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Nov. 20, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
51:41
A DANGEROUS TANTRUM Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep965
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Thank you.
Thank you.
the left among the Trump cabinet appointees, Matt Gaetz.
And I'll talk about the attempted smear against Matt Gaetz that the left is pushing very hard right now.
A bathroom controversy involving Nancy Mace and a so-called transgender member of Congress.
I'll give you the details.
An author and former Defense Intelligence Agency Officer Rebecca Koffler joins me.
We're going to talk about the risks of catastrophic war with Russia in the wake of Biden's escalation in Ukraine.
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There are a whole bunch of things going on in the news, and I'm going to zoom into a few of the biggest ones today.
Probably the most important thing is the firing of long-range U.S. missiles, U.S.-provided missiles, into Russian territory.
This is because Biden authorized it.
Zelensky took him up on it.
And I'm going to be speaking to an expert, Rebecca Koffler, who is a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer.
She is very knowledgeable about all this.
But here in the opening segment, I want to focus on domestic politics and focus on these ugly smears against Trump's most dangerous nominee from the point of view of the left, and that is, of course, Matt Gaetz.
Now, Gates is dangerous because of what he portends for the deep state or the police state, and that is a full ripping down of the mask, a tearing up of the veil, a top-to-bottom exposure and a rebuilding of the DOJ and of the agencies within it, which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It terrifies not just the Democrats, but terrifies all the operatives in the police state.
And some of those, of course, are Biden-Harris appointees, but a lot of them are also civil servants, people who work for the FBI, people who work for the DOJ. They're not subject normally to dismissal under the normal political process, but they are afraid that Gates is going to kind of come in With a bulldozer and they too are going to find themselves out on the street.
So you can imagine this is like an animal that is being tied down, that is being cornered.
I'm referring here to the police.
It's going to lash out every which way.
And the form of lashing out that we're seeing right now is this allegation that somehow Matt Gaetz was involved in a very sordid sex scandal involving an underage woman.
Now, the details of this sex scandal I'm going to go into, but not today, because what I want to do is I want to take the overview of it and give you the kind of significant conclusion that can be drawn from all this, which does not require us to know the details of the case.
Why?
Because, well, Here was Lindsey Graham on CNN and they were trying to get him to back off from Matt Gaetz.
And Lindsey Graham was actually defending Matt Gaetz and he said, nobody should be disqualified because of media reports.
And then Manu Raju from CNN goes, well, it's an investigation.
And Graham goes, and it didn't go forward.
So, Graham is actually cutting to the chase.
And that's the point I want to here highlight.
And that is that the DOJ looked at charges against Matt Gaetz.
You can be pretty sure that if they had enough to charge him, they would have.
Because they've been scared of him for a long time.
They've been wanting to get him for a long time.
If Trump is at the top of their list, Gaetz is probably number three or number four on that list.
And so, what Graham is doing without...
Sort of consulting the quote investigation or second-guessing it, he's like, well, look, if there was a criminal case, where is it?
Why hasn't it been brought?
Why are we relying on media reports of a case that wasn't brought?
Because that is simply a way of banding around salacious accusation.
Matt Gaetz did this, Matt Gaetz did that.
And the truth of it is, Matt Graetz hasn't broken any laws, in which case he would in no way be disqualified, at least on that basis.
For being Attorney General.
As I will go into, and I might do this really tomorrow, is all of these charges against Gates come out of a blackmail scheme.
They involve one of Florida's notoriously corrupt politicians.
In fact, a politician who, as far as I understand it, is currently serving 11 years in prison.
And this guy had a shakedown against Matt Gaetz's family.
Matt Gaetz comes from a very wealthy family, and this guy wanted to shake down $25 million off that family.
And when Matt Gaetz's father said, no, I'm not paying, this guy was like, guess what?
I'm going to teach you a lesson, and I'm going to teach you a lesson by making accusations against your son.
And the guy who's making these accusations has made false accusations against other people before, and in fact, been busted for it.
So, details to follow.
But what I want to do here today is take this in a slightly different direction.
Here is a comment by Alan Lichtman.
Alan Lichtman is aka or also known as election Nostradamus.
And these days I've been having great fun at the expense of poor Alan Lickman, who has these famous 13 keys, which he said help him infallibly to predict elections.
And now, of course, he got the last election absolutely and flatly wrong.
And he's always trying to now explain why his keys didn't really work.
And it turns out he says the keys weren't really defective.
What was really defective, really, I think, is the preferences of the voters, according to him.
So this is stuff of high comedy.
But here's Alan Lickman.
He says the Gates nomination for Attorney General could be a feint.
Trump could withdraw the nomination, then appoint someone just as dedicated to carrying out Trump's political agenda, but without Gates' baggage.
So here he's suggesting that Trump has a devious scheme, which is basically, look over here, Gates.
Everybody gets all worked up about Gates.
They work up all their energy.
They start doing all these investigations.
They mobilize all their votes.
And then right at the last minute, Trump basically withdraws Gates, puts in like Ken Paxton or somebody else, and everybody goes, whew, and they go along with it.
And then Ken Paxton turns out to be just as ruthless and just as effective as Gates.
So this is Alan Lichtman kind of offering his own, I think, somewhat wacky theory.
And I say wacky because...
Trump likes Gates.
He likes Gates' boldness.
He likes Gates' outspokenness.
I think he likes the fact that Gates was willing to take on Kevin McCarthy.
Gates is also, because he's independently wealthy, he's not somebody who can be easily bought by lobbyists.
And I think Trump likes that independence, which he displays himself.
And finally, of course, Trump likes the fact that Gates is very dedicated to Trump.
Gates is 100% MAGA. Gates' beliefs in that area are not even really open to questions.
So I think that Trump is going to be absolutely insistent that Gates become the Attorney General.
He's going to do arm twisting.
He's going to be calling senators.
He's going to He's going to make sure that this smear does not take down Gates.
The Democrats are doing...
What are they doing?
I mean, they're doing what they did to Kavanaugh.
They are playing out of a playbook that has often worked with Republicans.
And Debbie was just telling me this morning that she was watching, I think, I don't know if it was Fox News, but anyway, John Thune was like, well, yes, we do have to do our...
And John Thune, of course, is saying what he should say, which is that we're going to be reviewing the process.
We're going to be looking at any questions or any charges that are made against the cabinet nominees.
We're going to be assessing all that.
But John Thune is in no way saying that he is backing away from any of Trump's nominees.
In fact, I think John Thune realizes that the security of his own position and effectiveness of his own position depends on his ability to deliver on these cabinet nominations and see them through.
So for all these reasons, I think that the Gates nomination is actually doing fine right now.
And what I will do tomorrow Is I'm going to give you a Machiavellian angle on all this, but I'm also going to look more specifically at where these allegations come from.
What are they saying?
What is their real basis?
What do they really have on Matt Gaetz?
And the answer is really very little.
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Have you been following the so-called trans bathroom controversy in the U.S. Capitol?
If you haven't, I need to bring you up to date.
So apparently there is a A congressman, congresswoman perhaps.
This is a guy, a biological male, who calls himself Sarah McBride.
He identifies as a woman.
Was elected to Congress from Delaware.
And apparently had some high plans to be using the female bathroom.
And Nancy Mace, the Republican congresswoman who's been on this podcast from South Carolina, said, no way.
Nancy Mace, by the way, is a victim of rape, of sexual abuse.
And she's like, there is no way I'm going to have a biological man in the women's bathroom anymore.
That is not happening.
And she introduced legislation to ban that.
Now, interestingly, she's gotten so much abuse from leftists on social media, including one guy who threatened to kill her, and that you might think that Nancy Mace would have backed off.
Or you might fear or worry that she would have backed off under this pressure.
I should point out that Nancy Mace is actually very tough.
She is, you know, the first female graduate of the military academy called the Citadel in South Carolina.
In fact, that's kind of how her name first came into the news.
And so Nancy Mace is actually doubling down.
She goes, "I'm now introducing a bill, I'm escalating, that will ban biological males from women's facilities in the entire US government across the country.
That will not be allowed anywhere." But in this particular case of the US Congress, it turns out that you don't need legislation for it.
It's the decision of Mike Johnson, the House Speaker.
And Mike Johnson was asked about this.
And, you know, you've seen Mike Johnson.
His style is very ironic.
It's quite gentle.
Johnson is always emphasizing, I'm not against anybody.
I'm not trying to make anybody feel uncomfortable.
On the contrary.
But Mike Johnson then goes on to say, and you have to pause and take into...
Kind of digest our moment where the Speaker of the House has to say this.
He goes, I do believe that a man is a man and a woman is a woman.
Now, it's hard to believe it either in earlier eras this would need to be said.
It appears to be a tautology, right?
I believe that a horse is a horse and a toad is a toad.
Does this really need to be said?
Isn't it obvious?
Doesn't it follow from the definition of a horse, that a horse is a horse?
Apparently, in our own confused time, these kinds of clarifications need to be made.
And just this morning, I see that Mike Johnson has made, not a new rule, but essentially clarified, emphasized, that no, the women's bathroom In the capital is going to be reserved for biological women.
So this is bad news for Sarah McBride.
Now Sarah McBride has this statement today where this is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions.
We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing.
So the trans...
I sometimes hesitate from using these terms because I don't myself believe that there are trans individuals.
There are men who wear dresses.
There are women who wear male clothing and maybe grow a mustache, perhaps.
But this whole phenomenon, I think, is just downright odd.
And this idea that sort of the right has started the culture wars, that's basically what McBride is getting at, which is that, you know, we haven't started this, you've made an issue of it.
No, we haven't made an issue of it.
We were actually going about our lives just fine when essentially you imposed a doctrine on us which says that we have to treat you as you, quote, insist on calling yourself.
And just apply this doctrine logically and you see how silly it is.
I mean, imagine if someone comes up to me and says, I identify as a horse.
But, by the way, Dinesh, I don't want to get into the culture wars.
We should be lowering the cost of gas prices and inflation.
I mean, I don't even know how to absorb that because, first of all, You're telling me that you identify as a horse and that you are a horse.
Then you're further telling me that you want me to treat you as a horse and you'll be very insulted if I don't do that.
But you're saying you want me to have a man-to-horse conversation about inflation.
But I can't get beyond the fact that you're not a horse.
I can't get beyond the fact that you don't have four legs.
You don't go out to pasture and eat grass.
You are pretending to be a horse, which obviously suggests that there's something that might be wrong with you.
And you want me to put that aside, pretend that we're not having this man-to-horse conversation.
Let's just focus.
So would I have a conversation with an actual horse about inflation?
Obviously not.
So how do I have a conversation with a person who aspires to be a horse Or has always believed that he was a horse and is maybe a real horse but now inhabiting a human body.
This is the extremely convoluted situation in which we find ourselves.
And I respect Mike Johnson's desire to kind of be polite about it, be as accommodating about it as we can be, but at the same time realize that we're dealing with a situation that is flat out nuts.
And whatever we think about it, we shouldn't yield to the political intimidation that is being applied against us.
So I'm glad to see that Nancy Mace is standing up against it.
She's the best person, by the way, to do it.
You don't just want a bunch of Republican males standing up there and saying, you know, we're not going to allow this because then they would try to portray this as, you know, these are toxic masculine meanies making these decisions.
If I'm going to have a good spokesman on this issue, I think that we could do a lot worse than Nancy Mace.
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Guys, I'm really happy to welcome back to the podcast our friend Rebecca Koffler.
She is a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer.
She's also managing editor of CutToTheNews.com.
It's a newsletter for independent thinkers, and she has, well, in her...
Her book, Putin's Playbook, which we're going to talk about, she predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and she also has a forthcoming book.
It's called American Bolsheviks, the Persecution of Donald Trump and the Sovietization of America.
Her website is Rebecca, R-E-B-E-K-A-H, Koffler, K-O-F-F-L-E-R, Rebecca, welcome.
Great to have you back.
And what an opportune time in the sense that we have this crazy escalation by President Biden while he is a lame duck.
He, at least according to the latest reports, he authorizes Ukraine to fire long-range missiles into Russia.
This seems to be interpreted by the Russians as a new level of aggression by the West.
And I want to talk also in a moment about what the Russians are doing in response.
But can you start by giving us a little bit of a sense of What Biden actually authorized?
What is happening on the ground?
And then we can talk about the possible motives for it and the potential impact of this latest escalation.
So, Dinesh, what President Biden has done is almost the unthinkable, or what could lead to unthinkable.
He authorized President Zelensky to use U.S. weapons that we provided to Ukraine, specifically the Atakums.
The Atakums is an army tactical missile system that has a range of about 300 kilometers, or 190, And he allowed Ukraine to strike deep into Russia using those weapons.
And Zelensky actually went ahead and took Biden on his offer.
So just yesterday, Ukraine fired six missiles into the Bryansk region, which sits at the intersection of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
Fortunately, five missiles were intercepted by Russian air defense systems, which are very robust, one of the most robust in the world, rivaling our air defense.
One got through and the debris fell on a military base.
Fortunately, there were no human casualties.
But it's more important what Putin has done in response.
And Putin has warned multiple times President Biden to not do this because we will interpret it as an act of war.
And I'll explain why the Russians view it that way.
Well, they did that anyway.
So what Putin did, he approved the updates to Russia's nuclear doctrine exactly on the same day, yesterday.
He signed his approval.
And what that does, it lowers the nuclear threshold so the Russians now can use nuclear There's nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and then potentially even against Europe, and some of them against the United States.
Now, it doesn't mean that out of the blue that they're just going to go ahead and do that.
But Putin has the justification.
And the reason he has that justification is that attackers, they obviously, you know, those missiles, U.S. missiles, they don't fly by themselves.
Even though technically a Ukrainian soldier can push the button, but you need a U.S. military, a U.S. personnel, or NATO at minimum, and you need U.S. satellites to fly.
To program the flight trajectory of the missile to ensure that the missile flies correctly to the target and destroys the target.
So all the targeting is done by the United States and Hans Putin said, you the US are now an active combatant to this war and I have the right to target Europe, not only Ukraine, but Europe and you, the United States, the U.S. homeland.
So what Biden did is he put U.S. homeland into Putin's crosshairs, including into Putin's nuclear crosshairs.
Let me reformulate what you said just so we can be clear, because I think this is a subject of grave importance, namely that until now, We could have made the case and presumably Putin might even agree with it that this is a fight between Russia and Ukraine that the Europeans and the Americans are helping the Ukrainians but the Americans and the Europeans are not attacking Russia themselves
because for them to do that Would be interpreted as an act of war and warrant or at least provide a pretext for Russian retaliation directly against Europe and directly against the United States.
But with this latest approval, you're saying it's not merely that Biden is saying, hey, we gave you the missiles, you fire them and good luck to you, but rather the United States and or NATO are We're actively collaborating with the Ukrainians in identifying targets, guiding this weaponry.
And so, in a sense, Putin is saying, well, now you're fighting against us.
You are striking inside of Russian soil, and therefore, in a sense, you are committing a direct act of war against us.
Is that an overstatement of how the Russians are seeing this, or is it accurate?
It's 100% accurate.
It's exactly what the Russians have said and Putin has said.
And now what they are doing is they're actually actively looking at all sorts of scenarios of Where it can go, right?
Because this, they consider it a major, major escalation.
Obviously, you know, if the United States now is a warring party, the United States is a nuclear power.
And that's exactly the verbiage that Putin has changed in the doctrine.
It's saying, if a third party Strikes us, a third country, and that third country may not be a nuclear power, could strike us with conventional means, but if they're supported by nuclear power, we're considering it as a joint attack.
And so, and it's not at that point...
It has to escalate.
The reason I know this, as you informed your listeners, I'm a former DIA intelligence officer, and I worked with all of the, you know, 18 agencies, including the National Contestine Service and the CIA, and we wargamed this.
I've seen multiple, multiple times a US-Russia war, a direct, kinetic, you know, dogfight, if you will.
And that's what my book is about, Putin's Playbook, Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America, where at the unclassified level, I explain where that goes.
And where that goes is all the way to nuclear.
And it doesn't mean that it's going to shoot up right away, go to nuclear.
There's an escalation ladder.
There's a very sophisticated strategy that the Russians have developed on Putin's orders, the Russian general staff.
Ever since Putin became Russian president, since 2000, they started.
The reason they started at that point is because they've seen the United States conduct military operations for the past, you know, more than two decades, right?
Beginning with Kosovo in 1991, when the Yugoslavia effectively was broken up, and then Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria.
And they have concluded that Coupled with all the rhetoric that comes out, typically out of our White House, except it didn't from the Trump's White House, but all the others, there's always Putin is a wonger, he's a war criminal, he cannot remain in power.
So the Russians take that seriously at face value.
They think that we are out there to conduct regime change.
And remove Putin, just like what we did with Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.
And that's why they have prepared that very sophisticated strategy where they can use, starting with non-kinetic means, such as cyber attacks.
And they don't need nuclear to plunge our country into darkness.
All they need to do is take down our Um, electrical grid.
And this is by the way, what they're doing with Ukraine, 50% of Ukraine, uh, critical infrastructure is now destroyed.
But imagine if they start doing this stuff here, right?
Then there are space weapons and then the actual missile systems.
So it's very gradual, but once you get into that dogfight between the U S and Russia, It can't go anywhere except nuclear, and that is because the United States enjoys conventional superiority over Russia, but Russia relies on noobs to de-escalate conflict.
So they have the strategy escalate to de-escalate, and President Trump talked about it during his first presidency.
He actually revealed it to the American people, and President Trump actually authorized our military to develop a counter To that doctrine.
And we can talk later about it if you want.
But when Biden came to power, he nixed that program.
And that's why Putin knows now that we don't have a counter to that strategy.
And he is very comfortable going there if we have to.
He'd rather not to.
But Biden is the one who put us in Putin's crosshairs.
Now, given that this seems to be...
I mean, I don't know if there's any word for it other than utter madness from Biden's side.
It can't be that the motive of the Biden regime is to bring Putin to the negotiating table, come up with some reasonable settlement that Biden can claim credit for.
First of all, Putin knows that Biden is going out of office.
So, at the very least, Putin can go, well, I'm just going to stick around.
This guy's going to be exiting out the front door.
And so I'll deal with the Trump administration on these matters.
So, what do you think is the real motive?
I don't know if Biden is making the decision.
Maybe it's the people around Biden.
But whoever it is, what do you think they think they're accomplishing by doing this?
Yeah.
So I have some thoughts, but to be honest with you, it's much, much easier for me to interpret Putin's actions.
I actually spent my intelligence career on the Putin target, getting into his mind, knowing his mindset.
Biden is a lot more difficult for me to read.
So I have two, you know, well, first of all, So it seems to me what he's doing is illogical.
It makes no sense because Biden himself, just two years ago, remember that he explained to his donors, to his DNC donors at a fundraising event in New York City, that the reason for him calibrating his strategy in Ukraine and not giving Ukraine The vast amounts of weaponry, right?
Well, one reason we don't have that.
We're now depleting our own weapons arsenal by giving it to Ukrainians.
But the reason why we didn't give them right away is that he said, I don't want to provoke World War III. And he also told his donors that nuclear armageddon from Putin is a real threat.
Well, why is he doing it now?
Is he knowingly trying to get us into the nuclear war with Russia so that...
And there are some theories out there that sounds a little conspiratorial, but if you think about it, and I don't know if I believe it yet, but I'm just going to say to you, like...
Because again, this could be catastrophic.
So is Biden doing this stuff to get us into war with Russia so that he can declare a national emergency and he can prevent Trump from actually becoming president, extend his presidency?
Because, for example, this is what Zelensky has done.
Zelensky is no longer a legitimate president of Ukraine.
His term expired in March, but he's still fighting this war.
So, because otherwise, or is Biden mentally ill and he was in the delirium that he signed this?
Regardless, either way, it is very frightening.
But the second consequences to this is that Yes, if and when President Trump actually does come to the White House and starts his second term and starts negotiating to Putin, Putin is not going to trust him anymore because, like, you know, He talked about negotiations and settling this conflict, right?
But Putin knows that the deep state in the United States is very strong.
And even Biden was saying this, he's not going to get us into nuclear war, but now he's doing it.
So maybe someone else is actually in charge of the United States.
And what happens even if they negotiate, Trump signs the deal?
But then the U.S. does a 180, which is what effectively happened, right?
And the Russians are already suspicious of Washington because our official policy has been, regardless whether it's a Democrat or Republican who sits in the White House, the official U.S. policy is to democratize The post-Soviet states,
Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and get them into NATO, get them into the EU. And that's a major threat to Putin because he has his own version of the Monroe Doctrine, just like we wouldn't allow, you know, China or Iran get as close as Cuba, you know, Mexico, Canada.
Putin is trying to prevent Ukraine from actually becoming part of NATO, so NATO is actually on his doorstep.
And that's why this is going on.
So that's going to be a major, major impact and damage to President Trump's plans to settle this conflict, which tells me that the Democrats actually don't want peace.
They want to continue Having Ukrainians killed and already between Russians, Ukraine, 1 million men is dead and 50%, like I said, of Ukrainian infrastructure is destroyed.
So they're going to be freezing to death this winter.
And that's a tragedy.
And that's what these neocons and the Democrats have done to the biggest country in Europe, Ukraine.
It's now basically ceasing to exist and it's frightening and it's a tragedy.
Rebecca, what if you got a call today from President Trump who said, Rebecca, this is a very dangerous situation and it could be that the Biden administration is just trying to make life difficult, if not impossible for me, by creating a bunch of chaos and then going, hey, President Trump, good luck to you.
We're turning over the situation or this big mess, putting it into your lap.
And if Trump were to say, Rebecca, what is the right course of action for me to take now?
I mean, let's remember Trump is not president.
He's only president-elect.
But at the same time, Putin knows that Trump is on his way into the White House.
Is there anything...
What would you say to President Trump that he should do to maybe avert the catastrophe that we seem to be at least edging toward?
Sure.
Well, if that were the case, if President Trump did in fact call me, I wouldn't be giving out my advice to him on air, right?
That's just not what you do.
You don't reveal your negotiating tips.
We do have some leverage over Russia.
We don't have a lot of leverage, I'll be honest with you, because unlike China, we're not joined at the hip with Russia.
We don't have a major trade.
We used to depend...
Well, they don't depend on us on a lot of things, actually.
Hardly on anything.
We used to depend on them for some, you know, space launch capabilities.
We used their RD-180 engines to fly our rockets into space, even our top secret payloads, satellite payloads.
We don't do that anymore.
Like, there's not much.
But there is one thing.
And your readers can guess what that is.
How does Putin make his money?
How does Russia survive?
And that's energy.
And President Trump knows full well how to do this.
And he actually did that during the first term.
He unleashed the power of U.S. The oil sector, the energy sector, right?
And the Russian prices were down.
But then Biden came in and he canceled the Keystone Pipeline.
And the Russian energy revenues, they just surged.
And that's how Putin financed his war machine.
It's very, very simple.
The Russian defense budget skyrocketed like one and a half times as soon as Biden came to power, and that contributed to Putin's decision to invade Ukraine.
So President Trump, I have full confidence in him.
He's a very successful businessman, right?
He knows how, unlike, you know, these Antony Blinken and all this, Jake Sullivan, these people have never actually worked in the real world, right?
And they Putin plays multidimensional chess and so does President Trump.
President Trump may need some advice from somebody like me who deeply understands Russia and all the nuances and how they think and all that stuff.
From the business perspective, he is the best postured US leader to deal with Russia and that's why Putin actually fears him.
He fears him the best.
Fascinating stuff.
Guys, I've been talking to Rebecca Koffler.
She's a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer.
Her website, Rebecca, R-E-B-E-K-A-H, Koffler, K-O-F-F-L-E-R.com.
The books, Putin's Playbook.
Which predicted the Russian invasion and also forthcoming American Bolsheviks, the persecution of Donald Trump, and Sovietization of America.
Rebecca, we're going to have to have you back to talk about the Sovietization.
That's a whole different topic, but very important and very fascinating.
So thank you very much for joining me and look forward to talking to you the next time.
Thank you very much for having me, Dinesh.
If I may, I'll just throw out there.
Putin's Playbook is getting updated where I will include some more recent information and the update is coming in March.
Putin's Playbook, Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America.
Thank you for having me.
God bless everybody.
Thank you.
As part of trying to examine the question, we're talking about my book The Big Lie, the question of whether fascism, Nazism, are these phenomena of the left or of the right?
I said the last time that we need to Dive a little bit more into what is the left?
What is the right?
First of all, where do we even get these terms?
Why do we call it left?
Why do we call it right?
You know, there are some things in life where you've got designations that have a significance.
So, for example, if you're driving on the highway and you see an arrow pointing to the right, well, that means go right.
So, in that case, the designation of right literally means go right.
But there are other designations that don't have the same kind of significance.
I mean, you think, for example, about magnetic charge, where someone will say, well, this is a magnetic positive, or this is a magnetic negative, and opposites attract and the same charge repels.
But then the question becomes, well, what is positive charge?
And the answer is nothing.
In other words, there's nothing, quote, positive about positive charge.
It's simply a designation.
It's just a way of separating two different types of charge.
So we agree conventionally to call one positive, we call the other negative.
So is left and right kind of like that?
There are two sides and they don't agree on certain things.
We just call one the left, the other the right, but we could just as easily have flipped it and called the right the left and the left the right.
Well, as it turns out, The history of all this is a little eccentric, and it goes back to the French Revolution.
Apparently in the National Assembly in Paris, the partisans of the revolution, the people who were on the side of the French Revolution, would sit on the left side of the aisle.
And the people who oppose the French Revolution would sit on the right.
And that is the way that we get these original designations of left and right.
So the left becomes the revolutionary party, the party that wants to overthrow the old regime or the ancien regime.
And then the right are the people who In a sense, don't like the French Revolution and prefer the old France.
And what is the old France?
Well, it's the France of monarchy, of aristocracy, of an established Catholic Church.
So it's the France before the Revolution.
And conservative becomes a kind of description of the old guard because the old guard wants to conserve the France that was there prior to the revolutionary overthrow of the government and the execution of the king.
Now, right away you see That if that is what left and right means, how does that really apply to the United States?
Because if right-winger means going back to the days of the monarchy and the aristocracy and the established church, I mean, by that definition, there are no real right-wingers in America at all because nobody wants to do that.
Not to mention that America has never had a monarchy.
We've never had an established church.
And so modern conservatives have nothing to conserve in that respect.
If conservatives in America are conserving something, it has to be something else.
Well, what is that?
What is it that American conservatives want to conserve?
Now, the answer is a little bit paradoxical.
Namely, that we in America, we conservatives, are conserving the principles of the American Revolution.
And so the paradox is simply this, the conservatives in France were against the revolution.
We conservatives are for the revolution, admittedly not their revolution, but our revolution, and we want to conserve that.
And it is a little bit odd to talk about conserving revolutionary principles because a revolution, by definition, is disruptive.
It's an overthrow.
I mean, just think of the word revolution.
A revolution is to take a ball and turn it all the way around.
The earth revolves around the sun.
And so a revolution is a capsizing of the old order.
Well, it's a capsizing of the old order, but it's a capsizing of the old order to enshrine some new principles.
And it is those principles that conservatives in America are trying to conserve.
And well, what are those principles?
Well, there are complex ways to talk about it, and I've written books that go into it.
What's So Great About America?
America, Imagine a World Without Her.
But here I want to simply summarize by saying that the principles of the American Revolution can be reduced to three.
One.
Economic freedom.
Another word for that, although a word that has certain types of baggage, is capitalism.
That's principle number one.
Political freedom.
That is constitutional democracy.
Notice I don't hesitate to use the word democracy.
Some people say, well, we're a republic.
We are.
But if you put the adjective constitutional before democracy, you are describing a republic.
A republic that is, in certain respects, though not all respects, democratic.
And finally, what you could call civil liberty or civic freedom.
And this is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, of course, freedom of assembly.
So these are the freedoms that American conservatives are trying to conserve.
And in the conservative understanding, in our understanding...
The main threat to freedom comes from where?
Now, for the American founders, the main threat to freedom came from outside the country.
It came from the British.
It came from the Crown.
But for us today, The threat to freedom comes from the government, our own government, our own constitutionally elected government.
So you might say, wait a minute, if we put the government into place, how can the government be the threat to our freedom?
Well, the answer is that the government can take away basic rights that were never put up for governmental adjudication in the first place.
Here we need to turn, just for illustration, to the Bill of Rights.
Let's look at the Bill of Rights.
If I were to read it to you, it would...
The Bill of Rights, pretty much most of the rights begin kind of like this.
Congress shall make no law, dot, dot, dot.
Congress shall make no law restricting freedom of speech.
Congress shall make no law establishing religion or depriving people of the freedom of exercise.
Congress shall not restrict the freedom of assembly.
Congress shall not deny people a right to vote.
Congress shall not deny due process of law.
So you notice the Let's focus not on the rights, but on the Congress shall make no law.
Congress shall not, let's call it.
Let's focus on Congress shall not.
By and large, what's going on here is limitations on the government are...
So the way you protect freedom is not by the government saying, I guarantee you the freedom to do this, I guarantee you the freedom to do that.
That is, you could call it the Soviet approach.
That is an approach in which the government is conferring the right on you.
Listen, we the government are giving you this right and we're going to protect it on your behalf.
No.
The understanding of the American system is you have that right in the first place.
Government didn't give it to you.
It was always yours.
This is the meaning of unalienable rights supplied by whom?
Supplied by your creator.
And so even an elected government does not have unlimited power.
This is the meaning of limiting the power of the government, limited government.
And so, the government is limited so you can do what?
Well, the government is limited so that you can live your life.
The government is limited so that you have the scope to be able to make your own decisions.
This is what it means to be responsible.
And among these freedoms, by the way, it's the one that we often leave out, is the freedom to keep the fruit of your own labor.
Lincoln actually put it very well when he said...
I've always thought that the man who made the corn should eat the corn.
And right there you have economic freedom, beautifully illustrated in Lincoln's lapidary and very simple but powerful prose.
The guy that makes the corn, and Lincoln elsewhere put it this way, has the right to put that corn into your own mouth.
And so Lincoln was not worried, as today we hear a lot about, well, what about economic inequality?
What is it about?
No.
For Lincoln, as for the founders, that is not, not only not a problem, it's not even an issue that needs to be discussed.
Here is the, I'm looking at the Federalist Papers, number 10, and the founders are talking about what is the, quote, first object of government.
The first object of government means the main purpose of having a government at all.
A government can have eight different purposes, but what's the first one?
Why do we have a government at all?
Here's the Federalist, Federalist 10.
The first object of government is, quote, the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, end quote.
Now, property here is broader than property.
It refers to earnings.
It refers to wealth.
Basically, the reason for creating this American government, the government that we conservatives are trying to conserve, is to let people go out and, quote, Grow the corn or make their stuff and offer it in the market and sell it for a price that they think is worthwhile and keep the proceeds.
The guy who makes the corn has the right to put the corn into his own mouth.
And the founders very specifically talk about protection of the different and unequal faculties.
In other words, the founders anticipated,
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