All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 3, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
46:37
STARTLING ADMISSION Dinesh D’Souza Podcast EP487
| 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, Ray Epps told his nephew on January 6th that he, quote, orchestrated the events of January 6th.
I'll spell out the implications.
I'll review the latest Twitter files in the wake of nearly non-existent media coverage.
Trump says the GOP has it wrong on abortion, and I'll assess the truth of this impolitic statement.
And finally, Trump impersonator Sean Ferris joins me with some huge announcements.
This is the Dimash Jasuzza show.
♪♪ America needs this voice.
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.
Well, guys, I'm back and it's a new year.
2023.
Happy New Year. I guess we're all going to have to start remembering it's 2023 when we...
Write the year down.
And it's, well, it's kind of a big day in a number of regards.
Well, Nancy Pelosi's last day as Speaker, today.
Adam Kinzinger's last day as Congressman, today.
Liz Cheney's last day as congressman today.
So, by the way, this is all the debris also of the January 6th committee.
These people are being swept out.
The committee will now pass into the hands of the Republicans, and it's going to be a whole new story.
And I'm going to keep you updated on that.
2022 is a bizarre year.
I mean, in some ways...
Well, a good year in some respects for us as movie makers.
Our movie, 2000 Meals, was a big success and didn't produce the investigations it should have.
But nevertheless, woke up a lot of people, opened a lot of eyes, and I think showed that this issue is a legitimate one.
And now, of course, it's being openly discussed on Twitter, so big changes are underway.
And I think this is going to be 2023 an important and a good year And I'm very much, well, I feel tanned, rested, and combat ready for the new year.
Debbie and I had Christmas in New York.
It was really fun. Well, it was extremely cold.
Debbie kept telling me things like, I can't feel my legs.
I can't feel my arms.
And I go, you're the only one saying these things.
And I said, well, yeah, it is unseasonably cold in New York, but it wouldn't be cold for Jan or Feb in New York.
It just was cold. You know, 15 degrees in December.
Seven. It went down to seven?
Oh, yeah. Okay, so it went down to seven degrees.
In any event, we had a lot of fun, but we're back in the saddle.
I want to talk in this opening segment about Ray Epps.
You know, the Ray Epps, the guy who kept on video egging people to go inside the Capitol, because in the January 6th committee records, and I printed out the transcript of the Ray Epps interview, which I guess they reluctantly released, we find the following statement by Epps.
Who is Dallin Epps, first of all, the lawyer asks.
Ray Epps answers, he's my nephew.
He's 28 years old.
And then they scroll down, and this is the lawyer talking.
So it looks like around 9 a.m., this is on January 6th, 2021, your nephew texts you.
You and Jim be safe.
And then at 2.12 p.m.
on January 6th, you text back, meaning Ray Epps is now texting his nephew, quote, I was in the front with a few others.
I also orchestrated it.
So there's that keyword. I also orchestrated it.
What's he talking about?
Well, he's talking about the events of January 6th.
So it appears that here is Ray Epps admitting...
To his nephew, that he orchestrated these events.
And now, in the transcript itself, there's an immediate effort to sort of explain this away, to minimize it, and Ray Epps, of course, tries to do that.
So, the lawyer asks him, what did you mean by orchestrate?
What did you orchestrate?
And Ray Epps gives an answer that makes absolutely no sense.
I just mean that I got...
You have to understand our relationship, uncle, nephew.
We hunt together. We have fun with each other.
We do that kind of...
What? We're not talking about his relationship to his nephew.
We're talking about what did he mean when he told his nephew that he orchestrated it.
And then he goes on to say, What I meant by orchestrate, I helped people get there.
He helped people get where?
Not to Washington, D.C. He means he helped people get inside the Capitol.
That's what he was urging people to do.
And then he goes on to say, at that point, I didn't know they were breaking into the Capitol.
I didn't know laws had been broken.
I didn't know anybody was in the Capitol.
Well, again, this is a diversion because the real issue is, did he orchestrate people going into the Capitol?
Whether he knew that they were there at that point, whether he knew it was against the law, whether he knew that anybody was inside or outside, is all irrelevant and has nothing to do with what he meant when he used the word orchestrate.
I mean, orchestrate is a pretty clear word, right?
Someone is... A conductor of an orchestra.
That's kind of the origin of the word.
To orchestrate is to sort of bring it about.
To be the guy responsible for the whole performance.
That's what Reap said.
I think that's what he meant.
But now he seems to be attempting to obfuscate that.
In fact, Debbie showed me an interview.
This is from the Daily Mail.
I don't think he was interviewed by the Daily Mail, but nevertheless, Ray Epps basically goes on to say that he's not a Fed and that the speculation that he's a Fed is coming from conspiracy theorists, like I think he names Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And my point is...
You know, this is something the Republican House needs to look into.
This is something that needs to be investigated.
Who is Ray Epps?
If he's not a Fed, what is he?
Why was he egging people to go into the Capitol?
And how did he somehow become the January 6th committee's favorite insurrectionist?
Everybody else who did less than Ray Epps...
Ray Epps is sitting in solitary confinement or facing charges to the degree that anyone instigated an insurrection by saying, go into the Capitol.
It's this guy. And he's on video doing it.
And he doesn't even deny it.
And he goes on to say he orchestrated it.
So I think the truth about Ray Epps is yet to be known, but it needs to be known.
Mike Lindell is running a sale on his Giza Dream bedsheets.
They're as low as $29.99.
Now, Mike promises the first night you sleep in them, you'll never want to sleep on anything else.
The Giza Dream bedsheets are made with the world's best cotton called Giza.
Its long staple cotton makes it ultra soft and breathable.
The sateen weave gives them a luxurious finish, available in multiple colors, styles, and sizes.
Machine washable, durable, 10-year warranty.
60-day money-back guarantee.
So sleep well in 2023.
Call 800-876-0227, that number 800-876-0227, or go to MyPillow.com to get the discounts.
You need to use promo code Dinesh.
Hey, this offer continues through January.
They're known to sell really quick.
Order now with promo code Dinesh at MyPillow.com.
I've been covering through the end of last year the various episodes of the Twitter Files, a subject that takes on an added importance when you realize that this is a big story that the mainstream news media is assiduously and deliberately ignoring.
In a sense, kind of what they did to the Hunter Biden story, which is suppress it, they're doing that to the Twitter Files itself.
And so, for this reason, I want to give particular attention to what's in these Twitter files.
And I want to cover the latest one, which came out actually after I kind of went off on holiday.
But it's very important.
And in fact, it's the prelude to the next round of Twitter files, which Elon Musk has promised.
Well, you can almost call those the Fauci files.
They're coming. I'm waiting for them.
I'll talk about them when they're out.
But here's David Zwieg, the journalist David Zwieg, talking about COVID and about COVID-related censorship.
He points out that when the Biden administration took over, one of their first meeting requests was with Twitter executives, let's talk about COVID, and they immediately targeted Alex Berenson.
By the way, Alex Berenson, a credentialed, a reliable, a very good journalist.
I've had him on as a guest on this podcast.
But they target him to be banned, and sure enough, Berenson is suspended, and then he's kicked off the platform.
And by the way, he's kicked off the platform right around the time that Biden himself says that social media companies are, quote, killing people for vaccine misinformation.
And this series of Twitter files goes on to show that although Twitter did sometimes push back a little bit, and only a little bit, against the Biden regime, they suppressed views from prominent doctors, scientific experts.
Basically, if it goes against the official position of the Biden administration, it's not going to be allowed on Twitter.
Think about this. This is essentially a private platform doing the bidding and acting in lockstep, in concert with a particular partisan regime and shutting down its critics.
By the way, much of the content moderation was conducted by bots and artificial intelligence.
And then there were contractors in the Philippines.
Think about it. The COVID debate.
Arguments and articles put out by professors at Yale and Stanford and Harvard.
Epidemiologists, virologists are being suppressed by some guy in the Philippines.
And this is going on at the behest and at the control of Twitter.
So, David Zwick writes, asking non-experts to adjudicate tweets on complex topics like myocarditis and mask efficiency data was destined for a significant error rate.
Well, that's kind of putting it diplomatically and mildly.
David Zwick goes on to show that there was an institutional and leadership bias at Twitter.
In fact, when people make false information that is in congruence with the left or with the Biden regime, it's never taken down.
People will say things like, yeah, this is an epidemic that is lethal for children.
They'll exaggerate the amount of lethality for children.
That's misinformation. Nevertheless, no one bothers to take it down.
In fact, it hasn't been taken down to this day.
But Martin Kaldorf, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, because his views are at odds with the public health authorities on the American left...
He gets suppressed, he gets warnings put on his tweets, and they claim that he's sharing false information, even though the arguments that he's making, the data that he's citing is completely in line with vaccine experts in other countries and the official policies of other countries.
And here's another guy, a self-proclaimed public health fact checker.
And this is a guy displaying the CDC's own data, but because it's data that's not favorable to the Biden regime, it's labeled misleading.
And in fact, David Zwick goes on to point out that ironically, this guy was correcting a tweet that provides actual misinformation.
COVID has never been the leading cause of death from disease in children, and yet that tweet remains on the platform, and of course, no misleading label.
somewhat amusingly, when Trump tweets out something very benign, Trump basically goes, I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today, feeling really good, don't be afraid of COVID, don't let it dominate your life. This is not even really factual information. Trump is just basically conveying a kind of a pep-up attitude on COVID. And in a surreal exchange, Jim Baker, by the way, former FBI, Jim Baker, he was then
Twitter's Deputy General Counselor, he's asking people inside of Twitter, why isn't this a violation of the COVID policy?
You Yoel and Stacia, why isn't this POTUS tweet a violation of our COVID-19 policy, especially the quote, don't be afraid of COVID statement?
Now, here's a case where actually Yoel Roth pushes back and basically goes, all that the guy is saying is giving a sort of statement of optimism about COVID and this is not a violation.
So this is a case where Twitter itself from the inside pushes back.
But the very fact that they would flag a Trump tweet so benign is really telling about the sort of heightened scrutiny that is given to Trump.
Really, the bottom line on all this, and it's made by David's Week at the end, what might this pandemic and its aftermath have looked like if there had been a more open debate on Twitter and other social media platforms?
Let's remember that censorship is not exclusive to Twitter.
We're only finding out the details on Twitter, the details on suppression at Google and YouTube, suppression at Facebook.
All those remain hidden to this day.
But the point being that we could probably have had better information, better debate, more intelligent policy conclusions coming out if there hadn't been this irrational suppression of alternative points of view.
The Biden administration's New Year's goals seem to be tax and spend, turn a blind eye to inflation.
Yikes. Well, when you finally had enough of the gains the government is playing with your savings in retirement, you need to diversify into gold with birch gold.
That's why Debbie and I own gold.
We like protecting the value of our savings.
For over 5,000 years, gold has withstood inflation, geopolitical turmoil, and stock market crashes.
And Here's the great news.
You can still get it.
In fact, you can own gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account.
Birch Gold makes it easy to convert an IRA or 401k into an IRA in precious metals.
Here's what you need to do.
Text Dinesh to 989898, claim your free information kit on gold, and then talk to one of their precious metals specialists.
Protect yourself with gold today by texting Dinesh to 989898.
With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, Thousands of happy customers, countless five-star reviews.
Birch Gold is who I trust to protect my future and yours.
Text Dinesh to 989898 today.
Today is the day that Kevin McCarthy comes up for a vote to be House Speaker.
And at least as of me doing this commentary, it's kind of not clear which way we'll go.
I see that a number of the holdouts are not only holding out, but they're coming out today and essentially saying they're not voting for McCarthy.
I saw Matt Gaetz say that.
Here's Scott Perry.
He's chairman of the Freedom Caucus.
Quote, Kevin McCarthy had an opportunity to be Speaker of the House.
He rejected it.
Really, what Perry is saying is that the Freedom Caucus went to McCarthy and said, listen, you know, for us to support you, we need a number of concrete assurances.
Now, McCarthy has been doing his best to kind of go out there and say that he...
That he's going to be a solid conservative.
He has been saying, well, here we go.
The first thing we're going to do is repeal the 87,000 IRS agents.
This obviously would be a good thing.
He tweeted out that he's going to do an investigation into the origins of COVID. In fact, Debbie and I often talk about this very important investigation.
In some ways, there's, I think, an exaggerated focus on the efficacy of the vaccine.
Not that we shouldn't have that debate, but the real issue is how did we get this pandemic?
Who gave it to us? Those origins remain shrouded in mist.
Well, Kevin McCarthy says he's going to look into it.
He also says that he's going to be cracking down on the border.
The Biden administration wants to bury the story of our worsening border crisis.
Accountability starts.
Well, he's also talked about we're learning in real time how Twitter colluded to silence the truth about Hunter Biden's laptop.
The new House Republican majority will get answers for the American people.
Now, look, this is what Kevin McCarthy should be doing.
I think the objection has been that, A, he would not do it if he were not pressured into it.
By the way, this is why I think the campaign against him has already done a lot of good.
It's done a lot of good because it's moved McCarthy further to the right.
And this really seems to be the complaint, that McCarthy is doing these things.
He's doing them under pressure, but he's sort of, this is not who Kevin McCarthy is.
He's kind of an establishment guy.
And in order to see really what the right is upset about, you just have to contrast him with Nancy Pelosi.
I mean, Nancy Pelosi...
Represented aggressively the progressive base of the Democratic Party.
That's really all people are asking McCarthy to do.
Represent aggressively the conservative base of the Republican Party.
And the fact that Kevin McCarthy has to be sort of led into it and arm twisted and cajoled, this is actually part of the problem.
It's almost like we're...
You know, win the Civil War, Nancy Pelosi is like Robert E. Lee.
Now, she might be fighting in a bad cause, but she is fighting valiantly.
She's fighting ingeniously.
She never misses a chance to attack.
And Kevin McCarthy is more like McClellan, which was the top general under Lincoln in the beginning of the war until Lincoln fired and replaced him.
And that's really what right-wingers are saying should happen to McCarthy.
Let's bring in a combat-ready House speaker.
Now, realistically, I don't know who it's going to be other than McCarthy.
Some people have been talking about Jim Jordan, but I've seen no sign that Jim Jordan is willing to step forward and challenge McCarthy.
So as a pragmatic matter, it may be that the best we're going to get, and I'm not happy I've even tweeted out that McCarthy is kind of a dud.
But nevertheless, a McCarthy that has been arm twisted to the right may not be the best we can hope for, but it may be the best we're going to get.
You've heard me talk about the amazing benefits of taking balance of nature every day.
There's so many satisfied customers, Debbie and I included, who tell stories of how balance of nature has been one of the healthiest decisions we've made.
Balance of nature has decided to do something special for those of you ready to get this maximum nutrition that people are talking about.
The founder, Doc Howard, often talks about the benefits of combining their star product.
Fruits and veggies in a capsule, that's this, with their fiber and spice supplement, that's this.
So he's giving you a way to get both at a special holiday price.
Right now, as a special holiday offer, get $25 off plus free fiber and spice with your first preferred order of fruits and veggies when you use discount code AMERICA. This offer can end at any time.
Don't delay. Call 800-246-8751.
That number again, 800-246-8751.
Or go to balanceofnature.com.
Use discount code America.
I want to talk about Trump's latest statement on abortion, on truth social, because a lot of people are, well, discombobulated by it.
There are pro-life leaders who are Well, they're being a little diplomatic, but you can tell they're disappointed by it.
There are some conservative activists in social media who are furious about it.
And look, I'll put this in context a little bit.
This is something I put out yesterday.
Trump has animal magnetism that DeSantis doesn't have.
DeSantis has operational efficiency that Trump doesn't have.
Together, these two are much stronger than either one of them is individually.
This is the political reality we must understand going into 2023 and 2024.
So that's my view.
I'm not, you know, we have a policy and as a film company, we don't endorse candidates.
But I don't hesitate to comment and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of candidates.
And that's my take on Trump and DeSantis.
But it looks like Trump is stirring the pot a little bit here and is in some ways jeopardizing a little bit his support, even among people who are in the Trump camp.
So let's take a close look at this.
It wasn't my fault, this is Trump, that Republicans didn't live up to expectations in the midterms.
I was 233% 233-20.
I guess he means 233 wins, 20 losses.
Then he goes on to say,"...poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on no exceptions, even in the case of rape, incest, or life of the mother, that lost large numbers of voters." Now, quite honestly, I don't know a single Republican who took the position that abortion should be illegal even in the case of the life of the mother.
I don't know anyone who said that.
Now, there are pro-lifers who take the view that there should be no exceptions.
And Trump seems to be saying, and here I think he's not wrong, that the Democrats and the left were able to exploit the issue.
They were able to claim, by the way, falsely, that somehow the Dobbs decision made abortion illegal.
They were able to make a pitch to the middle and in a sense say the Republicans are too extreme on abortion.
We heard this rhetoric from the left.
But I think Trump here is wrong to blame the Republicans here.
He should be attacking the false and misleading rhetoric from the left.
He goes on to say, also the people that pushed so hard for decades against abortion got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court and just plain disappeared not to be seen again.
So here Trump seems to be saying that there are pro-life, pro-lifers who voted on the basis of a single issue, abortion.
And because of that issue, they voted and agitated on the Republican side for decades.
But now that they have sort of won, they've won through the Supreme Court, Roe versus Wade has been overturned, they are sort of no longer political.
They have stepped onto the sidelines.
And this is an interesting empirical question.
And quite frankly, I don't know the data on it.
Is it a fact that there was a kind of decline in pro-lifers showing up in the midterms and that that cost Republicans?
I mean, we can't deny that there were a number of close elections and it seems like the vast majority of them went the other way.
So my thought in these situations is, I mean, was it impolitic or undiplomatic for Trump to say what he did?
Yeah, probably. And the simple proof of that is that you've got all these, you know, Trump guys, people who were in the Trump camp, and some of these pro-life groups.
Here's the Susan B. Anthony, it's Pro-Life America.
They spent a whole bunch of money in the 22 campaign through their PACs.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, by the way, is the head of that group.
The approach to winning on abortion in federal races proven for a decade is this.
State clearly the ambitious consensus pro-life position and contrast that with the extreme view of democratic opponents.
The democratic position on abortion is very extreme.
It's basically abortion...
To the moment of birth, and in some cases, partial birth, abortion, and so on, even after birth.
I mean, nothing more radical could be imagined.
It's more radical than abortion laws in Europe.
It's more radical than abortion laws almost anywhere in the world.
And so this is a case where I think that Trump has a point, and yet he's pointing the finger of blame, perhaps in the wrong direction.
Debbie and I started taking Relief Factor two years ago and the difference we've seen in our joints the past two years has been nothing short of incredible.
Aches and pains are just gone thanks to the 100% drug-free solution.
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 Relief Factor swear by it.
They order more because it works for them.
Debbie has been able to do all the exercises for several years she wasn't able to do.
It's been a real game-changer for her, her aunt, other members of our family, 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 about this offer.
That number again, 833-690-7246 or go to relieffactor.com.
Feel the difference. Guys, we have a new guest for the podcast, and I think you're going to have, you're really going to enjoy Sean Farish.
He's a, well, he's a Trump impersonator that I discovered on social media, and Debbie and I showed it to Debbie, and the two of us just laughed our heads off.
Now, Sean is part of the lineup at LFATV. He's also the voice behind CaptainDeplorable45.
And by the way, that's his website, CaptainDeplorable45.com.
You can also follow him at Sean underscore Farish on Twitter getter.
Or Truth Social.
Hey Sean, welcome to the podcast.
Great to have you.
You know, we had a guy doing a little bit of Trump impersonation in one of my earlier films, Trump Card.
But that guy does not even come close to you in the way you capture Trump.
Well, not just the voice, but also the personality of Trump.
Let me start by just asking you, how did you sort of get into this?
Because you're so good at it.
You practice every day.
How did you get started? Well, first of all, thank you for having me.
I'm really excited to be here, to be speaking to you.
And I'm a huge fan of your work.
And 2,000 Mules, by the way, left me both angered, but I felt sort of vindicated, saying, you know what?
We knew this was what went on.
And it's unfortunate, but it was incredible.
And I can't wait to see what comes of it.
As far as how this goes, I mean, I was back in the 2016 timeframe I was working.
I was selling cable packages.
It started in a couple of ways.
We were bowling. Actually, and someone threw a strike, and I said, well, that was the greatest throw I think I've ever seen.
You knock the pins down like Rosie at an old unique buffet.
Incredible job. But then I would be selling these packages, and some of these folks would ask me if the package got Fox News, which is always a great question for me to get, because I would look them dead in the eye.
And I would say, excuse me, does that look like, do I look like a person who would take that away from you?
And they would immediately want to buy because they said, oh my gosh, you sounded just like Trump.
That's great. I also happen to be a weather hobbyist.
And, you know, I love to track the weather and all these different storms.
And we would get these big snowstorms.
That's going to snow. We're going to have the greatest snowflakes, bigger than MSNBC, okay?
You're going to build a snowman or a snowperson, too gender-specific.
And it was so much fun to be able to incorporate that into everyday things.
And then it wound up exploding over TikTok, which I don't like that app, but it helped me become, you know, have some notoriety.
They have since censored the heck out of my account, but that's okay because we have Twitter, which is a free speech platform, and Getter and Truth and Rumble, which is playing a huge role in keeping that whole thing going.
And it's just so much fun to be able to bring laughs to people when there's not really that much to laugh about right now.
I mean, hey, Sean, you seriously were censored on TikTok for just doing impersonations?
Yeah, I made fun of AOC's boyfriend.
I said that he was a white guy wearing sandals or something.
If I call Rosie O'Donnell, if I poke a little bit of fun at her weight, they say it's bullying and harassment.
As a matter of fact, when Joe Biden fell off the bike, And I said, there's an old man who's escaped the institution.
He fell off a bike. It's incredible.
They said bullying and harassment.
And then they put it back up after I appealed.
And then they took it back down because for no reason.
They didn't give me a reason. But it was shared like 7,500 times in two hours.
And they just didn't want that getting out.
And they just shut it down. Oh, wow.
Well, we've got to give people a taste of the kind of stuff that you've done.
I'm going to have you, well, I'm now going to address you as Mr.
Trump and ask you to give us a little whiff of your routine.
So, Mr. Trump, the first thing I want you to do is to talk about, well, you're now back, you're allowed back on Twitter.
Are you going to be tweeting?
And if you do, tell us a little bit about what your first tweet might be like.
Well, I've been thinking long and hard about it, and I was thinking about maybe talking to Nancy Pelosi.
We say, at Speaker Pelosi, you're fired.
And also, Nancy, crazy Nancy, why don't you tell Paul he doesn't look very good in his underwear?
Or I might actually go to Rosie O'Donnell at Rosie and say, Rosie, you're still a disgusting animal, both inside and out.
But I think the real thing I should tweet is something that drives the world crazy.
Nobody knows what it means.
I'm going to tweet the big, beautiful word, covfefe, because nobody knows.
And I'm coming back, and it's going to be fantastic.
Very awesome. All right, Mr.
Trump, over the Christmas holiday, many people are familiar with traditional Christmas songs and rhymes and so on.
You seem to have done a little bit of an innovation, not Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but Hunter the White-Nosed Crackhead.
So can you give us a little preview of what that sounds like?
Well, it goes a little like Hunter, the white-nose crackhead, had a very active nose, like his father, because, you know, he loves to sniff people, right?
And if you've seen the laptop, you've seen him shooting up between his toes.
All of the Intel swamp rats felt it was their obligation to say that Hunter, the crackhead's laptop was a Russian disinformation.
Then one soggy Christmas Eve, the big guy, we know who that is, came to say, Hunter, with your nose so white, go make a deal with your favorite country, China, tonight.
And now the big guy loved him as he shouted out with glee, Hunter, you white-nosed crackhead, now you give 10% to me.
And that's what we talk, that's what it is.
Perfect. Perfect.
Well, we just got time for one more.
And this is your newest one, Mr.
Trump. You were kind enough to share some of your New Year's resolutions.
So tell us about those.
Well, everybody loves to talk about New Year's resolutions and doing something different.
I'm a perfect person with perfect phone calls, but I have to say, Rosie O'Donnell, I hear she's going on a diet.
She finally figured out that not every carb needs to be eaten.
Stacey Abrams is going to the gym because she found out that running a mile may better suit her than running and losing for office both times.
But I'm a perfect president with perfect phone calls and perfect taxes.
You saw that? A big, beautiful nothing burger.
It's the only burger Rosie won't eat.
It's a nothing burger. So my resolution is to win more than anybody's ever won before, to make America great again, because the best is yet to come, believe me.
Well, that's awesome.
Really appreciate it, Mr.
Trump. Really appreciate it, Sean Farish.
Guys, the website, CaptainDeplorable45.com.
Sean Farish, thanks very much for joining me.
Thank you so much. I began last year my apologetics discussion focused on my book, What's So Great About Christianity?
I'm now going to pick it up and push it through for the next, well, probably two or three weeks, maybe even a little bit longer.
And I was talking about the impact of Christianity in In the formulation and articulation, also the realization in our culture of this powerful idea of the moral equality of human beings.
Now this moral equality is not self-evident by itself.
And it's a moral equality that's rooted in a theological supposition, which is what?
We're created equal in the eyes of God.
That's what makes us equal.
And if you look at the great sweep of American history, particularly the kind of monumental events, certainly the founding, the Civil War, to a lesser but still significant degree, the Civil Rights Movement, you see them as efforts to implement, to put into place, to realize this Christian ideal.
Now, right before the American founding, we had a great awakening, a great spiritual awakening.
Historians call it the first great awakening, a Christian revival that swept the country in the mid-18th century.
It created the moral foundation for the American Revolution.
And the focus of this was not just that people need to know about Christ, but they need to develop a relationship with him.
The leading figures in the First Great Awakening, George Whitefield, the Oxford-educated clergyman.
He led the newly founded Methodist movement.
Jonathan Edwards, the Yale-educated Congregationalist minister, who was also president of Princeton University.
So, historian Paul Johnson writes, the American Revolution is, quote, inconceivable without this religious, religious background.
Now, remember that Jefferson had asserted in the Declaration that equality was a self-evident principle.
What Jefferson meant by that is not that it's self-evident in the sense that no one can deny it, but he meant it's self-evident in two ways.
One, that it was accepted really by the American people.
I'm now quoting...
John Adams, not Jefferson, but Adams, but he's reflecting, I think, what Jefferson would have agreed to.
What do we mean by the American Revolution?
The war? That was no part of the revolution.
It was only an effect and consequence of it.
The revolution was in the minds of the people, a change in their lives.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Remember also that Jefferson, when asked to identify the source of our rights, was very clear.
It's the creator.
He didn't say it was social contract or lock or something else.
No, the source of our rights is, in fact, the creator.
Now, the second Great Awakening, we fast forward almost 100 years.
This is a Great Awakening that sweeps through, started in New England, continues through New York, and then through the interior of the country.
And this is a second awakening that leaves in its wake the temperance movement, the movement for women's suffrage, and of course, most importantly, the anti-slavery movement, including its most sharp or radical faction, the abolitionist movement.
Who was the important figure associated with the Second Great Awakening?
Well, this was Charles Finney, the Presbyterian lawyer who later became president of Oberlin College.
He was a leading abolitionist.
And so all the monumental events of the late 19th century, the Civil War itself, what Lincoln called America's new birth of freedom, all of that occurs against the backdrop of this story.
Second Great Awakening.
And then let's fast forward to the 1950s and 60s.
Martin Luther King's claim that he was submitting, as he put it, a promissory note.
And he said, I demand that this note be cashed.
And I think I've made the point before on the podcast, but my question is really, what note?
What is Martin Luther King referring to?
Certainly the segregationists didn't give him some sort of note and go, yeah, we owe you Martin Luther King.
You can submit this anytime.
No, Martin Luther King is actually appealing to the Declaration of Independence.
So note the irony here.
You have a black preacher in the 20th century in Montgomery appealing back to the words of a southern slave owner, a southern planter, And in a sense, what King is saying is that my argument, my cause is dependent, is even parasitic on what Jefferson said really 200 years earlier.
So the point here is that the 20th century pastor, this is King, and the 18th century planter, Jefferson, are both, in a sense, reflecting in their words and in the causes that they embodied The long reach of Christianity.
Or even consider Martin Luther King's famous claim that we should be judged by the content of our character.
This is King's dream. And the point I want to make here is King doesn't say, which a lot of people understand him to say, we should be judged on our merits.
We should be judged by our talents, by our work, by our effort.
No, he says we should be judged by the content of our character.
And so, notice the ethical element of what King is saying.
It's ethical achievement, not intellectual achievement, that is supreme.
And here, too, we see the strong echo of Christianity.
I'm discussing the issue of Christianity and human equality.
I'm in Chapter 7 of my book, What's So Great About Christianity?
And I begin the chapter with a quotation from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Now, Nietzsche is spelled an I-E-T-Z-S-C-H-E. Kind of a rabid atheist, but also a genius in his own right.
Son, by the way, of a Lutheran pastor himself.
And then Nietzsche later rebelled against his Lutheran upbringing and against Christianity.
Here's Nietzsche. Quote, The concept of equality of souls before God.
This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights.
So what Nietzsche is saying here is really what I've been saying.
You have a rabid atheist agreeing with a Christian believer that what?
That this concept of human equality is not some kind of a secular invention.
It is rather what Nietzsche would later call the shadow of God.
It arises out of the idea that in God's eyes, we are all Now, Nietzsche is against it.
He doesn't like the concept of equality.
But nevertheless, he agrees that this is in fact its source.
Now, I think we can see this more clearly if we look at some of the ways in which Christianity has changed the way we think about fundamental things.
Fundamental things like war.
Fundamental things like the idea that we as humans, all humans around the world, have basic rights.
I think how odd that is.
The idea that people in different cultures, with different traditions, some traditions, by the way, that don't even speak of rights at all.
Nevertheless, this Declaration of Human Rights, we find it in the UN Charter.
And I want to argue that all of this is the fruit, is the outgrowth of this Christian principle of equality.
Let me talk for a moment about the so-called just war theory in Christianity.
Because The just war theory is a spelling out of the ethical conditions for a war to satisfy the condition of being just.
Now, it's a radical concept that this is even an inquiry we conduct at all.
If we go back into the ancient world, I think, for example, there's a famous dialogue in Thucydides' Peloponnesian War.
It's called the Melian Dialogue, in which the citizens of Melos are being besieged by the Athenians.
And the Athenians basically say, well, why shouldn't we kind of crush you?
Why shouldn't we kill all of you?
And the Malians basically appeal to justice.
And they go, well, that would be unfair.
That would be wrong. And the Athenians essentially say, who cares about any of that?
Who cares about right and wrong?
I'm not quoting Thucydides now, putting this in the mouth of the Athenians.
The strong do what they have the power to do, and the weak accept what they have to accept.
So the Athenians go, we're stronger.
We are in a position to you the same as the lion is to the lamb.
The lion doesn't listen to arguments about justice.
The lion's only argument is, I'm a lion.
You're a lamb. End of story.
I get to eat you. Get ready.
But the Christian just war principle says no.
Wars have got to meet a sort of moral criterion.
And even secular people today accept the conditions of the just war.
Let's look at them. First of all, The first principle is war should be waged defensively.
You should not be the one to attack first.
Remember, this issue came up during the Iraq war with Bush, where the criticism was that Bush is waging preemptive war.
Saddam Hussein hasn't attacked us.
So right here, we see playing out the first principle of the just war theory.
War should be defensive. Number two.
War should be a last resort, undertaken only when other measures have been exhausted.
Number three, the war should not be undertaken unless there's a reasonable chance of success.
In other words, the war is not just a pointless, let's go out and sort of vent our rage by killing a bunch of people.
It should have a reasonable chance of restoring the peace that the war is intended to secure.
Next, retaliation should be proportionate to the original offense.
Very important principle.
Think about this for a minute.
The idea here is that if you belong to tribe A and you are raided by tribe B and they kill five of your guys, you can't say, okay, we're going to go kill 500 of their guys.
Why? Because that's disproportionate to what they did.
They killed five. Okay, you can retaliate.
But the retaliation has to be in some measure proportionate to the injury that you've suffered in the first place.
And then, finally, you're not justified in killing civilians.
In other words, this is something more relevant to modern war.
Ancient wars were fought on battlefields and only the combatants showed up.
Civilians were not involved at all.
But in modern war, the just war theory says that you cannot target civilians.
Now, of You're attacking a military facility, and some civilians may be accidentally or incidentally killed, sometimes called collateral damage, and there's some arguments about that.
But the principle is really clear.
No deliberate targeting of civilians, and to some degree, even some actions of the United States, for example, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing, are open to criticism, moral attack, on the basis that those did represent a targeting of civilians.
▲
Export Selection