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Sept. 25, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
49:41
THE TRUMP SURGE Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep671
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Welcome to my show!
I'll ask whether the indictment of Senator Menendez shows that Democratic prosecutors treat everyone equally under the law.
Ha! I'm joined by Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears today.
We're going to talk about how the GOP can win in a toss-up state.
Hey, if you're listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, or watching on Rumble, please subscribe to my channel.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
There is a new poll that is operating with the effect of a suppository for the left because they have a very constipated expression upon seeing this poll.
The poll is showing Trump leading Biden by...
10 points. Now, Debbie cautions me.
I mentioned it to her. She's like, yeah, it's a long way from the election.
And that's certainly true.
So we don't want to make too much of these things.
But nevertheless, here it is.
And it's not a poll that's done by the Trump campaign or some right-wing interest group.
No, this is a poll by the Washington Post and ABC. And now...
Here's the way ABC reports it, and this in itself is so telling.
Trump edges out Biden 51-42 in head-to-head matchup poll.
Now, first of all, if somebody is leading somebody else by 10 points, well, actually by 9 points...
Would you call it Trump edges out Biden?
Edges out implies that Trump is sort of just a nose ahead.
He hit the finishing tape like half a second before Biden.
You know, if Trump is 52, Biden's 51, or more accurately, 51 to 49, you can say he edged out Biden.
But... You can see right here, they don't like the poll.
The guy writing this headline is like, how do I downplay this poll?
This is the media we're dealing with today.
It's worth noting.
Now, I grant that the poll is controversial.
I also grant that the poll is a little bit of an outlier, by which I mean if you generally with polls, you look at six or seven polls, you sort of average them out.
And... So this poll, in that sense, is showing a much bigger lead.
There have been other polls, by the way, that have shown Trump five and six points ahead, but the vast majority of the polls are showing Trump and Biden very close to each other.
Generally, Trump is a little bit ahead, but there are one or two polls where Biden is a little bit ahead.
And so... There's now an effort on the part of the left to say, ignore this poll.
This is a disgrace. They shouldn't have even put out this poll.
So here's Larry Sabato, head of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, who calls the decision to release the poll ridiculous, ridiculous.
Well... Why would it be ridiculous?
Could it be? I mean, is he saying that the methodology of the poll is flawed?
Is he saying that somehow the people who have...
Think of it. The Washington Post and ABC have an ongoing sort of team that does this kind of polling.
They've been doing it before.
They're doing it now.
Presumably, they're using somewhat of the same methodology they did before.
So what sense does it make to say this is ridiculous?
Is it simply that you look at a result of a poll...
I mean, the poll is intended to measure public opinion, but is there an enlightened class of people like Larry Sabato and they go, oh no, this poll, throw this one out, we can't look at this one.
No. In fact, the left, let's be fair and say that the polls have been getting it wrong an awful lot lately.
First of all, they got it spectacularly wrong in 2016.
They even got it wrong in 2020.
Because even in 2020, they were predicting a decisive Biden victory.
Trump was way behind.
And let's even set aside the issue of cheating.
Let's embrace the fiction that this was a perfect and secure election.
It was still a very, very close result.
not what the poll said leading into the election.
So Martha Raddatz is actually on it because when they were talking about the Sunday and people kept saying, well the poll is an outlier, we can't pay attention to it, and she's like, well, she's like, whatever the caveats, whether it's an outlier, that's a tough one to spin. In other words, this poll does show a result.
Now, the result may be out of sync with other polls, and one possibility, of course, is there's something wrong with this poll.
But here's another possibility, that this poll is actually showing you that people are waking up, and that's the point.
Let me turn to a very different survey.
I... Ask the Rasmussen people who do the Rasmussen surveys.
I'm like, hey, I've got this film coming out next month, Police State.
And I said, do you guys mind asking, adding a question or two into your next national survey and ask the American people, ask a representative sample of people.
Are they worried that America is becoming a police state?
And number two, do they trust the FBI? So, Rasmussen, they kind of took the mission.
They wrote the question.
They defined what a police state is, the kind of characteristics of a police state.
So, in other words, they defined it as a tyrannical government engaging in mass surveillance, censorship, ideological indoctrination, targeting of political opponents.
And they go, given this definition, given that this is what a police state is...
Do you think America is becoming a police state?
Here's a remarkable thing. 72% of likely voters said that they are concerned that this is happening.
72! Think about this.
This means that it's almost like every single Republican and one half of all the Democrats share the concern that America is moving in the direction of a police state.
So this shows you the urgency, the timeliness, the importance of the film that is to come.
And then second, worries about the FBI is a danger to the freedom and security of law-abiding Americans.
I mean, think about that.
Turns out we have 50% of voters now agree with that statement.
50%! That means half the country doesn't even trust the once-trusted police agency of government that, you know, think about the FBI. The FBI was associated with the untouchables.
The FBI is sort of like, these are the guys who kind of keep us safe.
They're the reason we can sleep safely at night.
And now, half the country is like, no.
They are a danger.
Think about it. They're as big of a danger, perhaps, as the criminals, if not more, to the freedom and security of law-abiding Americans.
They're not a danger to criminals.
They're a danger to people who are not criminals.
and that alone tells you that the country is waking up to the prospect of a police state and is also waking up to the fact that something needs to be done about this.
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In a very interesting development, Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey has been indicted for corruption and bribery by the Southern District of New York.
This is the SDNY. This is, by the way, the same outfit that was involved in my case.
Now, so great is our suspicion of the SDNY and of the FBI and of the police agencies of government these days that when I first saw this, I was like, wait a minute, what's going on here?
There's something fascinating. Fishy.
I smell a rat.
Could it be that Bob Menendez has somehow upset them in some way?
Is he threatening to buck the police state?
Is he going after Biden in a way that now is the time to punish him?
Now, this guy, by the way, has been under investigation for a long time.
But he's always managed to stay one step ahead of the posse, so to speak.
And, of course, many of us assume that's partly because or largely because he's a Democrat.
He's on the Democratic side.
But he is also a Democrat who has challenged...
He's been, in some cases, a rebel.
And so there was some speculation among conservatives on social media that that's why they're going after Bob Menendez.
Now, this being said, when you take a look at the indictment, it does look like this guy is a crook.
Now, he wouldn't be the first Democratic crook.
In fact, probably he's closer to the norm.
If anything, his crime is not selling influence, because think about it, Biden sells influence.
But Biden is kind of shrewd about it, or at least has tried to cover his tracks.
Biden himself doesn't directly get the money, and Menendez does.
In fact, here's Rob Schmidt, who's a radio host.
He goes, Bob Menendez is a moron.
You got to let your son take the money, and then he filters it to you discreetly.
Everybody knows this.
So This is the Joe Biden formula.
Evidently, Menendez didn't get the memo.
So, apparently, when the feds raided his house, they found, quote, $480,000 in cash, much of it stuffed in envelopes.
Hidden in clothing, closets.
Some of it was in a safe.
There were also gold bars.
Apparently, some of this stuff had the fingerprints of the people who were trying to do the bribes.
And who were those people? Well, it turns out it was the government of Egypt.
The government of Egypt was treating Menendez as kind of a bought-and-paid-for U.S. senator.
I mean, just think about this.
Over in Egypt, they're like, yeah, we own Menendez.
You know what? We've got him. We've got the money.
It's all in his house.
We paid it in cash.
We paid it in gold. So Menendez should resign.
Will he? No.
He's like, no, I'm not going to resign.
This is how they go after Hispanics.
So, geez. Really?
I mean, I can't say that's a novel defense because this is kind of a standard.
They're just going after me because I'm black.
They're just going after me because I'm a woman.
Interestingly, Menendez is going to tough it out.
And that's probably good for us.
It's probably good for the Republicans.
It kind of opens up a seat that is in a pretty heavily blue state.
Normally a seat very difficult for us to win.
But look, Republicans can win in New Jersey.
Witness Chris Christie.
Now you may say, Chris Christie?
Well... The point is we're not going to get a Republican like Marjorie Taylor Greene to win in New Jersey, no.
So in certain places, in blue states, excuse me, in purple states, We're going to be okay with Republicans who are moderate, who are rhino-ish.
I'd be okay with Chris Christie as opposed to, say, Menendez.
Menendez is going to step down from his role in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Well, yeah, because that's a committee with access to all kinds of foreign secrets, precisely the secrets that, at least in the accusation, Menendez has been selling to foreign powers.
I mean, a good question is, since they knew that Menendez was under investigation, why did the Democrats allow him to stay on the Foreign Relations Committee all this time?
Evidently, again, the answer suggests itself, it's in large part because he's a Democrat.
They need Menendez.
He's on their team. As long as he's an obedient member of their team, they're like, listen, you know what?
And really what this shows you, I think, is that the Democrats aren't upset that Menendez is corrupt.
They're upset that he got busted.
And he got busted kind of in a blatant way.
When you've got a Democratic senator with gold bars around him, you know, and all this cash, it kind of looks bad.
You know, it's a little bit like, who was the guy who was, like, sexting, you know, the guy that they, you know, Huma Abedin's husband?
Oh, Wiener.
Oh, Wiener. Yeah.
Wiener. Again, they didn't have a problem with Wiener.
Their problem with Wiener was it became too embarrassing for them, and so they had to offload Wiener, and now it looks like they're going to have to offload Menendez.
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Get 35% off your first preferred order by using discount code Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast a new guest, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears of Virginia.
And we're going to be talking about her new book, How Sweet It Is.
She was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1964.
She served in the Marines.
She's been on the Virginia State Board of Education.
She's a small businesswoman.
She's also been involved with, well, leading a men's prison ministry, serving as director of a women's homeless shelter.
And the book again, How Sweet It Is, Defending the American Dream.
What a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
And, you know, I suppose our stories are different in a way because I was born in India.
I came to America at the age of 17.
I've lived a sort of American story myself.
But I've noticed that when people talk about the American dream, there are certain common themes that always emerge.
And so I'm actually very excited and curious to hear.
Tell us your American story.
So really, I don't think my story is that much different from yours, Dinesh, because I came from Jamaica when I was six, but actually because I wasn't learning anything in school, my dad sent me back to Jamaica for my education.
Can you imagine that?
You know, we were on the British system, and in fact, at that time, quite a few Americans even, not just Jamaicans, were sending their children home.
And Well, it all started with my dad coming to America, August 11th of 1963, just 17 days before Dr.
King gave his I Have a Dream speech.
And he came at a bad time for us.
I asked him, why did you come?
Because there were real dogmases, you know, that we really couldn't eat where we want and live where we want, etc.
And he said, because this is where the jobs and the opportunities were.
Now, Dinesh, you have to understand, that's incredible because He could have actually gone to England because we were still British citizens then and it would have been easier for him to enter England and instead he thought America would be the place that would give him a second chance at life.
And so he only arrived with $1.75.
He, of course, waited in line, provided all his documentation and then he had to wait.
And so even as, you know, you have to think about this, even as America at the time was, you know, had the racist issues that it did, even so they still allowed a black man to enter the country.
So, you know, there is no utopia.
And if there is and you find it, don't go because it won't be when you get there.
Because we know how to make things crash and burn.
That's what we do. So America is the best thing that we have, closest to utopia, and we have to make sure we preserve for Dinesh, for the next generation.
You know, you're making a very profound point here, and I think it's very unique to the immigrant experience.
Years ago, I was in a debate over, is America a racist society?
And I was debating, I think it might have been even Reverend Jesse Jackson, I'm not sure, but he was making the point that America falls short of its ideals.
And I found myself, I wasn't disagreeing with him, but I realized that as an immigrant, It was inevitable for me to use a kind of comparative or historical standard.
Compared to what? You know, looking at other countries, does somebody else do better?
But he was using this utopian standard of judging America sort of by the Garden of Eden standard.
Now, naturally, by that standard, America fell short.
But what you're saying is that compared to anyone else, America does give greater mobility.
And that includes, by the way, European countries like England.
Yes, and you know, when I think about patriotism, you know, it seems starting to be very patriotic.
It's the people at the southern border today.
They believe in America.
They want America to stay America.
They are throwing their children over the fence, literally, to plant themselves on American soil.
They know if they get a foot, a foot on this soil, the trajectory of their lives will change.
So it cannot be that they are more patriotic than we.
No, no. We understand that we have to have America remain America.
She must remain that city on shining hill.
And yes, even Jesse Jackson, I think he might have forgotten that if you go back, actually, you can Google this and find that he himself said that, you know, when he saw a group of black boys coming towards him, he was afraid.
Why are you afraid, Jesse?
So, you know, we need to stop playing these race games.
Because I was just the other day contemplating the change that America continues to march toward.
You know, we're still experimenting with her.
And she will continue to endure, as Abraham Lincoln said.
Will she endure?
Of course she will.
And we must fight for that to continue to endure because there is no other place to which to escape.
Let's take a pause. When we come back more with Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears of Virginia, the book, How Sweet It Is, Defending the American Dream.
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I'm back with Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, the book.
We're talking about how sweet it is, defending the American dream.
You mentioned in the last segment, Winsome, that your family had the chance to maybe go to England.
And they decided, no, your dad said, let's go to America.
I've noticed something as a country, India, connected with England almost in the same way, that Indians who live in England can be very successful.
In fact, there's one right now that's the Prime Minister.
But somehow the Indians I talk to who are in England feel that there is a system that is somewhat...
Impenetrable to them. So you have an Indian lawyer or barrister, but that guy feels like I'm sort of a member of the Indian bar.
I'm not really fully accepted within the circle.
I've noticed that this is where America is different, that you can come to America as you did, as I did.
And the highest reaches of the society in all walks of life are open to us.
Have you found that to be your experience?
You know, I've always felt I belong in any room in which I set my foot.
I have never really felt less than, and if I did, I quickly put that away.
Because this is America.
I mean, America welcomes you.
America looks like you, looks like me, looks like all the other people who have come here.
And we're not going to throw away.
You know, think about it. I am second in command in the former capital of the Confederate States.
I mean, you know, they must be rolling over in their graves.
And yet, Dinesh, they look at you and me, those people who want to divide us, and they say that we are the white supremacists.
Really, I'm the one who 22 years ago carried the bill to help protect us against the KKK. We won't listen to them.
They can continue with their nonsense.
Nobody's listening. Interestingly, you are an elected leader, which is a reflection of the way that Virginia is today, as opposed to, let's say, the days of Robert E. Lee.
Yes, and I am an immigrant.
So I'm not just black.
I am an immigrant.
And on top of that, I am the first female.
So I'm not the first black female.
I'm the first female, period.
So we have come a long way.
Yes, we have. And we must acknowledge these things.
And we have, yes, ways to go.
But we're not going to burn our own house down, Dinesh.
What do you make of the fact that a lot of this racism in days of slavery, but also in segregation, was perpetrated by the Democratic Party?
The Democratic Party had the solid South, it was Democratic legislators who passed those segregation laws, Democratic governors who signed them, and yet the very same party turns around today and says, oh no, The two parties switch sides.
We're going to take all the things we did and now blame them on the Republican Party.
I mean, you must get this all the time.
How do you respond to it?
Yeah, I get it. What you do is you just use your common sense because, Dinesh, we were not all kicked in the head after all.
I mean, we understand how these things work and there are quite a few minorities, not just black, but Latino, Asians, everybody's, you know, beginning to say to themselves, wait a minute, how did we really get here?
Who really did all these wrongs to us?
And yes, we won't say the Republican Party's without sin, but I gotta tell you, we're waking up.
And the problem for the Democrats is, I unfortunately look like the people that they're trying to keep me from.
And it's not working.
Because, you know...
When I enter the room and we talk, we understand that we have a lot of things in common and that they say to themselves, well, if Winsome can be there, then I can be there.
If Winsome is a Republican, and the fact of the matter is I had, when I held office 22 years ago, I had black people who voted for me.
I could not have won my race because the district was 62% Democratic, 58% black.
And so I became the first Republican, black or white, to represent a majority black district since 1865.
So that's their problem.
Now, Dinesh, what they won't tell you, these Democrats, is that they wind and dine me, wanting me to become a Democrat because they didn't think they could beat me.
But I've got certain principles.
I believe in free enterprise.
I'm not about to enter any racist nonsense.
I believe that the best government is least.
I believe in self-government.
We're just not going down these avenues they want to take us.
That's all there is to it.
Let's talk, Winsome, if we can, about Virginia, a kind of a swing state.
I don't know if it's right to call it a purple state, but it's a state that can pivot either way.
And my question is, for Republicans who have had trouble winning swing states, Certainly in the midterm election, it seems like all the tennis balls dropped on the wrong side of the net, so to speak.
What is the formula for the GOP to win in a swing state like Virginia, but also by extension in other swing states, perhaps Michigan, perhaps Pennsylvania, perhaps even Arizona and Georgia these days?
What is the stance of the Republican Party that can really get through to the American people?
Well, I would say we're a blue state.
Once upon a time, we were, you know, very red, but not anymore.
And we've had to, in Virginia, convince enough Democrats and enough independents that we were the party with the common sense ideas, that we were not going to separate you, parent, from your child, that we were going to make sure that you made decisions that benefited your family, that we were going to give more of your money to you and not the government deciding how to spend it.
And, you know, COVID really opened a lot of eyes because they understood that Democrats, apparently, you've heard the term, will take full advantage of a crisis.
And so they closed our schools, they closed our businesses, and they told us how we were going to worship by closing all of our houses of worship.
And people, their eyes were opened.
So you can be, well, a Democrat, but when it comes to your child, to your family, all bets are off, and that's what happened.
So what I've been telling our Republican family is, look, Don't cede the minority vote to anyone.
Nobody will tell our story as well as we will.
Nobody is going to sing our song for us.
So we have to go where the votes are, Dinesh, because there are voters in the Democratic Party who are conservative.
They don't even realize it.
I didn't know that I was until I heard a message, you see.
And so we've got to go and give them the message.
Where are the voters?
They're there. How do we do that?
We advertise in the minority newspapers.
There are Asian newspapers, there are black newspapers, Latino newspapers, etc.
Why aren't we advertising there?
Why aren't we talking about our own values?
We need to advertise on their radio programs.
There is black radio, Asian radio, Latino.
Why are we not there? That's where the voters are.
On television, on their programs, we need to be there.
In their restaurants, we need to be able to stop having our meetings in, you know, the certain places.
We need to get out of the clubs, the country clubs, and get into these restaurants so that, you know, if somebody says to the Latino business owner, who's that group over there?
They say, oh, that's the Republicans.
Oh, yes, they're here all the time.
This is what I mean. You have to mingle with the people.
You have to go where the voters are and not assume, as we have in the past, that it's going to take too much money and too much time to reach them and they'll never vote for us anyway.
No, no. That's how you lose.
We cede the vote to no one because we all want a safer community.
We're not going to get rid of our police.
We'll throw away, of course, the bad apples.
Bad apples in every profession, by the way.
Bad doctors, bad teachers.
Bad police. Throw them away and keep the good ones.
And we want to make sure here in Virginia, anyway, that businesses want to come here because businesses are the job creators.
The beautiful roads and schools and bridges and quality of life.
They pay for those things, Dinesh.
Not the government. The government is not a job creator.
So we've just got to make sure we get to where the people are after all.
Let's take a pause when we come back, a final segment with Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears.
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I'm back with Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears.
The book, How Sweet It Is, defending the American dream.
You know, Winsome, I think back to the Reagan era, which is kind of when I became interested in politics and the Reagan formula, as I understand it anyway, was let's have a kind of a A strong foreign policy which asserts American power in the world.
Let's emphasize the importance of free markets, the private sector, entrepreneurial mobility.
And the third, let's emphasize that we don't just want a free society but we also want a decent society, which means law and order, which means protecting family values.
Would you say, you know, here we are, you know, decades past the Reagan years, is that agenda still a winning formula for the Republican Party?
Because I think a lot of people are wondering, does that still work in 2023?
But of course it does.
Peace through strength.
We have this wonderful constitution.
The government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
The rights that we have, which by the way, courtesy of Virginia, when we brought it to the Constitutional Convention.
You know, if you don't have a strong military, who do you think defends that if we are overrun by our foreign adversaries?
They will tear up our constitution, tear it up.
So we need a strong military, and we know that our foreign adversaries, they only understand strength.
They understand pushback.
If we don't push back against them, they're bullies.
They will come after us.
And you see, it's already happening.
Do they really respect us?
And then, of course, in our homes, we have to have safety in our communities.
Who are we going to call, Dinesh, when they're trying to break into our homes?
The police, of course, but it's going to take them some time to get here.
We need strong Second Amendment, you see.
As we know, the Second Amendment backs up the First Amendment.
This is the beauty of America that, according to the NRA, there are about, what, 300 million guns in the United States?
And look, we're still a peaceful society, say, for the crazy few.
So we know what works here, and we have to have a good educational foundation, Dinesh.
How are we to take our place in the world, our children?
How are we to maintain our number one superpower if we don't know how to read and write and do arithmetic?
And science and technology, by the way.
It's ridiculous. So the same thing still holds true.
It's common sense.
And common sense, I hope, doesn't go out of fashion.
And I think what you're saying is that there is no reason for the Republican Party to have sort of a black agenda or a Hispanic agenda or an Asian agenda.
The agenda that we're talking about here, the common sense, pragmatic conservatism, is one that would be appealing to all these groups if it were sold in the right way and sold in the right environments and directly to the people who stand to benefit.
Well, it raises all boats.
There's not a black agenda, white agenda, Latino, etc.
No, it's the one agenda.
It's the one America.
I was elected under the same Constitution.
There was no change in the Constitution.
Yes, we have had the amendments to the Constitution, but it's the same.
That was, what, from 18-somethings?
1865, 1866.
And it is notable that even Dr.
King was not calling for a new law.
He simply said, we hold these truths to be self-evident.
The Declaration of Independence from the 1700s.
It will work. It's common sense.
Common sense doesn't change.
The sun comes up tomorrow, you know, water is wet.
So let us really try to stick with each other and not have these constant, these internecine wars with each other and the racial wars and the brother against the sister.
You know, it only benefits a certain group of people who are hellbent, as we say, on power.
They want to tell us how to raise our children.
They want to tell us how we lost our money, what we must read, how we must live.
And we don't want that.
If you want to do that, that's fine for you.
But we've got to come together because we only have this America.
And we've got to keep her.
The book, How Sweet It Is, Defending the American Dream.
Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, thank you very much for joining me.
Thank you very much. And I'll finish with this.
Even President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris said that America is not engaging in systematic racism.
So if they believe that and they surely know racism when they see it, I'm going to agree.
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I'd love to have you along for this great ride.
Again, it's dinesh.locals.com.
Welcome to my show!
And he made an interesting comment.
He goes, Dinesh, what happened to the Republican Party?
This is a guy, by the way, who is today, was once a very strong conservative, kind of a very involved Reagan conservative.
In fact, I remember he used to call himself a Jack Kemp conservative.
Even more than a Reagan conservative.
And looking back at those days, the reason we said a Jack Kemp conservative is that a lot of the ideological formation that later came to be known as Reaganism was concocted before Reagan and was associated with people like Kemp, Gene Kirkpatrick, and others.
They had formulated ideas and Reagan came along and said, I like this one, I like that one.
So that became Reaganism.
But we were aware of the sort of genesis Of Reaganism, and Reaganism to some degree preceded Reagan.
So in any event, this guy, who calls himself a jockham conservative even today, but recognizes that he's sort of out of step with the 2023 Republican Party, he goes, well, we used to be, you know, anti-Russia, and the Republican Party used to be anti, well, in favor of free trade, so anti-protectionist.
And he goes, it looks like the parties have kind of flip-flopped.
It looks like they've switched on these two critical issues.
And it kind of got me thinking a little bit as to what really happened.
Now, first of all, let me talk a little bit about a flip-flop, because a flip-flop can mean that you've changed your position dramatically in terms of goals.
But a flip-flop can also mean that you have the same goals, but you've changed your position with regard to the means, how to get there.
And so... This is a point, by the way, that Winston Churchill addressed.
Winston Churchill once wrote an essay, and he was talking about Edmund Burke.
Now, Edmund Burke is sometimes called a philosopher of liberty, but he is also regarded by his critics as a philosopher of authority.
So how can you be simultaneously for liberty and authority?
This is sometimes held to be kind of a contradiction on the part of Burke.
But here's Winston Churchill commenting on this.
No one can read the, quote, Burke of Liberty and the, quote, Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same ideals of society and government, and defending them from assault, now from one extreme, now from the other. The same danger approached the same man from different directions and in different forms, and the same man turned
to face it with incomparable weapons drawn from the same armory, used in a different quarter, but for the same purpose." Now this is very eloquent on I think what Churchill's getting at is the point that I want to emphasize here.
Russia. Yeah, if we've changed our position on Russia, it's because it's not the same Russia.
Russia is no longer the Soviet Union.
Russia no longer has the same.
Russia still is a nuclear power, but it doesn't have all those nuclear weapons directly tipped at us, or at least it didn't, until we began a proxy war in the Ukraine.
So, the point is that the reason that, as conservatives, as Republicans, we have a different view of Russia is we realize the Cold War is over.
And so, you have to look at Russia in a somewhat new light.
Is Russia still a dangerous society?
In some respects, yes.
Is Russia kind of a gangster capitalist operation?
In some respects, yes.
But But Putin, as a kind of individual strongman, if you will, of Russia, is in a very different position than, say, Gorbachev or Brezhnev or Chernenko or even earlier Khrushchev or even earlier Stalin and Lenin.
Turning to free trade.
We believe in free trade.
I believe in free trade now.
I think that, by and large, if there's a trade transaction between two parties and they engage in it voluntarily, it's to the best of both.
Why else would they do it? So trade makes sense, whether it's trade domestically, I'm trading with you, or if it's trade internationally.
The problem is that we've come to realize a bunch of things.
One is, of course, that when we trade with other countries, we let them trade freely over here, but they don't let us trade freely over there.
So that's a problem. Now, some people say that's not a problem.
That's their problem. But I think it is a problem because free trade relies on a certain reciprocity, a level playing field.
Number two, we've realized that if we practice free trade in the way that we have, then what happens is We wipe out communities.
We wipe out jobs in certain industries.
And that has social and cultural effects that are long-term on our own society.
Very damaging effects.
And so we're a little more alert and aware that trade has to be the servant of the people, of jobs.
Trade has to make America better, not just in providing cheaper consumer products, but also in protecting American jobs.
So if the Republican Party has shifted its position on that...
It's not because it doesn't believe in free markets or doesn't believe in free trade.
It's that it also believes in jobs, American jobs.
It believes in the responsibility of American leaders to protect American citizens.
It believes in safe American neighborhoods.
it believes in ultimately making America great again.
I'm still in the opening section of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, and when we last left off, Solzhenitsyn was describing his arrest and how his own captain, who had never previously treated him with any kind of regard or respect, nevertheless...
He takes his side in effect by stepping forward, shaking his hand, wishing him happiness, and in a way giving him a clue as to why he's being arrested.
Now all of this may not seem like much, but to Solzhenitsyn, to a man who's captive when the whole system is stacked against you, these small gestures become very important and significant.
Now, Solzhenitsyn goes on to talk about the very early days of his arrest, and he says that when he was taken to prison, the guys who grabbed him were so dumb.
He says that they didn't even know the town, the way to the prison, so he says, quote,"...they politely handed the map to me and asked me to tell the driver how to proceed to counterintelligence at Army...
I therefore led them and myself to that prison, and in gratitude they put me not in an ordinary cell, but in a punishment cell.
So, this is the bitterness of the police state.
You think, okay, I'll lead them to the prison.
They'll be like, oh, good behavior.
Oh, no. The opposite.
It's almost like they punish him because of his cooperation, and he's stuck into this cell.
Now, look at the description of the cell.
It was the length of one human body and wide enough for three to lie packed tightly, four at a pinch.
Small, tiny, dank cell.
As it happened, I was the fourth, shoved in after midnight.
The three lying there blinked sleepily at me in the light of the smoky kerosene lantern.
Look at Solzhenitsyn here.
He's not just telling you I was in a cell with a bunch of guys, we were all cramped.
He's a writer, and so he creates a scene, a scene that you would normally find in a novel, except this is not a novel, it's real.
The smoky kerosene lantern and moved over, giving me enough space to lie on my side, half between them, half on top of them, until gradually by sheer weight, I could wedge my way in.
What a vivid image.
He's tossed on the top.
All these guys are like, oh, you know, they just kind of make some room for him, but he's still kind of on top.
And then slowly over time, the way gravity begins to play, the bodies separate and he plunks down and basically hits the ground.
And so four overcoats lay on the crushed straw-covered floor with eight boots pointing at the door.
They're all facing the same way.
And then he says, then he goes on to say, in the morning as they sleepily awoke, sure enough, the first question, what are you in for?
And he says,"...but a troubled little breeze of caution had already breathed on me.
I pretended to be surprised.
No idea." Did the bastards tell you?
So here's Solzhenitsyn.
He's already a little bit like a cornered animal.
That's the way he's going to have to be all the eight years in the gulag.
He knows that.
He's learning really quickly.
And so what are you in for?
He doesn't want to say. Why?
You think, why not? These are guys, after all, they're comrades, they're comrades, they're locked up too.
Why not fess up and tell them?
Why not tell them the full story?
But no, his point is, I don't know.
I don't know who these guys are. I don't know who they're going to talk to.
I don't know if they're going to try to lighten their sentences by informing on me.
I am going to be very cagey about this.
So he asked those guys, what are you in for?
It turns out, He goes, my cellmates hid nothing.
They were three honest, open-hearted soldiers.
All three had been officers.
But their shoulder boards had been viciously torn off.
And so they were, in other words, when they were arrested, their insignia, their military insignia was yanked off of them.
Now, what was their great crime?
Apparently, their great crime was still damp from the battle the day before.
Let's remember, this is World War II. It's going on.
It's the very end of the war.
The Soviets are fighting the Nazis.
These guys are all fighting for the Red Army, including, by the way, earlier Solzhenitsyn.
And he says, Damn from the battle, the day before, they had gotten drunk, and on the outskirts of the village, they had noticed two raunchy broads going to bathe, and so they began to proposition them and yell at them, and Sol Jinssen says the girls sort of ran away so that nothing really happened.
And... And then Solzhenitsyn writes this.
He goes, yes, for three weeks the war had been going on inside Germany.
And he said, He says, had they been Polish girls or our own Russian girls, they could be chased naked around the garden and slapped in the behind in amusement no more.
So normally in the military, you do this kind of behavior.
If you're a soldier, no big deal.
He goes, but just because this one was the, quote, campaign wife of the chief of counterintelligence, So as it turns out, one of these girls was the concubine of one of the Soviet military officers.
That was the real crime.
It was the wrong girl that they had chosen to sort of make comments to.
And so just because of that, he says, these three frontline officers, he goes, were now all under arrest.
And now these warriors who had gone through the whole war and no doubt crushed more than one line of enemy trenches while waiting for a court-martial.
And this is the irony of war.
All that effort that you've put in the war, you've fought for years, you've distinguished yourself, you're hardened by battle, you think that the Russians would be like, wow, we value you as a soldier.
Listen, you went a little too far with these two girls, don't do that again.
No, they're all yanked out of the war.
Yanked out of their uniforms, here they are in the gulag, headed like Solzhenitsyn for a court-martial and probably years and years, if not decades, of imprisonment.
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