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Oct. 3, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
57:26
DEBATE FALLOUT Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep931
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coming up I'm going to talk about failed response to a hurricane and also the fallout from the vice presidential debate.
I'll compare Trump's character with that of his critics.
An actor and comedian, Brad Stein, joins me.
He's going to talk about his role in vindicating Trump.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
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There are two topics I want to cover in my opening segment.
One of them is the hurricane.
and the other one is the response to the vice presidential debate.
Now, the debate was Tuesday night. I was in Dallas all day yesterday.
I was actually doing four shows at Glenn Beck's organization called The Blaze and just got back well this morning, actually.
So this is a little bit of a delayed response to the debate.
But before I talk about that, let me talk about the hurricane because...
It's really quite disturbing to see.
This is something, by the way, that it's not the product of climate change.
It is the product of weather.
Hurricanes happen, and they happen about this time of year.
Sometimes they happen a little earlier.
Sometimes they happen a little bit later.
And we count them differently than we used to.
So sometimes people look at them and they go, well, there are more hurricanes than before.
No, not really. It's a different counting mechanism.
And the hurricane activity remains pretty constant.
There's obviously some variation over time, but that is to be expected.
Now, what is disturbing is the terrible federal response to all this.
The fact that the people of North Fending for themselves, looking for private assistance and aid, and private people who are trying to help in whatever way they can.
I mean, remember, we have a federal emergency management operation that is set up to deal with this kind of a thing.
And so, they're supposed to be the experts.
They're supposed to be ready on hand and To deal with these situations, they have lots of money, they have plenty of time to plan for this, and yet, when it comes time to help, the help is sporadic, it's irregular, it's, oh, we can't get over there because that part of the country is inaccessible.
Inaccessible? Well, it's disaster relief.
You're supposed to go where it's inaccessible.
You're supposed to create pathways to get aid to the people who need it.
And then Kamala Harris I saw giving a sort of an outdoor, not a press conference, but making a public statement.
And she seemed really pleased with herself that they're willing to pay out $750 in aid.
And I'm thinking to myself, look, have you seen the photos and the videos of the level of damage?
Do you really think that you are making things right by giving people $750?
Is this what emergency assistance really means?
And it turns out that is not what it's supposed to mean.
But guess what? FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been giving away its money.
It's been giving away its money to all kinds of illegals, and they have been boasting about it.
In fact, you can see FEMA talking about, well, we've done this, and well, we've done that.
So what the government's been doing, in effect, is raiding the Emergency Management Agency Fund And spending that money down.
This is what government does on a regular basis, by the way.
They say, oh, there's money in your Social Security account.
Actually, no. They're spending that money now.
So, they're going to try to fetch it from somewhere when you need it, when you retire.
But don't think your money is sitting in any account.
Don't think that the government cares that it's been designated for this or designated for that.
When they need to spend it, they will grab it from anywhere and spend it.
We're obviously also diverting a tremendous amount of money abroad, some of it of course to the Middle East, but also tens of billions of dollars We're good to go.
Let's talk about J.D. Vance and Tim Walsh.
I think this turns out to be a significant debate.
Vice presidential debates aren't always significant.
Normally, it doesn't really matter.
But I think it matters here on two counts.
One is, of course, that Trump is getting up there in age.
And so, because Trump is in his 70s, the second half of his 70s, closing in on 80, it is very important to be able to say, well, what after Trump?
Who is Trump's presumed successor?
Who is going to carry the torch of the MAGA movement?
I think J.D. Vance proved that he is an excellent leader for that purpose.
Trump made a good decision in picking him, and his performance in the debate I think reflects not just well on J.D. Vance, but it reflects well on Trump.
Why? Because when Trump picked Mike Pence, a lot of people said, I remember hearing this at the time, and I kind of didn't know if I agreed with it, but I certainly acknowledged it, is they'd say, well, Trump doesn't like to have anybody else who's smart.
He doesn't like to have anyone else who will take the limelight.
He doesn't want somebody else who's going to upstage him in any way, who's his own person.
He basically wants a kind of a vegetable.
And that's why he picked Mike Pence, because Mike Pence is sort of like a doll.
He will just kind of nod.
And of course, Mike Pence is like one of those dolls in the movie that sort of suddenly springs to life at the last moment and won't do what you expect the doll to do.
He's like, I won't sign!
No, no, no, I won't do it!
So Trump was like, you know, oh my gosh, I thought you were a doll.
But anyway, the point is that people thought that Trump would...
Always appoint somebody like that.
But clearly, J.D. Vance is not like that at all.
He's very much his own person.
He brings, in fact, a very different kind of slingshot to the debate than Trump does.
His whole debating style is completely different.
It's more cerebral. It's more, in a way, academic.
It's more Ivy League, if you want to put it that way.
In fact, J.D. Vance makes the Ivy League look good at a time when the Ivy League looks really bad.
And And let's remember, by the way, that Tim Walz is one of these guys who's a teacher that goes around boasting that no kid he has ever taught has ever made it to the Ivy League.
And apparently Tim Walz thinks that's a good thing.
Wow. Well, for someone who's a teacher of that ilk, you would expect them to be muddle-headed, confused, and have wide-eyed expressions like, whoa, I didn't see that one coming.
And of course, that was the defining element of Tim Walz's expressions during the debate.
I'm not saying that Tim Walston come across as a sort of a decent guy.
I mean, I don't know how decent he is because the guy does habitually lie.
And not only that, but he doesn't have the sort of decency to just say it.
You know, you said you've been saying for years that you were in Hong Kong, you were sort of in China during Tiananmen Square, but you weren't.
And instead of him saying, well listen, you know what, over time sometimes your memory plays a trick on you, you start saying you were, then you begin to believe you were, so I'm sorry I wasn't.
He comes back with all kinds of obfuscation and kind of folksy nonsense.
When he was asked about this at the pizza shop, I mean, first he goes, I like his opening.
He goes, alls I'm saying.
I love the word alls.
Alls I'm saying. That's all he's saying.
And then what he does is he ducks down and he begins to minutely study the pizza.
So he's obviously making an inventory of the ingredients and so on.
Bottom line is, he can't just bring himself to say, I was wrong.
I've repeated this misstatement for years.
I really shouldn't have done it, but I'm willing to own up to it.
No, he's not going to do any of that.
And in that sense, he's very much like Kamala Harris.
She's the same. And I think really both of them are major fakes.
Their folksiness is a put-on, just like Kamala's various multifarious accents are all a put-on.
And there's a real contrast, I think, that is becoming very clear before the Americans.
It's like there for you to see between J.D. Vance and Trump, who are, whatever you say about them, they're very authentic.
I mean, J.D. Vance is a guy who grew up in Appalachia, not just in sort of physical poverty, but in, I would say, cultural poverty.
He's really made an American and all-American success story.
Trump is a success story of a different kind, but they both represent, in their own way, the American dream.
And really, the other two, Walz and Harris, represent the anti-American dream, which is leeching off the state, mastering a certain kind of hokey put-on that is intended to sort of deceive the American people that they spend their time thinking about you.
In fact, they spend no time thinking about you at all.
So, in a way, I think that as we look to November...
The real question on the ballot is how much of suckers are the American people, really?
Is it not easy to see that these two people are putting on a kind of clown show that is aimed at deceiving you?
Is it not easy to see that, again, whatever you say about Trump and Vance, these are people of genuine accomplishment, genuine ability to comprehend what's going on around them, And also a genuine ability, which Trump demonstrated in the first term, to fix things.
So it's a stark choice in November, and it's not just a choice between the two candidates.
In some ways, it's also a referendum on the perceptiveness of the American people themselves.
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I want to comment about what is happening and what just happened in Israel because you have to say that it's quite a surprise.
It started out, in fact, Debbie who keeps track of these things and gets all kinds of notifications on her phone, she's like, man, things are really getting bad over in Israel because the rockets are flying.
And so, of course, I start looking at these images.
And the images are really quite terrifying because what does it look like?
Well, I mean, it looks like a fireworks display over Tel Aviv.
And it looks like you've just got little...
When I say little, I mean a lot of fireballs and explosions.
And it...
I mean, it... It can't help but cross your mind.
Is this like a prelude to a wider war in the Middle East?
And is this like the beginning of World War III? People have been using that term and predicting in some ways a rapid escalation.
When we think back to World War, certainly to World War I, It started off with an assassination that nobody thought was going to kick off a world war, but it did.
And so you never know when these things are going to suddenly spread and cause massive devastation.
But interestingly, as we look back now on this rocket attack...
You almost have to be shocked at the minimal level of devastation, by which I mean one casualty, one guy dead, and it turns out, and this is almost a little bit of a joke, the guy was a Palestinian.
And so the net effect of the Iranian rocket attack was sort of to knock out a Palestinian.
That's it. No other Israelis dead.
Now, that is not the full body count.
And Debbie pointed out to me this morning that there have been six, seven, or is it eight, honey?
Eight IDF soldiers who have been recently killed.
There was also a terror attack, I believe, in Tel Aviv, in which some civilians were killed.
The terrorists, of course, were also killed by the Israeli armed forces.
So it is a perilous situation.
I found it interesting to listen to an account of how the Israeli defense system intercepts these rockets.
And as it turns out, we all know about the Iron Dome, but apparently the Iron Dome is part of a three-part structure of defenses.
And it is very difficult to make all three Parts work harmoniously and simultaneously and yet that is exactly what happened.
The theme of this comment was that it borders on the miraculous.
In other words It is so unlikely to have three systems operating in such a coordinated fashion that the improbability can almost be ascribed to divine guidance or divine will.
There is quite a bit of commentary coming out of Israel about what Israel should do to respond because Israel responds.
I mean, Israel does not take this stuff.
It may be.
It's kind of like saying somebody attempted to murder you, but they didn't succeed.
But it's still attempted murder, and there still needs to be accountability.
So Iran may have killed one guy, but it looks like they were trying to get a lot of people.
And so the question is, what does Israel do in retaliation?
Well, one thing they seem to be doing is they've already moved Israeli troops into Lebanon.
And this, I think, can only be to the good because Lebanon has essentially been an occupied country.
Of course, Hezbollah doesn't see it that way, the way they see it.
Israel's invading Lebanon, but Hezbollah is an Iranian surrogate that has had a kind of strangled hold on Lebanon.
They've been using Lebanon as their base.
It can only be good for the Lebanese people, and it can only be good for security and for safety in the region, not to mention prosperity, for Lebanon to be liberated and From the chokehold of Hezbollah.
There's also been some people saying that Israel should kind of go all the way, take advantage of this opportunity because, hey, listen, Israel has been directly attacked.
And Israel now can, for example, say, all right, well, it's time to say bye-bye to those Iranian nuclear facilities.
Israel knows where they are and can target them and can eliminate them, blow them up.
Get rid of them. And of course, that would not be a permanent setback for Iran, but it would be a very significant setback, a setback that could probably put them back years and maybe even a decade or so.
As long as the knowledge of nuclear weapons exists, and as long as the Iranians know how to build a bomb, they're going to be able to come back and do it.
But it's not enough to have It's also worth noting that it's the United States' indulgence toward Iran that began in the Obama years.
Remember all those pallets of cash that Obama gave these guys?
So it's a combination of Obama's direct funding and then the release of frozen Iranian assets.
Remember that Biden, one of the first things he did when he came in, In early 2021, he goes, I'm going to undo the sanctions against Iran that Trump had.
And so, by removing those sanctions, what do you do?
You basically give the Iranians greater access now to resources that they can redeploy toward military action, projecting their power around the world, strengthening Hezbollah in Lebanon, strengthening Hezbollah's reach into Israel, and so on.
So the point I'm trying to make is that to the degree that the U.S. taxpayer is involved in all of this, and when is the U.S. taxpayer not involved, we are in a strange way subsidizing this nonsense.
People who want the U.S. not to be involved in any way.
And they're like, oh, yo, we're funding both sides of the war.
Dinesh, we're funding Israel, then we're funding Hezbollah.
And that is one way to look at it.
But my way of looking at it is that I understand why we're supporting Israel.
They are, in fact, our ally.
But the idea that we are also bankrolling Hezbollah, we're also bankrolling Iran, that's the real atrocity.
That's the real outrage.
And that blame needs to be laid squarely at the door of the Biden-Harris administration.
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We are, guys, on the verge of the book Vindicating Trump coming out.
The publication date is October 8th, which I guess is Monday.
Monday? Tuesday. Debbie says Tuesday.
Debbie-sama has a calendar like in her mind.
So she's able to envision the whole month visually and then go, oh no, that's a Tuesday.
I'm like, I look it up and I'm like, how did you know that?
Anyway, she has that.
You have a gift, honey.
But this is a great time to pre-order the book.
If you go on Amazon, Barnes& Noble, you can easily do it directly.
But you can also do it right off the movie website, vindicatingtrump.com.
Incidentally, the movie is still in 840 theaters and is actually having a strong week.
Better than our weekend.
I think our weekend was a little hurt by the hurricane and, hey, the hurricane sweeping across Florida into Georgia, North Carolina.
I mean, there we have a lot of theaters in that part of the country as well.
So, hey, that's the nature of the beast.
When you have a movie released like this, but it could well be that some of the people who weren't able to go, not people directly in the line of the hurricane, but let's say people who got a lot of rain that wanted to stay home.
In any event, the movie is in a lot more theaters today than it will be over the weekend.
So if you can go today, perhaps tomorrow, I think we're gonna be in about 400 theaters over the weekend.
So that's fewer, that's about half the theater, maybe 420 theaters, but half the theaters that we had last weekend.
So it's still out there, it's still a movie that you can see.
And the theater is a great way to see it because it's made cinematically.
It's made for the theater and seeing it with like-minded people is going to get you just really fired up.
It shows Trump in a new light and it shows Trump in a way that will show you why we don't need any kind of a reformed or remade Trump.
Trump as is.
Trump in his current mode is perfectly suited to the crisis we face as a country and to the challenges that we face in the Republican Party.
I thought I'd speak briefly about Trump's character, and I wanted to address head-on some of the critiques of Trump's character, his so-called, his vices, supposedly, and talk about them directly, not ducking them at all, but I also want to highlight the other side of Trump that is often not mentioned, and that is Trump's virtues.
So let's talk about his vices.
Trump is a liar.
We hear that a lot.
Well, Trump is admittedly an exaggerator.
He's not a liar.
What he does is he takes things and he puts them into sort of salesman's talk, but to such a degree, it's so over the top, that I would submit that no...
When someone exaggerates slightly, you can accuse them of lying.
But when someone exaggerates ridiculously, everybody knows they're exaggerating.
When Trump says something like, you know, I was in Butler, Pennsylvania, that was the greatest crowd that's ever been assembled.
Well, everyone knows that's a wild exaggeration.
Or the burgers in Mar-a-Lago are the best burgers ever made.
Well, that is so over-the-top that you know that that's part of a shtick.
Trump says, my term in office was the greatest economy of all time.
And that is the Trumpian mode of speech.
Once you're accustomed to it, you recognize what Trump is getting at.
And Trump has a point.
I mean, he's making a pitch, and he's got a lot of evidence to support the fact that he had a great economy.
So that's point number one.
Trump is an egomaniac.
I have two thoughts to say about this.
One of them is that Trump's ego is, in some ways, a political virtue.
It protects him when he's under ferocious attack.
But interestingly, Trump is not egotistical in private.
In public, Trump loves recognition.
He loves praise. He operates very much in the sort of recognition mode.
But interestingly, in private, he's self-deprecating.
He's whimsical. He pays attention to you And it's not all about him.
So to the degree that someone who is egotistical is some sort of a narcissist, you might expect Trump to be that way.
Trump is not that way.
He wants to know how you're doing.
He asks about your family.
If he's approaching someone who works at one of his hotels, he asks about, you know, didn't your wife just have an operation?
How did that go? He remembers.
He cares. So that is the opposite of narcissism.
That's the opposite of someone who it's all about.
It's all about him.
Trump is a playboy.
Well, he's not now.
No one claims he's a playboy currently.
So the worst you can say about Trump is he used to be a playboy.
He's a reformed playboy.
Well, okay. I don't think it's the worst thing in the world.
But that is obviously not a vice that can be pegged on Trump anymore.
Let's look at the other side of the equation for a moment Trump is obviously a devoted family man.
He's very good with his children.
He's very good with his grandchildren.
He's done a good job in raising his kids.
He doesn't have the kind of degenerates that, say, Biden has produced with Hunter Biden.
Or look at the...
I don't know if you've seen pictures of the Obama kids these days.
They look like complete delinquents.
Look at the...
Look at the dysfunctional families that political leaders often produce, and Trump is a kind of glaring exception to that rule.
Also, his family is very devoted to him.
Even his ex-wives are devoted to him and endorse him and show up on the campaign trail.
And all of this is not easy to achieve, but Trump has achieved it.
I mentioned his kind of openness to people.
He always treats people who are beneath him on a kind of even level.
In other words, he doesn't condescend to people.
He never bullies people who are beneath him.
He'll bully someone who's another 800-pound gorilla, so to speak.
And Trump is the perfect guy if you're dealing with a bully.
He knows how to bully the bully.
But on the other hand, he doesn't bully waiters.
He doesn't bully doormen.
I don't know if you saw the video of Tim Walz on the street.
Some Trumpster yelled out something at him.
So he gives the Trumpster the middle finger.
Trump would never do that.
Trump is generous, even to the point of being magnanimous.
He will hear about someone facing hard times and without claiming credit or any publicity attending it, he'll write the guy a $10,000 check.
Somebody's roof is blown off in a natural disaster.
Trump will help. And you never hear about other people helping.
Have you ever heard of Biden, for example, just responding to people in this way?
If it existed, there would be innumerable stories about it.
The fact that there are no stories about it, even by a press that is out there to build up Biden, shows he doesn't do it.
There's nothing to write about because it doesn't really happen.
And finally, I want to talk a little bit about the virtue of courage, which I've mentioned on the podcast before, but I want to discuss it in the Aristotelian mode.
And I mentioned this actually at The Blaze on one of the shows I was on, and they were like, Dinesh, you're the only guy who would bring up Aristotle in this context of discussing Trump and the assassination attempts.
I don't want to go over the assassination attempts per se, but what I want to say is that a lot of people think of courage as fearlessness.
He's fearless. That Trump is really fearless.
He knows no fear. And the point that Aristotle makes in his discussion of courage is that Aristotle says that courage is not overcoming fear.
And in fact, the courageous man is not fearless.
Why? Because think about a person who really doesn't have fear.
Who is that person?
Well, that person is bound to be the reckless person because there are in life very dangerous things.
Hey, there's a fire. Don't stick your hand in it.
But I have no fear. I'm going to do it.
Well, that makes you kind of reckless.
There's an ad that Debbie and I will watch sometimes when we're on the treadmill.
And it's an ad of this.
It's supposed to be a very cool ad.
There's this young couple there.
It's an ad for some sort of a Jeep or some sort of automobile.
They pull up at the top of a mountain and then they go, they look at each other like, let's do it!
And they both get out of the car and they run to the edge of the precipice and then they jump off into a deep pool down below.
Now, first of all, I'm thinking to myself, that's crazy.
And why is it crazy? Because presumably, this is the whole point of the ad, you're being spontaneous, you're kind of going for it, but you don't know if there are rocks down there, right?
You could end up completely destroyed.
So in other words, you could say, well, I'm fearless.
Well, you're stupid because you are jumping without knowledge and without caring what's down below.
Aristotle says that's not really bravery at all.
Not at all. The courage is not recklessness.
Courage is, Aristotle says, in between recklessness on the one hand, that's one extreme, and timidity or cowardice on the other extreme.
The timid guy will never go near a precipice.
Hey, I'm not going to go near. I could fall off.
The courageous man is somewhat in between.
The courageous man is, you know what?
That is very dangerous.
So I have to now weigh whether it is worth it for me to take that risk.
Now, if it's a matter just of, I'm on vacation, I'm going to be crazy, no, don't do it.
That's dumb. On the other hand, if it is a matter of, hey, I'm running for president, but that's going to expose me to greater danger because it seems like there are a lot of kooks out there and there are people who will stop at nothing to get me, but it's important to save this country and therefore I'm willing to assume that risk.
This is what Aristotle is talking about.
I want to emphasize that really what Trump is showing isn't just absence of fear or overcoming fear.
Not at all. Rather, it is the bravery of recognizing that you are putting yourself...
In a dangerous situation, you're putting your life in danger, but the cause is important enough for you.
You believe in the country, you believe that you're the guy who's maybe appointed by fate or providence to save the country, and so you're willing to endure the danger, you're willing to take on the risk.
And that, I think, is what Aristotle is saying is the true meaning of courage.
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He is a comedian and an actor.
In fact, he's been called the most dangerous Christian comedian in the country.
His groundbreaking album, Put a Helmet On.
He's also been profiled in New Yorker magazine.
And he plays a very amusing and interesting role in Vindicating Trump.
You can follow him on X at Brad Stein, S-T-I-N-E, and his website, bradstein.com.
Brad, welcome. Thanks for joining me.
I gotta say, I think that you and a couple of others kind of stole the show and the recreations of vindicating Trump.
You play a kind of DNC operative, maybe the head of the DNC. Talk a little bit about that role and talk a little bit about what you were going for in that recreation.
Well, the first thing I was going for was to see how long I could stay safe and alive being in a Dinesh D'Souza film.
I didn't realize it was an existential threat to join you in your amazing body of work when it comes to trying to tell hard stories in America.
It was fun.
It's always fun to play the heavy guy.
It's always fun to play kind of the the nefarious guy the mean guy. You know, I love what you guys do I mean you're you make it a docudrama. So you deal with reality or you actually interviewed extensively Trump himself and and as well as Laura Trump and numerous others as well as how Balloting works and how easy it is to fake that So, you know, you get in some really important issues when it comes to liberty and freedom in America, or if we even still have it.
And yet, you make these fun behind-the-scenes dramatizations of what probably took place or maybe taken some liberties, but probably not too often.
As to how it went about with lawfare.
We now know it's true. I certainly don't have to tell you, a man who actually lived it.
So, yeah, I enjoyed it.
It was fun to play it.
I think it was kind of bittersweet because I enjoy acting and yet what's at stake is so important and so volatile in America that in some ways it's sad that this type of a film has to be made.
Yeah, I mean, I think the reason that these recreations work so well is that people wonder what happens behind closed doors at these agencies.
What happens at the DNC? What happens in the media?
Do the people at CNN just watch with calm equanimity and journalistic objectivity?
Or are they really excited and they start congratulating and high-fiving each other and jumping up and down?
So it's fun to be able to imaginatively show people And that's the beauty of a film.
You know, I think if you tell someone something, let's say I want to tell people, hey, listen, there's a way that you can make ballots.
They'd be like, that's weird.
But if you show people, you know what, this is how we got the ballots talk.
Here, it's outside my front door.
Then people go, wow, I didn't realize that this could actually be done and you're showing me that you're proving in a way.
I think in a visual way that this is something that is a real vulnerability in our system.
Brad, you're a comedian.
Talk a little bit about how did you get into comedy?
Were you just funny as a kid and then you decided, hey, you know what?
Everyone laughs when I talk, so I'm going to make a profession out of it.
What was your journey that took you into the world of comedy?
Well, it was an accident.
I mean, I think I was always maybe kind of funny, but I didn't shoot for that.
I wasn't trying to be a funny guy.
I don't know that that was ever something of interest.
Believe it or not, I started out as a sleight-of-hand artist professionally in Southern California in the 80s.
I performed all around Southern California as a magician, sleight-of-hand artist, David Blaine kind of stuff.
But I did it funny.
It just was natural. It came out in a funny way, and I thought to myself, I need to have a bigger show to make more money because I'm just doing these little restaurants and things and there's no money here.
So with all capitalism, entrepreneurship, how can I take this clearly only skill I might have, which is performance art?
And see if I can turn this into a little bit better monetization so maybe one day I can have a family like real people and grown-ups.
And so I realized, well, Comedy Clubs is wide open for a revenue stream.
So I said, what if I had a Comedy Magic show?
And so I started working there.
And suddenly I saw these comics and I'm going, this is much more interesting to me because at least with magic, it's like music.
It's an instrument. You can train somebody to do that.
Doesn't mean everybody's going to be great, but it's a technique that you can teach somebody, not comedy, to stand up in front of people with a mind and mouth and a mic.
And have all these disparate people from all around the community, ages, colors, creeds, histories, life experience, and make them orchestrate into laughing at something you have to say about the human experience.
That's a challenge.
I found it interesting.
It didn't frighten me.
I was engaged by it, so obviously a gift from God to not have stage fright.
And I said, I wanted to see if I can just do this with just...
My ideas. And it was over time, Dinesh, when as a Christ follower, which I always was, even in the nightclub, so that made sure I didn't use curse words, I didn't use sexual jokes, but I was edgy and I had to compete with guys that used the F word and I didn't, so how do I do that? So I was energetic and I was extemporaneous and I was, you know, really...
Just creating an art form out of the beauty of comedy.
But I saw my country shifting.
I saw the artist leaning left and deciding that, you know, America's bad.
And I said, listen, I was born in Indiana.
My grandparents were farmers.
I'm blue collar. I believe this is a great nation.
Not perfect. Don't worship it.
I worship God. But the greatest nation there ever was and very grateful for it.
What happens if I decide to be a Christian and a conservative and add that to my comedy and see if anybody's interested in me?
Did it cost me my mainstream career?
You bet. Did it put me in the groove I belonged as a human being, as an American, as a Christian, to tell hard truths in a humorous way?
That's where I am.
And so it became sort of a ministry slash...
Passion to speak about truth and use free speech.
So, so crucial.
And it's such jeopardy right now.
Just heard John Kerry talk about the concern about social media.
The big hurdle is the First Amendment.
When guys are saying that out loud, we got a serious issue and it has to be fought with everything we have.
I mean, comedy, Brad, it seems to me, is such a great weapon to strike back at the kind of pomposities and rigidities and ideological absurdities that are all around us.
Why do you think it is that the mainstream of the comedy industry is sort of left-wing?
In other words, it would seem to me that there's kind of almost a business opportunity for For right-wing comedy.
Because if the regime is left-wing, then those are the orthodoxies.
That's the stuff you have to make fun of.
And it seems to me that, I mean, wouldn't Jimmy Fallon be funnier if he was taking on the Biden-Harris people?
And wouldn't Saturday Night Live be funnier if they were really taking on the...
Taking on the establishment.
When you're covering for the establishment, it seems like you're really just not using comedy and making it the weapon that it could be.
Well, the big flaw in your argument there, my friend, is that you are still thinking that logic and reason are sacrosanct, and you forgot and haven't realized that it's racist to be logical and reasonable, because that's what they've done now.
So everything you said is exactly true.
I cannot tell you how many interviews I've had over my lifetime.
The New Yorker, you mentioned that.
That was an eight-page profile.
They couldn't believe you could be a Christian and a conservative and be funny.
Literally, they couldn't believe it.
So I had to prove my point.
But I've had many, many, many interviews, print and television interviews, and it was usually this.
How come conservatives aren't funny?
What's wrong with you people?
And I would tell them, I said, oh, we're very funny.
But the problem is the left can't laugh at themselves.
You don't have the maturity level to do that.
You are systemically narcissistic.
You worship your point of view as a religious text as opposed to being objective enough to try to find actual truth.
And comedy does that and can do it well.
But here's the other thing they say to weaponize their perspective.
Well, the reason that conservative comedy doesn't work is because comedy is great when it punches up.
But all of you conservatives punch down at the weak, at the downtrodden.
It's like, no, that's a narrative you manufactured in your head that we punch down or try to harm the downtrodden.
Listen. LGBTQ, for example, is completely off limits.
You can't laugh, joke, talk about, judge, disagree with, can't talk about it, right?
You are as up as it gets.
There is nobody more privileged right now than you when you can't even be talked about.
Then you are as privileged as it gets.
It's your turn to get punched.
That's what it means.
And when you do, they cry.
And I know this sounds easy because you're a Christian and probably, you know, conservative.
I don't know if you label yourself. I certainly am.
So it's easy for us to be on this podcast and say, yeah, it's our turn.
But the truth of the matter is they don't understand that the beauty of comedy historically is We were the ones that could make fun of the king and not get our head cut off.
We made the monarchy and the peasantry inequality.
We could be the only ones given permission to speak the truth in real time so that people could try to reevaluate how they saw the world.
And they've stripped that away from us as they've stripped away everything.
Every form of free speech because they don't, they're not liberals anymore, which I would have loved to have a classical liberal back where they allow me to disagree and try to let the people decide.
They are leftists. They are Marxists.
And as you know better than I, my brother, they do not allow any dissent.
It must be destroyed.
And that's why you're right.
Most of America laugh at my stuff.
They love me. But the dissemination of information is owned by the left and they aren't going to touch me with a 10-foot pole.
I'd like to have your sort of professional evaluation of Trump as a comedian.
I say this because it seems that Trump has two very different comedy genres.
He has the stand-up, which he uses in the rallies.
And that's one genre.
But that's not the same as his, let's call it, written comedy.
But when you see a Trump social media post, you almost always have to laugh.
And part of the laughter is just because it is so Trump.
Yeah.
the typographical arts. Most of the tweet is typically in all caps. Very often bold faces also employed and multiple uses of exclamation points.
So, in other words, you could hire eight guys but they'd be very hard pressed for them to do what Trump does. They couldn't do it in the Trumpian voice, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
And I saw an interesting long article in The New Yorker, of all places, talking about how comedy is actually a very authoritarian concept.
And they were using it in connection with Trump.
They were saying because people like Trump can use comedy to cover some very dark themes that they're all about, but because they make people laugh...
It's sort of like a little bit of honey to make the fascism go down more easily, so to speak.
So comment on Trump as a comedian and this sort of leftist idea that comedy is actually a weapon of the right that is used to sell its dark agenda.
I wish it was that easy, my brother.
I wish that I and people of might ill control the comedy airwaves and we're given the Netflix specials and we're given the access to all the concerts at the local studios.
Universities and so forth.
I wish we were the ones that weren't disinvited from the academia.
I wish to God we were the ones that had that much power.
But there is not a group on earth more lacking in self-awareness than the left.
These guys are the ones that control the late night.
All they do is mock the right.
That's All they do, thinking, look how sophisticated we are.
And then they project onto us, look how they made a joke about us.
That isn't just me having to be a big boy and grow up and laugh at myself like any sophisticated, mature adult used to be expected to do.
No, what in fact that is is me getting hurt because you are a Nazi and you are a totalitarian and you are a bigot and you are a closed-minded and you are a racist and you are phobic.
All, by the way, ideas I projected upon you without proof don't need to.
I control the narrative.
And so when you say it, you try to cover it and dog whistle it and smoke screen it so you can get this inculcated into culture because otherwise people wouldn't realize what No, that's all you do.
That literally is your playbook.
What's beautiful about Trump, Dinesh, he's so kind of, I don't know if he's like an idiot savant.
It's like he's smarter than he realizes it, and I think he's lacking in a certain self-awareness as how he's perceived.
And like you said, he puts all the caps and the things in this.
And it is funny. And I said this for many, many years.
I think when you were on my podcast, I said the same observation when he was first running in 16.
I said, I don't know if he'd be a good president.
Maybe we need a businessman now over a politician.
Maybe we need a guy that isn't in the lobbyist's pocket because he's got plenty of money.
Maybe we need a guy that doesn't need to have his ego stroked because he's famous.
He's already there. Maybe we need him.
I don't know if we'll be good. Here's what I do know.
He was the first person of note and notoriety in front of a large screen of folks on television and so forth and media that when they called him something, you're, well, that's racist, that's bigoted, that's phobic.
And he would say, you're fake news next.
Oh, no, actually, that's you next.
And it's like, they didn't know what to do with that because they have never been trained to have to articulate ideas and fence with them because they have none.
They are whitewashed tombs.
They have nothing to offer.
They are deconstructionists.
A child can destroy a masterpiece.
It takes an architect to build something.
They build nothing.
So all they can do is attack.
Trump is hysterical because he doesn't give a crap.
What you think about him, he has nothing to prove.
He's made his mark.
And I believe, and I don't know the guy, maybe he's the greatest con artist in human history, but I believe the guy actually is doing whatever he can to say America is teetering on the brink of losing the freedom to speak, which is the single most important freedom, especially religious freedom, because that's your conscience.
So the freedom to have your religious conscience is more important.
That includes atheists. Your deeper transcendent belief system is the single most important thing a human free agent can have.
And he has fought that fight.
I will not play into your narrative.
I am not going to be intimidated by yourself since you demand.
And I'm going to destroy anything in my wake.
This is what a man looks like.
This is what a warrior looks like.
And most importantly, this is what a patriot and free speech looks like.
So buckle up.
Is he going to win in 30 days?
I don't know. Is there going to be free elections?
No. I don't know, buddy.
You know, this is what you've been doing films about.
But he is hysterical because he speaks the truth.
And if you know anything about comedy, the greatest jokes are when people say, that's true.
I've thought of that. And that's what he does, whether he realizes it or not.
Let's close out with just a final observation.
It seems to me that truth is the primary ingredient, just as you say, but maybe a secondary ingredient is that almost childlike boldness to be able to blurt it out, right?
To say it. And it's not something that Republicans...
I mean, Republicans have a psychology, it seems, that is defeatist, insecure, intimidated.
And so I think of people like McCain, and I think, for example, Romney, when he was up against the wall, when he was...
He goes on the defensive.
He appears in the media to be explaining, justifying, apologizing...
Trump doesn't do that.
He very rarely apologizes.
I think I've seen him apologize maybe once or twice in about a decade, but not more than that.
I think he feels about one apology a decade is sufficient.
So, do you agree that comedy is that kind of combination of truthfulness, which, of course, kids also have, along with a certain kind of adolescent boldness?
Just say it. Oh, absolutely.
But I think it also has a greater effect in culture in that it can teach you how to be strong and mature.
It can teach you...
Where are you going to allow power to come in and control you?
Because, you know, if you are making fun of taboos, if you are saying the things that aren't supposed to be said, and clearly, that doesn't mean you should go out and be a racist or slander people or be mean-spirited or try to harm people.
Trying to do that.
But in fact, you're using sarcasm, satire, sardonic concepts.
These are all tools that are designed to teach you the hardest lesson you can learn.
And that is if you truly believe in free speech, the only way that you can acknowledge that and prove that you believe it, but more importantly, actually utilize it, is you allow speech to exist everywhere.
In the atmosphere that you hate.
That's a hard lesson.
Most people can't do it.
They don't want to do it because they're children.
And so Trump, in his own odd way...
Kind of uses the best of both worlds of that child-likeness.
On one hand, I think he's lacking in self-awareness, blurts it out because he just does, he lived a long life as a billionaire and the emperor of New York.
So he's never had to apologize or do anything.
But I think he also, I think he's doing the best he can.
As a guy who probably never expected to be President of the United States, to see if he can help America.
You know, as you know, you get older, you start looking at life, the legacy you're gonna leave or not leave, and you start saying, maybe it's my turn to help the next people up coming up behind me, my kids, my grandkids, to have a chance at freedom.
Maybe it's my turn to suffer.
Maybe it's my turn to go to the cross.
And suffer so that when I'm resurrected, that resurrection might heal others because I'm going to go forth and take the arrows.
That might sound hyperbolic or over the top, but the truth is, my friend, that's where we're at in America.
It's going to cost you something now to hang on to your freedom, and maybe it should because maybe it has been taken for granted for too long, and it's time for you to decide, are you an American or not?
And if so, get to work because hell is here.
Let's fight. Wow.
Good stuff, Brad. Guys, I've been talking to Brad Stein, comedian, actor, star, one of the stars of Vindicating Trump, which, by the way, is still in theaters.
The website VindicatingTrump.com.
Get your tickets. Brad, a pleasure.
Thanks for joining me on the podcast.
My pleasure. And anytime you want to come on, let's do something together in one of these days.
Do some live events together.
We can go really stir things up.
Look forward to it. All right.
Thank you, buddy. Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
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