed to April Fool's Day.
So once again, the hearing was postponed.
And Matt called me.
And he was sobbing on the phone.
He could barely put a sentence together.
He was stuttering. He was scared to death.
And that was on that Monday And I said, Matt, you can't give up here.
We can't give up.
We have to have faith.
We have faith in God.
He's not going to let you go to prison.
He says, they're going to try to put me away for a lot longer than six to 12 months.
He said, I can't do it.
I said, Matt, don't worry.
We've got this. We're going to work through this.
Well, that Friday, 530 in the afternoon, my phone rang.
And it was one of my brothers in Pennsylvania.
And he said, Jerry, you need to get a plane ticket.
Matt just hung himself in his garage.
I went into hysterics.
And I called this attorney on the phone.
And I said, all this time you've been saying I've got this, I've got this, I've got this.
I said, you didn't have anything.
Because I didn't believe his attorney was truly fighting for him.
His attorney is a Democrat.
And Matt hired him anyway because Matt doesn't see color.
He doesn't see party.
He just wasn't that way.
And he felt that this man, with his 42 years of criminal justice experience, would have defended him.
But instead, he threw him there to plead guilty.
Wow, Jerry. And I think that was the worst part.
You're saying that little by little they really broke his spirit and he couldn't...
They tore him apart. Thank you so much for sharing this story.
Guys, the website, to find out more, RememberingMattPerna, P-E-R-N-A dot com.
Follow Jerry Perna on Instagram, Stormwatcher1965, Facebook, Jerry Perna, and Truth Social, Jerry Perna, G-E-R-I. Jerry, thank you so much for coming.
Please accept my sympathies and what a horrible ordeal to go through, but thank you for being brave enough to share it.
Dinesh, can I just share one more thing with you?
Sure. A mom of one of another J6ers reached out to me about a month ago, and her son is going through the same thing that my mat went through, and he is suicidal.
And if these people that are watching your podcast do not wake up and realize what is happening and how they are robbing these people of their spirit, And breaking them down to the point where they don't feel life is worth living.
Something needs done and people need to start speaking up.
Or they're going to find themselves in those shoes one day for perhaps speaking out at a school board meeting or a council meeting.
This can happen to anybody.
Anybody. I agree.
And I think that, I mean, there is a strong need for the Republican Party, which is in a position to do something about all this and probably will be come next Tuesday to actually get behind it and do something.
Thank you very much, Jerry. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Ginesh. We're now in Book 21 of The Odyssey, the final section.
Remember, The Odyssey has 24 books, same as The Iliad.
And this book begins with a ruse, a ruse that Penelope is involved in.
And Penelope's role here is very subtle because at no point do we see Odysseus openly conspiring with her.
Hey Penelope, you do this, I'll do that.
And yet as we see this ruse becomes important to the final scenes of the Odyssey.
Penelope comes down and And she starts sobbing.
She's sobbing about her husband's large bow, a bow and arrow.
And she picks up the curve bow.
And the bow, by the way, has several arrows attached to it.
And She makes an announcement to the suitors, who look up as if they're sort of intrigued by what she has to say.
And she says, listen, lords, you keep on coming to the house every day to eat, drink, wasting the wealth of someone who has been away too long.
Gross violation of Xenia.
You want to marry me?
I am the prize, so I will set a contest.
This great bow belonged to godlike King Odysseus.
If anyone can grasp it in his hands, string it easily, and shoot through all twelve axes, I will marry him.
And leave this beautiful rich house so full of life, my lovely bridal home, I think I will remember it forever, even in my dreams.
And so the suitors are like, oh, finally, we get some action.
Okay, all right, let's go for it.
And so the suitors come forward one after the other, all with, you know, a lot of braggadocio and a lot of boasting.
Oh, I'm going to do it.
And this is going to be great.
And... And I'm the one who's going to have the hand of Penelope, and the rest of you are going to be guests in my house.
But as each of these guys tries to lift the bow, they can't string it, they can't shoot it all at once.
And even if they're able to get an arrow out of the bow, they're not able to shoot through the 12 axes.
And so there's a tremendous sense of frustration, because these young men obviously think that they are They are awesome, and they should be able to do this.
And then an old man, a beggar, steps forward.
Of course, the beggar is Odysseus.
And he says, why don't you let me try?
And, of course, the Sooners are predictably outraged and derisive, and they go, what?
You? Seriously?
You old dude?
I'm obviously putting this into contemporary language.
Don't make us laugh.
If we can't do it, what makes you think you can do it?
And... The guy says, well, if I can't do it, I can't do it.
So there's going to be no harm at all in me making the attempt.
And then Penelope steps forward and she says, well, why don't you let him try?
Because you know what?
What have you got to lose?
He's not going to be able to do it.
I think you can see that.
But let's say he doesn't.
She goes, what do you think? I'm going to leave this grand house and this palace and marry this stranger, this old beggar, and go to some foreign country with him?
So Penelope very cunningly highlights the sort of absurdity of the situation, recognizing, of course, fully that this is, in fact, Odysseus.
This is his beau.
And even though he's been away 20 years...
He's still Odysseus.
He still may be able to lift and to string the bow.
And so, sure enough, Odysseus picks up the bow.
He strings it.
And as he strings it, the suitors suddenly realize, wait a minute, what's going on here?
This old guy is lifting this giant bow.
And you know what? There's a whole bunch of poisoned arrows right there.
So suddenly Odysseus is fully armed.
He's in the exact position he wants to be in.
The ruse has worked.
And so book 21 ends...
With his eyebrows he signaled and his son straps on his sword.
Let's remember that Telemachus has very carefully moved the weapons that were all over the palace into storage.
He's only left weapons for himself and his dad.
And it says that his son strapped on his sword and picked up his spear and stood by the chair next to his father, his bronze weapons flashing.
So, in other words, Odysseus and Telemachus are now, you may say, ready for battle.
It's a different kind of battle.
They're not at the Trojan War.
They're not fighting against the Trojans.
They're in their own home, but they're surrounded by, well, I guess you'd have to call it domestic enemies.
And these domestic enemies are there to take over the house, ruin them, kill Telemachus, kill Odysseus if they could.
But Odysseus is now in a unique position to fight back.
And so as the Odyssey draws to its close, we have the revenge of Odysseus against the suitors.
We have the defeat of the suitors.
We have the beautiful and touching sort of reunion of Odysseus and his wife Penelope.
The household is brought back together.
And so we see how Homer is setting up the sort of restoration of harmony, which will help to close out this magnificent epic.
Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
▲
Export Selection