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July 3, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
53:58
The Left’s America and How to Stop It Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep 613
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Hi, everybody. This is Brandon Gill.
I'm Dinesh's son-in-law, and I'll be hosting his podcast this week while he takes some much-deserved time off and enjoys his Fourth of July with some of his family from India that he doesn't get to see quite as often.
Right about now, he should be watching the tournament at Wimbledon.
I have to say, I'm quite jealous.
If you're a regular listener to the Dinesh D'Souza podcast, you might have heard me in the past a few times.
I'm the founder and editor-in-chief of an America First news outlet called DC Inquirer, which I highly encourage you to read.
We have breaking news you won't want to miss, and our articles are often shared on social media by our favorite president, Donald Trump.
And if Donald Trump reads DC Inquirer, then you probably should too.
I actually think we're becoming one of his favorite news outlets.
So make sure you check us out at dcinquirer.com.
That's dcinquirer with an e.com to subscribe to our emails and get news updates.
You can find me on Truth Social at Brandon Gill.
You can follow me on Twitter at RealBrandonGill.
You can also find me on Facebook and Instagram where I write down some of my thoughts on politics there as well.
Today for our 4th of July episode, we're going to take a step back for a minute and try to think about what is the America the left wants.
We're going to dive into some of their motivations and intentions.
We want to ask why they do what they do.
Then we have Gavin Wax joining us to talk about the Young Republican Club in New York that he leads, how it's exploded and is now a political force in New York politics.
Let's get started. 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.
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D-I-N-E-S-H. Dinesh.
Happy 4th of July and welcome to the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
I'm Brandon Gill.
Anybody who's been paying attention the last few years can see that the American left and right live in two different worlds.
They believe in two different Americas.
Unlike, say, 10 years ago, political differences aren't characterized by disagreements over marginal tax rates, the extent of the social safety net, or what our government's role in our healthcare system should be.
Those are all important questions, but they now seem like the debates of another era, a past prosaic time.
Compared to modern political discourse, those issues sound almost petty.
Political dialogue today is about far more fundamental truths.
And because of that, for normal Americans who weren't born yesterday, they become increasingly incomprehensible.
Just take a look at some of the hottest debates of today.
There's a vocal group of people in our country who can't tell you what a woman is, but they'll demand you give adult men the right to share a locker room with your teenage daughter.
I bet five years ago you didn't expect you'd be debating that.
Nobody would. In fact, not long ago you'd be considered a sexual predator for even suggesting such a thing.
But that's what's happening now in schools across the country.
In fact, it's the US Department of Education's official policy to defend it.
They said so in a policy letter last year.
You probably also didn't expect to be seriously debating the merits of free speech.
It wasn't long ago when both parties defended each other's right to debate, to speak openly and disagree.
That was a fundamental part of the political process.
Not anymore. Now one side is quite supportive of federal government directing social media companies to censor political dialogue.
That's what Facebook and Twitter did before the 2020 election, often with guidance from the federal government.
And it's what Facebook and YouTube still do.
And you've probably noticed a change in the way we talk about immigration.
We used to debate how many immigrants America as a sovereign nation can sustainably take in.
Our resources have limits, of course, and we have the right to determine who enters our country.
Now, for all practical purposes, that debate is over.
The debate now is whether America should have any physical borders at all.
If it's all a bit confusing, that's not surprising.
This has all happened so fast.
It's almost impossible for a sane person to keep up with or understand.
But it's not just gender-free speech and immigration.
There's another aspect of our new revolutionary political climate that's even more difficult to understand.
It's the new debate about crime, punishment, and justice.
Last week, a woman in Austin, Texas named Jacqueline Edison was sentenced after being involved in a murder-for-hire plot.
She helped hire two hitmen to murder her then-husband's parents.
In her sentencing, Austin's DA, Jose Garza, struck a plea bargain, and Edison walked away with only 10 years of probation.
In fact, she was given a special kind of probation, a deferred adjudication, which means that the conviction will not even be on her criminal record.
If that doesn't disturb you, it should.
Commenting on the case, Dennis Ferris, the president of the Austin Police Retired Officers Association, had this to say.
In the close to half a century that I've worked with criminal law as a prosecutor and a defense attorney, I have never seen anything like this.
I can't put it together in my mind and I just don't understand it.
She is evil.
Most of us can't understand what happened here either.
It certainly seems like no country for old men.
This is the kind of case that usually you give drug offenders, not people involved in premeditated murder plots.
The reason it's difficult to understand is that for most of our history, if you commit a crime, you are punished.
Murderers are sent to prison or hanged.
Thieves and frauds were thrown in jail.
Hiring hitmen to murder your in-laws wasn't allowed.
It was punished severely.
Criminals used to get what they deserve.
That's the definition of justice.
And when it's effectively carried out, it reduces crime.
Turns out bad guys tend to commit less crime when they're locked up.
And locking up bad guys has kept our communities safe.
But that's not what D.A. Garza wanted.
If you live in one of America's many cities, you've probably noticed some changes recently.
The places you used to go don't feel quite as comfortable anymore.
Your physical safety is more of a concern than it was, say, five years ago.
You might not have been robbed or assaulted, but you have friends and neighbors who have been.
They were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nowadays, there are some places you just don't go.
In big cities, you don't walk home at night anymore.
You take a cab.
And the reason this is happening is, of course, well known.
A man by the name of George Soros, a household name at this point, has been dumping millions of dollars into local district attorney's races.
DAs are the guys who are supposed to look out for you and me, keep bad guys off the streets and make our neighborhoods safer.
Instead, they're doing the opposite.
It was George Soros who spent $600,000 to help get Jose Garza elected.
And it's not just in Austin.
In Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, Soros-backed groups gave Larry Krasner $1.7 million for his DA campaign.
That was 90% of Krasner's campaign cash.
Krasner began his tenure by firing the city's homicide prosecutors.
He ordered his remaining staff to stop prosecuting most drug offensives.
Prosecutions for both felonies and misdemeanors dropped by 70%.
Since Krasner was elected, murders are up 63%, shootings are up 78%, and in more than 60% of murder cases in Philadelphia, not a single suspect has been arrested.
It's a similar story in New York.
Soros funneled $1 million into District Attorney Alvin Bragg's race.
Since being elected, Bragg has pursued a radically pro-criminal agenda.
Conviction rates have plummeted.
Prosecutors are downgrading more than half of felony cases to misdemeanors, including in cases of armed robbery.
Not surprisingly, last year Gotham saw a 22% increase in robbery, burglary, and other crimes across the city.
We could go on for nearly every major city in the country.
Under Soros-backed Kim Gardner, murders in St.
Louis have hit a 50-year high.
Every weekend in Chicago is a bloodbath, and San Francisco looks like the Night of the Living Dead, with streets filled with vagrants wasting away, drugged out of their minds.
And it's not just the big liberal cities.
One in five Americans now lives in areas controlled by Soros-backed DAs.
In this new revolutionary liberal justice system, DAs don't prosecute crime, and when they do they try not to convict.
Unlike you and me, the people who have to live in these cities, these new left-wing DAs don't think bad guys are bad.
Remember, When you don't prosecute criminals for violating crimes, when you don't prosecute them for violating the law, the laws might as well not exist.
It's striking because until a few years ago, most people didn't even know who their DA was.
You don't see DA signs in your neighbor's yard.
People don't talk about DA races at dinner parties or at the local barbecue.
And for George Soros and the left, that's precisely the point.
Because in more well-publicized races, it's rare for candidates to win on soft on crime platforms.
Vote for me and I'll stop prosecuting murderers.
It just doesn't work.
But George Soros found a political loophole.
In finance or business, you might say he found political races that were mispriced.
He realized he can spend a relatively small amount of money to have a very large impact on American communities.
From the left's perspective, he gets a lot of bang for his buck.
Remember, these are races that they specifically sought out.
Soros and the left targeted our local communities.
But the question is often asked, why?
Why would somebody like Soros, an immigrant, one of the richest people in the world, want to do this?
And even more perplexing is why would any American want this, liberal or conservative?
It's not just Soros who wants this.
There are people in very high places in our government who support him.
According to the New York Post, leaders from the Soros Foundation have had over two dozen meetings with top officials at the White House since Biden was inaugurated.
That makes Soros' foundation one of the most well-connected private institutions in the world.
But why?
Decriminalization isn't popular.
There's no coherent legal theory that would suggest refusing to enforce our nation's democratically enacted laws as just.
There's no sane philosophical system that advocates for essentially decriminalizing murder.
But we do know what the effect is, and by their fruits ye shall be known.
When laws aren't enforced, crime and anarchy prevail.
And when anarchy reigns, our institutions begin to collapse.
And when that happens, our country, our civilization unravels.
In other words, in the absence of law and order, we have disorder.
And disorder creates crises.
And crises can be times of profound, systematic change.
For the politically minded, crises are opportunities.
They're times of revolution.
They're times when you can get rid of the old and introduce the new.
A new political order.
A new economic order.
A new social order.
A new religious order.
And for the very ambitious, ultimately, a new world order.
And the new order can be made in the molten image of the left.
And it's worth asking if that's precisely why this is happening.
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Welcome back.
Welcome back!
I'm Brandon Gill filling in for Dinesh.
We've been talking a little bit about George Soros and the left's agenda with our justice system.
But there's another aspect of the left that's worth mentioning.
If we want to win against the left, we need to understand what exactly it is they are advocating for and what exactly it is they think about us.
We need to understand their underlying ideology.
And admittedly, it's sometimes difficult.
Leftist positions often seem contradictory or hypocritical.
They don't seem to follow normal American political principles or rules.
For example, free speech.
Our political system depends on open debate and even if we disagree with each other, we have to have open dialogue.
When somebody says something offensive, we have to tolerate it.
Doesn't it seem odd that large numbers of leftists want to ban hate speech or other things they don't like?
Especially when you consider that they say offensive things all the time.
Turn on a late night comedy show and you'll hear left-wing hosts mocking Christians and white people precisely because they are Christian and white.
And why is it that some of the most vocal opponents of the Second Amendment live in gated communities or have private security details?
Shouldn't everybody have the right to protect themselves?
We're usually told that leftists are just hypocritical.
And the problem, we're often told, is that they're blind to their own hypocrisy.
If Republicans can just call them out on it, maybe they'll realize they aren't being fair.
It's an easy criticism to make.
Look in the mirror, libs, we caught you.
It seems so straightforward.
But it's worth asking whether hypocrisy is really the best way to nail down today's left.
Do they really just need to look in the mirror and see why they're wrong?
Of course, there is a subset of the more old-school liberals where this might be the case.
That's, for example, the billionaire limousine liberal getting on his private jet to fly across the globe to a conference on climate change.
It's the New York liberal who supports higher taxes but then hires sophisticated accounting firms to reduce his own taxes.
Or it's the white leftist who demands everybody else pay race-based reparations but somehow has never had the inclination to give up any of his own wealth or privilege.
Those are examples of obvious hypocrisy.
We see them all the time.
That's the kind of hypocrisy that's been the foundation of Democrat Party politics for my entire lifetime.
And those are instances where shaming leftists for their flagrant hypocrisy might be helpful.
But it seems like there's something a little bit different about the new left-wing agenda.
You've probably noticed it.
The universal values that we've assumed every American believes in can't be taken for granted anymore.
Those are things like belief in freedom of speech, freedom to worship, a belief in the primacy of the rule of law, a belief that we're all created equal before the law and ultimately before God, a belief that political violence is never okay.
Those are the universal values that have always held us together as a nation.
We may disagree on a lot of things, but we've always had these principles in common.
But too many in today's left don't believe in these values anymore.
They don't believe, for example, in freedom of speech as a God-given right.
They don't believe that you have the freedom...
To question the legitimacy of the 2020 election, no matter what they said about 2016 or any other past election cycle.
They also don't believe that people of different political persuasions are in fact equal before the law.
Just ask Dinesh.
Something that a liberal would have received a slap on the wrist for made Dinesh a felon.
And when they genuinely don't believe in these universal principles that underlie American civilization, it seems difficult to say that hypocrisy is the issue.
If you don't believe the backwards bigoted Christians have a legitimate role to play in a free civil society, is it hypocritical to shut down churches while leaving strip clubs open?
That's what California did during the pandemic.
But to Gavin Newsom in the modern left, Strip clubs have a productive, beneficial place in a modern society.
Churches don't.
What about when leftists cheer as the federal government locks down January 6th protesters in solitary confinement, bringing the full force of the federal government against them, while Black Lives Matter rioters are free to burn down our communities and loot small businesses with impunity?
What if the left doesn't really believe opposing political movements should be equal before the law?
They don't. To a modern leftist, Black Lives Matter was good for society.
They were freedom fighters.
January 6th protesters were bad.
One movement should be celebrated.
The other shouldn't be tolerated.
And if innocent business owners have their stores looted and ransacked, so be it.
It seems the best way to describe the left's view of political and social rights may not be hypocrisy.
Instead, it's hierarchy.
Some things are just okay.
Others aren't.
If you pay attention to leftist rhetoric, you can get a bit more insight into why they might think this way.
If their side is progressive, our side, the opposing side, the one who disagrees with them, must be regressive.
If they are the anti-fascists swarming our streets to stop the deluge of right-wing authoritarianism, then we must be the fascists who want to bring America to some kind of Mussolini-style dictatorship.
If their political movement is called something as seemingly benign as Black Lives Matter, then anybody who isn't adamantly on board must not believe black lives actually have worth.
And if being pro-science means mandatory jabs, state-enforced lockdowns, anybody who disagrees must be backwards and anti-science.
We could keep going on, but you get the point.
You've heard it enough.
If we want to understand what the other side thinks, we have to take them at their word.
And if we take them at their word, then it becomes a lot more clear why they don't think we should have equal political rights.
Just ask yourself, if you could go back in time to 1930s Italy, would you be fighting to defend Mussolini's free speech?
What if you lived in Germany at the time?
Wouldn't you do everything you could possibly do to stop Hitler from coming to power?
The answer is, of course you would, and that's what they think of us.
To today's left, that's the point.
It's something we need to remember, because the first step towards winning political battles is understanding the other side.
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Alright, welcome back to the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
This is Brandon Gill filling in for Dinesh this week while he's taking some time off overseas watching tennis at Wimbledon.
If you look across the country, there are young Republican clubs in almost every major city.
The young Republicans are places where young people who are like-minded can meet other young people.
They can get involved in local political races.
They can get involved in their local communities and try and have an impact for the conservative movement.
One of the most interesting things about that is if you sort of compare all these different young Republican clubs, you would think that the most lively, the most active and vibrant clubs would be in deep red states like Texas or Florida.
But that's not really the case.
Those states have their clubs and they're great.
But one of the most active and flourishing young Republicans clubs in the country is actually in New York.
They have their clubhouses in Manhattan, a place where 85% of the population voted for Hillary Clinton.
This is a club that's headed by Gavin Wax, who's joining us.
Gavin, thanks for being here.
Gavin has been the president of the New York Young Republicans Club for the past several years.
He's also an activist, a commentator, a columnist, and a political operator.
Gavin's an ambassador for Turning Point and Live Action.
You've probably seen him on Fox News or Fox Business.
He's also been on Newsmax and OAN. He is a very active, prolific writer, including for DC Inquirer, so you can find some of his work there.
Gavin, thanks for joining us.
Well, thanks for having me, Brandon. It's great to be on and great to be speaking with you today about the club and all the work we're doing here in the belly of the beast, New York City.
Right. It's kind of the political heart of darkness for a conservative.
So Gavin, tell us, just give us some background on the club.
Five years ago, the club wasn't what it is today.
So tell us, how did you find the club?
What state was it in?
And give us a bit of the back story.
Absolutely. Well, like you mentioned, the club is a storied institution.
We are the oldest young Republican club in the country.
Frankly, probably the oldest Republican club in the country.
The current iteration of the club was founded in 1911, but it goes back all the way to 1856 with the founding of the party and the nomination of Abraham Lincoln as the Republican Party candidate in the 1860 election.
So it has a very long storied history, a lot of famous members over the years.
It's been a political force in New York City and New York State for over a century.
But that wasn't always the case.
It's gone through, it's ebbed and flowed in terms of its activity, in terms of its successes, in terms of its stature.
When I took over the club in April of 2019, it was kind of on its last leg.
There was only a few dozen members.
It was very few, very little money in the bank account.
The events were, you know, few and far between, sparsely attended.
It was really kind of an organization on its last leg and really only had this sort of legacy to hang on.
But beyond that, it was sort of failing, and it really had also devolved into very much a rhino club, very liberal and moderate in terms of its...
Ideological leanings.
When we took over the club in April of 2019, we completely professionalized it.
We completely changed its direction.
We certainly moved it towards MAGA, America First, pro-Trump against the advice and counsel of many of its former leaders.
What we saw over the past few years is that we created a network.
We created a parallel structure here in New York.
We created some place where conservatives and populists could come together, could meet other like-minded people, could hear great speeches from conservative thinkers and commentators from across the country.
They can get active and engaged with political campaigns and they can also just have fun at socials.
We built it as a holistic organization.
Many people said just do one thing or the other.
Just do campaigns, don't do socials.
Or just do socials, don't do campaigns.
Just have speakers, don't do anything else.
We're building a fully-fledged institution.
Because of that, we rose from a few dozen members in 2019.
Now we have over 1,200 dues-paying members.
We have a clubhouse, our own headquarters here in Manhattan.
We're the only club, young Republican club in the country, to have their own physical space.
Our gala is attended by over 500, 600 people.
I know you've been a guest at many of them.
This year we're going to be at Cipriani Wall Street, which is the largest and most exclusive event venue in the city of New York.
And we grew it as a volunteer organization.
I don't get paid. No one else gets paid.
A completely volunteer-run organization.
Now we're a $750,000 a year org in terms of our revenue between the gala and our events and our membership dues and everything else.
So we're very happy that we've built up.
Such a large and formidable political force that has helped elect Republicans here in deep blue New York, either whether it's on the city council or the state assembly or the state senate or even congress.
We've had boots on the ground.
We've staffed those offices with our members.
We're kind of creating like a mini, like a junior league for, or a feeder system, like in base.
We're very happy to do that and continue to do that.
We don't have massive institutional backing, massive donor backing.
We're not a Beltway establishment org.
We're funded by our members, supported by our members.
We remain true to the grassroots.
We're very happy to see this model flourish in New York, and we're seeing similar models take root in places like DC and Palm Beach and across the country.
And I think that's one of the amazing things.
Danielle and I used to live in New York, and we would go to some of the events.
And every time we would go, they're filled with people.
They're not rhinos.
They're not establishment people.
They're hardcore, pro-Trump, pro-America first people in New York, again, of all places.
We've been to your gala the past several years, and I think Marjorie Taylor Greene and some other people have spoken.
And it's always, I mean, it's a huge party.
It's a lot of fun.
So tell me, I mean, you come in four or five years ago.
The club doesn't exist.
What is it that you saw in this club that you wanted to resurrect?
Well, look, I think the conservative movement writ large needs to do more work in cities and with young professionals.
I think you look at New York City and we've seen a lot of commentators say, run from the cities, flee the cities, run and hide.
And I think that's the sort of losing mentality that has put Republicans and conservatives on the back foot.
We have to stop ceding ground.
We have to stop running. I'm not saying we're going to flip a place like New York City overnight.
I'm not saying we're going to ever flip it.
But I'm saying we need to keep an active presence in the cities because these are places that inform our media, our financial system, all the major institutions and the cultural levers of power, if you will, I think we're good to go.
Many young professionals who grew up in conservative households, who are conservative, they move to places like New York, they're moving up their career, whether it's in finance or law or media or whatever, and they eventually drift away from their conservative leanings because they don't have any sort of support network in these places because it's so dominated by the mainstream leftist orthodoxy.
So a club like ourself, even though we're in deep blue New York and we may not have all the elect I think it's super important.
I think even if you look electorally, states like Pennsylvania, states like New York, etc., you don't have to win the cities.
You don't have to win Philadelphia.
You don't have to win New York.
But if you get the numbers on the margins, if you move say New York City from the mid-20s in terms of Republicans to like 33, you flip New York.
We even saw this past cycle.
Lee Zeldin came very close and I would say his loss can largely be attributed to his numbers in New York City and had his numbers moved say to 30, 31, 33 percent in the city, not winning New York but moving it on the margins because there are so many people here.
You could have seen us flip this state in the gubernatorial race.
Likewise in a place like PA with Philadelphia, we just saw Trump there with tons of crowds coming out for him.
You move the numbers there, all of a sudden we take PA back.
So we need an urban strategy.
We need a young professional strategy.
We put a lot of emphasis on the colleges, which is only four years.
You put all these emphasis on campus.
But campus, you're at best getting four years out of them.
And where they live on campus is not where they vote.
The young professional organizations such as the YRs, that's really where you're going to get close to 20 years of their life from 80 or over 20, so 80 to 40, 18 to 40, excuse me, 18 to 40, and that's where they're really starting a family, starting a business, becoming established in their career.
That's the demographic group that we need to maintain, that we need to strengthen.
I'm very happy the club can be part of that.
I mean, I think that's exactly right.
whether we as conservatives like it or not.
New York is one of the major cultural centers for the country and the entire world.
And you can say the same thing to maybe a little bit lesser extent, but you can say the same thing about most major cities.
They are cultural hubs, and they're places that we can't just cede ground in.
I think what's interesting about what you guys are doing is whenever you think about getting involved in a far-left area like New York City, kind of the The typical strategy is to moderate a little bit, to kind of be more like the city.
If you're in New York, to be more like the sort of state establishment Republicans there, to be soft on social issues, on immigration and things like that.
And you guys have actually done the exact opposite of that.
So tell me about how, you know, What's the thought behind that strategy?
and it's obviously worked really well for you, but tell us about that.
No, you said it right. It's certainly counterintuitive, and many people certainly advised us against it. They told us, continue being establishmentarian, be very moderate, be even liberal. That's the only way you're going to get Republicans in deep blue New York.
And that was the strategy the club under previous administrations had been run, and it did nothing. I mean, if they had really built a really effective and large establishment style, liberal, moderate style Republican club, I could at least respect the competence and I can at least respect their ability to grow an org, but they weren't even able to do that.
But I think really what it boils down to is when you're in such a deep, loose place, when you're in such a liberal hotbed, a leftist hotbed, the Republicans and conservatives that exist in those areas, they're hardcore because they're under constant pressure to validate their views, to defend their views, to fight off accusations of racism and whatever it is they attack Republicans for.
They're battle-hardened.
They're in the trenches every day just by virtue of being a conservative in a place like New York.
It's very easy to be a Republican in a deep-red state.
It's very easy to be a conservative in a deep-red state because all the political infrastructure and in many cases the culture is still very conservative.
But in a place like New York, you're really going against the grain.
You're very counterculture. And because of that, you need to embrace that counterculture.
You need to be against something.
You can't just be a moderated version of the Demge.
You can't be just like Democrat-lite.
People are looking for an alternative.
They're looking for an alternative worldview.
They're looking for an alternative set of policies and philosophies by which to govern their city and the country as a whole.
And they're not looking for watered-down Democrat policies.
They're looking for you to provide a completely holistic alternative vision.
So that's why I think being stalwart conservatives and populists here in New York has paid off well because the people that are here, the pockets of Republicans and conservatives that are here – and there are many – We're good to go.
The margins that shifted between 2016 and 2020, there was big margin shifts in terms of the percent shift between Trump's numbers in 16 and 20 in places like New York, in these outer borough, working class, socially conservative, economically populist areas.
Many of them are white working class, many of them are Hispanic working class, and they're changing the face of the Republican Party.
The Republican Party in New York is no longer the Rockefeller Republican Party of They're no longer these moderate northeast establishment waspy guys.
They're turning into sort of these populist-style figures.
And Trump himself is a man from Queens.
He's a New Yorker. And he sort of embraces that sort of outer borough, rough-and-tumble populist-style rhetoric and energy.
And that's kind of what made him so successful at the National State.
in many ways.
So we're embracing that same persona.
And I would tell people that New York is much larger than just Manhattan.
I mean, there's over 8 million people in New York.
It's bigger than many states.
It's bigger than many countries.
And the outer boroughs are very different than Manhattan.
And you go to a place like Staten Island, it's voting Republicans 60, 70 percent, almost as much as, I guess, in Alabama.
You go to places like South Brooklyn or Northeast Queens, these are very strong Republican hotbeds.
So maybe we're only a quarter to a third of the city, but a quarter or a third of 8 million is a sizable number.
So there still are many of us.
And they're not looking for watered-down Republicanism.
They're looking for an alternative vision.
And if they wanted a watered-down Republican, they can go vote for a, quote-unquote, moderate Dem.
I mean, and those guys are still around.
They're not really moderate. They're not very sensible, but they certainly exist.
So I think the counterintuitive approach has worked.
We've tapped into it. And by the numbers, by the metrics in terms of our finances, our event attendance, our membership, We've seen massive growth, and I would encourage other similar organizations in deep blue areas not to shy away from their beliefs and principles, but to stand firm on them and to provide their members and their constituents with an alternative vision, not just a watered-down, Democrat-lite, Diet Pepsi-style conservative.
Right. No, I think we sort of live in an age of authenticity, right?
I remember whenever Danielle and I would walk down the street in New York and you would see these massive old churches.
They were beautiful buildings.
And a lot of them would have trans pride flags and gay pride flags and things like that.
And the thing you consistently noticed is that all of these churches were empty.
They were dead. And I think it's because nobody wants these hollowed out, ideological, sort of weak, limp-wristed people.
Nobody wants that anymore.
They don't want it in their faith.
They don't want it politically.
They're not looking for, like you said, the Rockefellers of New York to be the opposition.
They're looking for the people who actually talk and represent the working class people in Queens or Brooklyn or the Bronx or anywhere else.
And you guys have done that really well.
So, you know, tell me, I think the young Republicans, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you guys were one of the first, if not the first, sizable political group this year to endorse Trump.
Even before, I believe, before he even announced he was running Trump.
Yes, you made a few great points that I want to return back to.
But yes, we endorsed him a few hours before his official announcement.
We now have a signed letter from the president probably hanging on the walls of our clubhouse.
We came out swinging very early on for President Trump, who was the greatest president of my lifetime and I think of in a few generations for sure of the modern era in terms of what he was able to get accomplished under the circumstances in such a short period of time, I think. You look at that as a per capita success rate.
You can't get much higher than that.
And of course, we're always going to support our hometown hero on top of that.
We got flack for it. We got attacked for it.
But I think we made by far the right call based on the polling, based on the outpour of support for him.
We endorsed him early on when the polls were a lot tighter between him and DeSantis.
I'm sure we'll get into that primary discussion as this show goes on.
But I also want to touch on what you said about the churches.
I think it's so spot on.
We've seen an utter decline in these liberal, woke churches, especially mainline Protestants.
They've completely been hollowed out.
They died.
Their attendance has collapsed.
And again, people are looking for individuals, for leaders to rise to the occasion.
And the occasion we're in right now, we're in a period of time where we need to fight.
We need people to rise up and be willing to fight, to stand up, and to push back.
We're not looking for this go-along, to get-along attitude.
We're not looking for pats on the head.
We're not looking to get invited to the parties and the cocktail receptions in DC. We're looking for people that are going to speak truth to power.
Even if it costs them, even if it makes them enemies, even if it gets them hated.
Because we're in a civilizational fight.
We're in a fight for the heart and soul of our republic.
And I think that also plays out spiritually for the heart and soul of the church and these various churches and other religious bodies.
I think people are just sick and tired of the weakness.
And I think they're looking for a champion.
They're looking for a proxy. They're looking for someone who's going to take the hits and punch back.
And I think that man is Donald J. Trump.
And I think based on the polls, both in the primary and the general, people see him In the same light.
So I fully agree with your comments on authenticity.
And this is heightened, particularly in the age of social media.
You know, they used to say, you know, to be a good candidate, you need to have a voice for radio.
And then it said, okay, well, then you know, you had the Nixon JFK debates in the 60s, you know, you needed to have a face for television.
Well, now I think you need to have the authenticity for social media.
I think that's what Trump has perfected in his online rhetoric.
And many people would say, oh, I like him, but his mean tweets.
I would argue the opposite. I would say his mean tweets, his ability to fight, his ability to just represent himself and his own stream of consciousness.
People like that rawness.
They like that authenticity. They like the realness.
They like knowing this is who he is.
This is what he thinks. I can relate to that.
They don't want, on the other hand...
Someone like a Ron DeSantis who is consultant-driven, who is focus group-approved.
He runs everything by his team.
He doesn't say anything that he hasn't gotten prior approval for.
He's extremely constructed, extremely phony.
I think people are seeing through it, especially now with social media.
It's a lot easier to see through these types of people, and that's why he's utterly failing because he's running a campaign and a style of campaigning that may have worked 20, 30 years ago, but it's not working in the present, and it's certainly not going to work against a historic figure, such a revolutionary figure like Donald J. Trump.
It simply won't. No, I think you're exactly right.
Last question, Gavin, before we have to go, and I think you've touched on it a little bit here, but the primary race is heating up.
The only two real candidates in the field, I think, are Trump and DeSantis.
None of the other candidates matter.
They're irrelevant at this point.
What is the primary about?
If you're going to boil it down to its core, to its essence, what is the Republican primary about?
What are they fighting for?
I think most of them are vying for a cabinet spot.
They're vying for media and to stay relevant.
You know, I think Christie is trying to stay relevant, get media, you know, build up, you know, I guess, an email list and some donor lists, you know, basic things to keep their brands going.
I think a few others are vying for a cabinet spot.
And I think then there's this other, you know, this third group, which DeSantis is leading, where they're simply trying to create this neo-never-Trumpism.
They're trying to replicate the strategies from 2015, 2016.
And they're trying to take down Trump any way they can to sabotage Trump, to divide the party, and to basically, you know, force Trump, you know, to have to fight out this fight that doesn't need to be fought because he's overwhelmingly the leader of the party.
The overwhelming majority of Republicans support him, approve of him, and they want to see him be the nominee, and he's obviously the best candidate to do so based on the only quantitative data we have, which is the polling.
So I see it's one of the final fights, maybe the boss battle, if you will, where the establishment is using their last breaths to take out Trump and Trumpism because they realize that You know, if you were to win again, it would really be the nail in their coffin and the party would be fully transformed.
I mean, we've been making a lot of historical analysis, but look, you know, you look back at Goldwater, that conservative revolution back in the day in the 60s, it didn't get culminated until, you know, Reagan came in office in the 80s.
You're talking about a few decades there, where it took for the Republican Party to fully change.
I think starting in 2015, 2016, the party's moving towards the populist wing, the America First wing, this sort of Trump movement.
It's taking a few decades.
And you even saw prototype movements like the Tea Party movement or the Liberty movement, which were sort of these grassroots pushbacks against the establishment.
So we're seeing a multi-decade fight play out.
But I think Trump has expedited everything.
And because of that, this primary is getting extremely heated.
It's getting extremely vicious.
And I think they know they're failing and they're losing.
And that's what kind of explains...
A lot of their rhetoric and a lot of their psychology, especially from their influencers and surrogates online because Trump is so dominant and they didn't expect him to be so dominant.
They really thought that the indictments would take him down rather than make him a martyr and rather than clarify that he is really the only threat against the establishment.
And people saw the polling say back in December of last year where things were neck and neck and they said, oh, Trump's done.
Trump's over. And they made a stupid bet like many people make stupid bets.
And they constantly bet against him and they always underestimate him and he always proves to be able to come back, to punch back harder and stronger than ever before.
And that's really what we're seeing right now in this primary.
And I think ultimately a lot of the donor class, a lot of the consultant class type people, they really did believe and they convinced people like DeSantis that Trump will be indicted, he'll be thrown in jail, his campaign will be destroyed and you'll be able to walk in and fill the vacuum.
And that's not happening and no one's going to allow that to happen.
And I think right now that's their only viable strategy.
He's been campaigning for over a month, approaching, I guess, two months now.
And he's seen no discernible movement upward in the polls.
In fact, he's been declining in the polls in the primary.
Meanwhile, Trump has only strengthened his position, including against Biden.
I think it's very possible to make the prediction that DeSantis doesn't win a single primary state going into 2024.
I think they're going to write textbooks and essays and articles about the failings of this campaign for the decades to come.
But Trump is the invincible political force.
He knows no equal. I think he's going to emerge stronger from this.
and I love the idea of him returning to the White House with a vengeance, with a vengeance and with a fire, and without the thought of a re-election so he can do what he needs to do and clean up what needs to be cleaned up and bring about an American national renewal, which he was doing quite effectively during his first term.
So I'm looking forward to his second term as many others are.
He's definitely got some unfinished business to clean up.
Gavin, thanks for joining us.
It's always fun to talk to you, to hang out.
Tell us, how can people find you?
I know you're on social media.
What's the best place to keep up with Gavin's thoughts?
Absolutely. Well, thank you again for having me, and you all can follow me at Gavin Wax, G-A-V-I-N-W-A-X. That's on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.
You can follow my writings, GavinWax.com.
I post all my articles there.
And you can follow the club, the New York Young Republican Club, the oldest and largest Republican club in the country, Strong Allies of President Trump, at NYYRC. That's two Ys.
And you can follow us on our website, NYYRC.com.
You can join. You can donate.
We appreciate all the support.
Come to our events, our big gala, December 9th this year.
We're going to have some great guests to be announced very soon, so hope to see you all there, and hope to see you there as well, Raymond.
You will see us there. Thank you, Gavin.
We appreciate it. Thank you, sir.
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Well, that wraps up things for today.
If you enjoyed today's show, make sure to check out my website, dcenquirer.com.
That's dcenquirer with an e.com, where my team of writers and I release breaking news content and commentary on everything going on in U.S. politics.
I think you'll really enjoy it.
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