All Episodes
Previous Next
May 18, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
52:39
AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep582
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This episode is brought to you by my friend Rebecca Walser, a financial expert who can help you protect your wealth.
Book your free call with her team by going to friendofdinesh.com.
That's friendofdinesh.com.
Coming up, I'm gonna have Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida.
He's gonna talk about Florida as the place where woke perversion went to die.
I'm also going to talk about the lawsuits, the ongoing cases involving Cary Lake and Abe Hamaday.
Was the Marine who stopped Neely on the subway, is he a good guy or is he a bad guy?
This is the Dinesh D'Souza show.
Hmm. America needs this voice.
The times are crazy.
In a time of confusion, division, and lies, we need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida.
You can follow him at Twitter at GovRonDeSantis.
Ron, welcome to the podcast.
Yes, great to have you. I want to really begin by thanking you because flashing back to the days when I had my legal troubles with the Obama administration, at a time when it seemed like the whole weight of the US government was coming up against me, you reached out to express your sympathy and your support and it meant a lot to me coming at that time.
I also want to commend you for the fact that since you've been in the governor's seat, you have been aggressive on all fronts. I mean, I've been talking on this podcast about the need to fight on all fronts and no one has done that the way you have and I think it's an example to governors across the country. So, take that for what it's worth.
And your latest initiative, which I just read.
Well, before you do that, I just want to say, I mean, back in the Congress, when you were facing that, you know, that was a real clear example of weaponization of the DOJ. And at that time, I think a lot of Republicans kind of got that, but I don't think they got it as much as they understand it now.
But that was really an example of you were treated disfavorably Because of your political views and activism.
And that was plain as day.
We hauled some of these people into the oversight committee from DOJ to talk to them about the case.
Very mealy-mouthed. And I think that, you know, me and others in the Congress were very supportive of your eventual pardon.
But this government has been weaponized against factions of the country they don't like.
And you know that.
And it's only gotten worse since you had to go what you went through.
I mean, what was so critical was you had access to my FBI file, so you were able to look inside those things and able to see things that were going on behind the scenes that were, at the time, invisible to me.
Talk about your new initiative, a Protect Kids initiative.
It also protects girls.
It protects sports.
Describe what you're doing.
Well, you know, Dinesh, my wife and I, we're parents of a six, a five, and a three-year-old.
And so the education issues are important, of course, as a governor, because it's important for your state, but it also is personal to us.
We want a society here in Florida where kids can be kids, where they're able to go to school, watch cartoons, just do normal things without having somebody's agenda I think?
And we think that that's appropriate.
If parents want to discuss these things, that's their issue, but we should not be jamming this into the curriculum.
It's inappropriate for a teacher to tell a student they may have been born in the wrong body.
So we expanded that.
We also, in one of the bills, we nixed this whole pronoun Olympics.
You are not going to be required to choose pronouns in the state of Florida.
They'll have some of these schools around the country, second graders are being told To choose pronouns?
It's insane. And so we're going to do school just like it had been done for all of human history until about two weeks ago.
And so that's important.
And then we also did a bill, which is sad that we're even having discussed this, to criminalize the mutilation of minors who are undergoing these sex change operations by these really rogue ideological physicians.
And we've had heartbreaking testimony from people that have gone through this when they were minors, now they're adults.
And this is something they're now having to overcome really for the rest of their lives because irreversible changes were made.
We banned this administratively last year through our medical board.
So if a medical doctor did this, they lose the license in Florida, which is appropriate, but we felt you had to do more.
I mean, if you're taking off the private parts of some 15 year old kid, you should go to jail for that.
This is just totally unacceptable.
One of the things we did in that bill, though, is we're giving the victims the ability to sue the physicians.
So if you've gone through this...
As a 16-year-old or a 15-year-old, now you're 24, 25, and you have all this irreversible damage, you bring suit against them because they violated the Hippocratic Oath, they put their ideology ahead of evidence-based medicine, and we just think that's fundamentally wrong in the state of Florida.
What I love about all this is that you're describing something that counters what looks to me like a very insidious phenomenon.
The schools are propagandizing these kids.
You don't know who you are.
You don't know if you're a boy or a girl.
Don't take it from your biology.
It doesn't matter what you've been raised as.
And then what happens is that the medical profession sort of steps in.
And counselors step in and they counsel the parents and say things like, listen, if you don't accept your child as really a girl and not a boy, you have the choice of either having a daughter or a dead kid.
So this kind of psychological intimidation is used to bludgeon the parents into thinking, okay, I better go along.
And it seems to me what you're saying is that...
You know, people sometimes think this is a cultural problem, but you're saying, no, it's a policy problem, and there are policy solutions that can get to the heart of the matter.
Well, because what you said is exactly what happens in May these instances.
Kids go through a lot of stuff at that age.
You know, when you're 13, 14, 15, and it can be tough.
And parents want what's best for their kids more often than not.
And so they're searching for answers.
You know, what do we do? What's going on?
How can we help? And when you have somebody cloaked in a medical degree with a white lab coat, kind of has the authority to say that this is the direction you have to go, you know, Some parents will say, okay, then that's what we have to do.
And so I think these physicians have just been really, really irresponsible.
I do think this is an example of how our medical establishment has become very politicized.
We saw it during COVID, but I think there's a lot of rot beyond just how they handled COVID, and this is a good example.
It's interesting. There are European countries that started to go down this road with these gender surgeries for minors like Sweden, and they realized, like, one, There wasn't medical justification to be doing this.
And two, they recognized the harms of this were really catastrophic.
So they've gone in the direction that Florida has now gone, even before most places in the United States were even thinking this was a problem.
And I think what it shows is there are some countries out there, and this was true during COVID too, Sweden is more, quote, liberal than we are, but they are focused on evidence-based medicine.
And I think in the United States, the medical establishment is really governed, but based on ideology.
You'll actually see some of these medical school graduating classes.
I don't know if you've seen the videos.
They'll be taking like a woke Hippocratic oath before they go in and to serve.
And so, you know, I used to tell people back in the day, if anything happened to like my family, that they needed a doctor.
If I could have like some Harvard trained doctor, that's what I would want.
Now you see who they're churning out.
You run the other way because you wonder, are they actually focusing on the evidence or is this just trying to impose a woke agenda?
So I think it's been disturbing to see how some of these physicians have acted.
And this is a corrective to that.
And I think it's going to end up saving.
You know, this is not something that's happening to like tens of thousands of people in Florida.
But the fact that it's happening or was happening at all is a problem.
And now it stops. When we come back more with Governor Ron DeSantis.
...in 200 years.
Some experts believe there are serious threats to the future value of the U.S. dollar because of inflation, deficit spending, and our runaway national debt.
Now, one asset that has withstood famine, wars, and economic upheaval dating back to biblical times is gold.
And you can own it in a tax-sheltered retirement account with the help of Birch Gold.
Birch Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or 401k, maybe from a Previous employer into an IRA in gold.
And the best part? You don't pay a penny out of pocket.
So go ahead, text Dinesh to 989898.
Claim your free information kit on gold.
Think about this. In March of this year, when the banks faltered, the stock market faltered, gold surged.
Birch Gold can help you find out how to protect your savings with gold.
Birch Gold has an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
Thousands of happy customers.
So text Dinesh to 989898.
Get your free information kit on gold to get you started.
Text Inesh to 989898.
I'm back with the 46th governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.
You can follow him on Twitter, at GovRonDeSantis.com.
Ron, it's, wow, this woke phenomenon, I won't say came out of nowhere.
In fact, I've been writing about political correctness going back to the 1990s.
It's been around in some form, but the rapidity of its takeover of these major institutions, I mean, I suppose to some degree we can say we expected it in academia, maybe we expected it in the media, but But we've all often thought about the military as a conservative institution,
corporate America as reasonably conservative, the FBI as a conservative police agency of government, Disney as conservative in the sense that Disney for decades promoted a kind of Americana.
How do you account for the deep penetration of this woke madness into previously conservative institutions?
I think it's a function of our education system.
I mean, I remember being on campus, and you know, with some of these Ivy League schools, the nonsense that's there.
And I always told myself, you know, this is crazy, but the minute they get into the real world, none of this stuff's going to fly, so it's kind of harmless.
Well, I think really the joke was on people like us, because what happened is, as these people got into these different institutions in society over the last couple decades, they are bringing with them a worldview.
And it's really a worldview that's synonymous with the people in our ruling class, people in these institutions who think it's their right to govern us, even without our consent.
And so all the assumptions that they bring to bear about our country and society are shared across institutions.
And it's not like they're even coordinating this.
It's just a natural outgrowth of the intellectual foundation they carry themselves with.
But you're right, to think about, like, I'm a Navy veteran.
I was proud to wear the cloth of the country.
Great people. I was proud of the service.
You know, Jack Kennedy said, if you look back on your life and say, you know, I served in the Navy, you could have a great deal of satisfaction.
Well, now what do you see?
You see them recruiting with like using drag queens and doing stuff with the pronouns and all this other stuff.
That's part of the main reason recruiting is so low.
So I do think, like, as you looked at the battles with the left in the past, their imprint on society is much broader today than it was 30 or 40 years ago.
We knew we had to battle them in the halls of legislatures and in the halls of the Congress.
We knew things like academia were going to be what they were.
But I think a lot of us viewed in the past institutions like businesses as being more neutral and places like the military even exemplifying conservative values.
And those days are over.
And that's why it's important that we fight back and reclaim these institutions.
I saw a video on social media just a day or two ago and it was this Taliban guy and he had in front of him a big piano and some musical instruments that he was smashing with a hammer.
Now, the reason I mention this is that if I'd seen the same video a decade ago, I would have been like, Look, this is the kind of madness that goes on.
This is the kind of suppression of talent, of creativity that is characteristic of these unfree societies.
But then it occurred to me, today, I sort of have a mixed feeling about this because I look at that and I go...
In some form, that's going on in America.
Obviously, people aren't smashing musical instruments, but they're smashing statues.
They're going after creative people because they don't subscribe to woke ideology.
So, is it the case now that the line between us and them, between the free and the unfree, is more blurred than before?
And we have a real fight to protect.
If freedom is going to be a beacon of freedom around the world, we've got to consolidate it here first, right?
Right. Well, think about what's going on in these college campuses.
Look what happened at Stanford Law School, where they shout down a federal judge.
Look how they treated the swimmer Riley Gaines at San Francisco State University.
You have these centers which are trying to impose orthodoxy, and they don't allow any dissent.
I've told our folks here in Florida's university system, if you have behavior like Stanford Law School from these students or San Francisco State, those kids should be expelled from school.
And guess what would happen? If you just did that one time, you'd see a change in the culture.
But as it's now academia, they let the inmates run the asylum.
So I think we're in a situation where you have rigid orthodoxy being imposed, particularly in some of these monolithic intellectual senators like university.
And there's a lot of people, Dinesh, as we fought against this in our universities and put conservative trustees on places like New College, where we're really getting rid of the DEI framework and everything across.
There are left-of-center professors around the country who are interested in coming to Florida because even for them, they're walking on eggshells.
If they say one wrong thing, that could be the end of their career if you're violating the canons of wokeism.
And so I really believe that the woke ideology is a mortal threat to a free society.
And if we lose these looming battles over the next five or ten years, I think it's going to be very difficult to recover from that.
Talk for a minute about this phenomenon called ESG, because it seems to me to be a way in which these huge conglomerations of investment capital are able to manipulate companies into following a climate agenda, kind of a fanatical climate agenda, by essentially saying that we will give a black mark against you that will make it difficult for you to raise capital if you don't conform.
So, Florida is one of the states that is pushing back against ESG, how?
Well, first, what they're trying to do with ESG, I mean, they're trying to marshal considerable financial resources to change policy, to change our society, without having to go through the normal legislative and constitutional process.
These are people that don't stand for election, they're not accountable to the electorate, and so our view in Florida is very simple.
No social or economic transformation without representation.
We're going to fight back against ESG. We banned ESG from being used in our state pension fund, which is a $180 billion fund, very significant.
We've also said no to using ESG for government procurement at the local or state level.
We've also said the rating agencies, when they're grading municipal or state bonds, are not allowed to use ESG scores as part of the credit rating.
We fund the rating agencies, basically.
And so if they do that, they're going to lose business from the state of Florida.
And then we provided support for Floridians against woke banking.
Because what's happening is you have Wall Street banks that collude to try to marginalize people they disagree with.
Yes, it could be involving I think?
On a fundamental level, ESG is trying to impose bad policy, which is significant because I think it would do serious damage to the country.
But on a more fundamental than that, it's just who governs society?
Do we govern ourselves under written constitutions?
Or do these captains of industry and the asset managers, do they have a special place where they get to go on an ideological joyride and then we're basically left picking up the bill for the destruction that they wrought?
I can see why people say that Florida is a place where woke goes to die.
Governor Ron DeSantis, thank you very much for joining me.
Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Summer is just around the corner.
I'm asking for your help to bless a child with a mom or dad in prison by joining my campaign to send prisoners kids for a week of fun, fresh air, and Christ-centered activities that can literally transform their lives forever.
I want to personally thank each of you who have already stepped up here on my podcast to help my campaign to send these kids with a mom or dad in prison to Angel Tree Camp.
It's a very special program from the non-profit Prison Fellowship.
helping break the cycle of crime by reaching boys and girls with the gospel in a week-long adventure filled with summer camp activities.
And the people guiding the Angel Tree Camp program, they're solid, caring individuals who say they're blessed to be working with the kids that your donations send to camp.
Here's David Moy, who served as director of an Angel Tree Camp in Indiana for eight years.
I just fell in love with the ministry, being involved there, getting to see kids' lives impacted.
A lot of kids, it was the best week of their year, and they got to really just kind of break from a lot of the chaos happening in life, and they got to just be a kid for a week.
And just being able to see that positive environment for them, being able to share Christ with them, and just Just go to my website, DineshD'Souza.com.
Click on the Angel Tree banner at the top of the page, or you can phone in your gift by calling my special number, 888-206-2801.
$400 helps send two children to camp.
$800 for children to camp.
So you do the math and see how many kids you can bless.
Once again, the Angel Tree banner, easy to access.
Go to DineshD'Souza.com.
It's at the top of my homepage.
And thank you, hey, not just for listening to my podcast, but also for joining my campaign to help Prison Fellowship's Angel Tree Camp.
I want to talk about two lawsuits in the Arizona courts.
These are election lawsuits, one filed by...
Attorney General candidate Abe Hamaday.
And the other is Carrie Lake's lawsuit.
So let me talk about the Hamaday lawsuit first.
Basically, Hamaday is asking for a new trial.
A new trial why?
In order for him to show that there are thousands of ballots In the Arizona Attorney General race that were never counted.
Now, we need to digest this for a moment because the left is always talking about democracy.
We need to defend democracy.
You have thousands of uncounted ballots.
As Abe Hamide's lawyer said in court, we're not alleging fraud.
We're not talking about the fact that the election was somehow rigged.
We are saying that there are uncounted votes and that if you only count these votes, I'll win the election.
The election was... I mean, almost absurdly close.
And so, if Hamideh is right, there's no reason not to count the votes.
Now, what is really eerie is to hear the counter-arguments that are being made.
First of all, it seems quite clear that the votes weren't counted because Katie Hobbs, let's remember that Katie Hobbs was the Secretary of State.
She was running the election.
And so she had administrative supervision, supervisory control over how this election was going to be handled.
So the Democrat, who was herself running for governor, is orchestrating and overseeing the process.
And somehow in this process, thousands of votes don't get counted.
Now... This seems to me to be a pretty easy call.
True, Chris Mays, the victorious Attorney General Democrat, is saying, no, no, no, it's all over.
No, no, no, I've already been sworn in.
No, no, no, it's what's done is done.
So their idea is that whatever happened, and they're not even contesting that these votes haven't been counted.
They're basically saying there's no reason to count them now.
Well, why not? Why would you in an election where there obviously was some impropriety, the impropriety here being uncounted votes?
Think of it. You have thousands of Arizona citizens who cast their ballots, and they are being disenfranchised by their votes not being counted.
I mean, imagine there were 8,000 black voters whose votes weren't being counted.
So it seems to me it's in the hands of a Mojave County judge to make this decision, but it'll be very telling which way he rules because if he rules for Chris Mays, He's basically himself engaging in voter suppression, it seems to me. He's just siding with the Democrat.
He doesn't want to cause to ruffle the process.
He doesn't want to take an election that the Democrats are claiming is a done deal and throw it open to doubt.
It seems to me pretty clear Hamideh won that election and yet has been deprived of it.
And what he's trying to do is affirm democracy, get those votes counted and let the chips fall where they may.
With Carrie Lake, the situation is a little more complicated.
She is in court trying to prove that the Maricopa County authorities did not engage in proper signature verification.
And she's got to show that they didn't do that to such an extent that it is, by clear and convincing evidence, a sufficient violation that it could have made a difference in the outcome of the election.
Here, I think Carrie Lake is facing what seems to be, at least from what I read, a hostile judge who is trying to set a pretty high bar.
And Maricopa County is doing its best.
Again, Maricopa County is not saying, by the way, that the process wasn't botched.
They're just saying that they didn't botch it deliberately and they're saying that the signature verification, they made their best effort to do this.
Now, what's been coming out in the trial is that this best effort is really pretty horrible.
First of all, a bunch of people evidently decided or were authorized to do signature verification by themselves working on their computers at home.
So, no supervision, no observers present.
And this was evidently all done without letting anybody know.
Authorized by this guy, Stephen Richter, who was the election recorder or the guy, kind of, the official who was overseeing the process.
The other thing we see is there are videos of people doing signature verification, and they are doing them at such a rapid speed.
It's like a couple of seconds, three seconds per verification, and it's just sort of like click click click click click click click and and they're verifying hundreds if not thousands of signatures this way.
It's really obvious that they're not doing any signature matching.
You're supposed to take the signature.
Remember, these are for the mail-in ballots, where the guy isn't coming in.
And so all you have is an envelope and a piece of paper to make sure that that is a valid...
Eligible voter. You got to find that voter and you got to look at their signature on record and then compare the two signatures.
So this is a process that takes time.
Now, in one case, Maricopa County goes, they had to admit, yeah, this is clearly, this guy is obviously not doing it right.
By the way, they said, we fired that guy.
Okay, you fired that guy, but that guy is responsible for approving tons of votes that went through.
Did you go back and recount those votes?
Did you do the signature verification?
If there was somebody who was ultimately violating the process, did you, in fact, go back?
No, they didn't. They didn't do anything like that.
So, this is a complex case that's going to go before the judge immediately.
It's not clear to me how the judge is going to go.
At least, it seems to me the judge doesn't want to rule in favor of Cary Lake.
And yet, one of the really valuable things that Lake is doing is exposing what a botched and broken process we have for elections, not just in Arizona, but quite likely across the country.
I don't know about you, it takes a lot to shock me these days, but to see our judicial system resemble a third-world banana republic, to see trusted American companies embrace insane and destructive, woke ideologies, it's frankly depressing.
We must fight back, and that starts with changing the way we spend our money.
Now, for years, big mobile companies have been dumping millions into leftist causes.
We just took it because, hey, another option didn't seem to exist.
Well, now it does.
Patriot Mobile is America's only Christian conservative wireless provider.
It offers dependable nationwide coverage on all three major networks so you get the best possible service in your area without the woke propaganda pushed by leftists working hard to destroy this country.
When you switch to Patriot Mobile, you support free speech, religious freedom, the sanctity of life, the Second Amendment, and our military veterans and first responder heroes.
Their 100% U.S.-based customer service team makes switching easy.
Just go to Patriot Mobile, Patriot, M-O-B-I-L-E dot com slash Dinesh or call them 878-PATRIOT. Get free activation today with the offer code Dinesh.
Ask about their coverage guarantee while you're there.
Again, it's Patriot Mobile dot com slash Dinesh or call 878-PATRIOT. So who is the good guy and who is the bad guy?
According to the city of New York, the bad guy is 24-year-old Marine veteran Daniel Penny.
And the good guy is the deranged lunatic Jordan Neely, the 30-year-old homeless guy who was going around the subway throwing trash at passengers who were obviously trapped in these So imagine the level of threat that someone like that poses to passengers.
And so what happens is that Daniel Penny jumps in and protects people who are in the train compartment by putting...
Jordan Neely into a chokehold.
Now this guy is so unruly that far from submitting, he fights back and two other guys are needed to subdue him.
So it isn't Penny by himself, but Penny plus two other guys.
But in this attempt to subdue this guy, regrettably he gets choked and regrettably he dies.
And now Daniel Penny stands charged with manslaughter.
Now, it's very clear that while New York sympathies are with the homeless guy who's black, the public sympathies are with Penny.
And the proof is that Penny, who set up a Give, Send, Go, not a GoFundMe, because GoFundMe is very left-wing, they probably would have tried to cancel him.
So a Give, Send, Go account is And he's raised well over $2 million.
In fact, close to $2.5 million, showing that people are like, this guy is actually acting to protect other people.
This is the kind of guy you want in a society.
Let's remember in New York City, first of all, they demonize and they call for defunding the cops.
And so the cops aren't there to protect you.
Well, who are you going to count on?
If you're a vulnerable person, an elderly person or a child or a woman, you're going to look to some strong guy who's going to be able to step in.
You're going to look to someone like Daniel Henney.
We've seen all these recent incidents in the New York subway.
A 68-year-old Sri Lankan, his name is Bodhi, was knocked unconscious by a disturbed man on the number one train who just hit him and Knocked him out.
Michelle Goh, 40 years old, was shoved in front of an oncoming train where she was pulverized between the wheels.
Again, this was done by a kind of a lunatic at the train station.
So this is happening on a fairly regular basis.
And my question is, if you don't have guys like Daniel Penny to step in, well, I guess you just let it happen.
In fact, the lesson of indicting and charging Daniel Penny is, hey, if you're an able-bodied guy and you're in a position to help, don't!
Why? Because you're going to become the target of a prosecution.
Now, Daniel Penney is really up against it, and I say up against it because he's up against the full force of the prosecutorial authority of New York.
He's up against the media.
If you look at some of these headlines, they portray him as a monster.
And, you know, when you see videos of Jordan Neely, he's always like, oh, he's this happy-go-lucky kid.
There's a kind of disturbing inversion.
The bad guy is somehow made into the good guy.
The guy who's harassing passengers on the subway is now an innocent.
He's just basically being picked on.
There was no reason to kill him.
AOC calls Daniel Penny a murderer.
Now, They aren't pursuing murder charges.
It would just be too absurd.
But even the manslaughter charge, I think, is outrageous, given the circumstances.
Now, not all the facts have come out, and we have to await a trial.
But I actually saw a fairly lengthy interview with a woman who was present right there, who actually saw what happened.
And she says, basically, my prayers are with...
With Penny. And I think what she was getting at is not just that she sympathizes with him, she thinks he did the right thing, but she knows that they're out to get him.
She knows that the political, the Democratic political left-wing establishment of New York wants to make an example out of Daniel Penny.
The same way, by the way, they tried to make an example out of Kyle Rittenhouse.
Now, that one didn't work, but they're going to go after Penny, and they're Now, I don't think it's obvious which way this is going to go because New Yorkers don't like the degree of crime that they now have to live with on the streets and in the subway.
So I think Daniel Penny has pretty good chances in front of a jury.
But in this case, it is pretty obvious that it is Penny who is the good guy and Neely who was not.
I think when it comes to towels, nothing really compares to MyPillow towels.
Mike Lindell has really hit a home run with his towels.
Imagine having towels that actually work.
They actually dry you.
Now, these MyPillow towels are soft to the touch without the lotion-y feel.
They have proprietary technology, which makes them highly absorbent.
Other towels feel good, but they don't absorb.
MyPillow towels are available in multiple styles and sizes.
They're made with a 100% USA cotton.
They're machine washable and durable.
10-year warranty. 60-day money-back guarantee.
And Mike is running a My Towels 6-Piece Set Special.
$25 with promo code Dinesh.
These towels are regularly $99.98.
So it's an amazing offer.
Includes two bath towels, two hand towels, and two washcloths.
So go ahead. Call 800-876-0227.
The number again is 800-876-0227 or go to MyPillow.com to get these discounts.
Don't forget to use the promo code DINESH. On a somewhat lighter note, I want to talk about the latest adventures of Harry and Meghan.
Yes, I'm talking about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Not a subject I regularly cover on the podcast, but they are emblematic of something going on here that I want to put my So the latest is that Harry and Meghan claim, at least according to some headlines, that they were in a two-hour high-speed car chase in New York with the paparazzi racing over them, and they were in a, quote, near-fatal or near-catastrophic accident.
Now... As Megyn Kelly noted in a tweet, she said, I've lived in New York for 17 years.
She goes, how do you have a two-hour high-speed chase in New York City?
I mean, first of all, if you're in downtown Manhattan...
There's just no way.
There are lights every, you know, 100 yards or so.
Everything moves slowly.
It comes to a halt.
It starts up again. So this idea of being in a chase for that length of time is just impossible.
It's preposterous.
Now, fortunately, the media, or some elements of the media, got a little skeptical of this story, and they started chasing down.
They even interviewed Pierce. Morgan actually interviewed the taxi driver who drove Harry and Meghan.
And he, were you in a high-speed chase?
He goes, no. And they go, well, what was going on?
And he goes, well, this is just New York.
Yeah. It's nothing more than traffic in New York.
It's a little chaotic, to be sure.
But no, their lives weren't in any danger.
Now, one little tidbit is that I saw a video of Megan sitting in the...
Or a photo, actually, of Megan sitting in the car.
She doesn't even have her seatbelt on.
So if she's in a high-speed chase, you would expect that she would.
The whole thing is contrived.
It's unbelievable. It seems to be a sham.
Now... The question is, why?
Why do these people who claim that they're being terrorized by the media constantly seek attention by describing, you know, this is a near-fatal crash?
I mean, this is like saying, you know...
I mean, it's a near-fatal crash.
Another way of saying it is it wasn't a crash.
It didn't really happen. And yet, there you are putting out the story in the media.
I think that part of this is basically Meghan Markle's somewhat perverse Diana wannabe syndrome.
Because let's flashback to Lady Diana.
What happened to her?
She was in a high-speed chase.
Who was chasing her?
The paparazzi. And that really led to her...
Fatal. Not near-fatal, but fatal crash.
If you look at young Meghan Markle, even before she married Harry, she's clearly mirroring Diana.
She wears Diana outfits, Diana hats.
I mean, if you put her side by side with Diana, it almost looks like she is rehearsing or auditioning for the part of Lady Di.
And so that's, I think, part of the psychological weirdness that's going on here.
But the other part, and I think the...
The part that interests me is this kind of pretend victimology.
Because here you've got two people who are among the two, perhaps in the top tier of privileged people in the world.
They are, well, he is born into royalty, she marries into royalty, they have almost unimaginable wealth.
They have tremendous social cachet.
There are documentaries made about them.
The media has an interest in them.
They wear expensive jewelry.
I'm sure they eat in the finest restaurants.
And yet, these are aristocrats who are pretending to be serfs.
So everywhere they go, they complain.
Harry complains, oh, it's really tough to be royalty.
You know, the family excludes me.
She complains, oh, you know, because I'm half black, they're racist toward my kid.
And she's always playing the victim.
Meghan is. And so, why is that?
I think it's because they want to have not only all the benefits of aristocracy, but they want to have the cultural cachet of playing the victim.
The whole thing is actually downright sickening and And every time they make a spectacle of themselves, I think in a way they degrade themselves even further.
If aches and pains are your problem, Debbie and I have the solution.
We started taking Relief Factor a couple of years ago.
The difference we've seen in our joints, nothing short of amazing.
Aches and pains are totally gone thanks to this 100% drug-free solution called Relief Factor.
How does it work? 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 become regular customers.
They order more because it works for them.
Debbie's a true believer she can now do exercises that for several years she wasn't able to do.
So hey, Relief Factor has been a real game changer for her, her aunt, other members of our family, Mike right here in the studio, and for many other people.
You too can benefit. Try it for yourself.
Order the three-week quick start for the discounted price of just $19.95.
Go to relieffactor.com or call the number.
800-4-RELIEF to find out more about this offer.
The number again, 800-4-RELIEF or go to relieffactor.com.
You'll feel the difference. Guys, you know, if you listen to or watch the podcast that Debbie and I have been on a weight loss program, it's called PhD Weight Loss and Nutrition.
And we've seen, well, quite honestly, amazing results.
I am down 27 pounds and Debbie 20.
In fact, I've made the transition to what is now called Maintenance.
So we're just really happy with these results.
We want to have the founder of PhD Weight Loss and Nutrition, Dr.
Ashley Lucas, on the podcast.
Now, she holds a PhD in sports nutrition and chronic disease.
She's also a registered dietitian and a leading expert in the field of weight management and behavior change.
By the way, the website...
Dr. Ashley, thanks.
Welcome. Thank you for joining us.
Really appreciate it.
You know, this is a huge national problem, and people who come to America from other countries look around and they go, wow, we seem to be having an, I don't know if an obesity epidemic is the right way to put it, but it looks pretty And it also has horrible health consequences.
So can you describe the magnitude of the problem that we're dealing with as a country?
And if there's one thing that people need to know about weight loss that they don't know, because a lot of people are like, I'm trying, I'm trying, I work out, I do this, I do that.
If there's one thing you could tell these people to put them on the right track, what would that be?
Sure. Well, thank you so much for having me.
And congratulations, you guys.
I am so excited to see you here sitting.
I know we chatted just a few weeks ago.
It felt like just a few weeks ago, and it really was about you guys starting your own journey.
So that's amazing. And you put it exactly right.
It's an obesity epidemic, definitely.
And in the United States, we're in the top 10 countries of being the fattest and sickest.
72% of us are struggling with being overweight and obese.
What's crazy is that 88% of us are metabolically unwell.
And what I mean by that is diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, prediabetes, gout, Alzheimer's disease.
Did you know that we now call Alzheimer's disease type 3 diabetes?
If you eat a diet that's based on simple carbs like pasta, bread, fruit juice, those items that a lot of us eat quite a bit of, You're at a 400% increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
So it's not just heart disease, it's not just diabetes, but it's also our brain health.
It's such a huge deal and we are sick and I am on a mission We're good to go.
One tip to those of you struggling with weight, I would say look at your first meal of the day.
We've been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, which was just a marketing claim by Kellogg to sell more of his breakfast cereal.
I would say that breakfast isn't necessarily the most important meal of the day.
You can eat it if you're hungry, if you want to, but if you skip it, you're not going to slow your metabolism.
But if you do eat it, I want you to focus on something savory over sweet.
A lot of us eat oatmeal with blueberries and we think it's steel cut oats with flavored organic yogurt.
Those yogurts that are flavored have just as much sugar as a Haagen-Dazs ice cream.
I like ice cream.
I love ice cream. So I choose the ice cream over the yogurt.
Or we would go with corn flakes and a banana and skim milk.
Or maybe we would make a fruit juice-based smoothie where we add some mango and bananas into it.
All of those type of sweet breakfasts are going to cause you to go on a blood glucose rollercoaster of highs and compensatory lows where you're going to be hungry throughout the day.
You're going to have cravings.
You're going to be likely to overeat as you go through the day because of the hormonal response from those type of breakfasts.
So instead, focusing on the savory ones.
And if I were to give an example, it might be some eggs for breakfast, if you like that.
Or you could do a full fat, plain Greek yogurt that has lots of protein in it with some berries that you put on it.
So you're in control of the amount of sugar with maybe some nuts and seeds.
Or now maybe you guys can give some examples of what you've been eating for breakfast.
Yeah, so I am still on the program.
I have about maybe three to four pounds left before I go on full maintenance.
But I have to say, Dr.
Ashley, that this is an amazing thing for me because...
I went through menopause a couple years ago, and I gained 25 pounds during that time period.
And I tried everything.
I couldn't lose weight.
I was trying to do, you know, I would try keto, but apparently I wasn't doing it right.
Or I would try, you know, a program here, a program there.
Could not lose the weight.
So, really, I was a little skeptical, I have to say, when we started PhD.
I was like, oh, really? You think I'm going to lose 25 pounds?
Mm-hmm. Ha, ha, ha.
Well, let me show you.
You were also skeptical that I would even do it.
Oh, yeah. And I was skeptical that Dinesh would even do it.
He doesn't diet ever.
He loves to eat, as do I. But I knew that I could not do that anymore because I was afraid that I was 25 pounds overweight.
I was afraid that the 25 was going to turn into 35 and then 45 and then, you know, who knows what else after that.
So I was shocked when the first week of PhD I lost 4 pounds and Dinesh lost 7 pounds.
I literally had not done that before with any weight loss program.
So kudos to you and your program and your counselor that we love, Rachel, who has guided us every week.
As we go through this.
And really, it's a lifestyle change.
And I tell Dinesh, just because you're on maintenance doesn't mean you have to go back to your old eating habits.
One question, Dr.
Ashley, which I think has been interesting.
I mean, it's been illuminating for me.
The idea that...
This calls for, it's not really a diet, it's a change of mental orientation toward food.
So talk, if you will, about the role of the mind in this process.
It's not just a matter of the food that goes into your mouth, but how you think about food.
Yeah. You know, 80% of any change, if it's weight loss or relationship or career, comes from the mind.
So we have to tackle the mental, the emotional, the habits, the behaviors.
We have to let go of the stories that aren't serving us anymore, the belief systems.
For a lot of people, there are beliefs of shame and guilt and unworthiness all wrapped into our weight.
And if we don't focus on letting those go or changing those belief systems, then even if we drop the weight, it's going to come back.
So we have to make sure that the mind is changing in response to the body.
I think a lot of people go through a weight loss program where they're just focused on the ins and the outs.
They're looking at what they're eating, how much throughout the day. That's important.
And we focus on that as well. You can't ignore it.
But I would say the bigger aspect of it is the mental and emotional shifts.
You have to change your mind to change your life. And weight loss is no different.
So if you are out there and you're looking to and working on dropping weight, you've got to tackle what's happening up in here.
You know why you eat the way that you do or else even the weight loss that you're doing now is just going to come back.
So the mind and the body have to work in tandem.
I mean, one thing we say to ourselves is it is about looking better.
And of course, we're on the podcast, so we need to look our best.
But it's also about being healthier.
Yes, cholesterol. And so guys, if you want to do this, this is the way to do it.
It's called PhD Weight Loss and Nutrition.
The website, myphdweightloss.com.
Dr. Ashley Lucas, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.
Oh, my pleasure. And congratulations again.
I'm so excited for you guys.
Thanks. Thank you. Drawing on my book, What's So Great About Christianity, a book incidentally available in paperback.
You can get it. You should own it.
It's a nice resource to have.
But I'm in the chapter that is called The Ghost in the Machine, Why Man is More Than Matter.
And I describe the view that man is just matter as materialism, the idea that we are just material objects in a material world.
So let's confront this central materialist doctrine.
Man, like the rest of nature, is made up of matter and nothing more.
Now, the best evidence we have going for this is that All we can touch and see and measure is matter.
If there are immaterial things, well, we don't see them, we don't touch them, we can't weigh them.
So matter seems to be responsible, in some sense, for our thoughts, for our emotions, and maybe even our moral intuitions.
In other words, matter seems to be the generator, the cause of why we have these thoughts and feelings, even if the thoughts and feelings themselves are immaterial.
And we can tell that matter is related very closely to these immaterial things like thoughts and feelings because if we affect the matter, we also affect the thoughts and the feelings.
Think of it this way. A powerful blow to your head will cause you to lose consciousness.
So consciousness itself may be immaterial, but hey, it's obviously connected to your skull and your head because bam, and you lose consciousness.
Alcohol and fatigue interfere with your concentration.
So again, you make a material change, you drink alcohol, which is a material substance, and somehow you can't really see and think very clearly anymore.
Electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain produces a desired emotional response.
Patients who suffer certain kinds of brain damage lose the capacity to sympathize with others or to recognize shapes.
So clearly our mind...
is influenced by and shaped by what's happening to our physical brain.
Alzheimer's disease produces a physical deterioration that leads to a mental lapse and a complete disappearance of moral and, indeed, at the end, all awareness.
Now, because consciousness and perception and thinking all occur in the brain, Francis Crick, the famous scientist, describes the brain itself as a conscious, perceptive, and thinking organ.
Here's Crick. What you see is not what's really there.
It's what your brain believes is there.
Your brain makes the best interpretation it can.
The brain combines the information and settles on the most plausible interpretation.
This allows the brain to guess a complete...
And this is a very remarkable passage by a prominent scientist, and yet if you pay careful attention to what he's saying, what he's saying is indeed extremely odd.
Let's look at all the verbs that he attaches to the brain.
In what I just read you, in Crick's view, the brain, quote, sees.
My brain is seeing something.
It hears. My brain is hearing something.
It believes. Brains have the capacity evidently to formulate beliefs.
It guesses. The brain is guessing.
And it even makes, quote, interpretations.
Now, this, I think, is actually a kind of misunderstanding of how human beings are.
In other words, Philosopher Peter Hacker and neuroscientist Matt Bennett did an examination of this exact idea.
The idea that somehow objects, inanimate objects like a hand, a knee, or a brain, that these inanimate objects somehow do things, feel things, believe things.
This is really almost an error of projection.
We're projecting onto these inanimate objects things that the inanimate objects aren't themselves doing.
So, what Hacker and Bennett say is it's a conceptual fallacy to attribute qualities to the brain that are actually possessed by persons.
Let's look at it this way.
My brain is unconscious.
I'm conscious.
My brain doesn't perceive or hear things.
I do. My brain isn't thinking.
I'm thinking. So Crick is guilty of something that is called a pathetic fallacy.
Now, the pathetic fallacy isn't just, this is pathetic.
No, what it really means is the fallacy of ascribing human qualities to inanimate physical objects.
That's what he's doing. Now, think of it this way.
We certainly use our brains to perceive and reason, but we also use our hands and feet to play tennis.
No one would say, my hand is playing tennis.
My feet are playing tennis.
No, your hand and feet aren't playing tennis.
You're playing tennis with your hands and feet and, of course, with your racket.
So, just as it's crazy to say your hands and feet are playing tennis, I mean, that's as nonsensical as saying my racket is playing tennis.
No, you are playing tennis with the racket.
And so, similarly, by the same token, it is wrong to portray the brain as perceiving, feeling, and thinking or even being aware of anything.
▲
Export Selection