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July 15, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
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America needs this voice.
The times are crazy.
In a time of confusion, division, and lies, we need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
I've now had a day to digest the events of yesterday, the assassination attempt on President Trump.
And notice, by the way, that if you look at the newspaper headlines, there's almost no reflection of the word assassination.
It's almost like they all eerily agreed, let's not call it that.
And so they refer to a shooting, Trump is okay, but the effort at media minimization of this event is very significant and very telling.
In fact, one of the few places where you get honest information, honest discussion, is X, is the Elon Musk platform, which has become utterly indispensable.
Now, Trude Social is indispensable for other reasons.
It's the place we hear from Trump, and we'll talk about what Trump has to say and what Trump is doing and how he is responding the day after.
Now, let's go back to the assassination attempt itself and follow it in slow motion, because it is, first of all, this has almost lifted itself into a kind of a spiritual dimension, at least if you're a religious person.
If you're not a religious person, you've got to say that there's something eerie going on here, something massively coincidental, something that, well, borders on the providential, even if you can't go all the way, and here's why.
If you look at Trump speaking just one second before the shots rang out, and if you hold him in that position and then the shots ring out, Trump would have taken a bullet through the side of his head.
It would have gone through his brain.
If he wasn't killed instantly, he would be severely damaged.
He would be brain damaged.
He would be in intensive care right now.
In some ways, the implications of that are almost too large to contemplate.
I saw Vivek Ramaswamy and he goes, if Trump was killed, America would have ended yesterday.
Wow.
What a statement.
But the point is that Trump didn't have to do anything.
He just had to hold still and keep speaking.
And this bullet, aimed to kill him, would have at the very least gravely injured and possibly killed him.
Instead, at the last moment, he moves.
He turns.
And as a result of turning, the bullet comes from the side, grazes him on the ear, and passes without entering his head.
And as a result, Trump's life is saved.
In fact, Trump's life is saved to such a degree, and this almost seems a little downright unbelievable, that Trump actually made golf tea time this morning.
Yep, I'm not kidding.
Here's a picture.
I'm just gonna hold it up.
You may not see it all that clearly.
It's Trump on the golf course.
And I mean, first of all, this is an amazing recommendation for golf.
I'm thinking of taking it up myself because think of the appeal of this sport, man.
You're taking a bullet in the ear and then the next morning it's like, I gotta make my golf game.
But that's Trump.
It's the unbelievable tenacity of this man And of course, look at his tenacity in the moment.
Can you think of anyone taking a shot?
I mean, even when Reagan took a shot, boom, Reagan goes down, the Secret Service grabs him, they fling him in the car.
And we'll come back to the issue of the Secret Service, which I want to talk about in some detail, but the Secret Service in Reagan's time seems to have been ten times as competent as the sort of DEI version of the Secret Service, the kind of Ghostbusters cops.
the Secret Service light, if you will, the quota of Secret Service, the affirmative action hires that seem to have made up part of this entourage.
But nevertheless, in Reagan's assassination attempt by John Hinckley, Reagan is spirited away immediately, but Trump holds off.
He almost like pushes back at the Secret Service, and he's like, I gotta get my shoes.
So first of all, he wants his shoes.
He's not just gonna be carried away.
He wants to walk away.
And number two, he almost holds them back as if to say, wait, and then he goes, fight, fight, fight, with that same defiant look that we saw in his mugshot.
So this is a man of a different dimension.
I don't know if there's another way to say it.
This is a guy who is not made of the same materials as anyone else, certainly as normal people.
And this is a guy who has the presence of mind, because if he hadn't done that, And that AP photographer, by the way, hadn't been there.
You wouldn't get this Iwo Jima photo of Trump with his fist upraised with the Secret Service guys around him and with blood on his face and on his cheek and on his ear.
I mean, what an iconic photo.
And by the way, what a stunning contrast of that photo from Pathetic, shuffling Biden, who now appears quite clearly to have not only dementia, but possibly Parkinson's disease.
You notice that when Biden walks, he walks like a man who has a walker in front of him, although there's no walker.
His hands are completely still.
They don't really move.
And his hands don't swing from side to side the way normal people do, and he walks in a kind of slow motion with a very bewildered, confused look.
So contrast that image with the image of Trump.
I mean, think, there are three years that separate these two men.
There are three years, but there's a complete lifetime of vitality and energy, let alone a spiritedness that you see in Trump that has completely gone out of Out of Biden.
Now, let's talk about how this sniper was able to do this.
Because if you look at a map of the compound, you see Trump speaking, and then there's some buildings around.
This guy, it seems, was able to get on the roof of the nearest building.
The nearest building.
And take multiple shots at the president before somebody in the Secret Service team or in the sniper team was able to shoot and kill him.
Now, there are a lot of elements surrounding this, and I don't pretend to be an expert on this.
Dan Dongino is a former Secret Service agent, has talked about this with inside knowledge of the Secret Service.
I'm simply going to describe what we're being told, what we saw, and what we can reasonably make of it.
So item number one, I'm getting this from AP, There was a local, I'm quoting now, one local police officer climbed to the roof and encountered Crooks, encountered the shooter, who pointed his rifle at the officer.
The officer retreated down the ladder, and Crooks quickly took a shot toward Trump, and that's when the Secret Service sniper shot him.
So this, which didn't come out right away, is only coming out now.
Evidently, there was a police officer who approached the shooter before he shot.
And when the shooter pointed his gun at the police officer, the police officer backed off.
Had the police officer not backed off, presumably this fellow Crooks would not have been able to shoot at Trump.
So that opens up a whole set of questions.
Who is this guy?
What kind of police officer backs down in the face of this kind of a threat?
What kind of training leads him to do that?
That's point number one.
Point number two.
An observer has said that he told the police and in fact he pointed the Secret Service to the shooter whom he had seen in kind of camouflage gear with a weapon So, in other words, what he's saying is that they knew about this.
And in fact, not only does the guy seem credible, but it also seems that when you look at the sniper who eventually shot the guy, and you watch the video carefully, it seems pretty obvious that the sniper already had the guy in his sights.
In other words, the sniper doesn't say, isn't like, looking around, where's the guy?
Oh, there he is!
Bam, bam, bam!
Not at all.
The sniper's like, I got him.
I don't have to move.
My weapon is trained on him.
And so, once the guy fires, bam, bam, bam, bam, I think five shots, the sniper then goes, bam, bam, and kills the guy.
So, this is troubling at, well, more than one level.
Because, what's going on here?
Is it the case that the Secret Service had identified this guy already?
Knew that there was a guy in fatigues with an AR on top of the nearest building?
I mean, leave aside the question of how he got on that building.
Leave aside the question of why there weren't Secret Service or other types of law enforcement on top of the building in the first place, waiting there.
So you couldn't possibly... This is the nearest building to Trump.
And this alone has given rise to theories, and I don't even want to call them conspiracy theories, because conspiracies do occur.
People are put up to things.
People plan things.
John Wilkes Booth was part of a conspiracy against Lincoln's life.
There's some debate now about whether JFK was killed on the basis of a conspiracy.
Certainly, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
thinks so.
Others think so.
So let's leave aside the conspiracy theory sort of scare quotes and just focus on what we see and what we know.
We're certainly open to the theory that the Secret Service is acting in a very strange way here.
And when we get back in a moment, I want to dive further into that and look into whether or not it was the policy of the Secret Service not to shoot first, but to wait for someone to shoot at President Trump and only then to fire back.
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Reporter Susan Crabtree.
has a post where she says, here's my reporting on why the Secret Service did not shoot until after the shooter engaged.
And she goes on to say, a source within the Secret Service told her, told RealClearPolitics, that the agency rules of engagement in this situation are to wait until the president is fired upon to return fire.
This is a quote from the source.
You want to take a shot and then find out the guy was holding a telescope?
The Secret Service is by nature reactive and you better be right when you do react or you are effed.
So, the argument here is that the Secret Service doesn't want to get, you may call it a false positive.
They don't want to make a mistake.
They don't want some guy who has, let's say, a camera that looks, or a telescope, where he's trying to look at Trump, and BAM!
They shoot him dead.
They want to make sure that this is actually a shooter.
But think of it in the sort of risk assessment.
Apparently, the Secret Service, you get to take a shot, or multiple shots in this case, and then we fire back.
Well, I mean, You want the President dead before you fire back?
And you got the shooter, but guess what?
He's achieved his ambition.
He's achieved his goal.
He has taken out the President of the United States.
Is the only line of protection the Secret Service officers who are supposed to jump in and interpose themselves?
And how are they going to be?
Are they faster than a bullet?
Obviously not.
And so this, to me, seems just downright crazy.
The idea that the Secret Service is only going to return fire.
She goes on, the reporter, Susan Crafter, to say, Secret Service protocol requires that a counter-sniper, aware of a potential shooter, must radio directly to intelligence to respond and investigate.
And so there's some question about whether or not the sniper who eventually shot this guy Crooks, whether he asked for permission to shoot and was denied that permission.
We don't know that.
We're waiting to get more information about that.
But that is again, a very troubling possibility, which is the sniper goes, I got him.
I see a potential shooter.
He's in my sight.
Should I take him out?
And the response comes back.
No, don't take him out just yet.
And then this guy gets off a bunch of shots.
Now, The other side of all this is the Secret Service people surrounding Trump.
And if you watch these guys, you see that there are, there's more than one female Secret Service agent.
And these people, if you watch the video, have no idea what to do or what they're doing.
In fact, one of them on the audio just even says, if you listen carefully to the audio, she says something like, what are we doing?
Where are we going?
What are we doing?
She doesn't know.
She is either poorly trained or she's DEI, because after all, the Secret Service, if you watch interviews with Kimberly Cheadle, who's the head of the Secret Service, she's the director, her interviews are all about diversity.
We're trying to get a 30% ratio of women into the force.
That's going to make us better.
It's quite obvious when you watch the video that the women there, number one, they're not really protecting Trump.
None of them, first of all, are big enough to block Trump.
And so Trump is fully exposed.
If there was a second shooter, it would be extremely easy to take a second shot from a different angle and take out Trump.
And the women standing in front of Trump, they appear totally clueless.
They're just mumbling around and bumbling around.
And this is DEI.
So, there's going to be a lot of examination of all this.
Again, I don't claim to be an expert on it, but guess what?
Eric Prince, who is the CEO of Blackwater, somebody I've had on the podcast more than once, is an expert in armed security.
And I want to go through what he says about this, and I'll do it in some detail, because here's a guy who actually knows what he's talking about.
Probably a big contrast to the Secret Service Director, who, by the way, used to be in corporate security for PepsiCo.
She was a Pepsi executive, and she's now running the Secret Service.
And again, if you look at the website, it's all about women in security.
She's talking about, I'm quoting her, I keep a photo on my desk of the first five women sworn into the service.
She got some Women in Federal Law Enforcement Public Service Award.
I mean, just a total loser.
But here's Eric Prince.
Donald Trump is alive today solely due to a bad wind estimate by an evil would-be assassin.
Wow, what an interesting notion.
Here's what he's saying.
As the graphics show, the full value wind of just five miles per hour was enough to displace the unconfirmed but likely light 55-grain bullet two inches from DJT's intended forehead to his ear.
What Prince is saying is that the sniper didn't... I mean, you have an AR, and I, you know, I shot an AR.
The thing about an AR is, an AR has a red dot, and the red dot has simply got to be placed on the target, and then you pull the trigger.
I mean, even to shoot at 150 yards, for anybody who has shot a gun before, and you don't even have to be any kind of an expert, But certainly if you are a shooter who has gone to the rifle course and taken some training, that's like shooting at point-blank range because of the type of weapon.
You can't really miss.
And what Eric Prince is saying is he didn't really miss.
What happened was the combination of the wind and Trump moving Eric Prince, I think, focuses on the wind because the wind alone, he says, is enough to deflect the bullet a couple of inches.
And these were critical inches.
He says, DJT was not saved by Secret Service brilliance.
The fact that Secret Service allowed a rifle-armed shooter within 150 yards to a pre-planned event is either malice or massive incompetence.
I think this is the right way to frame it.
Why?
Because we don't actually know which it is.
It's very easy to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I'm long past giving institutions the benefit of the doubt.
I don't give the NIH the benefit of the doubt.
I don't give the FBI the benefit of the doubt.
I don't give the military the benefit of the doubt.
I don't give the Secret Service the benefit of the doubt.
Just to pull back for a moment, this is the same secret service that essentially went along with the FBI at the Mar-a-Lago raid.
Oh yeah, come on in, no problems.
We'll assist you in what you're trying to accomplish.
As opposed to, our job here...
is solely to protect Donald Trump and the First Family.
Anybody who poses any kind of risk to Trump and the First Family is to be seen as someone to be kept away, kept at arm's length, pushed back.
The Secret Service didn't do that.
They acted like, we're part of the FBI.
We're on your team.
Going after Trump?
Yeah, let's go get this guy.
Let's find out what you can about him.
So these people, I think, are fully capable of malice, particularly if they've been put up to it.
Put up to it by who?
We don't as yet know.
Is it the DOJ?
Remember the Secret Service is part of the, they're part of the Mayorkas operation.
They are part of the Merrick Garland operation.
This is all Homeland Security, it's DOJ.
These people are coordinated, they work with each other.
So I don't put really anything past these guys.
Clearly there was, back to Eric Prince, clearly there was, In...
there was adequate uncontrolled dead space for a shooter to move into position and take multiple armed shots. Watching the newsreel, one can hear how proximate the shooter is by the very short time lapse between the crack of an arriving bullet, supersonic, to the boom of muzzle blast, sonic. Wow, this is a guy who actually knows what he's talking about. And it says that the law enforcement sniper in the newsreels was clearly overwhelmed as his face came off his
rifle instead of doing his job to kill the shooter.
In other words, He has the shooter in his sights, and you would expect his face to be down, trained on the target.
Instead, he pulls back, moving off the shooter, if you will.
Clearly, they were watching the shooter, but apparently have a no-first-shot policy.
Now, we're right back to what Susan Crabtree reported, that their policy is not to shoot first.
And now, part of what we want to know is, is that really true?
I mean, I'd like to see the head of the Secret Service come before Congress and explain this policy of, hey, you know what?
we let them take some shots at the president and then we fire back.
And then Prince goes on to summarize and basically say, unserious and unworthy people in positions of authority got us to this near disaster.
He goes on to say, merit and execution must be the only deciding factors.
This, I think, is an oblique reference to DEI.
Eric Prince doesn't go into it or specifically refer to it, but he alludes to it.
Now, what is the effect of all this?
I had mentioned this earlier on Trump.
And here's Emerald Robinson.
Trump's advisors should tell him the 2024 election campaign is over.
No more rallies, no more risks.
Stay in a bunker under Mar-a-Lago until Election Day because the Biden regime won't stop trying to get him.
You know it's true.
I really don't disagree with Emerald Robinson that the left is determined to get rid of Trump by any means necessary.
I'm just quoting them.
This is not my view.
This is their view.
This is what they say.
He's an existential threat to democracy.
He's an existential threat to the American way of life.
This is what Biden says.
This is what their campaign is based on.
This is what their ads say.
And so, think of it this way.
What is the level of incitement to a would-be assassin?
If you say that to him, here's an assassin, he's thinking about taking a shot at Trump, and here's Biden talking to the guy and going, hey, listen, Trump poses an existential threat to your way of life.
He poses an existential threat to your freedom, to your security, and America just won't be the same if this guy's elected.
And so the would-be assassin goes, oh, well, what you're really saying is that this guy is Hitler circa 1933, and I would be doing The country a favor and you a favor if I were to take him out.
So Emerald Robinson is being very cautious here and she goes...
You know, Trump doesn't even need the campaign.
At this point, the contrast between what happened yesterday with Trump, the iconic Iwo Jima photo of Trump, and then the feeble photo of Biden, that is now emblazoned on the national psyche.
No need to campaign.
Just wait it out and things are going to be fine.
But you know what?
That's just not the psychology of Trump.
And I just saw Trump posting just a few hours ago, he's like, you know, I was thinking of going late to the Republican National Convention.
I was thinking of going two days late, so the convention begins tomorrow, Monday.
I was going to go on Wednesday, but I don't really want the shooter to win in this case.
I don't really want to have it said that I changed my schedule because of this.
No, I am going to the Republican Convention today!
Right away.
No delay.
No change in plan.
So that is Trump.
As I say, a man of steely resolve, of indomitable purpose, of great courage.
And this is the guy that is leading us into the future.
This is the guy who's on the ticket.
And it's in some ways I feel so I mean, I don't even know what to say to the kind of people who are like, well, I've got my reservations about Trump.
You know, I agree with him on policy, Dinesh, but you know, I'm a little unsure about the man.
He's a far better man than you'll ever be.
This is a guy who seems almost made for this moment, made for this time.
And what happened yesterday only proves it.
And I'm actually delighted that there are some people on social media, and these are people who are dug in on DeSantis, kind of nasty toward Trump.
And some of them are like, you know what, something came over me yesterday.
I felt feelings that I hadn't felt before.
I didn't even know were in me.
And guess what?
I am 100% pro-Trump right now.
And that's the way I think we should all feel.
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The Democrats on the left are trying to disclaim any responsibility for this assassination attempt.
And one way they're doing that is by saying that this 20-year-old who fired these shots was registered as a Republican.
Now, very interestingly, in Pennsylvania, there are Democrats who register as Republicans.
Why?
Because they want to vote in the Republican primary and keep Trump off the, try to make sure Trump gets defeated by some other candidate.
So this is a, we've seen this not only in Pennsylvania, but elsewhere, where Democrats are allowed to vote in Republican primaries and vice versa.
So that alone doesn't tell you a whole lot.
I mean, I guess if the guy's a Republican, he's sort of a never Trumper.
He's like Bill Crystal, or he's like one of these never Trump Republicans who decides I'm a Republican, but I'll never vote for Trump.
And so maybe the Never Trumpers bear responsibility for this, at least in part.
But no, I think this is a guy who is, and there's some reporting about the fact that he's donated to left-wing causes, at least from the little we know.
And we know very little.
Why?
Because what happens when these things happen, this has happened with the Nevada shooting.
Remember at the casino in Las Vegas, the FBI swoops in, They hide information.
They don't show you the social media of the guy.
They try to get everything off the internet.
They pretend like this is all part of the investigation.
Part of what I'm saying to myself is the shooter is dead, isn't he?
So why can't you reveal everything you can about him?
How does that compromise your investigation?
Why is telling us information about this guy?
His diaries, his journals, his voting habits, his commitments, his participation in riots or rallies or activism.
Why can't we see it all?
And so, I think that this is why people suspect a cover-up, and I think they're right to do that, because you're hiding information that seems relevant, that is part of the public interest, and there's no valid reason to conceal this information.
It's not like the conspirators are on the run, and you're looking out for them, and you're finding them, and you can't give any information about them, or you're going to interview the suspects, and you're not going to reveal all the details about what actually...
None of this is even really germane here.
Now, the Democrats have been saying on and on since 2016 for eight straight years, basically, that Trump is such a threat to America, such a dictator, such an autocrat, that they have to do whatever they can.
And they've been doing whatever they can.
They try to get him off the ballot.
They try to impeach him twice.
They have 91 criminal charges.
91.
Think about that.
This is like a shotgun approach.
We gotta get the bird.
One shot's not gonna do it.
Why don't we fire 91 shots?
Then we're bound to hit him one way or the other.
This is their strategy.
This is their campaign.
Here's Keith Olbermann responding to a post from Biden-Harris.
Trump says he's been treated worse than Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated.
Biden-Harris' headquarters is being sarcastic.
And then Olbermann replies, there is always the hope.
So, hope of what?
Hope that he will be, in fact, assassinated like Lincoln.
So, there you go.
Think of, you remember Kathy Griffin holding up that kind of mask of Trump with his face, with his head chopped off, and she's holding his bleeding face.
What is the message of that?
What are you saying if there's a, again, if there's a would-be assassin sitting there, what is Kathy Griffin communicating to that guy?
Good work.
Keep going.
This is our goal.
You're achieving this higher purpose.
That is our agenda.
And now, of course, these same people are pretending like that is not what they've been saying.
That is not their approach.
Here is George Takei.
Trump remains an existential threat to democracy.
We'll defeat him with ballots, not bullets.
Well, Here's Glenn Greenwald responding to him.
Democrats did everything possible to ban Trump from running.
They got him censored off social media.
They got Democratic officials to bar him from the ballot.
They impeached him twice.
They explicitly demanded his imprisonment before the 2024 election.
Now, oh, we just want to beat him with the ballot.
Suddenly, you know, these are defenders of democracy, and that's all they've ever wanted to do.
They didn't want to go after him any other ways.
They just wanted to put it up to a vote and put it before the American people.
This is utterly disingenuous, utterly dishonest.
Jake Tapper.
There is something wrong with the soul of America right now.
He's calling for an end of dehumanizing rhetoric.
Now, notice that whenever any Democrat is under attack, The media goes into an orgy.
Right-wingers are to blame.
Right-wingers are inciting violence.
This is a scourge on American society.
MAGA is a threat to the security of the country.
These are the true domestic terrorists.
But when a Republican is attacked, We need some national soul-searching.
As if to say the attack isn't coming from a certain direction.
The attack hasn't been egged on by people who are on the political left.
As if this is not a coordinated strategy by the Democratic Party to get Trump one way or another.
What about the media's dehumanizing rhetoric against Trump that's been going on for eight years straight?
So I can't even read this nonsense about, you know, there's something troubling the American soul, too many Americans see those whom they disagree as the enemy to be shunned, blah blah blah.
This is just boilerplate battle.
We should pay absolutely no attention to it.
And then, Coming from somebody whom I've known over the years, David Frum, in fact, a speechwriter for Bush.
And this kind of shows you here that some of these Bush guys, I mean, Pete Wehner, who wrote speeches for Bush, now David Frum, who also wrote speeches for Bush, have utterly gone deranged.
Trump derangement syndrome is intense.
And they don't mind basically shilling for Biden now against Trump.
And this article in The Atlantic, The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator, is actually one of the absolute worst I've seen.
And I might have to pick up this article tomorrow because I want to go through it in some detail, but I'll just deal with the opening section of it because the opening section is intended to show Trump is not only as bad, but he's the worst guy because he's been an apostle of violence all along.
In fact, the theme of the article, here's the subtitle, Violence Stalks the President Who Has Rejoiced in Violence.
Okay, well, let's see the proof of that.
Where has Trump rejoiced in violence?
And let's hear David from.
When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked.
Well, how did Trump jeer and mock?
And then he goes on to say, one of Trump's sons promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.
Well, pause for a moment.
There was reporting that was coming out of the mainstream media that the guy who assaulted Paul Pelosi had showed up in his underwear.
So is it unreasonable to conclude based upon media reports that something was going on there?
That this was some sort of a rendezvous?
Now, later that reporting was corrected, and those of us, including me, who had suggested this possibility quickly backed off and said, wait a minute, no, based upon new information, now reported that this was not the case, We're not making that claim at all.
So again, this is wrenched out of context by David Frum to pretend like there was a claim that Nancy Pelosi's husband sort of deserved it.
No one said that.
The question was whether or not this was some kind of asexual rendezvous, and then that guy turned on Paul Pelosi and attacked him.
Let's continue with David Frum.
After authorities apprehended a right-wing extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally.
Why would Trump do that?
Well, the answer is really simple.
Gretchen Whitmer knew about this plot in advance.
The FBI, which was actively involved in concocting the plot, looped in Gretchen Whitmer, who was quite aware of what was going on.
She was, in fact, part of the entrapment scheme to get these guys.
And remember, they wanted to get them Right before the 2020 election, so they could then go to the media and make it look like this is a perfect proof of right-wing violence.
But it was the FBI that funded this enterprise.
It was the FBI that led reconnaissance missions to Gretchen Whitmer's sort of summer home.
Hey guys, let's go check it out.
It was the FBI that organized training sessions to practice shooting.
So, This is why Trump minimized and belittled this Gretchen Whitmer operation, because it wasn't a genuine kidnapping plot concocted by the plotters by themselves.
The FBI was in on it, feeding it, encouraging it, building it up and providing the materials necessary to carry it out.
And then bam, they bust them.
And this is why these guys, one after the other, are being acquitted.
And even the two guys who were convicted, their case is on appeal.
They're probably going to get their cases overturned as well.
So again, David, from pretends like all this context doesn't exist.
Oh, Trump belittled the Gretchen Whitmer plot again as an attempt to prove that somehow Trump is the great insider of violence.
So just taking his first two examples, you basically just see how chronic lying, and I say chronic lying because David Trump's a really smart guy.
This is a guy, well, I have to say he used to be a friend of mine.
I've eaten dinner at his house.
But this is a guy who is too smart to be spouting stuff that he's just ignorant about.
He is in the know, he is artfully including information and excluding information, and ultimately this article begins, continues, and ends in pure, I am sorry to say, deceit.
I'm continuing my discussion of the opening section of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery.
And, you know, as you know, typically I do this at the very end of the podcast.
The last segment is literature or history or philosophy or Christian apologetics.
And it might seem that when something monumental happens, something like this assassination attempt on Trump, That I should do the whole show on that.
And as you know, I'm pretty much doing the whole show on that.
But I want to explain my reason for not suspending this sort of back-of-the-book last section and continuing to do my discussion of this book, you may say, as normal.
Well, my reason is this.
However much of a crisis we face as a country, and in some ways I think we are in a a kind of national emergency, not just because of the assassination attempt, but all the things happening in the country. But nevertheless, I think we need to preserve some element of normalcy.
And what that means is that if you're a student, well, you still got to study. You still got to get work done. You still not, you know, and even above and beyond that, we need to pay attention to our family. We need to take time to listen to a song or watch a movie, read a book.
Those activities that give wholeness and richness to normal life should not be cast aside.
In fact, they help us keep our balance in a difficult time.
So here we go.
I'm going to continue talking about Booker T. Washington.
We're now in the early part of the 19th century and he is free, but he's looking back on slavery And he's doing it with a kind of exceptional lack of bitterness.
He says, No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction.
Besides, it was recognized and protected for years by the general government.
So here Booker T. Washington is in part exonerating the South, as if to say, Look, you can't just blame the South.
And neither does he actually specifically blame the Democratic Party.
But the point he wants to make is that there are a lot of people complicit in this.
Northern industry, for example, was involved in the business, you may say, of cotton.
They were benefiting from it.
They made money off of it.
And Booker T. Washington knows all this.
He also says, having once got It's tentacles fastened on the economic and social life of the Republic.
It was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution.
Meaning, this is kind of the view that the founders had, which is that slavery is here, it's sort of Now built in, unfortunately, into the society.
Built in why?
Because the British brought it to America starting around 1610.
Think about the distance from 1610 to, let's say, 1776.
It's 150 years.
So, the point is that slavery is now part of the fabric of society.
And Booker T. Washington's point is it's not so easy at this point to root it out.
Lincoln agreed, by the way.
Lincoln compared slavery to a kind of snake in the bed.
And he's like, we want to get rid of the snake, but we don't want to aggravate the snake in a way that makes it sting and kill the child who is also sleeping in the bed.
The child, of course, here referring to the fabric of society.
So, here's Booker T. Washington continuing, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, what a way to begin a sentence, even though slavery was really bad, the 10 million Negroes inhabiting the country who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery are in a stronger and more hopeful condition materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.
What a spectacular assertion!
Basically, what Booker T. Washington is doing is he's applying a certain kind of logic that is always relevant when you're determining if something has harmed somebody.
And so, for example, if I say, I was harmed by British colonialism because my ancestors were tormented by it and I grew up in a country that was controlled by the British, here's the question I'd have to ask.
What if the British never came?
Would I be better off?
Would India be better off?
And so Booker T. Washington is asking that exact same question.
He's saying, are the blacks in America who are now former slaves or descendants of slaves, are they better off or worse off than any comparable group of blacks that remained back in Africa and were not enslaved?
Who's better off?
And he goes, gee, you know what?
We are.
And this seems like a shocking statement because not only is Booker T. Washington saying that the blacks are better off despite slavery, he's going to go on to argue that slavery actually helped them to become better off.
And this is such an outrageous claim.
You would never hear it today.
It is completely suppressed by sort of DEI literature.
And it's worth thinking about and assessing to see if there's any validity to it.
Now, Booker T. Washington goes on to say right away, this I say not to justify slavery.
On the other hand, I condemn it as an institution.
We all know it was established for selfish and financial reasons, not from a missionary motive.
But then he goes on to say this, Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose.
It's a biblical point, that God can take a bad thing and steer it to a good end.
Now, how is that possible?
How could it be, as Booker T. Washington says, that, quote, the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white man?
Again, these sentences ring with the power of a sort of a hammer, because they are so alien to the spirit of our time.
And yet, Booker T. Washington is speaking a certain kind of blunt common sense.
Now, we know what the white men got out of slavery.
You got people to work for you for free.
What does a black man get out of slavery?
Here's Booker T. Washington.
He says, this was fully illustrated by the life upon our own plantation.
So right away he's saying, I'm not going to give you some sort of theoretical argument.
Let's look at the life I know something about on my plantation.
The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labor as a rule to be looked upon as a badge of degradation or inferiority.
The slaves did all the work, the masters did basically no work, and so the masters looked upon work as degraded and bad.
And therefore, says Booker T. Washington, quote, labor was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape.
What an interesting point.
The slave, all he does is work.
So he's looking to escape work.
That's all that his life is, a drudgery of work.
But the master doesn't want to work either.
So the master and the slave have something in common.
But what the master can avoid doing, the slave is in fact forced to do.
So, says Booker T. Washington, the slave system on our place, in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white people.
So the white people did no work, and as a result, they had no skills.
My old master had many boys and girls, but not one, so far as I know, ever mastered a single trade or special line of productive industry.
The girls were not taught to cook, sew, or take care of the house.
All this was left to the slaves.
And so, we come to Booker T. Washington's key point, which is that under slavery, this system worked.
The masters did nothing, the slaves did everything, but now what happens when freedom comes?
It all changes.
Here's Booker T. Washington.
When freedom came, The slaves were almost as well fitted to begin life anew as the master, except in the matter of book learning and ownership of property.
Slaves didn't have knowledge.
When Booker T. Washington is going to talk about the effort to get knowledge.
And he says, we didn't own property, but he goes, the slave owner and his sons had mastered no special industry.
On the other hand, the slaves had mastered some handicraft and none were ashamed and few unwilling to labor.
So now the slave is going to work, but work even harder.
Why?
Because the slave now gets to keep the fruit of his own labor.
And then Booker T. Washington goes on, in a sort of a deflection, he moves away from this for a moment, and he talks about the fact that the slaves had always been longing for freedom.
He says most of the verses that they sang about or talked about in the plantation had some reference to freedom.
And when the master came in and said, what you talking about?
The slave would always say, well, the freedom I'm talking about is the freedom of the next world.
In other words, in this life, it's work, it's drudgery, it's misery, but maybe in the next world, I'll be free.
And the master was like, oh, okay.
Well, in that sense, you can kind of continue reading the Bible.
But Booker T. Washington's point is that the slaves never read the Bible as referring only to the next world.
The slaves read the Bible as referring both to the next world and to this one.
And he says, now they could throw off the mask. They were not afraid to let it be known that the freedom in their songs meant freedom of the body in this world. They were specifically yearning for freedom here and now. Now, again, this is the kind of back and forth of Booker T. Washington's rhetoric, and the back and the forth are not contradictory.
They're actually two sides of his argument.
The longing for freedom is real, and yet Booker T. Washington is not afraid to say that the slaves face what is sort of maybe called the shock of freedom.
What do you do with freedom?
Suddenly you are free.
And it doesn't come as a thrill of liberation, at least after the initial excitement, you sit back and you go, wait a minute, I now have to make life on my own.
He says, There was a feeling of interest, or perhaps sadness, on the faces of the slaves, but not bitterness.
He goes, it occurred to them that they were now going to say goodbye to people that they had known for years, sometimes decades, sometimes all their life.
This was actually not easy.
He said, on his own plantation, there was a guy who showed up who read the Emancipation Proclamation, and after the reading, we were told we were all free and could go wherever we want.
He goes, initial reaction, tears of joy.
But he says, the wild rejoicing lasted but for a brief period.
The great responsibility of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and their children, took possession of the slaves.
And he says it was almost like turning a youth of 10 or 12 years old out into the world and going, okay, you're free.
Go live your life.
Go work.
Go provide for yourself.
You're on your own.
And he goes, the reaction of the slaves was, what?
Where do we go?
What do we do?
The questions of a home, a living, rearing of children, he says a deep gloom came over the slaves, and he said freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected.
And he said that while some of the younger people were like, okay, we're gonna get out there, we're gonna make a go of it, he goes, gradually, one by one, stealthily at first, The older slaves began to wander from the slave quarters back to the big house to have a whispered conversation with their former owners as to the future.
In other words, they were seeking the advice of the slave masters.
What do we do?
Where do we go?
How do we make a living?
You have been free all along.
Now show us, at least a little bit, how we too can be free.
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