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Aug. 21, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
48:54
BIDEN’S FAKE NAMES Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep647
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Coming up, it's just been discovered that Biden has been using a bunch of fake names in his correspondence.
I'll argue that this shows the attempt on Biden's part to conceal the full extent of his involvement in the international bribery scheme.
I'll examine a new judicial ruling that will likely prove to be good news for many January 6th defendants.
PragerU CEO Marissa Strait joins me.
We're going to talk about the controversy over Florida's approval of using PragerU content for use in schools.
I'm also going to talk about the success of Oliver Anthony's song, Rich Men North of Richmond.
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Joe Biden, it turns out, has been using a bunch of fake names for himself.
In other words, he's been using aliases or pseudonyms or whatever you want to call it.
And here are some of his pseudonyms.
Robert Peters. Robin Ware, W-A-R-E, and J-R-B Ware.
Now, what's the deal with the W-A-R-E Ware?
I have no idea. But this is all very telling, isn't it?
Because these fake names are being used in a very specific context.
The context is to camouflage the collaboration between Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, to camouflage the fact that Joe Biden is very actively involved in the international bribery scheme involving really all the key members of the Biden family.
And the House Republicans are now on it, and Representative Comer has sent a letter to the archives basically saying, hey, listen, President Joe Biden's use of multiple pseudonyms during his vice presidency appears to have hidden some of his communications from that period, including some involving Ukraine policy and his son, Hunter Biden.
So Representative Comer is like, turn over all the communications that use Joe Biden's aliases or his fake names.
Now, let's look at why people use fake names, because there's a kind of uneasiness about all this on the left, and they're trying to imply, well, you know, people sometimes make up names, they use pseudonyms.
Well, okay, yeah.
I guess writers sometimes use pseudonyms.
George Eliot, the writer from the 19th century, was a woman.
She didn't want to write as a woman.
She thought she'd get more, be treated more seriously as a man, so she came up with a pseudonym, George Eliot.
Samuel Clemens is the real name of Mark Twain.
We know Hollywood actors sometimes take fake names, partly because their real names are weird and they like to sound kind of glamorous.
Scarlett O'Hara and so on.
So, by and large, you get actors taking on fake names.
Sometimes people take on fake names as a joke or they do nicknames, but none of that is really going on here.
Let's look at the context for which Joe Biden is using fake names.
And I want to say that the other reason to use fake names is pretty simple, when you want to hide your involvement.
And so you make up a name.
And in this case, as we'll see, the fake name has a government email attached to it.
So Joe Biden has been using government resources to essentially conceal his own identity.
All of this, I think, is just brick by brick by brick for the Republicans building up to an impeachment inquiry.
And I think Kevin McCarthy seems to be taking the approach here, listen, I'm going to move slowly on this so that when I move, all the evidence will be right there in front of me.
Now, in 2016, for example, a fellow who worked in the office of the vice president sends Joe Biden his official daily schedule, but he doesn't send it to Joe Biden's official email.
He sends it to robert.l.peters at pci.gov, and he copies Hunter.
So Hunter is being looped into the Biden schedule.
That's why they don't want other people to see it.
Similarly, in an email from Flynn to Joe Biden, aka Robert Peters, They talk about 8.45 a.m.
prep for 9 a.m. phone call with President Poroshenko.
Who's Poroshenko?
The president of Ukraine at the time.
This is at the time Hunter Biden is making $83,000 a month to sit on the board of Burisma.
This is right around the time Hunter is introducing the top Burisma executive, Vadim Pozarsky, to Joe Biden.
This is in April 2015 at a dinner in Cafe Milano.
And then, of course, the firing of the prosecutor.
Here's another email.
Joe Biden forwards an email about Ukraine through another pseudonymous or fake name.
This is robinware456 at gmail.com.
He sends it to Hunter.
And also to Hunter's brother, Beau Biden, who was then the Delaware Attorney General.
And the email was from Deputy Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken.
And it was essentially a communication about Ukraine and the corruption inquiry going on in Ukraine.
The Robert Peters email address that I mentioned, at PCI.gov, which tells you that this is all government resources being used to hide Joe Biden's...
So, what's all this reminiscent of?
Well, first of all, it's reminiscent of Hillary Clinton, who kept a private email server so she could engage in all kinds of communications that would be kept off of her official server.
This wasn't just a convenience or because I like to work from home.
No, this is how do I keep people from, how do I engage in transactions and communications that can be concealed from the public?
Here's an email that James Gilliar, one of Hunter Biden's business partners, sent to Tony Bobulinski, another guy who had been pulled into the Biden family operation.
Quote, Don't mention Joe being involved.
It's only when you are face-to-face.
So, in other words, only in person do we bring up Joe Biden's direct involvement.
Otherwise, he is kind of the silent partner of our operation.
The operation is an influence-peddling operation.
It's receiving foreign money in exchange for influence or favors or access.
The access is only to one person, Joe Biden, but the head of this mafia operation has got to be kept insulated from the crimes themselves.
That way he can say, what?
I didn't really know.
Yeah, I just called in.
I was just saying hello.
So the operation functions with the tacit approval of Joe Biden, but his involvement has got to be camouflaged, and that is precisely what these aliases, what these secret emails, what these private names are all about.
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There's an important decision that just came down from the D.C. Circuit Federal Appeals Court.
This is the higher court in D.C. It's one step below the Supreme Court.
This is a two to one decision delivered by the court.
The opinion is by Justices Justin Walker and Judith Rogers.
And this has implications for a lot of January 6th defendants.
That's really why I want to focus on it.
So one of the January 6th defendants, a guy named James Little, was given, let's call it a double sentence.
He was sentenced to prison.
And he was also sentenced to a lengthy period of probation.
Now, this is a non-violent offender.
And he pleaded guilty to four low-level charges, disorderly conduct, parading in a public building.
So he doesn't have an obstruction of justice charge.
It's just disorderly conduct, and he was in the wrong place.
He was parading in a public building.
And Judge Lamberth, This is one of the swamp judges in D.C. Decided to give him prison for the low-level charges, for the misdemeanors.
And then just to tack on a lengthy period of probation, essentially extending out to the next election.
And the judge was actually very candid about why he was giving these two sentences.
He basically says, number one...
He says that he's giving the prison sentence to punish him for the offense.
The court must not only punish Little for his conduct, but also ensure that he will not engage in similar conduct again during the next election.
So he says, only a longer-term period of probation is adequate to ensure that Little will not become an active participant in another riot.
So, in other words, let's tie his hands and put him under criminal supervision all the way through 2024 so he doesn't get a similar idea then.
The only problem with this, and you may say, well, a judge, he imposed a sentence.
It may be unfair, but a judge has a right to do that.
Actually, he doesn't.
Why? Because the statute is very clear.
The statute says that for these kinds of petty offenses, we're not talking about more violent offenses or more serious offenses, but for these offenses, you can impose a short prison term, and there are guidelines as to what they can be, or, says the statute, you can give the person probation.
Now, this Judge Lambert probably thought, well, who cares?
The statute says this or that.
I'm going to give him both. I'm going to give him some prison.
I'm going to give him some probation.
And here's where the appeals court jumps in and goes, actually, no.
Read the statute. When a statute says A or B, it doesn't mean A plus B. It means you choose A or you choose B, but you cannot do both.
That's the plain meaning of the words in the statute.
So, interesting reading the decision because it's ultimately a parsing of the simplest type of language, language that was ignored by Judge Lambert because he probably thought, I'm a swamp judge.
I can do whatever I want.
These people are enemies of the state.
I can, you know, the law says A or B. That's okay.
I'm going to give him a little of both and see if I can get away with it.
And I'm delighted to say he's not getting away with it.
Basically, the majority writes that the text and structure of the relevant criminal code show that probation and imprisonment may not be imposed as a single sentence.
This is Judge Walker writing for the majority.
They are separate options on the menu.
In other words, if you choose this for your entree, you can also choose another entree.
This is one of those prefix deals where you get to choose one or the other.
Now, the implications.
Lots of January 6th defendants have faced this kind of dual sentencing, twisting the statute, and the beauty of knocking it down.
Now, admittedly, the DOJ can appeal it, and appeal it, I guess, to the Supreme Court.
That would be the ultimate step.
But I don't think they're going to get very far with that.
The statute is actually reasonably clear.
And so this might mean, and I hope it does mean, that lots of the January 6th sentences are modified or even vacated because they are illegal.
They are not allowed by the statute under which they were imposed.
So, this is at a time when we're dealing with a twisted judicial system, twisted judges, twisted juries.
It's really refreshing to see that the court itself, and in this case, it's not even the Supreme Court.
This is an appellate court in a two-to-one ruling pushing back.
Now, there was a dissent, and the judge goes, well, there's a lot of flexibility that statutes typically give judges and so on.
Yeah, there is flexibility.
There is discretion. But the discretion is within the bounds of the statute itself.
And here, when you read the statute, it's really hard to see what they're talking about because the statute essentially says that the crime is a minor crime.
So, you kind of have two options.
You can say, listen, I'm going to impose a punishment and then that's it.
You paid for your offense.
Move on with life. Or, you can say, listen, I'm not going to give you that punishment.
I'm not going to sentence you to prison.
But guess what? I'm going to put you under...
Supervision instead. You're going to get probation instead of prison.
And here the judge decided, I've got two motives.
I kind of want to punish him and I want to tie his hands through the 2024 election.
So you can see again how election interference is always on these people's minds.
It's on these people's minds when they go after Trump.
It's on their minds when they go after January 6th defendants.
And this little bit of sharp pushback From the DC Appeals Court, I think is really a breath of fresh air in an otherwise fetid and stank, dank environment.
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Feel the difference. What's it like to be a conservative in Portland, Oregon?
There are a bunch of conservatives in Portland, Oregon.
I know because I've more than once spoken there and conservatives turn out, a lot of them.
But it's a tough life because not only are you outnumbered, it's one thing to be a red guy living in a blue city.
But it's a whole other matter when the system is stacked against you and you cannot expect anything resembling equal justice under the law.
In fact, you're living under conditions of relative barbarism, as we're about to see.
I'm going to consider the case of Andy Ngo.
Now, I think you know Andy Ngo.
He's a Vietnamese immigrant.
He's a really brave guy.
He undertook a journalistic career, and his journalistic career is expose Antifa.
He goes to Antifa events.
He follows Antifa.
He posts the mugshots of Antifa guys, and he just puts it out there.
In fact, the mugshots of Antifa guys are really interesting to watch.
I mean, this looks like these people look like they came right out of The Walking Dead.
I mean, they are ultimately scary and freakish people.
And Andy Ngo just puts it out there.
He's very responsible. If you've got a transgender thug that demands to be called, you know, Superwoman, he'll call her Superwoman.
He follows, he accepts their vocabulary, he clinically describes what they're doing, and this is the problem.
His work has credibility.
And so they've been going after him.
And by going after him, I mean they have been trying to corner him, beat him up.
I think if they could, they would even like to kill him.
He was badly hurt when he was, in fact, suffered a brain hemorrhage on one occasion where they beat him up.
On another occasion, they chased him and almost got him.
And they assaulted him and chased him into the lobby of a hotel.
I think if they had been able to catch up with him, it would be very bad news for Andy Ngo.
And Andy Ngo has been trying to inform the authorities.
He knows who did this to him.
He has them on camera.
And yet the authorities won't act, which shows that the local police are either intimidated or they're like in with Antifa.
Or they're under the command of the Portland political establishment, which is like, listen, Antifa is untouchable.
They're on our side. Don't go after them.
So then Andy now goes, okay, listen, I'll sue Antifa.
I'll sue the Rose City Antifa.
And the judge is like, no, you can't do that.
You can't sue Roe. I think he took the view that Biden was putting out that somehow Antifa is just an idea.
Yeah. Even though you've got an organizational structure, you've got the name of an organization, you've got people who actually come out when the organization calls a protest, and yet supposedly the organization can't be sued.
You can only sue the two guys who beat you up.
And so Andy now goes, okay, well, I'll sue those two guys.
And guess what? He sues them and goes to trial, and the jury comes back not guilty.
Now, not guilty why?
Is it not guilty because these guys didn't beat up Andy Ngo?
No. In fact, they're clearly on camera doing the assault.
In fact, one of them admitted in testimony that he was involved in an attack on Andy Ngo.
But the defense calls a Portland State University professor, and this guy is Alexander Reed Ross, and he basically says Andy Ngo, in a sense, deserves to be beaten because he's putting out, quote, a kill list to neo-Nazis.
Now, this is just a complete fabrication and a lie, as if to say, Andy Ngo is taking down the names of Antifa guys and giving them to neo-Nazis so that neo-Nazis can chase down the Antifa guys and kill them.
Now, nothing could be further from the truth.
Andy Ngo is a journalist.
He's putting out information on Twitter and other forms of social media.
I think he might have a substack as well.
But the problem Andy Ngo has is not that he didn't prove his case.
The problem is that he's in Portland.
And Portland is not the kind of whimsical Portlandia that you see in the show.
It's a thuggish environment.
You just have to... There's a dark feeling when you walk in the streets.
And Antifa is sort of like wild animals.
It's a sort of political jungle, if you will.
The judge is local. The jury is local.
Seems like everybody can be intimidated.
In fact, Antifa was roaming the halls of the courthouse kind of like...
Letting people know, we know who you are.
And in fact, in a closing statement, the attorney for the Antifa activists told the jury that she would be wearing an Antifa shirt.
And she told the jurors, I'm going to remember all your faces.
So the jury was, it seems...
A coward, intimidated, bullied, whatever you want to say, into saying, we don't really want to have justice here.
We'd rather just go home safe and not hear from these Antifa people again.
At least we don't want to be targets of Antifa.
There was one journalist, Katie Davis Court, who was covering the trial.
She had a car broken into and robbed.
And then if you look at media accounts, you can look them up right now about the Andy Noe trial.
They don't talk about Antifa.
They don't talk about thugs. They don't talk about beatings.
They talk about protests and activists, as though these are nothing more than people who are making a statement, carrying a sign, shouting a slogan.
No, we're talking about people who beat up kind of brown shirt style or black shirt style, beat up the political opposition, go after journalists.
You'd think that the media would rush to Andy Ngo's defense, but no, the media is not a real media.
They don't really want Andy Ngo's type of journalism.
In fact, a lot of media figures are sympathetic to Antifa, so they're on the thug side of this kind of operation.
So, boy, you know, when I look at all this, I mean, I realize that Portland is a once great city.
I realize that there are some good restaurants and there probably are good reasons to live in Portland.
But if the experience of Andy Ngo is any indication, it's not entirely safe to be a conservative in Portland.
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You'll get 35% off your first preferred order by using discount code AMERICA. Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast Marissa Strait, the CEO of PragerU, website PragerU.com.
Her Twitter handle is Strait, S-T-R-E-I-T, Marissa, M-A-R-I-S-S-A, so at StraitMarissa.
She was born in L.A., moved to Israel at a young age, served in military intelligence.
Gee, I didn't know that. Came back to L.A., got her master's degree in education and non-profit management, and is now running the wonderful PragerU.
Marissa, welcome.
You were just saying a moment ago that you've got some news about PragerU in Texas, which is where this podcast is based.
What's going on? Yeah, so your listeners are actually the first to hear that we are now welcomed into Texas as well.
Texas has a new core knowledge curriculum that they're working on and we are starting to also work with them to create our supplementary videos, magazines, books, all our K through 12th grade supplementary content that we make for schools is now going to be found in Texas as well.
So we're super excited.
Oh, that's great news.
And we want to talk in a moment about the use of these materials in Florida.
And then some people kind of whining and complaining about it and saying they're horrified that this is happening.
So we'll get to that.
But let's start with you, Marissa.
You have an interesting background.
It seems like you're a... You're a California girl who decided to go to Israel and then you signed up for the army and military intelligence.
Talk about your journey to Israel and then back to PragerU.
How did you do that?
I was born here in the United States.
My parents moved to Israel when I was seven years old, so I was raised in Israel.
I did serve in the military.
I was an intelligence officer.
I got a lot out of being there, mostly because I think that when you're 18 years old and you go and serve in the military, you probably get more experience than you'll get anywhere else.
I was very lucky.
I was in a small intelligence unit and they really invested in me.
They taught me how to look at things and find problems in there, which makes me a good CEO and a very annoying wife because I'll walk into a room and find...
I don't find problems anywhere.
But truly, that has been a gift also to my career and my work here at PragerU because, you know, I have a very much excuses or results mentality.
It's all about, you know, really being pragmatic and problem solving and being honest about what the real problems are.
And so later on, when I became an educator, I taught K-7 in California, and I also ran a school myself, I realized that the system is so corrupt, it's so rotten, the education system is basically held hostage between the Department of Education and even worse are the teachers' unions.
And even the great teachers that want to do great work are basically blocked and can't really do what it is that needs to be done in order to really propel America's education system.
And so I left.
I left the, I guess what we'd call the traditional education system in California, and we started this organization PragerU.
And PragerU really started in my kitchen.
I don't know if you know this.
I'm not a garage person, so you know they say, oh, it started in a garage.
Well, it actually started in my kitchen.
I met Dennis Prager and Alan Estrin, who I know you know both of them very well.
The three of us had lunch together one day.
And they basically said, you know, Marissa, America needs to be saved and education got us into this mess and education will need to get us out.
And I said, I completely agree.
And I had these random sets of experiences that I think only God, maybe only God knows why.
But, you know, serving in military, having a background in education, and I happen to also have an MBA. And so I understood business.
And I kind of looked at them and I said, okay, I think I can do this.
I'm not sure what the this is, but mostly it is that we need to provide mental cures for America.
America is losing its mind and we need to make sure that we save people through education and truth.
And those were essentially the seeds of the creation of PragerU.
I mean, Debbie and I have been honored to be a part of it.
Debbie's made a couple of videos about Venezuela.
I most recently, I guess last year, I did a series on the American founding.
I think part of the genius of the PragerU video has been both the, well, it's brevity.
Typically, the videos are five minutes or around five minutes.
But the other thing is there's a lot of content packed into those five minutes.
One of the things I found interesting working with Alan Estrin was it's sort of like not a wasted word.
This is not a case where you just bloviate for five minutes, kind of the way I do on this podcast, but rather that you write it all out, you make a compact argument, so you've taken the trouble that when the audience is digesting this stuff, a lot of care has gone into putting it together.
Isn't that right? Absolutely.
We realize that people don't have a lot of time, but they're starving for knowledge and information.
And frankly, it's hard to find access to great teachers like you.
People don't want to do all the work.
They don't want to read the books.
And so we are trying, again, this excuses or results mentality.
We are trying to lower the barrier to entry and allow people who don't have a lot of time or may not be able to pick up any one of our presenters' books to really get the nuggets, what we call those golden nuggets, the important information that needs to be taught.
And so we compacted into five minutes.
And we started with the five minutes about 13 years ago.
But we have expanded so much since.
We now make 40 brand new pieces of content every single week.
So it's not just the five-minute videos.
We have show.
We have podcasts. We have documentaries.
And then two years ago, we launched PragerU Kids, which is, again, the same concept.
It's edutainment, educational entertainment, or I like to call it broccoli for your brain.
And we basically serve our audience.
Four years old all the way to 104 with those little intellectual soundbites that will truly change their lives.
Let's take a pause when we come back more with Marissa Strait, CEO of PragerU.
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I'm back with Marissa Strait, CEO of PragerU.
By the way, the website, PragerU.com.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So, Marissa, talk now about, you mentioned Texas, but of course you've been having some issues in Florida, or at least getting some criticism in Florida, because the videos used to be out there, the materials out there for public consumption, but it's a whole other thing to navigate your way into the education system.
Talk about how you're doing in that regard, and any kind of pushback you might be getting.
Well, we've mostly been receiving a lot of love from Florida.
That is, the parents and many of the teachers that want to use our turnkey lesson plans and videos and content.
You might be familiar with our Cash Core series, which is Financial Literacy.
We have a video series for little ones on civics.
And so people are absolutely loving it.
The folks that are not loving it are the typical bureaucrats and the people who've had control over the education system.
And so you'll hear from the teachers unions who are upset.
You'll hear from the legacy media that is obviously lying about us making all kinds of claims that we say that women belong in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant.
And shouldn't have jobs.
I mean, these things could not be more ridiculous.
I'm the CEO of PragerU.
I'm a professional.
And so they obviously lie.
I mean, they've been lying about our videos on Frederick Douglass and the list goes on.
but the population is loving our content.
And it's the same thing that they've done to Ron DeSantis.
Right?
Like people, people love the freedom that Ron DeSantis gave them during the lockdowns, but the media was making all kinds of claims.
And so don't let the media fool you.
I know they wouldn't follow you, Dinesh.
You never fall to those kinds of things.
And obviously additional states are getting on the phone with us and saying, how can we provide the same type of turnkey education that is now gonna be provided in Florida to teachers all over the United States.
And so now we're in Texas, we're super excited about that.
And, you know, it's very heartwarming to see how many parents have been writing in saying, thank you so much.
We have been yanking out these curriculums that are revolving around critical race theory or the LGBTQ, early sexualization of children.
We've been pulling it out of our schools, but that has created some sort of vacuum.
What can we put instead?
And PragerU kids is the answer to that.
What we are trying to do is not only encourage people to pull the garbage out, but to give them something turnkey that is beautiful, educationally sound, and healthy for a child's brain to put in instead of what needs to be pulled out.
I mean, I think the point that you make about the need to go right to the source, go right to PragerU, or if you're trying to figure out what I say in one of my films, 2,000 Mules, go watch the film.
And the reason for this is that so often what would appear to be a neutral description or a fact-checker is an outright lie.
I mean, right now, if you go to Wikipedia and you enter Abraham Lincoln and you look at his political party, you'd expect to see a Republican, but you don't.
So, I mean, if you can distort the truth to that extent, and you mentioned, of course, Frederick Douglass, you know.
Now, the left doesn't really want to bash Frederick Douglass because he was an abolitionist.
He's obviously one of perhaps the two or three greatest black Americans of our history.
But what they don't want to know is, what was Frederick Douglass really saying?
Why was Frederick Douglass a lifelong Republican?
Why did Frederick Douglass say that the Republican Party is the ship and everything else is the sea?
So, in other words, the real Frederick Douglass is an inconvenience to the left.
And so, kudos to PragerU for like, you know what, we're going to tell the story that they refuse to tell, and no wonder they're squealing about it.
I mean, you bring up Frederick Douglass, and I know you're a great historian, so you might get a chuckle out of this one.
So we released the Leo and Layla animated show for third through fifth grade, and these are these two little characters that travel in time and meet Frederick Douglass, and they have a conversation with Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, and the kids say, you know, slavery is such a horrible thing,
and then Frederick Douglass responds with We're good to go.
And so all over Twitter, they started saying that we put words in Frederick Douglass' mouth.
And so when Frederick Douglass said that the Constitution is a glorious document, is a glorious liberty document, they went nuts on us saying, he would have never said something like that.
This is a complete lie.
PragerU is putting words in Frederick Douglass' mouth.
I'm like, guys, you cannot make this stuff up.
But like you said, that's what they do.
They distort history so much so they won't even bother seeking the truth.
Anyway, now Leo and Layla, these characters, are going to be the most famous little characters in America because they're just going crazy.
Oh, that is awesome, Marissa.
Well, this is all great stuff.
I'm really glad to hear it.
Guys, check out PragerU, PragerU.com.
It's been a pleasure talking to you, Marissa Strait.
Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me on.
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I don't often talk on the podcast about music.
Debbie is the musician in the family, not me.
But I do want to talk about Oliver Anthony's viral hit, Rich Men North of Richmond.
Now, you've probably heard the song.
If you haven't, you should check it out.
It's up all over the place.
It's all over social media.
In fact, it's the number one hit in the country.
It's kind of amazing.
This guy came out of nowhere.
I think he's got three hits now in the top 10.
He surpassed Taylor Swift for the number one slot.
And the interesting question is, who is he?
And what is this song about?
And why has it struck such a chord with people?
And why is everyone talking about it?
Interestingly, there are some people, even on the right, who are criticizing it and I'll get into that in a minute.
Now, the song itself is a kind of anthem.
You could call it a working class anthem.
The basic idea is you've got these rich people north of Richmond.
And who's he talking about?
Well, he's talking about Washington, D.C. He's talking about the people in Washington, D.C., the elites.
That want to control our lives, as he clearly says.
And he doesn't pull any punches in the song.
He talks about the fact that, hey, instead of looking after our children, they only care about children on an island.
What a phrase. What's he talking about?
Epstein! Lolita Island!
So this guy, he goes there.
He doesn't hesitate to call it the way it is.
And the song has some modest profanity, the S word and so on, BS, but what he's doing is he's expressing his disdain for the system.
To some degree, it becomes even disdain for the country because the country, after all, has allowed this system to entrench itself.
And he says that it's a system that is grinding down the little guy who has to work long hours for, well, BS pay.
And you think it's a nightmare.
This is not how life is supposed to be in America.
This is not what we're promised.
This is not the American dream.
But it is the American reality.
And it's the American reality, especially now, under Joe Biden.
So, no surprise, the song has kind of become a MAGA song.
Kind of hit. And it is being trumpeted across MAGA platforms on social media.
And, you know, not surprisingly, here comes National Review saying, in effect, that this song is kind of misguided because it's just talking about the frustrations of working-class people, but it doesn't offer policy solutions.
Policy solutions. I guess that they would much rather that Oliver Anthony, who, by the way, is a high school dropout, he went back and finished his GED, I guess they would have preferred if he had written an op-ed instead of writing a song, but...
I don't think they understand what a song is.
A song ultimately conveys an idea and an emotion.
It's not really a policy document.
Christianity Today weighs in against Oliver Anthony.
Oliver Anthony's viral hit doesn't love its neighbors.
This is a bunch of truly, like, Christian pansies sitting around, you know, they're like, they're like, rich men north of Richmond is disdainful toward people on welfare.
Christians shouldn't be.
Well, what about the biblical dictum that if you don't work, you don't eat?
In other words, you think that Christ would be happy with people who, by and large, have become parasites on a welfare state, created a kind of culture of dependency, who encouraged their children.
They don't get jobs.
They basically collect free stuff, and then they get hugely fat.
And guess what? Oliver Anthony doesn't hold back.
This is sort of part of the emotional power of the song.
It's a rant. But it's a rant converted to music, and it shouldn't be understood that Oliver Anthony doesn't like people in welfare.
Sure, there are some people in welfare who perhaps need welfare.
Remember, the original idea of welfare was aid to families with dependent children.
In other words, it was a widows and orphans program.
Look at the way in which it's been abused.
And that's what these Christianity Today characters don't really seem to get.
Now... I think the reason for the song's immense success can be described this way.
It's not just the song.
The song is really good.
It's the words are powerful.
I mean, just the phrase, rich men north of rich men.
I mean, notice the sort of, not only the alliteration, but how rich men goes with rich men.
And... And the song itself has that kind of lyrical quality to it, at least in parts.
It catches your eye how cleverly things are phrased.
But I think it's also a testament to the fact that so much of our culture has become detached from real feelings.
I mean, you talk about movies these days.
They have plots and you're like, what are they even talking about?
You don't care about any of the characters.
They're cartoon characters or they're superheroes.
They're basically detached from human feeling.
A lot of music today is removed from human feeling.
Now, interestingly, Debbie pointed out to me that there are elements of rap music that are not like that.
They are actually a kind of cry for help, a kind of emotional, gut-wrenching call out of the inner city.
But a lot of music you listen to today, like, what?
What are they even... What kind of emotions are they talking about?
Country music used to be different.
It used to talk about real feelings.
It used to talk about real situations.
It used to talk about heartbreak.
It used to talk about pain.
And that's what this guy is doing.
And the amazing thing is he's not a studio guy.
He's basically kind of a hillbilly with a guitar coming out of, what, North Carolina or South Carolina?
And he's just kind of banging away.
And we'll find out in the next segment that this is a very remarkable guy who doesn't want Oliver Anthony, the singer of Richmond, North of Richmond, released a statement on Facebook.
And you know, this guy, as he says in the statement...
He dropped out of high school at 17.
He has a GED from Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
He's worked in blue collar jobs at various plants, a paper mill.
In fact, he got injured in 2013, fractured his skull.
And so this is a guy who's had a hard life.
But his statement is remarkably kind of touching and elegant in its own way.
I want to just read a few segments from it because it gives you an idea that this is not your typical aspiring music star, a guy who's like, listen, I want to have one big hit, I want to cash in, you know, I want to make $8 million.
As we'll see from the song, this is a guy who doesn't want $8 million.
Wow. Wow.
It's been difficult as I browse through the 50,000 plus emails and messages I've received in the past week.
The stories that have been shared paint a brutally honest picture.
Suicide, addiction, unemployment, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and the list goes on.
So he's touched a chord, and that's what he's happy about.
I'm sitting in such a weird place right now, he writes.
I never wanted to be a full-time musician, much less sit at the top of the iTunes charts.
I still don't quite believe what has went on.
He means what has gone on, but there you go.
That's the working class cadence.
People in the music industry gave me blank stares when I brush off $8 million offers.
Not many people can say no to 8 million bucks.
I don't want six tour buses, 15 tractor trailers, and a jet.
I don't want to play stadium shows.
I don't want to be in the spotlight.
I wrote the music because I was suffering with mental health and depression.
The songs have connected with millions of people on a deep level because they're being sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were singing.
And he goes on, no editing, no agent, just some idiot and his guitar.
The style of music we should never have gotten away from in the first place.
So he's speaking here about the authenticity, which is what made country music what it was, a phenomenon.
Because you wouldn't say that the country music singers are the best singers in the country.
No, but they're singing. Some of them are kind of twangy.
Some of them are sort of singing out of their kitchen.
But nevertheless, or right off the back of their truck, but they were speaking about real stuff.
And this was true of Waylon Jennings.
It's true of Willie Nelson.
But a lot of the new country music, it was even true of the early Garth Brooks.
But the later Garth Brooks and Faith Hill and all these kind of trussed up fake country artists of today, these are people who've never known really hardship.
I'm not even sure if they've really known heartbreak.
They're sort of freaks of nature.
And so they have this kind of fast mutation between country music and rock music, and it's a flop on every level.
I mean, I guess people listen to it because it's kind of all that's out there.
But here's Oliver Anthony coming along to rewrite the rules.
In 2019, he writes, I paid $97,500 for the property.
That's where he's been living.
And I still owe $60,000 on it.
So here's a guy who's not exactly loaded.
I'm living in a 27-foot camper with a tarp on the roof that I got off of Craigslist for $750.
That's his roof. He goes, there's nothing special about me.
I'm not a good musician.
I'm not a very good person.
I've spent the last five years struggling with mental health.
So, again, we're seeing in Oliver Anthony's statement the same authenticity that's in his song.
And by the way, I shared on Twitter the song itself, but somebody recorded a bunch of reactions from various sort of DJs who are playing the song, and many of them are not political.
They're not listening to the song because it's a MAGA anthem.
Some of them, black guys, they go, I don't even like country music, but everyone's requesting this song.
All right, I'm gonna listen to it.
And then you watch their expression, their face as they listen to it, and you can see that kind of stunned look that the music is crossing racial boundaries.
It's basically reaching people who are down and out, and are down and out not because they're lazy or don't wanna work.
They want to work. But they're still being screwed.
And that's where the American dream is failing them.
And this is really how Oliver Anthony concludes.
He goes, So...
I, you know, I was telling Debbie, we live in a world removed from Oliver Anthony.
We don't experience the depression, at least Debbie and I don't.
The hardship, the economic, the grinding pressure that I can't pay my bills.
Where's the next, you know, how am I going to get through the month and so on.
But lots of Americans are in this situation and the least we can do is listen to them.
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