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June 20, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
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MONEY PIT Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep604
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This episode is brought to you by my friend Rebecca Walzer, 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, big news about Hunter Biden pleading guilty to tax avoidance.
And I'll talk more about new revelations about Biden corruption.
I'll make the case for why conservatives should make an alliance with Muslim communities over social and cultural issues.
Author Jamie Glazov joins me.
We're going to talk about why the Obama presidency was the turning point.
And country singer Carly Teft is here.
She'll talk about how singing the national anthem at a Trump rally got her canceled.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
America needs this voice.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
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Very interesting new development that Debbie and I spotted just on our way to the studio to do the podcast today.
Wall Street Journal, Hunter Biden to plead guilty to tax crimes.
Wow. Hunter Biden has reached an agreement to plead guilty to charges he willfully failed to pay federal income taxes.
headed by the US Attorney in Delaware, David Weiss.
By the way, a Trump appointee who had stayed on through the Biden administration to continue this criminal inquiry.
There's not a lot of information available yet.
I'm sure more to come.
But this to me is really important because this to me is the first gotcha.
It's a small gotcha because think about it.
We're not talking here about Hunter Biden's crimes, Joe Biden's bribery.
We're not talking about the racket itself.
It's almost like we're not going to pay attention to the racket, but guess what?
Lots of money came into your account.
Where'd you get it? Why didn't you pay taxes on it?
So it's almost like we're catching...
This is a case of getting Al Capone, I won't say on a parking violation, because it's not as trivial as that.
But on the other hand, it's a secondary violation.
It's not the crime itself.
Now, Debbie was saying, gee, you know, he probably did this plea in order to get a light sentence.
Maybe there's some deal he's made in which he basically gets no prison time or he gets off kind of light.
But there's a second reason, and I think probably a more important reason why they made this deal.
They don't want there to be a trial because in a trial, you go into the details.
Where'd this money come from? How did you get it?
Who wrote the check? Let's see the bank records.
So I think what's going on here is that Hunter Biden is kind of taking the fall so that the Biden family racket is not exposed in this way.
This is not to say the Biden family racket is safe.
The Biden family racket is being exposed by the House Oversight Committee and through other means.
But Hunter Biden doesn't want to be the means for it to happen.
And so I think they've made a decision, the Biden family.
It's kind of like, you know... This is similar to when Michael Corleone agrees to take a plea and serve some time so that the dawn is protected.
I think that's really what's going on here.
By the way, turning to the House Oversight Committee, Representative James Comer Was recently on, I believe, CNBC. Well, actually, no, he was on with Maria Bartiromo.
And he goes, look, there's evidence coming in now.
Let's remember that Comer had revealed that the Bidens had received a $10 million payment, $5 million for Joe, $5 million for Hunter, a bribe from Ukraine for Biden to carry out certain duties, including helping to get that prosecutor named Shokin fired, Shokin who was investigating corruption at Burisma.
But now, says Comer, there's going to be evidence of a lot more money going illegally to the Bidens.
He mentions $20 to $30 million.
And this is important because this is not a one-off.
It's not like the Bidens decided, you know what, let's make a deal with this Burisma guy.
We'll collect some money.
That'll be the end of it. No, the Bidens have been taking in tens of millions of dollars from multiple countries, from Costa Rica to Ukraine to Russia to China.
So they've been running a global scheme, a global racket, All of it illegal and, in fact, bordering on treason.
In fact, I don't really see why the line of treason isn't really crossed here.
And so far, Biden's been able to get away with it.
Where's the money? Or recently, he was asked, I think, by somebody at either the New York Post or Fox News, why did the Ukraine FBI informant refer to you as, quote, the big guy?
He goes, why do you ask such a dumb question?
It's not dumb. This phrase, the big guy, was used by Hunter Biden, one of Hunter Biden's business partners on the Hunter Biden laptop.
The same phrase is now used by the Ukraine FBI informant.
And so clearly this was sort of Joe Biden's reference point.
This was kind of his code name, if you will.
Well, he's the big guy. We're not going to say his name because we don't want to bring him up in illegal transactions, but that's who we're talking about.
So this is a...
But now I think with this Hunter Biden pleading guilty to the tax fraud, what's Joe Biden going to say?
Let's remember, Joe Biden said of Hunter Biden, this is the smartest guy I know.
The smartest guy he knows, his own kid, in fact, his bag man for his family racket, is now willfully admitting that he willfully avoided income taxes.
So Joe Biden's going to have some explaining to do.
And hopefully this is only the beginning of his explaining.
He needs to explain what he was selling for which he got all that money.
Let's remember, unlike Trump, he doesn't have a business.
He doesn't have golf courses.
He doesn't have casinos. He doesn't have hotels.
Trump has products.
The only product that Biden has to sell is political influence.
And that, of course, is what he was selling.
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to protect your wealth from the market uncertainty. Debbie and I just did a call with Rebecca's team to talk about our investments. We're pushing ahead and you should too. Go to friendofdinesh.com to book a call with Rebecca's team today. That's friendofdinesh.com to protect your investments and your future. Guys, I'd like to welcome to the podcast my friend Jamie Glazov.
He has a PhD in history with a specialty in Russian, US, and Canadian foreign policy.
He's the editor of Front Page Magazine, the host of the web TV show, The Glazov Gang.
He's written actually a bunch of books.
We're going to talk about the new one that he's edited.
It's called Obama's True Legacy, Barack Obama's True Legacy, How He Transformed America.
By the way, Jamie's website, jamieglazov.com.
Jamie, welcome to the podcast.
Barack Obama.
Is Obama the starting point of the radicalization of the Democratic Party?
When we think back to the Democratic Party of the late 20th century, you got guys like, well, you certainly had Carter, and before that you had Truman, you had JFK. Later, you had Bill Clinton.
But it seems like Obama's cut from a different cloth.
And if we look at the politics of the Democratic Party today, is Obama the fulcrum?
Is he the turning point?
And another question for you, Jamie, is how did Obama turn this whole party into this group of raging maniacs?
Absolutely, Dinesh.
First of all, what an honor to be here and something I'm going to say right now very directly connected to your profound questions.
In 1997, I read a book that was written in 1995 by a man called Dinesh D'Souza, The End of Racism.
If somebody had told me that 27 years later he would be interviewing me, I would have been very surprised and excited.
But in that book, Dinesh, you very much molded and influenced my intellectual journey.
I'm very honored to be here today.
But in that book you showed.
In the end of racism, just even this perspective of seeing America as a profoundly racist country.
And we know that Obama feels that way and believes that.
In your movie, you know, Obama's America, where you also paved the foundation to understanding all of this.
You show that Obama's founding fathers...
You know, we look at, you know, Jeremiah Wright later on in the timeline, but we look at Frank Marshall Davis.
We look at Bill Ayers.
We look at Edward Said and all these characters.
Obama's founding fathers have a profound hatred of the founding fathers of this country, as you show in your film and in all your work.
And once again, I just say that it's an honor to be here because you've intellectually deconstructed this hatred of the United States that Obama represents, and now we see the consequences of.
So, Dinesh, I would say in beginning this conversation is, I don't know if he started it, because we know that the left has its roots, it fertilizes the soil, but he did a tremendous job for the left, for the Marxist left, in fertilizing the soil, planting so many of the new seeds in the hatred of this country, in how the left masquerades itself with humanitarianism.
Where's the face of loving their fellow man, but really trying to destroy this country?
And today we see the consequences of that.
All of that is now revealing itself in Biden's America.
And yes, there's definitely a man pulling the strings, if we want to use that metaphor.
But this is Obama's third term ideologically and in many other respects.
I mean, you made a couple of really important points.
One that I think people will be somewhat familiar with is the Obama camouflage, the skillful way in which Obama was always able to present himself almost as a moderate.
We know that he had firm opinions, but he would act like he's just thinking it through.
He's open to different sides.
So you've got that strategic aspect of Obama.
But the other aspect you alluded to that I think people in America find it hard to believe is that you've got a guy who consciously wants to take down America, consciously wants to take down not just the founding principles, but the actual influence of America in the world.
And so he actively worked to achieve that goal and he was to a degree successful in achieving that goal.
Right. But I think for Americans, the idea that you could have a president who doesn't want the best for America and for Americans seems almost incomprehensible.
But you're saying it's the result of an ideology that was baked into Obama and has been baked into the left more generally over a much longer period of time.
Absolutely. And how shrewd and brilliant they are.
You know, when we think about the Garden of Eden, how the serpent presented himself to Eve, that I'm doing this in your interests, you know, and I want the best for you.
And in one of our essays in our book by John Drew, it's the young communist that I knew.
He writes about how he knew Obama when they were young and going to college.
And they, Obama's discussions were very much about, do we have a revolution?
Or do we do this gradual, smart thing, the Alinsky-ite thing?
And Dinesh, you're absolutely right.
Again, you show it very much in your film, and in many of your films, and in your work, that Obama figured out we're not going to overturn tables and grow long hair and start screaming.
We put on a tie, we put on a jacket, and we sit with them.
Because in order to destroy the middle class, which we hate, we pretend that we're part of the middle class.
So there's a lot of deception involved here.
And it's actually scary to observe it, how much they lie with smiles.
In your film, once again, Obama's America, you know, I rewatch it.
And there's so many profound things and scary things that you unveil there.
But his speeches... I'm not interested in a blue America or in a red America.
I'm interested in America.
He talks unity.
He talks love.
But then when you look deeper, he's actually pouring fuel on the fire and inflaming racial tensions and inflaming hatred of the country.
So, yes, a hatred of the country.
But masquerading itself as wanting to make America a better place, where in fact they want to destroy it, and on the ashes of that destruction they build their utopian paradise.
When we come back, I want to ask you, Jamie, about a specific episode, because I think this is one of the early episodes of political targeting, the way that Obama himself was involved in the targeting of Michael Flynn.
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I'm back with Jamie Glazov. We're talking about his book, Barack Obama's True Legacy.
His website, Jamie Glazov, J-A-M-I-E-G-L-A-Z-O-V dot com.
Jamie, you know, the phenomena, we're dealing today with this really repulsive and scary phenomenon of active political targeting. And it's not two-way targeting.
It's targeting of the right by the left, with Trump being a primary example.
But it looks like in the Obama years, this was cooked up for the first time.
Obviously, I remember my own case going back to 2013.
But there was also the prominent case of Michael Flynn.
Talk about... Not just the targeting of Flynn, because we know that Comey was involved in that and there were a bunch of other people involved with that, Clapper and so on.
But Obama himself was involved because it all goes back to a meeting in the Obama White House in which both Obama and Joe Biden were present.
So talk about that. Absolutely.
We have a chapter in our book by expert Joseph Klein on Obamagate.
And, you know, this is a Stalinist, Leninist, Maoist tactic.
This is very scary.
Dinesh, my family escaped the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union is here now.
And when we look at what Biden is doing today, this just didn't come out of thin air.
There's a foundation for these intelligence agencies overlooked and the puppet masters orchestrating all of this.
There was a war on General Michael Flynn by Obama.
The FBI wanted to shut that down.
But it was Obama that kept that going.
And it was vindictive.
And it was sadistic.
And it was hateful. Because Obama had it out for General Flynn.
And one of the chapters in our book shows that he kept the FBI going on this.
And there was a coordinated effort to destroy this man.
For many, many reasons.
And that's for another time and place.
But he definitely knew too much and opposed the leftist agenda to hurt this country and everything else that was connected to it.
The unleashing of the Muslim Brotherhood and all the destructive policies that Obama had.
But it's very scary.
This is the communist-style political oppression of political dissidents.
Well, some of them...
Some of the background in the chapter is really fascinating, Jamie.
I mean, Obama was scared that Flynn, even after he fired Flynn and pushed him out of the military, that Flynn would blow the whistle on Obama.
Because there was all the stuff with the Arab Spring.
There was, of course, the Iran nuclear deal.
And so they decided to go get Flynn.
They were trying to get him on his connections with the Russians, right?
That Flynn was somehow...
But they couldn't. There was nothing there.
The FBI goes there's nothing there.
So they decide, let's just go interview Michael Flynn at great length.
And if you interview anybody over hours and hours and hours, you will find two statements that seem to contradict each other.
And then you just go, there you go, lying to federal officials.
And so this was from the beginning of...
An early case of find me the man and we will then find a crime.
And Obama was very consciously pushing that forward, using the whole apparatus of government to do it.
I mean, what I find fascinating, Jamie, is this is Alinskyism, but Alinskyism was by and large, you're on the outside pushing to get into the government.
But here's Obama applying Alinsky tactics from the inside using the weaponry of government.
You're absolutely right, Dinesh.
And also, so empowered and feeling exempt because he knows he's not going to be under any scrutiny by the media.
So this is very much part of this story, is how brave he is that there's not going to be any scrutiny on this.
And, you know, just to include it on this, because I think it's very important.
And once again, Dinesh D'Souza, for instance, interviewing Larry Sinclair.
Where were the interviews with this guy? But it's very, very important to mention this, even though that's on another topic.
But we had all these and go Anderson Cooper's trying to get to the bottom of the condom with Stormy Daniels, you know, and all this and we didn't have that with Larry Sinclair, or the death of Donald Young and the things that you revealed in your interview with Larry Sinclair. Why I'm bringing that up is it's just an example of how this man was able to operate and so they can take the FBI do this process crime as you show that we don't have anything, but let's just get in there and after a couple
hours or days or whatever, then we'll maybe find something I mean, this is this actually frightening. And absolutely what they did there was they go on a fishing expedition, and then they try to find something and oppression of political opponents and dissidents.
And now, what are the consequences of that?
FBI officials in parking lots writing down the license plates of parents that don't want drag queens dancing in front of their children in schools.
These are domestic terrorists now, quote unquote, in Joe Biden's America, but that had its roots in Obama's America.
Absolutely, guys. This is why this is an important book, and I'm showing it to you, Barack Obama's True Legacy.
It's edited by Jamie Glazov.
Actually, it's got seven or eight powerful essays and reports by different people.
The website, jamieglazov.com.
Jamie, always a pleasure.
Thanks so much for joining me.
Thank you, Dinesh. I just want to stress that I'm also the editor of Front Page Magazine, right alongside of David Horowitz, who made all of this possible.
And it's a real think tank battling the left.
And we're doing the best we can to try to expose the sinister agenda that you have also helped so significantly in exposing.
Thank you, Dinesh. God bless you.
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I want to do a sort of a woke update, and I want to talk both about developments at Bud Light and also at Disney.
Now, there's a similarity between these two companies.
They're both companies that were established and built their reputations on a certain kind of Americana.
Bud Light was sort of The company that sold product, kind of an all-American product, beer, related to all kinds of activities, Fourth of July picnics, Super Bowls, related to a bunch of frat guys outside their fraternity house drinking Bud Light.
So this was a beer that appealed to kind of American traditions and Americana.
Disney the same. Think about Walt Disney.
Think about, I remember my first trip to Disneyland and then later Disney World.
And wow, you know, I was really struck by how this was a celebration of America, traditional America.
It celebrated American space exploration.
It celebrated America's kind of...
Rural, the beauty of America, Bear Jamboree and so on.
There was a cosmopolitan element to it.
We are the world and the kind of ride through all the different countries, which I remember.
But a lot of it was just celebrating Uncle Sam and celebrating American songs and music and And all of this is now turned upside down in which Disney has now become kind of this sick and demented and perverted institution that's promoting all this gay and transgender propaganda and promoting it on kids.
That's what makes it sort of doubly offensive and doubly disgusting.
And now, Bud Light, I noticed, I saw this in the London Daily Mail, which often has tidbits that you don't see elsewhere.
Bud Light actually won some kind of a advertising award.
The creative director of Bud Light got an award for the brilliance of his advertising.
Now, this seems laughable because the guy has...
In a sense, Bud Light has almost sunk their own company.
Bud Light used to be, by the way, the number one beer in America.
It's now slumped to number two.
They've lost tens.
I mean, I don't know the actual number, but it's a giant number.
Their stock has taken a hit.
They've lost billions of dollars in market value.
So this is one of the most stupid, counterproductive.
I mean, measured just by the results.
I'm not even talking about the ideology of it.
Just look and see. The purpose of advertising is to sell more beer.
Did this ad campaign sell more beer?
No, it almost tanked the company.
So why are you giving them an award?
Well, as it turns out, the award was apparently, it preceded this campaign.
And some people said, of course, that Bud Light should have declined the award because they are now associated with what probably is the worst marketing campaign for 2023, possibly the worst marketing campaign of the past decade.
Welcome to my show!
The reason we haven't been talking about beer is you're the guy who brought the pride and transgender issue onto the can of the Bud Light.
You did that. You introduced the political element, and now you're saying, we're not talking about beer.
We're talking about Dylan Mulvaney and other things like that.
Well, that's the reason we're doing that is because you put that on the table.
You put that on the beer can.
Turning to Disney, Disney has a new movie out, released by Pixar Studios, which is owned by Disney, and the movie is called Elemental.
It's supposedly a movie that fights racism and xenophobia, and it does it by looking at humanized elements.
They take fire, water, earth, air, and convert them into kind of humanized elements.
And supposedly, this is a movie that is fighting bigotry and promoting tolerance.
And it has Disney's first ever non-binary character.
Given all of this, and I don't really plan to see the movie.
In fact, what I think is interesting is that Disney is releasing one horrific flop after the other.
And I'm glad about it.
I actually want the company to go down because they have turned really into the opposite of what they were supposed to be.
They, like Bud Light, they're burning their brand.
Recently, well, going back to 2015, they released The Good Dinosaur Flop.
2020, onward, flop.
And now, the biggest flop of all, Elemental, which, you know, Disney films cost a lot of money.
This is a film that cost over $200 million to make.
And what that means, and this is a little bit of film economics, is if you want to get that money back, and let's say you want to get it back in the U.S. market, you need to make $400 million in the U.S. market because, by and large, the producers get half and the theaters get half.
In fact, this is a film that opened at $29.5 million.
Usually, opening weekend is a third, maybe even a half of all your domestic revenues.
And so, by and large, this is a massive bomb.
It's only going to go downhill from here.
And I'm cheering it.
I'm cheering it because this is a company, as I say, That has sort of violated its social compact with the American people and the social compact with people around the world who go to Disney to see Americana.
The rides are reflections of Americana and what we're getting now from Disney is anti-Americana and the people are staying away and Disney is paying the price and I for one am applauding not their horrible films but Disney's own decline.
What an economic mess we have.
The debt ceiling crisis has come to a head.
The administration is doing its best to force more government spending.
How irresponsible. They've reached a settlement to get the deal done for now, but our national debt continues to skyrocket.
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There's a very interesting phenomenon that we're seeing in the relationship between Republicans and conservatives on the one hand and Muslims on the other.
Now, traditionally, or at least since 9-11, conservatives have been We're quite critical of not just the Muslim community for not speaking out against 9-11, but critical of Islam itself.
There's a strain of Republicans and conservatives, by the way, me not among them, that have denounced Islam itself as being the root of the problem.
I took the opposite view.
In fact, in a book I wrote around 2008-2009 called The Enemy at Home, I argued that the Muslims should be divided into two camps, not the liberal Muslims, there really aren't any, but traditional Muslims versus radical Muslims.
That the radical Muslims are not an insignificant number, but they are the minority.
The traditional Muslims are the normal Muslims who practice Islam the way it's been practiced since the days of Muhammad.
And I said that these traditional Muslims are socially and culturally conservative, and that Republicans and conservatives could make common cause and common ground and even find allies, if not allies across the board, if you can't get these people to vote Republican.
At least allies on certain key issues.
And now there's a huge issue, and it's the issue of the LGBTQ, and it's the issue of trans propaganda, and it's the issue of trans indoctrination of children.
Now, interestingly, as I say, for more than a decade, a lot of conservatives and Republicans were, you could say, pro-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim.
So they were pointing out things like, Well, look, you know, in Islamic countries, or in some Islamic countries, they throw the gays out of windows, or there's Muslim countries that have outlawed homosexuality, and the idea was that Western civilization stands for liberalism, and liberalism means tolerance, and tolerance means that we are for the LGBTQ, or at least for the right to be LGBTQ, and the Muslims are intolerant.
But what's happening, what's changing, I think, is Is that the Muslims are becoming more activist against Pride Month.
A very interesting resolution that was passed recently.
Actually, not a resolution. It was a bill, a law, by Muslims who took over a city council board.
And when they first did, the left was jubilant.
Oh, Muslims have taken over the city council.
I think this is somewhere in Michigan.
And now that very same Muslim city council has outlawed any pride displays on city property.
So, the Muslims have realized, listen, this is not something that doesn't affect us.
This is stuff that is being driven through the public schools.
They're trying to propagandize our kids, and we're not going to have it.
Let's remember that Muslims on this kind of stuff are very tough, and we can learn something from them.
We should be tougher than we are, because a lot of times Christian groups are like, well, we've got to be tolerant.
Well, I don't know.
I don't really know if it's our place to be challenging this kind of stuff.
Well, with the Muslims, they've realized, if we don't do it, who's going to do it?
Who's going to protect our children?
So they're stepping forward.
And conservatives are now making concrete, deliberate, conscious outreach to the Muslim community.
Yeah. This is happening in Montgomery County, Maryland.
It's happening in Dearborn, Michigan.
It's happening in basically the places where you do have Muslim populations that do make a political difference.
And it seems like the interest in a kind of Muslim GOP alliance, or at least a working relationship, is coming from both sides.
It's coming from the Muslims who realize, wow, we have some new allies in the GOP and our so-called, our normal allies, the Democrats, the left, are not going to help us on this.
In fact, they're siding with the LGBTQ guys.
And similarly, from the Republican side, it comes the knowledge that, hey, listen, not only is this an influential group, the Muslims, but they also happen to be in certain swing states.
They're in suburban Virginia and They are in Michigan, which is undoubtedly a swing state.
So I think this is actually a very intelligent move by the GOP and, in general, a very positive development.
Why? Because this trans stuff is totally out of hand.
This is no longer a matter of tolerance.
It may have started off as a matter of tolerance, but now it's become the fact that this is hurled at you from every direction.
And your right to have your point of view, hey, I don't like this stuff, I don't want it foisted on my kids, that is now treated as somehow intolerant.
In other words, we have gone from permitting something to now being on the defensive, up against the wall.
And so if we can find some Muslim allies to push back against it, I say, better late than never.
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Carly, welcome to the podcast.
You're new to our audience.
Talk a little bit about yourself and how you decided to become a musician.
Thank you so much for having me, Dinesh.
I just grew up, honestly, with songs in my head.
As a songwriter, that's kind of how our imagination works.
And I thought it was normal.
I thought everybody had songs in their head.
But until I got a guitar around the age of 13 and put what was in here onto chords and melody, that was when the ball started to roll for me.
And with the support of my friends and family, auditioned for Berklee College of Music, Had an amazing four years there and always heard about Nashville and had to come check it out for myself.
So I moved down here and since then I've been back and forth between New England and Nashville touring, performing, writing.
It's been a really beautiful journey and I've been very grateful.
I've often wondered about the creative process with composing music.
I'm a writer, and so I think of writing as a combination of a craft that you learn, but also inspiration.
Probably 50-50, would you say that the song, as you say, just kind of comes to you, or is there a kind of craft to it?
It's interesting.
So, by myself, I will always have...
ways to get inspiration either by a melody, a chord progression, someone tells me a story and I find that really interesting. I go through something personally and want to write about it, but in Nashville we do a lot of co-writes so we keep, you know, I think every songwriter here in Nashville has notes full of titles and ideas and the voice memos that we sing into the iPhones.
So then we bring those into co-writes and kind of work things out together.
So there's a couple different ways to do it.
And I think that's what makes the creative process so exciting, as you can attest to.
There's different formulas to get an incredible song.
Carly, you were invited to sing the national anthem at the Trump rally in New England when you were asked to do this.
Well, first of all, how did this come about?
And second of all, did you see this as something controversial or were you just like, hey, this is awesome.
Let me go do this. It'll be really fun and I'll get some good exposure and I support Trump.
What was your talk about that event?
It's interesting. The National Anthem was something I, as an artist, had to work through myself because it is not an easy song to sing.
So for many years, I tried to find my own way to sing it and gained a lot of confidence through it.
I performed at... I've performed for the Boston Bruins, all different sports organizations, and also from local organizations as well, to veteran organizations.
So I've had a lot of experience, and it just is always an honor whenever I get asked.
So when I got the call from the Trump folks, I thought, wow, this is a former president asking me to sing our country's national anthem.
That's beautiful.
And like you said, what a great opportunity.
But really, I always look at the anthem as something to do for my country.
And I don't look at it as political.
And then, after you sing the National Anthem, now I guess you were scheduled, were you scheduled to perform at the Harvest Gallery?
Tell us what happened.
I'm interested in the mechanics of the cancellation process, not just, hey, Carly, Tev got cancelled, but did you get a phone call?
Was it the day before?
Talk about what happened and how you heard about it.
I posted my video of singing the National Anthem, which I've always done whenever I've performed the National Anthem.
I usually do post it to my websites and my social media accounts.
Again, it's such an honor.
So I posted the video and about five days after, I got a phone call from the owner who I haven't spoken to in probably over a year.
I usually work and book through a different manager.
And he initially left me a message and said, please call me right away.
So I thought something really urgent was happening.
And I got on the phone and he just described, you know, this was, I'm sure, a great opportunity for you, but I'm trying not to be controversial.
And at my space, I can't hang nude people.
Because they're controversial and they may offend people.
And it was this really roundabout way for him to ask this question of, well, are you a Trump supporter?
And... Immediately, I just knew he had already made up his mind.
It didn't matter what I said after that.
And I still stand by exactly what I said.
You know, the only person I wholeheartedly support is God, my Lord and Savior, Jesus.
Every politician is going to be polarizing.
Every politician is going to let you down.
The national anthem is something I don't view as political.
I view it as an honor and respect.
And especially from a former president, I view that as I'm doing something respectful for the country.
So that was how I presented myself in the conversation.
And he said, you know, I'm sure, you know, it's great.
You did that. You got a great head on your shoulders, but we're going to go ahead and cancel your performances for the rest of the year.
It seems like he was almost trying to say something like that this wasn't really something he wanted to do, but he was seemingly compelled by...
Was he saying all my customers are like Trump haters and they're not going to want to come here because...
Is that what he was getting at? Yeah, he made a reference saying, you know, I just don't want my customer base to feel threatened.
Yeah. I still am wrapping my head around that because I don't sing the national anthem at my own shows.
I have my own original songs.
I have plenty of cover songs I love to play as well.
I also don't wear anything political.
I don't speak my political beliefs upon anyone.
That was just an interesting way for him to phrase it.
Wow, Carly. Well, I wish you well.
It just shows you the crazy times we live in, in which something as innocuous as singing the national song is going to get you canceled in this way.
Guys, check out Carly's music.
Her website is carlyteft.com.
Hey, Carly, thanks very much for joining me.
Thank you for having me. I'm talking about what makes Christianity unique and different from other religions.
And I want to mention that I'm now approaching the very end of this mini-course and also of my discussion of the book What's So Great About Christianity.
I'm in the penultimate chapter called Jesus Among Other Gods.
Now, the last chapter focuses on what Christianity can do for you, how Christianity can change your life.
And rather than do that in bits and pieces, I thought I would devote a special episode to it.
So, this Friday...
I'm going to talk about the seven reasons why we should consider Christianity, why we should consider becoming and being Christian.
And I'm going to go beyond the intellectual arguments, the sort of psychological arguments, the historical arguments.
I'm just going to focus on the pragmatic one, which is, why is it good for us?
What benefits does Christianity, in a very practical way, deliver to us?
So that's coming up in a special edition on Friday.
So, between now and Friday, my goal is to finish the penultimate chapter and then set up the conclusion on Friday, which will then complete the course and we'll be on next week to something else.
Now, I've been talking about the way in which different religions attempt to create a human ladder to ascend toward God or ascend to God.
And I'll focus today on Judaism and Islam.
Judaism and Islam, it seems like, have some tension between Jews and Christians in the Middle East.
And yet, Judaism and Islam are actually quite similar.
They're both religions of law as opposed to religions of creed.
Christianity is more of a creedal.
I believe. Think of the creed.
I believe in this. I believe in that.
The Christians affirm the things they believe.
Jews and Muslims, not that they don't have things that they believe, but the emphasis is on what you do.
It's on your actions.
It's on, well, whether you're modest or not is a separate issue, but the point is you need to wear the veil.
And both of them, Judaism and Islam, have pretty strict codes and commandments.
They even have pretty strict dietary restrictions.
The Muslims, for example, have the halal.
You can only eat food that is halal.
The Jews have, of course, kosher.
And I remember Debbie and I were talking to our friend Zev Ornstein from Jerusalem.
And we were talking about kosher, and I asked him whether the reason the Jews have all these prohibitions is because in ancient times there were lots of foods that were simply unsafe to eat.
There weren't ways to have these foods cleaned, and so you could get all kinds of infections or diseases if you ate.
And he goes, well, actually, yes and no.
He said, to some degree, that may be true.
But he goes, a lot of times the Jewish kosher is simply because of God's desire, God's instruction that the Jews be a people apart.
So his point is there's nothing wrong with these foods or some of these foods, but we don't eat them anyway because we're trying to say we're not like everybody else.
We're trying to maintain, if you will, our separateness as a people, which I thought was very interesting.
It's not something that quite had occurred to me in that way.
But yes, both Judaism and Islam have these codes and rituals, pray five times a day, pack up and go to Mecca, sacrifice a lamb or goat, in some cases wear a long beard, keep kosher.
Interestingly, the Jewish jurist Maimonides even says circumcision is essential for salvation.
I'm quoting him now. Whoever neglects the covenant of our ancestor Abraham and retains the foreskin will have no portion in the world to come.
Wow! So the rigor of these rules has caused, well, many Jews and Muslims to kind of ignore them and just follow a few select prescriptions that they can live with.
And these are the so-called reformed Jews or the Muslims who practice only to a certain point, who seem to have given up on trying to live up to the full rigor of their legal codes.
They're trying to, well, I guess their hope is that God is not too much of a stickler for these kinds of details.
But when we think really about the full depth of human sin, I think it's silly to ask of God that he be kind of a lenient tradesman who's willing to accept 30% payment, because God's justice in this sense demands full reimbursement.
Now, in some ways, I can sympathize with the slackers because they're correct that it is too difficult to render full compensation to God.
I even sympathize with Christopher Hitchens, who says, if God wanted man to live up to these high standards, quote, he should have taken more care to invent a different species.
And the point I want to make, which I'll pick up tomorrow, is that Christianity agrees with Hitchens that the standards are difficult.
In fact, Christianity goes further.
It says not only are these moral standards difficult, they are impossible.
Not only is it impossible to stop sinning, even the most devout Christian can't stop sinning, but it's also impossible to atone for your sins.
Because how would you go about atoning for them?
You might say, well... Can you locate everyone that you've wronged in your life and make them whole?
Yes, you can say, well, I'm not going to do it again.
I'm going to live a subsequent life of goodness.
But hey, this is not an atonement because you should have been doing this anyway.
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