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Dec. 16, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
49:11
BORDERLINE INSANITY Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep478
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Coming up, what can we call Biden's border policy?
Borderline insanity.
I'm going to argue that this is actually a good basis to consider impeachment.
Debbie's going to join me.
We're going to talk about issues of the week, the Twitter files, and also the arrest of the newly elected president of Peru, a real leftist.
Director John Gruters joins me.
We're going to talk about his deeply moving film, Sabina, which is going up now, this weekend, on my Locals channel.
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.
The United States has a border that is completely out of control.
Completely porous.
And if you can imagine, the problem is only going to get worse.
Now, on social media, I follow a guy named Bill Milligan.
He is the reporter with Fox LA. And it seems like his unique and distinctive beat is to cover the border.
Cover the border in Arizona.
Cover the border in Texas.
And this guy is on it.
And he's on it with video.
So you can see...
Not dozens, but hundreds, and in some cases over a day, over a week, thousands of people just pouring through the United States.
And in some cases, they just walk up to the border control officials.
There's no border control really going on at all.
It's like, hello, give us your name.
Goodbye. Go into the United States.
Yeah, we'll give you a court date.
We recognize that you may or may not show up.
And so this is what's going on, and it's going on by design.
So a flagrant violation of our laws, a flagrant violation of the idea of national sovereignty.
I mean, think about it. The Biden administration is sending all this money right now to Ukraine.
Why? To protect Ukraine's border.
To protect Ukraine's border and its national sovereignty from being infringed and violated by Russia.
Well, what about our border?
What are we doing to secure our own border?
And the answer is virtually nothing.
Now, there was a little band-aid, or there has been a little band-aid on this border problem, and it's called Title 42.
Title 42 is basically a...
An order from the CDC, from the Center for Disease Control, that basically says that in an era of a pandemic, in an era of COVID, we don't want immigrants coming into this country that are bringing coronavirus.
And so this provided a basis for not only testing people, but if you don't have the ability to know if somebody has COVID, turning people back away at the border on the grounds of tidal Now,
this was being done under the Trump administration, and it was also being done under the Biden administration until a left-wing judge in Washington, D.C. decided to strike down Title 42 or to basically declare that it had expired.
And so the effect of striking it down is quite simply that now, on December 21st, coming up, Title 42 is no longer in play.
Title 42 basically is now lifted.
And what that means as a practical matter is that this one stopgap, this one Band-Aid, this one minor blocking mechanism to prevent illegals from streaming into the United States is now going to be gone.
And so even the Biden people have publicly admitted we're going to see a surge above and beyond the surge that we have now.
It's hard for me. I recognize that some of the people coming over are well-meaning.
They want to be here. They want to work and live here.
But just the swamping of the United States with this kind of an immigrant problem and the just sort of brazen...
We don't even care what the immigration rules and laws even say.
And we're just going to dare the American people to do something about it.
And gee, you know what? You had a midterm and you didn't.
So Biden is like, let's keep going.
Whatever we're doing is obviously working well enough and people are not sufficiently angry or energized.
Now, while Bill Milligan is right there at the border, Republican congressmen occasionally make their way down to the border.
Debbie and I visit the Rio Grande Valley, where Debbie's mom lives.
So we are, what, 30 miles or so, honey, I think, from the border.
We get a little bit of a glimpse of the border.
That way, we pass through a big border checkpoint that is not at the border itself, but some 50 or so miles inside.
But here's the point.
Democrats never go to the border.
Or I should qualify that. Democrats would go to the border regularly under Trump.
Remember AOC with her theatrics at the border fence.
Remember all the Democrats who are like, look at the horrible conditions at the border.
Well, those conditions are actually far worse.
Sex trafficking, rape trees, smuggling, gangs, all these problems are being essentially just flooding the United States.
So you can forgive other countries by saying, you know what, if the United States wants to destroy itself...
If they have so little self-regard and so little self-pride, why should we care?
In other words, why don't we just take advantage of the system that they've set up?
In some ways, even the immigrants or the migrants are not to blame.
They're like, Biden invited me.
They've opened the border.
Mexico is basically plucking people from Central and South America and saying, listen, we'll give you transit to Mexico.
You know why? Because these fools over the United States will let you in.
No questions really asked or hardly any questions asked.
Just fill out a paper. Don't contact us.
We'll contact you.
That kind of thing.
It seems to me that there are a number of reasons to open a Biden impeachment investigation, but this surely is one of them.
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You need to use promo code DINESHDINESH. Guys, I'm really pleased to welcome back to the podcast our friend John Gruders, movie director.
And we want to talk about John's film that is called Sabina.
It is a magnificent film.
Debbie and I found it very powerful, deeply moving, and it's up on my Locals channel this weekend.
In fact, now you can check it out.
And go to dinesh.locals.com.
You'll actually have two options.
You can just purchase the film and stream it, watch it, or you can subscribe to my Locals channel, become an annual subscriber.
You'll get the film along with a whole bunch of other films there for free.
John, welcome to the podcast.
Of course, we have one of your films already up in my local channel, The Frontier Boys.
And if I scroll down into the comments, people just love that film.
It's a very different kind of a film.
It's basketball.
It's high school. It's located differently than Sabina.
But I just wanted to thank you for working out a deal where we could have these films available to people and To me, it's such a refreshing contrast from just, you know, surfing Netflix and one horrible choice after another.
And Debbie and I could not be more excited about Sabina.
So we'll get to Sabina in a moment.
But you just got back from Nepal doing some film scouting.
Well, first of all, what was it like?
And what are you scouting for?
Well, yeah, thank you, Dinesh.
It's always a great pleasure to speak with you.
And I'm just honored that our films are going up on your channel.
I really love your audience.
I'm one of them. I'm part of them.
And I hope they enjoy the Frontier Boys and Sabina.
Yeah, my wife and I were in Nepal.
In the mountains, way up in the Himalayas, in the Annapurnas, in a very remote little village scouting for some projects that we'll be shooting in January.
I'd never been to Nepal before, and we took a helicopter from Kathmandu I flew up into this mountain village about an hour and a half and flew right past the most incredible mountain range I've ever seen in my life.
And I've seen the Dolomites in Italy, I've seen the Alps in Switzerland, the Rockies, but my goodness, the Himalayas are amazing.
And the people are very wonderful there.
There's a hospitality gene that they're born with, that they treat guests with great dignity and honor.
It was wonderful. We'll be shooting a couple of short films in January that talk about the world of the Buddhist monk.
And the boys in Buddhism are sent to the monasteries at about age four or five, and then they spend their lives there.
And for some of them, that can feel a bit oppressive.
And so we're telling the story of a young boy who actually...
Disrobes, they call it, which is he leaves the Buddhist monastery and ends up finding himself in a very vibrant Christian church A true story, but it was really a fascinating trip to learn about that world.
Well, John, I mean, it sounds amazing, to be honest.
And I think one of the wonderful things that you do in your work is you're able to take us to different places and times and just sort of parachute us in there.
And let's talk about Sabina, because there's been a lot of films about the Nazis and the Jews and the concentration camps and, of course, World War II. Right.
Right. And you create, I think, a wonderful opening scene where you've got these Nazis who were once, as you, this is your language, the hunters, who now become the hunted.
The Soviets are after them.
They're running away from the Soviets.
Talk a little bit about that sort of stunning opening scene which sets forth the whole storyline of Sabina.
Why would a woman, Sabina, who is of Jewish origin but now a Christian want to help Nazis to escape from the Russians?
Wow. Yeah.
Well, I have a friend that always asks me, what is the one question that your movie is trying to answer?
He's another writer, and he says, you've got to boil it down to that.
You've got to have a question that must be answered.
And the question in this movie, you just put your finger right on it, is why would a Jewish woman help a set of Nazi soldiers?
That is a foundationally deep question.
And the question gets even more complicated as the movie unravels when you realize she has every reason in the world to do the complete opposite, rather than help the Nazis to take vengeance on them.
They had taken an amazing bite out of her life and her culture's life.
The horror of being occupied by the Nazis And the brutality with which they treated the Jewish populations all over Western and Eastern Europe is, like you say, well documented.
But this isn't necessarily a story about World War II or about the Holocaust in particular.
It's a character study of a woman who is in the middle of that world.
And so the movie opens with these three Germans running through the streets of Bucharest trying to evade a Russian patrol group.
And what's honest, or what's odd is that the Russian patrols in this case are not that terribly motivated.
It's not really a sort of a life and death, you know, heavy music.
They're running and they're being shot at.
But this particular Russian patrol is drinking booze and chasing women and kind of in town.
And they'll take a few potshots and run, but it's not sort of the heavy, heavy, intense The guy literally finishes his vodka bottle and throws it at the Germans.
So they're evading, but it's a strange situation.
Like you said, I think it's a little bit different than Saving Private Ryan or other great World War II movies.
And what happens is that these Germans are left over.
They're the last of the Germans in town, because exactly as you said, Romania switched sides halfway through World War II. I did not know this fact before I started working on this screenplay.
They were aligned with the Russians.
I'm sorry, they were aligned with the Nazis.
And halfway through, they switched sides and joined the Allies, which might have been okay had the Americans been their closest ally.
But the war ended, and then, of course, they got the communists and a million communists.
And our other film, Tortured for Christ, deals with that era.
You know what, John, let's take a pause.
When we come back, I want to push further into the plot of this film, because it sets up the, I think, explosive and very moving climax.
We'll be right back. Will the absence of a red wave during the midterms lead to a more emboldened Biden, more wasteful government spending higher taxes?
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This is a great stocking stuffer just in time for Christmas.
I'm back with film director and producer John Gruters.
We're talking about his marvelous film, Sabina, that is up on my Locals channel.
If you can watch it this weekend, just go to dinesh.locals.com.
You can purchase and stream the film, or you can become an annual subscriber and you'll get the film included with that.
John, we were talking about the conundrum of a Jewish woman, a woman of Jewish background, now a Christian, helping Nazis get out of Romania to safety from the Russians.
And I think this was a beautiful setup of the core theme of this film.
And the core theme of this film is, of course, Christian forgiveness.
But you explore it at a level that I think gets people just emotionally completely vested here because I'm going to give away a line from the film because I just think it's so powerful and will help people see why.
You have a woman say, in effect, I have only kissed...
Two men since my marriage.
My husband and the man who murdered my entire family.
I mean, I'm sort of like moved by just reciting that line to you back from your film.
And yet that's the theme you explore, right?
Is it an effort to get to the heart of the Christian message?
Yeah, the heart of the gospel is forgiveness.
For us to forgive others the way Christ has forgiven us, is that so bad?
That's what Richard, Sabina's husband, asks her.
Because we're exploring, the setting is World War II, the setting, the context, are all the things we were talking about.
But it's really, like I said, a character study.
It's about a person.
And can a person change?
And is that change evidenced by what they claim?
They can say, oh, listen, I've changed.
Or is that really evidenced by what they do?
And in this case, Sabina's life is put on full display.
And great lines, like the one you just quoted, I only ever kissed two men.
These are Sabina Wurmbrand's own words.
These are lines that have been taken right out of her autobiography, The Pastor's Wife.
So this is a true story.
This is an honest confession.
And it reaches so deeply into me every time I even still see the movie, because it It asks me the same questions.
You know, does my life give evidence of the faith that I claim?
And if it doesn't, who am I trying to fool?
Because I'm only fooling myself.
And so we don't need to lie about this.
We don't need to put on a happy face about this.
Are we really infused with the reality that we have been forgiven so much?
And then if we aren't the same towards our neighbors, aren't we like the parable of the one who is forgiven the debt and then goes and beats the next man to get his debt repaid?
In Sabina, we have a perfect example of that kind of story.
I mean, I literally think this is a film where Debbie and I look at each other at the end of the film and we're like, we have to do an examination of conscience, like right now, to go through all the people that we think have wronged us and ask ourselves sort of the Sabina question, which is, Is it possible and have we really, you know, at the core forgiven them for any wrongs that they've done us?
Obviously, at a much smaller scale than what happened to Sabina.
But you set this up beautifully and you said it's based on a true story.
So is it the case that Sabina and Richard, this couple, they start out, yeah, they're of Jewish background, but they're really hedonists.
I mean, if you were to identify their lifestyle, it's not Judaism.
It is, it's living for pleasure.
They're sophisticated. She's at the Sorbonne.
He's obviously almost sort of this wealthy guy who seems to be living in a kind of old castle.
And you beautifully recreate that environment, not only in place, but also in time.
Well, that's right. There are a couple that we can identify with at a lot of different stages in our lives.
And again, just the other movie that we have done is called Tortured for Christ.
And we actually produced that one first, but it happens later in time.
And in Tortured for Christ, we meet Richard Wurmbrand as he's being brutally treated in a Russian prison.
And yet he's got this amazing holiness, this spirit, where he is forgiving and caring for not only his fellow prisoners, but even his jailers.
And Tortured for Christ, which I hope is next up on Locals, introduces these people.
And the problem was, I asked myself, when we finished that particular movie, who are these amazing people?
Were they born of virgins?
Are they that different from me?
And I had to go back in their story and realize, no, they're not different.
They pursued wealth.
They pursued pleasure. They wanted nothing to do with other people.
They didn't want to have children.
They only wanted to have their own lives.
That's the Richard and Sabina that we meet at the beginning of this film, Sabina.
So the story progresses and shows me like you said that you and Debbie can ask the same questions that Judy and I can.
Have we really internalized this gospel to the point where we are different people?
And okay, maybe I can learn to not react in the road when somebody cuts me out.
That's a small thing. But what if it was a big, big thing?
And so many of us have dealt with major wrongs, people that have stolen from us or done deep, deep harm to us.
Well, Christ himself can relate to that.
We have an on-ramp with Richard and Sabina, and they come to this place where they're legitimately different people from the inside out, and that's what the movie's about.
Well, John, you made a great film, and I predict it's going to become a real classic.
It's a film that's hugely entertaining and interesting, and yet, at the end of it, I've got to say, it's a film that makes you want to be a better person.
And there's not many films you can say that do that for you.
So check it out, guys, this weekend.
The movie is called Sabina.
It's up on my local channel.
John Grutus, thank you very much for joining me on the podcast.
Thank you for all you do, Dinesh, and be blessed this Christmas season.
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Feel the difference. Debbie and I are here for our weekly roundup, and we've got a bunch of stuff to cover, but I thought we'd start by reacting to John Gruters and Sabina.
I mean, this is one of the most remarkable movies that I think I've seen, and I think you do.
Now, I have told you that I have known people that have done what Sabina did also in real life.
A friend of mine whose daughter was murdered back, I think, in 2004, many, many years ago, she was murdered on her 18th birthday.
And he and his wife forgave the murderer.
I thought that was absolutely courageous and amazing.
Almost inhuman.
I mean, almost hard to believe that someone would do that.
Yes. I was just, you know, it just really spoke to their character and their Christianity.
They were truly in the Word, right?
And then most recently, it's been in the news where this FedEx driver murdered this little seven-year-old girl here in Texas, and the grandfather of the little girl forgave him.
And I thought, okay, this is a Sabina moment.
It's a Sabina moment.
But what this film does, I think, very powerfully is all good films are a story.
And it sets up by drawing you into this world of Sabina in Romania.
And I think what's interesting is you've got a hedonistic woman who marries a hedonistic man.
He gets tuberculosis and is sent off to a sanitarium, which is what they did in those days.
There, through reading and reflection and some very interesting events, he is the one whose life turns.
Yeah, yeah. He's looking for a grounding for morality, and he becomes a Christian.
She is drag-kicking and screaming into it.
Oh, yeah. She doesn't want to do it. She does not want to do it.
First of all, she... The whole concept of just even belief in God is one thing, but let alone Christianity for Jews is a whole other, right?
And so he starts seeking because of his time alone in this place with that grumpy nurse, but he starts seeking.
And in fact, he even talks about Marx, Karl Marx, and how, why is it that these Marxist, you Do not believe in God or reject God.
And are they happy?
And he was like, they're miserable.
You know, I don't want to be miserable.
And so I think that is his moment of like wanting to seek a little bit more and a little bit more.
And I don't know that book that he kept putting in her purse.
Do you remember the name of that book?
No, it's one of those kind of books that introduces you, probably a European book that introduces you to Christianity.
He begins to read this book.
But let's fast forward to the unbelievable climax of this film, which I'm not going to reveal, but I'll just set up.
In which you've got this hardened, brutal Romanian guy.
He's called Borilla.
And he's essentially the Nazi man in Romania.
And in a confrontation with Richard Wurmbrand, Richard says to him...
I can prove the existence of God to you.
And the guy's like, you can't do it.
Yeah, we can't give too much away.
Yeah, and we're not. Because in watching the film, I was kind of agreeing with the Nazi in that I'm like, how is he going to do it?
And how is he going to do it in a movie?
And how is he going to do it in like...
So we just have to get people to watch so they learn how he does it.
Don't give it away. I won't.
I won't. But I think it's fair to say that you and I, we were enjoying the movie immensely.
We were drawn into it.
Very riveting. But we were sort of stunned at the climax of the movie.
And we were both kind of emotional about it.
Completely started sobbing, both of us.
And it's really hard to make you sob.
Okay? Me, not so much.
But you? You're very, very...
You're pretty critical on things, you know?
And so you're... You really...
When we watch movies, Dinesh will really look at it as a, you know, kind of a project.
Like, how would I change the ending of this?
And what was it that they did that wasn't, you know...
And I usually watch it for enjoyment.
Well, I do too. I know, but you have a more critical eye.
So the fact that you went total emotional boohoo on me was like...
Well, you know why? It's because the movie harnesses intellectual and emotional and also spiritual power.
beautiful way of combining those. So, you're not surrendering your mind. Sometimes your emotions overwhelm your mind, but in this case you're actually thinking throughout the movie because the movie makes you think about Christianity, it makes you think about Judaism, makes you think about the hedonistic life and where it ultimately leads.
Yeah, and this is great to go into our next segment about the Israel trip because it really lays it out nicely.
Absolutely. We'll be right back and we'll talk about our takeaways from Jerusalem.
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It's been now, well, I guess a week since Debbie and I got back from...
A little over a week. A little over a week. And I would say that we both feel that we're a little different people than went to Israel.
Yeah. And it's hard to say that of a single trip, let alone over just over a week.
And we'd be hard-pressed to pin down exactly how we're different.
But I think we both feel like this was a confirming and a transforming event.
How would you describe it, this trip?
It was life-changing.
It really was. And you know, I was very hesitant at first to go, only because today, Juliana graduates from college, finally.
Just a semester behind.
It's okay. But I was afraid that something was going to go wrong.
We were going to get COVID or something.
We would stay, you know, in Israel and not be able to come to the graduation.
So I'm really glad that that didn't happen.
And indeed, she graduates today.
But... Set that aside, just going, you know, I really didn't know what to expect.
And like I told you before, I had many opportunities to go.
I was a worship leader for a woman's ministry for many, many years, and they went on Israel trips many times.
And, you know, so I was really could have gone and sent my mom back in 2014.
She went, she came back, and she was just in awe of everything.
And so it's not that I... I didn't believe all these people when they would come back and say how life transforming it was of a trip, but really seen as believing.
Well, I mean, for me, I had a reluctance in a different way.
And that is that when I've thought about Israel in the past, I realized there are kind of two types of groups that go to Israel.
First, I mean, I would get letters from the Dartmouth Alumni Club, We are organizing a trip to Israel.
We will be sending these three members of our anthropology and art department.
So you can see the approach.
It's completely secular.
It's archaeological. From a scholarly point of view, probably impressive, but detached from what Jerusalem really means or is.
Detached from the Hebrew Bible and detached from the Christian Bible, or at least ostensibly a secular perspective.
But then on the other side, you have the church groups.
Yeah. And I was a little afraid if you go with just the youth pastor and the pastors, what you will get is essentially the Jerusalem that is pulled right out of the Bible.
So a replay of the Sunday sermon.
But what I actually wanted was to find a way to go to Israel with people who are both biblically anchored and knew the scriptures, both the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures, and were archaeologically sound and sophisticated, knew about the archaeological digs, knew about what this stone means and what this place means.
And the beauty of our trip is we had both.
Well, the first half of the trip, we had a Bible-believer archaeologist.
He was a Jew who was a believer.
So I don't think he called himself a Messianic Jew, but he was a believer in Christ.
And again, every time he would show us...
And we have photos that we're just going to kind of splash throughout so you can see kind of our little quest.
A glimpse or two of what we saw.
Of what we saw. But it basically...
He said, this rock here or this formation here is taken right out of the Bible.
Look at right here and he would read the scripture.
And it was amazing because he was bringing the Bible to life.
He was showing us things that were actually in the scripture.
He would point out, Jesus talks about particular places and basically says, because of what you did and what you did to me, You are essentially condemned.
You will never rise again.
And basically, our guide goes, and look, this place hasn't risen since.
In other words, it's been a desert ever since.
So the Bible prophecy, if you will, out of the mouth of Jesus has come true.
And then he goes on to point out, all these people who seem to have far better prospects than the Jews, the Hittites, the Amalekites, and so on, all of those people are gone.
And yet the Jews, just as the Bible prophesies, are back in Jerusalem in their own land, in their own country, a magnificent fulfillment.
Yes. One of my least favorite places, and it's not that it's not an impressive place because it was, was Caesarea Philippi.
If you've heard of the term, the gates of hell, and when Jesus actually said it in Matthew, I believe it was 16, 13 through 16, right?
Was it that? Well, let's look at the scene.
The scene is that Jesus is talking to Peter, and Jesus says, who do you say that I am?
Yes, that was it. And Peter says, well...
You are the Messiah. You are the Son of God.
And then Jesus says, no human could have told you that.
In other words, you got that from the Holy Spirit.
And usually in sermons, we hear about that and it stops there.
But what's very important is what continues.
Jesus then goes on to tell Peter, you are the rock, Petra, the rock.
And on this rock, I will build my church.
Itself a topic that has been disputed.
Was this... Was Jesus handing Peter the keys to the church?
Was the rock intended to be symbolically that Jesus is creating a foundation for his church?
And Jesus continues, the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And that's what you want to point to.
The gates of hell isn't a metaphor.
No, it's a place.
And we actually took a photo right in front of it.
It was just remarkable.
It's a giant rock formation.
Yes, and it's got like a precipice at the bottom.
And they used to throw people into this precipice.
Bodies. Body. And if they bled out, that means they were...
What? Condemned? Human sacrifices of a sort and later animal sacrifices.
Well, this was a pagan worship site.
Essentially, it's a gallery of gods.
It was the god Pan.
The god Pan was kind of the leader.
And the god Pan is the god of debauchery, basically.
So people would engage in all kinds of sexual debauchery.
And people would come from far and wide to worship here.
So when Jesus said, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, he didn't just mean Satan.
He meant all these different forms of pagan worship that you see right here before you.
That! That debauchery, that perversion, the church will outlast all of that.
I mean, this is a very encouraging message for us today.
It is. It really is. And it also tells us that things tend to repeat themselves, right?
And so we need to take notice.
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Debby and I are just talking about Israel and I got to say, you know, we were coming back and I almost felt like, well, there's so much more there.
Our trip is sort of like premature. When are we going back?
And that's not like you to say.
So I floated to you the idea which we're now developing, which is organizing a trip And I think I envision it as either Athens and Jerusalem or Rome and Jerusalem.
Now, why Rome? Well, first of all, Rome is important as a Christian site by itself.
But it's also because we want to look at what came before Christianity.
And then look at the way in which Christianity transformed the world.
So our Israel trip was, it actually began in the north of Israel.
It began up in the region that is now called Tiberias.
By the way, named after the Emperor Tiberias.
That's near the place called Capernaum, where Jesus did his early ministries, early healings, his early miracles.
Then we made a sort of a detour to Caesarea Philippi and Caesarea by the Sea, which was the site, by the way, of Pontius Pilate's palace and his athletic games and his race course for horses.
And then down, of course, to what really ends up being the focus of the trip, which is Jerusalem, a kind of unbelievably interesting place.
Yeah. And so we want to go back, probably right after the election, 2024.
And if you've never been to Israel, we believe, I mean, you've said every Christian should make an effort.
Do your best to see Israel.
You'll find it to be a transforming experience.
And if you can, and if you're able to, go with us.
Plan to go the end of...
Not 2023.
We have to plan these considerably in advance.
But think about it. We'll have a big, hard-fought election.
We're going to be actively involved in all that.
But after it, whatever happens in the election, a spiritual refresher is...
Great. It's much needed because it gives you perspective of what's really important.
It puts everything in its rightful place.
And, you know, again, I'm so...
I mean, I was a political science major.
I love politics. But it really does...
Going to Israel really does put things in perspective.
Just in terms of, you know, when you're feeling really down about something and you're like, oh, this is not, you know, if we lose this election, this will, you know, life will never be the same or whatever.
You go to Israel, you're like, you know what?
We are living in a very, very tiny, tiny portion of life itself.
You know, just eternity, right?
And you see how...
We were able to touch the ashes of the city that was burned in Jerusalem.
We were actually able...
I had ash on my hand from when they burned it down 2,000 years ago.
2,000 years ago. And you're like, you know what?
It's kind of hard to put your mind around it.
Nothing we're saying is implying it's not.
Remember, I think the Christian phrase here is to be in the world, but not off the world.
And there's an exquisite balance there.
You're in the world. So you are concerned with worldly things.
You do apply biblical and Christian principles to the world you live in.
So engagement in civic life and politics, very important.
I'm not saying don't engage.
Obviously, I'm not saying that.
But I'm just saying as a perspective, you know, just knowing that what you always read about in the Bible, you actually got to see and feel and touch and so manipulate.
And it was just amazing.
Let's pivot a little to politics.
Interesting development in Peru.
Now, by the way, a left-winger, a far left-winger, you can almost call him a communist.
This is Pedro Castillo.
As soon as he was elected, did what communists do.
He tried to dissolve the parliament.
In other words, he tried to create a government by decree.
And guess what? In this case, happily, the parliament struck back, they impeached him, and they arrested him. And so the guy is actually under lock and key as we speak.
A new president, Dina Bollewaert, has been named and there's unrest in Peru because there are left-wingers in Peru and they're like, oh, they're trying to... Well, but you know what?
Guess what? If the president was elected, the parliament is elected too.
And when a president moves unconstitutionally or against the system, the Peruvian system, to shut down the parliament, the parliament decided to shut him down.
I believe this is a congressional system, not a parliament system.
It's a congressional system, yes.
It's like the Venezuelan system as well.
Yeah, no, it didn't work with Hugo Chavez, but it worked here.
Too bad, so sad.
Or to put it differently, it worked with Hugo Chavez in imposing the tyranny.
But you're saying the tyranny was thwarted in the case of Peru.
So, you know, Peru's right now in a state of emergency.
We don't know where it's going to go.
But here, the broader picture is this.
We're very worried about South and Latin America falling in the complete hands of the left.
And if Peru is able to avert the precipice, that's surely a good thing.
Exactly. Debbie and I are back, and I thought I would ask you, I've been talking about it for several days.
We've had Twitter files, one, two, three, four, five...
What do you make of this sort of Elon Musk strategy?
And evidently it is a strategy, not to do a single dump a la WikiLeaks, but to sort of put it out one theme at a time.
First, it's going to be the Hunter Biden story, and then it's going to be the shadow banning and banning of conservatives, and then it's going to be the mechanisms that led to the banning of Trump.
I mean, it's all very eye-opening, isn't it?
It's very eye-opening, but it's also very depressing.
Because... Why?
Because the media is not talking about it.
Is Fox News talking about it at all?
Do you know if they are? I don't know as a fact, but I'll tell you why it's...
I'll add to your point by saying that it's also depressing because we all know the same and worse is going on currently at YouTube, at Google, and at Facebook.
In fact, the censors there...
If we look over the last couple of years, we haven't had any strikes on Twitter.
I know lots of people have been banned on Twitter, so I'm not implying there wasn't censorship there.
There was. But we've had all kinds of close calls at YouTube.
We've had several strikes on Facebook that have demonetized us, restricted our reach.
So we know as a practical matter that the censorship is worse on Facebook, worse on YouTube.
And all that's still going on.
So far, it's almost like the sensors there have gone into a kind of freeze.
Yeah, but don't count on it.
Don't count on it. They're still doing it.
Oh, yeah, they're still doing it.
And, you know, again, if they own all of the platforms, if they own the megaphones of culture, we're kind of sitting there going, oh, see, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so.
I told you so. And it's kinda like an echo chamber because they don't care.
They're not gonna do anything about it.
What's gonna happen to these people that did this to Trump?
Nothing, nothing.
Elon Musk is taking a huge risk because, why?
Because he has Tesla and it could go, people could stop buying his cars And people could stop following him, you know, just in general, because he's not going to be cool anymore.
He's going to be uncool, just like Trump was.
Remember, Trump was cool before he was uncool.
And so it's the same thing is going to happen to him.
But, I mean, I'm glad he's doing it.
Look, a couple things. One is that, I mean, as far as I can tell, Twitter is doing better than ever.
So all this mass exodus on Twitter, we're going to be leaving Twitter, kind of reminds me of all these Hollywood times.
We're going to be leaving the United States.
We're going to be going to Canada.
Six weeks later, what are you still doing here?
Yeah. Oops.
Right. No one's really...
There's a handful of people leaving Twitter.
Who cares if Elton John is on Twitter?
Were you following Elton John?
Yeah, I did not. No.
And again, you know, these people, they should just stop being political.
Elton John is like, oh, yeah, you know, I just want people to be, like, nice to each other, and I don't like all of this meanness and all this.
And I'm like, oh, well, but you were perfectly fine knowing...
That we were being censored.
And the sitting president of the United States was censored.
And you're okay with that.
I guess he is. And you know what?
Good riddance. Good riddance.
Good riddance. Look, what Elon Musk is doing, I take a much more positive view on this.
I don't think Elon Musk cares.
He's escalating. Hey, if Apple wants to ban me, I'll make a phone.
And by the way, I think Elon Musk should go ahead and make a phone.
You know why? Well, first of all, he's got this thing called Starlink.
He actually owns satellites.
Oh, Oh my gosh, can you imagine?
It would be an amazing phone.
It would be so much nicer than even Apple.
I would be on board to buying it.
Why not? This is a guy who thinks in a way so outside the box that I think people underestimate him hugely.
Competition. They'll say things to Elon Musk like, you know what, you're spending so much time on Twitter.
Business management studies show that you could be neglecting SpaceX and Tesla.
And whereas this is how Elon Musk is thinking, he's thinking, I got Twitter, but, you know, Twitter is only a platform.
What if we created an app that we call the X app?
And you know what the X app is going to be?
It's going to be Twitter. Plus YouTube, plus Facebook, plus Amazon.
In other words, not only will people communicate on it, find their college friends on it, post on it like Twitter.
Is he saying the equivalent of YouTube or actual YouTube?
No, he's basically talking about creating a super app in which people will do their shopping.
They'll buy their Christmas presents.
They will load videos.
So it competes with YouTube.
But it's not YouTube.
He's not putting YouTube on that platform.
No, no, no. So the idea would be you don't need YouTube because you now have a video platform.
But we have Rumble. No, exactly.
We have Rumble. And one way Elon Musk could do that is, quite honestly, if he were to buy Rumble.
Elon Musk could buy Rumble and import Rumble into Twitter.
Who knows if this is exactly his way of carrying it out.
But all I'm trying to get at is this is a guy who's thinking...
We're thinking of Twitter as one platform out of four platforms.
But he's thinking of it.
How do we make Twitter the only platform in which you not only don't need Facebook or YouTube, you don't even need Amazon?
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