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Nov. 12, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
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TRUMP UNLEASHED Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep455
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Coming up, Trump is unleashed, and some people are cheering and some people are freaked out, but I'll talk about the significance of this.
I also want to talk about the leadership struggle that is going on both for the House leadership, McCarthy, and also the Senate leadership, McConnell.
Devi's going to join me. We're going to analyze the midterms and also compare notes on the future of the GOP. And Diane Haidt, founder of Forever Young Veterans, joins me.
We're going to talk about how we can show our appreciation for those who sacrifice so much for our freedom.
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.
It seems like in the immediate aftermath of the midterm election, Trump is unleashed.
I mean, this guy is...
Laying it out there and in some sense is bashing some of the people that he thinks are either responsible or perhaps he thinks are obstacles to his own candidacy.
And it's gotten things really riled up.
There are some people who are, of course, cheering Trump on.
Let's go, Trump, you're the guy.
And these are the hardcore Trumpsters.
And then there is a faction, I have to say, a fairly significant faction, that is, Trump has lost it.
Trump should not do this.
Why is Trump going after DeSantis?
In one case, there was also a Trump tweet about Glenn Youngkin.
Wow, is Trump going after Youngkin now?
What is really going on?
And there's all kinds of speculation about what's happening here.
One theory is that Trump is not the center of attention, so he needs to be the center of attention, so he's just putting himself into the limelight because he's never happy unless he's centrally in the limelight.
Another critique of Trump that I've seen on social media—again, this critique is coming from people on our side.
These are not leftists or rhinos I'm talking about—is, look, it is the obligation of a leader to prepare the next generation, to cultivate the people who are going to come after him, in a sense, in his wake.
And be able to take things even further than he was able to.
You can almost call this the sort of Braveheart William Wallace model.
I, William Wallace, may not make it, but Robert the Bruce will win the Battle of Bannockburn and the Scots will be free.
It's to some degree even the Moses model.
Moses doesn't get to the Promised Land, but he leads people to the Promised Land, and then the Israelites get to the Promised Land, although without Moses.
So this is a... This is a very important theme here.
And so I want to ask, kind of, what is Trump up to here?
To some degree, I say, as I look at it, I'm not going to get in the middle of this.
First of all, we have had, as a film company, we had this discussion even before 2016— As a team, we stay out of primaries.
We don't get into internees and fights about who's going to be the nominee.
Why? Because our goal is to take the battle to the other side.
So we will support the Republican nominee.
We want the Republican nominee to win, and we're going to let the...
Let our side sort of figure out who that's going to be.
Not to say that on the podcast I won't comment on strengths and weaknesses of particular candidates or talk about what they're saying and analyze that.
But we're not going to, in that sense, take sides.
So I said to myself, this is a big distraction.
This is dumb. Because, frankly, 2024 is kind of a long way away.
We haven't even finished 2022.
Why don't we wait for the results?
And by the way, this...
Caution also applies to all the pundits who are like, well, this is a humiliating and massive defeat for Trump because, look, well, this is most recent.
Blake Masters lost in Arizona.
Oz lost in...
Pennsylvania, Horschel Walker is in the runoffs in a race that we should have won.
All right, well, that's one side of the story.
The other side of the story is that one of the reasons Blake Masters lost is that McConnell didn't get behind Blake Masters, even though McConnell was entrusted by GOP donors with massive resources to put into these races.
He pulls money from Masters to help Murkowski, so is Trump really to blame here, or would the blame fall more on McConnell?
Trump himself says, this is a recent, not tweet, but truth, he goes, we won.
Pelosi's gone. We take Congress.
If we can stop the very obvious cheating, we'll also take the Senate.
Big victory. Don't be stupid.
Stand on the rooftops and shout out loud.
So what Trump is saying, and he kind of has a point, is that, listen, are we, at the end of the midterms, are we better off or are we worse off?
We're obviously better off. Even if we just have the Congress, the House, that's going to block Biden for two more years.
There's a chance we'll get the Senate.
That's not over yet.
We're going to probably end up with more state legislature seats, more state Supreme Courts, more school boards, more governors, So all of that has been, in a way, downplayed by the media.
But if you look at the ground level, also look at the popular vote.
Republicans, for the first time, beat Democrats in the popular vote.
So let's look.
We're still waiting. We're waiting on the result in Arizona to see what'll happen with Cary Lake, see what's going to happen with Abe Hameday.
We're waiting on the final results in Nevada to see if Adam Laxalt wins.
Well, if Adam Laxalt wins in Nevada and Carrie Lake wins in Arizona, suddenly the view that Trump is a big midterm loser or that he's over doesn't really become all that tenable.
So kind of what I'm saying is we don't want half-baked summary judgments before we even know the result of 2022.
And number two, let's focus on how we can reorganize now, for example, what kind of leadership we need in the House and the Senate and There'll be time for us to figure out who our nominee is in 2024.
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Make sure to use promo code DINESH. There's a very interesting and perhaps somewhat unexpected challenge to both McCarthy's leadership, Kevin McCarthy's leadership in the House, and Mitch McConnell's in the Senate.
Now, the House is almost certainly going to be in the hands of the GOP. There are some races still undecided, but Republicans are willing.
Ahead of the Democrats substantially and should be able to get to the majority fairly easily.
So McCarthy is almost certainly going to be the Speaker of the House.
Or at least the Republicans will have a chance to choose the Speaker.
Now McCarthy has always, this guy is like a frat boy.
I mean, he basically has got everyone in his pocket.
They're all his buddies. They like to go, you know, eat steak with him and have a glass of wine So he's been able to kind of glad hand his way to the leadership and there's no doubt that he does have those personal qualities of affability and you know, everybody likes Kevin McCarthy, but we're in a little bit of a of a Precarious situation and if you agree that we are in let's call it Cold War combat mode Then we actually need a combat general and I think
Republicans are beginning to realize this I'm not saying they're gonna be able to prevent McCarthy from getting the leadership because as far as I can see there's nobody else Perhaps Jim Jordan, who has the ability to run toe-to-toe with McCarthy and maybe give him a race.
And these positions are really important because when you come in as an elected congressman or a senator, in a sense, you're almost giving up your power to your leader because your leader then controls committees, controls appointments, controls the agenda, decides what bills advance, and so on. So this is a very important decision.
And I think that the House, the Freedom Caucus, by the way, Marjorie Taylor Greene is in there, Matt Gaetz is in there.
So these are people who might be able to We'll exercise leverage on McCarthy and basically say, listen, no Democrat's going to vote for you.
You need the Republicans to kind of line up behind you.
But we're not going to unless we get certain agreements, concessions, and specific authorizations from you now in advance.
On the Senate side, and this is perhaps even a bigger surprise, McConnell, as we know, is someone who insists upon loyalty.
I think the big reason that he's been backing Lisa Murkowski is not because McConnell is a Lisa Murkowski-style rhino.
McConnell himself is more conservative than Lisa Murkowski.
His voting record is far to the right of Murkowski's, but he really likes Murkowski.
Why is that? Because Murkowski is a McConnellite.
She's basically in McConnell's camp.
She's somebody who will, in the end, always do what McConnell says.
Now, this has benefits because, you know what?
Big Supreme Court appointment.
Lisa Murkowski is like, I don't know.
Mitch McConnell is like, remember, you're a McConnellite.
In the end, you have to come through for me.
And Lisa Murkowski is like, yes, sir.
So McConnell loves this, and it has a policy benefit, as I say.
Kelly Chewbacca, as far as McConnell is concerned, is not a McConnellite.
She's kind of a Trumpster.
So she might not, you know, march to McConnell's drum.
So this is McConnell's problem.
Well, as it turns out, just in the last couple of days, it started out...
I think it started out with, I don't know if it started out with Rubio or with Hawley.
I believe it was Josh Hawley who came out and said, basically, we have to hit the pause button on the Senate leadership.
He wasn't saying, I'm not voting for McConnell.
His point was, I'm not voting for McConnell now.
Let's wait and see. We'll see what happens in the Georgia runoffs.
We'll see if we have the majority.
Herschel Walker, obviously, if he wins, would join that majority.
And then Rubio comes out, says exactly the same thing.
And now Ted Cruz comes out, says exactly the same thing.
So now here we go.
These are three influential senators.
I mean, think about it. Ted Cruz is representing Texas.
Rubio, Florida. Josh Hawley, Missouri.
So others probably feel the same way, even if they haven't come out publicly.
So all of this, it seems to me, is that while before the midterms, McConnell and McCarthy were probably thinking, we got this wrapped up.
This is a done deal. We're in for sure.
We've got enough people who are sort of in our back pocket.
We don't have to worry about any of this.
But now it seems that they do.
And I think this is a very healthy thing.
Why? Because leadership needs to be earned.
This idea that you somehow automatically have it because you're like the nicest guy around the block or you've bought more dinners for everybody else, that's not going to cut it anymore.
As I say, we're in a mode where we need people who are going to get things done.
If only, look, it may be that we are in the minority and if we're in the minority, our job is block and tackle.
And if we're in the majority, our job is investigations, impeachments, moving the ball forward on a regular basis.
And we need leaders who are in that mode, not leaders who are there to kind of just warm the benches, as they say, pass the time, wait for the next election, so that we're just sort of the custodians of the country doing nothing.
And our argument for ourselves is just that, well, we're not doing any harm, are we?
We're not doing what the Democrats would do, are we?
We're not ruining the place, are we?
Well, that's not sufficient anymore.
And so I think this message is percolating upward.
It's coming from the base.
It's then hitting the elected, and in many cases, newly elected congressmen, congresswomen, and newly elected senators.
and they are now taking it up to the leadership level and saying, listen, we need to be convinced that this is the right team and the most aggressive team going forward.
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Do it today. Debbie and I are back together, well, in the same studio because I'm back from Florida.
Everything was back to normal.
So yesterday was my travel day to get back.
You were gone too long.
I missed you! Honey!
Yeah, instead of my normal two days.
No, you were gone four days and three nights, and that's too long.
Yeah. Yeah. Can't do that again.
Well, it was just one of those things where...
I mean, as I drove out there...
In fact, I got a studio in Orlando.
I was in that studio.
Debbie was here... It was, I mean, we get a lot of rain here in Houston and in Texas.
I know, you were like, this is nothing compared to what I'm used to.
Yeah, I was like, the flooding is like little splashes on the side of the road.
No big deal. But anyway, we're glad to be back kind of.
Side by side here to pick up.
But let's pick up on the Trump-DeSantis business because, well, first of all, I see this article.
I'm almost chuckling about it.
This guy named Costa, and he goes, oh, things are really dark in the Trump camp.
He says, you know, I've talked to a lot of Trump insiders.
First of all, thinking, you know, this is NBC. He's talked to a lot of Trump insiders.
And apparently they all spill the beans to tell him everything.
And Trump is like sitting alone in the room.
He's in a funk. He's really mad.
His circle is isolated.
And as I look through, I see not a single, there's no one named.
It's always unnamed source A, unnamed source B, unnamed source A. They're just making it up.
I'm like, you know what? You're writing the article that you always wanted to write.
You haven't made any phone calls.
You actually haven't talked to anyone.
This is standard journalism these days.
It's journalism without sources, and it's journalism that reflects the ideological predisposition of the writer.
And, of course, of the editors, because they always think it's genius-level work.
Why? Because they themselves have the same predispositions.
So, and quite frankly, on our side, we've always got to be careful about bubbles developing on our side.
We actually talked about that this morning.
So, what's on your mind as you think about this Trump situation?
You were telling me about Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Yeah, yeah, there's apparently there's an article on Epoch Times that she says that DeSantis should avoid the 2024 race and remain a Florida governor.
And the reason she gives is that we need to have as many Republican governors in the United States as possible because they are the ones that control their state, the crime, all those And if we don't have a really good governor, then all those things that people, you know, take for granted, quite frankly, will fall to the wayside or elect a Democrat and then things will go really bad, you know, like in California and in New York.
So I think she does have a point, but I kind of wish she would also stay out of the primary.
I don't really think that anybody should be talking about the primary right now.
It's too early. It's too early and it's also a little bit toxic.
Yeah. And quite honestly, we think that, I mean, I think we both agree that Trump himself should cool it because there's no reason.
Oh, absolutely. There's absolutely, you know, here you have these kind of wonder boys of the GOP. I'm thinking of Youngkin in Virginia.
And look, Youngkin is a little bit of a different character than Trump.
But on the other hand, Virginia is a different state than Florida or than some of the other red states.
So Youngkin has shown that a Republican can effectively campaign and win even in a blue state.
That's admirable. People like Youngkin for that reason.
He's showing the way forward.
He's focusing on issues like fiscal responsibility and empowering parents.
So he's creating a kind of blue state recipe for the GOP. Now, what DeSantis has done, and done, I think, decisively, is shown that we can win Hispanics, we can win urban areas, areas that have been historically blue, in fact, areas that DeSantis did very poorly in before.
And so there is, I cannot think of a rational reason.
Frankly, Trump doesn't need to do it.
If I were DeSantis, I would not be looking at 2020 for anyway.
No, no.
So Marjorie Taylor Greene is probably right.
And that's probably how DeSantis is thinking.
But in a sense, it's almost as if Trump is saying, this is my main competitor, I'm going to go.
I want to swing at him right now so that it's not a problem.
But really, truly, we want a conservative America.
And simply because I don't understand at all how people can vote Democrat when voting Democrat gives you poverty.
Gives you filth.
Gives you crime.
You know, all those things, right?
So are we just not doing a good enough job of selling our platform?
Is that what's going on? I mean, there are two possibilities.
That's one of them. And that's, I think, the obvious one and probably right.
The other one is a little bit more insidious in that there is something about these democratic constituencies that All of them.
And I don't just mean like the homeless people like homeless benefits or that young people like their loans forgiven But there are also upper middle-class whites and college-educated whites who for some reason either emotionally or psychologically benefit from this dysfunctional arrangement Maybe because they become part of the elite. Hey, I'm more part of the elite and then you've got this kind of you know
Disheveled mass so it creates a kind of aristocracy in places like, California Because it doesn't actually make sense why people would vote so dramatically against clean streets low crime Not to mention the Don't you want low crime?
Not to mention the fiscal depredations of the Democrats.
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That's 800-246-8751 or go to Midterm results continue to come in, and of course, one question is, why are they coming in so late?
The New York Times keeps talking about technical glitches and Republicans are calling into question these elections.
And to my knowledge, no one has actually said that the elections are fraudulent, the 2022 elections, but there's lots of frustration.
Why does this happen only in swing states?
Why is it taking so long to count a relatively small number of votes?
How come other countries do it so much more quickly?
So yeah, my cousin, Venezuelan cousin is like wondering, hey guys, what's going on?
I mean, you know, third world country can do it faster.
What are you doing?
What's going on? What's going on?
Two big results that did come out.
One is that Blake Masters lost in Arizona.
That's a disappointment.
I was hoping that Masters would make it.
Masters campaign kind of together with Carrie Lake and Hameday, they were kind of campaigning as a team.
But of course, what happens is you got to realize that even if they're campaigning as a team, they're not going to be judged as a team.
People are going to judge Masters against Mark Kelly.
And this guy is very chameleonic, very clever in playing the astronaut card.
You always thought that. I've always said that.
And also the other card he plays very well is, you know, his wife.
congresswoman Gabby, is that her name?
Gifford, yeah.
So, you know, she was shot 10 years ago, 11 years ago, and so he plays that card really well, you know?
The combination of those two.
The combination of the gun violence and all those things.
So I knew that he wanted to go to Washington to kind of, you know, hammer at the gun control issues.
On a happier note for us, in Nevada, big result, Joe Lombardo, running in the governor's race, knocks out the incumbent.
Yeah, and he's like so cute.
He's like this old sheriff guy, you know?
I loved his campaign commercial.
Sisolak kept denouncing him, saying he's ineffective and so on.
But Sisolak had given a speech, basically saying that the best sheriff in the country is right here, Joe Lombardo.
Stand up, Joe! Let's have a round of applause for Joe.
So Lombardo just played that as his ad, saying, listen, this is coming from my opponent.
Very clever. Very effective.
Look, I mean, in a sense, McConnell's point, which is that we need good candidates, is important.
We need strong candidates, and we're capable.
There's a lot of talent on our side.
We need a system for bringing forward really strong candidates so that they can...
They can take us across the finish line.
One of the shockers to me was really the fact that I thought Carrie Lake was going to just sweep it.
I know she says she's way ahead or thinks she's ahead but it's just too close for comfort.
Yeah, she's been trailing the whole way.
Now, Carrie Lake's point is she goes, listen, this is artificial.
This is not like two people in a race where one is actually leading because the Democrats are managing the counting.
So they're going to go, we're going to start here.
We're going to then go here.
Then we're going to go here. So Carrie Lake's point is my votes are being sort of counted last.
And I think she's predicting that she will be not just ahead, but kind of decisively ahead in the end.
We'll wait and see. We're going to know for sure.
Sure. But I do think that this has been an outrage, the way that Arizona has handled the counting.
I mean, problems with the tabulator machines, problems with sending people to...
But yet, they don't want you to say anything about it.
They want you to go, nothing to see here.
You know, it's all normal.
The public distrust, it seems to me, is coming not because of, quote, conspiracy theories.
It's coming because of what people observe.
The reality of what's happening, right?
And not to mention that the counting always seems to break down in a swing state.
Always seems to break down at the last minute, election day.
Generally pushes out an abnormally long period of time when, even if there are leftover ballots, there seems to be no good reason they can't be counted.
And finally, those races always fall to the Democrat.
Have you noticed that? Absolutely.
I don't remember this kind of thing happening when I was a kid, you know, with Reagan or even with Bush Senior.
Because it didn't. So are you saying that the reason that this is happening is the mail-in ballots?
Is that what's going on?
Because that's different. Yeah, they're claiming that it's the early voting, the mail-in ballots.
And in some cases, I guess- But the early voting, like, you know, I've always early voted in Texas.
As long as they've had early voting, I've early voted.
And usually they tabulate that pretty quickly along with the day of voting.
So there's no reason to do it later.
I don't think that their explanations make any sense.
And so as a result, you know, I try to resist because even with 2,000 Meals, I approached that skeptically.
I was drawn into it very slowly.
We were not talking about the issue of election fraud.
It was not until we saw the evidence that Catherine and Greg had.
And similarly now, if you looked at my feed, I expect Point out a lot of these weird behaviors going on, but I haven't said anything about the election being stolen.
And so I'm just saying we're applying a kind of...
But this shouldn't even matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat.
Now, granted, the Democrats get the advantage, but it shouldn't matter because we should be able to have results election day.
Period. End of story.
Another thing we need to talk about, we'll do it another time, is the incredible disproportion of resources on the two sides.
I looked at the actual amount of money spent in these races.
And so, for example, Blake Masters is outspent by Mark Kelly by a huge amount.
And this is true consistently.
So in some cases, our guys win.
But they win almost by being outnumbered on the battlefield.
They have to pull off a kind of David against Goliath.
It shouldn't be that way.
that we need to make sure that we have adequate resources to combat the Democrats on even terms.
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Feel the difference. In a surprise move and a disturbing move, Los Angeles, the district attorney in Los Angeles, George Gascon, has dropped the charges against Eugene Yu, the CEO and founder of the election software company called Conic.
Now, this is a surprise at one level because...
When charges are filed, usually the case goes forward.
But it's not a surprise in a little different sense, and that is that here you have a left-wing progressive DA, George Gascon.
And the case appears to have emerged out of his office, the election integrity or election crimes unit of his office.
He let it go forward because he had originally made this statement.
I'm quoting him. Data breaches are an ongoing threat to our digital way of life.
When we entrust a company to hold our confidential data, they must be willing and able to protect our personal information from theft.
Otherwise, we're all victims. So this is what...
The DA's office found that Eugene Yu and Connick had stored huge troves of U.S. election data on Chinese servers accessible to the Chinese government.
Now, interestingly, Gascon doesn't come out and say that this didn't happen.
He makes this weird statement.
We are concerned about both the pace of the investigation...
What? It went too fast?
And the potential bias in the presentation and investigation of the evidence.
As a result, we've decided to ask the court to dismiss the current case.
Now, the bias here, I think, is a clear reference to Katherine Engelbrecht and Greg Phillips of Truth of Vote.
Greg Phillips went out to Los Angeles and testified before the grand jury.
And so the argument here appears to be that they are somehow biased because they're right-wing and they're conservatives.
But... I went back and read the complaint that had been filed by the DA's office.
And remember, the DA's office in Los Angeles has its own investigators.
And so the information in the complaint was based upon information that had been obtained by the DA's investigative unit.
And again, as you read through it, it makes very specific allegations, and two in particular, not merely the violation of trust, which is to say the data breach, and the accessibility of this data to a hostile country, but in addition, charges of misappropriation of funds, theft, That this Eugene Yu collected money under city contracts.
And by the way, Connick's contracts are not just with Los Angeles.
They have contracts with Texas.
They have contracts with other cities and counties.
And so you have a very interesting situation.
Where, you know, maybe we can't trust the left-wingers in Los Angeles to investigate this.
Many of us were surprised that there was even an initial indictment and complaint filed in Los Angeles by Gascon of all people.
But... There are conservative jurisdictions that can have their own investigations and bring their own charges if appropriate.
Now, why would they not want to do that?
There's really only one reason, and that is that the elected officials in some of these conservative jurisdictions haven't done their due diligence.
In other words, They were like, oh yeah, Connick, oh yeah, sure, yeah, absolutely, let's sign the contract.
And they weren't monitoring it, and now they're busted.
True, the vote is sort of revealed that, wait a minute, there's been a massive data breach here.
By the way, Greg Phillips comes out and goes, more than that, we have irrefutable evidence that the entire Pennsylvania voter registration file is living on a server in China.
Machine serial numbers, ballot bundle numbers, they didn't steal it, they gave it to the CCP and the PLA. The PLA, of course, the People's Liberation Army, the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party.
So True the Vote is absolutely standing by their data.
And I haven't seen one iota of evidence, not even from the DA, saying that this data is inaccurate.
They're merely, I think, embarrassed that this was brought to light by True the Vote, and it seems like some conservative jurisdictions are in the same position.
They kind of want this whole thing to go away because they don't want to be busted for their own ineptitude.
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Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast Diane Haidt.
She is the founder of Forever Young Veterans, which she founded in 2006.
She's also the author of a book that's sort of based upon the work done by the organization.
It's called Forever Young Veterans, website foreveryoungvets.org.
She has organized all kinds of stuff for veterans.
In fact, many times taking them back to the scene of their battlegrounds.
It allows them to meet up with their old buddies.
This looks like an awesome project and an awesome organization.
Diane, welcome to the podcast.
Let me start by asking you how you sort of got into this.
You have a very touching section in the very beginning of your book Where you talk about your dad.
Was he the inspiration for this organization and this book?
Absolutely. There would not be a Forever Young Veterans without my dad.
But my father, he did become an alcoholic after World War II, and I watched him suffer, and our family suffered.
And I remember looking at him as a little child, and I knew something was wrong with him, but I didn't know what.
And as I've grown older, I realized that he was suffering silently.
You know, a lot of our World War II veterans were told, do not go home and burden your family.
You don't want to hurt them.
And so they didn't, and they just stuffed it inside.
And I do think that was a lot of my father's problem.
So that definitely is the reason I started for Young Veterans.
I mean, you talk about how your dad kind of grew up on the farm, and you have this funny line where he says when he was, I guess, drafted to World War II, he's like, war's probably going to be easier than working on the farm.
It was obviously a hard life.
He hated working on the farm.
He really believed that.
And he was always in trouble with his father because he hated picking cotton and cutting hay, and he'd slip off and go swimming.
He would get spankings for it.
He didn't care because he got to go swimming.
So when the war broke out, he was ready to go.
And he thought seriously that it had to be easier than the farm.
I mean, you talk about his enduring patriotism, which has been an inspiration for you, even though your father had personal problems and he sort of deteriorated after the war.
I imagine that a lot of the reason for this trauma is you go into this experience of war, which is hell.
And you share it with your buddies.
And then when the war is over, whatever the outcome, everybody disperses.
You've had a group of people that you've had this unique experience with.
It's incommunicable to anyone else who wasn't there.
And so you now live in this kind of split screen world.
You think that's part of what these veterans go through?
Very, that is well said, because that's exactly what has happened.
We saw with the World War II veterans, because they were the group that we started off with because they were the oldest.
But I thought in the beginning, I've waited too long just because of their ages.
The World War II veterans were in their mid-80s when I started this.
But here's what we found with them.
They came back from war.
And they totally focused on making America great, making their communities great, building their families.
But now what was happening with them is they were sitting at home, they were retired, their wives had died, their children were busy, and for the first time since World War II, they were struggling.
With PTSD, those who had never had nightmares were now having nightmares.
Those who had had nightmares, they were getting worse.
And I think they were shocked by it.
We saw an increase in alcoholism and all kinds of issues.
And that was one of the things that really shocked me about all of this.
I started Forever Young because I thought, I can grant a few little individual wishes for them.
But I was really taken back by how much they were suffering silently, just like my dad.
I mean, it seems that, I mean, in the book you cover veterans World War II, you have Korea, you have Vietnam, and you tell individual stories which are really powerful.
And one of the things that you describe with the organization is to take people back to the sort of scene of the battle.
Now, one of the reasons apparently to do that is that If you have an American World War II vet, they go to France.
There are still people in France, probably some older guys, who remember what the Americans did for them and come up and thank them, and they're sort of taken aback because they don't expect this.
But I'm imagining that the kind of reunion with their buddies is also something very special and kind of can't be duplicated any other way.
Talk a little bit about that experience.
Well, we never intended on doing Trips of Honor.
I'd say it kind of fell into my lap because we started taking them to Washington, D.C. And we spend five days when we go there because our mission is really about healing.
We were in DC and I had a D-Day vet say to me, you know what I really want?
I want to go back to Normandy.
And I kind of laughed because I thought, well, taking elderly men to DC is one thing.
Going out of the country is another.
But what we found when we took these men back was The healing was unbelievable.
I mean, there was no comparison to it because when you have a whole group of D-Day vets and they're walking on the beach together, I mean, so many of them have never talked about it with people and they won't talk about it.
It was just like you were saying, Dinesh, it's almost impossible for them to have a conversation about what they've been through.
But when they are with their comrades, I mean, they talk.
And one of the things that they say to each other is, you know, I thought I was the only one feeling that way.
I thought I was the only one with those thoughts or having those nightmares.
And that was comforting and also healing for them, too, to find out that they were not alone, even though they're in their mid-90s.
I mean, I remember, now this is going back to the 80s, and you probably will too, when Reagan went to Normandy and he spoke so movingly about the boys who became men.
And you could see those guys, and they were pretty old even then.
They were kind of bawling because they...
I think it meant so much to them, but it also meant so much to younger guys like me who were able to sort of identify, even if briefly, with that experience that has changed the whole country and the configuration of the world.
Yes. So I want to thank you for the work you're doing.
This is awesome. It's a very interesting book.
It's called Forever Young Veterans.
Website, foreveryoungvets.org.
And the organization, of course, is called Forever Young Veterans.
Dayan Haidt, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
Thank you, Dinesh. Thank you.
I've completed my discussion of Mikhail Zoshenko, the comic and satirical writer under Soviet socialism.
I hope you enjoyed it. It was kind of a brief, but I think interesting detour.
And I've been sort of thinking about what to do next.
And Debbie said, well, why don't you do one of your own books?
Why don't you pick up the theme of Christian apologetics and maybe do...
You've written three books on the topic, which I have, by the way.
And they're nice, by the way, if you don't have them.
They're kind of a nice combination.
The first one, which is the one I'm going to start talking about today, What's So Great About Christianity?
I'm actually going to hold up.
I have the hardcover, but you can get the book in.
In paperback, it looks exactly the same.
And then the second one was called Life After Death, The Evidence.
And the third one, God Forsaken, although in paperback it was called What's So Good About God.
So they decided to go with a different title.
But anyway, all books available in paperback.
You can get them on Amazon, Barnes& Noble, the obvious places.
I want to begin the discussion of what's so great about Christianity just by talking about apologetics and what it is and sort of why we do it.
My work in this area has focused on apologetics and And apologetics comes sort of from the word apology, but the word apology means something different in its original meaning than what apology means today.
Today, if you say apology, it's sort of like you're apologizing.
You did something wrong and you're expressing your regret.
That's the meaning of apology.
But apologetics doesn't mean that.
Apologetics means apology in the old sense, which is to kind of give an explanation, to give a reason, To give an account.
Now, very interestingly, in Scripture, we as Christians are called to do exactly this.
We're called to be contenders for our faith.
And what does that mean? A contender is somebody who speaks up, but a contender is also somebody who recognizes that he or she can face resistance, can face opposition.
Here is 1 Peter 3.15.
Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reasons for So, the Bible here, very interestingly, and this is a little bit of a departure because the Bible normally doesn't do apologetics.
The Bible is, you can almost say, declarative.
It makes declarations.
Jesus was the Son of God.
He is the Messiah. The Bible doesn't try to prove it.
But the Bible does sort of ask us to be ready, be prepared, to give reasons.
Now, give reasons to whom?
It would seem that giving a reason is particularly important to someone who doesn't know the reason, who's looking at what you believe from the outside going, huh, why would you believe that?
Now, you may think, and in fact, I think many pastors in the churches operate very much on the idea that, hey, we're a Christian society, or at least we're all Christians around here.
So, pastors typically give you, in church, a Bible teaching.
And this is true whether it's in the Catholic Church or the Protestant Church.
Typically, you have in the Catholic Church liturgy plus a sermon.
The sermon is typically taken from a reading from Scripture and an attempt to kind of elucidate or expound that reading.
Of course, in the Protestant churches, the sermon is the centerpiece of the service, and it typically is right out of the Bible.
And in fact, it should be.
Not to mention the fact that pastors typically are trained in biblical exposition.
That is what they know.
That is why this is what they do.
You can accuse them, of course, of preaching to the converted, but they're going to say, well, it's important to do that.
It's important to fortify the converted and reinforce their beliefs.
But you can see here how it's difficult for a pastor to rely on the Bible to make a case to someone who is secular, who doesn't know or accept that the Bible is, in fact, the Word of God, quote, the book that God wrote.
If someone goes, well, I don't accept that.
Or they produce a rival book.
Oh, well, I believe the Koran is the inspired Word of God.
I believe the Book of Mormon is actually our Bible.
So you can have people making rival claims.
And see, none of this really mattered, I would say, 100 or 200 years ago.
If you lived in America, you lived in a completely secular, I mean, a completely Christian society.
Yes, there weren't isolated Jews and probably a few people who rather quietly didn't believe but didn't say that.
But by and large, you could take Christian assumptions for granted.
But we no longer live in that kind of society.
And even if we as adults choose to create a world around us that is our fellow Christians, nevertheless we send our kids out into the world and off they go to school and off they go to college.
And the language that is spoken in those places is a secular language.
And they learn to reason in a secular way.
And they learn to respect arguments that are made in a secular way.
And so this is where apologetics takes on a kind of urgent new significance today.
It is, I would say, the best language to present Christianity in secular culture.
I'm not suggesting it replace the other.
I'm not in any way trying to replace the pastors.
They do their work. But I guess what I'm saying is apologetics, in my view, is a necessary complement to To the kind of work that pastors do on Sunday.
And you're going to get a real taste of it in the days and weeks ahead as we plunge into this book written by one Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About Christianity?
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