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Sept. 13, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza

55:39

THE DISRUPTER Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep917

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	Coming up, Debbie and I have our Friday Roundup with no shortage of material.
	We're going to do our recap of the debate with Debbie's thoughts.
	We're going to have a bet over who's going to win the 2024 election.
	We're also going to discuss how Democrats became the party of the rich and what's behind the rash of school shootings and also the truth about those Venezuelan gangs in America.
	If you're watching on Rumble or YouTube or listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
	This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
	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.
	It's Friday and so Debbie are here for our Friday weekend roundup of things that have happened during the week and And, well, I think you wanted to start with something that was a little unexpected, that I wasn't kind of counting on, and I don't know if people, well, even people watching the podcast, I don't know if they've noticed over the past couple of days, but why don't you sort of outline what I'm referring to.
	What happened?
	Well, first of all, I think people are familiar with pickleball.
	Most people are.
	Yeah.
	I was sort of familiar with pickleball because a friend of mine plays pickleball or played pickleball, so I knew it that way.
	But we were in Utah.
	We were in Park City, Utah last weekend with some friends, and they decided to play a game of pickleball and invited us to play it with them.
	Let's just say that they are of the competitive disposition.
	They are very competitive, yes, true.
	So, we decided that we would join them and play pickleball, and probably about ten minutes in, Well, I was really enjoying it.
	It's a little bit like tennis, but it's fast moving, you know, and so I was hitting some pretty fluid shots and I kind of joke I was going for the shot of the day that would be on ESPN the next day, but it didn't quite work out.
	Needless to say, you feel flat on your face.
	Yeah, right.
	You like to say flat on your back but no, it was actually I fell forward.
	You dove for the ball.
	You said it was like in slow motion.
	My knees went down and then my arms went down and then unfortunately my face kind of almost just dipped and grazed the ground and I kind of gashed my lip.
	And you know how Trump says that when his ear, he's like, I couldn't believe how much blood there was because apparently he found out that the ear is one of those kind of bleeding organs.
	Well, the lip is too.
	There was a lot of blood.
	Everybody was freaked out.
	Me too, a little bit.
	And I was a little embarrassed at the situation too, because, you know, here we are having a friendly game.
	But in any event, I put some ice on it and I'm fine now, at least better now.
	Yeah, you still have a little thing.
	I still have a little gash, but it's on the mend.
	It's okay, it's on the mend.
	It just really scared me and I said, I don't think we should ever play pickleball ever again.
	We're done.
	Our lesson is we're done with pickleball.
	We're just not very athletic.
	Several years ago, I spoke to Michelle Malkin.
	Remember Michelle Malkin?
	Yeah.
	She was very active on social media.
	She's less now.
	But she told me, like, Dinesh, you know, my husband, Jesse, and I were like obsessed with pickleball.
	We play all the time.
	We travel the country and enter tournaments.
	And I remember listening, like, this was, to me, so exotic and out there.
	And then the subsequent years, we've never played until… This is the first time we've actually… Perhaps the last.
	Yeah.
	Now once in a while when I watch the tennis channel, which I sometimes do when I'm on the treadmill, I see that they'll be, instead of seeing tennis, they'll have pickleball.
	And I'm like, whoa, this must be getting somewhat popular because they're playing it on the channel, you know?
	No, yeah.
	I mean, it's a fun game.
	It really is.
	And, you know, to be fair, we were not properly dressed because we didn't know we were going to play pickleball.
	So, we were... Oh, no.
	I mean, exactly.
	We were dressed to go to the airport.
	I was dressed in, like, my preppy khakis and my... And just regular shoes.
	Walking shoes.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, that's probably part of the problem.
	All right.
	Let's talk about the debate.
	Yeah.
	And your take on... Let's talk about the bet first, before we talk about the debate.
	Okay, so Debbie and I have a bet that we have undertaken.
	Now, obviously a bet between Debbie and me is a little bit of a...
	An interesting phenomenon because we have joint accounts and all.
	But nevertheless, we do write separate checks and things, so I think this is a bet that's more based upon pride and judgment, and it's not really about the money.
	But we're betting $1,000, and what are we betting?
	Yeah, we're betting $1,000.
	Well, let me back up because we placed a bet, a $100 bet in 2020.
	Because I told you that Biden was gonna win by, because people are crazy and they're dumb and they listen to the media, and cheating.
	I said, both components are gonna cause him to win.
	I told you this before the election.
	You didn't believe me.
	I said, let's bet.
	I bet a hundred bucks.
	I won.
	Obviously, I was not happy that I won because I was not happy about the outcome, but I had that feeling.
	And likewise... And you acknowledge that in a straight-out election, Trump would have won, but the cheating factor... Your point is that it wasn't that Trump had a landslide and there was cheating.
	Your point is that because of the media, because of the fact that a lot of the Americans who decide the election don't pay close attention, it was a pretty close election, but the cheating was sufficient to put Biden over the top, right?
	Isn't that what you were saying?
	Because it was a close election, and because of that, Cheating was able to achieve its purpose.
	Right.
	And I knew that they were because I know they've been cheating for years.
	Right.
	But I knew that there was going to be an election that they were going to actually succeed.
	And I believe 2020 was that year.
	Likewise, I bet you that Kamala will win this election.
	I don't obviously want that outcome.
	And so I am actually betting Because I want people to get motivated so that Dinesh can get the $1,000.
	Okay?
	I want to lose the bet.
	I want to lose the bet.
	I mean, let's emphasize something very important here because this is something that very often people don't understand.
	They'll listen to you say something like this.
	They'll go, Debbie, wait a minute.
	I thought you were a conservative.
	I thought you were a MAGA.
	And your point is, we always have to make a distinction between the thing that we wish will happen And the thing that we think is going to happen.
	And it's a part of critical objectivity to recognize that those two are not the same.
	Correct.
	You can say very consistently, I want Trump to win the election.
	I'm going to vote for Trump.
	But you know what?
	I don't think he will.
	Or I'm worried that he won't.
	And that's not an inconsistent statement.
	Just like, actually, a leftist could say the opposite.
	A leftist could say, I don't like Trump, I hate Trump, I'm going to vote against Trump, but you know, I think Trump's going to win it.
	And that wouldn't be inconsistent either.
	So, there's a difference between the is and the ought.
	Right.
	The other thing is, I do have PTSD, okay?
	You admit it.
	I admit it.
	I have election PTSD and I have socialism PTSD.
	And because I see the signs, and later on we're going to talk about some of those signs, I see the writing on the wall, Dinesh.
	Yeah.
	I see it.
	Hey, you called me Dinesh.
	I called you Dinesh, I didn't call you honey.
	That's okay.
	Honey, I never call you Dinesh.
	Maybe you're in a very stern mode.
	You're like, I see you're writing on the wall, Dinesh.
	Or you should go like one of the youth pastors who once called me Dinesh.
	I'm waiting for him.
	I'm about to speak at some conference.
	He's picking me up.
	He jumps out of the car, beaming, wide-eyed, red-cheeked.
	Hello, Dinesh.
	Well, you know.
	I didn't really know what to say for a moment.
	You know what else calls you Dinesh is the phone.
	Oh, you mean the AI?
	The AI on the phone.
	Dinesh.
	Dinesh.
	Yeah, it says Dinesh.
	But anyway.
	Alright, so back to PTSD.
	Yeah, so I have it and I think that that is a definite reason why I think so negatively and why I'm so incredibly worried that I'm right.
	And I don't want to be right.
	I really don't.
	This is one case.
	I usually like being right, but this is one instance when I really, really pray I'm not right.
	Yeah, and in fairness, looking at your record, which is in general pretty good, you did call the 2016 election wrong.
	I did.
	In other words, that was a case where you were happy to be wrong.
	That's the only election I've ever called that was wrong.
	Because I still remember 2016, that's the year we got married, and well, we were about six months married at that time, and you were like, this is not going to be a good night, I'm actually going to go to the gym, and I'll see you later, and off you went.
	And I was watching the results and stuff, and then you came back, and you're like, how's it looking?
	And I'm like, I think Trump's actually gonna pull it off.
	And you're like, what?
	You couldn't believe it?
	Yeah, I couldn't believe it.
	I could not believe it.
	And I think the left couldn't believe it.
	No, they couldn't either.
	And in fact, it may be that they didn't deploy their full cheating mechanisms.
	Yeah.
	Because they thought they had it in the bag.
	Yeah, I think that's what happened, really.
	Okay, let's come back to Kamala Harris, and let's talk about the debate, and let's talk about Kamala as a candidate.
	Oh, well, look, I couldn't actually watch the debate.
	I watched probably about two minutes of it.
	You watched flashes of it, yeah.
	I watched most of it.
	Well, I watched about two minutes of it, you know, when I changed the channel.
	And she then said, it was when she said that the world laughed at Trump.
	The world was laughing at Trump.
	And I was like, Okay, that is an outright lie, because the world is not laughing at Trump.
	I happen to know first-hand experience, or actually second-hand experience, my cousin, telling me how the Venezuelans, the poor Venezuelans that are here illegally, came because they thought that this government was a joke, okay?
	So I know that that's indeed a fact.
	They are scared of Trump.
	They're not scared of Kamala Harris.
	Or Biden.
	Or Biden.
	So that was false.
	And so I was like, okay, I cannot stand this woman.
	I have to get up because I don't want to ruin the television set by throwing something at it.
	Well, that and then also the sort of aggressive intervention of the moderators is actually a very unpleasant thing to watch.
	I mean, imagine if you're watching a boxing match, right?
	And in the middle of the fight, the referee jumps up and starts pummeling one of the fighters.
	I mean, it's a disgrace.
	The whole thing takes on a kind of surreal and disgusting aspect.
	I think a lot of people felt that way in response to the debate.
	I hope so.
	Now, the media cheerleaders were all like, Kamala was scoring and so on.
	Well, it's impossible not to score when you've got two referees who are punching with you against your opponent.
	In your opinion, do you think she knew what the questions were?
	Or do you think she You know, gave them the questions.
	I mean, I'm not sure about that.
	I do think, well, look, I mean, the questions are going to be not only predictable in terms of issues, but I think she knew that the moderators were in her camp.
	So here's my point.
	She knew they're going to bring up racism and go after Trump.
	All I need to do is pile on.
	They're gonna actually set it up.
	They're gonna bring up the things.
	They're gonna bring up Trump's cases.
	They're gonna bring up the criminality.
	They're gonna bring up January 6th.
	The election.
	The stolen election.
	They will do my work for me, I guess is the point.
	So you don't even, to be honest, you don't need the questions when that's the case.
	Yeah, that's true.
	You're right.
	Right?
	You're right.
	All right, so we're going into this tough election.
	When we come back, Debbie and I will pick up on this theme, and there's a whole lot else.
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	That's right.
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	Debbie and I talking about the debate between Trump and Kamala Harris and you know I was making this point to you that I want to share now and that is that to me the closing statements were the heart of the issue where Trump made the point and it was probably the most important point of the night namely, hey you're saying you want to do all these things Let's leave aside the merits of what you want to do.
	But you have ideas, I'm going to do this in Ukraine, I'm going to do this with the border, I'm going to do this with taxation, I'm going to do this with healthcare.
	Well, why haven't you done them?
	Why aren't you doing them now?
	You're still in office.
	You're the Biden-Harris administration.
	Why haven't you carried them out?
	And this was an excellent point.
	But the point I want to make, and I was trying to make this to you, is that the point becomes even stronger if you take it to the next step and drive it home.
	And the way you drive it home is you say something like this, and this is something that Trump didn't say and didn't come up during the debate.
	I would have said it if I were debating, and it would go like this.
	I'd say like, look, clearly the things that you're proposing you haven't done.
	And there are two possibilities for why you haven't done them, and I'd like to know from you which of the two it is.
	The first is, you don't know how to do them.
	You know how to say them.
	You know how to pretend.
	But you don't know how to actually carry them out.
	And since you have no solutions, no practical solutions, it's no surprise you haven't done them.
	You don't know what to do.
	And you don't know how to do them.
	But there's another possibility.
	And that is, you're in an administration where Biden And all the people around Biden think you're a fool.
	And so even though you have repeatedly proposed, let's do this, let's do that.
	They have started laughing, told you to leave the room, paid no attention, gone on with the meeting.
	They think you're a buffoon.
	They don't take you seriously.
	They know that you're highly disliked, maybe the most disliked member of the administration.
	So either you couldn't do it or they didn't let you do it because they don't respect you.
	So which one is it?
	We know it's the first.
	No, I don't think it's the second.
	Absolutely not.
	Well, she is.
	Do you think that they took her seriously?
	No, I don't think she proposed it.
	I think she doesn't know how to do it and I think she's only saying those things to win.
	In fact, Bernie Sanders said the very same thing.
	He said that all of the things she's saying now, she's saying it simply to win the election.
	Did you know that?
	Yeah, I saw something where Bernie was basically saying that her heart is with us.
	Exactly!
	So in other words, what he's saying is she is, if not a socialist, in the socialist or in the pro-socialist camp.
	Absolutely.
	But, says Bernie, she's making a tactical maneuver, right?
	And so he's fessing up.
	Absolutely.
	Look and to some degree you have to admit that it is a rule of politics and this has happened you know many times where candidates will tack sort of to the center rhetorically for the campaign and that is what Kamala Harris is doing.
	I think part of the broader picture here and we should talk a little bit about this is the way in which not that the parties have switched sides but that there has been a reconfiguration I mentioned this a day or two ago on the podcast where, think about it, you have Tulsi Gabbard, you have Robert F. Kennedy Jr., you have Alan Dershowitz now either leaving the Democratic Party or announcing that they're for Trump.
	And then on the other hand, you have Dick Cheney, you have Liz Cheney, you have Adam Kinzinger.
	You've got these sort of Bill Crystal, these Republicans who are actively campaigning for Kamala Harris.
	So that tells you that the parties have sort of regrouped.
	What do you think is the key to the regrouping?
	Is it the uniparty against the People's Party?
	Is it the party of the, to some degree, I think what we've noticed is that the Republican Party, which used to be demonized as the party of the rich, but it's really hard to say that anymore, isn't it?
	It's not the party of the rich.
	In fact, most rich people are the ones contributing to the Harris campaign.
	Where are our rich people?
	You know?
	We have some, but not nearly as many.
	Not nearly as many, no.
	The other thing, to your point, I think that the switch on both sides is happening for different reasons.
	I think that the Liz Cheney switch, I think that's happening because of the man.
	They hate Trump, the man.
	They have absolutely zero idea that what they are actually doing is voting for a socialist slash communist slash Marxist.
	But is that really possible?
	I mean, think about it.
	Take Liz Cheney, who's an intelligent person, right?
	Liz Cheney fully knows what Kamala Harris stands for.
	She has herself posted that Kamala Harris is a disaster on the border.
	So you can find Liz Cheney.
	So the idea that somehow she doesn't know, she's ignorant, she forgot, makes no sense.
	It's not that she doesn't know.
	It's that she's willing Right.
	Willing to bring in those things because if it means Trump losing, she's all for it.
	I'll take open borders over Trump winning.
	I'll take confiscatory taxation.
	I'll take regulation.
	Because she thinks that it'll all be, you know, straightened out in the end.
	Because in the end, the people will then vote for a real Republican.
	I mean, the good old pendulum will swing.
	It's going to swing back and this time it won't be Trump.
	It's going to be some sensible.
	She wants to get Trump out of the Republican Party.
	That is her number one aim.
	And, you know, she's lost her mind, really.
	She really has.
	Because she has such a horrible Trump derangement syndrome that it's blinding her from the reality that if this woman wins the election, we're not going to swing to the right ever again.
	She doesn't seem to, that doesn't seem to register because her hatred of Trump is so incredibly intense that that's blinding her from the reality of what will happen if Kamala Harris wins.
	And then to continue the point about the party of the rich, I think if you look at the Look at the sort of rich communities in the country, which you can identify pretty clearly.
	There's the Silicon Valley moguls.
	Now, we have a half dozen of those, but they have the rest.
	You know, we have Elon Musk, we have David Sachs, we have a few others, but we have Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, but they have Zuckerberg, they have Google.
	They have probably the majority.
	They have Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn.
	They have many others.
	So they have more than we do.
	Wall Street, they have more than we do.
	CEOs of major Fortune 500 companies, they have more than we do.
	Now, This, at some level, doesn't make any sense because you would say rich people have a stake in the economy.
	They have a stake in the value of the dollar.
	They would see, I mean, a poor guy who's just got, you know, $50,000, let's say, in total savings.
	That $50,000 might become less, but you only have $50,000.
	Think of a guy who has a lot.
	Doesn't that guy have a lot more to lose?
	And if so, why would they in disregard of that?
	Don't they know that the Democrats are not as good for the economy as Republicans and Trump in particular?
	Well, it could be a phenomenon that they know can happen to the liberal elites.
	Because, you know, as I always point out, in Venezuela, the rich people in Venezuela are not affected by anything because they're part of the regime.
	They're part of that.
	They're part of the establishment.
	They're part of the regime.
	They're part of the, you know, narco terrorists, whatever.
	And so they're protected.
	They're shielded from it.
	And perhaps these people think that this will also be the case here.
	You know, they vote for Kamala Harris.
	Wink wink, they will be protected from all this.
	I don't know how because America has a little bit of a different system.
	But perhaps, just perhaps, they think that they're going to be part of that elite group of people that runs the country.
	So they want to be the new Chavistas in America.
	And look, that's not as far-fetched because really what we're saying, to spell it out, is this.
	If we are moving from a free enterprise system, a largely free enterprise system, toward A certain fascistic hybrid of an alliance between business and government that government directs.
	That's the key to fascism.
	If you have an alliance between business and government and business directs it, it's not fascism.
	Fascism is when the government is the one calling the shots and business is carrying it out.
	That's what Mussolini had.
	That's what the Nazis had.
	That's why they are fascists in that sense.
	If we're moving in that direction, the Democrats could well think It's not a bad thing in that regime for me to be one of the favorites of the government.
	Who else are they going to allocate?
	Car production, computer production, banking services, healthcare.
	We're going to force Americans to buy healthcare and we're going to force them to buy it from these eight companies of our choice.
	Don't worry, yours is going to be one of them.
	So they go, wow, ready-made demand.
	So that's what you're saying, that they They could cynically recognize that the country may be worse off, but they might be okay.
	Yeah, I think that's what it is.
	It has to be.
	Consider this.
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	It's D-I-N-E-S-H, Dinesh.
	W9 is third, the final segment of our roundup.
	We want to talk about crime, we want to talk about school shootings, but we also want to talk about gangs.
	And we'll get to the gangs in a minute.
	On the school shootings, yet another school shooting, and you were making the point that We don't seem to have an adequate answer to these things.
	That some people accuse JD Vance of saying, hey, school shootings just happen, you know, they're part of life, as if to say that we don't care about them.
	That's actually not what he meant.
	That was a distortion of what he was trying to say.
	But nevertheless, The answer to school shootings is not so easy to come by.
	It's not enough, I think we both agree, just to say, it's not the gun.
	Because people then go, well, then what is it and what can we do about it?
	We came up with something, at least the beginning of a new type of answer, so lay that out.
	Well, I mean, I jokingly said that, you know, to become a society of like minority report, you know, like that movie where the police know what you're going to do before you do it.
	Short of that, I don't know that we can actually solve this issue because our society, as you know, we've had guns for years, you know, many, many years.
	This wasn't a thing.
	When did it become a thing?
	When mental illness became a thing?
	When we did not address these issues, these mental illness issues?
	Even in the school shooting, this young man, apparently last year, was actually questioned by the FBI.
	Why didn't they do something then?
	Well, I'll tell you why.
	Because they don't do anything unless you do something.
	Yeah, two thoughts about this.
	One is, just to summarize the minority report, it was a film and our friend Jerry Mullen was the producer.
	Did he win an Academy Award for that one?
	I don't know if he did.
	Yeah, but anyway, it's one of those kind of very memorable, almost cult films.
	The idea is that the government develops the ability to read your mind and to anticipate crimes before, and the moral issue raised by the film is, is it right to arrest someone for a crime that they haven't committed, but that they perhaps are thinking about committing, but they haven't crossed the bridge and done it.
	Yeah.
	So, is moral responsibility simply in the intention, or is it the action necessary in order for you to have earned, if you will, the retribution or the punishment?
	But, when you say this is mental illness, To me, it's more than that, because there is mental illness in the classic sense, right?
	People have, they have a, your wiring in your mind is somehow messed up, or your chemicals in your brain, or that you have some kind of mental breakdown.
	But I think that in many cases, you're dealing with almost a cultural and moral and spiritual, you know, anomie, an aimlessness, like a lack of purpose in life.
	Those kinds of issues which are not mental illness in the classic sense.
	If someone loses a sense of direction, let's just say you have a strong sense of purpose in life and then you're completely knocked off your pedestal, right?
	You become very confused and you become very unhinged.
	But you're not suffering from mental illness in any sense, so I think that the causes of this are more complex than mental illness, although I think you mean mental illness in a sort of a general sense.
	You're saying that the problem is not the gun, it's the person firing the gun.
	But continue your thought about, so short of anticipating the crime, we can't fully solve the problem, well, what can we still do about it?
	Yeah, well, I mean, if we had an answer for that, we would have no more mass shootings, right?
	So, given that we don't have an answer, I just, I don't know short of... Well, here's my answer, and let's see what you think about this.
	My answer is this, and that is that there is always a certain balance between civil liberties on the one hand, and a kind of risk assessment on the other.
	So let's just say you have a kid who comes into the principal's office, let's say, in the old sense, and the kid has been going around saying to all the people who make fun of him or to all the people that he gets into fights with, I am going to murder you.
	Now, he hasn't murdered anybody, but it's not a case where he had a fight and in the heat of passion he said once, I'll kill you, I could kill you, but rather he has been consistently threatening to murder his classmates.
	And the question is, What about his civil rights?
	What about his liberties?
	He hasn't done anything that you can't really take any action, Dinesh, because the kid has only been saying stuff.
	People say stuff all the time.
	But I think that you can go beyond that just generic rhetoric and make a certain type of risk assessment.
	Now obviously, if the kid is known for boasting, he's a big talker, this is just talk, then you're like, okay, let's keep an eye on the kid, but we're not gonna do anything.
	But on the other hand, if this is a kind of a creepy, dangerous kid, let's just say, for example, one of his friends says, well, you know, he does carry a big Swiss Army knife in his backpack, then the risk assessment now begins to shift.
	And so, because case after case, we hear, yeah, the parents knew about it, Yeah, the school knew about it.
	Yeah, the counselor knew.
	Yeah, the principal knew.
	The teachers knew.
	Sometimes the police knew.
	None of them did anything.
	And you have to think that they didn't do anything because the kid hadn't yet done the outrageous act, hadn't done the school shooting.
	And to be honest, even in the Trump assassination, if you watch it very carefully, the counter sniper from the government waited for the shooter to shoot first and then shot him.
	That's crazy.
	I mean, if you just watch it, that's what happened.
	He had the guy in his sights.
	And the reason you know is he didn't have to re-aim.
	He didn't have to move the rifle.
	The rifle was trained on the shooter.
	Only when the shooter discharged not one but multiple shots, Then you hear BAM!
	But I think that was a mistake.
	A mistake.
	That was a mistake.
	That was an obvious mistake.
	That was an obvious mistake.
	But I mean, it's a symbol for what we see in these school shooting incidents where they don't hear, I'm talking about obviously not shooting the kid in advance, but I'm talking about taking necessary action.
	I personally think that your civil liberties should go out the door when you threaten to kill people.
	That, you know, I'm sorry.
	In a serious way.
	Yeah, in a serious way.
	And a lot of these kids were not taken seriously.
	But what you do is you take them out of that environment, you put them in a facility, Until they rehabilitate if they're able to rehabilitate I don't even know but you watch him like a hawk that you watch them you watch every step they make Because they are dangerous individuals and if they have guns in their homes They they perhaps are even more dangerous.
	I don't know but speaking of guns in your homes I truly believe that if the government has their way, they will take those guns away from the law-abiding citizens that will not do mass shootings, right?
	And we're going to be in a lot of trouble given the crime that has happened since the border has erupted.
	Yeah, let's pivot to that because that is an important theme.
	We only have a couple of minutes, but this is a really big issue.
	Yeah, let's go get into it a little bit.
	I think we can go over a little bit.
	But there's been controversy over these Venezuelan gangs.
	And you have been researching them.
	And you've got a cousin who gives you inside information from Venezuela.
	You've also been looking at what these gangs are doing in the United States.
	So just give us a summary of some of the stuff that you found.
	So, I want to tell everybody, so this Tren de Aragua, okay?
	It's train from Aragua.
	Aragua is a state in Venezuela, okay?
	And this gang, this particular gang, became a gang in a Venezuelan prison.
	Actually, it's called the Prison of Tocoron, and it's in the state of Aragua, okay?
	They became very large.
	Uh, very dangerous in Venezuela, especially.
	And, uh, my cousin told me something very interesting about them.
	And that is that once they exploded into Venezuela, when they got out of prison, because they did get out of prison, um, they became kind of part of the regime in a way, because they were actually guarded by the regime.
	They were protected.
	And they had these zones called one of them, the zones that they called it were the peace zone, la zona de paz, right?
	And in these zones, if you lived in this zone where the Tren de Aragua gang kind of like owned it, right?
	Yeah.
	They could do literally whatever they wanted.
	They could rape, murder, extort, and like their big thing was extort for money.
	It reminds me of two things really.
	One of them is the sort of CHAZ.
	Remember the zone that was set up in Seattle in the aftermath of George Floyd?
	It's like we have a leftist controlled thug zone.
	It's the Antifa BLM zone.
	You're saying that's what it is.
	The other thing I'm reminded of is these European no-go zones for Islamic radicals where they They can have Sharia law.
	They can do whatever they want.
	The cops stay away.
	You sort out your own problems.
	Very scary.
	It's very scary.
	And this is what they do in Venezuela.
	Now, they actually are a transnational gang now.
	They're known all over the world, really.
	They started the expansion in South America at first, right?
	Colombia, Peru, and Chile.
	A lot of them there, right?
	But they decided to come to America because word on the street in Venezuela was that the Biden-Harris regime was going to give them housing, give them a car, really give them a way of life, right?
	So why on earth would you stay in Venezuela, where there's nothing, there's no opportunity, and not take that bait and go to America?
	Because after all, The leftist American regime is offering you all these free things.
	And from the point of view of the Venezuelan dictatorship, Maduro and his friends, they're probably laughing and thinking, we'll send you these guys.
	This is some of Venezuela's best.
	Venezuela's finest, right?
	And so anyway, so this gang is very bad.
	And they are actually wreaking havoc pretty much everywhere.
	In a lot of places, a lot of cities.
	In a lot of cities.
	Just recently, There was a takeover at an El Paso hotel called the Gateway Hotel, and they basically took over that hotel.
	Now, you know, sometimes when you say these things, you know, the left is like, well, this is not really true.
	The gangs haven't done that.
	But so what are your sources?
	Where are you learning?
	Oh, Fox News.
	It's all over.
	It's widely reported is what you're saying.
	Yeah.
	The local authorities are aware.
	So talk about, why doesn't the cops go in and oust them?
	Well, I mean, I think that they're going to do that, but again, they kind of infiltrate in a way that it makes it very difficult to kick them out.
	Because, like for example, in this hotel, it says, a Texas hotel may be shut down after 693 police calls were made.
	Why does it take 693 police calls to be made before they go in there and take these guys out?
	Well, you were telling me that they've set up multiple... I mean, they have prostitution going on in the hotel.
	They've got this... Habitual criminal activity.
	Yeah.
	Of all kinds.
	Of all kinds.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And they're also suspected of, of course, in Aurora, Colorado, right?
	Right.
	The mayor of Aurora, Colorado, I can't now that I'm speaking Spanish, I kind of can't speak English.
	But anyway, they have said, Oh, no, no, no, it's not a problem.
	It's not a problem.
	Trust me, there's about 1000 of these guys These members in America and they're wreaking havoc everywhere they go.
	So here's the thing, guys, and I'm putting this out there.
	If Kamala Harris wins this election, these guys are going to recruit more members and we're going to have these peace zones here in America where they're going to wreak havoc and no one's going to do anything about it.
	So on the gun control issue, You know, I think that we should keep... I see what you're getting at.
	You're saying we might very much need not only a 22 or a 45 but maybe an AR-15 because these are not, you know, Americans are not used to the kind of gangs that you sometimes see in other countries that... I mean, think of it.
	America's not used to cartels of the kind that Mexicans have learned to live with.
	America's not used to the kind of gangs that run the Philippines, that run a lot of other countries, including Venezuela now.
	There's a level of absolute barbarism and brutality that would shock Americans.
	It would.
	And so, I guess what you're saying in a very It's like, get ready.
	I mean, if it gets to that, we might be dealing with something that we're unaccustomed to in this country.
	Listen, my cousin who came from Venezuela, he says that every time he would go by, you know, the TSA or whatever, they would ask him, are you a member They would ask every Venezuelan male, if they were members of this gang, who is going to, in their right mind, say they are?
	Well, this is just a kind of bureaucratic stupidity.
	It's almost like, well, we included that question on the questionnaire to try to ferret out You know, it's so dumb.
	It's ridiculous.
	So anyway, so they have allowed these bad, bad players to come into America and infiltrate our way of life.
	As if we didn't have nutty enough people.
	And enough problems on this criminal front.
	Yeah.
	That we now need these Venezuelan thugs to come in and destroy this very beautiful country that means so much to so many of us.
	And listen, I do pray that if Trump is able to win this election that he kicks them all out.
	He just deports every last one of them.
	Otherwise you're saying the worst is yet to come.
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	Booker T. Washington is talking about the, well, the art of raising money.
	You could raise the money for a business, for a new venture, for a cause, for charity.
	It's pretty much the same art.
	And Booker T. writes, I have proceeded on the principle that the persons who possess sense enough to earn money have sense enough to know how to give it away.
	So, he trusts the instincts and the judgment of the people he's asking for money.
	He says, I think that a presentation of facts on a high dignified plane is all the begging that most rich people care for.
	So rich people, he says, are not looking for you to abase yourself and somehow make yourself their subordinate or their servant or attend to their every need.
	What they want to find out is what is it that you're doing with these funds that justifies the giving of it, that justifies the trust that they're going to place in you to dispose of this money.
	Such work, writes Booker T. And let's remember, he didn't really sign up for this kind of work.
	He just realizes that now, to keep a big institution going, you've got to raise money all the time.
	So such work gives one a rare opportunity to study human nature.
	So here's Booker T approaching the job and there's a certain amount of mechanical, just thoroughgoing persistence to it.
	But for Booker T, he finds a way to make it interesting.
	Why?
	By saying, all right, let me study these people and let me see what I can learn about human nature.
	And he tells us what he learned.
	He starts off by pointing out, he goes one time in Boston, he says, I called on a very wealthy lady, I was admitted to the parlor, I sat up there, but while I was waiting her husband came in and asked me in the most abrupt manner what I wanted.
	When I tried to explain the object of my call, he became more ungentlemanly and finally grew so agitated that I left the house without waiting for a reply from the lady.
	And then, interestingly, he goes a few blocks away, he stopped in to see another man who wrote him a check for a generous sum and said, quote, we in Boston are constantly indebted to you.
	for doing our work.
	So think of the contrast.
	In the first case, Booker T is literally chased away, scared away, driven away by very rude treatment.
	And for Booker T, this is like all par for the course.
	It's like, all right, well, that's not a reflection on me.
	You just don't want to hear what I have to say, and that's fine.
	I'll try somewhere else.
	And happily for him, the next place he tries, the guy Again, very tellingly, he doesn't say, I'm going to support your work.
	But rather, we in Boston are constantly indebted to you for doing our work.
	So the guy looks at it that it is their job in the North to help people in the South and to help blacks in the South to start bettering themselves.
	Notice that the phrase here is not becoming dependent, leaning on the government, claiming welfare, filing for benefits, none of that.
	He is, this is a project in creating self-dependence.
	Now, Booker T goes on to say, in the early years of Tuskegee, I walked the streets and traveled country roads of the North for days and days without receiving a single dollar.
	So, whenever people have built successful enterprises, they always look back to the early days.
	In fact, preserving some of that initial spirit is probably not a bad thing.
	And then he says, one thing he has learned is that very often when he's really discouraged, generous help comes from people who you had no expectation that they would give at all.
	He says, for example, he walked in, in Stamford, Connecticut.
	He met a gentleman.
	It was a cold and stormy day.
	He had walked two miles to see this guy.
	And he said, the man listened with some moderate interest in what he had to say, but he said, didn't give me anything.
	Booker T said, nevertheless, you know what?
	If I didn't go see him, I would have felt like I neglected my duty.
	I've done my duty, so let me move on.
	Sure enough, I'm now quoting.
	Two years after this visit, a letter came to Tuskegee from this man, which read like this.
	Enclosed, I send you a New York draft for $10,000 to be used in furtherance of your work.
	I had placed this sum in my will for your school, but deemed it wiser to give it to you while I live.
	I recall with pleasure your visit to me two years ago. How interesting. The guy said he didn't give a penny. He obviously thought, well listen, this guy is really good. I'll leave him some money in my will. And then later he thought, well, why wait? Why not give it to him now?
	I'll at least have the pleasure of having given it to him in my lifetime.
	I will see some of the benefits that my money is doing.
	Very smart, very sensible.
	And for Booker T, of course, a very welcome donation.
	So his visit was not, in fact, in vain.
	In fact, he says it was by far the largest single donation which up to that time the school had ever received.
	And it came after kind of a long period in which they had not received any money.
	And then he writes this.
	The first time I ever saw the late Collis P. Huntington, obviously a very successful industrialist.
	The great railroad man.
	He gave me two dollars for our school.
	And you might expect Booker T at this point to immediately comment on that, how interesting and ironic that a guy who's worth millions of dollars gave me two bucks, really.
	But he doesn't.
	He doesn't say a word about it.
	He continues like this.
	The last time I saw him, which was a few months before he died, he gave me $50,000 toward our endowment fund.
	Let's remember, this is $50,000 prior to 1901.
	So it's a great sum of money.
	Between these two gifts, there were others of generous proportions which came every year from both Mr. and Mrs. Huntington.
	Some people say that Tuskegee has had a lot of good luck.
	No, says Booker T, it's not luck.
	It's hard work.
	He says, when Mr. Huntington gave me the first two dollars, I did not blame him for not giving me more, but made up my mind I was going to convince him by tangible results that we were worthy of larger gifts.
	For the dozen years I made a strong effort to convince Mr. Huntington of the value of our work, I noted that just in proportion as the usefulness of the school grew, his donations increased.
	He not only gave money to us, but took time in which to advise me as a father would a son about the general conduct of the school.
	Now, very often this kind of mentorship is just as important as the money itself.
	And what Booker T is really saying is that very often if you get a smaller donation, it's a reflection of the fact that you haven't made the case that your work is that important.
	Now, to everyone who goes asking for money, their work is the most important thing in the world, but you need a certain amount of objectivity.
	What real difference is this going to make?
	Oh, this could change the world if it reached millions of people.
	Yeah, but what's your plan to reach millions of people?
	So, in other words, Booker T says, all right, I'm going to let the donor be the judge of the value of my work.
	Very sensible kind of operating procedure.
	A short time ago, he writes, we received $20,000 from Mr. Andrew Carnegie to be used for the purpose of erecting a new library.
	He says, it required 10 years of work before I was able to secure Mr. Carnegie's interest and help.
	The first time I saw him 10 years ago, he seemed to take little interest in our school.
	And then Booker T reproduces a short letter he sent to Mr. Carnegie.
	And notice the letter.
	It's very businesslike.
	It's not plaintive.
	It doesn't have flashes of rhetoric.
	I'm just going to read a sentence or two.
	We have 1,100 students 86 officers and instructors, together with their families, about 200 colored people living near the school, all of whom would make use of the library building.
	Such a building as we need could be erected for about $20,000.
	All the work for the building, such as the brick making, the masonry, the carpentry, the blacksmithing, would be done by the students.
	It's an opportunity for many of them to learn the building trades.
	And boom, here comes the reply.
	I will be very glad to pay the bills for the library building to the extent of $20,000.
	So the sale is made.
	Why?
	Because Booker T is able to convince the great magnate Andrew Carnegie, we're doing something useful.
	It's affecting a lot of people.
	We will make very good use of this building.
	And we're using it not just as a library, but to learn the building trades of actually building a library.
	Booker T concludes the chapter, very interestingly, with an account not about himself, but he talks about a fellow named the Honorable J.L.M.
	Curry of Washington.
	I think he means Washington, D.C.
	Curry is a native of the South.
	An ex-Confederate soldier.
	And yet, writes Booker T, I do not believe there is any man in the country who is more deeply interested in the highest welfare of the Negro than Dr. Curry or one who is more free from race prejudice.
	What a thing to say!
	You know, today we see the demonization of the Confederacy, let's pull down the Confederate statues, and so on.
	The assumption is that all these guys to a man are bad guys.
	But here's Booker T. talking about one of them, and he's talking about one of them a fellow who actually fought in the civil war for the south and presumably at least by extension for the extension of slavery that may not have been his personal motive but that was part of the motive of the war in the first place and yet says Booker T this guy he says I can't think of a guy more interested in the welfare of the negro.
	How amazing!
	He says, he enjoys the unique distinction of possessing to an equal degree the confidence of the black man and the southern white man.
	So, for Booker T, it's really important to find people like this.
	People who care about the elevation of blacks through self-help and through institutions like Tuskegee.
	But guess what?
	This guy also has credibility with Booker T's white neighbors in the town of Tuskegee and throughout the South.
	And he says he came to get to know this guy.
	And he says, I came to know him then, as I have known him ever since, as a high example of one who is constantly and unselfishly at work for the betterment of humanity.
	And that's the key phrase here, the betterment of humanity.
	What Booker T is getting at is, in the end, it's not about the blacks.
	In the end, it's not even about the whites.
	In the end, what we are trying to do is create productive institutions, productive communities, productive societies, in the end a productive country, and in some, in large sense, a productive and prospering world.
	So we all want to play our own unique part in that by doing what we can do and finding people who recognize that that's the goal, that's the task, that the race element of it is not crucial, and that we should in some senses be able to rise above that kind of thing.
	You can see Booker T. here outlining without ever... I notice in this book he never uses the phrase colorblind.
	He never uses the phrase that sort of race shouldn't matter.
	He's removed from all these slogans, but he has a very clear vision.
	Long before Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream, the same philosophy of transcending race is right here in the writings and life of Booker T. Washington.

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