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Dec. 7, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
51:36
THE REAL DICTATOR Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep722
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Coming up, I'll evaluate the GOP candidates debate with a specific focus on Vivek Ramaswamy's performance and his ambitions.
Debbie joins me for our roundup.
We're going to talk about Putin's worldview, anti-Semitism on the college campus, why Trump is not the dictator we need to worry about, and a Netflix special about a bad surgeon.
If you're watching on Rumble or listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
This is the Dimash 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.
Did you watch the GOP candidates debate last night?
I didn't. I mean, I didn't watch the whole thing.
What I do sometimes with these sorts of things is I capture all the significant exchanges by surfing various sites on social media.
So I have a grasp of all the key exchanges.
But I didn't watch the whole thing.
And I'm trying to think to myself, is it because...
I know that this is a fait accompli.
Trump is ahead. Debbie was telling me actually this morning, what, 66%?
I mean, think about it. One guy's at 66 and everybody else is sharing the other 34 and no one even has the lion's share of that.
So I guess DeSantis has about 15.
Nikki Haley has a bunch.
They're ahead of Vivek Ramaswamy.
I mean, Christy, I'm surprised he's even at one or two.
And in fact, that came up during the debate.
Vivek was being a little harsh, but I think not unduly harsh.
I mean, I would say duly harsh.
Basically says to Christy, like, you know, why don't you have a big, go to a buffet, eat a big all-you-can-eat meal, and then go home and take a nap.
Get out of the race. You're wasting everybody's time.
And of course, Christy, I mean, it's interesting to ask, like, what is he doing there?
What's the point? Even Megyn Kelly at one point was like, Christy, you know, people in your own party sort of hate you.
So what kind of...
What kind of race are you running when most people think you're a disaster?
They would never dream of voting for you.
And Christie's like, well, sometimes I've got to be there to tell people harsh truths about themselves and so on.
But look, I mean, if you're running in a democratic election, telling people harsh truths about themselves is not exactly a winning strategy, right?
You're... Let's even say that the American people are stupid, selfish, confused, morally rotted.
Imagine running a campaign.
Guys, I'm here. Here's my message to you.
You're a stupid, selfish, morally rotted.
Now vote for me. Yeah, so this is a disaster.
Perhaps the most talked about exchange was the time when Vivek challenged Nikki Haley.
He says, look, I mean, Vivek was really harsh even on Nikki Haley, and Debbie was recoiling a little bit.
She's like, well, Republicans shouldn't be quite this harsh on one another and so on.
You know, I think we're in a strange time when both the country is in a raw state, the Republican Party is in a raw state, so there's an unusual level of candor, but even acrimony.
At one point, Vivek holds up a sign saying Nikki Haley is corrupt.
Another point, he suggests that she's willing to send Americans to die so she can buy another house.
Wow. So, yeah, mean for sure.
But mean doesn't necessarily mean untrue.
Because think, Nikki Haley is somebody who was a politician, South Carolina governor, UN ambassador.
I mean, earning a politician's salary, right?
And then suddenly her network rockets to $8 million.
Now, how is that possible? Answer?
She's on the board of Boeing.
So, she is essentially, because she's a hawk, She is being celebrated by the defense establishment that has a lot of money to make on hawkish policies and hawkish wars.
So, you know, now Nikki Haley in her defense could say, well, listen, I happen to be a hawk.
I happen to be a—I want a strong defense, and that's my motive.
Now, if Boeing happens to like me for that reason, that's not why I'm taking this position.
I'm not taking the position for the money.
But this is really what I think Vivek is hitting at.
He goes, well, you may not be taking it for the money, but the money doesn't hurt, does it?
Isn't money a great persuader?
Isn't money something that's going to help you go, yeah, I think we've got to stick it out in Ukraine a little bit longer.
After all, I've got another million dollars to make.
So Vivek is really hitting here.
In the past, when you have these Republican debates, they would rarely attack motives in this way.
And then, of course, I think Vivek, kind of his knockout punch for the debate, he's like, Nikki Haley wants us to fight in foreign wars and she can't even name the places we're supposed to be fighting in.
And Nikki Haley, I'm not sure if she was just caught by surprise or if she honestly didn't know.
I told Debbie this morning, it's a very risky strategy by Vivek because...
If he says, you can't name these places, and she goes, oh yes, I can.
Boom, boom, boom.
Vivek would have immediately, that would have been a counterpunch of a Joe Frazier type of counterpunch that puts the other guy really on his back.
So Vivek took a risk, I think, in doing this.
But I think Vivek knew that a lot of these people are such political positioners.
They spend a lot of time crafting their messages.
They don't do something like read a book or read some history, really understand what's going on in Ukraine.
They don't have that kind of intellectual depth or curiosity.
In fact, I would venture to say that probably the only guy on that podium who does is Vivek.
Now Ron DeSantis, I think, did pretty well for the debate and spoke effectively when he was asked, but there's something about him that is not breaking out.
I mean, not only has he been stuck, but in some ways he loses ground.
And so after every debate I see on social media that DeSantis, people are like, Ron DeSantis comes through again.
Ron DeSantis wins another debate.
And I'm like, yeah, but this isn't just a debate.
It's an election. So the debate is a means to increasing your popularity, strengthening your Republican support.
And finally, when Debbie and I were talking about, what is Vivek trying to accomplish here?
What's his goal?
What's his ambition?
And I said, I think it's twofold.
Number one, Vivek, I think, wants, and I think he'd do very well, by the way, a top position in the Trump administration.
I think that's the most obvious kind of Vivekian motive.
I will run sort of defense for Trump, and he is doing it.
And so Trump will notice that and go, hey, Vivek would be great on my team.
I think the answer, he would be.
But the other is that if for some reason, we can think of reasons, right, that Trump can't run, Trump is immobilized, Trump is not going to be able to do it, And people are going to look down that list and go, well, who is the most Trumpian candidate?
All the Trumpsters, the 66% are going to say, who's the guy who's most like Trump on that stage?
And I think Vivek is hoping people will say, well, there's only one answer to that question.
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Debbie and I have been talking about all the stuff in the news, and so she's been weighing in, and there's a lot of topical stuff.
So she's like, why don't we do our roundup a day early so we can cover all this stuff?
That's going on.
And so here we are for a Thursday rather than a Friday roundup.
Actually, before we start, what's kind of funny to me is these days after the podcast, you're like, oh, Dinesh, you know, I was hoping that you'd have some time to relax after all the promotion for the movie and stuff.
But instead, Danielle and Brandon have put me to work.
Okay. We have a political campaign to win.
And so, I mean, these things are, well, the primary is March 3rd.
So it's like a three-month mad dash to the finish line.
And, you know, you've got a bunch of campaigns.
I have it. This is like the first one I'm even in.
And I swore I would never do another.
Yeah. Because you know how much it works.
It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work.
And I wasn't even in charge of the campaigns.
I was just helping. Right.
Just even helping, you know, making phone calls, block walking, helping with fundraising, all of those things, you know, they're a lot of work.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
But I was actually impressed.
He knows a lot about billboards, and I suppose that's just part of the science of the campaign.
So anyway, it's exciting, and it's fun, and it's a big step, of course, for those guys.
And they're just 29, and Danielle's 28.
So at a very young age, they're jumping in the frame.
But we need some young people.
And the age of Congress is 59, is it?
That's the average. The average age?
Yeah. So you know that there's some geezers up there.
Oh, sure. We've seen a couple of guys who seem to be almost 100 years old, and both of us were like, why is this guy still in Congress?
I mean, you know, here's the thing.
I feel, and I saw that Brandon had this sign that said that he's for term limits, which is really good because I think that you should not be a career politician.
I think it's wrong.
I think you should Serve your time, serve the people, and then exit and have new blood come in and do the same.
Exit, come in. Because what happens is these people get a little too comfortable in their positions, and then they get a little bit of a hothead.
Not hothead, you mean a bighead. A bighead, yeah.
Yeah. And they get very egotistical about their position.
I'm a congressman. Sheila Jackson Lee, okay, as an example.
Of course, she's a lefty, but...
I mean, the good thing about term limits is that it doesn't mean you have to get out of politics, but it means you have to move on.
So think of it this way. Okay, your terms are running out as a congressman.
You could run for Senate if you want, run for lieutenant governor, but it forces you to be on the move.
It doesn't allow you to settle in in the way that you're describing and just become a fossil.
Right. I mean, like, you know, Nancy Pelosi, even McConnell, you know, on the R side.
I mean, these people have got to go.
You know, go... Go enjoy your life with your grandchildren.
Go have a trip with your spouse.
Do something other than...
Let's talk about the GOP debate.
And I think you...
I mean, I was showing you some of this stuff.
And of course, I enjoy it probably a little more than you do.
Because you were... I think a little part of you doesn't like the sharpness of these exchanges.
No, I don't like it.
And I don't like treating our own side that way.
Because what do you do?
You're actually giving ammunition to the left for when they go up against someone.
Because they're going to go up against somebody, right?
Right. And so if you're like, oh yeah, you're corrupt, you're this, you're that, then let's say Nikki Haley would be the nominee.
Not that she would be, but let's say she would be.
Okay, then all the things that Vivek said about her are now going to be front and center when she is actually running against a Democrat.
Thank you, Vivek.
Thank you. You did all the research for them.
Well, not to mention the fact that, you know, again...
The Republicans need to come together, which would mean that Vivek would be endorsing Haley, and then he'd be asked, well, wait a minute, you're endorsing somebody, and then you say- Why didn't you rip her to shreds and now you're endorsing her?
What? You know, so, guys, remember Ronald Reagan?
Remember what he said?
Thou shall not- Criticized.
Not criticized. What did he say?
Go against your own Republican, right?
Because Reagan would go in debates.
I remember the 1980 debate.
I remember Phil Crane, George H.W. Bush.
They were disagreeing.
It's one thing to disagree with policy.
It's another thing to rip somebody to shreds and just humiliate them in front of everybody.
Like if you asked me, you know, what are the provinces and whatever, I wouldn't know.
I would be stunned. Well, what you're doing is you're embarrassing me.
You're not doing anything other than that.
And so what you're doing is you're making me upset.
You're making me not like you as a person.
Right? I mean, Vivek's view of that would be this.
He'd be like, you know, the problem is that too much of this corruption is seeped into the Republican Party.
So, for example, let's take Biden's war in Ukraine.
It is a gigantic river of cash, right?
And Vivek's point is there are Republicans who have been relentlessly enabling this.
Yeah. And number two, very physically remote from our interests.
We seem to be taking too much interest in that side of the world, and we are literally, literally destroying our side of the world.
Our country and our neighbors and our hemisphere.
No, absolutely. So this is the point.
You know, I remember even thinking back to the Reagan years.
We would always make a distinction between countries and regions that were seen as vital to our national security interests.
So the Middle East was more vital then than it is now, in part because we were more dependent upon Middle Eastern oil.
But the idea that sort of the United States should commit huge amounts of resources anywhere just because somebody else is on the prowl, this makes absolutely no sense.
So I think Vivek is quite right about that.
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The left is accusing Trump of being a dictator.
Now what I find really amusing about this, honey, is that most Republicans, if they saw this, right, you're a dictator, would immediately go into absolutely not Biden's the real dictator, here are all the things he's done.
Right?
Trump is being interviewed by Sean Hannity, and Sean Hannity basically gives them a softball.
He basically goes, you know, do you have any plans to abuse your power, to become a dictator, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?
And Trump basically goes, only on day one.
I'm going to be a one-day dictator.
Well, I have to say, I tell you this all the time, but he is the worst dictator in the history of dictators.
Right. Well, first of all, what dictator loses an election, whether by fraud or any other means?
Number two, what dictator doesn't control his own police agencies or government?
And not just the FBI. I know.
I love Trump, but I know he doesn't like to lose.
Well, I have to say, in this aspect, he did.
He didn't score on the dictator index.
He was not an effective dictator, guys.
He didn't do anything that dictated anything.
And the weird thing is that by that standard, Biden is a whopping success, right?
Because Biden is, well, I'm not saying he's in charge of the police state, but he's the face of the police state.
Let's look at Biden's success as a dictator.
Censoring ideological opposition.
Check. Check. FBI raids on political enemies, check.
Prosecuting opposition candidates, show trials, mass surveillance, endless investigations, violating bodily autonomy, mass propaganda in education and the media.
So this is the police state checklist.
And let's just say the Biden team is much better at the...
At the job of dictatorship.
What is really interesting is I used to think that Obama was kind of a dictator.
He reminded me a lot of Hugo Chavez.
I used to say he was the American Hugo Chavez, right?
And because I still believe that he somehow manipulates things now, it's not surprising to me that this administration, the Biden administration, is very dictatorial.
Yeah, I think with Obama, it's not that he lacked the impulse, he just lacked the opportunity.
In other words, he was more cautious.
He realized that dictatorship and police state kind of tyranny means the soil needs to be cultivated.
That's why he wanted a third term with Hillary.
Or a third term going on now.
Exactly, but he thought he was going to have a third term with Hillary.
With Hillary, right. So he thought, you know what, I didn't do what I really wanted to do, but it's okay because Hillary's coming in and we're going to finish the job.
Hillary didn't come in, so he didn't finish the job, and then a loss.
I mean, this is in a way very, in a way, similar to Reagan on a completely different front, which is to say, you remember that all Reagan's policies over eight years toward the Soviet Union did not achieve their fruition until after Reagan.
The Berlin Wall fell, 89, Reagan just finished, and then the collapse of the Soviets, 91, 92, all under Bush.
And similarly here, it could be that the real sort of efflorescence of That's right.
With regard to Trump, I was actually happy that he said he was, you know, in a very Trumpian way.
He's always being a little bit of a comedian.
His sense of timing is so good.
But as also, I think this is what is freaking the left out.
There's also a grain of truth to it.
I think what Trump means is that, yeah, on day one, I've got to come in and fire a lot of people, clear out a lot of underbrush.
I've got to sort of vacuum the place.
Do you think he can do it?
I think he can do it.
I think the way you... There are ways to do it.
And I hope that Trump is exploring the actual mechanics of how to do it.
Because, for example... He needs to call you.
Oh, if he needs to call me, I would supply him with a five-page single-space blueprint of how to do it.
And it's a little subtle. You know, it's not just a matter of you fire people.
See, you can't fire some of the people who are Korea bureaucrats.
Now, Vivek has a way to fire them, but even that takes time.
So what you have to do is torment them.
Vivek can just torment them and attack them personally.
But what's that? Vivek can do lecture all these guys and abuse them and talk about their families and their...
And their weight problems.
I know. Yeah. Vivek goes, listen, I've got Chick-fil-A outside.
I would have said... I would have said, Christy, Chris, Christy, I really like you and I respect you as a person and I want you to live a long time.
But as a heavy man, you are actually a heart attack away from leaving us, right?
Because he looks unhealthy.
Maybe Vivek could have handed a PhD weight loss.
That's what it is. I was going to say, I will buy a membership to PhD weight loss so that you too can achieve your goal weight like we have.
You know, and then just be nice about it, right?
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Usually, Debbie and I are, well, I won't say we agree on all issues.
Well, we agree on most.
And we do have, as I mentioned at the end of the last segment, a slightly different temperament, particularly in how to respond to the landscape of politics now.
Debbie's response, I think, is very traditional.
It tends to be the way Republicans naturally respond.
Are oriented to responding in a certain way.
I think I have, and maybe this is a result of my Obama case.
Yeah, street cred. Well, not street cred.
It's just that I have a little bit more of a, I'm now dealing with a bunch of gangsters approach.
And so traditional remedies don't really work or don't work as well as they used to.
One issue that we might disagree on pretty fundamentally, and it's pretty funny because as we're setting up to do this segment, Brian here in the studio supplied me with equipment.
Here are our boxing gloves.
So if things get out of hand, we may have to put these on in the course of this segment.
I don't think it's going to happen, but just in case it does, yeah.
And... Not to mention in this trans era, the idea of men and women boxing each other is actually becoming a little more mainstream.
We'll see. We'll see how it goes.
Anyway. Yeah.
Right. Let's talk about this business, about the three presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn.
and your point is that the fact that they were trying to defend people calling for genocide against Jews and they were doing it amazingly invoking free expression. Oh we were committed to free expression of ideas. Ha ha ha.
I think that is where I draw the line.
The Jews have been persecuted for so long, so long.
The only group of people that has ever had 6 million of its own people killed because of who they are.
So I think that...
I'm sorry, but...
You're saying that that sets an outer limit.
It sets an outer limit to me.
And I would love to send those three presidents of those schools all the videos, all of the audios, all of the photographs that I have in my possession of the massacre that happened on October 7th.
And I guarantee you, I don't think they'll be able to sleep at night if I do that.
Well... Okay, let me play devil's advocate here a little bit.
Just because the reason I'm doing this is because with free speech issues, we're not talking about things that we agree with.
Remember, under free speech, if you're going to have free speech and you're committed to free speech, at least political free speech.
Let's not worry about nude dancing or anything like that.
I don't call that political free speech.
Well, you cannot decide something is not free speech just by claiming it's extreme or you don't agree with it or it is inflammatory because free speech means...
Why does free speech stop when people say, fire?
Why is that? Only because the free speech in that case produces immediate and imminent physical danger.
Okay, don't you think this is producing that for these Jewish students that are in these schools?
Don't you think that they are scared for their lives because these other people are out of control and they're acting like terrorists?
Oh, yeah.
It's a learning environment, right?
And the idea of Jewish students cowering in their dorms is unacceptable.
But I'm saying it's unacceptable on the level of conduct.
This is actually not directly related to speech.
And here's what I mean. You were saying about the six million Jews, and I agree.
There's no single event I can think of that compares to that.
But let's just say, for argument, I would say to you...
The Hitler regime lasted for basically six years, right?
It started in 1939.
Well, 1933 is when Hitler was elected, but 1939 was the beginning of World War II. So the escalation to the final solution was basically in the period of the war.
Now, let's compare this, let's say, to American slavery, which lasted really from almost the beginning of the country to the 1860s.
So you're talking about a duration of 150 years.
Now, if I were to add up all the suffering in that period of time and compare it to the Jews, I would say, I'm hard-pressed to say one was worse.
Well, okay, but the Jews have been persecuted for centuries.
Centuries! Centuries! When we were in Israel and we were in that pilgrimage road, we saw the ashes, the ashes of the Romans burning the Jews.
We saw that. We were able to touch the ash.
It was still there. How many years ago was that?
So are you saying that there is a pyramid of suffering, right?
And that basically the Jews are maybe at the top or maybe the blacks are next.
And I think what you're saying is we are going to allow free speech up to a point...
Well, I've never been for mocking gays or blacks or anybody else.
I'm not that way.
So I don't agree.
You say that it's free speech to do that.
I don't believe it is.
That's where we differ.
Right. Well, on a campus, let's just take an example.
Let's just say somebody actually takes a bullhorn on the campus and says, homosexuality is as thick.
I would take that bullhorn away from them and knock them in the head.
Why? Why? Because that's mean.
So? Well, I just...
I mean, it may be mean, but it's not...
See, I'm not a hypocrite. I'm not a hypocrite.
Because I don't think it's good to do it to any group of people.
But I especially feel like the Jews have been persecuted for so long that they should be in their own special class.
I do believe that.
Yeah, let's pick it up when we come back.
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It's D-I-N-E-S-H, Dinesh.
I think what's emerging from this conversation between Debbie and me here is that we're actually both taking a consistent position, but we're taking a consistent position with a little more latitude or a little less latitude.
So your view is, look, because a campus is a learning environment, there should be certain limits.
Yes, you can argue about the history.
You can argue about politics.
But if you create an environment where people feel degraded...
An environment of hate. An environment of hate.
Right. No place.
That does not belong on a campus.
Now, my view is the opposite, which is that...
Well, I mean, okay, remember when you spoke at Michigan State and that kid was yelling at you?
Get out of here.
Get the F out of here.
And then he told me to get the F out of this country as well.
Right. But hold on.
See, interestingly, you think he was taking my position, but I think he's taking your position.
Here's why. Because he would say that my views are so hateful, right?
That they do not belong on the campus, and therefore he is acting like the enforcement.
But I don't believe in the enforcement, though.
I don't believe in...
I just think that there should be nobody allowed to do that, whether it's him telling you that or you telling him that.
Right. But the problem is...
Right. So, obviously, I wasn't saying anything.
I mean, I always... Yeah, well, you...
No, no, I know.
I know. But what we're getting at, honey...
I lost my cool.
Imagine that. What I'm trying to say is that the campus should have more free speech than even the surrounding society.
Yeah, but you know what? Because that's what a campus is.
And not to mention, honey, you're talking about people who are 18 to 22.
If you cannot be bombastic, over-the-top, outspoken, let's just say crude, let's just say mean.
If you can't do it then and test out ideas, however outrageous...
You know, I think people on the campus should be able to say pretty much anything.
Now, I would enforce that across the board.
Now, look, I'm not talking about directed hatred, but I'm talking about someone taking a position.
I know, but see, I believe that this anti-Semitism on college campuses is direct hatred.
And it's also because of what happened on October 7th.
with Hamas. Now, the atrocities committed by Hamas are off the charts. I mean, we're talking women whose pelvises were broken because of rape, their legs broken because of rape, they shot women's genitalia, they stabbed women's genitalia. I mean, there are so many things that I could tell you that they did to these women. My mind goes there.
And so when these kids are, you know, I'm like, shut up.
It's ridiculous.
Right. Well, and it's doubly ridiculous because these same kids are like, this guy didn't use my pronouns.
He needs to be signed, you know.
So in other words, these kids are little tyrants.
I think on that, we're in agreement 100%.
I think where we're disagreeing is this.
I'll give an example to, I think, highlight.
Let's say somebody, for example, takes the view and writes a paper or even gives a lecture on campus, basically saying, I've read Mein Kampf and I think Hitler had a lot of good ideas.
I'm not saying that the Holocaust is defensible, but I'm taking an extreme example because the only way to defend free speech is at the extreme.
Remember, a generation ago, the ACLU of all groups defended the right of the Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, a Jewish neighborhood, right?
But the Nazis were marching peacefully.
They were marching in a Jewish neighborhood.
It's very inflammatory, because obviously, think of Jews.
There are people, their parents are Holocaust survivors.
No, it's horrible.
Yeah, so you wouldn't allow that, and I would.
I think that's really what we're, that's our area of difference.
And you know what I want to do to the Hamas terrorists, right?
So, there you go. Yeah.
Dobby thinks that capital punishment is not enough.
No. Oh, no.
Yeah. Let's talk about...
They have a special place in hell.
Not the virgin, you know, paradise.
Not the 72 virgins.
No, not the paradise they think they're going to.
They're actually going straight to hell.
Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about Vladimir Putin because...
And we'll continue perhaps in the next segment.
You were talking about the fact that when people think about left and right, he's on the left, he's on the right, with a lot of times it's very easy to say Maduro's on the left, very obvious.
Javier Millet is on the right in the libertarian sense.
How do you classify Putin?
I know. I don't think he can be classified.
I'm not sure he can.
Yeah, it is hard to say because, well, it depends.
If you look at left-right as, on the one hand, state control, that's the left, and then an expansion of individual liberty and the private sphere as being on the right.
Capitalist. Yeah. Putin is kind of in a strange position.
I think he supports a certain type of gangster capitalism.
The Soviet Union is run like a mafia.
Now, America's run like a mafia, but in a different way.
Yeah, but the Biden family is more ideological than Putin.
The Biden family is left.
Do you know how Putin feels about climate change and all of those things?
Is he left on that issue or right?
Well, part of the problem here is that I don't know.
And part of the problem here is that, you know, for a while there, Russia was playing along, just like India and China do.
India and China go to these climate conferences, like, the climate is in real danger.
But then you notice that they're building coal plants.
They actually don't believe a word of it, but they're putting on a little bit of a performance of a show just because they just don't want to be, you know.
So I think Russia is the same.
But think of it. Putin has come out in defense of the kind of traditional family values.
Now, again, that could be a stance.
That could be a ruse.
But in that sense, he seems conservative.
But on the other hand, think of it.
He's allied with China.
He's allied with Iran.
He doesn't hesitate to ally with these countries.
Right, right. And again, you know, he's a tyrant.
He's the tyrant, but he's also a tyrant that poses as a defender of Western values.
He's almost like saying, I'm the last guy upholding Western values in the West.
The West itself has become morally corrupt and depraved, and so I'm standing up for the Western values in the sense of a previous generation.
Yeah, interesting.
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Debbie and I watched the Netflix special.
It's three episodes.
Well, I guess we sort of binge-watched it.
We watched... We watched one episode, and then we watched two.
Right. The next day.
Right. Yeah. And it's called Bad Surgeon.
In my view, a poor title, but it does describe what the series is about.
this sort of celebrity Italian doctor named Macchiarini, Paolo Macchiarini.
And it's not just about his sort of diabolical medical schemes, but evidently this guy was a little bit of a Casanova.
And it's about him developing a romance with an NBC, a former NBC producer named Benita Alexander.
And so he in one way cons his, what she ended up being his fiance.
He cons his fiancé. Oh, that was funny.
That was the most interesting thing to me of the whole thing, was how he almost pulled it off.
It was hilarious. Well, now, you know, there are these shameless sort of seducers, and what they do is they hold on to women, often more than one, by promising to marry them, right?
What I find amazing is in this case, not only did he promise to marry her, not only did he claim that they were going to be married by the Pope, but...
They sent out 300 ornate, exquisite invitations to people to come to the wedding, a wedding that was sort of never meant to be.
Never meant to be. I mean, they never made any arrangements.
He was supposed to be planning the whole thing.
Yeah, yeah. Very, very...
I mean, I chalked that up as he was just nuts.
Because it's just pathological behavior.
Nuts. And then he was doing the synthetic trachea, and that was what he- So explain what that is.
So that is the trachea.
Some people get cancer, other people get a degenerative disease, and they can't swallow, things like that.
So he actually- So that's this gullet right here.
Going down. It kind of goes into two, you know, it's the breathing mechanism.
It's the airway, right?
And so what he did is he took like a PVC pipe.
I mean, for lack of a word.
plastic pipe and he said that he was doing the cells, the stem cells, that the stem cells were going to wrap around this plastic and that he was going to put it into the patient and they were going to have a new trachea and they were going to be cured, right? And so he did tell all the patients that this was experimental, but that he was very confident that it would work and it turns
out it killed every single one of the patients he put it in.
Well in one case it didn't but that guy took it out. No, they had to take it out. Yeah. No, it almost killed him. So very, very scary.
And the thing about it is the whistleblowers, the other surgeons, said that he missed a lot of data.
So in other words, instead of doing animal studies, he went straight to human studies.
And that was where the criminality came in.
Right. The medical, the procedure is you do it in rats.
You try it for a long period of time.
If it works in rats, you do it in like pigs or some other larger animal.
And then you move to human trials.
But he didn't. But he didn't do that.
And that was amazing too, because think about it.
This was a guy hired by one of Europe's most prestigious hospitals.
Given his own division, what was the Karolinska hospital?
Given his own division with lots of doctors under him, the media was in his back pocket.
So when we think about who he conned, we think obviously of Benita Alexander, the fiancé, the other Italian woman he was romancing at the same time.
She was the mother of one of his victims.
Right. That had echoes of Richard III and Shakespeare.
And then he had a wife that he married in 1987, and he had two children with her.
So presumably he conned her, or maybe.
But most importantly, he conned the media.
Because the reason this guy became a celebrity surgeon is all these articles and all these shows, including American shows, with recognizable American hosts.
This guy is the...
Doing all these breakthroughs.
It really shows that even though media outlets have medical journalists, they don't know anything.
They are not in a position, not one of them thought of asking, okay, you're doing these procedures on humans, show me the studies that you've done.
They're too lazy and they're too dumb.
Yeah. And he was very charming, though.
He was charming. I think that was part of the whole thing, was that he was very...
Not only was he manipulative, but he was charming.
And I don't think he was handsome, but, you know...
But, I mean, think of it. Is it that easy where, if you're a medical doctor...
And this guy was a surgeon. My point is, this is not a case.
This is not like DiCaprio in that movie where he pretends to be a...
Yeah, pretends to be a pilot.
He's not a pilot. This guy was a surgeon.
But the idea that you can go to one of the most prestigious medical institutes in the world, and what?
Because you're good-looking and charming?
They're like, okay, you can be the head of a medical division.
Well, you know, he did serve two and a half years.
Ultimately, he did pay, I wouldn't say a full price, but some price for his misdeeds.
Although, interestingly, and we're looking at an article in USA Today, which is a kind of response to the series, he's still a doctor, and his license has not been taken away.
I don't think he's allowed to do this procedure, at least not in certain places, but again, he could conceivably do it in other places.
Yikes. In concluding his chapter on sentencing and show trials, Solzhenitsyn concludes with a specific case of a guy named Pavel Chulpenyev.
Now, this is during World War II, 1941, and Solzhenitsyn tells us that the military medical assistant, a guy named Lozowski, He brought this fellow, Pavel Chilpenyev, on charges, mainly because he was jealous of him.
He thought, let me figure out a way to get this guy.
And so what he did was, he addressed three questions to this lieutenant, Pavel Chilpenyev, And he recorded his answers.
So here are the questions and the answers.
The first one was, why, in your opinion, are we retreating from the Germans?
This is 1941. Remember, the Germans are doing this massive blitzkrieg attack.
Chilpanier replies, they have more equipment and they were mobilized earlier.
So, an excellent reason.
We're retreating because we're not prepared.
Our forces are outnumbered.
They're being overwhelmed. That's why they're retreating.
Question number two. Do you believe the Allies will help?
Help us, meaning Russia.
Joel Pennev replies, I believe they will help, but not from unselfish motives.
In other words, the Allies will help us, but they're looking out to their own interests.
Again, a correct answer, because obviously the United States and Great Britain aren't going to get in the war because they care about Russia per se.
They realize that their enemy is the Germans, if they can kind of ally with Russia to defeat the Germans.
So again, an accurate answer.
And the third question is actually not important.
So Chopiniam answered, Solzhenitsyn tells us, and forgot about this.
But Lozowski wrote a denunciation, so he writes a kind of complaint, a denunciation.
Very often, an arrest is preceded by some kind of informant, some kind of denunciation.
And Chopinyev is summoned before the political branch and then expelled from the Communist Party, from the Komsomol.
Why? Because they say he has a defeatist attitude, that he's praising German equipment, and also because he's belittling the strategy of the Soviet high command.
Think of the ridiculousness of this.
Chilpenev is just giving accurate answers.
He supports the Soviet high command.
But nevertheless, Chilpenev's arrest followed.
He had one confrontation with Lozovsky.
The previous conversation was not even brought up by the interrogator.
One question was asked, Do you know this man?
Yes. Witness, you may leave.
So in other words, all they're trying to do is confirm that the two men are acquainted, that this guy, this guy, Lazovsky, isn't making the whole thing up.
So all it is, do you know this guy?
Yeah, you do? Okay, good.
Go. In other words, they are taking at face value the charges made by this guy, Lazovsky.
Chulpeniam now appears before a military tribunal of the 36th Motorized Division.
And this is Solzhenitsyn's great grasp of detail, part of what makes the Gulag such a compelling document.
It's not just there was a meeting.
I heard about a meeting. Present were Lebedev, the division political commissar, and Slezarev, the chief of political branch.
So Solzhenitsyn, he wasn't there, but his information is so good that he knows, yeah, this is the next trial.
It was this particular command.
These two guys were present.
The witness, Lozovsky, was not even summoned to testify.
However, after the trial, to document the false testimony, they got Lozovsky's signature.
The questions the tribunal asked.
Again, Solzhenitsyn is really in the know.
He knows not only who was there, he knows what was asked.
Did you have a conversation with Lozowski?
What did he ask you about?
What were your answers? And this poor guy, Cholpenyev, he tells them, he says, this is what he asked me, this is what I said.
Solzhenitsyn says he still couldn't understand what he was guilty of.
After all, he says, many people talk like that.
He's telling the truth.
This is the kind of obvious fact of the matter.
He's like, many people have this opinion.
It's not just uniquely me.
And he says, many people think like this.
And the tribunal was like, who thinks like this?
Give us all their names.
Well, he obviously can't give all their names.
He's simply saying that his opinion is a common perception.
The Soviets are better prepared.
They have better equipment.
That's why they're advancing and we're retreating.
And finally, Chilpaniev realizes he's doomed anyway.
So he begs the tribunal.
He goes, listen, I'm a patriot.
And to prove my patriotism, will you send me to the front so I can sort of die like a man?
I don't want to die like a traitor.
I want to die like a man.
And the tribunal is like, no.
And here is Solzhenitsyn.
He says, this guy, like a simple-hearted warrior of old, was asking for an honorable death.
I mean, think of, you know, Brutus running on his sword.
Think of Roman soldiers who committed suicide.
This is the tradition that Solzhenitsyn is evoking, but he goes, the communists are such low-down creatures that they won't permit you this even.
So he goes, There's no justice.
Once again, there's the sort of simulacrum.
There's a kind of an outward semblance of a trial.
Oh, we have a hearing. We have people present.
Witness appears.
But it's all a sham.
None of it means anything.
This poor fellow is targeted and doomed from the outset.
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