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Sept. 19, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza

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CAMPAIGN STRATEGY Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep921

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	coming up I'll provide some updates on the themes in the movie vindicating Trump
	I'll also discuss how the Fed's timely lowering of interest rates represents a kind of shrewd campaign strategy to help Kamala Harris.
	Fanchen Stinger, she's co-host of Merit Street's Morning on Merit Street TV show.
	She joins me.
	She's going to talk about how do you survive and even thrive in today's highly toxic media environment.
	Hey, if you're watching on Rumble or YouTube, 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.
	Debbie was looking at Facebook this morning and she discovered that there is a fake website On Facebook that has been set up for vindicating Trump.
	It looks like it's real, but it's not real.
	We did not set it up.
	And you know it's fake because if you try to get, there's a link, like you can get tickets by clicking over here, but you can't.
	It tells you no such venue.
	And so this is an attempt to mislead people.
	This is the kind of bogus stuff that the left does to deflect, to make it difficult, to confuse you like, oh my gosh, there must be something wrong.
	The truth of it is that is not taking you to the movie website.
	So if you want to get tickets for Vindicating Trump.
	And you should go see it next weekend in the opening weekend, September 27th.
	That's Friday, 28th, Saturday or Sunday, the 29th.
	Very helpful to us.
	It will give the movie an early sort of dose of rocket fuel that sends us into the week and then into our second weekend.
	So that's the way to see it.
	But get tickets by going directly to theater sites.
	You can get them from Fandango and other types of movie sites or the One Stop Shop.
	Go to the website, VindicatingTrump.com.
	Now, get the name right, because there are a couple of people who are like, well, I typed in Trump Vindicated.
	No, it's VindicatingTrump.com.
	That's the website.
	That will take you right there.
	Put in your city, put in your zip code.
	Boom, theaters come up.
	And by the way, if you don't see a theater right in your area, be a little patient with us.
	We're adding more theaters.
	There's, in fact, a whole bunch of theaters that are going to go up on Monday, setting up our sort of full kind of theatrical list for the opening.
	So this adding of theaters is one of those types of back and forth things.
	And look, So be patient and keep trying back to see if we've added theaters that are more convenient for you, if you don't see one that is very much within striking distance.
	I've begun my familiar media blitz and tour for the book.
	It's kind of hectic, but in a good way, because it's a chance to Preview the movie, talk about the themes in it, make the central points that make the movie unique.
	And I want to say this, because people sometimes ask me, like, how do you go about doing a film like this?
	Like, where do you get the premise?
	What makes you think of, like, this would make a good film?
	And I said on one of these shows, I said, look, What I don't want to do is sort of take the lay of the land of what's out there, the kind of familiar boilerplate of things that are said about Trump, and make a movie that regurgitates that.
	That is absolutely not what I'm going to do.
	What I want to do is I want to start where things are, start with the lay of the land, and then push the debate one step further.
	So if we flashback to my first film on Obama, People were saying, Obama's a civil rights guy.
	He's the reincarnation of Martin Luther King.
	His history is right out of Selma and Montgomery and the civil rights marches.
	That's my starting point.
	And the moment I realize I have a movie is when my answer is, no it's not.
	That's not Obama's history.
	That's not what he cares about.
	He spends his time brooding and thinking.
	He does have very powerful dreams, but they're not the dreams of Martin Luther King.
	It's not, I have a dream.
	It's the dreams from his father.
	So let's go find out.
	And that's when the movie becomes a journey to find out the dreams that Obama got from his father.
	Similarly with Trump, my starting point is you got a lot of people who say things, and I keep hearing these over the months and even over the years.
	Well, you know, I don't really like Trump, but I'm going to vote for him.
	I like his policies.
	Or you hear people say, I just wish he'd keep his mouth shut.
	He needs to stop with the social media.
	He needs to stop with the insulting people.
	Or you have people who say, in some form or another, that they want a new and different Trump.
	If only Trump would do this, if only Trump would do that.
	Apparently what they want Trump to do is engage in introspection, realize that he's kind of a little bit of a defective character, and fix himself.
	And then they're gonna be very comfortable voting for him.
	He needs to follow their prescription for how he can improve his personality and his life.
	And so my starting point in this film is, does that make any sense?
	First of all, is anyone going to actually do that?
	If I'm running for office and someone goes, well Dinesh, you're kind of a good guy and all, but we need a new and different Dinesh.
	You need to be rehabilitated.
	So here's our formula for how you can become like Dinesh 2.0.
	We want to vote for Dinesh 2.0, not for Dinesh.
	First of all, that's not going to happen.
	And it's not going to happen with Trump.
	Second of all, unrealistic as it is, it shouldn't happen.
	And this is kind of one of the key messages of the movie.
	It's that we don't need to remake Trump.
	Actually, we need to remake our understanding of Trump.
	Why?
	Because Trump is the right guy.
	For the crisis that we face as a country today.
	He's not only the best choice, in some ways he's the only choice.
	Because he has the singular virtues.
	And this is the key point.
	People are always talking about Trump's vices and I'm happy to talk about them.
	I discuss them in my book on Trump.
	This is the book, Vindicating Trump, which you can get also on the website, vindicatingtrump.com.
	Just go down, you'll see a little tab for Amazon, Barnes & Noble.
	But my point is, ignored in all this talk about Trump's so-called vices, Let's make a list of Trump's virtues and then let's see how common those virtues are in the GOP, among the leadership of the GOP, even among some of the rank-and-file GOP sort of establishment types who go, well, you know, it's almost like they act like they're too good for Trump.
	And the question I have is, isn't Trump too good for you?
	Have you ever looked in the mirror, made a list of your vices and virtues and stacked them up against Trump to see who actually comes out ahead?
	What about the vices of the Democrats?
	You ever hear Democrats say things like, well, yeah, you know, Biden is utterly corrupt and takes money from all these foreign countries, but I like his policies.
	I'm still going to vote for him.
	You hear people say, well, you know, Kamala Harris was kind of a hooker and she kind of levitated her way up in her career.
	But guess what?
	I like her policies.
	I like her laugh.
	I'm going to vote for her.
	No, the Democrats never say things like that.
	Our side has the peculiar characteristic of doing it.
	So the movie gets into all this.
	And as I mentioned before, it's a centerpiece of it is my one-on-one with Trump and And I'm very proud of the fact that I think I was able to bring out An aspect of Trump that hasn't been really seen in public before.
	In fact, it's a side of Trump that I think Trump himself has sought to conceal because Trump is raised in the kind of the manly tradition, don't show vulnerability, don't put yourself out there, don't wear your feelings on your sleeve.
	And so when he's been asked these kinds of questions in the past, he moves away.
	He goes in a different direction.
	But you'll see Trump in, I think, at least in some respects, a reflective and very wonderful new light in this film.
	So get your tickets, get signed up, make plans, round up your buddies.
	VindicatingTrump.com.
	Get your tickets from there.
	Don't try to get them off the fake Facebook site.
	Go to the genuine site, VindicatingTrump.com.
	The radical left is working overtime to gain control of the Supreme Court.
	They want to end lifetime tenure so they can end the court's conservative majority.
	And this is a familiar story.
	Remember when Hugo Chavez reformed Venezuela's Supreme Court?
	Debbie and I have had this discussion many times when she warned me about Chavez's destruction of Venezuela.
	He never lost a ruling subsequently, never lost an election.
	Why?
	He packed the court!
	And this ensured that Venezuela would never be a free and a capitalist country again.
	So now, more than a decade after his death, Venezuela is still in total tyranny and total chaos.
	So we can't let that happen here.
	If we lose the court, well, we lose the country.
	And that's why my friends at First Liberty are doing something about it.
	They're fighting to save the court, and you can help in the fight.
	So to win the fight, they need a million patriots like you to join them.
	Here's how you do that.
	You can learn more.
	Go to SupremeCoup, C-O-U-P, SupremeCoup.com slash Dinesh.
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	I'd like to mention two interesting developments, one on the political side and one on the economic side.
	So we'll start with the political and that is the Teamsters.
	The Teamsters have been a reliable Democratic endorsement for decades.
	I mean, the alliance between the unions and the Democrats goes back to FDR.
	By and large, what happened in the New Deal was the government went to the unions and said, listen, Whenever you have a fight with management, call us.
	Because we'll step in, we will pulverize the management, and you will get your concessions.
	So the union suddenly realized, this is like getting into a street fight and having the cops on your side.
	And the unions have been in the democratic camp ever since.
	And by the way, this is also why Sometimes people say, well, Dinesh, are you anti-union?
	I go, no, I'm not anti-union.
	I like the idea of workers and management bargaining back and forth.
	What I don't like is when it's not a real negotiation, where somebody else, a third man, sometimes called Uncle Sam, can step into the room and put a gun to the head of one of the two parties and then pretend it's a negotiation.
	Oh, GM agreed to this and GM agreed to that, but Not under the normal conditions of negotiation.
	But nevertheless, what's interesting is that the unions have decided, the Teamsters have decided, no political endorsement 2024.
	And that can only mean one thing.
	Most of the Teamsters are voting for Trump.
	The Teamsters leadership has realized, see, if you got the Teamsters kind of divided, the leadership goes, well, you let us decide.
	We follow this stuff.
	We're going to choose which party.
	I think what's happening is that the members are saying to the Teamsters leadership, no.
	We want Trump.
	Trump is our guy.
	You're working against our interests if you, as union leaders, endorse Kamala Harris.
	And so the Teamsters have decided we will not endorse anybody.
	This is very good news for Trump.
	Now, very interestingly, as you have a union that is backing away from Kamala Harris, you have the Fed.
	Playing politics.
	And I see this latest rate cut.
	The Fed was anticipated, it was anticipated that the Fed would cut rates by 25 basis points.
	But they decided to go more.
	In fact, to go double and cut rates by half a percentage point.
	So that's a fairly big move.
	And I think that it is a move, even though Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed, was out there and was giving sort of an economic rationale.
	I don't think that unemployment is up, but I don't think it's too bad.
	And I think that the economy can use Isn't a strong enough position that I think we can cut rates without causing any kinds of problems or even overstimulating any inflationary trends?
	I think all of this is rhetorical garbage.
	It's rhetorical garbage not because there are no economic arguments to be made.
	It's garbage because that's not why he's doing it.
	So why is he doing it?
	To help Kamala Harris essentially 50 days or 50 days thereabout to the election.
	The Fed has become a wing of the Democratic Party.
	And I don't just mean the Fed as an institution.
	I mean this Fed.
	This Fed with Democratic nominees is trying to kind of do its job to help the Democratic nominee.
	Now, this is not what the Fed is supposed to do.
	The Fed is supposed to be independent.
	It is supposed to make decisions based on an economic rationale.
	But my point is, We should not be fooled by this.
	What they want is a spike in the Dow.
	What they want is to make loans a little more easy to get.
	You were paying 6% before, now you can get loans at 5.5%.
	And so people go, oh wow, it looks like those Biden-Kamala policies are finally working.
	No, it doesn't.
	This is like Biden lowering gas prices by drawing on the strategic reserve.
	This is a game that government can play in the short term to create a sort of illusion that things are getting better.
	And then the moment the election is over, I mean, this is one of the things about democracy.
	We can't vote every day.
	We can't be involved all the time.
	We're involved every two years, every four years.
	So politicians will sometimes say, let's put on an amazing song and dance in the weeks and days leading up to the election.
	Business as usual, corruption as usual, back slapping as usual, smoky room deals as usual, the moment that the election is over.
	And so my advice to you is take this skeptically.
	Don't be fooled by it.
	If you think Kamala Harris and Biden's policies have been bad for the last four years, you're right.
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	It's D-I-N-E-S-H, Dinesh.
	Guys, now is the time.
	If you'd like to support my work, here's the best way to do it.
	Sign up for my Locals channel.
	Become an annual subscriber.
	It's a modest expense.
	I post a lot of exclusive content on Locals, including content that's censored on other social media platforms.
	On Locals, you get Dinesh Unchained, Dinesh Uncensored.
	You know, so interact with me directly.
	I do a live weekly Q&A on Tuesdays.
	No topic is off limits.
	I've also uploaded some cool films to Locals.
	I've got Dinesh's movie page up there.
	2000 Meals is up there.
	the latest film that came out last year, Police State, and the new film will be up there as well.
	Hey, if you're an annual subscriber, you can stream and watch this movie content for free.
	It's included with your subscription.
	So check out the channel.
	It's Dinesh.Locals.com.
	I'd love to have you along for this great ride.
	Again, it's Dinesh.Locals.com.
	Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast a new guest.
	It's Fanchen Stinger.
	She's a national TV personality.
	She is currently the co-host of Morning on Merritt Street.
	You probably know about Merritt Street.
	It's the new network associated with Dr. Phil.
	She's a 15-time Emmy Award winner.
	She was a host, actually, of a Fox show in the Midwest.
	She also has a charitable initiative.
	It's called Grit and Grace Nation.
	And that website is thegritandgracenation.org.
	Fanchin, thank you for joining me.
	I really appreciate it.
	I thought it'd be really fun and interesting to talk to you about your life, but also about the state of journalism.
	Journalism is a kind of an old and trusted profession.
	I'm sure that that was your idea of it when you went into it years and years ago.
	Let's start by talking about that.
	Talk about your story, your upbringing, and why you decided, with a lot of choices in front of you, I'm gonna go into journalism.
	Well, it's interesting.
	First of all, Dinesh, thank you for having me.
	I am absolutely delighted to be on your podcast and have a chance to have this conversation with you.
	You know, I felt I was called to journalism very young.
	At 15 years old, I felt like that that dream was ignited in my heart.
	And the reason I got into journalism is just a few things.
	I love to tell people's stories.
	I knew that I could make an impact on the community, and I loved to travel.
	So I had an adventurous spirit.
	So being able to advocate for people, to tell people's story, and to be a good communicator, that was important to me.
	And especially as a young child, I was very shy growing up.
	And I wasn't one of those outgoing girls.
	I wasn't someone who was always in the mix, but I had this burning desire to get into a career that really was a challenge for me because I had to learn to overcome my shyness.
	I had to learn to overcome and sometimes low confidence.
	So early on, I wonder, well, God, why are you calling me to this platform?
	You know, why is it that I have this desire to be a journalist?
	And I had to work very hard to overcome some of those things.
	And I think now, seeing what this industry is, seeing what it has become, I know we're going to talk about that.
	But the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of information and the pursuit of knowledge, I'm a believer that we all have a foundational right in this country and a foundational freedom to make educated decisions.
	And that's what drove me to this industry and that's what I thought in the beginning I was going to be doing and that's what I felt like I was doing for the majority of my career.
	What do you think has changed, if really anything, with journalism over the years?
	Is it that there has been a shift of the type of person who goes into journalism?
	Because when people say today that journalism has become perhaps more ideological, perhaps it's become more confrontational, maybe the ideal of objectivity, which was never perfect, But it's something that a lot of people aspire to.
	There's an actual story out there.
	I'm going to try to get it right.
	And even though I bring some biases to it, I can't help to some degree seeing it from a perspective, I'm going to try nevertheless to allow my perspective to be corrected by the facts.
	Now, all of this today seems so much out the window.
	Did you see it happening around you?
	Was there a moment in time when it happened?
	Or is it just one of those gradual things where you wake up one morning and you go, well, this is really not the environment I really signed up for?
	I would say it's a combination of both of those.
	And this is why I'll say it that way.
	I think the majority of us who got into this business when we did, it was because we really revered what journalism was supposed to stand for.
	We really revered what journalism stood for.
	It's free speech.
	It's being a check.
	It is holding people accountable.
	It's advocating for people.
	It's telling people stories, whether it's a high, whether it's a low.
	It's bringing people into lives of others.
	I am a believer that journalism, that media is the most powerful force.
	I mean, that's why we see countries use media as propaganda.
	It can be the it is one of the most powerful forces, if not the most powerful force, because you have a visual and what people see over and over again, people believe, right?
	So when you have a media entity.
	For the profession of journalism, in the hands of people with the right motivations, the right heart, the high ethics and integrity, boy, do you have a thing that can be used for good, a force for good.
	You can use it to start conversations, to challenge people, to right wrongs, like we've been talking about, to advocate, to educate people.
	But when you have a media and an industry that loses its way ethically, And with integrity.
	And it becomes a tool that is weaponized.
	Now you have a force that can be used for a lot of destruction.
	A lot of destruction, a lot of misinformation, and a lot of confusion.
	And it can be used to create a lot of conflict.
	And I think that we are in a point now where that is what has happened to the majority.
	I'm not going to say all, but I'm going to say to the majority of the industry.
	How did it happen?
	I was on Dr. Phil's podcast recently and I talked about this.
	I said there was a point in time where the media was being called out for being behind fake news.
	And that was a moment in time when we could have collectively as an industry, and I said this before, looked at ourselves introspectively and said, To that.
	Maybe we're not being totally unbiased like we should be.
	When I come to work every day, what I say, what I think doesn't matter.
	My job is to come in every day and to tell an unbiased story, but to tell both sides.
	Everyone has a natural bias, but to tell both.
	So go out of my way intentionally to do point counterpoint and to be very fair and balanced in doing that.
	So we had a situation, and you'll remember in 2016, We started hearing this term fake news.
	When that started happening, instead of the industry saying to itself, hey, maybe there's some truth to this, maybe we need to take an introspective look and sit down, regroup, and collectively come out and do better, make an effort, because the people are most important.
	Instead of that happening, I think that it was Fueled by pride, and there was some arrogance there.
	We are not going to do that.
	Instead, we're going to declare war on people and on voices that we don't agree with, that we don't feel as though should have the same access to a microphone, or to information, or to truth, or to having their stories told truthfully.
	And I believe that was the beginning of Onward Spiral.
	And it has been so very difficult and disappointing to watch that because it means we're working alongside people.
	And I worked alongside people who I'm watching them do this.
	And I'm questioning in the beginning, well, wait a second, are they just not knowing the information?
	Are they doing this intentionally?
	It was, I would say it was traumatic.
	You know I just saw Fanchin just in the last day or so.
	Trump was doing a rally in New York and I'm mentioning this episode because I just think it has a broader resonance.
	You had all these ordinary sort of Trump supporters walking around and then you had some journalists and these are New Yorkers now.
	They're yelling at the journalists to sort of get out, move, get out of here and I think The sentiment that I'm picking up was not that the journalists are critical of Trump or anything like that, but it's sort of like the ordinary guys are conveying the idea that you are not representing what we believe with even a modicum of fairness.
	You can even sense the hostility between the two camps.
	It's almost like the journalists feel like I'm in the lion's den.
	And so, it strikes me as an unhealthy environment because when you're covering a story, like you say, there has to be some level of Particularly if you don't agree, an empathetic effort to say, well, let me try to get where these people are coming from.
	Let me say what they think in a manner that they would go, yeah, and then I can criticize them if I want, but let me begin with a fair articulation of their point of view.
	Not just in the case of politics, but so many areas now, that doesn't seem to happen.
	I think that's what you're trying to say.
	Yes, it doesn't happen.
	And I think that something very interesting is happening right now.
	If you look at some of the polling, people are starting to see that in so many cases, they have been misled, historically, on so many different things.
	I mean, it's not just politics, there are other issues that have come up, and where people are seeing that they have been misled.
	Take, for instance, with all of the polling and all the numbers now, And I'm not taking a side on this, but you see there are a lot of minority voters who are moving towards the Republican Party.
	Why is that happening?
	If you look at the polling data, and this is data, this is not me just saying this, there are a lot of people who are saying, hey, we were not told Fully accurate information during the last administration.
	We were not told the numbers when it came to all that the Trump administration did for minorities.
	We were not told what the numbers were when it came for what all he did for minority businesses.
	We were not told the numbers when it came to all he did for HBCU colleges and universities.
	We were not told about the dream of the Opportunity Zones that Dr. Ben Carson was putting into place in so many different cities.
	Well, why weren't Why weren't we told that?
	There are a lot of people saying that.
	Now you're starting to see, when you look at those rallies, as a journalist looking at that, it looks very different.
	Those rallies look very different than they looked In 2016.
	And over and over again, you hear more people saying, I'm looking at what's happening in my communities.
	It's lowest statistically.
	That's not an opinion.
	That's a fact.
	Unemployment was at its lowest in the history of our country.
	That's not an opinion.
	That's a fact in terms of the numbers and what happens.
	We were energy independent.
	That's a fact.
	That's not someone's opinion.
	And people were not told that because a lot of the mainstream media chose not to report that news.
	That's a choice.
	Because the information is out there.
	So either you're not looking for the information, the information is being filtered somehow, or you're intentionally choosing not to tell that information.
	And the question becomes, why?
	And that's just one example.
	I mean, you can look at COVID, you can look at so many of the other things that happened.
	And there are instances that I personally experienced, where I was challenged with giving viewers full and complete information.
	You know, I had instances where I was told, well, you're going to read what's on the teleprompter.
	But I knew that all the information was not complete.
	It wasn't there.
	And it was my decision whether or not I was going to do it.
	Now, in the case that that happened, I said to the news director, I'm not going to read it.
	It's not going to be me.
	Because I have to go home every night and I have to be accountable for what comes out of my mouth and what doesn't come out of my mouth.
	I mean, it seems to mention that for you, as for many others, COVID was a little bit of a turning point because in COVID, there was this massive public campaign accompanied by digital censorship.
	We've got to correct misinformation and disinformation.
	And yet it looks like in retrospect, that there was a good deal of both misinformation and disinformation coming from the government.
	The government was telling you, you take the vaccine, you can't get COVID.
	You take the vaccine, you can't give somebody else COVID.
	That's Rochelle Walensky, the head of the CDC.
	Recently, Dr. Fauci admitted that the six-foot social distancing rule was just sort of made up.
	Well, he didn't tell us that at the time.
	He's admitting that now.
	At the time, it was followed the science as if there were all these worldwide studies that showed that, you know, and so Was COVID for you a career turning point?
	Talk a little bit about why you decided now to join Dr. Phil and Merit Street.
	It seems like a great fit for you.
	Talk about you, but also talk about the vision of Merit Street.
	Well, I'll start with COVID and yes, that was a turning point and I've shared this on Dr. Phil's podcast as well.
	There was an instance, I'll tell you the story, there was an instance where, if you'll remember, Joe Rogan came out and he talked about ivermectin and he talked about how ivermectin helped him get back to health pretty quickly.
	Well, that was during a period of time when we knew that there were more and more studies since April of 2020 that were coming out showing that ivermectin really did reduce symptoms And it reduced the severity of COVID if it was taken within I believe it was the first 24 to 48 hours of someone showing symptoms.
	And when he came out and did that, you'll remember he was attacked vehemently days later.
	A similar story was done in my newsroom, and I had been studying ivermectin.
	I had been talking to a lot of the frontline doctors who are helping people recover quickly from COVID.
	They were actually consulting other countries and giving their protocol to other countries, and those countries who use that protocol, their COVID numbers drastically dropped.
	And when all this started happening, The mainstream media started attacking Ivermectin, they attacked Jorogen, anyone who even brought the name, they attacked hydroxychloroquine.
	Now if you look at that on a surface, anyone who was saying anything in support of those drugs, they were labeled what?
	Misinformation.
	They were like conveyors of misinformation, and they were immediately dismissed, not given a voice.
	Well, during that time, there were thousands of doctors that were prescribing ivermectin.
	There were court cases underway.
	People were suing hospitals because they had loved ones that were put on respirators, and they were trying to get their loved ones the ivermectin.
	The hospitals would not give them.
	They took that to the courts.
	We also knew that ivermectin received a Nobel Prize for Medicine for its safety and efficacy.
	Most immigrants who come to the United States are given what?
	Ivermectin because it gets rid of parasites.
	Now, if it had been reported completely and honestly and accurately, it would have also been made known to the public that in order to have an emergency authorization for any kind of vaccine or medication, there cannot be anything else on the market that can help With the symptoms or with the disease that the emergency authorization is being used for.
	So what was the vaccine brought to the public under the Emergency Authorization Act?
	So there could not be an ivermectin.
	There could not be a hydroxychloroquine on the market that helped reduce symptoms.
	And all of a sudden it became We did a story and when the story came up, I was on the air, on the newscast.
	We did a story on ivermectin.
	We interviewed a doctor who said, you're crazy if you take it.
	And we interviewed a lady who had a horse who said, I give this to my horse and why would anyone want to take ivermectin?
	What was missing was another doctor saying, well, I disagree.
	I'm prescribing this to my patients and I'm having a high percentage of success.
	What was missing was another patient who had taken it, who said, this saved my life.
	You can have a variety of thought, but you have to have fairness and you have to have balance.
	Nowhere in that story did it mention that there was increasing information on the safety and the effectiveness of ivermectin when you look at the peer-reviewed studies that came along with ivermectin and COVID.
	That was nowhere.
	So I immediately turned to my executive producers during a commercial break and I said, hey guys, this story is not balanced.
	Half of the information is missing.
	I'm gonna add some of the factual information in the top and then at least we can rescue, save it.
	And we're telling people all those other facts that were not there.
	Within five minutes, I had a boss that came into the studio.
	This has never happened to me in 26 years.
	And he said, you changed the beginning of that story.
	Why did you change it?
	I said, because the story is biased and a lot of this in here is inaccurate.
	And he looked at me and said, you will read what's in the prompter.
	It's been changed back and you will read what's in the prompter.
	And in that moment, I had a decision to make.
	And my response was, no, I won't.
	I am not going to read that because what will happen if I do that?
	The credibility, the integrity, everything that I've built over an entire career, people would take that information because they trust me and they would have believed that when I knew it wasn't true.
	I did not read that story.
	He tried to make me, you know, embarrass me, all those things in the middle of the newsroom, and I didn't read the story.
	We aired the story, we had pharmacists, we had doctors, we had people that responded with sheer anger because they knew that it was going along with a narrative.
	And that it wasn't true, and that there were people used.
	And now what do we know about nivromectin?
	Now the truth has come out.
	Now we know that there were studies.
	And those studies were being done in the beginning of COVID, but the doctors who were trying to bring it to the forefront, they were labeled as people that were given misinformation.
	So labeling someone as a purveyor or conveyor of misinformation, that's just an excuse, I believe, for someone to not give them a platform.
	And to silence their voice and to censor what they're trying to say.
	So we saw this play out in so many instances, people who were questioning the way things you were mentioning, like social distance, all of those things.
	It was absolutely devastating, Dinesh.
	As a journalist to watch that happen.
	Why?
	Because people were making decisions that would affect their health, that was affecting their mental, emotional capacity.
	Based on information they thought was true.
	During COVID, every single day you turn on the news, what did you hear?
	This many people died.
	This many people died.
	This is the death rate.
	Not once or very rarely did you hear the recovery rate.
	I had to go to my producers.
	I had a good relationship with my producers.
	And my producers, I told them, I said, I'm going to read the death rate.
	Make sure in my scripts you also include the recovery rate.
	I believe it was 97% or so.
	It was very high in terms of the recovery rate.
	And the people who were affected most and the people who were least affected.
	Dr. Phil has done a whole show on our young people.
	Our young people were not at the highest risk.
	They were at the lowest risk for COVID.
	Yet, we put them in lockdowns and a lot of these young people who their lifeline was school, maybe for food, you know, maybe they were young people in an abusive situation.
	And he has now exposed that a lot of the people who made those decisions knew that That they would be placing children back in the hands of abusive relationships or abusive situations and they knew the emotional damage that it would have on our children.
	Now look at what we're dealing with.
	Anxiety is at its highest level.
	So at the end of the day, there's no point in pointing fingers now because we have a situation.
	But at the end of the day, we have to look and say, OK, what happened here?
	Who's responsible for this?
	Why wasn't this information reported accurately and fairly?
	Who was controlling all of this?
	There are some very serious questions that need to be asked.
	And I think that everyone in the line of communication, all of us, are responsible for our individual part.
	And I know what it took for me to research and to read and to question things and to try and find people who are experts, so that I at least knew the information.
	But then to come to work and literally be fought Because you wanted to tell people or at least help people ask intelligent questions about some of the things we've been told.
	You're shut down at almost every point.
	And that is one of the reasons why I left mainstream media.
	That's one of the reasons why I decided this is not something that I can continue to be a part of because it's not honest.
	And I'm watching people have lifelong effects because of decisions that were made During some of those times.
	So here at Merritt Street, and there's a whole other show going on behind me, so this has nothing to do with my show, but here at Merritt Street, Dr. Phil decided to step into some of these issues in our country, and he decided to come in with a commitment to truth.
	Merritt Street stands for meritocracy.
	There's no free lunch.
	in life.
	You've got to work hard for what you earn.
	You've got to work hard to earn your seat at the table.
	You know, there's value in integrity.
	There's value in ethics.
	There's value in looking at things from both sides, from all sides, whatever's there, and searching for the truth.
	So he is bringing his expertise to the table and the entire focus of this network is to give people information that is fair, that it's balanced.
	All voices are at the table so that you, a viewer, Can listen to that information and make your own decision.
	It is not our job to tell you what to think.
	It's not our job to tell you how to think.
	It's our job to give you the information so that you can make an educated decision for yourself, for your family and for your community.
	That to me, Dinesh, was a breath of fresh air.
	I mean, what a wonderful, yeah, absolutely terrific vision, and it sounds like you have, you know, landed beautifully in a place that suits you wonderfully well.
	The stuff you said about COVID is just eye-opening and fascinating.
	I didn't know what you mentioned about the fact that an emergency authorization means you can't have other working drugs on the table, because if there are, you got to use those first.
	And so right away, that gives you a a window into the motive.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Guys, I've been talking to Fanchion Stinger.
	She's the co-host of Morning on Merritt Street.
	Follow her on X at Fanchion, F-A-N-C-H-O-N, Stinger.
	The website, thegritandgracenation.org.
	There's also merrittstreetmedia.com.
	Fanchion, thank you very much for joining me.
	Dinesh, thank you for having me.
	God bless.
	Appreciate you.
	We are now at a very critical stage in our discussion of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, the most famous speech that Booker T. ever gave, and a speech that was overwhelmingly well-received, but at the same time also produced Early sparks of controversy that later became more than a spark, became a kind of a flame, created almost a division, a fork in the road in the black civil rights movement.
	And I have to say that in the end, Booker T. was not the winner.
	And by that, I mean that the leadership of the civil rights movement, starting initially with the NAACP, later on with Martin Luther King, took a road that was somewhat different.
	Not somewhat, very different from Booker T. Washington.
	Martin Luther King was kind of on the same page with Booker T. to a point, but even toward the end of his life, Martin Luther King became very radicalized.
	He sort of joined the anti-Vietnam War movement.
	He was very close to it.
	He wasn't explicitly a socialist.
	So Booker T. Washington represents the road not taken.
	And we have to understand what the controversy is about and where all the screaming came from.
	And to some degree we have to say that Booker T recognized that he was going to be saying some controversial things in this Atlanta exposition address.
	And I'm going to begin, I'm going to read a few lines from the address, but I'm going to begin with the most controversial line in the whole address.
	And this appears to be Booker T. Washington Supporting segregation.
	Supporting segregation.
	Let's read it and pay careful attention to it, as we've tried to do to a lot of things Booker T. Washington says.
	And we always, when we hear something, we want to look at what he said exactly, and we also want to know why he said it.
	Because, you know this from life itself, people will often say things, And what they say has not just got to be somewhat interpreted or understood.
	Someone says, for example, man, how could you do that?
	I could kill you!
	Now, what does that mean?
	Does that mean that this is a murder that we've just run upon?
	Or is it somebody expressing disgust?
	But if they're expressing disgust, why do they put it that way?
	So, let's look at Booker T. Washington and see what he says and why he says it.
	Now, here we go.
	In all things that are purely social, We can be as separate as the fingers, meaning on the hand, the fingers of the hand, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
	So, let me interpret this passage.
	Booker T. Washington is saying is that in social life we can be segregated.
	This is what he means by as separate as the fingers.
	He means you can go to the White barbershop and I'll go to the black barbershop.
	You can sit in the white car in a train and I'll sit in the black car.
	And he says, we can do that.
	And at the same time, we can cooperate on quote, all things essential to mutual progress.
	Now, This is the kind of thing that drove W.E.B.
	Du Bois, a lot of the progressive blacks in the North, nuts.
	They said, there you go.
	This is Booker T. Washington, the ultimate Uncle Tom.
	He's supporting segregation.
	He's selling out to the white man.
	He's saying this because he's before a largely white audience.
	But let's try to do a little more careful and sympathetic understanding of what Booker T. Washington is saying.
	Now, it's important to realize that we're talking about the late 1890s.
	Segregation has just been, not just established, but is fairly widely consolidated in the South.
	And there is a kind of a vengeful mood in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War.
	The South has just lost a war just a few decades earlier, 1865, that has leveled the South.
	I mean, Sherman burned Atlanta to the ground.
	And the Southern way of life as it existed before is gone.
	And so the white South was in a very surly mood.
	And segregation is now entrenched.
	And there is basically an atmosphere of vicious hostility to the black man.
	Some of which comes out of just ancient racism that was there under slavery.
	But some of it is also That we can't fight back against the North.
	The North has actually now exited the South.
	They're no longer ruling the South.
	But we're still mighty PO'd.
	Let's take it out on the black man who's right here.
	The black man who, on top of it, is voting Republican and seems to be, in some senses, allied with the North.
	Because, after all, it was the Northern soldiers that gave these black men freedom.
	So, to understand why Booker T. Washington says what he says, I'm going to turn for a moment to Abraham Lincoln and something that Lincoln was asked several times during his career.
	Do you support social equality between the races?
	Abraham Lincoln's answer, no.
	Do you support blacks being given the right to vote now?
	Lincoln's answer, no.
	Do you support getting rid of laws that enable, that prevent blacks and whites from being able to intermarry?
	So-called miscegenation laws.
	Do you support getting rid of those?
	Lincoln, no.
	Now...
	What was Lincoln's actual position?
	Lincoln's actual position is that, as a country, we do need to get to a place where those things are permitted.
	Blacks should be able to intermarry with whites.
	Blacks should be able to vote.
	That's what Lincoln believed.
	But Lincoln also recognized that he was living in a situation in which those positions were completely anathema.
	And that for Lincoln as a politician in a democratic society to take a position utterly anathema and revolting to the people whose votes you are trying to get is basically a political death sentence.
	It makes no sense to say, I want to do the thing that I cannot in any case do.
	Even if Lincoln were elected, he could not bring those things about.
	And so, Lincoln was essentially denying his intention to do that which he could not in any case do.
	Exactly the same thing is going on with Booker T. Washington.
	Is he a supporter of segregation?
	No.
	But he knows that at that time, and for a period, He was going to have to live with it.
	There was no way to root it out, not in the short term and not in the South.
	And so what does he do?
	He makes the best of it.
	He goes, listen, all right.
	He doesn't say I'm for segregation.
	At no point does he say, oh, I'm going to give three cheers for the segregated system.
	Here's what he says.
	In all things that are purely social, we can be.
	In other words, let us live with what we have here.
	We have segregation.
	We're not going to be able to get rid of it immediately.
	But he says, however, Even though we have segregation, there are a lot of things in which blacks and whites can cooperate, not on the basis of, we love each other, not on the basis of, because Booker T. Washington knows that there's a lot of accumulated resentment, and there's a lot of accumulated resentment on both sides, and to some degree justified.
	Because the resentment in the case of the blacks justified, because look at the way they were treated.
	The resentment in the case of the whites also justified to a degree, because it's like, look, it's because of you guys that we were invaded by the North, our whole way of life destroyed.
	Basically, yes, you got freedom out of it, but what did we get out of it?
	Look at our world.
	It's essentially in tatters.
	So there's mutual recriminations and Booker T is trying to reset a kind of foundation for blacks and whites to be able to get along, work together.
	And so he says, all right, it's kind of like if you and your neighbor have been, you know, at blows and you hate each other and you want to kill him, he wants to kill you.
	And then along comes Booker T. Washington and says, all right, listen, Nobody's asking you guys to, like, go to the 4th of July party together.
	Nobody's asking you to invite each other to each other's birthdays.
	But guess what?
	You can be civil across the fence.
	You can do some mutual cooperation.
	You lend me your lawnmower, I'll lend you my rake.
	In other words, there are things that you can do so that Each of you benefits from this mutual relationship of respect.
	And that's what Booker T. Washington is getting at.
	So he has been vilified, I think quite wrongly, for being some sort of a sellout or apostle of segregation.
	A wise man knows what you can and cannot achieve.
	Politics is the art of the possible.
	What can you get done?
	And there are all kinds of things that you might want to do after that.
	But it's very often the case, and remember with Booker T. Washington, it's always about getting the first thing done before you get to the second thing.
	In other words, learn to brush your teeth before you can learn to read a book.
	and learn to read a book before you start mastering Latin grammar.
	So Booker T, again, is not against the rising up on the scale, but he thinks it should be done step by step. And same here.
	He thinks that social progress occurs. First, let's decide that we can get along.
	Let's decide that you can do something for me, and I can do something for you.
	You need to have your attic repaired?
	I happen to have the skills to do it.
	You need a mason?
	I happen to be able to do that.
	You need something supplied?
	I can provide it.
	And so, you suddenly realize, I'm not such a bad guy after all.
	I'm making a living the same as you, and there are things that can be done for mutual benefit.
	So, mutual benefit is the starting point

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