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March 14, 2025 - Dinesh D'Souza
27:13
OUR FAVORITE EV Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep1041
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Thank you.
Thank you.
Coming up, what's with this big spending budget bill?
I'll make the case that Congress has shown no ability to cut spending, but the executive branch, the Trump administration, has.
Chase Hughes, he's an expert on human persuasion and deception, joins me.
We're going to have a fascinating conversation about how to tell if somebody is lying to you, and then also apply those principles to the political arena.
And I'm going to begin my narrative about Reagan and the Reagan era based on America
needs this voice.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
These days, so much is happening all around the place that it's my old formula, which was I would talk about a single topic in my opening monologue.
I now like to do three or four items in the news and comment on them before kind of delving into a single topic.
And so let me hit a few things that I've spotted just from the last 24 hours.
Michelle Obama has a new podcast.
Well, it's not just her podcast.
It's Michelle Obama and, well, you might expect Barack Obama.
But no, it's Michelle Obama and her brother.
Craig Robinson.
Now, you know, all over social media, people are making jokes about the fact that this is a two-guys podcast and, you know, it's Craig and Mike and all this kind of stuff.
But I think the interesting thing here is the missing figure, namely Barack Obama.
And I know that Trish Regan and a few others have been, even Megyn Kelly, speculating about, are the Obamas, like, are they together anymore?
And this is hardly my area of specialty.
I focus really a little bit more on questions like, is Obama really gay?
Which I think has now been fairly well established, at least if you watch my interviews and also Tucker's with Larry Sinclair.
Odd, because, you know, Debbie made the point this morning, she's like, well, this Craig Robinson fellow is not really a public figure.
It's odd for Michelle to do a podcast with him.
Apparently, no one's really watching this podcast.
And 12,000 views, which is pretty horrible.
And so I don't know what its future is.
Well, let's turn to the cost of eggs.
Democrats are in a little bit of a quandary because they've been focusing now for several weeks.
The cost of eggs has gone up under Trump.
Didn't he say, didn't he campaign that he was going to bring the cost of eggs down?
Well, the cost of eggs has dropped.
It has dropped to about $5.50, and it was about $7.50.
And in fact, apparently the all-time high was $8.17, so it's almost one-third.
A drop in the price of eggs.
And I'm only chuckling about it because the Democrats have to find another talking point.
They can't use the price of eggs.
Major cuts on climate programs at the EPA. Very good news.
This is a massive boondoggle.
If you think USAID was a boondoggle, this is much, much bigger.
And so the savings for the U.S. government and the taxpayer are huge.
31 historic actions, says Lee Zeldin, to save money and put bureaucrats and programs out on the street.
And all of this is causing a certain kind of panic in the federal bureaucracy, which I think is a very good thing.
Here's a sign of that panic.
Article in Politico.
USAID official.
Tells remaining staffers, shred and burn all your documents.
Wow.
Well, if that's going on, and it seems to be going on, then I think Pam Bondi and the DOJ need to step in and find out who is shredding what and why.
So the DOJ here has a mission.
And that is to root out this kind of corruption.
And this is not just bureaucratic infighting.
Shredding documents, by and large, is for the purpose of hiding guilty or culpable behavior.
The NIH, the National Institutes for Health, has canceled the following grants.
I'm just going to mention two or three of them.
$620,000 for an LGB plus inclusive teen pregnancy program for transgender boys.
Wow.
Almost $700,000 for studying cannabis use among sexual minority gender diverse individuals, end quote.
$740,000 for exploring social networks among Black and Latino sexual minority men in New Jersey.
Now, again, this is all sort of DEI related.
But this is the kind of stuff that DOGE is digging up one example after another.
And by the way, they have a website.
I think it's doge.gov.
That's it.
It's a governmental website.
And it's got a very systematic presentation of all these DOGE findings.
Maybe the best news from my point of view, Department of Education cutting its workforce in half.
Now, this is a prelude to eliminating the whole department, but cutting the workforce in half is an excellent first step.
There are about 4,000 employees who work in that building, educating, I should add, nobody.
And Linda McMahon, the education secretary, who's, by the way, tasked with shutting the whole department down, is sending about half these people home.
In fact, I think she essentially...
Called a day off because she didn't want confusion over who stays home and who doesn't stay home.
She's like, you know, digest the information.
Half of you have been kind of essentially let go.
And we don't want people who have been let go showing up for work because they are no longer part of this workforce.
Now, all these cuts in Doge and in the federal government raise a broader issue.
And this is really what I want to focus on.
There is a CR, or Continuing Resolution, bill that passed the House, 217 to 213, with a prominent dissent, and that is Representative Thomas Massey.
Now, Thomas Massey is a budget cutter.
He sees that this bill doesn't really cut Biden levels of spending.
It is a big spending bill.
And he's like, there's no way I'm going to vote for it.
Now Trump lashes out at Massey, says, oh, you're, you know, this is horrible.
And Trump even says, I'll even back a primary opponent against you.
Very awkward position, by the way, to put conservatives in because a lot of conservatives and a lot of MAGA people, by the way, like Thomas Massey because he is a guy who will stand by his principles and will not relent.
So what is Trump's...
Well, part of it is that Massey has been something of a never-Trumper.
That should be said.
And Massey did endorse DeSantis in the race between Trump and DeSantis.
And Trump, as you know, doesn't...
Like that kind of thing, and he remembers that kind of disloyalty as he sees it.
But I think that's not really the fundamental issue here.
The fundamental issue here is that if you don't have a budget bill, you don't have a continuing resolution, the government shuts down.
In the past, when the government shuts down, you have a certain type of paralysis, and the Democrats and the media go out and say the Republicans are to blame.
So I think the Trump strategy here is really simple.
The Congress should pass the spending bill, and if the Democrats want to shut down the government, let them.
Because then...
It's on them.
If they shut down the government, then people can't say, I'm not getting my Social Security check.
Now, by the way, people do get your Social Security checks.
The basic functions of the government continue.
If you remember government shutdowns in the past, nothing really happens.
Nothing really of note happens.
It's true.
Certain things get suspended.
But the point is, if the Democrats are causing that to happen, if they are the ones responsible, guess what?
The Trump people can actually use this to accelerate the cutting of the government.
You know, federal bureaucrats aren't showing up for work.
Guess what?
Maybe some of them can be let go.
We don't need them.
We'll put them on permanent vacation.
And so the Democrats are in a way in an awkward situation because their willingness to shut down the government and in fact their decision to do it.
Now, why is it their decision to do it?
Democrats have been tweeting out saying, well, the Republicans control both houses.
Why do they even need us?
Well, they need you only for this reason.
They don't need you in the House because the Republicans, and there's some credit that goes here to Mike Johnson, although more to Trump, they've been able to convince virtually every Republican, not counting Massey, to go along.
And to approve the CR. But to approve it, I think, on this basis.
I'm looking at some posts by a Republican congressman.
Here's Andy Biggs.
I've never voted for a continuing resolution, but I'm voting for the CR on the floor today.
And he says, by and large, that the executive branch is the only branch of government serious about cutting spending, despite my best efforts.
This captures right here, I think, the heart of the matter.
And that is that...
We do not have a congressional majority to cut spending.
There are enough Republicans who will not vote for it.
These are Republicans who benefit from big spending.
They like the big spending particularly in their own districts and their own states, which facilitates their re-election.
And so quite honestly, if you want a budget-cutting majority in the House and Senate, The American people need to vote for that.
We don't have that currently.
And so the point that Andy Biggs is making, and I see others, Greg Stubbe and others making the same point, it's that, look, guess who is shown the ability to cut spending?
Not us and Congress.
We don't have those kinds of votes.
But the executive branch is doing it.
So guess what?
If Congress allocates the money, it's still up to the administration to spend or not to spend it.
They can choose not to spend it, and to cut programs and to cut personnel, they are ultimately charged with the complete enforcement of all the allocations that Congress makes.
Now, this bill is now in the hands of the Senate, and even though Republicans have a majority, 53 to 47, the simple truth of it is because of the filibuster and because of efforts to delay procedures, You need 60 votes in the Senate.
And the Democrats are basically saying that they are going to create a unified wall so that the Republicans can't get to 60 votes.
And so there is a kind of impasse.
There is a standoff.
Now, one way to overcome the standoff is to override the filibuster.
And the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, does have the ability to do that.
But the other possibility is that John Thune goes, OK, guess what?
You want to shut down the government?
Because you're refusing to get to 60 votes, go ahead and do it.
You'll be the ones who did it.
And then anybody who's angry about the fact that they aren't getting paid, because remember, when there is a shutdown, bureaucrats do not get paid.
Some of them may get back pay later, but they're not going to get paid on time.
And that's going to create some restlessness and some anger.
And I think the Republicans can say, well, we...
We deployed our entire majorities in both houses to get this through, and the Democrats refused to go along.
They shut the government down.
We didn't.
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Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast a new guest, Chase Hughes.
And he has the most unusual title.
Well, he's an author, but he's also an interrogator.
He runs an organization called NCI University, and you can follow him on x at nciuniversity.
His website is chasehughes.com.
He served in the military for 20 years, and now he teaches interrogation, sales, influence, persuasion.
He's also the author of a best-selling book which talks about behavior profiling, persuasion, and influence.
It's called The Ops Manual.
Chase, welcome.
Thank you for joining me.
Debbie and I like to watch these criminal shows and we came across a segment in which you and three other guys were commenting about, I don't remember if it was the Scott Peterson case or the Menendez brothers.
We watched two or three of those segments and they're really fun to watch because you've got really smart people observing human behavior and Analyzing it from the point of view of do we see and detect...
Deception.
And that's what intrigued me a lot.
And I thought, wow, I'd like to have Chase on the podcast.
I noticed you followed me on X, so I messaged you.
Anyway, that's how this came about.
Maybe I'll begin by just asking you to tell just briefly about your background, because this is such an unusual field.
The field of interrogation and the study of human behavior.
Well, I think that, and thanks for having me on, Dinesh.
I think when I was like 19, I got rejected by a girl.
And I kind of searched the internet for how to tell when girls like you.
And that was kind of the origin of all that.
And it became almost an obsession because...
I think I had this social anxiety and the more I could see behind the masks that people are wearing, their insecurities, these little fears that we hide from the public.
I never judged anyone for it, but it just made me realize that everybody screwed up.
Everybody screwed up in their own way.
And it became addictive in that we're kind of getting this glimpse into a part of reality that no one else in the room.
We're seeing a layer or several layers deeper than most people really see.
And it just became an obsession for me.
And I did 20 years in the military and then wound up training the psychological operations personnel and then now titled in a bunch of podcasts as a brainwashing expert and a mind control guy and stuff like that.
But it evolved into that thing to where I wanted to see Where the loopholes are in the human brain, not just from a profiling perspective, but from an influence perspective.
If we go all the way back to the Milgram experiment where people were made to do crazy stuff, I wanted to identify all these loopholes to make interrogation better, to make hostage negotiation better, and all of that.
I mean, Chase, you're touching something that is so fundamental, I think, to human experience, which is that unlike any other animal, we have this sort of Rather profound inner life.
And yet the inner life is not automatically disclosed to the world.
I like the phrase that you use that we all kind of wear a mask.
And so often, even in normal interaction, someone does something really stupid, but it's in social companies, so you're not going to register an astonishment in your face because you realize you don't want them to know that you've realized how dumb that was.
And so you put on a sort of screen.
And what you're saying is that your career is devoted to peeking behind the screen.
Now my question is, do you do that by...
Using the tools of biology and neuroscience or more the tools of philosophy and psychology?
In other words, are you studying the mind or are you studying the brain?
I think that's a very important distinction to make, but I think it's a mixture of both.
I think if we look at, we have one side of like...
The philosophy of it and the sociological aspects of everything, the cultural things that impact.
So someone's tiny little head movement might mean something different in another country.
So it's cultural and there's a lot of biology there.
For instance, somebody starts getting scared, their body, their shoulders go up, their arms kind of squeeze into their sides, they reach down and cover their abdomen.
It makes our body just automatically start protecting our arteries.
So there's some biology there, but we're also looking at a lot of sociological indicators.
Let's talk about, just to set things up, I'm going to pivot a little bit into politics in a moment, but I thought I would ask you about two cases.
Actually, one of them, I agreed with you completely.
The other one, I disagreed not just with you, but with your entire panel.
So, the first one was the Scott Peterson case.
This is the fellow who was accused and convicted of killing his wife, Lacey Peterson.
He was being interviewed by Diane Sawyer.
And I thought it was very interesting how, I mean, yes, I was like, this guy is obviously lying.
But you go way beyond that to look at things like his eye movements, the fluttering of his eyelids, whether he is looking directly at Diane Sawyer or kind of looking to the side, if he is speaking in a kind of normal, I didn't do it, or if he speaks in a sort of abstract way like, I don't think the general public would believe that I did it.
It has a whole different meaning than, no, I didn't do it.
And so talk a little bit about some of those kind of human signals that you look for to see if somebody is not telling the truth.
Well, the first thing we look for anytime we're using behavior profiling is change.
How does the person normally act in a comfortable or lower stress scenario?
And am I seeing a change in behavior at this critical moment?
And a lot of times what we're looking for are, are they deviating from that baseline?
Is there hesitancy?
Does their statement lack pronouns?
This is proven that deceptive statements are more likely to lack pronouns.
Are they lacking contractions?
Instead of, I didn't kill her, it's, I did not kill her, or I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
And there's other things called psychological distancing that's really, really common.
There's 50 or so indicators that we're really looking for, but these are some strong ones.
In psychological distancing, you're going to see people that are, instead of saying murder, they might say hurt.
Instead of saying steal, they might say take.
Instead of saying touch inappropriately, they might say interfere with.
And so you'll see this little softening.
And instead of sex, you might hear sexual relations, to use that statement again.
So you'll hear a little softening, and guilty people are a lot more likely to do that.
So we're looking at several dozens and dozens of factors here, but those are some of the most common.
And one of the other things we're looking for is blink rate.
And our average blink rate is, like this is how often we blink, is around 15 times per minute in conversation.
And if I see a blink rate suddenly start increasing, that is a almost guaranteed indicator of high stress.
Stress is going up.
If I see blink rate go way down, that's actually an indicator of focus.
So it doesn't obviously mean the opposite.
So it's focus in the low end and stress on the high end.
So it could be different.
You could be focusing on something that's a potential threat or something that's valuable.
But we really look, during this critical question, am I seeing all of these things come to a little crescendo?
And that's where we're paying attention to.
The case where I disagreed and I thought it'd be fun to mention it to you was in the Menendez brothers' case, where my take on that, having actually watched a lot of the trial, Going back, of course, now to the 1990s, I guess it was, was that you had an authoritarian...
Kind of classic bullying Cuban father who ruled the household somewhat tyrannically.
You had a submissive mom, and then you have two unbelievably uncontrolled, bratty, entitled kids with at least one and maybe both being pure psychopaths.
But...
Distinguished by the fact that at least one of them, I'm thinking here of Eric, not Lyle Menendez, is a kind of a genius performer and actor.
And so I saw them as putting on the performance of a lifetime, at least in the first trial.
But then I noticed that you and your buddies, who are all extremely well-credentialed, very smart, analytically looking at this at a depth that I wouldn't be able to match.
But all of you thought, you know what?
I think these guys were in fact abused.
Not to say that they are telling the full truth about what happened, but I think that they are believable on the fundamental abuse.
Do you still hold to that position?
And do you think that they were abused?
I don't remember because so many of these cases that we look at, I'm never looking into the case.
And the more I look into the case, the more I find that it skews my bias.
So I'm definitely no expert on the case.
The behaviors I remember distinctly indicating signs of abuse and when they recalled it.
And so just as an example, and this is proven.
We look down and to our left most of the time in our baseline when we're accessing an internal dialogue.
We're thinking about what to say.
We're kind of rehearsing something mentally.
And if something hits us emotionally, we'll look down right when we're thinking about it.
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